Across the Bridge - Mavis Gallant [85]
“We knew where she was going.”
“I’ll be over nineteen by the time I start to work.”
“And starting off at fifteen dollars a week, if you’re lucky.”
Nora said, “I’ve been wondering how Dad’s going to manage to pay for the course. It’s two hundred dollars, not counting the shorthand book.”
“It’s not for you to worry about,” said her mother. “He’s paid the hundred deposit. The rest isn’t due until December.”
“Uncle Victor had to chip in.”
“Uncle Victor didn’t have to do anything. When he helps out, it’s because he wants to. Your father doesn’t beg.”
“Why couldn’t he pay the whole hundred dollars on his own? Did he lose some of it at Blue Bonnets?”
Her mother sat up all of a sudden and became a looming presence in the dark. “Did you ever have to go bed on an empty stomach?” she said. “You and Gerry always had a new coat every winter.”
“Gerry did. I got the hand-me-down. Grandma Abbott sent Gerry presents because she had red hair.”
“Gerry’s old coats looked as if they came straight from the store. She never got a spot or a stain on any of her clothes. Grandmother Abbott sent her a chocolate Easter egg once. It broke up in the mail and your father told her not to bother with any more parcels.”
“Why would Uncle Victor have to lend Dad fifty dollars? What does he do with his money?”
“Did you ever have to go without shoes?” said her mother. “Did you ever miss a hot meal? Who gave you the gold chain and the twenty-four-carat crucifix for your First Communion?”
“Uncle Victor.”
“Well, and who was he trying to be nice to? Your father. He’s been the best father in the world and the best husband. If I go before he does, I want you to look after him.”
I’ll be married by then, Nora thought. “It’s girls that look after their old dads,” Ray had said when Victor had once commiserated with him for not having a son. Ninette was now back from the place in the Laurentians – cured, it was said – and had taken Aunt Rosalie’s place, seeing to it that the boys did their homework and Uncle Victor got his meals on time. She wore her hair short (apparently the long hair had been taking all the strength) and had put on weight. Her manner had changed more than her appearance. She was twenty-six, unlikely to find a husband. A nagging, joyless religiosity had come over her. Nora had seen her only once since her return: Ninette had instructed Nora to pray for her, as though she were gradually growing used to giving spiritual orders. Nora had said to herself, She’s like a sergeant-major. The whole family had been praying for Ninette for well over a year, without being pushed. Perhaps she had chosen this new, bossy way of behaving over another possibility, which was to sit with her head in her hands, thinking, Unfair! Either way, she was not good company.
Nora said to her mother, “You mean you want me to look after Dad the way Ninette takes care of Uncle Victor?”
“Poor Ninette,” her mother said at once. “What else can she do now.” Who would marry Ninette, she was trying to say. Ninette kept herself to herself; it may have been that one kept away from her – not unkindly, not dismissing the devaluation of her life, but for fear of ill luck and its terrible way of spreading by contact.
In the next room, Ray thumped on the wall and said, “Either we all get up and waltz or we pipe down and get some sleep.”
Her last waking thoughts were about Gerry. When the time came to take over Ray’s old age – for she had assumed her mother’s wild requirement to be a prophecy – Gerry might decide to leave her convent and keep house for him. She could easily by then have had enough: Ray believed her vocation to be seriously undermined by a craving for peanut clusters and homemade fudge. In a letter she had run on about her mother’s celebrated Queen of Sheba chocolate cake, artfully hollowed and filled with chocolate mousse and whipped cream. Nora tried to see Gerry and Ray: old and middle-aged, with Gerry trying to get him to drink some hot soup; her imagination went slack. Old persons were said to be demanding and difficult, but Gerry would