The Blind Assassin

  Good position, I told her. Angel above, and a carnivorous angel too - high time they came clean on that subject! Oven below, as in all the most reliable accounts. Then there's the rest of us in between, stuck in Middle Earth, on the level of the frying pan. Poor Myra was baffled, as she always is by theological discourse. She likes her God plain - plain and raw, like a radish.

  The winter we'd been waiting for arrived on New Year's Eve - a hard freeze, followed by an enormous fall of snow the next day. Outside the window it swirled down, bucket after bucket of it, as if God were dumping laundry flakes in the finale of a children's pageant. I turned on the weather channel to get the full panorama - roads closed, cars buried, power lines down, merchandising brought to a standstill, workmen in bulky suits waddling around like outsized children bundled up for play. Throughout their presentation of what they euphemistically termed "current conditions," the young anchorfolk kept their perky optimism, as they habitually do through every disaster imaginable. They have the footloose insouciance of troubadours or fun-fair gypsies, or insurance salesmen, or stock-market gurus - making overblown predictions in the full knowledge that none of what they're telling us may actually come true.

  Myra called to ask if I was all right. She said Walter would be over as soon as the snow stopped, to dig me out.

  "Don't be silly, Myra," I said. "I'm quite capable of digging myself out." (A lie - I had no intention of lifting a finger. I was well supplied with peanut butter, I could wait it out. But I felt like company, and threats of action on my part usually speeded up the arrival of Walter.)

  "Don't you touch that shovel!" said Myra. "Hundreds of old - of people your age die of heart attacks from snow shovelling every year! And if the electricity goes off, watch where you put the candles!"

  "I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose."

  Walter appeared, Walter shovelled. He'd brought a paper sack of doughnut holes; we ate them at the kitchen table, me cautiously,Walter wholesale, but contemplatively. He's a man for whom chewing is a form of thinking.

  What came back to me then was the sign that used to be in the window of the Downyflake Doughnut stand, at the Sunnyside Amusement Park, in - what was it? - the summer of 1935:

  As you ramble on through life, Brother,

  Whatever be your goal,

  Keep your eye upon the doughnut,

  And not upon the hole.

  A paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used - metaphorically, of course - to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?

  The next day I ventured out, among the cold, splendid dunes. Folly, but I wanted to participate - snow is so attractive, until it gets porous and sooty. My front lawn was a lustrous avalanche, with an Alpine tunnel cut through it. I made it out to the sidewalk, so far so good, but a few houses farther north of me the neighbours had not been so assiduous as Walter about their shovelling, and I got trapped in a drift, and floundered, slipped, and fell. Nothing was broken or sprained - I didn't think it was - but I couldn't get up. I lay there in the snow, pawing with my arms and legs, like a turtle on its back. Children do that, but deliberately - flapping like birds, making angels. For them it's joy.

  I was beginning to fret about hypothermia when two strange men levered me up and carted me back to my door. I hobbled into the front room and collapsed onto the sofa, my overshoes and coat still on. Scenting disaster from afar as is her habit, Myra arrived, bearing half-a-dozen turgid cupcakes left over from some family starch-fest. She made me a hot-water bottle and some tea, and the doctor was summoned, and both of them fussed around, giving out a stream of helpful advice and hearty, hectoring tut-tuts, and mightily pleased with themselves.

  Now I'm grounded. Also enraged at myself. Or not at myself - at this bad turn my body has done me. After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken.

  It's an affront, all of that. Weak knees, arthritic knuckles, varicose veins, infirmities, indignities - they aren't ours, we never wanted or claimed them. Inside our heads we carry ourselves perfected - ourselves at the best age, and in the best light as well: never caught awkwardly, one leg out of a car, one still in, or picking our teeth, or slouching, or scratching our noses or bums. If naked, seen gracefully reclining through a gauzy mist, which is where movie stars come in: they assume such poses for us. They are our younger selves as they recede from us, glow, turn mythical.

  As a child, Laura would say: In Heaven, what age will I be?

  Laura was standing on the front steps of Avilion, between the two stone urns where no flowers had been planted, waiting for us. Despite her tallness, she looked very young, very fragile and alone. Also peasant-like, pauperish. She was wearing a pale-blue housedress printed with faded mauve butterflies - mine, three summers before - and no shoes whatsoever. (Was this some new mortification of the flesh, or was it simple eccentricity, or had she simply forgotten?) Her hair was in a single braid, coming down over her shoulder, like the stone nymph's at our lily pool.

  God knows how long she'd been there. We hadn't been able to say exactly when we'd arrive, because we'd come down by car, which was possible at that time of year: the roads were not flooded or axle-deep in mud, and some were even paved by then.

  I say we, because Richard came with me. He said he wouldn't think of sending me off to face such a thing alone, not at a time like this. He was more than solicitous.

  He drove us himself, in his blue coupe - one of his newest toys. In the trunk behind us were our two suitcases, the small ones, just for overnight - his maroon leather, mine lemon-sherbet yellow. I was wearing an eggshell linen suit - frivolous to mention it, no doubt, but it was from Paris and I was very keen on it - and I knew it would be wrinkled at the back once we arrived. Linen shoes, with stiff fabric bows and peek-a-boo toes. My matching eggshell hat rode on my knees like a delicate gift box.

  Richard was a jumpy driver. He didn't like to be interrupted - he said it ruined his concentration - and so we made the trip in silence, more or less. The trip took over four hours, which now takes less than two. The sky was clear, and bright and depthless as metal; the sun poured down like lava. The heat wavered up off the asphalt; the small towns were closed against the sun, their curtains drawn. I remember their singed lawns and white-pillared porches, and the lone gas stations, the pumps like cylindrical one-armed robots, their glass tops like brim-less bowler hats, and the cemeteries that looked as if no one else would ever be buried in them. Once in a while we'd hit a lake, with a smell of dead minnows and warm waterweed coming off it.

  As we drove up, Laura did not wave. She stood waiting while Richard brought the car to a stop and clambered out and walked around to open the door on my side. I was swinging my legs sideways, both knees together as I'd been taught, and reaching for Richard's proffered hand, when Laura suddenly came to life. She ran down the steps and took hold of my other arm and hauled me out of the car, ignoring Richard completely, and threw her arms around me and clutched on to me as if she were drowning. No tears, just that spine-cracking embrace.

  My eggshell hat fell out onto the gravel and Laura stepped on it. There was a crackling sound, an intake of breath from Richard. I said nothing. In that instant I no longer cared about the hat.

  Arms around each other's waists, Laura and I went up the steps into the house. Reenie loomed in the kitchen door at the far end of the hall, but she knew enough to leave us alone right then. I expect she turned her attention to Richard - distracted him
with a drink or something. Well, he would have wanted to look over the premises and have a stroll around the grounds, now that he'd effectively inherited them.

  We went straight up to Laura's room and sat down on her bed. We held on tightly to each other's hands - left in right, right in left. Laura wasn't weeping, as on the telephone. Instead she was calm as wood.

  "He was in the turret," said Laura. "He'd locked himself in."

  "He always did that," I said.

  "But this time he didn't come out. Reenie left the trays with his meals on them outside the door as usual, but he wasn't eating anything, or drinking anything either - or not that we could tell. So then we had to kick down the door."

  "You and Reenie?"

  "Reenie's boyfriend came - Ron Hincks - the one she's going to marry. He kicked it down. And Father was lying on the floor. He must have been there for at least two days, the doctor said. He looked awful."

  I hadn't realized that Ron Hincks was Reenie's boyfriend - indeed her fiance. How long had that been going on, and how had I missed it?

  "Was he dead, is that what you're saying?"

  "I didn't think so at first, because his eyes were open. But he was dead all right. He looked ... I can't tell you how he looked. As if he was listening, to something that had startled him. He looked watchful ."

  "Was he shot?" I don't know why I asked this.

  "No. He was just dead. It was put in the paper as natural causes - suddenly, of natural causes, is what it said - and Reenie told Mrs. Hillcoate that it was natural causes all right, because drinking certainly was like second nature to Father, and judging from all the empty bottles he'd downed enough booze to choke a horse."

  "He drank himself to death," I said. It wasn't a question. "When was this?"

  "It was right after they announced the permanent closing of the factories. That's what killed him. I know it was!"

  "What?" I said. "What permanent closing? Which factories?"

  "All of them," said Laura. "All of ours. Everything of ours in town. I thought you must have known about it."

  "I didn't know," I said.

  "Ours have been merged in with Richard's. Everything's been moved to Toronto. It's all Griffen-Chase Royal Consolidated, now." No more Sons, in other words. Richard had made a clean sweep of them.

  "So that means no jobs," I said. "None here. It's finished. Wiped out."

  "They said it was a matter of costs. After the button factory was burned - they said it would take too much to rebuild it."

  "Who is they?"

  "I don't know," said Laura. "Wasn't it Richard?"

  "That wasn't the deal," I said. Poor Father - trusting to handshakes and words of honour and unspoken assumptions. It was becoming clear to me that this was not the way things worked any more. Maybe it never had been.

  "What deal?" said Laura.

  "Never mind."

  I'd married Richard for nothing, then - I hadn't saved the factories, and I certainly hadn't saved Father. But there was Laura, still; she wasn't out on the street. I had to think of that. "Did he leave anything - any letter, any note?"

  "No."

  "Did you look?"

  "Reenie looked," said Laura in a small voice; which meant that she herself hadn't been up to it.

  Of course, I thought. Reenie would have looked. And if she had in fact found anything like that, she would have burned it.

  Besotted

  Father wouldn't have left a note though. He would have been aware of the implications. He wouldn't have wanted a verdict of suicide, because, as it turned out, he'd had some life insurance: he'd been paying into it for years, so no one could accuse him of having fixed it up at the last minute. He'd tied up the money - it was to go straight into a trust, so that only Laura could touch it, and only after she was twenty-one. He must already have distrusted Richard by then, and concluded that leaving any of it to me would have done no good. I was still a minor, and I was Richard's wife. The laws were different then. What was mine was his, to all intents and purposes.

  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 me was 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 said ancestral 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 realize 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 own
s 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.