Liberty Street (9 page)

Now that it's quiet, Frances can hear Dooley moaning below her for real, and she's glad when someone comes running out to help him. It's the principal, who says, “Dooley Sullivan, what have you done now?” A few minutes later, the town's ambulance arrives, and the one attendant and the principal help Dooley onto a stretcher. Then it's as if Dooley remembers Frances in the window, and he looks up and sees that she's still there, and he waves. She waves back. Then she quickly ducks down so the principal won't see her. By
the time she peeks over the window ledge again, they're putting Dooley in the ambulance. When she returns to the grade one classroom, her teacher says, “Frances, I was just about to go looking for you,” and Frances doesn't say anything about Dooley and what she's seen, because she doesn't want to share it with the other students, the ones who are ignoring her. She doesn't tell anyone she saw the whole thing, even when the story circulates on the school bus.

That night she dreams about Dooley Sullivan falling past the window. He stops falling when he reaches the place where she's standing in the window, and he floats there, hovering, grinning at her. She says, “Come inside now, Dooley Sullivan,” the way a teacher might, and she reaches out and offers him her hand, but he doesn't take it, and then he starts to fall again and disappears in blackness below her. When she wakes up she wonders what would have happened in the dream if he had taken her hand, whether she would have tumbled out the window and fallen with him.

When Frances's mother hears about what happened, she says, “What in the world was that boy trying to do? Kill himself?”

“He did it for a laugh,” Frances says.

“How do you know that?”

“He's the funniest boy in the school,” she says. “He does everything for a laugh.”

She knows there is more to it than that, although she's not sure what. She keeps thinking about the look on his face as he fell past her—or was it in the dream? She isn't sure, because the two memories have become one. He'd looked puzzled, as if he wasn't sure how he ended up in the air, or perhaps was trying to decide whether he liked falling through space.

“I hope you won't do anything that stupid when you get to be a teenager,” her mother says.

Frances would never do that—jump out a window.

“I don't even like tobogganing,” she says.

A few days later, Dooley is back at school with crutches and a cast on his foot. In the hallway, Frances overhears the grade eight teacher telling him he'd better pull up his socks, and Dooley says he can't, he isn't wearing any under his cast.

The teacher says, “Dooley, Dooley, Dooley.”

F
RANCES AND HER
parents are going to a wedding anniversary party in the town hall, where there will be dancing and a live orchestra, although Frances's mother says on the way there, holding two homemade apple pies on her lap, that “orchestra” is hardly the word for it, since it's just Alvin Brown with his accordion and two of his neighbours. “Oh, listen to you, then,” Basie says, “sounding like a proper English toff,” which makes Frances laugh.

Several of the kids from her class at school are there. Frances's parents think she is playing with them somewhere, but she's not. Instead, she's hiding from them under a table, peeking out from under the white cloth, watching everyone's legs—all the people dancing—and she's also watching Dooley Sullivan, who still has the cast on his foot. From her vantage point under the banquet table, Frances can easily follow Dooley's legs around the big hall because of the cast and crutches. Girls' legs have been following his all night. She can see girls' legs following Dooley's now—four legs, two girls. One girl is wearing flat white shoes with bows on the toes, and she has a swishy yellow dress. The other girl is wearing pumps. They're white too, and this girl's dress is
turquoise, the same colour as the one Frances is wearing, only Frances's has checks. Both girls have bare legs. Frances is wearing white socks that come halfway up her calves. She takes off her shoes and her socks, and then puts her shoes back on so she has bare legs like the older girls who are following Dooley. She watches as the girls flank him, one on each side, but then he makes a break for it and his cast disappears among the dancing legs.

Several ladies' legs appear then, and Frances can hear the sound of dishes being placed on the table above her. People gather and disperse and gather again—she can hear the clatter of forks on china—and the ladies come back with more of whatever is up there. When the legs around the table seem to be gone, temporarily at least, she sneaks out from her hiding place to have a look. Pie. Slice after slice of pie on little white plates, each with a fork. People keep arriving to study the choices—lemon, apple, rhubarb, some kind of red berry—and then they pick up a plate and leave a hole to be filled by the ladies with trays. Frances waits until the coast is clear, and then she grabs a plate of lemon pie and slips back under the table with it.

She sees Dooley's cast coming again, no girls following him this time, and she thinks he's come for pie. Then he's shoving his crutches under the table and his face appears, and then the rest of him, and he's under the table with her.

“Howdy,” he says.

It's dark under the table. She wouldn't know this was Dooley if it weren't for the cast. She doesn't say anything. Dooley is a big boy. What do you say to big boys?

“Don't worry,” he says. “I won't tell anyone you're under here.”

She can't really see him, but he looks too tall for under the table. He's hunched forward with his arms wrapped around his knees. The crutches are sticking out and someone trips on one, so Dooley grabs it and pulls it under. She remembers Joey, Doreen's son—the boy who'd wanted to put his hand in her underpants—and how she'd known she should run away from him, known she should be afraid of him. She's not afraid of Dooley. She puts her plate of pie on the floor next to her and waits to see what will happen. She knows why
she's
under the table, but Dooley can't be there for the same reason. Then Frances sees the white shoes coming toward them, and Dooley says, “Shhhh,” and she realizes he
is
there for the same reason, more or less. The reason is called hiding.

One of the girls—the one in the yellow dress—lifts the tablecloth and says, “You can't escape from us, Dooley.”

“I guess not,” Dooley says. He turns to Frances in the dark. “What's your name?” he asks.

“You know my name, silly,” says the girl. Her hair doesn't move around her face even though she's bent over. Frances wants to reach out and touch it, to see what it feels like.

“Frances Mary Moon,” says Frances.

“Who's under there with you?” asks the girl.

Dooley says, “Why, Frances Mary Moon, who else?” Out go the crutches and then Dooley, and Frances waits for the tablecloth to drop back down, but it doesn't.

“Are you coming?” Dooley asks her once he's on his feet, peering back at her under the table.

Frances crawls out, dragging one toe through the slice of lemon pie.

“Let's dance,” Dooley says to her.

Frances doesn't know how to dance, and Dooley can't really dance with his cast, but he hands one crutch to the yellow-dress girl and takes Frances's hand with his free hand, and there she is, dancing with Dooley Sullivan—if dancing is what it can be called.

“What in the world are you doing?” says the yellow-dress girl as Dooley leads Frances all around the dance floor. People clear out of their way because of Dooley's crutch. Frances can hear herself laughing, it's so much fun. As Dooley spins her around, she can see Caroline from school watching—Caroline, who is not dancing with anyone, ha ha, and especially not a big boy like Dooley.

Then Frances's father is there and he says, “Mind if I cut in?” and Dooley hands Frances over and hobbles back to retrieve his other crutch. Frances's father dances her around the floor to where her mother is standing with two other women, and he says, “I think it's time we got on home, don't you, Alice? It's getting late for a dairy farmer.” Her mother goes to the kitchen to retrieve her pie plates and then disappears for half an hour.

When they finally leave it's dark outside, but the hall's parking lot is well-lit thanks to a pair of yard lights. They pass a sprawling group of young people—girls in dresses, and boys in jeans and light-coloured shirts with collars. Dooley is there, the girl in the yellow dress hanging on to his arm. Frances thinks the kids he's with must go to the high school, or maybe they're from other towns, because she doesn't recognize them. They stop talking when Frances and her parents pass them, but then Dooley says, “Don't let the bedbugs bite, Frances Mary Moon.”

Frances looks back at him, and all the kids he's with
laugh. The yellow-dress girl says, “Don't you think she's too young for you, Dooley?”

Frances's mother grabs her hand and pulls her to the car. When they're inside and the doors are closed, her mother says, “That boy was Dooley Sullivan. How does he know your name?”

“From school,” Frances says.

“Well, don't you talk to him,” her mother says. “Trouble is that one's middle name. They say he failed grade seven twice and barely made it through the third time.”

Frances knows better than to say that when she's old enough to have a boyfriend, she wants him to be Dooley Sullivan. She wonders if Dooley and the yellow-dress girl will kiss later.

“I think those young people were probably drinking,” her mother says. “Even the girls.”

When they get home, her mother realizes that Frances is not wearing her socks, and that there's a big blob of lemon pie hardening on the toe of her shoe.

“What am I going to do with you?” she says.

“Nothing,” says Frances.

That night she dreams about Dooley falling again, this time from the roof of her father's barn, and he lands in the hay and doesn't break anything. The yellow-dress girl is looking for him, but she's going the wrong way, out to the pasture with the cows. Dooley lies in the hay laughing. Frances laughs along with him, until he stops and puts his finger to his lips and says, “Shush,” because he doesn't want the girl in the cow pasture to hear them. When Frances puts her finger to her own lips to shush him back, she realizes that she has all her teeth, and they're perfectly straight. When she wakes up, she thinks that was the best dream she's ever had.

F
RANCES
'
S MOTHER DECIDES
that they should rent out Uncle Vince's house, which was tied up in what her parents called probate for a long time, and now belongs to them. It's had a For Sale sign in front of it for months, but no one wants to buy it, perhaps because it's still the only house on the street—a poor advertisement for a subdivision. Their first renter is the new bank manager, but he doesn't like the noise from the freight trains passing in the middle of the night and moves out almost soon as he's moved in. After that, there's a year of single male renters who work in the bush or the lumber mill. They pay their rent, but they have a tendency to leave cigarette burns on the windowsills and holes in the plaster when they move out. Frances's mother gets good at patching holes with plaster and doing spot paint touch-ups.

One Saturday afternoon in August, Frances and her father leave her mother at the house fixing holes for the next renter, and they drive across the tracks to the post office for the mail. On their way back, Frances's father goes through the town's one and only stop sign and runs smack into a red truck, and who should get out, hopping mad, but Dooley Sullivan. No one is hurt, but Dooley's truck got the worst of it, and they have to call the RCMP to come and take their statements for the insurance. Frances's father pulls his truck over to the curb to wait. He says, “I feel badly about this, Frances. I hear Dooley fixed that old truck up himself.” Then he adds, “He shouldn't have been driving so fast.”

Frances hasn't seen Dooley since he finished grade eight and moved across the schoolyard to the high school, and she watches him as he paces around the street, his red truck stalled in the middle of the intersection. He stops pacing periodically to glower at his hanging front bumper and the truck's hood, which is popped up and buckled. He's wearing
a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and has a cigarette pack stuck in the roll. He has some kind of oil in his dark hair to keep it slicked back. He doesn't look like the same boy who jumped out the window.

It's hot inside Frances's father's truck. The two of them get out to wait on the bench in front of the bank. Frances sits in the shade next to her father and watches Dooley. The memory of him falling through the air outside the bathroom window is vague now. Maybe she'd just imagined that he was close enough she could have touched him.

Several people have gathered on the sidewalk in front of the bank to watch the action, to stare at Dooley and his truck. One man says, “You could see that coming,” and Frances's dad says, “Apparently I didn't.” They laugh, and Dooley sees them and strides to the bench, saying, “You think this is funny, do you?”

Frances's father says, “No, Dooley, of course not.”

Frances slides closer to her father on the bench and wonders whether Dooley remembers her, the girl in the window, the girl under the table. He says to her father, “That's a new paint job. Candy apple red. You stupid farmers. Don't you know what a stop sign is?”

Dooley's cigarette pack is threatening to fall out of his rolled-up sleeve, and Frances doesn't know whether to point this out.

“Candy apple red,” Dooley says again, and then—
plop—
the cigarette pack lands on the sidewalk, right at Frances's feet. She picks it up and holds it out to Dooley, but when he goes to snatch it from her, his hand hesitates for a just a second and she thinks,
He does remember.
Then he takes the pack without saying thank you. He lights a cigarette and
strides off again to pace another circle around his truck. He throws back at Frances's father, “Where the hell did you learn to drive anyway?”