The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [158]
Here he looked at Richard expectantly. Money changed hands, though somehow – I gathered – not quite so much money as the man had expected. Then Laura was summoned. She didn’t protest. She took one look at us and decided against it. “Thanks for everything, anyway,” she said to the waffle man. She shook hands with him. She didn’t realize he’d cashed her in.
Richard and I each held one of her elbows; we walked her back through Sunnyside. I felt like a traitor. Richard installed her in the car, between the two of us. I put a steadying arm around her shoulder. I was angry with her, but knew I had to be comforting. She smelled of vanilla, and of hot sweet syrup, and of unwashed hair.
Once we got her into the house, Richard summoned Mrs. Murgatroyd and ordered up a glass of iced tea for Laura. She didn’t drink it though; she sat in the dead centre of the sofa, knees together, rigid, stony-faced, her eyes like slate.
Did she have any idea of how much anxiety and commotion she had caused? said Richard. No. Did she care? No answer. He certainly hoped she wouldn’t try anything of the kind again. No answer. Because he now stood in loco parentis, so to speak, and he had a responsibility towards her, and he had every intention of fulfilling that responsibility, whatever it might cost him. And since nothing was a one-way street, he expected her to realize that she had a responsibility towards him as well – towards us, he added – which was to behave herself, and to do as required, within reason. Did she understand that?
“Yes,” said Laura. “I understand what you mean.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Richard. “I certainly hope you do, young lady.”
The young lady made me nervous. It was a reproach, as if there were something wrong with being young, and also with being a lady. If so, it was a reproach that included me. “What did you eat?” I said, for a distraction.
“Candy apples,” said Laura. “Doughnuts from the Downyflake Doughnuts, they were cheaper the second day. The people there were really nice. Red Hots.”
“Oh dear,” I said, with a weak, deprecating little smile at Richard.
“That’s what other people eat,” said Laura, “in real life,” and I began to see, a little, what the attraction of Sunnyside must have been for her. It was other people – those people who had always been and who would continue to be other, insofar as Laura was concerned. She longed to serve them, these other people. She longed, in some way, to join them. But she never could. It was the soup kitchen in Port Ticonderoga all over again.
“Laura, why did you do it?” I said as soon as we were alone. (How did you do it? had a simple answer: she’d got off the train in London and changed her ticket for a later train. At least she hadn’t gone to some other city: we might never have found her then.)
“Richard killed Father,” she said. “I can’t live in his house. It’s wrong.”
“That’s not really fair,” I said. “Father died because of an unfortunate combination of circumstances.” I felt ashamed of myself for saying that: it sounded like Richard.
“It may not be fair but it’s true. Underneath, it’s true,” she said. “Anyway, I wanted a job.”
“But why?”
“To show that we – to show that I could. That I, that we didn’t have to ...” She looked away from me, chewed on her finger.
“Have to what?”
“You know,” she said. “All of this.” She waved her hand at the frilled dressing table, the matching floral curtains. “I went to the nuns first. I went to the Star of the Sea Convent.”
Oh God, I thought, not the nuns again. I thought we’d put paid