A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [6]
Japonica Street. Around our place the spruce trees still stand, as I remember them forever. No other trees are so darkly sheltering, shutting out prying eyes or the sun in summer, the spearheads of them taller than houses, the low branches heavy, reaching down to the ground like the greenblack feathered strong-boned wings of giant and extinct birds. The house is not large – it often surprises me to realize this. The same way it will surprise my children to return when they’re grown and look around the classroom and see how small the desks are. The house used to seem enormous, and I think of it that way yet. Rust brick, nothing to set it off or mark it as different from the other brick houses near by. Nothing except the sign, and the fact that the ground floor doesn’t belong to us.
When I was a child the sign was painted on board, pale-grey background, black lettering, and it said Cameron’s Funeral Parlour. Later, my father, laughing in some way incomprehensible to me then and being chided for it by Mother, announced other times other manners. The new sign was ebony background and gilt lettering, Cameron Funeral Home. After he died, and we sold the establishment, the phraseology moved on. The blue neon, kept lighted day and night, now flashes Japonica Funeral Chapel. All that remains is for someone to delete the word funeral. A nasty word, smacking of mortality. No one in Manawaka ever dies, at least not on this side of the tracks. We are a gathering of immortals. We pass on, through Calla’s divine gates of topaz and azure, perhaps, but we do not die. Death is rude, unmannerly, not to be spoken to in the street.
It was in those rooms on the ground floor there, where I was told never to go, that my father lived away his life. All I could think of, then, was the embarrassment of being the daughter of someone with his stock-in-trade. It never occurred to me to wonder about him, and whether he possibly felt at ease with them, the unspeaking ones, and out of place in our house, things being what they were. I never had a chance to ask him. By the time I knew the question it was too late, and asking it would have cut into him too much.
We were fortunate to be able to stay on here, Mother and I. We sold the place outright, but for much less than it was worth, for the right to stay. Hector Jonas got a bargain. He already had a house. He didn’t want the top floor of this one. At least we live rent free in perpetuity, or near enough to suit our purposes. I sometimes wonder what I’ll do when Mother dies. Will I stay, or what?
“Hello, dear. Aren’t you rather late tonight?”
“Hello, Mother. Not especially. I had some clearing up to do.”
“Well, I’ve got a nice lamb chop, so I hope you’ll eat it. You’re not eating enough these days, Rachel.”
“I’m fine.”
“You say you’re fine, but don’t forget I know you pretty well, dear.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You’re too conscientious, Rachel, that’s your trouble. Other people don’t allow their work to get on their nerves.”
“It’s not. I’m fine. A little tired, perhaps, but that’s normal.”
“You fret about them too much, whether they’re doing well or not. But mercy, you didn’t bestow their brains on them, did you? It’s not up to you. Small thanks you’ll get for it, if you ask me anything.”
She stands beside the stove. Her heart is very tricky and could vanquish her at any moment. Yet her ankles are still slender and she takes pride in wearing only fine-denier nylons and never sensible shoes. Her hair is done every week, saucily stiff grey sausage curls, and the frames of her glasses are delphinium blue and elfin. Where does this cuteness come from, when she’s the one who must plump up the chesterfield cushions each night before retiring and empty every ashtray and make the house look as though no frail and mortal creature ever set foot in it?
“What are you having