Выбрать главу

“You will be. You’ll adjust in a few days.”

“I’m not myself.”

“You and me both.”

“What’s that? I can’t hear with all that racket in the hall, that woman screaming.”

“I said, I’m not myself either.”

Alice has officially adopted her mother’s maiden name; it appears now on her passport: Alice Goodwill. Her ex-husband’s name, Downing, was buried some years ago in a solicitor’s office in London, although their three grown children, Benjamin, Judy, and Rachel, retain it. And for Alice the name Flett was symbolically buried two years ago with the publication of her fifth book which received unfavorable reviews everywhere: “Alice Flett’s first novel should be a warning to all academics who aspire toward literary creativity.” “Posturing.” “Donnish.” “Didactic.” “Cold porridge on a paper plate.”

What was she to do? What could she do? She went to court and changed her name. Even as a girl Alice had complained about the name Flett, which suffered, she felt, from severe brevity; Flett was a dust mote, a speck on the wall, standing for nothing, while Goodwill rang rhythmically on the ear and sent out agreeable metaphoric waves, though her mother swears she has never thought of the name as being allusive. Alice is discouraged at the moment (that damned novel), but hopeful about the future. Or she was until she arrived in Florida and saw how changed her mother was. Thin, pale. Crumpled.

On the plane coming over she had invented rich, thrilling dialogues for the two of them.

“Have you been happy in your life?” she’d planned to ask her mother. She pictured herself seated by the bedside, the sheet folded back in a neat fan, her mother’s hand in hers, the light from the window dim, churchy. “Have you found fulfillment?”—whatever the hell fulfillment is. “Have you had moments of genuine ecstasy? Has it been worth it? Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, at the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity? Do you know what I mean?

Everything suddenly fits, everything’s in its place. Like in our Ottawa garden, that kind of thing. Has it been enough, your life, I mean? Are you ready for—? Are you frightened? Are you in there?

What can I do?”

Instead they speak of apple juice, gravy, screams in the corridor, the doctor, who is Jamaican — this Jamaican business they don’t actually mention.

When Alice reaches for her mother’s hand she is appalled by its translucence. She can’t help staring. Knuckles of pearl. Already dead. Mineralized. She reminds herself that what falls into most people’s lives becomes a duty they imagine: to be good, to be faithful to the idea of being good. A good daughter. A good mother.

Endlessly, heroically patient. These enlargements of the self can be terrifying.

“Just tell me how I’m supposed to live my life.”

“What did you say, Alice?”

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

“It’s only nine o’clock.”

“The light’s fading.”

“It’s the curtains, you’ve closed the curtains.”

“No, look. The curtains are open. Look.”

Grandma Flett has good days, of course. Days when she puts on her glasses and reads the newspaper straight through. Days when she is praised by the staff for her extraordinary alertness. A nurse describes her, in her hearing, as being “feisty,” a word Mrs. Flett doesn’t recognize. “It means tough,” Alice tells her. “At least, I think so.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as being tough.”

“It’s meant as praise.”

“I’m not really tough.”

“You’re an old softie.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Don’t call me that. It reminds me of those soft-centered chocolates your father used to bring home from his trips. I could never bear them, biting into them.”

“I’m sorry.” Alice has heard about the soft-centered chocolates before. Many times before.

“Nougat. Butter creams. And those other ones.”

“Turkish delight.”

“They make me feel sick. Just thinking of them.”

“Don’t think of them.” Alice shuts her eyes, feeling sick herself: love’s faked ever-afterness.

“He traveled a lot. I don’t know if you remember, you were so young. Always going off. Montreal, Toronto.”

“I know. I do remember.”

“I could never understand what those trips were for.”

“Meetings.”

“Never understood just why they were necessary. I asked, of course, I took an interest, or at least I tried to. Women back then were encouraged to take an interest in their husbands’ careers — but it was never clear to me. Not clear. Just what those meetings were about, what they were for.”

“Administrative blather probably.”

“It worried me. Bothered me, I should say.”

“Don’t think about it now.”

“He’d bring a two-pound box sometimes. Oh, dear. Not that I ever let on I didn’t like them. I used to give them to Mr. Mannerly.

You remember Mr. Mannerly, Alice. He helped out in the garden.

With the heavy work.”

“Of course I remember Mr. Mannerly.” Alice knows that now her mother is about to remind her how Mr. Mannerly’s wife died of diabetes, how their son, Angus, went into politics.

“His poor wife died young. It was sugar diabetes, they couldn’t do much about it in those days.” Whispering. “I don’t suppose she ever ate any of the chocolates, at least I hope she didn’t. Their son Angus, he couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen when his mother went. Sixteen, I think. And he’s done so well. Serving his third term, if I’m not mistaken. I used to see him mentioned in the papers. Angus Mannerly, a wonderful name for a politician, I always thought.”

“It’s a lovely name.” Living so long in England has given Alice the right to use the word “lovely,” and she uses it a lot.

“I’m glad you’re here, Alice. I appreciate you being here. I don’t mean to sound so out of sorts.”

“You’re not. You’re—”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything.”

“I just meant—”

“Really, dear, I mean it, you don’t have to say anything.”

“All right.”

“What was that word again? What the nurse said?”

“Feisty.”

“It sounds like slang. Is it in the dictionary?”

“I don’t think so. It could be.”

“It sounds so terribly — I can’t think of the word, it’s on the tip of my tongue, it sounds—”

“Nasty?”

“No. More like superior.”

“Condescending?”

“Yes. That’s it. Condescending.”

“You’re right, you know. It is condescending. It’s reductive. Insolent, as a matter of fact.”

“Yes.”

“We pretend to admire feistiness in others,” Alice muses, “but we’d hate like hell to be feisty ourselves. To have someone call us that.”

“It’s got a bad smell.”

“A bad what?”

“Overripe. Like strawberries past their prime.”

“Exactly.”

“He had a very long back, your father. I think that’s why he never learned to dance.”

“Dancing’s not for everyone.”

“I’m glad you’re here, Alice.”

“I’m glad to be here.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, I’m glad to be here.”

“Forgive me, darling Alice, if I don’t believe you.”

(Does Grandma Flett actually say this last aloud? She’s not sure.

She’s lost track of what’s real and what isn’t, and so, at this age, have I.)

When we say a thing or an event is real, never mind how suspect it sounds, we honor it. But when a thing is made up — regardless of how true and just it seems — we turn up our noses. That’s the age we live in. The documentary age. As if we can never, never get enough facts. We put on the television set and what we hear is the life cycles of birds. The replaying of wars. Interviews with mass murderers. And the newspapers know nothing else.