I have gone away. I will be all write. These were the words that Sylvia read when she unfolded the paper on her way back from the bus station. She was sure that Carla knew “right” from “write.” It was just that she had been talking about writing a note and she was in a state of exalted confusion. More confusion perhaps than Sylvia had realized. The wine had brought out a stream of talk, but it had not seemed to be accompanied by any particular grief or upset. She had talked about the horse barn where she had worked when she was eighteen and just out of high school—that was where she’d met Clark. Her parents had wanted her to go to college, and she had agreed, as long as she could choose to be a veterinarian. She had been one of those dorky girls in high school, one of those girls they made rotten jokes about, but she didn’t care. All she really wanted, and had wanted all her life, was to work with animals and live in the country.
Clark was the best riding teacher they had—and good-looking, too. Scads of women were after him—they would take up riding just to get him as their teacher. She had teased him about this, and at first he seemed to like it, but then he got annoyed. She tried to make up for it by getting him talking about his dream—his plan, really—to have a riding school, a horse stable, someplace out in the country. One day, she came in to work and saw him hanging up his saddle and realized that she had fallen in love with him.
Maybe it was just sex. It was probably just sex.
When fall came and she was supposed to leave for college, she refused to go. She said she needed a year off.
Clark was very smart, but he hadn’t waited even to finish high school, and he had altogether lost touch with his family. He thought families were like a poison in your blood. He had been an attendant in a mental hospital, a disk jockey on a radio station in Lethbridge, Alberta, a member of a road crew near Thunder Bay, an apprentice barber, a salesman in an Army-surplus store. And those were only the jobs he had told her about.
She had nicknamed him Gypsy Rover, because of the song, an old song her mother used to sing. And she took to singing it around the house all the time, till her mother knew something was up.
Last night she slept on a goose-feather bed
With silken sheets for cover.
Tonight she’ll sleep on the cold cold ground—
Beside her gypsy lo-ov-ver.
Her mother had said, “He’ll break your heart, that’s a sure thing.” Her stepfather, who was an engineer, did not even grant Clark that much power. “A loser,” he called him. “A drifter.” He said this as if Clark were a bug he could just whisk off his clothes.
Carla said, “Does a drifter save up enough money to buy a farm, which, by the way, he has done?” He said, “I’m not about to argue with you.” She was not his daughter, anyway, he added, as if that were the clincher.
So, naturally, Carla had had to run away with him. The way her parents behaved, they were practically guaranteeing it.
“Will you get in touch with your parents after you’re settled?” Sylvia asked. “In Toronto?”
Carla raised her eyebrows, pulled in her cheeks, and made a saucy O of her mouth. She said, “Nope.”
Definitely a little bit drunk.