I watch her leave, my hand wanting to hover close to my mouth, my whole body unsure and uncertain of how to act. She rushes up the stairs out into the cold night air, and for a moment I consider following – rushing, running after her, calling her name, forcing her step to halt, her head to turn, willing her eyes to stay dry and her heart not to break. But my feet are leaden, and I have no desire to force their movement. Why should I chase her, when I am the injured party? Why should I beg forgiveness, when I am the one sinned against?
I sit back on the piano stool, rub my hands across my forehead, tight and kneading, and can feel a response building, some kind of verbal release, and I have to reach down inside myself to find the words. I sigh, and let myself say it. "Fuck" I breathe, and mean it. Fuck. It shocks me slightly, that I have thought it, let alone said it. It's not a word my father would approve of, not a word I'd ever let anyone hear me say, but, somehow, the only word appropriate for this particular situation. It's Betty's word, I think. That's what she'd say, and I see then how much of her I have taken to myself these past few months. The smoking, the drinking, the late night dancing.
"So, she kissed you," Leon says, far calmer than I might have expected. I cannot say what my face must look like, but my hands fall from my eyes, and he looks at me, then back at the music, and smiles. His fingers take up the tune again, picking out the melody, the cheerful tune now in a minor key, reflecting my own, earlier, rendition.
"Churchmouse," he says, and his tone is soft, conciliatory, "I ain't gonna judge you. You and her, you'd fit nice together".
"I'm not like that," I say, and this is important. Leon's mouth quirks down at the corners, and he continues to play the tune, humming now. Be careful what you wish for, indeed. When I arrived in Toronto, I wanted to be like Betty – bold and together and in control. But I'm not like Betty. I'm not like that, all twisted up and wrong inside. I carry my own sin, I know, but I try to live within the path set out for me, as we are all expected, as is good and true and right. The times I've held her hand, or hung on her arm, or danced or laughed or smiled in her presence, I did because they came naturally, as these things do between friends. I never had a sister; this is the way I would feel for one if I did. If Betty read more into it, perverted natural female affection and fashioned it into something else, well that is her own look-out.
"I'm not like that," I say, repeating myself for emphasis. "And you people can stop trying to make me be". I stand back, away from the piano, from Leon and leave the bar.
I creep along the corridor of the rooming house, more nervous now than when I arrived months ago, stepping slow and holding my breath to make no sound. Her door is shut, and when I ask the other girls, on their way out as I come in, have not seen her all night. I barely have the door to my room open when the tears overwhelm me and I collapse on the bedcover, coat still on, crying dry-eyed tears of anger and disappointment. I cry for the shock, the surprise, the betrayal. I cry out my feelings of disgust, of repulsion, of fear that others will imagine I am like that.
She was my friend, my first friend. A true and honest and trusted friend, or so I thought. Yet all the time, in the background, that devil's spectre haunted us. When she helped me with my papers, what motive lay there? I thought it was a desire to see me stay, but perhaps it was only desire to see me in that bathing suit. When she taught me to smoke, was she setting me free, or simply hooking me tighter? Everything now takes on a tawdry, tainted edge. Our laughter, our dances, our simple co-existence, our hopes and dreams, all take on a darker and less pleasant taste.
Someone sits down beside me, and as the bed sags under their weight the warmth of their body leaps across the gap to mine, and through my sobs I feel a fleeting pang of fear. I am in no state to defend myself against her, not now. Kind words, a hug, a crooked nervous smile, and I will be undone again. I am angry how she tricked me, beguiled me, how she drew me in – I must remember that. I set my teeth firm against one another and push my jaw tight closed.
"Oh Marion," my father says, his hand smoothing my shoulder, and his voice is kind, gentle, and only fuels my sobs. I tell him, then, everything: the story of my time here, of how happy I was, of how high I flew, and how hard I am now falling.
"I know," he says, "I know." I bury my head in his shoulder, and cry as he holds me, unspeaking, the feel and smell and solidness of him reminding me of home, of my family, of things this place can never offer. It feels like forever we sit there together, my father and I, yet it can only be a few minutes. My sobs slow and start to stop, my breathing still shaky and shallow, but calming. My father presses a kiss to my cheek, and smiles. "Come home," he says, "come home to your mother".
I pack efficiently, my few belongings fitting easily into my trunk. Some things I will not take back. My records – no player to play them on – will be the hardest to leave of all, but I have listened to my favourites so many times I think I could go a hundred years and not forget a note. The photos, those horrid damaging photos, those I will gladly leave behind. I hold the hair pin in my fist, for a moment, and then throw it, slamming across the room. It skitters out of the door and rests against my father's feet.
"Marion," he says, "you dropped this?" and holds it out me, sitting in his open palm. Just yesterday I threatened to jump out of a window because of this man, but that was just silliness. He is my father, who gave me life, taught me right from wrong, and I know, always, what I can expect from my family, my father. I take it from him, and push it down into my trunk, deep under layers of clothes where it cannot be seen.
They say that Mary, Queen of England, sister to Elizabeth, burnt hundreds and thousands of Protestants at the stake. The history books, even now, demonize her. They point to her traitorous marriage to Phillip of Spain, they speak of her harsh actions, of her mad, murderous tendencies. As a child, when I read those stories, in a battered book of my mother's, I always felt sorry for her. She was a product of her time, and place, and faith. Desperate for a child, hated and reviled by her public, unloved even by her own father. And after all, she wasn't ending those people's lives unthinkingly, meaninglessly, she was ensuring them eternal life. Turn this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his soul may be saved. 1 Corinthians, Chapter 5. I understand, incomprehensible as it may seem to many, that Mary's reign was an act of love, for if she did not love them, why would she try so hard to save them?
"You think I can't see the sin inside of you," I hear my father say, and I understand. I hear, though maybe Betty can't, the protectiveness in that statement, a father's concern for his child, the love in every word.
"I've seen your scars, Kate, I know he put them there". She sees, but does not understand. She holds herself there as some kind of restoring angel, a mediator of good and evil, but what authority does she have? What authority, when she has lied and tricked and deceived me? She let me rely on her, need her, when all the time nothing was as I thought it. I see now I set her up as a false idol – a guide to this strange new world – and in doing so, I lost sight of who and where I was, and where I was going.
"Please, Kate, don't leave". I have reviled her, denounced her; still she fights, still she tries to save me. I wonder whether this has tricked her too, crept up unannounced and uninvited. But I remember the woman in the bar that first night, who nodded and smiled, who asked me, later at the bar, whether I was with Betty. At the time, I saw nothing further to the question – now I wonder what deeper implications it held. I remember, too, the way she reacted to the factory film, to mentions of husbands, to romantic movies, to dances, and I know that this is not unexpected for her. This was conscious, this seduction, and probably not the first time, or the last, that she will act this scene.
"I love you" she says, and despite all that has just gone through my head, I feel her words hit me. I remember, again, Queen Mary and all those burnings. I might have said something, done something, then, but my heart has stopped again and my father's hand has not. Betty is stumbling, reeling, leaning against the wall, clutching her face, and she does not understand the pain. It saves her not, for she does not know it is intended to. I'm moving too, towards her, and I have to redirect my outstretched hands away from their intended course, away from their tender caress of her face, and down, more seemly, to her arms. I need to hold her still, to make her see.
"I don't want this anymore, and I never wanted you". The words are sharp, and want to stick in my throat, but I cannot let them. She is still now, and I know she will not follow. I look one last time, and make my farewell. My father puts his hand on my shoulder, reassuring, and we turn together and leave.
Most people would expect that to be the end of the story. But I know Betty, and I understand love. Love that hurts its object, that fights for its salvation, that never ever stops, despite how hard we try. Fuck, I think, and mean