In the Clear Read online

  In the Clear

  In the Clear

  ANNE LAUREL CARTER

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2001 Anne Laurel Carter

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licencing Agency), 6 Adelaide Street East, Suite 900, Toronto, Ontario, M5C 1H6.

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Carter, Anne, 1953–

  In the clear

  ISBN 1-55143-192-0

  I. Title.

  PS8555.A7727I65 2001 jC813’.54 C2001-910131-7

  PZ7.C2427In 2001

  First published in the United States, 2001

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001086678

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for our publishing programs provided by the following agencies: The Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), The Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover illustration by Ron Lightburn

  Cover design by Christine Toller

  Printed and bound in Canada

  IN CANADA:

  Orca Book Publishers

  1030 North Park Street

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8T 1C6

  IN THE UNITED STATES:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  03 02 01 • 5 4 3

  The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

  For Janet Abernathy

  and

  Mary Richardson,

  who gave me their stories.

  Contents

  1. FACE-OFF, 1959

  2. ONCE UPON A TIME, 1954

  3. DREAMING WITH TANTE MARIE, 1959

  4. IN THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN, 1954

  5. CHRISTMAS WITH TANTE MARIE, 1959

  6. THE HOUSE OF HORRORS, JANUARY 1955

  7. CHRISTMAS MORNING, 1959

  8. HENRY’S VISIT TO THE HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1955

  9. FUNERALS ARE FOR FAMILIES, 1960

  10. TWO SESSIONS A DAY, 1955

  11. SECOND CHANCE SPRING, 1960

  12. NURSE NIGHTINGALE, 1955

  13. GOOD NEWS, 1960

  14. THE NEW BRACE AND SHOE, 1955

  15. MARCH THAW, 1961

  16. FACE-OFF: THE HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1955

  17. THE FINAL PLAYOFFS, 1961

  18. HOME

  1.

  FACE-OFF, 1959

  “It’s Hockey Night in Canada,” I holler. My voice swells in a perfect imitation of my favorite TV announcer, Foster Hewitt, on a Saturday night.

  “In goal for the Montréal Canadiens … Jacques Plante.”

  “Quiet, Pauline!” my mother scolds from the kitchen. “I’m on the phone. Long distance to Grand-mère in Montréal.”

  “In goal for the Maple Leafs …” I raise my voice a notch louder. Grand-mère is a Canadiens fan. “… Johnny Bower!” Time for a whistle, long and shrill. Grand-mère knows that the only thing I enjoy more than hockey is making my mother good and mad.

  High heels click across the kitchen floor.

  I wait. I push my thin, shrunken left leg to one side of my throne, the cushioned window seat overlooking our backyard. I used to wait for my mother’s home-school lessons at the kitchen window at the front of the house. I used to watch for my old friend – my old best friend – Henry Patterson, walking to school with Stuart O’Connor and Billy Talon. Until one day a new girl on our street stopped and pointed at me. “Look!” she yelled. “Is that Polio-Pauline? I heard she caught it from the Don Mills pool.” Four girls turned and stared at me. I stuck out my tongue and they ran, afraid they might catch it.

  On my window seat, I position the little metal men on my dad’s old table-hockey game for a face-off. My dad and I are big Leafs fans. We’re hoping we’ll win the Stanley Cup this year. When I play hockey on the window seat at the back of my house, the blue paint-chipped Maple Leafs never lose.

  “Pauline!” My mother stares from me to the hockey game to the stack of books she left within reach this morning.

  I never reach for the books she leaves me.

  Her voice accuses me of betrayal. “You haven’t read a thing all morning!” She grabs my table-hockey game and turns away. The accordion pleats of her gray flannel skirt flick the air. Before I can stop her, she’s locked my game in a cabinet on the other side of the room.

  “No fair,” I yell. My metal leg brace is off and my crutches are on the floor.

  “You refuse to read the books I give you! You do it to annoy me.”

  Now I turn away. Outside the window, I see my dad skating figure eights around our new backyard rink. He flies by, waving to me. He’s so pleased with himself for finally building a rink this winter. My mother wasn’t keen on the idea. Every year she gave more reasons. Like, what if there’s a thaw and water floods the basement? What if a puck breaks a window? Who’s Dad going to play with? What if kids sneak over the fence in the middle of the night and get hurt? My mother can be such a dream squelcher. But this year – maybe it’s the Stanley Cup fever – Dad ignored her and built it anyway. Our wide backyard is meant for a rink, he says. The wooden fence on both sides makes natural endboards when he shoots pucks. He bought nets and froze them into the ice. Years ago, he played hockey at high school and university, and now when he goes out to skate, he’s dreaming he plays for the Leafs.

  If only I could fly out there with him, so powerful and free.

  Suddenly I see Henry, my once-upon-a-time best friend. He’s jumping over the fence, the endboards, wearing his skates. He begins to race around the rink with my dad. Henry plays on a Don Mills hockey team – I’ve watched him leave for a hundred games with that big, black bag of his. He’s fast, almost as fast as my dad.

  What a show-off! Wouldn’t you know he’d be the first kid out with my dad on my new rink?

  I thump the window. Henry looks up. I glare, stick out my thumb and jerk it sideways, the unmistakable sign for go away, my gesture to Henry from the time I was in the hospital and did not speak for months.

  “This could be Grand-mère’s last Christmas,” my mother says, her voice soft with apology and regret. She never stays mad at me for long.

  Henry’s shoulders droop. My dad says something before he leaves. Dad likes Henry. If the Leafs make it to the playoffs, he’ll ask Mr. Patterson and Henry to watch a Saturday night game with us. I’ll hate it. Dad thinks I’m alone too much, but it’s way better, just Dad and me. If Henry comes, I’ll hide my leg under a blanket and I won’t cheer or say a word. I still don’t speak when Henry’s around.

  I turn to glare at my mother. Her hands fuss nervously with the perfect bun at the back of her head. “She wants to come visit us, but she can’t travel alone.”

  “Can’t someone bring her?”

  “No. My sisters are busy with their families. All your cousins want to stay home for Christmas.”

  We usually celebrate Christmas at Tante Giselle’s or Tante Mireille’s in Montréal. My parents think it’s good for me to see my cousins. But last year we drove through a blizzard and my mother swore, “No more winter driving. What would happen to Pauline in an accident, or, God forbid, if something happened to all of us?”

  My cousins hate me. They play games with balls and I can’t chase the ball. I complain to my mother and she makes them get it for me. Behind her back, my cousins call me “Tattle-tale.” I hate them every bit as much as they hate me.

/>   But I have another aunt. She’s the black sheep of the family and I adore her.

  “Tante Marie isn’t married,” I say. “You could ask Tante Marie.”

  “You know how hard I find her visits. She interferes. She likes to stir up trouble.” My mother’s nervous hands smooth her perfectly ironed skirt.

  Tante Marie is my mother’s youngest sister, ten years younger. Where my mother is hard bones and smells like a closed-up library, Tante Marie is soft skin and smells of lavender and the open woods. Her dark hair is never pinned back but curves playfully around her shoulders. She makes my father and me laugh and she’s not afraid of anything or anybody.

  Something always happens when she visits – some wonderful trouble.

  There are only two weeks until Christmas.

  My mother reaches for the top book. “The Secret Garden. You’d like it. There’s a girl in this book almost as old as you and a boy in a wheelchair.”

  She flips open to the first page.

  I reach for my crutches, ignoring my brace. It takes too long to fasten around my left leg and I want to make a fast getaway. “I don’t want to hear about a cripple.”

  She starts to read, “When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen …”

  Without my brace, I lean heavily on my crutches to hurry out of the back room, into the front hallway. On my left is the kitchen. My mother’s domain. On my right, stairs lead up to my parents’ bedroom and the guestroom. I can’t do stairs easily. My bedroom is here on the main floor, close to the side door. But my bedroom doesn’t have a lock on it.

  In front of me is the bathroom. It’s my only choice. I lock the door behind me.

  Her voice is slightly muffled. Too bad. I can still make out every word.

  “So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also.”

  I flush the toilet, over and over. For a while, all I can hear is the sound of water rushing through pipes behind walls and under the floor.

  I stop. The last drips of water fill the toilet tank.

  “There was panic on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows. During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone.”

  I open the door a crack and thrust out my hand. “Okay. You win. I’ll read it. But on one condition. You invite Tante Marie.”

  There is the sound of a book being slammed shut. Pages pressing, words colliding. Trouble.

  I feel the strong spine of the book placed between my thumb and fingers.

  “Okay,” she says. “You win. I’ll invite Tante Marie.”

  2.

  ONCE UPON A TIME, 1954

  Once upon a time, I could walk and run.

  For me, there’s a huge mountain in my childhood. Everything that happened – all that I was before the mountain – is once upon a time.

  Does everyone have a mountain in their lives, a before and after?

  The mountain fills my sky and I will never cross its peak, never go back to that other time, before I got polio. But I remember everything.

  My legs moved perfectly then. I didn’t have to think about what they did. If I felt like running, I ran. If I wanted to get to the top of a tree, I climbed. In my memories, I ran ahead of Mom everywhere we went. “Slow down, Pauline,” she’d call behind me. Even then, she never spoke French to anyone, except to Grand-mère. Not in Don Mills. She wanted to belong.

  Henry lived next door. He was better than a brother or a cousin because we never fought. My parents liked him too, especially Dad.

  A year older than me, Henry was bigger and his legs longer than mine. He led the way wherever we went. On rainy days we built dams in the sewers and recreated big storms. We played that our world, Don Mills, was in danger of being flooded and washed away. But no! Henry and I would knock out those dams. We were heroes, saving the world and everyone in it.

  Billy Talon and Stuart O’Connor – they lived further down Chelsea Street – always wanted to play with us. But it was way better without them; they wrecked our play with their wrestling and fighting. Henry and I were a team: a dazzling duo. So, if Stuart and Billy followed us as we played, Henry would make the gesture with his thumb. Go away: you can’t be part of our brave deeds.

  On sunny days our favorite game was chasing bad guys off our street. My father even made wooden stick-horses for us to ride. I chose the red one. Henry’s was blue. We rode up and down the green lawns saving old Mrs. Hankenstein, the widow, or Mrs. Dickson with the twins who cried all the time. I was allowed to run as many lawns as I had years. I counted them – one, two, three, four, five, six – as Henry and I chased all the bad guys off our street, keeping Don Mills safe.

  One, two, three, four, five, six … then came the summer I turned seven.

  For several days before my birthday, I felt light-headed and tired. The morning of my seventh birthday, I was hot and my throat hurt, but I didn’t want to tell my mother, because it was my birthday. Henry knocked at the front door, calling on me to come out and play. I splashed cold, cold water on my face and followed him outside.

  Henry suggested we chase bad guys on our horses. I didn’t say anything. I felt sick. I dragged out my red horse and began to ride. Because it was my birthday, Henry let me take the lead. I rode dizzily. Strangely, the lawns had turned into a mountain and I was struggling up toward a distant peak, getting hotter and hotter. I had to prod my horse to keep going. Maybe I was too close to the sun. Maybe it would burn us up.

  A terrible hurting went right through me, beginning in my head, right down to my feet, and then …

  I fell off my horse and lay on the ground, feeling like a deflated balloon, waiting for Henry to find me and help me.

  He did. He stood over me, upside-down, laughing as if I were playing a joke. “Wow. How’d you fall like that?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer. He seemed a long, long way away, on the other side of a mountain.

  Henry must have sensed something was wrong, for he put his hand on my forehead, just like our mothers would.

  “Hey, Paulie. You’re really hot. Are you okay?”

  I shook my head. No. I wasn’t okay. I’d never felt sick like this before. I’d had chicken pox in the spring, but this was way worse.

  Henry ran to get my dad. It must have been a Saturday because Dad was home, cutting the grass. I heard the buzz of the lawn mower stop … there was a long silence … and then I saw the shiny top of Dad’s bald head bobbing toward me as he ran behind Henry.

  Scared and confused, I lay on the seventh lawn away from home, aching like crazy, my red horse fallen on the green grass beside me. I was scared and confused because I felt too sick to get up.

  Dad knelt beside me. I could see flecks of fear in his eyes when I whispered, “Can you carry me home, Dad?”

  • • •

  I went to bed and slept right through until the next morning. My curtains were open and sunlight flooded my room, rousing me. It was hotter than yesterday, and my throat felt like I’d swallowed burning rocks. I had to get to the bathroom.

  With an effort I sat up dizzily and swung my legs, letting my feet drop to the floor. I started to walk across the room, but instead toppled against my dresser, my left leg buckling under me.

  Something was the matter with my left leg. It didn’t want to move or hold me up. I tried to drag myself toward my open door, holding onto the dresser, but it was too hard. I collapsed on the floor.

  “Mom!” I called out weakly. “Dad!”

  They came running into my room. The bright yellow daisies on my mother’s housecoat were bobbing and swaying crazily.

  “I can’t move my leg,” I said.

  A look of helpless panic came over my mother’s face. Even my dad couldn’t hide his fear as he immediately cradled me in his arms and
swept me off the floor. “Go call Dr. Shinobu,” he ordered Mom into action. “This isn’t a flu.”

  She ran and phoned our family doctor. Dr. Shinobu seemed to appear within minutes to check me over. Then the three of them left my room and I could hear their urgent voices out in the hallway. Mom came back in my room and yanked a few clothes from my drawers, helped me get dressed, then packed a bag for me. “Dr. Shinobu says we should get you to a hospital for some tests,” she explained in a tight voice. “Don’t worry, dear. You’re going to be all right.”

  Dad carried me outside and put me in the back seat of the car. We drove downtown to the hospital. A quiet fear rode in the car with us and though they wouldn’t name it, I knew its name.

  Everyone was terrified of polio. We called it the summer plague. The summer before had been the worst epidemic in years. People told stories at school, at church, at the corner store, everywhere. Someone always knew someone who had it. One of Dad’s best friends at work lost his wife and new baby to it. And my mother had taught students at the university who caught polio and never returned. Magazines showed pictures, too, pictures of sad-looking kids lying sick and helpless in those iron lungs. A huge poster showing one of those kids hung in the waiting room of Dr. Shinobu’s office, and I cowered with fear beside my mother whenever I had to look at it. Those poor kids! Locked inside those tin-can prisons.

  Dr. Shinobu had kept his voice quiet in the hallway after he checked me over, but I heard two words, plain as day: paralysis and breathing.

  Buildings and statues sped by outside the car window. Dully I looked at the signs, trying to read them. I loved reading, maybe because I read so much with my mother. I was counting the days until grade two started in September. Only ten days left. I had to get better for school. I was the best reader in my class. When Dad pulled up in front of a big building downtown, I looked up to see several words above the wide front doors. The first word was long and unfamiliar. It began with “H.” But the last three words, I read easily. I sounded them out and felt a tremendous sense of relief wash over me. I guessed at the first, long word: “Hospital for Sick Children.” This was the place that would get me better for the first day of school.