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“I’m sorry. I told you – I can’t go.”

He’s gone. My own hands, spread out on the desk, are too large. Large and too thin, like empty gloves.

Why did I have to ask him who? Like that. So eagerly. Was that how it sounded? As though I couldn’t wait to be told. And he, so malicious, replying like that. Once Calla said to him, “Don’t be mean, Willard,” over something he’d said to me, and he replied, “Oh come on, now, can’t you take a joke?”

It is only now, concentrating on my hands, the nails nicely manicured and coated with colourless polish, that I realize something else. When Willard Siddley’s spotted furry hands were on my desk, I wanted to touch them. To see what the hairs felt like. Yet he repulses me.

I didn’t. I won’t. I didn’t feel that way. I’m only imagining things again.

“Hallo, child.”

Calla. I wish she wouldn’t call me child. It sounds ridiculous. I’ve asked her not to, but she doesn’t stop. She’s carrying, I see now, a potted plant. A hyacinth, bulbously in bud and just about to give birth to the blue-purple blossom.

“Here you are. For your desk. So you’ll be convinced spring is upon us.”

“Calla – it’s lovely. How kind of you.” It really is, and I’m not thanking her sufficiently. She may guess how awkward I feel about her generosity. “Thanks ever so much. You shouldn’t have.”

“Bosh,” she says, waving a brawny chintz-encased arm. “I was getting some for the Tabernacle. It’s my week to do the flowers. So I thought I might as well get two extra, one for you and one for me. It’s rather a nice one, isn’t it? I got them at Zimmer’s. They had some gorgeous lilies as well, but I have a mean prejudice against those, as you know.”

Calla’s mother was exceptionally fond of white lilies, and christened her only daughter after one variety of them. Calla detests her name and no wonder. Nothing less lily-like could possibly be imagined. She’s a sunflower, if anything, brash, strong, plain, and yet reaching up in some way, I suppose, even though that Tabernacle of hers seems an odd way for anyone to choose.

“We’re having a special service tonight,” she says, almost shyly now, the meagrely hopeful voice she uses for this one purpose. “Out-of-town speaker, supposed to be worth hearing. I don’t suppose you’d care to come along, Rachel?”

I’ve gone with her once or twice, against my better judgement. They sing the hymns like jazz, and people rise to testify, and I was so mortified I didn’t know which way to look. How can they make fools of themselves like that, so publicly?

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Calla. I’d like to go, but it’s Mother’s bridge night.”

“You don’t get out enough,” she frowns.

I know it’s only that she is concerned, but what business is it of hers?

“It’s none of my business,” she says, as though knowing my mind. “But – well, even if you don’t believe, it’s a way of getting out. For me, it’s the rock of my soul, kid, but even if you can’t feel that way, it would still –”

Does she imagine I’m that much in need? Anything for an evening out?

“The next special service, I’ll go,” I hear myself promising.

“Oh well – don’t feel you have to. I didn’t mean –”

“No, no, I’d love to, really. Honestly. It’s just that this particular evening –”

“Yeh. Okay. Well, we’ll see, then.”

At least I have postponed it, and perhaps by that time some reasonable excuse will come along, or I’ll be dead.

I wish I hadn’t noticed the look of disappointment on her face as she went out. But all the same, she tried bribing me with hyacinths – what a nerve.

At last I can leave. The halls are quiet, and from upstairs I can hear the swishing and clash of the janitor’s broom and dustpan. The daylight stays longer these days, and the streets are not quite dusk yet. The maple branches are black and intricate against the white unwarm sky. The leaves will not be out for another month. The cement sidewalks are nearly dry, the last of the melted snow having seeped away. I turn at River Street and walk past the quiet dark brick houses, too big for their remaining occupants, built by somebody’s grandfathers who did well long ago out