Smile Pretty Mount Hatton

Scorch marks wormed their way up the side of the Mess Hall walls, the lumber that was harvested from the Mount Hatton Camp trees accepted the branding. Like ink it stained deep, seeping into the good spots, into the nooks, into the crevices. Fouling it. The fireplace itself – the carved stone - was still intact, still holding strong. Flames reached out, trying to scorch more, burn more, pervert more. It was still the same. Above the fireplace was an array of camp photographs: sepia toned smiles. There was one particular one that Aimee had always admired, a volleyball photo. In the sand sat three girls, their bare legs reflecting that scorching Ontario sun. They had those smiles on them that were attached to nativity, to promise rings and secret handshakes. For an old photo there was a freshness about it. A blast of citrus. Then, as quickly as it came, a sharp bitter taste that lingered in her mouth. Had lingered for all these years.

          She had never intended to come back.

This was not meant to be the prodigal sons return, there would be no warm embrace. Unless you counted the flames of course, which Aimee didn’t. It was a false warmth. A false sense of security. Then, she was cursing herself: why had she decided to come back? Ten-year reunion to celebrate what - the loss of innocence? A bitter taste she couldn’t be rid of? The reunion hadn’t started yet, the Mess Hall tables were laid out with bog-standard silverware and paper plates. Fly traps hung from the ceiling like macabre streamers; little black dots contorted outwards. Their legs kicked as their squirmed, losing the fight with every second they struggled. It would all be over if they just stopped struggling. Their mistake had been entering the Mess Hall in the first place...as was hers.

 The reunion was themed of course. That was just a given. ‘That was the Mount Hatton Camp way’ – was something her MHC worshipping mother would have said. The theme was 1950s. Oh, so cliché, so overdone. James Dean, John Wayne, Elvis Presley – it was more of a reunion for them than for the campers of Mount Hatton. A cardboard cut-out of Marilyn Monroe struggling to hold down her cream dress stood precariously in the corner. Fluttering with the constant draft, her two-dimensional eyes searching for an escape route. Ten minutes prior to Aimee’s arrival a mock juke box had been wheeled into the Mess Hall and set up on the north-east wall beside four heavy-duty freezers. Now it played Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’, as it competed with the hum of the freezers:

‘I thought of quitting, baby. But my heart just ain’t gonna buy it.’

Aimee suffocated a laugh. She’d tried to quit, she had. But Mount Hatton had the ability to dismantle you from the inside out and still have you smitten. The desire could be nauseating at times. Even ten years down the line she’d sometimes lie awake at night as the next-door neighbour’s flood lights illuminated the edge of her mattress; swirling her bare feet under the duvet. From the first swirl Mount Hatton’s old cheer would rattle through her mind: ‘MHC is the camp for me, we are the juniors, the seniors are we, lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!’ The toe-curling chant was always followed by that bitter taste in her mouth.

 Aimee unravelled her fingers – they’d been digging small crescent moons in her palms for a minute or two. She was an adult, she reminded herself. And the thing about being an adult was the wonderful ability to say ‘no’. Let’s face it, she thought, that just wasn’t her thing. Appeasing others, that was her thing. Showing up ten minutes too early to events, that was her thing.

 She kneaded her hands together, ridding herself of the crescent moons she’d created. Aimee gazed upwards, following the path of the scorch marks. Smack dab in the centre above the fireplace, just to the right of the volleyball photo was the relic she’d been avoiding. The damned thing grimaced down at her from its pedestal - self-righteous and unholy. Two hours she’d driven to get there. Two hours driving in stop-start rush hour on the 401 then the QEW; sheer determination, white knuckles on the steering wheel, creamed coffee jostling in the cup holder. The AC unit in ‘Sapphire’ her Volkswagen Jetta had been broken for five months and even the searing heat hadn’t held her back. There was an insufferable want and need, a compulsion. When her alarm clock had bleeped five A.M that morning she had no intention of taking a pilgrimage back to MHC. No intention of looking back into the callous face in that photograph.

              Yet here she was, staring down the devil.

 Brandon had a lazy eye, but this never deterred his prolific confidence. Even in the photograph you could see it ooze over the edges, seep into the frame, another stain on MHC’s history. The stubble on his mandible sat flushed against her fourteen-year-old cheek, claiming it. Instinctively, her hand raised up to meet her cheek. Incinerating, unbearable. The stain wasn’t just in the photograph, it had seeped into her skin long ago and remained there. She’d always detested his hair – it was ‘only the haircut a mother could love’ because his mother had been the one that cut it. She presumed it had been done with a bowl and a pair of blunt kitchen scissors. How else could such a monstrosity be executed?

 His voice was still a solid fixture in her life. One of those voices that showed up on the same nights the bare foot swirling happened. She’d shoot up in her bed, gasping for air, rummaging for the small plastic button attached to the lamp on her nightstand. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ she’d once screamed into her pitch-black room, as if the religious figures would suddenly appear and save her from the precise form of hell she’d created for herself. Despite feeling like a fool she’d have to sit up and read for an hour before she could turn the lights back off. Checking the doorway to her en-suite for a shadow of a man, for the sound of his voice, the tap of his finger on her shoulder.

‘Lamee’ he used to call her. Thought it was a hoot, a class act. As if no one had ever taken someone’s name and morphed it using rhyme before. That was Brandon though, he genuinely thought the words on his lips and feel of his hands were golden.

           “Lean in,” her mother instructed them, the group closed in on the command. Aimee could feel the warm breath of Brandon on her shoulder – the smell of fresh onions. It had been a sub lunch that day, the second day of camp and she’d watched him squirt Heinz mustard, onions and salami on a foot long whole-wheat. His right arm wormed its way around her waist. Then, with a well-positioned crunch forward his hand closed around her upper thigh. His thumb moving up towards her crotch.

        “Smile pretty, Lamee,” he cooed in her ear.

Aimee shuddered, it ran deep and rattled her bones. What if he showed up? What if he asked her to ‘smile pretty?’ That unwanted onion breath was still lingering, she could feel his fingers on her leg: groping, searching, hunting. She had a resentment now for light touch, the kind of touch that glides gently over the skin, skimming the edges of the peach fuzz on her arms. Rage filled her from top to tail whenever someone dared perform such an act. Next was impulse – she disregarded the fire; the fire wasn’t burning at passionately now, it had died down to a soft crackle. With ease she leapt onto the edge of the fireplace and plucked the photo frame from the wall.

Heavy, she thought, it’s much heavier than I had anticipated. The frame was sturdy and weighted down by wiring that ran across its back. Mount Hatton Camp ’09 someone had scribbled on the back with a silver permanent marker, turning the ‘o’ in Mount into a heart. How could something that looked so innocent, be so cursed?

She’d always fantasized about what she would say to Brandon if they ever met again. Pull him aside, sit him down, calmly state: ‘Even if you don’t apologize, I’m going to forgive you so that I can move on with my life.’ It wasn’t like one of those long-winded imaginary conversations you sometimes have in the shower, arguing with your foe in a tit-for-tat. No – it was right to the point. An injection straight into the blood stream, straight into the infection. It would be unlikely that he’d actually cry, but in Aimee’s fantasy, he always did.

“Smile pretty, Brandon,” Aimee said, tossing the photograph into the crackling fire. The protective glass splintered and turned their youthful faces into obtuse shapes. Distorting their smiles into unforgiving black holes. The fire roared, gobbling the photo frame up first then working its way through the photograph itself. With wild bites it devoured the relic until nothing remained. Aimee looked up at the space on the wall that the photograph had once occupied. There was a faint colour difference on the wall from where the sun had streamed in through the window and washed it out. Even with the photograph gone, a permanent shadow would remain on Mount Hatton.

A click echoed across the Mess Hall and Aimee twisted to look over her shoulder; the first of the reunion goers were arriving…