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Postcards from Europe 3 page

The roller coaster screamed past, the shooting gallery made a noise like popcorn. Other people laughed. I found myself becoming hungry, but could not suggest a snack; it would not have been apropos right then, and the food was beyond the pale. Richard was frowning like destiny; he held me by the elbow, steering me through the crowd. He had his other hand in his pocket: this place, he said, was bound to be crawling with light-fingered thieves.

We made our way to the waffle booth. Laura was not in view, but Richard did not wish to speak with Laura first, he knew better than that. He liked to fix things from the top down, always, if possible. So he asked to have a private word with the waffle-booth owner, a large dark-chinned man who reeked of stale butter. The man knew at once why Richard was there. He stepped away from his booth, casting a furtive glance back over his shoulder.

Was the waffle-booth owner aware that he'd been harbouring a juvenile runaway? asked Richard. God forbid! said the man, in horror. Laura had got round him-said she was nineteen. She was a hard worker though, she'd worked like a horse, keeping the joint clean, lending a hand with the waffles when things got real busy. Where had she been sleeping? The man was vague about that. Someone around here had given her a bed, but it wasn't him. Nor was there any funny business, we had to believe it, or not that he knew about. She was a good girl and he was a happily married man, unlike some around here. He'd felt sorry for her-thought maybe she was in some kind of trouble. He had a soft spot for nice kids like her. Matter of fact, it was him who'd made the call, and not just for the reward either; he'd figured she'd be better off back with her family, right?

Here he looked at Richard expectantly. Money changed hands, though somehow-I gathered-not quite so much money as the man had expected. Then Laura was summoned. She didn't protest. She took one look at us and decided against it. "Thanks for everything, anyway," she said to the waffle man. She shook hands with him. She didn't realise he'd cashed her in.

Richard and I each held one of her elbows; we walked her back through Sunnyside. I felt like a traitor. Richard installed her in the car, between the two of us. I put a steadying arm around her shoulder. I was angry with her, but knew I had to be comforting. She smelled of vanilla, and of hot sweet syrup, and of unwashed hair.

Once we got her into the house, Richard summoned Mrs. Murgatroyd and ordered up a glass of iced tea for Laura. She didn't drink it though; she sat in the dead centre of the sofa, knees together, rigid, stony-faced, her eyes like slate.

Did she have any idea of how much anxiety and commotion she had caused? said Richard. No. Did she care? No answer. He certainly hoped she wouldn't try anything of the kind again. No answer. Because he now stoodin loco parentis, so to speak, and he had a responsibility towards her, and he had every intention of fulfilling that responsibility, whatever it might cost him. And since nothing was a one-way street, he expected her to realise that she had a responsibility towards him as well-towardsus, he added -which was to behave herself, and to do as required, within reason. Did she understand that?



"Yes," said Laura. "I understand what you mean."

"I certainly hope so," said Richard. "I certainly hope you do, young lady."

Theyoung lady made me nervous. It was a reproach, as if there were something wrong with being young, and also with being a lady. If so, it was a reproach that included me. "What did you eat?" I said, for a distraction.

"Candy apples," said Laura. "Doughnuts from the Downyflake Doughnuts, they were cheaper the second day. The people there were really nice. Red Hots."

"Oh dear," I said, with a weak, deprecating little smile at Richard.

"That's what other people eat," said Laura, "in real life," and I began to see, a little, what the attraction of Sunnyside must have been for her. It wasother people -those people who had always been and who would continue to beother, insofar as Laura was concerned. She longed to serve them, these other people. She longed, in some way, to join them. But she never could. It was the soup kitchen in Port Ticonderoga all over again.

"Laura, why did you do it? " I said as soon as we were alone. (How did you do it? had a simple answer: she'd got off the train in London and changed her ticket for a later train. At least she hadn't gone to some other city: we might never have found her then.)

"Richard killed Father," she said. "I can't live in his house. It's wrong."

"That's not really fair," I said. "Father died because of an unfortunate combination of circumstances." I felt ashamed of myself for saying that: it sounded like Richard.

"It may not be fair but it's true. Underneath, it's true," she said. "Anyway, I wanted a job."

"But why?"

"To show that we-to show that I could. That I, that we didn't have to…" She looked away from me, chewed on her finger.

"Have to what?"

"You know," she said. "All of this." She waved her hand at the frilled dressing table, the matching floral curtains. "I went to the nuns first. I went to the Star of the Sea Convent."

Oh God, I thought, not the nuns again. I thought we'd put paid to the nuns. "And what did they say?" I asked, in a kindly, disinterested manner.

"It was no good," said Laura. "They were very nice to me, but they said no. It wasn't just not being a Catholic. They said I didn't have a true vocation, I was just evading my duties. They said if I wanted to serve God, I should do it in the life to which he has called me." A pause. "But what life?" she said. "I have no life!"

She cried then, and I put my arms around her, the time-worn gesture from when she was little. Just stop howling. If I'd had a lump of brown sugar I would have given it to her, but we were well past the brown-sugar stage by then. Sugar was not going to help.

"How can we ever get out of here?" she wailed. "Before it's too late?" At least she had the sense to be frightened; she had more sense than I did. But I thought it was just adolescent melodrama. "Too late for what?" I asked her gently. A deep breath was all that was called for; a deep breath, some calm, some stocktaking. There was no need to panic.

I thought I could cope with Richard, with Winifred. I thought I could live like a mouse in the castle of the tigers, by creeping around out of sight inside the walls; by staying quiet, by keeping my head down. No: I give myself too much credit. I didn't see the danger. I didn't even know they were tigers. Worse: I didn't know I might become a tiger myself. I didn't know Laura might become one, given the proper circumstances. Anyone might, for that matter.

"Look on the bright side," I said to Laura in my best soothing tone. I patted her back. "I'll get you a cup of warm milk and then you can have a good long sleep. You'll feel better tomorrow." But she cried and cried, and would not be comforted.

Last night I dreamt I was wearing my costume from the Xanadu ball. I was supposed to be an Abyssinian maiden-the damsel with the dulcimer. It was green satin, that costume: a little bolero jacket with gold spangle trim, showing a lot of cleavage and midriff; green satin undershorts, translucent pantaloons. Lots of fake gold coins, worn as necklaces and looped over the forehead. A small, jaunty turban with a crescent pin. A nose veil. Some tawdry circus designer's idea of the East.

I thought I looked pretty nifty in it, until I realised, looking down at my drooping belly, my enlarged blue-veined knuckles, my shrivelled arms, that I was not the age I was then, but the age I am now.

I wasn't at the ball, however. I was all alone, or so it seemed at first, in the ruined glass conservatory at Avilion. Empty pots were strewn here and there; others, not empty, filled with dry earth and dead plants. One of the stone sphinxes was lying on the floor, tipped on its side, defaced with Magic Marker-names, initials, crude drawings. There was a hole in the glass roof. The place stank of cat.

The main house behind me was dark, deserted, everyone in it gone away. I'd been left behind in this ridiculous fancy dress. It was night, with a fingernail moon. By its light I could see that there was indeed a single plant left alive: a glossy sort of bush, with one white flower. Laura, I said. From over in the shadows, a man laughed.

Not much of a nightmare, you'd say. Wait till you try it. I woke up desolate.

Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.

Nonsense. It's all chemicals. I need to take steps, about these dreams. There must be a pill.

More snow today. Just looking out the window at it makes my fingers ache. I write at the kitchen table, as slowly as if engraving. The pen is heavy, hard to push, like a nail scratching on cement.

Autumn, 1935. The heat receded, the cold advanced. Frost on fallen leaves, then on leaves that were not fallen. Then on windows. I took joy in such details then. I liked breathing in. The space inside my lungs was all my own.

Meanwhile, things continued.

What was now referred to by Winifred as "Laura's little escapade" was covered up as much as possible. Richard told Laura if she talked about it to anyone else, especially anyone at her school, he would be bound to hear about it and would consider it a personal affront, as well as an attempt at sabotage. He'd fixed things up with the press: an alibi had been provided by the Newton-Dobbses, a couple of his highly placed pals-the Mr. was something in one of the railroads-who were prepared to swear that Laura had been with them at their place in Muskoka the whole time. It had been a last-minute holiday arrangement, and Laura thought the Newton-Dobbses had telephoned us and the Newton-Dobbses thought Laura had, and it was all a simple misunderstanding, and they hadn't realised Laura had been considered missing because while on vacation they never paid any attention to the news.

A likely story. But people believed it, or had to pretend they did. I suppose the Newton-Dobbses were spreading the real story around among their twenty closest friends, hush-hush and for your ears only, which was what Winifred would have done in their place, gossip being a commodity like any other. But at least it never hit the papers.

Laura was bundled up in an itchy kilt and a plaid tie and sent off to St. Cecilia's. She made no secret of detesting it. She said she didn't have to go there; she said that now she'd got one job she could get another one. She said these things to me, when Richard was present. She would not speak directly to him.

She was chewing her fingers, she was not eating enough, she was too thin. I became very worried about her, as I was expected to become, and, in fairness, as I should have been. But Richard said he was tired of this hysterical nonsense, and as for a job, he didn't want to hear anything more about it. Laura was far too young to be out on her own; she would get involved in something unsavoury, because the woods were full of those who made a business of preying on silly young girls like her. If she didn't like her school, she could be sent to another one, far away, in a different city, and if she ran away from that one he would put her into a Home for Wayward Girls along with all the other moral delinquents, and if that didn't do the trick there was always a clinic. A private clinic, with bars on the windows: if it was sackcloth and ashes she wanted, that would certainly fill the bill. She was a minor, he was in authority, and make no mistake about it, he would do exactly as he said. As she knew-as everyone knew-he was a man of his word.

His eyes tended to bulge out when he was angry, and they were bulging out now, but he said all of this in a calm, believable tone, and Laura believed him, and was intimidated. I tried to intervene-these threats were too harsh, he didn't understand about Laura and the way she took things literally-but he told me to keep out of it. What was needed was a firm hand. Laura had been mollycoddled enough. It was time for her to shape up.

Over the weeks, an uneasy truce was established. I tried to arrange things in the house so that the two of them never collided. Ships in the night, was what I hoped for.

Winifred had put in her oar over this, of course. She must have told Richard to take a stand, because Laura was the kind of girl who would bite the hand that fed her unless a muzzle was applied.

Richard consulted Winifred about everything, because she was the one who sympathised with him, propped him up, encouraged him generally. She was the one who propped him up socially, who promoted his interests in what she considered the right quarters. When would he make his bid for Parliament? Not quite yet, she'd whisper into whatever ear she was bending-the time was not yet ripe-but soon. They'd both decided that Richard was the man of the future, and that the woman standing behind him-didn't every successful man have one of those?-was her.

It certainly wasn't me. Our relative positions were now clear, hers and mine; or they'd always been clear to her, but they were now becoming clear to me as well. She was necessary to Richard, I on the other hand could always be replaced. My job was to open my legs and shut my mouth.

If that sounds brutal, it was. But it wasn't out of the ordinary.

Winifred had to keep me busy during daylight hours: she didn't want me loopy with boredom, she didn't want me going off the deep end. She put a good deal of thought into cooking up meaningless tasks for me, then rearranging my time and space so I would be at liberty to perform them. These tasks were never too exacting, because she made no secret of her opinion that I was a bit of a dumb bunny. I in my turn did nothing to discourage this view.

Thus the Downtown Foundlings' Cr ¨che charity ball, of which she was the convenor. She put me on the list of organisers, not only to keep me hopping but because it would reflect well on Richard. "Organisers" was a joke, she didn't think I was capable of organising my own shoelaces, so what cinder-sweeping chore could I be given? Envelope-addressing, she decided. She was right, I could do that. I was even good at it. I didn't have to think about it, and could spend the mental time elsewhere. ("Thank the Lord she hasone talent," I could hear her telling the Billies and Charlies, at bridge. "Oh, I forgot-two!" Gales of laughter.)

The Downtown Foundlings' Cr ¨che, in aid of slum children, was Winifred's best thing, or at least the charity ball was. It was a costume ball-such functions mostly were, because people at that time liked costumes. They liked them almost as much as they liked uniforms. Both served the same end: to avoid being who you were, you could pretend to be someone else. You could become bigger and more powerful, or more alluring and mysterious, just by putting on exotic clothes. Well, there was something to it.

Winifred had a committee for the ball, but everyone knew she made all the big decisions herself. She held the hoops, others jumped through them. It was she who'd picked the theme for 1936-"Xanadu." The rival Beaux Arts Ball had recently done "Tamurlane in Samarkand," and it had been a great success. Eastern themes couldn't miss, and surely everyone had been made to memorise "Kubla Khan" at school, so even lawyers-even doctors-evenbankers would know what Xanadu was. Their wives would know as a matter of course.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Winifred had the entire poem typed out and mimeographed and distributed to our committee-to get the ideas percolating, she said-and any suggestions from us were more than welcome, though we knew she had the entire thing mapped out in her head already. The poem would appear on the engraved invitation as well-gold lettering, with a gold-and-cerulean border of Arabic writing. Did anyone understand such writing? No, but it looked just lovely.

These functions were by invitation only. You were invited and then you paid through the nose, but the circle was very tight. Who was on the list became a matter of anxious anticipation, though only for those in doubt about their status. To expect an invitation and then not to receive one was a foretaste of Purgatory. I expect many tears were shed over such things, but in secret-in that world, you could never let it appear that you cared.

The beauty of Xanadu was (said Winifred, after she had read out the poem in her whisky voice-read it excellently, I'll give her that)-thebeauty of it was that with such a theme you could be as revealing or concealing as you might wish. The corpulent could swathe themselves in rich brocades, the svelte could come as slave girls or Persian dancers and show off everything but the kitchen sink. Gauzy skirts, bangles, tinkling ankle chains-the scope was practically infinite, and of course men loved to dress up as pashas and pretend they had harems. Though she doubted that she could talk anyone into playing the eunuchs, she added, to appreciative tittering.

Laura was too young for this ball. Winifred was planning a d ©but for her, a rite of passage that had not yet taken place, and until it did she was not considered eligible. However, she took quite an interest in the proceedings. I was very relieved to have her once more taking an interest in something. Certainly she was not taking an interest in her schoolwork: her marks had been abysmal.

Correction: it wasn't the proceedings she took an interest in, it was the poem. I knew it already, from Miss Violence, from Avilion, but Laura hadn't bothered much about it then. Now she read it over and over.

What was a demon-lover, she wanted to know? Why was the sea sunless, why was the ocean lifeless? Why did the sunny pleasure-dome have caves of ice? What was Mount Abora, and why was the Abyssinian maid singing about it? Why were the ancestral voices prophesying war?

I didn't know the answers to any of these questions. I know all of them now. Not the answers of Samuel Taylor Coleridge-I'm not sure he had any answers, since he was hopped up on drugs at the time-but my own answers. Here they are, for what they're worth.

The sacred river is alive. It flows to the lifeless ocean, because that's where all things that are alive end up. The lover is a demon-lover because he isn't there. The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of ice because that's what pleasure-domes have-after a while they become very cold, and after that they melt, and then where are you? All wet. Mount Abora was the Abyssinian maid's home, and she was singing about it because she couldn't get back to it. The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

The snow fell, softly at first, then in hard pellets that stung the skin like needles. The sun set in the afternoon, the sky changed from washed blood to skim milk. Smoke poured from the chimneys, from the furnaces stoked with coal. The bread-wagon horses left piles of steaming brown buns on the street which then froze solid. Children threw them at one another. The clocks struck midnight, over and over, every midnight a deep blue-black riddled with icy stars, the moon white bone. I looked out the bedroom window, down to the sidewalk, through the branches of the chestnut tree. Then I turned out the light.

The Xanadu ball was the second Saturday in January. My costume had come that morning, in a box with armfuls of tissue paper. The smart thing to do was to rent your costume from Malabar's, because to have one specially made would be displaying too much of an effort. Now it was almost six o'clock and I was trying it on. Laura was in my room: she would often do her homework there, or make a show of doing it. "What are you supposed to be?" she said.

"The Abyssinian Maid," I said. What I would do for a dulcimer I wasn't yet sure. Perhaps a banjo, with ribbons added. Then I remembered that the only banjo I knew about was back at Avilion, in the attic, left over from my dead uncles. I would have to skip the dulcimer.

I didn't expect Laura to tell me I looked pretty, or nice even. She never did that: pretty andnice were not categories of thought for her. This time she said, "You aren't very Abyssinian. Abyssinians aren't supposed to be blonde."

"I can't help the colour of my hair," I said. "It's Winifred's fault. She should have chosen Vikings or something."

"Why are they all afraid of him?" said Laura.

"Afraid of who?" I said. (I hadn't considered the fear in this poem, only the pleasure. Thepleasure-dome. The pleasure-dome was where I really lived now-where I had my true being, unknown to those around me. With walls and towers girdled round, so nobody else could get in.)

"Listen," she said. She recited, with her eyes closed: Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

"See, they're afraid of him," she said, "but why? Why Beware?"

"Really, Laura, I have no idea," I said. "It's just a poem. You can't always tell what poems mean. Maybe they think he's crazy."

"It's because he's too happy," said Laura. "He's drunk the milk of Paradise. It frightens people when you're too happy, in that way. Isn't that why?"

"Laura, don't keepat me," I said. "I don't know everything, I'm not a professor."

Laura was sitting on the floor, in her school kilt. She sucked on her knuckle, staring up at me, disappointed. I was disappointing her frequently of late. "I saw Alex Thomas the other day," she said.

I turned away quickly, adjusted my veil in the mirror. It was a fairly poor effect, the green satin: some Hollywood vamp in a desert movie. I comforted myself with the thought that everyone else would look equally faux. "Alex Thomas? Really?" I said. I should have displayed more surprise.

"Well, aren't you glad?"

"Glad about what?"

"Glad he's alive," she said. "Glad they haven't caught him."

"Of course I'm glad," I said. "But don't say anything to anyone. You wouldn't want them to track him down."

"You don't need to tell me that. I'm not a baby. That's why I didn't wave at him."

"Did he see you?" I said.

"No. He was just walking along the street. He had his coat collar up and his scarf over his chin, but I knew it was him. He had his hands in his pockets."

At the mention of hands, of pockets, a sharp pang went through me. "What street was this?"

"Our street," she said. "He was on the other side, looking at the houses. I think he was looking for us. He must know we live around here."

"Laura," I said, "have you still got a crush on Alex Thomas? Because if you do, you should try to get over it."

"I don't have a crush on him," she said with scorn. "I never had a crush. Crush is a horrible word. It really stinks. " She'd become less pious since going to school, and her language had become a good deal stronger. Stinks was in the ascendant.

"Whatever you want to call it, you should give it up. It's just not possible," I said gently. "It will only make you unhappy."

Laura put her arms around her knees. "Unhappy," she said. "What on earth do you know aboutunhappy?"

 

 

Eight

 

Carnivore stories

 

He's moved again, which is just as well. She hated that place out by the Junction. She didn't like going there, and in any case it was so far, and so cold then: every time she got to it her teeth were chattering. She hated the narrow cheerless room, the stink of old cigarettes because you couldn't open the stuck window, the sordid little shower in the corner, that woman she'd meet on the stairs-a woman like a downtrodden peasant in some musty old novel, you kept expecting to see her with a bundle of sticks on her back. The sullen insolent stare she'd give, as if picturing exactly what would go on behind his door once it was closed. A stare of envy, but also of spite.

Good riddance to all of that.

Now the snow has melted, though a few grey smudges of it remain in the shadows. The sun is warm, there's the smell of damp earth and stirring roots and the sodden vestiges of last winter's discarded newspapers, blurred and illegible. In the better sections of the city the daffodils are out, and, in a few front gardens where there's no shade, there are tulips, red and orange. A note of promise, as the gardening column says; though even now, in late April, it snowed the other day-big white sloppy flakes, a freakish blizzard.

She's hidden her hair under a kerchief, worn a navy blue coat, the closest she could get to sombre. He said it would be best. In the nooks and corners down here, tomcat scents and vomit, the reek of crated chickens. Horse dung on the road, from the mounted policemen who keep an eye out, not for thieves but for agitators-nests of foreign Reds, whispering together like rats in straw, six to a bed no doubt, sharing their women, incubating their warped, intricate plots. Emma Goldman, exiled from the States, is said to live somewhere nearby.

Blood on the sidewalk, a man with a bucket and brush. She steps fastidiously around the wet pink puddle. It's a region of kosher butchers; also of tailors, of wholesale furriers. And sweatshops, no doubt. Rows of immigrant women hunched over machines, their lungs filling with lint.

The clothes on your back come off somebody else's, he'd said to her once. Yes, she'd replied lightly, but I look better in them. Then added with some anger, What do you want me todo? What do you wantme to do? Do you seriously think I have any power?

She stops at a greengrocer's, buys three apples. Not very good apples, last season's, their skins softly wrinkling, but she feels she needs a peace offering of some kind. The woman takes one of the apples away from her, points out a punky brown spot, substitutes a better apple. All this without speaking. Meaningful nods and gap-toothed smiles.

Men in long black coats, wide black hats, small quick-eyed women. Shawls, long skirts. Broken verbs. They don't look directly at you but they don't miss much. She's conspicuous, a giantess. Her legs right out in the open.

Here's the button store, just where he said. She stops a moment to look in the window. Fancy buttons, satin ribbons, braid, rickrack, sequins-raw material for the dreamland adjectives of fashion copy. Someone's fingers, right around here, must have sewn the ermine trim on her white chiffon evening cape. The contrast of fragile veil and rank animal pelt, that's what appeals to the gentlemen. Delicate flesh, then the shrubbery.

His new room is above a baker's. Around to the side, up the stairs, in a haze of a smell she likes. But dense, overpowering-yeast fermenting, going straight to her head like warm helium. She hasn't seen him for too long. Why has she kept away?

He's there, he opens the door.

I brought you some apples, she says.

After a while the objects of this world take shape around her once more. There's his typewriter, precarious on the tiny washstand. The blue suitcase is beside it, topped with the displaced washbasin. Shirt crumpled on the floor. Why is it that tumbled cloth always signifies desire? With its wrenched, impetuous forms. The flames in paintings look like that-like orange fabric, hurled and flung.

They lie in the bed, an enormous carved mahogany structure that almost fills the room. Wedding furniture once, from far away, meant to last a lifetime. Lifetime, what a stupid word it seems right now; durability, how useless. She cuts an apple up with his pocket knife, feeds him segments.

If I didn't know better I'd think you were trying to seduce me.

No-I'm just keeping you alive. I'm fattening you up to eat later.

That's a perverse thought, young lady.


Date: 2016-04-22; view: 585


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