The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [114]
The night before the wedding I spent in one of Winifred’s best bedrooms. “Make yourself beautiful,” said Winifred gaily, implying that I wasn’t. She’d given me some cold cream and some cotton gloves – I was to put the cream on, then the gloves over it. This treatment was supposed to make your hands all white and soft – the texture of uncooked bacon fat. I stood in the ensuite bathroom, listening to the clatter of the water as it fell against the porcelain of the tub and probing at my face in the mirror. I seemed to myself erased, featureless, like an oval of used soap, or the moon on the wane.
Laura came in from her own bedroom through the connecting door and sat down on the closed toilet. She’d never made a habit of knocking, where I was concerned. She was wearing a plain white cotton nightgown, formerly mine, and had tied her hair back; the wheat-coloured coil of it hung over one shoulder. Her feet were bare.
“Where are your slippers?” I said. Her expression was doleful. With that, and the white gown and the bare feet, she looked like a penitent – like a heretic in an old painting, on her way to execution. She held her hands clasped in front of her, the fingers surrounding an O of space left open, as if she ought to be holding a lighted candle.
“I forgot them.” When dressed up, she looked older than she was because of her height, but now she looked younger; she looked about twelve, and smelled like a baby. It was the shampoo she was using – she used baby shampoo because it was cheaper. She went in for small, futile economies. She gazed around the bathroom, then down at the tiled floor. “I don’t want you to get married,” she said.
“You’ve made that clear enough,” I said. She’d been sullen throughout the proceedings – the receptions, the fittings, the rehearsals – barely civil towards Richard, towards Winifred blankly obedient, like a servant girl under indenture. Towards me, angry, as if this wedding was a malicious whim at best, at worst a rejection of her. At first I’d thought she might be envious of me, but it wasn’t exactly that. “Why shouldn’t I get married?”
“You’re too young,” she said.
“Mother was eighteen. Anyway I’m almost nineteen.”
“But that was who she loved. She wanted to.”
“How do you know I don’t?” I said, exasperated.
That stopped her for a moment. “You can’t want to,” she said, looking up at me. Her eyes were damp and pink: she’d been crying. This annoyed me: what right had she to be doing the crying? It ought to have been me, if anyone.
“What I want isn’t the point,” I said harshly. “It’s the only sensible thing. We don’t have any money, or haven’t you noticed? Would you like us to be thrown out on the street?”
“We could get jobs,” she said. My cologne was on the window ledge beside her; she sprayed herself with it, absent-mindedly. It was Liù, by Guerlain, a present from Richard. (Chosen, as she’d let me know, by Winifred. Men get so confused at perfume counters, don’t they? Scent goes right to their heads.)
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “What would we do? Break that and your name is mud.”
“Oh, we could do lots of things,” she said vaguely, setting the cologne down. “We could be waitresses.”
“We couldn’t live on that. Waitresses make next to nothing. They have to grovel for tips. They all get flat feet. You don’t know what anything costs,” I said. It was like trying to explain arithmetic to a bird. “The factories are closed, Avilion is falling to pieces, they’re going to sell it; the banks are out for blood. Haven’t you looked at Father? Haven’t you seen him? He’s like an old man.”
“It’s for him, then,” she said. “What you’re doing. I guess that explains something. I guess it’s brave.”
“I’m doing what I think is right,” I said.I felt so virtuous, and at the same time so hard done by, I almost wept. But that would have been game over.
“It’s not right,” she said. “It’s not right at all. You could break it off, it’s not too late. You could run away tonight and leave a note. I’d come with you.”
“Stop pestering, Laura. I