For Your Tomorrow (9 page)

Jeff lost interest in school after the elementary years, and his boredom led to disruptive behaviour. At a parent-teacher interview, his high school English teacher confessed to Marion, “We just let him sit at the back of the room and read.”

Mica is in grade two. She’s marching with her class, two by two, down the school corridor. The only sound is the hollow echo of their shoes clicking on the cement tiles. They’ve been warned to keep their “lips
zipped” until they reach the gym. Mica is in the middle of the pack, so she doesn’t see him until she’s almost abreast of him. Her jaw drops
.

Outside the door of the seventh grade classroom, her brother sits alone at a desk, an unopened book in front of him. Her eyes bulge in disbelief, her lips twitch with the urge to speak to him. With a long questioning stare, she meets his eyes. He flashes her a grin
.

Five years younger, Mica idolized her big brother. As a toddler, she wore his outgrown jeans, T-shirts and sweaters. She tried—unsuccessfully—to be included whenever his friends came over to play, yearning to be one of the guys. She worked hard at emulating her brother’s proficiency in playing hockey, soccer and baseball. For her first day of preschool, Mica refused to put on the new white blouse, red plaid kilt and matching knee socks that her mother had bought specially for this occasion. She would not leave the house unless she could wear her blue jeans and T-shirt. When her mother came to pick her up at noon, the teacher called Marion aside. “I’m not sure how to put this,” she whispered, “but …?” She told Marion about introducing Mica to the group: “Today children, we have a new girl in our class. This is …”

But before she could finish, Mica interrupted: “I a boy.”

From the outset, Jeff resented this “little princess,” as he called her. She had usurped his throne as the only grandchild and the sole focus of his grandmother’s affection. He bullied her constantly. He’d come downstairs to the TV room where she’d be curled up on the couch watching her favourite show, grab the remote and change the channel.
Mica would run upstairs to tell her mother; he’d call her a tattletale … and so the pattern perpetuated itself in many variations. While Jeff was slogging through the quagmire of adolescent angst, Mica was climbing high, achieving top grades in school and excelling in sports—just “a goody-goody,” in Jeff’s view. Once Mica became a teenager, herself, she no longer cared about his antagonizing tactics. When he came down to watch TV, she’d throw the remote at him. He gave up tormenting her.

In grade eleven, school took a back seat in Jeff’s life. He was preoccupied with his friends and heavy metal music. Before going out on the weekends, he’d spend an hour in front of the mirror, styling his hair in a spiky upswept imitation of British punk rocker Billy Idol. Strumming his guitar, he fantasized about becoming a rock star. He developed leftist views and derided the military—its conservatism, hierarchy and itinerant lifestyle. He found his father’s constant change in postings stressful—from Oromocto to Halifax, then to Ottawa, then to Winnipeg, then back to Ottawa—especially during his teenage years when he was severed from his pack of buddies with every move.

He skipped school, drank on the weekends and disregarded his curfew. Sometimes he didn’t come home at all, and didn’t call. He wanted to be in control of his own life and do things his own way. Russ had grown up with a strict military father, and as a soldier himself, he thought rules and orders should be unquestioningly obeyed. Power struggles ensued between father and son. They squared off in verbally abusive shouting matches that left a dense fog of
tension in the air between them. Marion knew they needed a different approach to dealing with Jeff’s rebelliousness, so she enrolled in a course—STEP/Teen: Systematic Training for Effective Parenting of Teens. She learned parenting strategies that encouraged teenagers to become responsible for themselves and the consequences of their actions. Late one night when Russ was away on a course, she had the opportunity to put the theory into practice.

It’s after midnight when she’s awakened by the ringing of the phone. “This is Officer Brant of the Winnipeg Police Department. Are you the parent of Jeff Francis?”

“Yes.” She is jolted awake, all her parental alarm bells ringing.

“Your son is in our custody. We need you to come down to the station as soon as possible.”

Jeff and three of his friends are driving home from a movie in downtown Winnipeg. Starving, they empty their pockets of all their change, but don’t have enough to buy even a bag of chips. They stop at a 7-Eleven and stroll down the aisle to the coolers at the back of the store. Each of them takes a submarine sandwich and slips it under his jean jacket. They’re heading out the door when the clerk yells, “Hey, you guys come back here!” Three of them take off
.

Jeff stops and returns to the checkout. “We’re just really hungry,” he tells the clerk, “but I live only a few blocks away. I’ll bring you the money tomorrow—I promise.”

One of his buddies rushes back into the store: “Come on, Jeff, we gotta get outta here!” Meanwhile, the clerk is on the phone, calling the
police. Jeff doesn’t move. He hears the squeal of tires leaving the parking lot, and the pounding of his heart
.

At the station, Marion informs the tall, moustached police officer about her plan to make her son seriously consider the consequences of his actions. He ushers her into a small windowless room, stale with recycled air. Under bright fluorescent lights, Jeff slumps at a table, pen in hand, staring at a blank sheet of paper. He peers up at his mother through the sandy wave of hair fringing his eyes; sheepishness and relief wash over his freckled face. “He has to write a report describing the incident,” the officer says. “When he finishes, you can take him home. Or you could leave him here for the night.”

Marion hesitates. “Well, Jeff,” she says, “I think it would be good for you to find out what it’s like to spend a night in jail.” Struck dumb, Jeff gapes at her, eyes wide in disbelief.

“I’ll leave you two to discuss it.” The officer nods and closes the door.

Marion pulls up a chair beside her son. As they stare into each other’s eyes, the cleft in his chin quivers. They talk about making bad decisions and having to face the adult consequences of them. Then she leaves him to complete the writing of his report.

Half an hour later, Marion walks out of the police station, her son gratefully by her side. In the car, they sit in silence for several seconds. “Mom,” he turns to look at her, “would you really have left me there?”

“Next time,” she says, “I will.”

Marion still remembers the opening line of the incident report Jeff wrote that night: “I committed this dastardly deed.”

Throughout grade twelve, Jeff attended school sporadically. He found its social arena—the cliques of jocks, preppies, nerds and metalheads; the malicious gossip and macho posturing—to be as cruel as anything the gladiators inflicted in the Roman Colisseum. He couldn’t sit at a desk all day, listening to teachers prattle on about stuff he had no interest in. All that calculus crap; his fear of mathematics was visceral. And French, a total waste of time. When would he ever need that? May rolled around, time to study for his final exams; he couldn’t handle the pressure. A month before he was to graduate, he dropped out of school.

The public school system was barren ground for him. In light of the intelligence that would blossom during his post-secondary studies, Jeff’s conflict may have been a war between what psychologist James Hillman calls
tuition
—classroom study and learning—and
intuition
—primary wisdom and insight.
Cradles of Eminence
, a book about the childhoods of famously gifted individuals, reveals that 60 percent had serious problems at school. Thomas Mann, Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Picasso, Emile Zola: they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, learn in a regimented classroom. They hated school, and either quit or were expelled. “It is as if the image in the heart in so many cases is hampered by the program of tuition and its time bound regularity,” Hillman concludes. “An exam tests more than your endurance, ability, and knowledge; it tests your calling.”

There’s a photo of Jeff—“June 1988” written on the back. He wears a navy suit, a crisp white shirt and a red tie. His chestnut hair is brushed conservatively back off his face. He clasps a black portfolio case under his arm as he’s about to leave for his first day at a summer manpower training course—“Careers in Business.” He’s interested in becoming a stockbroker. Unsmiling, he looks off into the distance. Perhaps he’s contemplating his future at the Toronto Stock Exchange? No, Marion tells me; he’s saying, “Mom, hurry up and take the fucking picture.”

Jeff’s walk along the path to a potential business career is short-lived. In August, Russ is posted to Ottawa, and the family packs it all up, again, to move back east. Jeff is eighteen now, and a working man. He stacks shelves at Loblaws, busses tables at a restaurant and mows fairways at the Ottawa Golf Club. At night, he attends an adult high school, and completes grade twelve. Then he lands a job as a security guard at the Ottawa airport, working early morning shifts. In the afternoons, he takes courses at Carleton University—two in art history, one in biology.

In December 1992, just after turning twenty-two, he writes to his grandmother:

In the fall of 1993, he starts the first year of a BA in mass communication, immersing himself in the study of popular culture and media, embarking on the intellectual quest that will challenge him for the next seven years.

Jeff scans the sea of unfamiliar faces in the lecture hall—the first class of his film studies course. His eyes light up. Sitting near the back is Sylvie Secours, her smooth olive skin and honey-blond corkscrew curls radiant, even in the dim lighting. They work together at the airport, and both play on the airport softball team. He’s been watching her, mesmerized by her sunny congeniality as she checks passengers through and chats with co-workers in English and French. Captivated by her silvery blue eyes, he always freezes when he gets close to her, grows tongue-tied, blushes as he throws out some monosyllabic remark, wishing he’d paid attention in French class. But drawn into her glow, he shuffles into the middle of her row, and takes the vacant seat beside her. She smiles, surprised to see him.

After the class, they stroll around the corner to Starbucks—or “Five Bucks,” as Jeff calls it. He marvels when Sylvie tells him she’s always lived in Ottawa, spent her whole life in the same brick house a few streets from the campus. “You’re lucky to have roots somewhere,” he says,
spooning the froth on his cappuccino. “My dad’s been posted five times. I’ve lived on four military bases—and in twice as many houses. I don’t know where my true home is.”

In the classes that follow, they sit side by side, then pick up a coffee and chat about the films they’re studying. One evening, after the final softball game of the season, they go out with the airport team for a beer. After a few rounds, their teammates gradually disperse. Sylvie and Jeff find themselves alone at the round wooden table strewn with empties, swirling the dregs in their glasses. They eye each other, and smile. “It’s so cool how you switch back and forth between French and English,” Jeff says. “I have trouble getting the words out in one language.”

“You gain respect without having to say a word,” Sylvie says. “I’m always nervously talking—worried about what people will think of me. But you don’t try to impress people.”

“Opposites attract,” he grins, meeting her eyes, “a universal law.”

She pauses, pensive. “I’m a floater. I skim along on the surface of life; get swept along by the currents. But you seem more like a diver. You search into the depths of things.”

“But you have the sunlight,” he says, touching her hand for the first time. “It can be dark and lonely in the depths of the sea.”

He invites her over to his place on Halloween to carve pumpkins. It’s their first date. When he answers the door in his orange polo shirt, they burst out laughing—she’s standing there in an orange cashmere sweater. They reach
their hands into the fleshy caves of the pumpkins, scrape and scoop their stringy, slimy entrails and slippery seeds. They carve one with a laughing face and one with a frown—like orange masks of comedy and tragedy. His mother insists on a taking a picture, so he stands behind Sylvie, circles his arms around her. She rests her head against his chest and crosses her hands to clasp his forearms.

Long after the jack-o’-lanterns burn out, long after the smell of candle wax and charred pumpkin has drifted away, the two young lovers are still luminous.

In the back of the notebook for his film studies course, Jeff writes,