Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [74]
Alice, lying in her bed at night, seems to hear the continuous drone of great distances, a vibrating emptiness. She imagines that she can smell a rolling wave of Saskatchewan air, a smell of spice and cold.
"Is Cousin Beverly ever going to come back?" Alice asked her mother once. For some reason it took her a long time to work up to this topic.
"I wouldn’t put my money on it," Mrs. Flett said slowly.
"Isn’t she wonderful," Alice breathed.
"Well," Mrs. Flett said finally, "She’s got plenty of oomph anyway." Saying this, she cast her eyes upward like someone trying to remember the end of an old story, and then she let out a long sigh.
When Alice looks into that sigh, or around it, she understands that there’s something chastening about the sound, and also something withheld, some vital piece of information that is being kept back until "she’s old enough." Nightmare, shame, revelation, judgment, the strain of failure—all this lies ahead for her. She can’t bear to think about the future. It’s like concentrating on your own breath: once you start thinking about the air rushing in and out of your body, your breath has a way of getting stuck in your throat so that you understand how easy it would be to fall down and die.
A Letter Folded in Mrs. Flett’s Dresser Drawer
Dear Daisy, This is to let you know that our girl Beverly arrived home yesterday afternoon after her long train journey, the train was crowded with servicemen all going home and then the heating went on the blink just outside Winnipeg so that she caught herself the most awful cold, a runny nose and a real bad sore throat. I have to tell you her feelings were hurt just terribly by the way she was treated at your home, not asked to stay for supper or offered a bed for the night, just given the bum’s rush, that’s how she felt anyways. Maybe if her uncle had been there things would have gone different, who knows.
If only she’d taken the morning train she might not have ended up sick like she is. She just can’t understand it, thinking you’d be happy as can be to meet your niece from the West that you’d never laid eyes on before and who has served her Country. Her dad and I can’t understand it either, maybe manners are different in the East than out here where we welcome one and all.
Sincerely, your sister-in-law, Fan Flett
Mrs. Flett’s Aged Father
Cuyler Goodwill is seventy years old, that talismanic age, and his wife Maria (his second wife, that is) has just celebrated her . . .well, no one knows how old Maria is. Mr. Goodwill, a stone carver by trade and, later, a famous entrepreneur in the state of Indiana, is now retired. He and his wife have recently sold their handsome old Bloomington house and bought a little place on Lake Lemon, some twenty-five miles outside the city limits. Why did they sell their comfortable house for this lakeside cottage? Because Maria wanted to be out in the country where she could grow vegetables in the front yard without the neighbors squawking their heads off.
And Cuyler Goodwill wanted plenty of space in the back yard in which to build a pyramid.
He’s been planning his pyramid for a year now, ever since he and Maria got home from their cruise on the Nile. Almost every day when they were in Egypt he sent postcards to his grandchildren in Ottawa, Canada. "Dear Alice (or Warren or Joanie), you should see the pyramids they’ve got out here. The biggest one has two million limestone blocks and each stone weighs two and a half tons."
He wrote a letter to his daughter, Daisy, telling her that the classic pyramid shape is based on the spreading-out rays of the sun as they fall to earth.
"Nonsense," Daisy’s husband said, "the sun’s rays fall straight downward, not on an angle."
"Well, never mind," Daisy said vaguely, "it’s something for him to do."
The pyramid is to be two yards square, a miniature replica of the real thing. He’s worked out the proportions, using the Great Pyramid as his model. So reduced