The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [196]
Someone had cleared away last autumn’s soggy leaves from Laura’s grave. There was a small bunch of white narcissi, already wilted, the stems wrapped in aluminum foil. I scooped it up and chucked it into the nearest bin. Who do they think appreciates these offerings of theirs, these worshippers of Laura? More to the point, who do they think picks up after them? Them and their floral trash, littering the precincts with the tokens of their spurious grief.
I’ll give you something to cry about, Reenie would say. If we’d been her real children she would have slapped us. As it was, she never did, so we never found out what this threatening something might be.
On my return journey I stopped at the doughnut shop. I must have looked as tired as I felt, because a waitress came over right away. Usually they don’t serve tables, you have to stand at the counter and carry things yourself, but this girl – an oval-faced girl, dark-haired, in what looked like a black uniform – asked me what she could bring me. I ordered a coffee and, for a change, a blueberry muffin. Then I saw her talking to another girl, the one behind the counter, and I realized that she wasn’t a waitress at all, but a customer, like myself: her black uniform wasn’t even a uniform, only a jacket and slacks. Silver glittered on her somewhere, zippers perhaps: I couldn’t make out the details. Before I could thank her properly she was gone.
So refreshing, to find politeness and consideration in girls of that age. Too often (I reflected, thinking of Sabrina) they display only thoughtless ingratitude. But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past – the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.
Up to a point, of course.
The waitress in her blue smock brought the coffee. Also the muffin, which I regretted almost immediately. I couldn’t make much of an inroad into it. Everything in restaurants is becoming too big, too heavy – the material world manifesting itself as huge damp lumps of dough.
After I’d drunk as much of the coffee as I could manage, I set off to reclaim the washroom. In the middle cubicle, the writings I remembered from last autumn had been painted over, but luckily this season’s had already begun. At the top right-hand corner, one set of initials coyly declared its love for another set, as is their habit. Underneath that, printed neatly in blue:
Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
Under that, in purple ballpoint cursive: For an experienced girl call Anita the Mighty Mouth, I’ll take you to Heaven, and a phone number.
And, under that, in block lettering, and red Magic Marker: The Last Judgment is at hand. Prepare to meet thy Doom and that means you Anita.
Sometimes I think – no, sometimes I play with the idea – that these washroom scribblings are in reality the work of Laura, acting as if by long distance through the arms and hands of the girls who write them. A stupid notion, but a pleasing one, until I take the further logical step of deducing that in this case they must all be intended for me, because who else would Laura still know in this town? But if they are intended for me, what does Laura mean by them? Not what she says.
At other times I feel a strong urge to join in, to contribute; to link my own tremulous voice to the anonymous chorus