A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [61]
Oh Rachel. He’d never say that in a million years. What is he going to say to you, then, after that touching outburst? “Thank God you are here, darling – together we can face this wildness and walk hand-in-hand into the etcetera.” I’m ashamed. But I don’t stop. I’m addicted.
“You’re an awfully long time in there, Rachel.” Mother’s anxious quaver. “Are you all right?”
I won’t answer. I haven’t heard. Shut up, for God’s sake, can’t she? No, I’m not all right. I’ve just drowned.
“Are you all right, Rachel?”
“Yes, I’m quite all right. Be out in a minute.”
The water is clouded with soap, and through the murkiness my flesh does have a drowned look, too pale, lethargic, drifting, as though I could nevermore rise and act. I look thin as a thighbone. Naked, I am so bone-thin and long, my legs placed maidenly together and my arms out-dangling. Underwater, this cross of bones looks weird, devalued into freakishness. My pelvic bones are too narrow, too narrow for anything.
The phone.
I rise, listening, slithering on the porcelain, drenched, listening, cursing myself for not having got out before, listening.
It is. And Mother’s voice is breathless, as though she can’t wait to hang up the receiver.
“No, I’m sorry, she’s having a bath right now.”
“Hang on – I’m coming!”
He’ll have heard that, oh my God, that cry, as though I were a Saint Bernard galloping to the rescue of some stranded Alpine party.
“Hello.”
“Hello – Rachel?”
“Yes. How are you?”
“Sorry, darling, I didn’t recognize your voice at first. Oh, I’m more or less fine. Are you free?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight.”
“Yes. I’m free.”
When I hang up, Mother is standing in the kitchen doorway, watching me, distaste in her face, and then I realize I haven’t even got a towel around me.
“Really, Rachel, that doesn’t look very nice.”
“Don’t worry –” I don’t know what I’m saying. “The telephones aren’t equipped with TV yet.”
Then, while her disapproval turns to concern over the worrying gaiety of my madness, I begin in relief to laugh, to laugh and laugh, and it goes on.
“I’m sorry – I’ll stop in a moment –”
I close the door of the bathroom, and lock myself inside, and laugh shudderingly, light-years away from laughter.
Nick’s shirt is dark brown, the sleeves rolled up and showing his forearms, brown with summer and lightly covered with fine black hair, and where his shirt is open at the neck I can see the dipping curve of his collarbone. The male smell of him, clean sweat and skin, compels me to touch him. He smiles, but abstractly, as though not really noticing, and starts the car.
“They’re home tonight.” He sounds annoyed. “Shall we just drive out somewhere?”
“All right.”
“I tried to induce them, in my tactful way, to go to the movies, but no dice. The old man and I haven’t been on very good terms recently, so whatever I suggested, he was bound to do the opposite. If I’d had any sense, I would have begged him to stay home and he would’ve been out like a shot.”
“What’s the trouble, Nick?”
“Nothing’s the trouble,” he says. “He’s got such an awful temper, that’s all, and I’ve got a pretty evil one myself.”
“You? I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t know me very well.”
“Enough to know about your temper.”
“No, darling,” he says. “You don’t.”
“You shouldn’t run yourself down.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” he says. “I’m not. You’re the one who does that.”
Then I’m silenced. Is that what he thinks? Is that how I strike him? What must it be like, to be with someone who plays that drab tune repeatedly?
“I don’t! Anyway, not now. I haven’t recently.”
“Oh darling,” he says, and I cannot interpret his voice, something regretful in it, as though he were thinking a thing he couldn’t hope to explain. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“Your father – has he been keeping on at you about staying?”
He has talked so much