Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [174]
She is on painkillers, then stronger painkillers. She lies down more. “I’m glad I don’t have to have an operation, in a hospital,” she says. “The only time I was ever in a hospital was with you kids. With Stephen they gave me ether. I went out like a light, and when I woke up, there he was.”
A lot of what she says is about Stephen. “Remember those smells he used to make, with that chemistry set of his? That was the day I was having a bridge party! We had to open the doors, and it was the middle of winter.” Or else: “Remember all those comic books he had stowed away under his bed? There were too many to save. I chucked them out, after he went away. I didn’t think there was any use for them. But people collect them, I read about it; now they’d be worth a fortune. We always thought they were just trash.” She tells this like a joke on herself.
When she talks about Stephen, he is never more than twelve years old. After that he got beyond her. I come to realize that she was, or is, in awe of him, slightly afraid of him. She didn’t intend to give birth to such a person.
“Those girls gave you a bad time,” she says one day. I’ve made both of us a cup of tea—she’s permitted this—and we sit at the kitchen table, drinking it. She’s still surprised to catch me drinking tea, and has asked several times whether I wouldn’t prefer milk.
“What girls?” I say. My fingers are a wreck; I shred them quietly, out of sight beneath the tabletop, as I do in times of stress; an old bad habit I cannot seem to break.
“Those girls. Cordelia and Grace, and the other one. Carol Campbell.” She looks at me, a little slyly, as if testing.
“Carol?” I say. I remember a stubby girl, turning a skipping rope.
“Of course, Cordelia was your best friend, in high school,” she says. “I never thought she was behind it. It was that Grace, not Cordelia. Grace put her up to it, I always thought. What became of her?”
“I have no idea,” I say. I don’t want to talk about Cordelia. I still feel guilty, about walking away from her and not helping.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “They came to me that day and said you’d been kept in at school, for being rude to the teacher. It was that Carol who said it. I didn’t think they were telling the truth.” She avoids the word lie, if possible.
“What day?” I say carefully. I don’t know what day she means. She’s begun to get things mixed up, because of the drugs.
“That day you almost froze. If I’d believed them I wouldn’t have gone to look for you. I went down the road, along by the cemetery, but you weren’t there.” She regards me anxiously, as if wondering what I will say.
“Oh yes,” I say, pretending I know what she’s talking about. I don’t want to confuse her. But I am growing confused myself. My memory is tremulous, like water breathed on. For an instant I see Cordelia and Grace, and Carol, walking toward me through the astonishing whiteness of the snow, their faces in shadow.
“I was so worried,” she says. What she wants from me is forgiveness, but for what?
On some days she is stronger, and gives the illusion of improvement. Today she wants me to help her sort through the things in the cellar. “So you won’t have to go through a lot of that old junk, later on,” she says delicately. She won’t say death; she wants to spare my feelings.
I don’t like cellars. This one is unfinished: gray cement, rafters above. I make sure the upstairs door is left open. “You should have a railing put on these stairs,