Friend of My Youth

thought the girl was slightly lonesome, or unlucky. Because she thought it showed, that Lana was brought up mostly by old grandparents. Lana seemed old-fashioned, prematurely serious without being clever, and not very healthy, as if she were allowed to live on soft drinks and sugared cereal and whatever mush of canned corn and fried potatoes and macaroni-and-cheese loaf those old people dished up for supper. She got bad colds with asthmatic complications, her complexion was dull and pale. But she did have a chunky, appealing little figure, well developed front and back, and chipmunk cheeks when she smiled, and silky, flat, naturally blond hair. She was so meek that even Debbie could boss her around, and the boys thought she was a joke.
    Lana was wearing a bathing suit that her grandmother might have chosen for her. A shirred top over her bunchy little breastsand a flowered skirt. Her legs were stumpy, untanned. She stood there on the step as if she was afraid to come out—afraid to appear in a bathing suit or afraid to appear at all. Reuel had to go over and give her a loving little spank to get her moving. With numerous lingering pats he arranged one of the towels around her shoulders. He touched his cheek to her flat blond head, then rubbed his nose in her hair, no doubt to inhale its baby fragrance. Margot watched it all.
    They walked away, down the road to the beach, respectably keeping their distance. Father and child.
    Margot observed now that the car was a rented one. From a place in Walkerton. How funny, she thought, if it had been rented in Kincardine, at the same place where she rented the van. She wanted to put a note under the windshield wiper, but she didn’t have anything to write on. She had a pen but no paper. But on the grass beside the trash can she spied a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag. Hardly a grease spot on it. She tore it into pieces, and on the pieces she wrote—or printed, actually, in capital letters—these messages:
    YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF ,
YOU COULD END UP IN JAIL .
    •
    THE VICE SQUAD WILL GET YOU IF
YOU DON’T WATCH OUT .
    •
    PERVERTS NEVER PROSPER .
    •
    LIKE MOTHER LIKE DAUGHTER .
    •
    BETTER THROW THAT ONE BACK IN
THE FRENCH RIVER, IT’S NOT FULL GROWN .
    •
    SHAME .
    •
    SHAME .
    She wrote another that said “ BIG FAT SLOB WITH YOUR BABY-FACED MORON ,” but she tore that up—she didn’t like the tone of it. Hysterical. She stuck the notes where she was sure they would be found—under the windshield wiper, in the crack of the door, weighed down by stones on the picnic table. Then she hurried away with her heart racing. She drove so badly, at first, that she almost killed a dog before she got out of the parking lot. She did not trust herself on the highway, so she drove on back roads, gravel roads, and kept reminding herself to keep her speed down. She wanted to go fast. She wanted to take off. She felt right on the edge of blowing up, blowing to smithereens. Was it good or was it terrible, the way she felt? She couldn’t say. She felt that she had been cut loose, nothing mattered to her, she was as light as a blade of grass.
    But she ended up in Kincardine. She changed her clothes and took off the wig and rubbed the makeup off her eyes. She put the clothes and the wig in the supermarket trash bin—not without thinking what a pity—and she turned in the van. She wanted to go into the hotel bar and have a drink, but she was afraid of what it might do to her driving. And she was afraid of what she might do if any man saw her drinking alone and came up with the least remark to her. Even if he just said, “Hot day,” she might yelp at him, she might try to claw his face off.
    Home. The children. Pay the sitter. A friend of Lana’s. Could she be the one who had phoned? Get takeout for supper. Pizza—not Kentucky Fried, which she would never be able to think of again without being reminded. Then she sat up late, waiting. She had some drinks. Certain notions kept banging about in her head. Lawyer. Divorce. Punishment. These notions hit her like gongs, then died away without giving her any idea about how to proceed. What should she do first, what should she do next, how should her life go on? The children all had appointments of one kind or another, the boys had summer jobs, Debbie was about tohave a minor operation on her ear. She couldn’t take them away; she’d have to do it all herself, right in the middle of everybody’s gossip—which she’d had enough of