The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [14]
The Alumni Association will sponsor a Tea in the Gymnasium immediately after the Graduation, tickets available from Myra Sturgess at the Gingerbread House, all proceeds towards new football uniforms which are certainly needed! Donation of baked goods welcome, with nut ingredients clearly marked please.
III
The presentation
This morning I woke with a feeling of dread. I was unable at first to place it, but then I remembered. Today was the day of the ceremony.
The sun was up, the room already too warm. Light filtered in through the net curtains, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond. My head felt like a sack of pulp. Still in my nightgown, damp from some fright I’d pushed aside like foliage, I pulled myself up and out of my tangled bed, then forced myself through the usual dawn rituals – the ceremonies we perform to make ourselves look sane and acceptable to other people. The hair must be smoothed down after whatever apparitions have made it stand on end during the night, the expression of staring disbelief washed from the eyes. The teeth brushed, such as they are. God knows what bones I’d been gnawing in my sleep.
Then I stepped into the shower, holding on to the grip bar Myra’s bullied me into, careful not to drop the soap: I’m apprehensive of slipping. Still, the body must be hosed down, to get the smell of nocturnal darkness off the skin. I suspect myself of having an odour I myself can no longer detect – a stink of stale flesh and clouded, aging pee.
Dried, lotioned and powdered, sprayed like mildew, I was in some sense of the word restored. Only there was still the sensation of weightlessness, or rather of being about to step off a cliff. Each time I put a foot out I set it down provisionally, as if the floor might give way underneath me. Nothing but surface tension holding me in place.
Getting my clothes on helped. I am not at my best without scaffolding. (Yet what has become of my real clothes? Surely these shapeless pastels and orthopedic shoes belong on someone else. But they’re mine; worse, they suit me now.)
Next came the stairs. I have a horror of tumbling down them – of breaking my neck, lying sprawled with undergarments on display, then melting into a festering puddle before anyone thinks of coming to find me. It would be such an ungainly way to die. I tackled each step at a time, hugging the banister; then along the hall to the kitchen, the fingers of my left hand brushing the wall like a cat’s whiskers. (I can still see, mostly. I can still walk. Be thankful for small mercies, Reenie would say. Why should we be? said Laura. Why are they so small ?)
I didn’t want any breakfast. I drank a glass of water, and passed the time in fidgeting. At half past nine Walter came by to collect me. “Hot enough for you?” he said, his standard opening. In winter it’s cold enough. Wet and dry are for spring and fall.
“How are you today, Walter?” I asked him, as I always do.
“Keeping out of mischief,” he said, as he always does.
“That’s the best that can be expected for any of us,” I said. He gave his version of a smile – a thin crack in his face, like mud drying – opened the car door for me, and installed me in the passenger seat. “Big day today, eh?” he said. “Buckle up, or I might get arrested.” He said buckle up as if it was a joke; he’s old enough to remember earlier, more carefree days. He’d have been the kind of youth to drive with one elbow out the window, a hand on his girlfriend’s knee. Astounding to reflect that this girlfriend was in fact Myra.
He eased the car delicately away from the curb and we moved off in silence. He’s a large man, Walter – square-edged, like a plinth, with a neck that is not so much a neck as