The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [179]
“Laura doesn’t mean to be disrespectful,” I said. “Not about God, at any rate.”
The headmistress ignored this. “It’s not so much the specious arguments she makes, as the fact that she saw fit to pose the question in the first place.”
“Laura likes to have answers,” I said. “She likes to have answers on important matters. I am sure you’ll agree that God is an important matter. I don’t see why that should be considered disruptive.”
“The other students find it so. They believe she’s – well, showing off. Challenging established authority.”
“As Christ did,” I said, “or so some people thought at the time.”
She did not make the obvious point that such things may have been all very well for Christ but they were not appropriate in a sixteen-year-old girl. “You don’t quite understand,” she said. She actually wrung her hands, an operation I studied with interest, having never seen it before. “The others think she’s – they think she’s being funny. Or some of them do. Others think she’s a Bolshevik. The rest just consider her odd. In any case, she attracts the wrong kind of attention.”
I began to see her point. “I don’t expect Laura intends to be funny,” I said.
“But it’s so hard to tell!” We looked across her desk at each other for a moment of silence. “She has quite a following, you know,” said the headmistress, with a touch of envy. She waited for me to absorb this, then went on. “It’s also a question of her absences. I understand there are health problems, but . . .”
“What health problems?” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with Laura’s health.”
“Well, I assumed, considering all of the doctor’s appointments . . .”
“What doctor’s appointments?”
“You didn’t authorize them?” She produced a sheaf of letters. I recognized the notepaper, which was mine. I looked through them: I hadn’t written them, but they were signed with my name.
“I see,” I said, gathering up my wolverine coat and my handbag. “I will have to speak to Laura. Thank you for your time.” I shook the ends of her fingers. It went without saying, now, that Laura would have to be withdrawn from the school.
“We did try our best,” said the poor woman. She was practically weeping. Another Miss Violence, this one. A hired drudge, well-meaning but ineffectual. No match for Laura.
That evening, when Richard asked how my interview had gone, I told him about Laura’s disruptive effect on her classmates. Instead of being angry he seemed amused, and close to admiring. He said Laura had backbone. He said a certain amount of rebelliousness showed getup-and-go. He himself had disliked school and had made life difficult for the teachers, he said. I didn’t think this had been Laura’s motive, but I didn’t say so.
I didn’t mention the false doctor notes to him: that would have set the cat among the pigeons. Bothering teachers was one thing, playing hookey would have been quite another. It smacked of delinquency.
“You shouldn’t have forged my handwriting,” I said to Laura privately.
“I couldn’t forge Richard’s. It’s too different from ours. Yours was a lot easier.”
“Handwriting is a personal thing. It’s like stealing.”
She did look chagrined, for a moment. “I’m sorry. I was only borrowing. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I suppose there’s no point in wondering why you did it?”
“I never asked to be sent to that school,” said Laura. “They didn’t like me any more than I liked them. They didn’t take me seriously. They aren’t serious people. If I’d had to be there all the time, I really would have got sick.”
“What were you doing,” I said, “when you weren’t at school? Where did you go?” I was worried that she might have been meeting someone – meeting a man. She was getting to be the age for it.
“Oh, here and there,” said Laura. “I went downtown, or I sat in parks and things. Or I just walked around. I saw you, a couple of times, but you didn’t see me. I guess you were going shopping.” I felt a surge of blood to the heart, then