As I've said, I got Father's medals. What were they for? Courage. Bravery under fire. Noble gestures of self-sacrifice. I suppose I was expected to live up to them.
Everyone in town came to the funeral, said Reenie. Well, almost everyone, because there was considerable bitterness in some quarters; but still, he'd been well respected, and by that time they'd known it wasn't him shut down the factories for good like that. They'd known he'd had no part in it-he couldn't stop it, that was all. It was the big interests did him in.
Everyone in town felt sorry for Laura, said Reenie. (But not for mewas left unspoken. In their view, I'd ended up with the spoils. Such as they were.)
Here are the arrangements Richard made: Laura would come to live with us. Well, of course she would have to: she couldn't remain at Avilion all by herself, she was only fifteen.
"I could stay with Reenie," said Laura, but Richard said that was out of the question. Reenie was getting married; she wouldn't have time to look after Laura. Laura said she didn't need to be looked after, but Richard only smiled.
"Reenie could come to Toronto," said Laura, but Richard said she didn't want to. (Richard didn't want her to. He and Winifred had already engaged what they considered to be a suitable staff for the running of his household-people who knew the ropes, he said. Which meant they knew Richard's ropes, and Winifred's ropes as well.)
Richard said he had already discussed things with Reenie, and had come to a satisfactory arrangement. Reenie and her new husband would act as custodians for us, he said, and would oversee the repairs-Avilion was falling to pieces, so there were a lot of repairs to be done, beginning with the roof-and that way they would be on hand to prepare the house for us whenever requested, because it was to serve as a summer abode. We would come down to Avilion to go boating and so forth, he said, in the tone of an indulgent uncle. That way, Laura and I would not be deprived of our ancestral home. He saidancestral home with a smile. Wouldn't we like that?
Laura did not thank him. She stared at his forehead, with the cultivated blankness she had once used on Mr. Erskine, and I saw we were in for trouble.
Richard and I would return to Toronto by car, he continued, once things were in place. First he needed to meet with Father's lawyers, an occasion at which we need not be present: it would be too harrowing for us, considering recent events, and he wanted to spare us as much as possible. One of these lawyers was a connection by marriage on our mother's side, said Reenie privately-a second cousin's husband-so he'd surely keep an eye out.
Laura would remain at Avilion until she and Reenie had packed up her things; then she would come in to the city on the train, and would be met at the station. She would live with us in our house-there was a spare bedroom that would suit her perfectly, once it had been redecorated. And she would attend-at last-a proper school. St. Cecilia's was the one he had picked, in consultation with Winifred, who knew about such things. Laura might need some extra lessons, but he was sure all of that would work out as time went by. In this way she would be able to gain the benefits, the advantages…
"The advantages of what?" said Laura.
"Of your position," said Richard.
"I don't see that I have any position," said Laura.
"What exactly do you mean by that?" said Richard, less indulgently.
"It's Iris who has the position," said Laura. "She's the Mrs. Griffen. I'm just extra."
"I realise you are understandably upset," said Richard stiffly, "considering the unfortunate circumstances, which have been difficult for everyone, but there's no need to be unpleasant. It isn't easy for Iris and myself, either. I am only trying to do the best for you that I can."
"He thinks I'll be in the way," Laura said to me that evening, in the kitchen, where we had gone to seek refuge from Richard. It was upsetting for us to watch him making his lists-what was to be discarded, what repaired, what replaced. To watch, and to be silent. He acts like he owns the place, Reenie had said indignantly. But he does, I'd replied.
"In the way of what?" I said. "I'm sure that isn't what he meant."
"In the way of him," said Laura. "In the way of the two of you."
"It will all work out for the best," said Reenie. She said this as if by rote. Her voice was exhausted, devoid of conviction, and I saw that there was no further help to be expected from her. In the kitchen that night she looked old, and rather fat, and also defeated. As would presently appear, she was already pregnant with Myra. She'd allowed herself to be swept off her feet. It's dirt that gets swept, and it's into the dustbin, she used to say, but she'd violated her own maxims. Her mind must have been on other things, such as whether she would make it to the altar, and if not, what then? Bad times, without a doubt. There were no walls then between sufficiency and disaster: if you slipped you fell, and if you fell you flailed and thrashed and went under. She'd be hard put to make another chance for herself, because even if she went away to have the baby and then gave it up, word would get around and people in town would never forget a thing like that. She might as well hang out a sign: there'd be a lineup around the block. Once a woman was loose, it was seen to that she stayed that way. Why buy a cow when milk's free, she must have been thinking.
So she'd given up on us, she'd given us over. For years she'd done what she could, and now she had no more power.
Back in Toronto, I waited for Laura to arrive. The heat wave continued. Sultry weather, damp foreheads, a shower before gin and tonics on the back verandah, overlooking the sere garden. The air like wet fire; everything limp or yellow. There was a fan in the bedroom that sounded like an old man with a wooden foot climbing the stairs: a breathless wheezing, a clunk, a wheezing. In the heavy, starless nights I stared up at the ceiling while Richard went on with what he was doing.
He was besotted with me, he said. Besotted -as if he were drunk. As if he would never feel the way he did about me if he were sober and in his right mind.
I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering, What is it about me? What is it that is so besotting? The mirror was full-length: in it I tried to catch the back view of myself, but of course you never can. You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else-to a man looking at you, from behind, when you don't know-because in a mirror your own head is always cranked around over your shoulder. A coy, inviting pose. You can hold up another mirror to see the back view, but then what you see is what so many painters have loved to paint-Woman Looking In Mirror, said to be an allegory of vanity. Though it is unlikely to be vanity, but the reverse: a search for flaws. What is it about me? can so easily be construed as What is wrong with me?
Richard said women could be divided into apples and pears, according to the shapes of their bottoms. I was a pear, he said, but an unripe one. That was what he liked about me-my greenness, my hardness. In the bottom department, I think he meant, but possibly all the way through.
After my showers, my removal of bristles, my brushings and combings, I was now careful to remove any hairs from the floor. I would lift the little wads of hair from the drains of tub or sink and flush them down the toilet, because Richard had casually remarked that women were always leaving hair around. Like shedding animals, was the implication.
How did he know? How did he know, about the pears and the apples and the shed hair? Who were these women, these other women? Aside from a surface curiosity, I did not much care.