Across the Bridge - Mavis Gallant [89]
“Who was the girl in the lane? The one you were talking about.”
“Just a girl in the wrong place. Her father was a school principal.”
“You said that. Did you know her?”
“I never saw her. Missy and Louise did. Louise is my wife.”
“I know. How much did you give my dad? Not for Neil. For me.”
“Thirty bucks. Some men don’t make that in a week. If you have to ask, it means you never got it.”
“I’ve never had thirty dollars in one piece in my life,” she said. “In my family we don’t fight over money. What my dad says, goes. I’ve never had to go without. Gerry and I had new coats every winter.”
“Is that the end of the interrogatory? You’d have made a great cop. I agree, you can’t stay. But would you just do one last Christian act? Wash your hands and comb your hair and sit down and have lunch. After that, I’ll put you in a taxi and pay the driver. If you don’t want me to, my mother-in-law will.”
“I could help you take him to the hospital.”
“Forget the Fenton family,” he said. “Lunch is the cutoff.”
Late in the afternoon Ray came home and they had tea and sandwiches at the kitchen table. Nora was wearing Gerry’s old white terrycloth robe. Her washed hair was in rollers.
“There was nothing to it, no problem,” she said again. “He needed a hospital checkup. He was run-down. I don’t know which hospital.”
“I could find out,” said Ray.
“I think they don’t want anybody around.”
“What did you eat for lunch?” said her mother.
“Some kind of cold soup. Some kind of cold meat. A fruit salad. Iced tea. The men drank beer. There was no bread on the table.”
“Pass Nora the peanut butter,” said Ray.
“Did you meet Mr. Fenton because of Ninette,” said Nora, “or did you know him first? Did you know Dr. Marchand first, or Mr. Fenton?”
“It’s a small world,” said her father. “Anyways, I’ve got some money for you.”
“How much?” said Nora. “No, never mind. I’ll ask if I ever need it.”
“You’ll never need anything,” he said. “Not as long as your old dad’s around.”
“You know, that Mrs. Clopstock?” said Nora. “She’s the first person I’ve ever met from Toronto. I didn’t stare at her, but I took a good look. Maman, how can you tell real pearls?”
“They wouldn’t be real,” said Ray. “The real ones would be on deposit. Rosalie had a string of pearls.”
“They had to sell them on account of Ninette,” said her mother.
“Maybe you could find out the name of the hospital,” Nora said. “He might like to see me. He knows me.”
“He’s already forgotten you,” her mother said.
“I wouldn’t swear to that,” said Ray. “I can remember somebody bending over my baby buggy. I don’t know who it was, though.”
He will remember that I picked him up, Nora decided. He will remember the smell of the incense. He will remember the front door and moving into the dark hall. I’ll try to remember him. It’s the best I can do.
She said to Ray, “What’s the exact truth? Just what’s on paper?”
“Nora,” said her mother. “Look at me. Look me right in the face. Forget that child. He isn’t yours. If you want children, get married. All right?”
“All right,” her father answered for her. “Why don’t you put on some clothes and I’ll take you both to a movie.” He began to whistle, not “Don’t Let It Bother You,” but some other thing just as easy.
Afterword
BY ROBERTSON DAVIES
How pleasant to be asked for an Afterword, instead of a Preface. A Preface always suggests criticism, and I do not want to criticize Mavis Gallant’s book, but to celebrate it and, in so far as I can, express my own enjoyment of it. Criticism is a weariness of the spirit to writers, who are all too conscious of the aptness of Christopher Fry’s words: “everywhere today can be heard the patter of tiny criticism, the busy sound of men [and women] continually knowing what they like. How anything manages to create itself at all is a wonder.”
As Fry suggests, even positive criticism imposes a restriction on a writer; it tells him who and what he is, when he is struggling to discover those things for himself. Mavis Gallant has had plenty of criticism and much of it has been