Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [14]
My mother was not delighted when she discovered the holes cut in her drapes. They were lined drapes; my mother had pleated and hemmed them herself, not because she liked sewing but because it was a good deal cheaper that way. But there was nothing to be done. With a child like that, punishment was beside the point: the poor little thing was in a constant state of suffering anyway, over one thing or another. Her reactions were always in excess of the occasion for them. What was to be done? What was to be done, in particular, about the waking up at night? Surely it wasn’t normal. My sister was carted off to see the doctor, who was no help. “She’ll grow out of it,” was all he would say. He didn’t say when.
Because of her sensitivity, or perhaps because my mother was so worn down, my sister was allowed to get away with things I would never have been allowed to do, or so I felt. She spent most mealtimes underneath the table instead of on a chair drawn up to it, and while down there she tied people’s shoelaces together.
Remember the shoelace thing?” I say to her. “We never knew exactly why you did that.”
“I hated sitting at the dinner table,” she says. “It was so boring for me. I didn’t really have a brother and a sister. I was more like an only child, except with two mothers and two fathers. Two and two, and then me.”
“But why the shoelaces?”
“Who knows? Maybe it was a joke.”
“You weren’t very joke-prone at that age.”
“I wanted the two of you to like me. I wanted to be funny.”
“You are funny! We do like you!”
“I know, but that was then. You didn’t pay much attention to me. You always talked about grown-up things.”
“That’s hardly fair,” I say. “I spent a lot of time with you.”
“You had to,” she says. “They made you do it.”
“They had this idea that I was good with you,” I say. “That’s what they used to say: ‘You’re always so good with her.’ ”
“Way to go, Fred, you moron!” says my sister. “Did you see that? Nobody ever signals. Yeah, well, it let them off the hook.”
“I made you those moss gardens,” I say defensively. These had been a special thing for her: I put them together in the sandbox, with moss for the trees and bushes, picket fences made of sticks, wet sand houses trimmed with pebbles. Paths paved with flower petals. She’d watch, enraptured: her face would brighten, she’d become very quiet, as if listening. The real garden had that effect on her too. It was at its height then. She’d stand among the irises and poppies, stock-still, as if enchanted. “Moss gardens,” I say. “And gardens with little shells in them – you loved them. I made those too.”
“Not at the dinner table, though,” she says. “It’s okay, the light’s green, you can go! And then after dinner you used to shut me out of your room.”
“I had to study. I couldn’t play with you all the time.”
“You just didn’t want me messing up your stuff. Anyway you weren’t always studying. You were reading Perry Mason books and trying on lipstick. And then you left, when I was eight. You abandoned me.”
“Nine,” I say. “I didn’t abandon you. I was twenty-one! I left home and got a job. That’s what people do.”
“It’s no left turn before six, Fred, you creep! I wish I had a camera. The thing is,” says my sister, “I couldn’t figure out who you were supposed to be.”
My sister had a friend who was a lot like her – another quiet, shy, anxious, big-eyed fairy child, dark where my sister was fair, but with the same china fragility. Leonie was her name. They both insisted on wearing flouncy skirts instead of jeans, they both chose The Twelve Dancing Princesses as their favourite story. They longed to have me doll them up in outfits improvised from the dress-up box: I’d pin up their hair and