The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [32]
My father could have looked elsewhere, for a wife with more money, but he must have wanted the tried and true: someone he could depend on. Despite his high spirits – he’d had high spirits once, apparently – he was a serious young man, said Reenie, implying that otherwise my mother would have rejected him. They were both in their own ways earnest; they both wanted to achieve some worthy end or other, change the world for the better. Such alluring, such perilous ideals!
After they had skated around the pond several times, my father asked my mother to marry him. I expect he did it awkwardly, but awkwardness in men was a sign of sincerity then. At this instant, although they must have been touching at shoulder and hip, neither one was looking at the other; they were side by side, right hands joined across the front, left hands joined at the back. (What was she wearing? Reenie knew this too. A blue knitted scarf, a tam and knitted gloves to match. She’d knitted them herself. A winter coat of walking length, hunting green. A handkerchief tucked into her sleeve – an item she never forgot, according to Reenie, unlike some she could name.)
What did my mother do at this crucial moment? She studied the ice. She did not reply at once. This meant yes.
All around them were the snow-covered rocks and the white icicles – everything white. Under their feet was the ice, which was white also, and under that the river water, with its eddies and undertows, dark but unseen. This was how I pictured that time, the time before Laura and I were born – so blank, so innocent, so solid to all appearances, but thin ice all the same. Beneath the surfaces of things was the unsaid, boiling slowly.
Then came the ring, and the announcement in the papers; and then – once Mother had returned from completing the teaching year, which it was her duty to do – there were formal teas. Beautifully set out they were, with rolled asparagus sandwiches and sandwiches with watercress in them, and three kinds of cake – a light, a dark, and a fruit – and the tea itself in silver services, with roses on the table, white or pink or perhaps a pale yellow, but not red. Red was not for engagement teas. Why not? You’ll find out later, said Reenie.
Then there was the trousseau. Reenie enjoyed reciting the details of this – the nightgowns, the peignoirs, the kinds of lace on them, the pillowcases embroidered with monograms, the sheets and petticoats. She spoke of cupboards and of bureau drawers and linen closets, and of what sorts of things should be kept in them, neatly folded. There was no mention of the bodies over which all these textiles would eventually be draped: weddings, for Reenie, were mostly a question of cloth, at least on the face of it.
Then there was the list of guests to be compiled, the invitations to be written, the flowers to be selected, and so on up to the wedding.
And then, after the wedding, there was the war. Love, then marriage, then catastrophe. In Reenie’s version, it seemed inevitable.
The war began in the August of 1914, shortly after my parents’ marriage. All three brothers enlisted at once, no question about it. Amazing to consider now, this lack of question. There’s a photo of them, a fine trio in their uniforms, with grave, naive foreheads and tender moustaches, their smiles nonchalant, their eyes resolute, posing as the soldiers they had not yet become. Father is the tallest. He always kept this photo on his desk.
They joined the Royal Canadian Regiment, the one you always joined if you were from Port