Annabel - Kathleen Winter [93]
“Watching daytime television is a kind of death,” she had said. “I don’t know how anyone can stand it who calls themselves alive.” But now she kept watching it, and she said, “Your father can open that letter and read it himself, if ever he decides to come home.”
Every night after the six o’clock news there was an ad for Minute Auto Glass that promised same-day service, but Wayne had never heard of anyone getting a truck window fixed at the Goose Bay franchise in less than five days. There was always some factor that made your glass a special order. He had to visit Goose Bay three times before his truck was ready, and on the third time, which they had promised would be the last or he would get the work done for half price, they asked him to wait two more hours. He went across the road to the A&W and sat by the window with his onion rings and Teenburger special, and that was when he saw Thomasina Baikie walking along the main road carrying two ShopRite bags.
In grade eight Wayne had believed Thomasina strong. Now she was smaller. In her late forties when he had last seen her, she had now entered menopause, and the thing that happens to a lot of women had happened to Thomasina. You might as well call her a different person. What happened to women, Wayne wondered, and why did it happen to some but not others? If you did not know Jacinta, for instance, and you looked at a picture of her the day she married Treadway and another one of her now, you would not be able to match the two. If you entered a contest and could win a million dollars by picking out the old and young Jacintas, you could win only through random luck. Thomasina was more recognizable than that, but still there was a shift when Wayne looked at her face. The shift between Who is this stranger? and, Now I see my friend inside this stranger. The direction her hair grows is the same. The temperature of her eyes. But the background has shifted. What, Wayne wondered, did Thomasina see when she looked at him?
There were two Teenburgers in a Teenburger special, and Thomasina accepted Wayne’s offer of his second one. He bought her a root beer. They heard Mark Thevenet’s sister on her drive-through microphone asking if someone wanted fries with that.
Wayne saw things in Thomasina’s face he had not seen in grade seven. He saw the day blind Graham Montague went out in his white canoe with their red-haired daughter. He saw the silver undersides of new leaves on the aspens overhanging Beaver River.
“Did you get my postcards?”
“They were great. I don’t know if I got them all yet. Some took a long time to get here.”
He knew it was stupid to call a burger a Teenburger. Anyone could eat it, not just a teenager. But he couldn’t help thinking Thomasina should not be eating something called a Teenburger. He wished he had bought something else to give her, like one of the warm apple tarts.
“Did my letter arrive?”
“There’s a letter from you for my father.”
“Has he read it?”
“He’s on his trapline. He’s always there now.”
“Has anyone read it?”
“It only came the other day. My mother didn’t want to open it.”
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“Do you think I could have it back?”
The last time Wayne had gone over the road between Goose Bay and Croydon Harbour with Thomasina, she had been driving, and he had thought she had all the answers. It was not so now. His new window was tight and clear. He realized the other windows needed a wash. He put the radio on to cover the silence. Why would anyone want a letter back after they had sent it? The postcards Thomasina had sent him spoke of the bridges and cities she had seen, but hearsay had given him pieces of her personal life, though the pieces were as fragmented as any postcard.
“She went too far,” Treadway had told his wife in bed after the school board fired Thomasina. “It’s not like she’s twenty-one and straight out of college.”
“She was only trying to help Wayne.”
“If Thomasina Baikie had her way we’d all be driven around the bend. Wayne wouldn’t be fit for anything but the fourth floor.”
“Ssh. His door is open.”
“I’m just