The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [142]
I ate only half of my hamburger. I couldn’t manage the whole thing. Walter ate the other half, slotting it into his mouth in one bite as if mailing it.
On the way out of the city, I asked Walter to drive me past my old house – the house where I’d once lived with Richard. I remembered the way perfectly, but when I reached the house itself I didn’t at first recognize it. It was still angular and graceless, squinty-windowed, ponderous, a dense brown like stewed tea, but ivy had grown up over the walls. The fake-chalet half-timbering, once cream-coloured, had been painted apple green, and the heavy front door as well.
Richard was against ivy. There had been some when we’d first moved in, but he’d pulled it down. It ate away at the brickwork, he said; it got into the chimneys, it encouraged rodents. This was when he was still coming up with reasons for what he thought and did, and was still presenting them as reasons for what I myself should think and do. It was before he’d thrown reasons to the wind.
I caught a glimpse of myself back then, in a straw hat, a pale-yellow dress, cotton because of the heat. It was late summer, the year after my marriage; the ground was like brick. At Winifred’s instigation I had taken up gardening: I needed to have a hobby, she said. She’d decided I should start with a rock garden, because even if I killed the plants the rocks would still be there. Not much you can do to kill a rock, she’d joked. She’d sent over what she called three reliable men, who were to do the digging and the arranging of the rocks, so that I could then plant things.
There were already some rocks in the garden, ordered by Winifred: small ones, larger ones like slabs, strewn at random or piled like fallen dominoes. We were all standing there, the three reliable men and myself, looking at this jumbled heap of stone. They had their caps on, their jackets off, their shirt sleeves rolled up, their braces in plain view; they were waiting for my instructions, but I didn’t know what to tell them.
I’d still wanted to change something back then – do something myself, make something, from whatever unpromising materials. I still thought I might. But I’d known nothing whatsoever about gardening. I’d felt like crying, but cry once and it’s all over: if you cry, the reliable men will despise you, and then they will not be reliable any more.
Walter levered me out of the car, then waited silently, a little behind me, ready to catch me if I should topple. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at the house. The rock garden was still there, though much neglected. Of course it was winter, so therefore hard to tell, but I doubted that anything grew in it any more, except perhaps some dragon’s blood, which will grow anywhere.
There was a large dumpster standing in the driveway, full of shattered wood, slabs of plaster: renovations were going on. Either that or there had been a fire: an upstairs window was smashed. Street people camp out in such houses, according to Myra: leave a house untenanted, in Toronto anyway, and they’re into it like a shot, having their drug parties or whatever. Satanic cults, she’s heard. They’ll make bonfires on the hardwood floors, they’ll plug up the toilets and crap in the sinks, they’ll steal the faucets, the fancy doorknobs, anything they can sell. Though sometimes it’s only kids who do the smashing-up, for fun. The young have a talent for it.
The house looked unowned, transient, like a picture in a real-estate flyer. It no longer seemed connected with me in any way. I tried to recall the sound of my footsteps, in winter boots on the dry creaking snow, walking quickly home, late, concocting excuses; the inky portcullis of the doorway; the way the light from the street lamps fell on the snow-banks, ice blue at the edges and spotted with the yellow Braille of dog pee. The shadows