Finding Home (7 page)

Afterwards Kiera and I had lunch in a little
cafe called Loaves & Fishes. Phoebe waited in the car.

“Good news Flo,” Kiera said to the woman who
brought our seafood chowder. “We finally got the fabric for Gail’s
quilt this morning.”

“Bout time. Wedding’s in December.” Flo
pointed at the basket she’d placed on the table. “Maritime brown
bread,” she said. “We make it fresh everyday.” She turned back to
Kiera. “Where’s Phoebe then?”

“She’s got a headache, we’ve been hours
looking at fabric.”

“That so?” Flo looked like she didn’t believe
it any more than I did. She strode back to the kitchen yelling,
“Phebe don’t feel good, Dottie.”

Kiera shook her head. “Dottie’s the cook,”
she said. “They’re both in the quilting group. Couple of real
characters.”

Back at the house, Phoebe felt better, so she
and Kiera headed straight to the quilting room to start on their
new project. I sat and watched them awhile, pretending interest,
but paying no real attention. My thoughts were on other things.
Like Nick. All of a sudden my situation seemed freaky.

What did I really know about him? That he’d
grown up in a dysfunctional family and was now a successful lawyer
whose wife didn’t live with him. That he had everything except a
child and was prepared to pay the earth to get one. That we had a
past. And that he was attractive in a powerful, almost frightening,
way.

What was I thinking, even being here at all?
It was an awfully big step I was taking. But then, except for those
few high school years when I’d lived with the Wembles, I’d always
made a point of shunning the conventional. I didn’t want a
predictable, unchanging life. I wanted a wild blind leap into the
unknown every so often.

Like the leap I’d made when I left the
Children’s Agency. Others saw it as negative, but I’d never
regretted it. I’d known clearly that what I saw around me was not
something I wanted to be part of anymore. And since I knew I
couldn’t change things, I’d simply left.

I was fed up with working with clients in
constant crisis on one hand, and with the Agency’s pointless
meetings, bureaucratic procedures and hierarchical decision-making
on the other. There was such a vast gap between the two. Most
important though, I was sick of what our government had done to
social services. The cutbacks made it almost impossible to help
anyone. The number of homeless was growing while the funds to
support them were shrinking.

Each day I found it harder and harder to help
my clients. There were so many families with no place left they
could afford to live. There were so many desperate street kids,
selling drugs or even themselves, just to get by.

It didn’t help that I was also suffering a
broken heart because Jay had gone back to Vermont to live with
Becky. But I pretended that didn’t matter. I focused on my
work.

I lost sleep over my clients, something I’d
never done before. I’d wake in the middle of the night in a cold
sweat, full of panic that the emergency worker was calling me. I
started having trouble eating too. I knew how hungry many of my
clients were, even though the rest of the city, people like Nick
and Kiera, could afford to spend their weekly food budget on one
dinner party. I’d go into a grocery store and come out with
nothing, sickened by designer-outfitted shoppers sweeping
extra-virgin olive oil and fresh pasta and Belgian chocolate into
their carts. The people I worked with were eating Kraft dinner, if
they were lucky.

Friends had been suggesting for years that I
was trapped in a kind of hopeless hippie nostalgia. They’d all
given up trying to save the world years ago. I needed to build some
equity, they said, a good high mortgage would straighten me out.
Then I’d get on the fast-track and care when the next raise was
coming.

But I kept on living in my tiny apartment in
a rundown house on an iffy street in an undesirable neighborhood. I
cropped my hair, lost weight, gave most of my money to a women’s
shelter. I stopped taking time off. I stopped seeing anyone but my
clients. I became obsessed with trying to make life better, or at
least a little more bearable, for them.

One day in June of 1994, in an effort to
convince me I needed a new perspective, my supervisor, Emily
Phipps, suggested I go with her to the annual Social Workers’
Conference in Ottawa. I’d already refused once. Such things were
bogus, a complete waste of time and money. But the caseworker
scheduled to go was sick, so someone had to make use of the prepaid
registration.

I was feeling very down and frustrated by my
job. Totally futile. I’d used up all my resources and had nothing
left to offer my clients. The day before, I’d had to take the
preschool children of an immigrant woman into custody, because she
was leaving them alone while she worked as a nanny. In a moment of
cynical weakness, thinking maybe it was time to get out of casework
after all, I agreed to go to the conference.

On the train to Ottawa Emily said, “I’m don’t
want to talk about your cases. I’m putting on my other hat now,
Lucienne. I’m going to talk to you as Coordinator of Internal Staff
Placement and Development.”

“I don’t want to be developed,” I told
her.

“But Lucienne, even though you have years of
experience and you’re one of our best workers, you can never be
promoted to a supervisory or management position without the proper
academic qualifications. I want you to go back to school and finish
your degree, so you can get working on your M.S.W. I can recommend
you for an educational leave and I’m sure a grant can be
arranged.”

“I’m not interested,” I said. “I don’t want
an office job. What would I do? Write endless memos and reports in
silly jargon? No thanks.”

“Don’t be so obstinate. I think you’re afraid
you can’t do it, so you’re not even going to try. But you’re just
limiting yourself. Think of the future. Where do you want to be in
five years?”

I thought she had incredible nerve. She
wasn’t much older than me, had advanced with her overrated M.S.W.
almost straight to her current position. But for all her proper
qualifications, she knew the realities of front line work in theory
only. Her experience was limited to a few field placements, not
based on long hard years of working with clients day in and day
out, like mine was.

“You owe it to yourself to think about it,”
she said. “Stop by my office one day next week and we’ll take a
thorough look at your options.”

“The hell we will.”

The rest of the trip was spent in silence. By
the time we arrived at the hotel though I was thinking that maybe I
should listen to her. I knew I couldn’t go on being a good
caseworker forever. It was just too draining, and I couldn’t do it
halfheartedly.

But watching Emily pin on her name badge,
already busy networking and interfacing with staff from other
agencies, I balked. I didn’t want to be like her. She did nothing
but attend meetings and conferences dressed in business suits. She
spoke only to other social workers, not to clients. She cared more
about schedules and reports and administration than what was
actually going on in the lives of the people the agency was
supposed to be helping.

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach
as I read the titles of the seminars she’d decided I should
attend.

The Art of Chairing a Meeting

Steps to Better Staff Communication and Time
Management

Social-Worker Friendly Computer Programs

This was not for me. I dropped the entire
kit, free pen and all, into the nearest garbage bin and walked
away.

In the lobby I bought a newspaper and sat
scanning the classifieds. I think it was the name, Auberge Ciel
Chasse et Peche, that caught my eye. Auberge sounded classy, and
from my high-school French I knew that
ciel
meant sky,
although I didn’t get the part about the hunters. And right at that
moment I wasn’t about to be too picky. I wanted to get as far away
from Emily, the conference and the Children’s Agency as possible. I
phoned the number, spoke to Odette who said to come on up, they’d
meet me at the bus station.

When I first saw Baptiste in his grimy work
clothes and rusty pick-up truck I was pretty surprised. I was
expecting the lodge to be a fancy place, him something of a natty
maitre d’. But he was friendly and didn’t ask too many awkward
questions, so I went along with him and a couple of hours later was
helping Odette prepare dinner.

That evening I phoned Emily at the conference
hotel.

“Good God Lucienne! Where are you? I was just
about to call the police.”

“Get a grip,” I told her. “I’m okay, but I’m
not coming back.”

“Don’t be so naïve. You’re just running away
from responsibility and decision-making, do you realize that?”

“I really don’t care. I quit.”

“You do know you’re sabotaging yourself?
That’s a very juvenile response to stress and frankly, Lucienne,
I’m disappointed.”

I remember hanging up with a profound sense
of relief.

My only regrets were for my clients. I’d
screwed them, people I’d spent weeks, months, in some cases even
years, trying to convince I wasn’t just another official telling
them how to live. Trying to prove I would stand by them, no matter
what. People I will never forget, but who forgot me after each
visit, certain I would never show up again.

By walking out on them I confirmed what they
already knew – that I was just one more in the never-ending parade
of interfering do-gooders who made false promises. Who lied. I will
feel guilty about those people the rest of my life. Probably my
idea for a camp grew from that guilt. But at the time it was them
or me. I had to draw the line.

Did I made the wrong choice? Should I have
stuck with the Children’s Agency, earned my M.S.W., climbed the
career ladder?

It didn’t even bear thinking about anymore.
It was a done deal. I’d sublet my apartment and arranged for
another caseworker to send on my pay and give what little furniture
and household stuff I had to needy clients. I’d put my heart and
soul into my work at the lodge.

And now here I was in a strange house,
watching a quilt being made. Thinking about having a baby for a
couple I scarcely knew. Was I out of my mind?

Probably, but the quilting room felt so cozy
and comforting. Phoebe and Kiera worked happily together, chatting
and laughing like mother and daughter. I could easily imagine how
well they would care for a baby.

I told myself I’d be a loser if I didn’t make
the best of my situation. I’d burned all my bridges when I left the
Children’s Agency. This time when I took that leap into the unknown
I’d have nothing to loose.

And fifty thousand dollars to gain.

In the late afternoon I went for a run, once
more taking the gravel road to Airdrie Bay and back. A brisk breeze
blew in off the sea, making me feel full of energy. I wondered all
the way if I might meet Nick arriving on his Harley. But he didn’t
appear, which was just as well. Excited as I was to see him, I had
no clue what I was going to say to him.

I stayed in my room for the rest of the
afternoon trying to read. In the library downstairs, which held an
extensive collection on the Maritimes, I’d found a book about the
flora and fauna of Nova Scotia. But I couldn’t concentrate. The
black and white line drawings made me think of Jay. He’d studied
biology in college, which he now taught to high school students. He
loved botany too, and print making. He’d been planning to develop
an art therapy program at our camp.

Thinking about Jay made me wonder if he’d
called the lodge again. I couldn’t help hoping he had. Not that I
was going to change my mind about him. I even wondered if he might
go looking for me – he’d arrived at the lodge other times to
surprise me. But I knew school had started and he was back in
class. He couldn’t just appear like he sometimes did in the
summer.

Around six I heard Nick’s bike roar up the
front drive. I leapt up to peek out my window. In spite of the
black leather jacket and boots, he looked like he had as a kid
ramming around popping wheelies on his rusty old bicycle. Tough and
vulnerable and trying too hard. I remembered how poor he and his
father had been. Even living as a crown ward I’d had more to my
name. If I needed new shoes, I was provided with them. A staff
member would take me out shopping, and buy me new socks and
underwear too. Sure, I was given the cheapest, most serviceable
stuff, but Nick never had anything new.

I didn’t go downstairs. Since meeting him in
Montreal I’d been dredging up memories, not all of them good. I
just didn’t feel ready to face him.

I’d met Nick long before high school. He used
to hang around the group home where I lived between my short,
disastrous placements in foster homes. I think he felt more
comfortable there than at his own house. And the staff accepted
him. We all knew he needed a refuge from his brutal father. He
often showed up with fresh bruises, and once with a broken arm.

I had such a crush on him, back then. When I
was maybe eleven, and he was about thirteen, I saw one of the older
girls sneaking him into her room. Nick caught me watching them from
the top of the stairs. “Hey kid,” he said with a sly smile. “Don’t
tell on us, okay?” Then he puckered his lips and made a kissing
motion at me.

A couple of years later, when I was in eighth
grade and Nick was already in high school, he became my boyfriend.
When he sneaked into someone’s room, it was mine. The memory of
that crept over me now with lusty shame. God, I’d been so eager.
Too eager, the staff and social workers thought. They quickly found
yet another foster home, the Wembles, for me.

I’d tried to forget about Nick and how he
made me feel. But now that it was time to go down for dinner with
him all these years later, I remembered. And suddenly I cared very
much how I looked. Why hadn’t I splurged and bought something funky
at The Silver Needle? I was stuck with my faded denim skirt and
black cotton shirt, about the only clothes other than jeans I
owned. Until I brought them along to Malagash, they’d been hanging
in my closet at the lodge since the day I left the Social Workers’
Conference.