The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [65]
“What is the spout?” Laura whispered to me. “What spout?” But I didn’t know.
As well as jumping, said Reenie, women like that might walk into the river upstream and then be sucked under the surface by the weight of their wet clothing, so they couldn’t swim to safety even if they’d wanted to. A man would be more deliberate. They would hang themselves from the crossbeams of their barns, or blow their heads off with their shot-guns; or if intending to drown, they would attach rocks, or other heavy objects – axe-heads, bags of nails. They didn’t like to take any chances on a serious thing like that. But it was a woman’s way just to walk in and resign herself, and let the water take her. It was hard to tell from Reenie’s tone whether she approved of these differences or not.
I turned ten in June. Reenie made a cake, though she said maybe we shouldn’t be having one, it was too soon after Mother’s death, but then, life had to go on, so maybe the cake wouldn’t hurt. Hurt what? said Laura. Mother’s feelings, I said. Was Mother watching us, then, from Heaven? But I became obstinate and smug, and wouldn’t tell. Laura wouldn’t eat any of the cake, not after she’d heard that about Mother’s feelings, so I ate both our pieces.
It was an effort for me now to recall the details of my grief – the exact forms it had taken – although at will I could summon up an echo of it, like a small whining dog locked in the cellar. What had I done on the day Mother died? I could hardly remember that, or what she’d really looked like: now she looked only like her photographs. I did remember the wrongness of her bed when she was suddenly no longer in it: how empty it had seemed. The way the afternoon light came slantwise in through the window and fell so silently across the hardwood floor, the dust motes floating in it like mist. The smell of beeswax furniture polish, and of wilted chrysanthemums, and the lingering aroma of bedpan and disinfectant. I could remember her absence, now, much better than her presence.
Reenie said to Mrs. Hillcoate that although nobody could ever take the place of Mrs. Chase, who’d been a saint on earth if there could be such a thing, she herself had done what she could, and she’d kept up a cheerful front for our sakes because least said, soonest mended, and luckily we did seem to be getting over it, though still waters ran deep and I was too quiet for my own good. I was the brooding type, she said; it was bound to come out somehow. As for Laura, who could tell, because she’d always been an odd child anyway.
Reenie said we were together too much. She said Laura was learning ways that were too old for her, and I was being kept back. We should each of us be with children our own age, but the few children in town who might have been suitable for us had already been sent away to school – to private schools like the ones we should be sent off to by rights, but Captain Chase could never seem to get around to arranging it, and anyway it would be too many changes all at once, and although I was cool as a cucumber and would certainly be able to manage it, Laura was young for her age, and, come to that, too young altogether. Also she was too nervous. She was the type to panic and thrash around and drown in six inches of water, through not keeping her head.
Laura and I sat on the back stairs with the door open a crack, hands over our mouths to keep from laughing. We enjoyed the delights of espionage. But it did neither of us much good to overhear such things about ourselves.
The Weary Soldier
Today I walked to the bank – early, to avoid the worst heat, but also to be there when it opened. That way I could be sure of getting someone’s attention, a thing I needed since they’d made yet another mistake on my statement. I can still add and subtract, I tell them, unlike those machines of yours, and they smile at me like waiters, the kind who spit in your soup in the kitchen. I always ask to see the manager, the manager is always “in a meeting,” I always get shifted off to some smirking, patronizing elf just out of short pants