Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [9]
I sip at my tea and rock, by my feet the dog stirs, the lake below flutters in the wind which is beginning. My father has simply disappeared then, vanished into nothing. When I got Paul’s letter – “Your father is gone, nobody cant find him” – it seemed incredible, but it appears to be true.
There used to be a barometer on the porch wall, a wooden house with two doors and a man and a woman who lived inside. When it was going to be fair the woman in her long skirt and apron would emerge from her door, when it was going to rain she would go in and the man would come out, carrying an axe. When it was first explained to me I thought they controlled the weather instead of merely responding to it. My eyes seek the house now, I need a prediction, but it’s not there.
“I think I’ll go down the lake,” I say.
Paul raises his hands, palms outward. “We look two, three times already.”
But they must have missed something, I feel it will be different if I look myself. Probably when we get there my father will have returned from wherever he has been, he will be sitting in the cabin waiting for us.
CHAPTER THREE
On my way back to the motel I detour to the store, the one where they’re supposed to speak English: we will need some food. I go up the wooden steps, past a drowsing mop-furred mongrel roped to the porch with a length of clothesline. The screen door has a BLACK CAT CIGARETTES handle; I open it and step into the store smell, the elusive sweetish odour given off by the packaged cookies and the soft drink cooler. For a brief time the post office was here, a DEFENSE DE CRACHER SUR LE PLANCHER sign stamped with a government coat of arms.
Behind the counter there’s a woman about my age, but with brassiere-shaped breasts and a light auburn moustache; her hair is in rollers covered by a pink net and she has on slacks and a sleeveless jersey top. The old priest is definitely gone, he disapproved of slacks, the women had to wear long concealing skirts and dark stockings and keep their arms covered in church. Shorts were against the law, and many of them lived all their lives beside the lake without learning to swim because they were ashamed to put on bathing suits.
The woman looks at me, inquisitive but not smiling, and the two men still in Elvis Presley haircuts, duck’s ass at the back and greased pompadours curving out over their foreheads, stop talking and look at me too; they keep their elbows on the counter. I hesitate: maybe the tradition has changed, maybe they no longer speak English.
“Avez-vous du viande hâché?” I ask her, blushing because of my accent.
She grins then and the two men grin also, not at me but at each other. I see I’ve made a mistake, I should have pretended to be an American.
“Amburger, oh yes we have lots. How much?” she asks, adding the final H carelessly to show she can if she feels like it. This is border country.
“A pound, no two pounds,” I say, blushing even more because I’ve been so easily discovered, they’re making fun of me and I have no way of letting them know I share the joke. Also I agree with them, if you live in a place you should speak the language. But this isn’t where I lived.
She hacks with a cleaver at a cube of frozen meat, weighs it. “Doo leevers,” she says, mimicking my school accent. The two men snigger. I solace myself by replaying the man from the government, he was at a gallery opening, a handicraft exhibit, string wall hangings, woven place mats, stoneware breakfast sets; Joe wanted to go so he could resent not being in it. The man seemed to be