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So Long, See You Tomorrow

I

The North Sea

1

In the Care of Churchgoers and Old Girls

According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jack's most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt co then

Of course we don't remember much until we're four or five years old--and e ree is very selective or incomplete, or even false What Jack recalled as the first time he felt the need to reach for his mom's hand was probably the hundredth or two hundredth time

Preschool tests revealed that Jack Burns had a vocabulary beyond his years, which is not unco only children accustole parents But of greater significance, according to the tests, was Jack's capacity for consecutive memory, which, when he was three, was comparable to that of a nine-year-old At four, his retention of detail and understanding of linear time were equal to an eleven-year-old's (The details included, but were not li and the names of streets)

These test results were bewildering to Jack's mother, Alice, who considered him to be an inattentive child; in her view, Jack's propensity for daydreae

Nevertheless, in the fall of 1969, when Jack was four and had not yet started kindergarten, his s Hill Road in Forest Hill, which was a nice neighborhood in Toronto They aiting for school to be let out, Alice explained, so that Jack could see the girls

St Hilda's was then called "a church school for girls," frorade thirteen--at that time still in existence, in Canada--and Jack's in his schooling, although he was a boy She waited to tell him of her decision until the reet therees of sullenness and exultation and prettiness and slouching disarray

"Next year," Alice announced, "St Hilda's is going to adrade four"

Jack couldn'thi and noisy, all of them in uniforms in those colors Jack Burns later caray and ray sweaters or maroon blazers over their white middy blouses

"They're going to ad it"

"How?" he asked

"I' that out," Alice replied

The girls wore gray pleated skirts with gray kneesocks, which Canadians called "knee-highs" It was Jack's first look at all those bare legs He didn't yet understand how the girls were driven by some interior unrest to push their socks down to their ankles, or at least below their calves--despite the school rule that knee-highs should be worn knee-high

Jack Burns further observed that the girls didn't see hih hiirl omanly hips and breasts, and lips as full as Alice's She locked onto Jack's eyes, as if she were powerless to avert her gaze

At the age of four, Jack wasn't sure if he was the one who couldn't look away from her, or if she was the one as trapped and couldn't look away fro that she frightened him Perhaps she had seen what Jack would look like as an older boy, or a grownand desperation (Or with fear and degradation, Jack Burns would one day conclude, because this sairl suddenly looked away)

Jack and his irls' rides had coone, and those on foot had left not even the sound of their shoes behind, or their intihter However, there was still enough warmth in the early-fall air to hold their scent, which Jack reluctantly inhaled and confused with perfuirls at St Hilda's, it was not their perfuirls therow used

to or take for granted Not even by the tirade four

"But why airls had gone Some fallen leaves were all that remained in motion on the quiet street corner

"Because it's a good school," Alice answered "And you'll be safe with the girls," she added