Free For Your Tomorrow by Melanie Murray Page B

hampered by the program of tuition and its time bound regularity,” Hillman concludes. “An exam tests more than your endurance, ability, and knowledge; it tests your calling.”
    There’s a photo of Jeff—“June 1988” written on the back. He wears a navy suit, a crisp white shirt and a red tie. His chestnut hair is brushed conservatively back off his face. He clasps a black portfolio case under his arm as he’s about to leave for his first day at a summer manpower training course—“Careers in Business.” He’s interested in becoming a stockbroker. Unsmiling, he looks off into the distance. Perhaps he’s contemplating his future at the Toronto Stock Exchange? No, Marion tells me; he’s saying, “Mom, hurry up and take the fucking picture.”
    Jeff’s walk along the path to a potential business career is short-lived. In August, Russ is posted to Ottawa, and the family packs it all up, again, to move back east. Jeff is eighteen now, and a working man. He stacks shelves at Loblaws, busses tables at a restaurant and mows fairways at the Ottawa Golf Club. At night, he attends an adult high school, and completes grade twelve. Then he lands a job as a security guard at the Ottawa airport, working early morning shifts. In the afternoons, he takes courses at Carleton University—two in art history, one in biology.
    In December 1992, just after turning twenty-two, he writes to his grandmother:
    My job at the airport is OK. It’s a dead end job, but I can handle it for now until I go to school and try to get a real job, and until I finish paying off my car I guess it will have to do. I haven’t (until this year) been treating life seriously and I’m finding out now that I should’ve been a long time ago. I have to make
a lot of important decisions that I’m not sure about. Hopefully everything will work out in the end. I’m sorry if you can’t read my writing, it’s been a long time since I’ve written any letters. I love you very much, Jeff
    In the fall of 1993, he starts the first year of a BA in mass communication, immersing himself in the study of popular culture and media, embarking on the intellectual quest that will challenge him for the next seven years.
    Jeff scans the sea of unfamiliar faces in the lecture hall—the first class of his film studies course. His eyes light up. Sitting near the back is Sylvie Secours, her smooth olive skin and honey-blond corkscrew curls radiant, even in the dim lighting. They work together at the airport, and both play on the airport softball team. He’s been watching her, mesmerized by her sunny congeniality as she checks passengers through and chats with co-workers in English and French. Captivated by her silvery blue eyes, he always freezes when he gets close to her, grows tongue-tied, blushes as he throws out some monosyllabic remark, wishing he’d paid attention in French class. But drawn into her glow, he shuffles into the middle of her row, and takes the vacant seat beside her. She smiles, surprised to see him.
    After the class, they stroll around the corner to Starbucks—or “Five Bucks,” as Jeff calls it. He marvels when Sylvie tells him she’s always lived in Ottawa, spent her whole life in the same brick house a few streets from the campus. “You’re lucky to have roots somewhere,” he says,spooning the froth on his cappuccino. “My dad’s been posted five times. I’ve lived on four military bases—and in twice as many houses. I don’t know where my true home is.”
    In the classes that follow, they sit side by side, then pick up a coffee and chat about the films they’re studying. One evening, after the final softball game of the season, they go out with the airport team for a beer. After a few rounds, their teammates gradually disperse. Sylvie and Jeff find themselves alone at the round wooden table strewn with empties, swirling the dregs in their glasses. They eye each other, and smile. “It’s so cool how you switch back and forth