Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [57]
No one here could guess at her situation. No one here knew her story. Here she was simply one more young woman wearing a linen dress and matching jacket and standing by the railing at Niagara Falls, catching a fine spray on her cheek.
She felt agonizingly alert as she attempted to swallow the thunder and majesty of this natural marvel. But why should all this ravishing beauty make her sad? A good question. Because it was not beautiful enough, nor was it quite as large as she had imagined.
Moreover, the strewn rocks at the bottom of the falls gave a look of untidiness. Something seemed lacking in the overall design. At any rate, she was not "seized with rapture" as the travel booklet had promised. The next minute, though, she was made cheerful, for she perceived a man standing beside her, standing so close she could feel the cloth of his jacket scratching her bare arm. "Jeez," he said brightly, in a New York-accented voice, "it makes ya thoisty, don’t it, lookin’ at all dat water."
She stared with great pleasure into the side of his upper sleeve and shoulder, beyond which floated clouds and a clean wipe of blue sky. She resisted an impulse to lean into the man’s chest, to shelter there, crying out her joy at having fallen upon this unexpected intimacy. Instead she inclined herself toward his lightness of spirit, thinking how suddenly merry the world could turn if you only let it. The gaiety of this encounter, its private looks and smiles and shared observation, is more indelibly fixed in her mind than the chronology of her tragic honeymoon; there are words to accompany this Niagara scene, there is a fresh breeze, there is mingled disappointment and mirth, there is the eloquence of a man’s gaberdine sleeve randomly brushing against her skin.
Two days later, in Callander, Ontario, she lined up in the hot sun with hundreds of other tourists. As they at last approached the viewing area, they were ordered to remain silent so as not to disturb the young quints who were playing in an enclosed garden. She caught only a glimpse of little white dresses and sun bonnets against the vivid green grass. At least one of the infants was wailing. People behind her pushed up against her, and she was obliged to move on. She felt herself part of a herd of absurd creatures observing other creatures, and dwelt with a part of her mind on the need to set herself at a distance from all these sunny, chatting people, women in summer cottons with cardigans thrown over their shoulders, men nattily dressed in linen jackets, determined to be entertained. There was something comical about this, and something deeply degrading, but why should she be surprised? She had come to see this spectacle knowing she would go away filled with a satisfying sense of indignation—and so she did.
In Toronto, in a solemn-as-a-church corporation boardroom, she delivered a sheaf of blueprints from her father’s company, and was patronized by the bank president—"What a fine wee girlie you are coming all this way"—and propositioned by the bank vice-president—"Here we are, two lonely people on a beautiful summer’s afternoon."
"But I’m leaving," she told him, "on the four o’clock train."
"You just arrived."
"I’m on my way to Ottawa," she said, "to see an old friend."
"A he-friend or a she-friend?"
She stared hard. She wanted to reach out and slap the smile off his silly shining middle-aged face. At the same time she wanted this conversation to go on and on, to see where it might take her.
"A he," she said boldly.
"I knew it, I knew it."
"And how did you know?" This was obscene, continuing like this. And frightening.
"Your face. Your perfume. The way you said ‘friend.’ I have a nose for these kinds of things."
"What? What