They knew us by our long hair and our muscular legs,
by the soccer ball hooked under an elbow,
by our early morning walks to the school gymnasium,
by our part-time jobs slinging pizzas down at Aldo’s place,
by our reputations as athletes.
We lived in a chalet.
Not a real chalet, but the old servants’ quarters
from when the house was part of a large estate.
There was an oil stove in the middle of the room
with several bunkbeds up against the wall.
B had a stolen Canadian Tire flag hanging above his bed.
D was frequently given baskets of food and fruit
from a teacher who worried about his nutrition.
We paid no rent, but kept the lawn trimmed,
the leaves raked, and the main house protected from vandals.
We fed ourselves with the money we earned from our after-school jobs.
Occasionally, B’s grandma would slowly walk from the house to the chalet,
a cane in one hand, a fresh pie in the other.
I didn’t go to the main house often, but B said we needed
to occasionally attend a proper dinner.
I washed up in the bathroom but let my hands air dry
for fear of using the wrong towel.
Grandma no longer drove her car, but I would still go up to the garage,
which used to be a horse stable, and give it a wash.
Grandma was a nurse back when the town was young,
providing private care to a wealthy estate owner who had no heirs.
She inherited his estate upon his death.
B’s family lived in Toronto, had sent B to his grandma
in the little northern town, it was said, to calm him down.
He had been out of control in the big city.
It didn’t take very long before he was out of control again.
Despite that it was oh so close to the high school,
I gave up the chalet the night I came home to find
glass shattered and spread onto my bed and
my stash of food eaten or trashed,
the result of one of B’s drunken impulses.
D asked me to stay, that it would get better. But no.
I wanted to leave with happy memories.
The year after we graduated high school,
I learned that B had been given a job in Toronto by his parents,
that he was married, and that he and his wife
had moved into a house his parents bought them in the suburbs.
D and I went on adventures, ended up in different parts
of Europe and Central America.
But my chalet experiences have never drifted far from my memory.
