Chapter 3
Friday, August 29th
Trinity, Don Bosco High School, 9:30 am
Miriam got up very early the following day. She was so excited that she really couldn’t lie in bed longer, even if she generally liked to remain in bed after she had woken up for a few minutes to indulge in a peaceful moment before starting her day. She looked at the photo of her dad she had on her bedside table, the first thing she had taken out of her suitcase, and she instinctively clutched the wedding ring that hung from her neck.
Feeling the warmth of her dad's smile, she prepared breakfast and the unfailing cup of coffee. She got dressed. She had not brought elegant clothes from Italy, because she didn’t feel at ease when she dressed up, she didn’t like high-heeled shoes and skirts and she generally wore jeans and a shirt or a sweater. This did not mean that she was in any way untidy-looking, because her slim figure and her elegant bearing made her look attractive and smart.
She put on a light grey cotton jacket over a blue flannel shirt and she took her bag. She was ready! She stopped before opening the door, said a quick prayer and made the sign of the cross, as she had always been used to doing before starting her day.
The sun was shining and the day was pleasantly warm. Miriam walked the short distance to the school and arrived in plenty of time. She had already gone to see the school from the outside the day before, but now in plain daylight, she was able to appreciate the imposing structure. The school was a red brick building, surrounded by a schoolyard with trees, benches and paths. Students could meet here before or after lessons, talk, chat, revise what they had studied or simply walk along the paths. They could sit on the benches or the grass and stay there as long as they liked because there was no fence around the property. Next to the main entrance, there was a huge cross on the external wall that indicated that the chapel of the school was there. The chapel, which in reality was a big church, had a separate entrance because it was accessible by the parish people who went to the mass. The church was, in fact, a parish church for the Trinity Catholic community and a school chapel for Don Bosco High School. The main front door introduced a large hall surrounded by tall glass windows overlooking the front garden. Next to the main building, there was a lower structure for the gym, and behind it, you could see the outdoor basketball court and a baseball field with a tall net around it. In front of the school, there was a sign that directed to the car park.
Miriam walked up the path that led to the front entrance. A sliding glass door opened automatically in front of her and she found herself in the large hall. There was a long reception desk and a notice board beside it with various colourful notes, some handwritten and some printed.
In the hall, several small groups of two or three people were chatting cheerily. When Miriam entered, Father Mark left one of these groups to approach her with a welcoming smile.
“Miriam, welcome to Don Bosco High School.” From behind the reception desk, a short plump woman with a beautiful sweet smile, green eyes and short curly blond hair came to introduce herself to her. Miriam guessed immediately that she was the secretary she had spoken to on the phone, Mrs Dawson.
When Angela came near her, she abruptly stopped and made a strange face, as if she had seen a ghost or a person she had not met for a long time. Miriam noticed that Father Mark was surprised by the secretary’s reaction, also because the smile on Angela’s face turned for a moment into what seemed a worried and troubled expression. But Mrs Dawson regained her composure immediately and said,
“Miriam, I am so glad you are here. Come to meet your new colleagues!” The warm words made Miriam forget the shocked reaction of a few instants before.
“Angela, I must thank you again for your kindness!” Miriam said with equal warmth.
Soon Miriam was surrounded by a small crowd of friendly faces and shaking hands. ‘Canadian people really know how to make you feel at ease,’ she thought. She turned from one face to the other and she was, for a few minutes, the centre of attention and kindness.
“Welcome to Canada!”
“I hope you had a pleasant flight!”
“Which town are you from?”
“How do you like Canada so far?”
“I love Italian cooking!”
“How long have you been teaching in Italy?”
Some remarks made her smile, because they were based on common stereotypes about Italy and Italian people but everything was said to make her feel at home, and she appreciated this flood of words and smiles and handshakes.
Father Mark seemed to be enjoying himself, and after a few minutes, he said, “Colleagues, let’s go to the meeting room and there we can get to know Miriam better.”
They all went to a large room with a circular table and many swivelling chairs around it. The school looked modern in the furniture and the facilities.
In the room, there were now more or less fifteen people, only the teachers of the high school and the staff, but Miriam knew that in the building there was also a middle school for younger pupils, which was on another side of the structure and there were specifically organized meetings of the two teaching bodies.
Father Mark waited until everyone had taken a seat and said, “I am so glad we are all here together at the beginning of a new school year. Before starting, let’s offer a prayer for our school, our teachers, our staff members, our students and all the people we are going to meet this year. All the students who come to this school must leave it after a few years feeling they have been part of a family. They must not only know more about the subject they have chosen to study, but they must be better people, ready to face life and always aware that they can come back here whenever they need to. This is what ‘school’ means for me and for the Salesian order, whose mission is to take care of young boys and girls in parishes and schools. Now let’s pray…” Everyone stood up and they prayed together, “Our Father” and “Hail Mary”. From the countenance of the people around her, Miriam could see that Father Mark was respected and loved by everyone. The priest was a short and slim man in his late sixties, with a pleasant round face and smiling light brown eyes.
After the prayers, they sat down in silence and Father Mark resumed:
“Before going into the agenda for this school year, since we have a new teacher,” he smiled at Miriam, “I would like each of you to introduce himself or herself. We commonly use first names here, both for colleagues and staff and for students. Please, John, break the ice!”
John stood up and said he was the Science teacher.
Then the other people gathered in the room introduced themselves. Maria was trying hard to memorize names and faces. All the teachers were from Ontario, apart from Lucas, the French teacher, and Simon, the arts teacher, who came from Quebec. The staff was composed of three people: the secretary Angela, the receptionist Lucinda and the accountant Robert.
Now it was Miriam’s turn and she was really agitated. She stood up and said, “My name is Miriam, I am from Padua in Italy.” When she said the name of her hometown, Angela cast her eyes down as if she had heard something that had hurt her, but Miriam didn’t have time to dwell on it. “Padua is a little town in the north, not far from Venice. I graduated almost fourteen years ago in my hometown in Italian and foreign languages and I specialized in teaching techniques. I have always taught high school students in a linguistic high school and I have been teaching now for thirteen years. I have always dreamt of teaching Italian in a foreign country and I still can’t believe I am fulfilling my dream now. I hope I will be able to do a good job and I think I will need your help. I thank you for your warm welcome today.” She looked around at the smiling friendly faces. She sat down and Father Mark started to introduce the different commitments of the year. He distributed a detailed calendar where all the holidays, the meeting days and the deadlines were indicated.
When the meeting ended, John, the Science teacher, offered to take Miriam on a tour of the school, so that she could familiarize herself with the different rooms and areas of the big building.
On the ground floor, apart from the reception, there were two meeting rooms of different sizes, the smallest one was used for parents’ meetings. There was also a small cafeteria in a corner with some tables outside. On the first floor, there were the classrooms, Father Mark’s parlour and the laboratories; one in particular, the language lab, would be useful for Miriam.
John was a very pleasant guide. Miriam had already noticed that all her colleagues were in their forties or early fifties, John looked a little younger, maybe late thirties. He was blond with a round face and round glasses that gave him a funny and joyful look. He was not tall, and he was of medium build but he seemed an athletic man, maybe because he was wearing jeans and a light sweatshirt with the logo of the school.
After a cursory tour of the school, John led Miriam to the cafeteria where some of the other colleagues were already sitting at a table. John took a chair for Miriam and invited her to sit down. They all remained for an hour together, chatting and getting to know each other. Miriam was really happy and enjoyed the company of these new workmates. One of her new colleagues, Julian, the Maths teacher, said, as they were leaving,
“ Father Mark has told me that you have rented a bungalow not far from the school. If you need a car, my mum doesn’t use her car any more because of her health problems and we would be happy to sell it to you. It is not very old and it has not been used much!”
Miriam didn’t need the car to go to school, but the previous day, when she had explored the town, she had thought that maybe a car could be useful if she wanted to visit nearby places. She thanked Julian and they agreed to meet one of the following days to see the car and finalize the deal.
In the early afternoon, Miriam went back home, but she was invited the following Sunday to go for a walk on the lake with two or three colleagues who loved walking in nature.
When she left the school, Angela was not at the reception desk. Miriam wanted to go to the office to say goodbye, but she changed her mind because there was something in the behaviour of the secretary that had upset her, even if she could not understand exactly what. Angela had reacted in a strange way to their meeting and to something Miriam had said. Maybe she was just shy, maybe inadvertently Miriam had said something that had hurt her. Miriam thought that she would have plenty of time in the following days to talk to her or to talk to Father Mark and learn if Angela had some problems or something that worried her.
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The Trucker, 7:30 pm
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Jill had made up her mind. During one of Steve’s unpleasant phone calls, she had heard him mention a place, the Trucker, which was halfway between Oshawa and Trinity. She wanted to understand, she needed to understand what was upsetting the life of her boyfriend so much. If they wanted to be a real couple, if they wanted their relationship to get real, to become something lasting, she didn’t want to be excluded from a part of his life, she didn’t want secrets between them.
Two weeks before, Steve had taken her to his workmate Andy’s home and she had met the beautiful family of his colleague — his wife and his charming daughter — a simple but real family, like the one she was dreaming of having one day, maybe with Steve. It had been a pleasant evening, they had had dinner together and they were chatting and laughing when… Steve’s phone had rung and he had changed completely from the pleasant self he had been up to that moment to a nervous, irritable person who had discussed on the phone and then had not been able to go back to the pleasant conversation of a few minutes before. After a short while they had left. He hadn’t talked in the car while he was driving her home, he had been moody and visibly angry, she didn’t know why and he had refused to explain. Then he had called her the following day to apologize, he was sorry and he promised nothing would again ruin their time together, but when she had asked him to explain what had happened, what had changed his mood so abruptly, he had said the sentence that by now she knew by heart, even before he uttered it, “Please, stay out of it.” The only thing he had added was that he was having problems with some people but that he would soon find a solution and go back to a normal life. But this normality was far away, judging from his behaviour that had changed from having a pleasant time together, then a phone call and… romanticism was over; only rarely they had had an entire evening without interruptions and the situation was getting even worse, the phone calls more frequent and menacing.
Now she was driving to the Trucker, she intended to find out what he did there and what kind of company he had. She prayed all her fears and her suspicions would prove groundless and that Steve had just some meaningless discussions.
She arrived at the parking lot in front of the diner and she immediately saw that it was not a decent place; there was a coming and going of evil-looking faces and women who were clearly prostitutes. She parked her car and waited a few minutes. She had expected a bad place, but not so bad. She had never entered a similar place and she resisted the urge to turn her car and go back home. While she was recovering from the shock, she saw Steve’s car arrive. He parked on the other side of the parking lot and clearly he had not seen her, because he got out of the car and started to walk towards the bar.
Jill braced herself, she took a deep breath and got out of the car. ‘Now or never,’ she thought.
“Steve,” she called out.
Steve turned with a panicked expression on his face. “Jill, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see for myself where you spend your time when you are not with me!” A note of sarcasm was in her voice, even if at that moment she was more desperate than ironical.
“I told you, I implored you to stay out of it,” Steve’s voice sounded exasperated. “Why did you come here? We were supposed to meet tomorrow…” his voice trailed off, they had arrived at the door and he stopped.
“Why don’t you introduce me to your friends now that I am here?” In reality she just wanted to run away, but she didn’t know exactly what she should do.
“Go home, Jill, go home, please!” The door opened and a couple of bad guys came out, they saw Steve and they told him,
“Aren’t you coming? We are waiting for you to start.”
Steve was visibly embarrassed and he was torn between his so-called friends and his bad habits and this sweet, beautiful girl who offered him a normal righteous life.
He made a gesture to the men that meant, ‘I am coming!’
Now he had entered the diner and Jill had followed him. She faced him and said,
“It’s up to you, Steve. You can remain here and you’ll see me no more or you can leave with me and we can go somewhere else to spend a pleasant and romantic evening together!” She knew she sounded harder than she was in reality, but she was desperate and she was realizing now that she was in love with this man! Yes, she loved him! And she cared for him!
“You can’t be serious, Jill!” He was trying to keep his voice low because there were still a few people and he didn’t want to be heard. “I come here just to meet some friends. I don’t have to give you any explanation for what I do and for how I live my life.” He knew he didn’t mean what he was saying. Jill was the person he cared for, the person that could save him, but oh, how difficult it is to say what you really want to when you are not free, free from vices, free to live as you like to, because you have built your own prison of lies, of vices, of debts, of bonds with people who will keep you in their power.
Jill felt she had no hope of forcing him to leave, she just turned and left… All the way back to Oshawa she cried desperately and she hoped that Steve would come back to her to ask for help, to explain, to make things right.
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Don Bosco High School, 8:00 pm
Father Mark had noticed something strange in Angela Dawson’s behaviour when he had introduced Miriam to her colleagues. He didn’t like asking personal questions; his teachers, the students and his staff members knew that they could come to him whenever they needed to talk about their problems or if something worried them and that he was always ready to listen and give advice. Almost every day there was someone in his parlour; a parishioner, a student, a parent, a teacher, and he never said he didn’t have time for them. Whoever talked to him could also count on his absolute discretion and what was said in that parlour remained in that room. When he knew that someone had a problem, he never failed to ask once in a while if everything was OK, if that relative had recovered, if that young student had found his way, if that difficult situation had been solved and he remembered everyone’s needs in his prayers. This was his way of interpreting his role as priest, pastor and director of a school.
Now, after the evening prayer and dinner, he took his phone and called Angela,
“Angela, I am sorry to disturb you at home.”
" Don’t worry, Mark. We have just finished dinner.”
" I wanted to know if everything is ok. Are you worried about something? I noticed you were a little distracted today at the meeting.”
Angela blushed. She didn’t feel ready to talk about THAT thing, even to Father Mark, not yet, at least. The only people who knew were her husband Tony and her sister Annette and they had promised not to tell anybody.
“Thanks, Mark. No, I am not worried. It’s just something from my past that sometimes comes back to haunt me. Maybe one day I will tell…” A lump in her throat prevented her from explaining further. Father Mark didn’t press her, he looked at her, smiling and said,
“You know that you can always come to me to talk.”
“Thank you. Mark, I know. Pray for me because, sooner or later, I will have to take a decision and it won’t be easy.”
“I will pray for you, Angela, don’t worry, you are a sensitive woman and you have an affectionate husband. You will certainly make the right decision.”
Father Mark ended the phone call, sure that Angela would come to him eventually when she was able to talk.
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