A Jest of God Read online

  Calla’s mother was exceptionally fond of white lilies, and christened her only daughter after one variety of them. Calla detests her name and no wonder. Nothing less lily-like could possibly be imagined. She’s a sunflower, if anything, brash, strong, plain, and yet reaching up in some way, I suppose, even though that Tabernacle of hers seems an odd way for anyone to choose.

  “We’re having a special service tonight,” she says, almost shyly now, the meagrely hopeful voice she uses for this one purpose. “Out-of-town speaker, supposed to be worth hearing. I don’t suppose you’d care to come along, Rachel?”

  I’ve gone with her once or twice, against my better judgement. They sing the hymns like jazz, and people rise to testify, and I was so mortified I didn’t know which way to look. How can they make fools of themselves like that, so publicly?

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Calla. I’d like to go, but it’s Mother’s bridge night.”

  “You don’t get out enough,” she frowns.

  I know it’s only that she is concerned, but what business is it of hers?

  “It’s none of my business,” she says, as though knowing my mind. “But – well, even if you don’t believe, it’s a way of getting out. For me, it’s the rock of my soul, kid, but even if you can’t feel that way, it would still –”

  Does she imagine I’m that much in need? Anything for an evening out?

  “The next special service, I’ll go,” I hear myself promising.

  “Oh well – don’t feel you have to. I didn’t mean –”

  “No, no, I’d love to, really. Honestly. It’s just that this particular evening –”

  “Yeh. Okay. Well, we’ll see, then.”

  At least I have postponed it, and perhaps by that time some reasonable excuse will come along, or I’ll be dead.

  I wish I hadn’t noticed the look of disappointment on her face as she went out. But all the same, she tried bribing me with hyacinths – what a nerve.

  At last I can leave. The halls are quiet, and from upstairs I can hear the swishing and clash of the janitor’s broom and dustpan. The daylight stays longer these days, and the streets are not quite dusk yet. The maple branches are black and intricate against the white unwarm sky. The leaves will not be out for another month. The cement sidewalks are nearly dry, the last of the melted snow having seeped away. I turn at River Street and walk past the quiet dark brick houses, too big for their remaining occupants, built by somebody’s grandfathers who did well long ago out of a brickworks or the first butcher shop. Long ago meaning half a century. Nothing is old here, but it looks old. The timber houses age fast, and even the brick looks worn down after fifty years of blizzard winters and blistering summers. They’re put to shame by the new bungalows like a bakery’s pastel cakes, identical, fresh, tasteless. This is known as a good part of town. Not like the other side of the tracks, where the shacks are and where the weeds are let grow knee-high and not dutifully mown, and where a few bootleggers drive new Chevrolets on the strength of home-made red biddy. No – that’s as it used to be when I was a kid, and I would go with Stacey sometimes, because she was never afraid. I don’t know what it’s like now. Half my children live at that end of town. I never go there, and know it only from hearsay, distorted local legend, or the occasional glimpse from a child’s words.

  How cold the wind is becoming. I should have worn a scarf and my woollen gloves. I’ve just managed to get rid of that nasty hacking cough. I certainly don’t want it back again. If I could put on a little weight, I wouldn’t feel the cold so. But I’ve always been too thin, like Dad. Stacey takes after Mother, and in consequence has a good figure. Or had. I haven’t seen her since the last two were born. I haven’t seen my sister for seven years. She never comes back here. Why should she? She’s lived away for years. She has her own home, and wouldn’t be bothered to visit here, not even so Mother might see the children. She’s very decisive, is Stacey. She knew right from the start what she wanted most, which was to get as far away from Manawaka as possible. She didn’t lose a moment in doing it.

  My great mistake was in being born the younger. No. Where I went wrong was in coming back here, once I’d got away. A person has to be ruthless. One has to say I’m going, and not be prevailed upon to return.

  But how could I? I couldn’t finish university after Dad’s death. The money wasn’t there. None of us ever suspected how little he had, until he died. He’d had a good business, or so we thought. Mother said, “I hate to say it, but there’s no doubt where it all went.” If she hated to say it, why did she? Then it was – “Only for a year or so, Rachel, until we see.” See what? She couldn’t be the one to move – I do see that. She’d be lost any place else. Stacey was already married, and with a child, and Mac selling encyclopaedias at the west coast. She said I must see how impossible it would be for her. Yes, I saw, I see. Seesaw. From pillar to post. What could I have done differently?

  I’ve been teaching in Manawaka for fourteen years.

  A faint giggle. I’ve been walking with my eyes fixed downwards. Who is it?

  “Hello, Miss Cameron.”

  “Oh – hello, Clare. Hello, Carol.”

  I taught them in Grade Two. Now they’re about sixteen, I guess. Their hair is incredible. Piled high, finespun, like the high light conical mass of woven sugar threads, the candy floss we used to get at fairs. Theirs is nearly white and is called Silver Blonde. I know that much. It’s not mysterious. It’s held up by back-combing, and the colour sprayed on, and the whole thing secured with lacquer like a coating of ice over a snowdrift. They look like twins from outer space. No, not twins necessarily. Another race. Venusians. But that’s wrong, too. This is their planet. They are the ones who live here now.

  I’ve known them nearly all their lives. But it doesn’t seem so. Does thirty-four seem antediluvian to them? Why did they laugh? There isn’t anything to be frightened of, in that laughter. Why should they have meant anything snide by it?

  I have my hair done every week at Riché Beauty Salon. It used to be Lou’s Beauty Parlour when I got my hair done first, at sixteen. They’d find that amusing, probably. I say to the girl, “As little curl as possible, if you can.” So it turns out looking exactly as it’s always done, nondescript waves, mole brown. What if I said some week, “Do it like candy floss, a high cone of it, and gold?” Then they would really laugh. With my height. How silly I am to think of it. But what beats me is how the Venusians learn to do all these things for themselves. They don’t have their hair done. Who teaches them? I suppose they’re young enough to ask around. At that age it’s no shame not to know.

  Japonica Street. Around our place the spruce trees still stand, as I remember them forever. No other trees are so darkly sheltering, shutting out prying eyes or the sun in summer, the spearheads of them taller than houses, the low branches heavy, reaching down to the ground like the greenblack feathered strong-boned wings of giant and extinct birds. The house is not large – it often surprises me to realize this. The same way it will surprise my children to return when they’re grown and look around the classroom and see how small the desks are. The house used to seem enormous, and I think of it that way yet. Rust brick, nothing to set it off or mark it as different from the other brick houses near by. Nothing except the sign, and the fact that the ground floor doesn’t belong to us.

  When I was a child the sign was painted on board, pale-grey background, black lettering, and it said Cameron’s Funeral Parlour. Later, my father, laughing in some way incomprehensible to me then and being chided for it by Mother, announced other times other manners. The new sign was ebony background and gilt lettering, Cameron Funeral Home. After he died, and we sold the establishment, the phraseology moved on. The blue neon, kept lighted day and night, now flashes Japonica Funeral Chapel. All that remains is for someone to delete the word funeral. A nasty word, smacking of mortality. No one in Manawaka ever dies, at least not on this side of the tracks. We are a gathering of immortals. We pass on, through Calla’s div
ine gates of topaz and azure, perhaps, but we do not die. Death is rude, unmannerly, not to be spoken to in the street.

  It was in those rooms on the ground floor there, where I was told never to go, that my father lived away his life. All I could think of, then, was the embarrassment of being the daughter of someone with his stock-in-trade. It never occurred to me to wonder about him, and whether he possibly felt at ease with them, the unspeaking ones, and out of place in our house, things being what they were. I never had a chance to ask him. By the time I knew the question it was too late, and asking it would have cut into him too much.

  We were fortunate to be able to stay on here, Mother and I. We sold the place outright, but for much less than it was worth, for the right to stay. Hector Jonas got a bargain. He already had a house. He didn’t want the top floor of this one. At least we live rent free in perpetuity, or near enough to suit our purposes. I sometimes wonder what I’ll do when Mother dies. Will I stay, or what?

  “Hello, dear. Aren’t you rather late tonight?”

  “Hello, Mother. Not especially. I had some clearing up to do.”

  “Well, I’ve got a nice lamb chop, so I hope you’ll eat it. You’re not eating enough these days, Rachel.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You say you’re fine, but don’t forget I know you pretty well, dear.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’re too conscientious, Rachel, that’s your trouble. Other people don’t allow their work to get on their nerves.”

  “It’s not. I’m fine. A little tired, perhaps, but that’s normal.”

  “You fret about them too much, whether they’re doing well or not. But mercy, you didn’t bestow their brains on them, did you? It’s not up to you. Small thanks you’ll get for it, if you ask me anything.”

  She stands beside the stove. Her heart is very tricky and could vanquish her at any moment. Yet her ankles are still slender and she takes pride in wearing only fine-denier nylons and never sensible shoes. Her hair is done every week, saucily stiff grey sausage curls, and the frames of her glasses are delphinium blue and elfin. Where does this cuteness come from, when she’s the one who must plump up the chesterfield cushions each night before retiring and empty every ashtray and make the house look as though no frail and mortal creature ever set foot in it?

  “What are you having tonight?”

  “Asparagus rolls, I thought,” she says earnestly, “and that celery and ham mixture. I’ve got it made. All you have to do is spread them. Can you do the asparagus rolls or shall I do those first?”

  “I can do them. It’s all right.”

  “Well, we could do them and put them in the fridge. It might be easier.”

  “If you like. We’ll do them after dinner, then.”

  “I don’t mind, dear – whatever you like,” she says, believing she means it.

  How strange it is that I do not even know how old she is. She’s never told me, and I’m not supposed to ask. In the world she inhabits, age is still as unmentionable as death. Am I as far away as that, from the children who aren’t mine? She’s in her seventies, I can guess with reasonable accuracy, as she bore me late, but the exact positioning is her wealth, a kept secret. And it matters. It means something. Does she think someone cares whether she’s sixty or ninety?

  I could have gone to Willard’s for dinner. I could have gone with Calla. I wish I had. Now that it comes to it, I do not know why I didn’t, one or the other.

  It’s her only outlet, her only entertainment. I can’t begrudge her. Anyone decent would be only too glad.

  As I am, really, at heart. I’ll feel better, more fortified, when I’ve had dinner. I don’t begrudge it to her, this one evening of bridge with the only three long long friends. How could I? No one decent would.

  Thank God, thank God. They are finally gone. The last cup is washed and put away. The living-room is tidied enough to suit her. It might be the midsummer gathering of a coven, the amount of fuss we go to, lace tablecloth, the Spode china, the silver tray for sandwiches, the little dishes of salted nuts to nibble at. Well, it’s only at our place once a month. I can’t complain, really. And it is nice for her. She enjoys it. Her face grows animated and her voice almost gay – “Verla, you’re not going into no-trump – you wouldn’t dare! Oh girls isn’t she the meanest thing you ever saw?” She doesn’t have much to interest her these days. She never reads a book and can’t bear music. Her life is very restricted now. It always was, though. It’s never been any different. Just this house and her dwindling circle of friends. She and Dad had given up conversing long ago, by the time I was born. She used to tell him not to lean back in the upholstered chairs, in case his hair oil rubbed off. Then she put those crocheted doilies on all the chair backs. And finally on the chair arms as well, as though she felt his hands could never be clean, considering what he handled in his work. Maybe she didn’t feel that way at all. Maybe it only seemed so to me.

  This bedroom is the same I’ve always had. I should change the furniture. How girlish it is, how old-fashioned. The white spindly-legged dressing-table, the round mirror with white rose-carved frame, the white-painted metal bed with its white-painted metal bow decorating the head like a starched forgotten hair-ribbon. Surely I could afford new furniture. It’s my salary, after all, my salary we live on. She’d say it was a waste, to throw out perfectly good furniture. I suppose it would be, too, if you think of it like that.

  I always brush my hair a hundred strokes. I can’t succeed in avoiding my eyes in the mirror. The narrow angular face stares at me, the grey eyes too wide for it.

  I don’t look old. I don’t look more than thirty. Or do I see my face falsely? How do I know how it looks to anyone else? About six months ago, one of the salesmen who was calling on Hector Jonas, downstairs, asked me out and like an idiot I went. We went to the Regal Café for dinner, and I thought every minute someone I knew would see me and know he sold embalming fluid. Of course someone has to sell it. But when he told me I had good bones, it was too much. As though he were one of the ancient Egyptians who interred the pharaohs and knew too intimately the secrets of the core and marrow. Do I have good bones? I can’t tell. I’m no judge.

  Go to bed, Rachel. And hope to sleep.

  The voices of the girls, the old ladies, still echo, the prattling, the tiny stabs of laughter making them clutch their bosoms for fear of their hearts. They feel duty bound to address a few remarks to me, remarks which have fallen into a comfortable stability. “How’s school, Rachel?” Fine, thank you. “I guess they must keep you pretty busy, all those youngsters.” Yes, they certainly do. “Well, I think it’s marvellous, the way you manage – I always think that anyone who’s a teacher is marvellous to take on a job like that.” Oh, I enjoy it. “Well, that’s marvellous – don’t you think so, May?” And Mother nods and says yes it certainly is marvellous and Rachel is a born teacher.

  My God. How can I stand –

  Stop. Stop it, Rachel. Steady. Get a grip on yourself, now. Relax. Sleep. Try.

  Doctor Raven would give a few sleeping pills to me. Why on earth don’t I? They frighten me. What if one became addicted? Does it run in the family? Nonsense, not drugs. It wasn’t drugs with him. “Your father’s not feeling well today.” Her martyred voice. That sort of thing is not physical, for heaven’s sake, not passed on. Yet I can see myself at school, years from now, never fully awake, in a constant dozing and drowsing, sitting at my desk, my head bobbing slowly up and down, my mouth gradually falling open without my knowing it, and people seeing and whispering until finally –

  Oh no. Am I doing it again, this waking nightmare? How weird am I already? Trying to stave off something that has already grown inside me and spread its roots through my blood?

  Now, then. Enough of this. The main thing is to be sensible, to stop thinking and to go to sleep. Right away. Concentrate. I need the sleep badly. It’s essential.

  I can’t. Tonight is hell on wheels again. Trite. Hell on wheels. But alm
ost accurate. The night feels like a gigantic ferris wheel turning in blackness, very slowly, turning once for each hour, interminably slow. And I am glued to it, or wired, like paper, like a photograph, insubstantial, unable to anchor myself, unable to stop this slow nocturnal circling.

  This pain inside my skull – what is it? It isn’t like an ordinary headache which goes through like a metal skewer from temple to temple. Not like sinus, either, the assault beginning above my eyes and moving down into the bones of my face. This pain is not so much pain as a pulsing, regular and rhythmical, like the low thudding of a drum.

  It’s nothing. How could it be a tumour? It’s nothing. Perhaps I have a soft spot in my head. This joke doesn’t work. I can’t hold on to the slang sense of it, and its other meaning seems sinister. Fontanelle.

  Something meaningless, something neutral – I must focus on that. But what? Now I can’t think. I can’t stop thinking. If the pain is anything, then I’ll see Doctor Raven, of course. Naturally. It wouldn’t hurt to go in for a check-up soon, anyway. It might be a very good idea. I can’t afford to let myself get run down.

  I can’t sleep.

  – A forest. Tonight it is a forest. Sometimes it is a beach. It has to be right away from everywhere. Otherwise she may be seen. The trees are green walls, high and shielding, boughs of pine and tamarack, branches sweeping to earth, forming a thousand rooms among the fallen leaves. She is in the green-walled room, the boughs opening just enough to let the sun in, the moss hairy and soft on the earth. She cannot see his face clearly. His features are blurred as though his were a face seen through water. She sees only his body distinctly, his shoulders and arms deeply tanned, his belly flat and hard. He is wearing only tight-fitting jeans, and his swelling sex shows. She touches him there, and he trembles, absorbing her fingers’ pressure. Then they are lying along one another, their skins slippery. His hands, his mouth are on the wet warm skin of her inner thighs. Now –