The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [209]
Myra – how old were you, Myra? You must have been three or four, I’ve lost count – Myra was with her. Her cheeks were red with excitement, her eyes were round and slightly bulged out, as if she were being gently strangled.
“I’ve told her all about you,” said Reenie fondly. “The both of you.” Myra wasn’t too interested in me, I have to say, but she was intrigued by the foxes around my neck. Children of that age usually like furry animals, even if dead.
“You’ve seen Laura,” I said, “or talked with her?”
“Least said, soonest mended,” said Reenie, glancing around her, as if even here the walls might have ears. I saw no need for such caution.
“I suppose it was you who organized the lawyer?” I said.
Reenie looked wise. “I did what was required,” she said. “Anyways, that lawyer was your mother’s second cousin’s husband, he was family in a way. So he saw the point of it, once I knew what was going on, that is.”
“How did you know?” I was saving what did you know for later.
“She wrote me,” said Reenie. “Said she wrote you, but never got an answer. She wasn’t allowed to be mailing any letters as such, but the cook helped her out. Laura sent her the money for it afterwards, and a little extra.”
“I didn’t get any letter,” I said.
“That’s what she figured. She figured they’d seen to that.”
I knew who was meant by they. “I suppose she came here,” I said.
“Where else would she go?” said Reenie. “The poor creature. After all she’d been through.”
“What had she been through?” I very much wanted to know; at the same time I dreaded it. Laura could be fabricating, I told myself. Laura could be suffering from delusions. That couldn’t be ruled out.
Reenie had ruled it out, however: no matter what story Laura had told her, she’d believed it. I doubted that it was the same story I’d heard. I doubted especially that there had been a baby in it, in any shape or form. “There’s children present, so I won’t go into it,” she said. She nodded at Myra, who was gobbling up a slice of grisly pink cake and staring at me as if she wanted to lick me. “If I told you all of it you wouldn’t sleep at night. The only comfort is that you had no part in it. That’s what she said.”
“She said that?” I was relieved to hear it. Richard and Winifred had been cast as the monsters then, and I’d been excused – on the grounds of moral feebleness, no doubt. Though I could tell Reenie hadn’t entirely forgiven me for having been so careless as to let all of this happen. (Once Laura had gone off the bridge, she forgave me even less. In her view I must have had something to do with it. She was cool to me after that. She died begrudgingly.)
“She oughtn’t to have been put in such a place at all, a young girl like her,” said Reenie. “No matter what. Men walking around with their trousers undone, all kinds of goings-on. Shameful!”
“Will they bite?” said Myra, reaching for my foxes.
“Don’t touch that,” said Reenie. “With your sticky little fingers.”
“No,” I said. “They’re not real. See, they have glass eyes. They only bite their own tails.”
“She said, if only you’d known, you’d never have left her in there,” said Reenie. “Supposing you’d known. She said whatever else, you weren’t heartless.” She frowned sideways, at the glass of water. She had her doubts on that score. “Potatoes was what they ate there, mostly,” she said. “Mashed and boiled, she said. Skimped on the food, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor nutcases and loony birds in there. Lining their own pockets, is my guess.”
“Where has she gone? Where is she now?”
“That’s between you and me and the doorpost,” said Reenie. “She said it was better for you not to know.”
“Did she seem – was she ...” Was she visibly crazy, I wanted to ask.
“She was the same as she always was. No more, no less. She wasn’t like a loony bird, if that’s what you mean,” said Reenie.