The Bay of Love and Sorrows by David Adams Richards Page A

suddenly smiled, snapped her gum, hugged her stepdaughter coldly, and her lips quivered slightly, so Karrie had to look away.
    Now, Karrie remembered Michael as a young boy who swam out from the wharf without a thought to get a wounded seagull — and it seemed as if she’d always been attracted to him. Yes, she was the one who always took his side, and never allowed people to talk about him.
    Her stepmother had bought her a new silk blouse that she had worn on her birthday.
    Karrie had also been singing the song lately: “Many a tear will fall — but it’s all in the game of love”
    She did not tell herself that his family was well known and wealthy — with political connections in Fredericton, an uncle who was a senator in Ottawa, and sailboats and trips to the Bahamas — her stepmother did.
    As she ran away from Tom, smelling the thick, bland heat, remembering Tom’s poor troubled face, and what he had done with the blueberries, she felt that she had finally met someone who understood and respected her.

S EVEN

    Everyone called her the cinnamon girl Michael gave her that name during her first trip on the sailboat.
    “Oh,” he had said gravely, “you won’t be Karrie here — you will be — oh hell, I don’t know — the cinnamon girl.”
    There was such gaiety at everyone else’s expense — there was such disorder, fighting and cursing and nudity. There was such high revelry at nothing at all There was such a pretence of concern for their friends, the world of affairs, the marijuana laws, that seemed upon reflection to be tired and sad.
    Sometimes as they sat on the sailboat, it drifted to the port side, and they could smell the Jessops’ farmyard.
    “God, those horses,” Michael complained about the odour.
    “Them aren’t horses, boy — them are cows. Them is the smell of money.”
    Michael studied her in a particular way when she corrected him. There was just a slight look of aversion on his face. Then he just bent over, and with his hand on the inside of her thigh he kissed her. She opened her mouth slightly and felt his tongue.
    He was only the second boy she had ever really kissed. Then he drew away and playfully squeezed her thigh.
    “Now, stop it,” she said, “What am I going to do with you?”
    And she began to laugh again, with a marked fear at doing something inappropriate, and then moved a lock of hair back from his face, and shook her head, as if she was exasperated.
    She decided then to go back to Tom, where she felt she would be safe. But on her way to Tom’s the next afternoon, she came out on the road, and spied Vincent waiting for her, looking down the highway holding Maxwell Far up in the field she heard Tom’s tractor, and her heart was no longer in it. She turned quickly and ran, all the trees passing her at the same instant, and didn’t stop until she got to the bay.
    “I’ll go with you — to Prince Edward Island,” she said. “If you want”
    “Well — as long as we enjoy it,” Michael said in an almost ice-cold fashion. And she suddenly gave a short embarrassed laugh, and looked at Madonna.
    On her birthday, Michael took her to Prince Edward Island. He had to talk to some people there, or Silver (who seemed to be upset about something) did. But while the rest went to shore, she remained on the sailboat, looking down the teakwood stairs into the cutty
    She kept walking back and forth on deck hoping they would come back soon, and her attention was drawn to three young teens on the wharf who kept asking her if she owned the sailboat.
    “My boyfriend does,” she said suddenly, filling a glass with white wine.
    She then looked across the strait to the far-off shore she had come from, and took a drink. She promised herself she would be back home by six. When Michael came aboard again, she found herself talking about Tommie.
    “Shhhh,” Michael said.
    He took her hand, and led her into the cutty.
    She looked at his face and it was filled with a quiet strength. She