Annabel - Kathleen Winter [136]
“The gold you always had in your closet?”
“I want you to have it. Put it in your pocket and we’ll go to the credit union tomorrow and I’m going to sign that account over to you. And you, I want you to use it to do something with yourself. I don’t care what it is but I want you to think about it. Go and visit different places if you want, places where they can teach you something you want to know how to do. It has to be something you have an interest in. And this thing here” — he gave Wayne an envelope — “is a ticket Thomasina Baikie gave me to give you.”
Wayne put the bank book in his pocket and unwrapped the ticket. It was a ticket for a performance of American folk songs by the Boston Downtown Community Choir. The ticket had cost five dollars and the date on it was August the twenty-fifth, which was in six weeks’ time.
“Thomasina wants you to see your old friend. The trip won’t cost much, and even if it did, what else is money for?”
“Dad, I don’t want to take your gold.”
“As I said, son, you’ve had a lot more to contend with than I have ever had. I want you to take that. Your mother and I want you to have it and we want you to do something with it that will mean we don’t have to worry about how you are going to make a living. It’s pure selfishness on our part.”
“Does my mother know?”
“Does she know what, son?”
“Does she know I’ve gone off the drugs? And what about what Derek Warford did? She doesn’t know about that?”
“No. I didn’t say a word about Derek Warford. Your mother would not have been able to stand hearing that.”
“I know.”
“But she knows about the drugs. Your mother has always — part of her — wanted you to be who you are now. She has always been the one who felt the drugs might not be the right thing. Ever since you were little. So yes, I told her about that. And she was happy.”
They were at the intersection that led up Signal Hill and, to the east, along the Battery.
“She was happy?”
“Well she cried, but she said she was happy. And I almost forgot to give you this. I hope to God it’s not bent. She’ll kill me if I’ve bent it.” Treadway took a small square out of his pocket. It was two pieces of cardboard measuring no more than two by three inches and held together by a rubber band, and when Wayne took the band off, he saw it was a photograph. There had been a newspaper clipping that showed the moment Elizaveta Kirilovna had won her gold medal for synchronized swimming, when Wayne was eight years old. Jacinta had clipped it at the time, and they had looked at it together and felt Elizaveta Kirilovna’s joy.
“But this is not newsprint,” Wayne said. “It’s a real photograph.” Elizaveta Kirilovna was waving and her face was wet. You could see a drop of swimming pool water on her mouth. Wayne had, when he was eight, told Jacinta he could almost imagine that Elizaveta Kirilovna was waving to him personally.
“Your mother took it to Sooter’s in Goose Bay and asked them to reprint it on photo paper. They do that now. They can make a poster if you want it. But your mother wanted it small. She asked me to go into S. O. Steele on Water Street and have it put in a sterling silver frame for you, but I didn’t get around to it. Could you do that yourself, son? Your mother doesn’t need to know. I don’t tell her everything, and I sometimes have the feeling there are details she keeps from me.”
They walked past the convent and past the coloured houses that straggled up the hill and petered out before you got to the Battery Hotel, the front all white on the hillside