White Horses On The Bay

Fisher Sullivan - This is Your Life

~

The cool breeze on the back of Fisher's neck where his long hair used to be, felt strange and he was compelled to rub it several times as he walked home from Tom's Barber Shop. He reached into the mailbox at the end of his front gate and pulled out a few pieces of mail. The rust had finally broken through the metal where a little wooden boat was nailed to the top of the box, and the mail itself seemed damper than usual. Fisher made a mental note to buy some marine epoxy to fix the whimsical ornament that had adorned their mailbox for as long as he could remember.

The day's mail included a post card of the Eiffel Tower with a perfectly printed note on the back from Karen, the girl who used to live next door. There was a flyer from Newman's Hardware and a couple of bills addressed to Mrs. James Sullivan. He checked the post card again and sure enough, it was addressed not to him, but to Mr. and Mrs. Wright, Karen's parents. He walked back up the road to their mailbox and before sliding the card inside he decided to read it.

Dear Mom and Dad, I'm in Paris! Weather is cold and rainy, just like home! Eiffel Tower is way taller than I thought it would be. France is so old. Going to The Louvre tomorrow. Brad and I are having the time of our lives! Miss you both, Je t'aime Karen XXXOOO

Fisher envied Karen's adventure abroad. He wished he were going to The Louvre. He thought about their school days when Karen was the only one who admired his art. The teachers, desperate to decorate the building's blank walls, often posted the better examples of student work in their hallway galleries. Fisher and Karen's efforts were regularly featured. Now she was studying art in Halifax and apparently on an art holiday in Europe with someone named Brad. He wondered if she would ever come back to old Twillingate and if her photo would be in the local paper in one of those 'hometown girl makes it big' stories.

His good deed done for the day, Fisher entered his house and placed the mail on the kitchen table. He walked straight into the room, forgetting his muddy boots, but caught himself mid-step and carefully returned to the doormat. Once settled, he leaned back on the chrome kitchen chair and recalled the way it drove his grandmother crazy. 'You're gonna break the legs right off that bloody chair!' she'd say. The legs did feel like they were bending a bit, but he shrugged it off and put his feet up on the table anyway. He tried to imagine what his night would be like as he snapped off the cap of a beer and guzzled half the bottle all at once.

The coming evening with Jenny brought to mind past moments with other women and the highlights flashed through his thoughts like an episode of This is Your Life - 'Fisher Sullivan this is your high school graduation night!' - He remembered how he managed to get Karen to dance with him. She was a quiet pretty girl, his first crush since Dinah died. She seemed out of everyone's league, especially his. It was a stroke of luck how the band switched to a waltz just as he finally asked her to dance that night. He assumed she'd back out of the deal right there and then, but she carried on without skipping a beat. During that dance, his crush turned into uncontrollable desire, with the way she stood so close to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders like they were a couple.

Fisher took another gulp of his beer and smiled at the thought of his terrible timing back then. Why had he waited until the last day of school to make his move? He remembered how they snuck out of the dance, raced out behind the school to the playground and explored each other's bodies in a flurry of teenage lust. If it weren't for Karen's older brother stepping in at the worst possible moment, they both would have lost their virginity that night. The image of waking up face down in the grass with a piercing headache, a lump on his forehead, and blood on his only dress shirt was still seared in his mind.

He remembered seeing Karen leave on the ship for St. John's a few weeks later, as she left for a summer job in Ontario and her college years after that. It was just his kind of luck too, that Karen's brother became one of Randy Miller's crew.

Between his graduation night and this night, there had been a few local girls who would sit on his lap at parties, drink his beer, and lead him on. But always near the evening's end, they would disappear into the dark with boys who had cars or boats and seemingly, more to offer.

Fisher drank the last of his beer and thought about one other relationship he had in the years since high school, the one he couldn't brag about or even tell anyone at all. He wanted to many times, especially when being teased by Randy for not 'getting any', but too many people would be hurt and he wasn't exactly proud of his actions, either. 'Fisher Sullivan, this is your dirty little secret!'

He leaned back again on his kitchen chair and thought about the first time it happened, just over a year ago, the night before the wedding of Michelle Bordeau, a girl he'd known in high school. It was late in the evening and he was tidying the church alone, arranging the hymnals in the pew pockets, making sure the sanctuary was ready for the ceremony the next day. Michelle's mother had returned to the church to retrieve a sweater she'd left behind earlier.

Fisher closed his eyes and remembered how they stood in silence in the Narthex together, admiring the peaceful setting with the pews decorated with those white bows and the colourful flower arrangements adorning the altar. It was so sudden, the way Mrs. Bordeau began to cry. It wasn't a sentimental kind of crying for the beauty of the wedding scene, but a sorrowful, painful sobbing.

Fisher thought about her tears dripping down her face as she searched for a tissue in her purse. It was weird how she reached for him and put her arms around his neck, and cried into his shoulder. Fisher remembered how it had felt uncomfortable but oddly romantic at the same time.

Mrs. Bordeau was a petite woman and even though she was twice his age, she felt like a young girl in his arms. He remembered standing frozen in the embrace and then how his instincts led him to caress and comfort her. When their lips met in that kiss, in the middle of that sacred place, he felt guilty and aroused. He remembered how his heart pounded as she gave him soft little kisses all over his face and spoke to him in her beautiful French. It had felt like she'd wanted him her whole life, and yet he had never given her a second's thought.

It took Fisher a while to forgive himself for having sex on the floor of the church and every time he set foot in that cloakroom, he relived that night in his mind with a weird feeling of disbelief and shame.

It was after the ceremony, while sweeping up the wedding rice the guests had thrown at Michelle and her groom, that he felt the depth of his transgression coupled with a new and exciting direction in his life. He recalled watching Mrs. Bordeau leave the church, behind her husband, glancing back at him with a twinkle in her eye and a mysterious smile on her face. It was the same unsettling look she gave him each time Fisher left her after their encounters in the months that followed; like a 'thank you' and 'you're welcome' at the same time. They never made love in the church again; Michelle's old room in the Bordeau family home became the meeting place, whenever Mr. Bordeau was away at sea. One day, just after Valentine's Day, Mrs. Bordeau moved home to Montreal without any warning or even a goodbye.

Fisher looked up at the portrait of Georgina Stirling hanging on the wall by the kitchen window. He wondered how old she was when the photo was taken. He knew it was the late 1890's when she was singing for kings and queens and selling out opera houses around the world but in this photo she looked old and a bit dowdy and he wondered whether she had ever had a boyfriend in her life. Somehow the newspaper clippings and his Grandmother's stories of Georgina never touched on that subject.

It occurred to him just then, that the famous Georgina Stirling of Twillingate probably sat in this very kitchen and looked at her own portrait up there on the wall thirty years ago. She would have hung her coat in that cloakroom at St. Peter's church, too. He felt her eyes following him as he left the kitchen and headed upstairs to get ready for his date.