A Jest of God (13 page)

“No, I’m all right. Good night, Nick.”

“Good night, darling. I’ll see you.”

Mother is awake. Of course. Anything else would have been too much to hope for. The instant she hears me on the stairs she flicks on her light. What if she comes out into the hall and sees me like this, dishevelled? I will not be quizzed. I won’t be. I’ll refuse.

“That you, Rachel?”

“Yes.”

Who does she think it is – the Angel of Death? But maybe that’s precisely what she did think. Maybe she has been lying there for hours, listening for uncertainties in her heart’s beating. Or worrying about me. She cares about me. I matter to her.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Mother. Would you like some cocoa?”

“That would be nice, dear. And I think I could manage a little slice of toast, while you’re on your feet.”

Into the bathroom, quickly, to re-do my makeup and hair. There. Now I look neat, usual. And yet, when I’m in her
room and handing her the tray, I avoid the querulous fragility of her face, the over-brightness of her eyes rimmed with the shadows of sickness or disappointment. I cannot look at her. She wouldn’t know at all; no explanation could ever get through to her. There are three worlds and I’m in the middle one, and this seems now to be a weak area between millstones.

At last she’s settled and I can go to bed. I haven’t begun to think yet. I’ve been saving that for when I am alone.

I wish I could tell my sister.

Right now, I’m fantastically happy. He did want me. And I wasn’t afraid. I think that when he is with me, I don’t feel any fear. Or hardly any. Soon I won’t feel any at all.

He thought I lied to him.

I couldn’t tell him I hadn’t. At least it’s better than having him know the absurdity of the truth. But I wish he didn’t think I had lied. How could I have been so dense, when he said, “It’s never much good the first time”? I should have seen what he meant. If I had, then the matter of telling lies wouldn’t have arisen. Damn. Damn. Why didn’t I see? It was quite obvious.

He said, “You were pretty tense, darling.” Yes. More than I knew, even? I don’t know how one is supposed to be. I don’t know what other women are like. Of course he would be comparing.
Tense.
All my actions jagged, jerky, spasmodic, convulsive? I didn’t do well. I must have been – no, I won’t think of it. I can’t. I can’t think of anything else. But he said “Next time –”. God, please. Even if only once more. So I can make up for it. So I can cancel out the clumsiness. Please.

I don’t know why a person pleads with God. If I believed, the last kind of a Creator I could imagine would be a human-type Being who could be reached by tears or bribed with words.
Say please, Rachel, it’s the magic word.
Mother.

Please, God, let him phone.

And the way I rushed off like that.
What’s the hurry?
He was amused. No wonder. Crash! And I’d pushed him away and flashed into my clothes as though there were an unseen audience ready to hoot and caw with a shocking derision. Someone might really have come along, though. Just because the place wasn’t much frequented when Nick was a kid, that doesn’t mean it’s the same now. Someone might very easily have come along. I couldn’t have borne that.
What’s the hurry?
Oh Christ, I might at least not have done it the way I did. I can see myself now, the frenetic haste, like a person in some early film, everything speeded-up comically.

I must not think. And now I remember. He said, “You’ll take care of yourself when you get home, won’t you?” I can’t. I haven’t got anything. Has Mother? Somewhere, undoubtedly, some antique contraption. A red tube like a catheter, a bag like a rubber udder. The coldness of my nausea is like a stone in my guts. No. I won’t get worked up over details. I can’t afford that, not any more. Would Mother have kept it? That’s the only important question at the moment. She never throws anything away. But where would it be? I can’t rummage around now, that’s plain. I can’t think straight.

What if it happens? When am I due? Not for another two weeks. That’s the worst time, too, the most likely, right in the middle of the month. What if? That’s crazy. It’s stupid to worry. It hardly ever happens the first time. What would I do, though? What would become of me? Maybe –

No, he wouldn’t. Anyway, who would want anyone on those terms? A life is too long for reproach. That would be worse than any alternative.

You’ll fix yourself?
How can I? Listen, Nick – you don’t understand. How can I get what is necessary? Doctor Raven has known me since I was a child. I can’t see myself going to
him. It’s out of the question. Or going to the Manawaka Pharmacy, where everybody knows me. How can I? He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know. I’ll have to tell him. He’ll have to. It’s up to him. What if he won’t? He will, of course. But what if he won’t? Then I’ll just not see him again.

Yes I will, though.

“D
id you see that awful rubbishy thing that’s on at the Roxy this week, May?”

“No. No, I didn’t. Rachel and I did intend to go, we fully intended, but Rachel’s been rather tired lately, poor child. She’s always just that little bit run-down for a full month after school quits. She needs to rest up. It’s the only thing. What was the movie, Verla?”

“Teenage Tigress.
Well, really, I ask you. Just junk, of course. All these awful creatures with those sloppy hairdos and not an ounce of decency or sense among the whole lot of them. I could hardly sit through it.”

“Whose deal? Oh, mine? They’re not making any good movies any more, that’s the whole trouble.”

“I used to like Claudette Colbert.”

“So did I. She was sweet. So natural. And such pretty hair. Let’s see. I think – I think just maybe – yes, I’m going to say one spade.”

“I used to like Ruby Keeler.”

“She was years ago, Holly. Years and years ago.”

“Well, it wasn’t that long ago, I don’t believe. I’m no older than you are, Verla. It doesn’t seem that long ago to me.”

“Florence, what are you bidding?”

“With this mean old hand, I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, make up your mind, dear. Nothing venture, nothing gain. Try some of these, Holly. They’re not the ordinary Bridge Mixture. These have got chocolate-covered raisins, as well. I think it’s a nice addition, myself.”

“Oh, thanks, May. Just a few, then. Maureen tells me I shouldn’t eat candies.”

“Mercy, why not? You’ve hardly gained at all, not to speak of.”

“Well, she says –”

“I’m going to pass, May. Honestly, with this hand –”

“The one next week at the Roxy is
The Doomed Women.
I can’t imagine what it can be about. I don’t suppose it’ll be worth seeing. Harold says if I want to go, I can go alone. He’s reading the life of Albert Schweitzer. It’s very long.”

“I’ll go with you, Verla, if you like.”

“Oh, are you sure, Holly? I just hate going alone. I don’t feel right about it.”

The voices. Shrill, sedate, not clownish to their ears but only to mine, and of such unadmitted sadness I can scarcely listen and yet cannot stop listening.

There. That’s the last of the sandwiches cut fine and bite-size. So Rachel’s a bit run-down, is she? She needs to rest, eh? As if I were getting the opportunity to do anything much else. It’s been a week, nearly.

So much for my practicality and my stealth, persuading Mother over to Mrs. Gunn’s where the garden is pleasant to sit in (this pretext flowering so naturally that I wouldn’t have found it difficult, myself, to be convinced). Then running
back to ransack her dresser like a she-Goth out for loot. Small blue glass bottles, once
Evening in Paris
but long since dried; a stack of heavy clotted-lace doilies she crocheted for the arms of chairs and never used, having a million others; new nylon nightgowns, pink pastel, still folded in the tissue paper, given to her by my sister each Christmas, but believed too delicate to wear – morbidly, she saves them for hospital and the last illness, so she’ll die demurely; a sachet of rose petals encased in stiff mauve voile and tied with a royal purple ribbon, the petals now ruined to the appearance of bran flakes; a chocolate box filled with sepia photographs of herself, a ringleted child with enormous long-lashed eyes and prettily pursed mouth, and one picture of Niall Cameron, awkwardly proud and unbelievably young in his new uniform as Private in the Artillery in 1915.

Under all the souvenirs, another one, the thing I was looking for. I took it back to my bedroom and hid it, not examining it, hardly able to pick it up for the loathing I felt. I sat on my bed and smoked and thought
This isn’t the way to do it – something is all wrong here.
I won’t ever be able to touch that contrivance. Anyway, it probably doesn’t work, not any more. It’s rotten with age, more than likely.

Let’s say I tell Mother I have to go to the city for a few days. What for? I could be buying books. There are plenty of drugstores, and not a soul to know a person. Could I ask, or would I get my words confused, come out with something I never meant to say?

None of this should be, not this way. How can I be steadier? To be nonchalant would be the best thing in the world, if I knew how. It’s all right for Stacey. She’d laugh, probably. Everything is all right for her, easy and open. She doesn’t appreciate what she’s got. She doesn’t even know she’s got it. She
thinks she’s hard done by, for the work caused by four kids and a man who admits her existence. She doesn’t have the faintest notion. She left here young. She gave the last daughter my name. I suppose she thought she was doing me a favour. Jennifer Rachel. But they call her Jen.

“How about the sandwiches, Rachel? Are they ready?”

“Yes. You don’t want them yet, do you? It’s only eight.”

“No, I just thought I’d see how you were coming along, dear, that’s all.”

“Fine. Everything is ready.”

“Oh, that’s lovely, dear.”

The phone. I can’t intercept her. She’s too quick.

“Rachel – it’s for you.”

Her voice rises in questionment. Damn. I am shaking and cannot seem to stop. Mother, her mock-diamond earrings flickering in the hall light, hands me the receiver and a blank look.

“Hello.”

“Hi. Sorry I didn’t phone you earlier, Rachel. I meant to, but this place has been like a circus today. Are you busy?”

“When? Now?”

“Yes.”

In the livingroom the voices mercifully begin again.

“No – I’m not busy.”

“Can I pick you up in – let’s say a quarter of an hour?”

“Yes. That would be fine.”

He laughs. “I like that polite voice of yours. I’m glad it’s deceptive, though.”

“Is it?”

“Well, that’s my impression. I could be wrong.”

“Although you so rarely are?”

“That’s it, darling. You’ve got it. Well – see you.”

I have to summon Mother. She comes out looking anxious.

“What is it, Rachel? Is anything the matter?”

“No. No, of course not. It’s just – well, I’m going out for a little while. With Nick.”

If she had not answered the phone, I think I would have told her Calla was ill and I had to go over there. It isn’t that I want to lie to her. But she invites it, even demands it. Whoever said the truth shall make you free never knew this kind of house. Now she’s upset.

“Is that the same person, Rachel?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s too late to go the movie, dear.”

If I laughed, she would be hurt, really hurt.

“We’ll go to the Regal and have coffee. I like talking to him.”

“Well, dear, you do what you think best. I’d never suggest you shouldn’t go. Only, on a bridge night – well, never mind. We’ll just have to stop playing while I do the serving, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry. Honestly. It’s just that –”

“Oh, I quite understand, dear. You go right ahead. I know it doesn’t happen very often. It’s just that you’re always here, on a bridge night, that’s all, and it’s such a help to me.”

I won’t go, then –
I find the words are there already in my throat, and yet I force them back. This newfound ruthlessness exhilarates me. I won’t turn back. If I do, I’m done for. Yet I can’t look at her, either, or see the sallowness of her face.

“Well –” her voice is like a thread of gum, stretched thin from someone’s mouth until it may break and dangle, “I guess Verla won’t mind giving me a hand with the cups and things –”

“I’m sorry. I mean, to leave you like this. But I won’t be late.”

“No,” she says, circling my wrist with her white sapphire-ringed hand, “don’t be, dear, will you?”

The Kazliks’ place is about three miles out of town, along the gravel highway where the telephone wires hum like the harps of the wind. The house is set back from the road, indistinguishable from a thousand frame farmhouses planted among the poplars. The barn, though, is splendid and enormous, as newly white as an egg. At the front of the house someone, Nick’s mother probably, has planted orange and yellow calendula, and blue larkspur and zinnias stiff and dowdy as paper flowers.

“I’ve never been here before.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would have been.”

“How long are your parents away for?”

“Oh, just a few days, likely. My mother would like to stay a week, at least, at her brother’s place in Galloping Mountain, but the old man will never stay away that long. He doesn’t trust me. Jago is here, but nevertheless my dad expects to get back and find the business in ruins. Of course, he’s quite right in a way. I don’t know the first thing about cows, except what I remember from when I was a kid, and that was as little as possible.”

“Didn’t you ever like the place, Nick?”

“I guess before I started school I did. Not after that. Historical irony – it took my father fifteen years to build up that herd of his, and I used to wish every goddamn cow would drop dead.”

“What did you wish he’d been?”

“Oh – doctor, lawyer, merchant chief. Even a railway-man.”

“Or undertaker?”

“No,” Nick says with a smile, “not that. Did it bug you?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Don’t misunderstand, though. I loved my father.”

“Never mind. It’s a common complaint. Come on, darling, let’s go in.”