In honour of this new cereal I forced myself to sit down properly at the kitchen table, with place setting and paper napkin complete. Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.
Yesterday I decided to do the laundry, to thumb my nose at God by working on a Sunday. Not that he gives two hoots what day of the week it is: in Heaven, as in the subconscious-or so we're told-there is no time. But really it was to thumb my nose at Myra. I shouldn't be making the bed, says Myra; I shouldn't be carrying heavy baskets of soiled clothing down the rickety steps to the cellar, where the ancient, frantic washing machine is located.
Who does the laundry? Myra, by default. While I'm here I might as well just pop in a load, she'll say. Then we both pretend she hasn't done it. We conspire in the fiction-or what is rapidly becoming the fiction-that I can fend for myself. But the strain of make-believe is beginning to tell on her.
Also she's getting a bad back. She wants to arrange for a woman, some nosy hired stranger, to come in and do all that. Her excuse is my heart. She has somehow found out about it, about the doctor and his nostrums and his prophecies-I suppose from his nurse, a chemical redhead with a mouth that flaps at both ends. This town is a sieve.
I told Myra that what I do with my dirty linen is my own business: I will stave off the genericwoman for as long as possible. How much of this is embarrassment, on my part? Quite a lot. I don't want anyone else poking into my insufficiencies, my stains and smells. It's all right for Myra to do it, because I know her and she knows me. I am her cross to bear: I am what makes her so good, in the eyes of others. All she has to do is say my name and roll her eyes, and indulgence is extended to her, if not by the angels, at least by the neighbours, who are a damn sight harder to please.
Don't misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.
Having made my decision-and having anticipated Myra's bleats of distress upon discovering the stack of washed and folded towels, and my own smug grin of triumph-I set about my laundering escapade. I delved about in the hamper, narrowly saving myself from toppling into it head first, and fished out what I thought I could carry, avoiding nostalgia for the undergarments of yesteryear. (How lovely they were! They don't make things like that any more, not with self-covered buttons, not hand-stitched. Or perhaps they do, but I never see them, and couldn't afford them anyway, and wouldn't fit into them. Such things have waists.)
Into the plastic basket went my selections, and off I set, step by step, sideways down the stairs, like Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Granny's house via the underworld. Except that I myself am Granny, and I contain my own bad wolf. Gnawing away, gnawing away.
The main floor, so far so good. Along the hall into the kitchen, then on with the cellar light and the jittery plunge into the dank. Almost at once, trepidation set in. Places in this house that I could once negotiate with ease have become treacherous: the sash windows are poised like traps, ready to fall on my hands, the stepstool threatens to collapse, the top shelves of the cupboards are booby-trapped with precarious glassware. Halfway down the cellar stairs I knew I shouldn't have tried it. The angle was too steep, the shadows too dense, the smell too sinister, like freshly poured cement concealing some deftly poisoned spouse. On the floor at the bottom there was a pool of darkness, deep and shimmering and wet as a real pool. Perhaps it was a real pool; perhaps the river was welling up through the floor, as I have seen happen on the weather channel. Any of the four elements may become displaced at any time: fire may break from the earth, earth liquefy and tumble about your ears, air beat against you like a rock, dashing the roof from over your head. Why not then a flood?
I heard a gurgling, which may or may not have been coming from inside me; I felt my heart gulping in my chest with panic. I knew the water was a quirk, of eye or ear or mind; still, better not to descend. I dropped the laundry on the cellar stairs, abandoning it. Perhaps I might go back and pick it up later, perhaps not. Someone would. Myra would, lips tightening. Now I'd done it, now I would havethe woman foisted on me for sure. I turned, half fell, grasped the bannister; then pulled myself back up, one step at a time, to the sane bland daylight of the kitchen.
Outside the window it was grey, a uniform spiritless grey, the sky as well as the porous, aging snow. I plugged in the electric kettle; soon it began its lullaby of steam. Things have gone pretty far when you've come to feel that it's your utensils that are taking care of you and not the other way around. Still, I was comforted.
I made a cup of tea, drank it, then rinsed out the cup. I can still wash my own dishes, at any rate. Then I put the cup away, on the shelf with the other cups, Grandmother Adelia's hand-painted patterns, lilies with lilies, violets with violets, like patterns matched with like. My cupboards at least have not gone haywire. But the image of the cast-away items of laundry fallen on the cellar steps was bothering me. All those tatters, those crumpled fragments, like shed white skins. Though not entirely white. A testament to something: blank pages my body's been scrawling on, leaving its cryptic evidence as it slowly but surely turns itself inside out.
Perhaps I should make a try at gathering these things up, then stowing them away in their hamper, and none the wiser. None means Myra.
I have been overcome, it seems, by a lust for tidiness.
Better late than never, says Reenie.
Oh Reenie. How I wish you were here. Come back and take care of me!
She won't, though. I will have to take care of myself. Myself and Laura, as I solemnly promised to do.
Better late than never.
Where am I? It was winter. No, I've done that.
It was spring. The spring of 1936. That was the year everything began to fall apart. Continued to fall apart, that is, in a more serious fashion than it was doing already.
King Edward abdicated in that year; he chose love over ambition. No. He chose the Duchess of Windsor's ambition over his own. That's the event people remember. And the Civil War began, in Spain. But those things didn't happen until months later. What was March known for? Something. Richard rattling his paper at the breakfast table, and saying, Sohe's done it.
There were just the two of us at breakfast, that day. Laura did not eat breakfast with us, except on weekends, and then she avoided it as much as possible by pretending to sleep in. On weekdays she ate by herself in the kitchen, because she had to go to school. Or not by herself: Mrs. Murgatroyd would have been present. Mr. Murgatroyd then drove her to school and picked her up, because Richard didn't like the idea of her walking. What he really didn't like was the idea that she might go astray.
She had lunch at the school, and took flute lessons there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because a musical instrument was mandatory. The piano had been tried, but had come to nothing. Likewise the cello. Laura was averse to practising, we were told, although in the evenings we were sometimes treated to the sorrowful, off-key wailing of her flute. The false notes sounded deliberate.
"I'll speak to her," said Richard.
"We can scarcely complain," I said. "She's only doing what you require."
Laura was no longer overtly rude to Richard. But if he entered a room, she would leave it.
Back to the morning paper. Since Richard was holding it up between us, I could read the headline. He was Hitler, who had marched into the Rhineland. He'd broken the rules, he'd crossed the line, he'd done the forbidden thing. Well, said Richard, you could see it coming a mile away, but the rest of them got caught with their pants down. He's thumbing his nose at them. He's a smart fellow. Sees a weak point in the fence. Sees a chance and he takes it. You've got to hand it to him.