Jilly-Bean (Jilly-Bean Series # 1) (2 page)

A skinny boy with oversized swimming-trunks was walking by.

“Hey kid, can you take our picture?”

“Oh yes, please,” the girls pleaded; “take our picture,”

“What's your name?”

“Billy,” replied the skinny boy, who couldn't have been more than ten years old.

Jillian handed him her camera.

Turning to her friends with looks of appeal, Jillian shouted, “Wait! How does my smile look?”

“Oh, it looks fine. Just be yourself, Jilly.”

The girls smiled, and that moment was captured.

They shared tortillas in large mouthfuls, hardly giving their waistlines a second thought. Jillian Crossland, Amelia Hartman and Annie Treadway had been best friends since junior kindergarten at Swansea Elementary. They were as close as sisters, if not closer, and understood each other correspondingly well. They traded and guarded secrets and finished each other's sentences with mere nods and knowing glances, and each had vowed from early on to remain true to their loyalties and never let anything loosen the ties of friendship. For them such bonds were stronger than fleeting passions; for them romantic love was as remote as an uncharted foreign galaxy. Their hopes for the future were boundless; their dreams would never die. Voices from long ago; silly childhood rhymes they would sing to one another while playing double-scotch on the neighbourhood sidewalks, the ropes whipping around them so quickly and their quick frantic steps keeping pace, dissolving into shrill laughter:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor ....

There was a whirr followed by fluttering wings— a blur of white seagulls. An aureole about them rose into the sky, where they glided in the sunlight as their shrieks were carried by the wind. Then, swooping down, they retrieved bits of discarded food off the sand, where a few dead fish, pushed in by the tides, lay by the water's edge to decay. One bold gull walked up and looked curiously at the three girls before it began to peck at the dead fish. A flock of others followed closely, only to be interrupted by children running frantically, kicking up sand and trampling over abandoned sand castles. The children were screeching with excitement, clapping their hands and leaping for joy as water whipped their faces and watched the seagulls soar into the sky.

Jillian sat gazing up at the spectacle, mouth wide open and eyes moist and shaded by her hands against the blinding, shimmering light overhead.

“Jillian, can you hear me? Wake up!”

Jillian looked over at her friend as if awoken from a trance. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Care for a tortilla chip?”

“Well, I didn't think you were planning to eat all them by yourself.”

“No sense letting it go to waste,” replied Amelia, laughing.

“I agree. No sense letting it go to
your
waist,” added Jillian.

They shrieked with laughter.

Going home for the last summer before starting university, lost in a thin sleep and wrapped in a small blanket, she was sitting on a reclining seat towards the back of the coach in Via Rail train No. 63 as it sped along its 2-hour run from Kingston to Toronto. In the background she heard the continuous din of the metal wheels grinding on the tracks, the voices of passengers speaking French and English and attendants announcing in tinny hollow voices the approaching stops. She was looking through large coach windows and imagining the puffy white clouds overhead as a troop of giants being blown across the vast sky by a small cherub with golden wings and chubby rosy cheeks. Beneath them lay miles of farmland, rows upon rows of hay ricks, dandelion flowers just beginning to bloom in bold golden yellows and orange daylilies growing like weeds by the side of the road.

She was returning from Kingston, where she had arranged her lodgings for the fall and then spent several hours strolling through the main campus of the university and staring up at its imposing gothic buildings. She was to share a house within walking-distance of the campus with three other girls, all first-year students. Someone had told her that undergraduate life and all the people she would meet would be a foretaste of the greater world she would be thrown into one day— a time of transition, unsettling, for sure, and a big change from her life a mere four years ago, when she was just beginning high school.

“I'm on my way back home to Toronto,” she said cheerfully to fellow passengers seated across the aisle from her. “I'll be attending Queen's in the fall.”

“Oh, it's such a beautiful countryside isn't it? We've had so much rain; everything is so green.”

“One day I would love to take the train across Canada and see the Rocky Mountains up close. I hear its God's country out there.”

The landscape whirled by as the train rocked with speed, heading west through rural Ontario. As she peered out the window, catching glimpses of green fields, swaying pines, quaint towns and picturesque white churches with solitary black crosses perched high on top, their windows ablaze with the morning sun, she wondered if she would make it home in time for her job interview at 1:00 p.m. She looked up to see a friendly male attendant who had just approached with the food trolley, regarding her with curiosity. He inquired in his broken English, “Anyt'ing to eat, mademoiselle?”
A Quebecker,
she thought; his accent was thick, and his words rolled off his tongue with difficulty. She glanced indecisively at the selection, not feeling very hungry, while the smiling attendant waited patiently as she tried to decide between a ham and a turkey sandwich, then finally settled on the peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich washed down with hot tea in a large styrofoam cup.

At the next stop, which was Belleville, a male passenger boarded the train. He was middle-aged with small apprehensive eyes and a rather large high forehead. The hair on his scalp was thin and sparse; it reminded her of the tufts of grass growing unruly in her mother's flowerbed.

Jillian, the best way to control weeds is to pull them up as soon as you see the pesky things. Never put off to tomorrow what can be done today.

He sat in the vacant seat directly next to her.

“
Excusez-moi,
” he announced, his eyes gleaming brightly like shiny black pebbles. “You don't mind if I sit 'ere, do you?”

Her sensitive nostrils pinched. A strong smell of either aftershave lotion or cologne tainted the air. At once she disliked the man, but she looked up from her newspaper, greeted him with a vacant smile, nodded her head to show indifference and promptly returned to her reading. On the front page of the
Globe and Mail
the headlines read:
“Global Warming: Environmental Changes Ahead!”
Scientists were concerned about the melting icecaps.

“Not'ing but doom and gloom!” the man announced loudly with distaste. “Dis is what de media 'ave to print to sell de papers.”

The words were like a jab to her ribs. She looked up again from her paper and this time gave the man a hostile glance.

The man quickly wiped his fingers over his nearly bald scalp and leaned forward. With a wan smile, he added, “De winters 'ave been getting hotter, I 'ave noticed.”

She smiled briefly and nodded assent, then craned her neck to see above the seat in front of her, looking for an escape, any vacant spot in the narrow overcrowded compartment. None was to be found. She slowly turned back and glanced at the man, who was still looking at her, expectantly, smiling hopefully. She felt a low throbbing pain like a migraine developing but resigned herself to her spot by the window, chiding herself for not having taken an earlier train. Undeterred by her hostile glances, the man continued to make attempts at small talk, while she replied in monosyllables and tried in vain to avoid making eye contact with him; instead she would stare at the back of the seat straight in front of her as she spoke. Over the next hour, she learned the man's name was Pierre la Boite; he talked about his background, his family, his wife, his two kids, the amount of rain that had fallen within the past few weeks and whether global warming could have anything to do with it. Maybe the newspapers were right. As the time passed she grew increasingly anxious and alarmed by his shiny coal-black eyes with their penetrating gaze.

At last the train wheezed as it made its way slowly into Union Station; the anxious passengers waited eagerly to escape the confined hot space and proceed to their destinations. Hurriedly they retrieved their luggage from the overhead compartments, struggling and pushing to be first off the train. The ride had left Jillian exhausted. The snapping sound of the luggage compartments opening and shutting, like bullets, seemed deafening. There was a buzzing in her ears; people were pushing past her, struggling to get out. She was swaying, wiping at her eyes in a half dazed state. She retrieved her day bag from the compartment above her seat. But Pierre la Boite was hovering directly behind her and suddenly laid a clammy hand on her shoulder— an unexpected movement that caught her off guard and caused her to straighten and freeze, dropping the bag with a thud. She turned sharply to face him, forcing herself to view him more clearly, and was immediately struck by the anxious look in his beady black eyes. So embarrassing! The same look Selby Travis had used to give her— a boy in her sixth-grade class who had had a crush on her— the only boy ever to accidentally wet himself in front of the whole class while the teacher was giving a lesson in Canadian geography.

“Yes, what is it?” she asked, her voice faltering. She absent-mindedly wiped at the beads of perspiration forming above her brow. The compartment had become unbearably hot and oppressive, and the smell of his cologne was overpowering.

Pierre la Boite continued to stare at her with his sheepish grin, sweat gleaming on his forehead. His mouth was moving but with no sound coming out, like an announcer on a TV set on mute, but then slowly his words became clear; he was speaking half apologetically: “Per'aps we could get together some time— maybe for coffee?”

She was astonished: “Coffee? I'm not a coffee-drinker,” she retorted.

“It doesn't 'ave to be coffee,” he said in an apologetic tone, his face turning red.

Had she heard him right? The competing voices in the background had become disconcertingly loud. Her eyes widened in alarm, and as she stared at this middle-aged man standing before her, every detail came into focus: the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, the sharp angle of his jaw, like a razor blade. She felt the blood rush to her face as she grabbed her day bag, then pushed and slammed past him, stammering what she had meant to be an apology: “Sorry, I don't date bald, ugly men, and especially not married ones!” She headed off in the opposite direction.

With its maze of underground tunnels leading to the subway line and office buildings, Union Station was a place of bustle and confusion. Sharp wedges of refracted sunlight from the clerestory windows caught the floating motes suspended in the air, giving the place an odd dream-like quality. Passengers were boarding and trains departing to places all over North America; knots of people with indistinct faces were looking about. Announcements were being made over a loudspeaker system in both French and English: “Now boarding, train No. 85 for Port Hope.”

The prevailing smells were of diesel oil from the train, fresh-baked cinnamon buns from Cinnabon and fresh-brewed coffee from The Second Cup. Everything else was a blur as Jillian walked along the marble corridors, hearing the echoes of her footsteps ricocheting off the walls, while overhead the arched coffered ceilings soared twenty-seven metres high. She gazed up at the enormous columns and decorative friezes where pigeons had settled and were now peering down from dark nooks at the passing crowds below. Suddenly a woman with a heavily made-up face, a billboard face, loomed in front of her, clutched at her right arm and began speaking to her in a foreign language; was it Russian? Jillian could make nothing of it. She recalled reading stories in newspapers of purse thieves who could skilfully snatch a person's identification, credit cards and money within a matter of seconds. The woman spoke loudly and was persistent.

Jillian stammered and apologized, “No! I have no money. Please l-l-leave me alone,” then broke free and pushed her way blindly, all but stumbling, through the crowds. Then she was struck by the sight of a gaunt man lying on a sleeping-bag. He looked quite out of place in the business district— a sharp contrast to the well dressed people walking by. His head was bent and his eyes were half closed, moving only now and then, oblivious to the passing crowds. He had tucked his arms behind his back as if he were cold and needed to lie on them to keep warm. He lay pressed down amid empty Macdonald's wrappers and had set out a dirty Styrofoam cup to collect loose change. A stench of cigarettes and unwashed clothes drifted towards her as she walked past him. He was one of the many homeless, and she could almost hear his moans in the midst of the noise of Union Station.
How easy it is to just fall out of society— to give up,
she thought. Her heart sank; she turned back, dropped a ten-dollar bill into the styrofoam cup and walked away quickly, not daring to look back.

Moments later she was standing outside on the busy corner of Front and Bay Streets among well-dressed people pushing past her, with the tall office and hotel buildings soaring high above. She was grateful for the outdoors, for the feeling of invisibility in the midst of the shifting crowds. Cars were inching forward in the congested streets, and taxis were lined up along the curbs, idling their engines. Their exhaust fumes were spreading, invisible but all too evident to her nose. They gave the air a mahogany haze, and the clouds looked menacing; the wind was picking up leaves and debris and scattering them across the dusty sidewalks. A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. A yellow taxi had just crawled up to the curb where she was standing. A dream-like sequence of events began: she stretched out her hand, about to grip the rear door of the taxi; but just then a voice, like a firecracker going off from behind her, asked, “Is this taxi free?” A tall young man in Levi's jeans and a grey T-shirt stepped out abruptly in front of her and was about to claim it.