Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [70]
The babies grew up, they were fine children, you couldn’t ask for better, they spoiled her, and then the husband died. Lillie didn’t speak of him, but she kept his suits in the closet; she couldn’t bear to give them away. Dead was not an absolute concept to her. Some people were more dead than others, and finally it was a matter of opinion who was dead and who was alive, so it was best not to discuss such a thing. Similarly she did not speak of the camp she’d been put into, nor of the lost baby. Why speak? What difference would it make? Who’d want to hear? Anyway she’d been luckier than most. She’d been so lucky.
She encouraged her young couples, and listened to their problems, and cheered them up and told them who to call when they got downcast about clogged drains or dry rot or carpenter ants, and protected them from faulty wiring. She took an interest in their children, if any, and their divorces, if any. She kept in touch. When it was time for them to sell and buy something else – move up the ladder, get maybe a bigger studio – she was always the person they consulted.
She wouldn’t go to the house-warming parties, though. She couldn’t manage parties. They made her feel sad. She’d send her bowl of cookies, with a nice note on flowered notepaper. They deserved such a house, she would write. They were good people. They should enjoy it. She was happy for them. She wished them well.
When Nell and Tig were planning to move in from the country, they inherited Lillie from a friend. Lillie got passed around from one youngish couple to the next. “She won’t try to sell you anything you can’t afford,” was the word. “You can tell her exactly what you want. She’ll get the idea.”
At their first meeting, Nell found herself running off at the mouth to Lillie. It was Lillie’s pleasant face, her air of reassurance. Much as they’d loved the farm, Nell said, generalizing slightly, they really needed to move, it was time, they’d been there too long, things had changed, the old families had gone, all the people they knew. Here Lillie nodded. Not only that, but there’d been too many break-ins, a house almost across the road – a retired schoolteacher – had been totally cleaned out by two men with a moving van. You couldn’t feel safe.
“These are not nice peoples,” said Lillie.
“They watch your house,” said Nell. “They know when you’re away.” And anyway, Nell and Tig had a nearly school-age child who’d have to spend two hours on a bus every day, and anyway the house was dark somehow, the locals said it was haunted, not that Nell personally had ever seen anything but there was a feeling, and anyway it was cold in winter, it was a hundred and fifty years old, it had never been properly insulated, snow piled up on the driveway.
“This you don’t need,” said Lillie. She had a man shovel her driveway. It was always kept clear. You needed to live in a city to have a man who shovelled.
And Tig hadn’t been as well as he might have been, said Nell. It was the lack of insulation, he got coughs, it had all become too much for Nell, she couldn’t cope. “The cows escape,” she said. “They want to be with other cows. Then if Tig isn’t there, it’s only me.”
Lillie nodded, she understood: a young and busy mother like Nell could not be expected to deal with escaping cows. “You shouldn’t worry,” she said, “we’ll find perfect,” and Nell felt immediately better. Lillie would take care of things.
The housing market was hot right then but Lillie did her best, and Nell and Tig ended up in a fairly good row house near the art