The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [86]
Callie Fitzsimmons had attempted to mollify him: Alex was not a hard-luck case, she’d assured him. True, the young man had no visible job, but he did seem to have a source of revenue, or at any rate he’d never been known to put the twist on anyone. What might that source of income be? said Father. Darned if Callie knew: Alex was close-mouthed on the subject. Maybe he robbed banks, said Father with heavy sarcasm. Not at all, said Callie; anyway, Alex was known to some of her friends. Father said the one thing did not preclude the other. He was turning sour on the artists by then. One too many of them had taken up Marxism and the workers, and accused him of grinding the peasants.
“Alex is all right. He’s just a youngster,” Callie said. “He just came along for the ride. He’s just a pal.” She didn’t want Father to get the wrong idea – that Alex Thomas might be a boyfriend of hers, in any competitive way.
“What can I do to help?” said Laura, in the kitchen.
“The last thing I need,” said Reenie, “is another fly in the ointment. All I ask is that you keep yourself out of the way and don’t knock anything over. Iris can help. At least she’s not all thumbs.” Reenie had the notion that helping her was a sign of favour: she was still annoyed with Laura, and was cutting her out. But this form of punishment was lost on Laura. She took her sun hat, and went out to wander around on the lawn.
Part of the job assigned me was to do the flowers for the table, and the seating arrangement as well. For the flowers I’d cut some zinnias from the borders – just about all there was at that time of year. For the seating arrangement I’d put Alex Thomas beside myself, with Callie on the other side and Laura at the far end. That way, I’d felt, he’d be insulated, or at least Laura would.
Laura and I did not have proper dinner dresses. We had dresses, however. They were the usual dark-blue velvet, left over from when we were younger, with the hems let down and a black ribbon sewn over the top of the worn hemline to conceal it. They’d once had white lace collars, and Laura’s still did; I’d taken the lace off mine, which gave it a lower neckline. These dresses were too tight, or mine was; Laura’s as well, come to think of it. Laura was not old enough by common standards to be attending a dinner party like this, but Callie said it would have been cruel to make her sit all alone in her room, especially since she, personally, had invited one of our guests. Father said he supposed that was right. Then he said that in any case, now that she’d shot up like a weed she looked as old as I did. It was hard to tell what age he thought that was. He could never keep track of our birthdays.
At the appointed time the guests foregathered in the drawing room for sherry, which was served by an unmarried cousin of Reenie’s impressed for this event. Laura and I were not allowed to have any sherry, or any wine at dinner. Laura did not seem to resent this exclusion, but I did. Reenie sided with Father on this, but then she was a teetotaller anyway. “Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine,” she’d say, emptying the dregs of the wine glasses down the sink. (She was wrong about that, however – less than a year after this dinner party, she married Ron Hincks, a notable tippler in his day. Myra, take note if you’re reading this: in the days before he was hewn into a pillar of the community by Reenie, your father was a notable souse.)
Reenie’s cousin was older than Reenie, and dowdy to the point of pain. She wore a black dress and a white apron, as was proper, but her stockings were brown cotton and sagging, and her hands could have been cleaner. In the daytimes she worked at the grocer’s, where one of her jobs was bagging potatoes; it’s hard to scrub off that kind of grime.
Reenie had made canapés featuring sliced