The Mechanic's Daughter

The Mechanic's Daughter Part 7: How to be a lady

That fight was the final nail for the Camshafts. Jimmy and El decided to start over, beginning with recruiting new talent. All week the phone at home rang with singers and guitarists hoping for an audition with my brother's crummy garage band. Everyone wanted to be a rock star.

My mother got tired of answering the phone. "Answer your own calls, James. It's ringing constantly. Between this band stuff and Brenda tying it up half of Sunday, I can barely using the phone myself."

She'd already complained about me tying up the phone Sunday afternoon. After Nikki, I'd talked to Cheryl, who'd found a room in a house in Toronto and a part-time job in a boutique. Between now and Christmas she had full-time hours. When could I come see her? Probably not until the term ended.

I was behind in my essays. On Tuesday, I walked with Nikki to her afternoon class and warned her I wouldn't be finished until close to five. Then I hunkered down in the library to do the research for my Urban Environments essay, not my favourite subject.

It was a relief to stop thinking about streetscapes and talk over Nikki's day as I drove her home.

"The tutorial was about personality disorders. It's so interesting. I hope one of the exam questions is about this. I don't know how I can have thought I might drop out."

"Tell me how you got interested in psychology?" I glanced at her before looking back at the wet road. She was still somewhat subdued, but at least she was engaged in the subject.

She told me about a high school guidance teacher who had her fill out aptitude forms when she said she was interested in going on to university.

"Filling out those stupid forms forced me to think about the rest of my life – how little there was to do besides pick tobacco and drink. I had a vision of myself in ten years time, married to an insurance salesman and struggling with three small children and praying, like my mother, for some kind of deliverance."

"Is your mother unhappy?" I don't suppose I'd ever thought much about my own mother's happiness. She was Mom – she cleaned and cooked and kept us in line. She and my father seldom disagreed. I pulled the car into a space on the street outside her house.

"Come in for a few minutes." She unlocked the door and resumed the thought inside. "I think she must be unhappy. My main aim in life is not to be her. So I began to think about those forms – how could you design a set of questions that would tell people what they should do with their lives?" We sat at the kitchen table, where Barbara was sitting reading.

Nikki put the kettle on. "I'm really interested in people. I guess I could have been a schoolteacher – I could still do that. But I wanted to find something that tells me more than 'at six is the Oedipal stage and Johnny may follow his mother everywhere fascinated by what she does. Blah, blah, blah.' I wanted to know how people really think, why they act the way they do."

Barbara looked up. "Make me some too. What are you guys talking about."

"Mothers." My own mother couldn't drive. I wondered if she felt confined, relying on my father to get anywhere. When she needed groceries, she went with her friend June or Dad drove her and sat in the coffee shop until she was ready to go home.

Barbara said her mother was very involved in community works. "She's a pillar of the Anglican Church Women. Everyone's afraid of her. All the church ladies do exactly as she says."

I try to picture having this kind of mother, feared by all. "What was she like with you and your sisters?" Barbara had two sisters.

"Totally domineering. We had to do everything just so. We had to dress this way, do just so well in school but not better. We had to date a certain kind of boy. We led a life of complete conformity. It's no wonder we're all such misfits."