A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [73]
What am I going to do?
“Rachel.”
“Yes. I’m sorry I was so long.”
“I was worried, dear. I really was.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. It was a – it was a lovely night, so I walked around.”
“I thought it looked like rain. The wind was chilly, I thought. I opened my bedroom window, but then I closed it again. It’s very late to be walking, by yourself, Rachel. Didn’t you think it might look – well, just a little peculiar?”
Not – was it peculiar? Only – did it look so?
“Well, I didn’t go far. I shouldn’t have been away so long. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, dear, but I can’t help worrying, just a little bit, when you’re –”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Never mind, dear. It’s all right, of course. It was only that I –”
“Yes. I’m terribly sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“I know you don’t mean to worry me.”
“No. Well, it was thoughtless –”
“I suppose it doesn’t occur to you to think how I might feel, that’s all. Of course I quite understand that. It’s just that I can’t settle down properly until you’re back, and I suppose I thought you must surely realize that, by this time.”
“I do – yes. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s all right, dear. Never mind.”
Finally she is settled and I can go to my room. I put on my yellow nightgown and then I brush my hair as I’ve always done at nights. I turn out the light and open the curtains and window so I can see what’s out there, if anything. The air is very cool, too cool to rain now, and the wind has gone away. In the far distances, the unreal places beyond ours, I can hear a freight train. They’re diesels now and the whistle is sharp and efficient. When I was a child the trains were all steam, and you could hear the whistle blow a long way off, carrying better in this flat land than it would have done in the mountains, the sound all prairie kids grew up with, the trainvoice that said don’t stay don’t stay just don’t ever stay – go and keep on going, never mind where. The mourning and mockery of that voice, like blues. The only lonelier sound I ever heard was the voices of the loons on the spruce-edged lake up at Galloping Mountain, where we went once for the summer when Stacey and I were small and when my father still could muster the strength to go somewhere, not too far away, for a short time. People say loon, meaning mad. Crazy as a loon. They were mad, those bird voices, perfectly alone, damning and laughing out there in the black reaches of the night water where no one could get them, no one could ever get at them.
I want to see my sister.
Stacey – listen – I know it’s been quite a long time since we’ve seen one another, and even writing to one another is something we only do after Christmas to thank for presents. But if I could talk to you, you would maybe be the only person I could talk to. Look – would you know?
Would Stacey know where I could go? If I wrote to her and said I was coming there, a brief visit, what would be so odd about that? The autumn term has started, and there aren’t any holidays now. She’d think I was off my head. And even if I could say, could tell her right away, just like that, what then? She’s been married for years. She has four children, all born in hospital and in wedlock, as the saying goes. What would she know of it? Her dealings in these matters have been open and recognized. She goes to her doctor, is given diet sheets and vitamin pills, attends clinics. She has a right to be doing what she is doing.
What does she know of it? She’d be sympathetic, no doubt, from the vast distance that divides us. She’d give me good advice, maybe, not needing any herself. God damn her. What could she possibly know?
Cassie Stewart. That was the girl mother told me about. She had twins, twice as bad in Mother’s eyes. If I could go into the hardware store and speak to her, that might be a good thing. But it isn’t possible. Cassie is ten years younger than I, and I’m Miss Cameron