A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [68]
There. And the first autumn leaves come out, paper cutouts, crimson as no leaves have ever been seen hereabouts, yellow like goldenrod, the dream leaves we concoct to teach – what? That dreams are more garishly coloured than trees, perhaps.
In the hall, at recess, I encounter James Doherty. I was looking for him, I guess, to confirm what I’ve always known – that I have nothing to do with him. I glimpsed him a very little, for a year, and that is that. He looks taller from the summer, but with the same quickness, in-held yet always ready to take off. The same auburn hair – hasn’t it darkened, though? What business is it of mine? And now I recall Grace Doherty, and how, then, I couldn’t bear to know she cared about him.
“Hello, James.”
“Hi, Miss Cameron.”
That’s all. From now on, we will probably never say another word to one another. Maybe, after all, he has forgotten that I hit him once.
After school, Willard Siddley comes paddling into my room in his built-up brown suede shoes. Still the same ostentatious briskness, the sloping smile that hints at wily meanings beyond his words.
“Had a nice summer, I trust, Rachel?”
“Very nice, thanks.”
I’ve scarcely thought about Willard at all, these past two months, and yet it seems to me now that I’ve been considering him without knowing it, planning how I’d be with him, how different. There never was any need to be afraid. It was only my nervousness that invited his sly cruelties. This year it will not be the same. I hope he won’t stay long, though. Just this time, let him go quickly. Tomorrow I’ll be able to deal with it better.
“Didn’t see you around very much,” he is saying. “We meant to ask you over, but Angela wasn’t feeling up to scratch, and then we went to the lake in August. I suppose, however, that you were probably fully occupied anyway.”
What a choice of words. He couldn’t have meant anything by it. He could, though. He knows. He must. He could not possibly, and even if he did, so what? Yet I find myself fumbling, as I’ve always done, for the pencil on my desk, holding it between my fingers as though I meant to snap it. And my eyes turn towards the window, hiding or seeking, anything for a quick getaway.
Suppose Willard was walking in the valley one evening, accompanying Angela who’d gone to catch the willows drooping paintably beside the Wachakwa, and suppose they came close to the place, and saw –
Now I am forced to look at him, to examine his face, to detect. Behind his navy-framed glasses there is nothing, nothing lurking, nothing gathering itself to pounce. Only his whitefish eyes, hoping for some slight friendliness from me, possibly, while I sit here conjuring up dragons to scare myself with. How easily I slip back into the set patterns of response.
“Yes, I was fairly busy. Did you have a good summer, Willard?”
“Oh, so-so,” he says, placing his hands on my desk, just as he always has. “The lake was extremely crowded this year, which was certainly something of a disadvantage. We attended all the open-air sing-songs, however, and those were – oh, reasonably entertaining.”
Suddenly I wonder if what he is asking for, really, is condolence, and if he’s asked for it before, and if at times he’s asked for various other things I never suspected, admiration or reassurance or whatever it was he didn’t own in sufficient quantity. I don’t know if he is speaking differently or if I am hearing him differently.
I’m mistaken. I must be. I’m imagining things again. And yet – I wonder if he goes into all the other classrooms, after school? He couldn’t. There wouldn’t be time. I never thought of that before. I always believed he came in here because of the game he loved best to play, the delicate unacknowledged baiting for which I was such a damnably good subject. There was that. I know it. But now I’m not sure it was the only thing. Whatever the disparity in our heights, or maybe, perversely, because of it, he might –
He might, quite simply,