memory of Janet, who one afternoon plucked G.I. Joe from out of my hands and asked him, using Barbie like a puppet, if he wanted to take her—Barbie’s—clothes off.Except Janet never called her Barbies “Barbie”—she always gave them names like Nancy or Priscilla or Penelope. And, not even consulting me, Janet had my G.I. Joe respond in the affirmative. “Affirmative,” she had him say. She was keeping Joe in military character, I suppose, even though she insisted on having Barbie call him “Matthew.” I sat there and watched this performance for a while—interested, I grant you, because the fact is, the first thing I did whenever I got hold of Janet’s Barbies was to rip their clothes off and tap on their hard plastic breasts. There was not much else to do with naked Barbies—turn them this way and that, fondle the unyielding plastic, and feel strangely thwarted.
So Janet and I never went to check out the library catalogue. She called a few days after my parents hopped the ferry back to PEI, and I told her I had already gone to one of the free orientation seminars the library was offering around the clock that first week. I may have sounded snotty when I said this, but Janet didn’t care. She’d officially paid for her meal at the Crowfeather Inn. Now she could call home with a clean conscience.
Did you call Larry about the library?—Yes, Mom and Dad, I did
. Sometimes we’d wave to one another from across the quad.
I’ve scarcely run into her at all this year. We never called each other after that, never had coffee, lunch, or a beer like our parents expected, and neither of us—I felt I could safely assume—suffered a twinge of guilt leading our independent, Westcock lives.
Anyway, now I feel horrible. The delayed guilt comes rushing and babbling over me like high tide when my parents call to tell me Janet is pregnant.
It’s a big deal for the Campbells and Humphrieses of PEI, who, have I mentioned, are Presbyterian. Our grandmotherheads up the local Temperance Society. To elucidate: we come from a place with a temperance society, and my grandmother heads it up. Janet apparently went home early this month for Thanksgiving, and the family pronounced her tubby. Aunt Maud neglected to offer Janet gravy come suppertime. Uncle Stan asked if she’d been getting enough exercise. Cousin Wayne reverted to using her childhood nickname of “Chubs.” Janet broke down when dessert was passed around and Grandma Lydia “forgot” to add the expected scoop of ice cream to her pumpkin pie.
“Darn it all!” Janet is reported to have sobbed. “I’m eating for two, ya know!”
Boom
, went the table. My parents were there, plus, as I’ve already noted, my temperate Presbyterian grandma, Lydia Humphries.
“Nonsense,” Lydia kept saying. “Nonsense.” I know she said this, because this is the thing Lydia says when she is angriest of all. She said it when I was ten and allowed myself to be flung from the tire swing in her yard only to alight on a much doted-on patch of black-eyed Susans. “What is this nonsense?” she wheezed, appearing on the porch without her sun hat. The lack of a sun hat, I remember, terrified me. And honest to God, she looked at the flowers but not at me, didn’t even ask if I was hurt—just headed straight for the crabapple tree from which the tire swing was suspended and for some reason yanked off a branch. And even though I’d never been exposed to such a thing in my life, some kind of universal childhood knowledge kicked in when I heard the crack of the bough being ripped from the tree. I understood that crack to be a prologue of sorts, an audio hint of what was to come. She was cutting a switch was what she was doing. I always thought you could do that only with willow branches, but I guess Grandma Lydia was improvising that day. My father yankedme off my ass and through the back door, and together we hid in my grandmother’s bathroom—Dad pretending all the while that we
So Janet and I never went to check out the library catalogue. She called a few days after my parents hopped the ferry back to PEI, and I told her I had already gone to one of the free orientation seminars the library was offering around the clock that first week. I may have sounded snotty when I said this, but Janet didn’t care. She’d officially paid for her meal at the Crowfeather Inn. Now she could call home with a clean conscience.
Did you call Larry about the library?—Yes, Mom and Dad, I did
. Sometimes we’d wave to one another from across the quad.
I’ve scarcely run into her at all this year. We never called each other after that, never had coffee, lunch, or a beer like our parents expected, and neither of us—I felt I could safely assume—suffered a twinge of guilt leading our independent, Westcock lives.
Anyway, now I feel horrible. The delayed guilt comes rushing and babbling over me like high tide when my parents call to tell me Janet is pregnant.
It’s a big deal for the Campbells and Humphrieses of PEI, who, have I mentioned, are Presbyterian. Our grandmotherheads up the local Temperance Society. To elucidate: we come from a place with a temperance society, and my grandmother heads it up. Janet apparently went home early this month for Thanksgiving, and the family pronounced her tubby. Aunt Maud neglected to offer Janet gravy come suppertime. Uncle Stan asked if she’d been getting enough exercise. Cousin Wayne reverted to using her childhood nickname of “Chubs.” Janet broke down when dessert was passed around and Grandma Lydia “forgot” to add the expected scoop of ice cream to her pumpkin pie.
“Darn it all!” Janet is reported to have sobbed. “I’m eating for two, ya know!”
Boom
, went the table. My parents were there, plus, as I’ve already noted, my temperate Presbyterian grandma, Lydia Humphries.
“Nonsense,” Lydia kept saying. “Nonsense.” I know she said this, because this is the thing Lydia says when she is angriest of all. She said it when I was ten and allowed myself to be flung from the tire swing in her yard only to alight on a much doted-on patch of black-eyed Susans. “What is this nonsense?” she wheezed, appearing on the porch without her sun hat. The lack of a sun hat, I remember, terrified me. And honest to God, she looked at the flowers but not at me, didn’t even ask if I was hurt—just headed straight for the crabapple tree from which the tire swing was suspended and for some reason yanked off a branch. And even though I’d never been exposed to such a thing in my life, some kind of universal childhood knowledge kicked in when I heard the crack of the bough being ripped from the tree. I understood that crack to be a prologue of sorts, an audio hint of what was to come. She was cutting a switch was what she was doing. I always thought you could do that only with willow branches, but I guess Grandma Lydia was improvising that day. My father yankedme off my ass and through the back door, and together we hid in my grandmother’s bathroom—Dad pretending all the while that we
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