the girls some scrambled eggs for supper, she would just slip off to bed if he didn’t mind.
I never doubted that she loved the house more than she loved us. Our father and Judith and I only impeded her progress as she plunged from one room to the next. Our very presence made the rooms untidy; sitting on the new chintz slipcover we pulled the pattern off-centre, and our school books on the sideboard disturbed the balance of her ornaments. Once I chipped the Chinese blue kitchen cupboards with the broom handle, thus necessitating a frantic search through all the hardware stores in Scarborough for patch-up paint, a search she suddenly abandoned when it was decided that the cupboards should be painted a pale pumpkin to match the striped cafe curtains which she planned to “run up” as soon as she finished gluing on the moulding in the front bedroom.
Suddenly it stopped. Overnight her obsession became a memory, the way she was before she got old. Judith says it was about the time our father died. I think it was a little earlier. It’s been years now since she has made even the slightest alteration to the house. All the upholstery is faded, slightly soiled on the arms, and when I was last there five years ago I actually saw a patch of the old Chinese blue paint in the kitchen showing through the pumpkin. And under that? A scratch of pink? Perhaps.
I don’t know why she stopped. I must ask her when I see her. Casually mention something like, “Remember how interested you used to be in decorating—why is it you don’t do it anymore?”
But of course I won’t actually say anything of the kind. These offhand conversations which I always rehearse in my mind before seeing my mother never materialize because, once in her presence, I freeze back to sullen childhood when all such phenomena were accepted without comment. To question would be to injure the delicate springs of impulse and emotion. For an obsession such as the one which ruled my mother’s life could only have existed to fill a terrible hurting void; it is the void we must not mention, for, who knows, it may still exist just below the uneasy quaking surface. Quicksand. So easy to get sucked under. Better to walk carefully, to say nothing.
She may have lost her nerve and become, in the end, finally doubtful about what she had once taken to be taste. Perhaps she simply became exhausted. Or the cost of paint and paper may have strained her small pension. It may be that she suddenly realized one day that all her energy was being poured into an unworthy vessel. Or perhaps she was struck with the heart-racking futility of altering mere surfaces and never reaching the heart: her world was immutable, she may have decided. What was the point of trying to change it?
Because the Vistadome is packed with people, Eugene and I sit side by side in the day coach, I by the window and he in the aisle seat. We are leaving the mountains behind and for an hour we’ve watched their angles collapse; they are softening and melting into green, elongated hills which, with their hint of cultivation, are mannerly and almost English. Eugene tells me he has never crossed the Rockies by train before.
“Why not?” I ask.
He shrugs; he is a man much given to shrugging, resignation being the principal inheritance of his forty years. “I don’t really know.”
“How did you get out of Estevan in the first place?” I demand.
“Bus,” he says. “I left on a Thursday afternoon and got into Vancouver late on a Friday night. September. It was the first Friday in September, I remember exactly. I’d just turned eighteen.”
“Why didn’t you take the train?” I ask, wanting details.
“The bus was cheaper,” he explains carefully as though I were exceedingly simple. “Probably only a buck or two, but to my folks—” he stops, shrugging again.
“How did you get home for holidays,” I ask, “when you were at university?” These questions are necessary, for though Eugene and I
I never doubted that she loved the house more than she loved us. Our father and Judith and I only impeded her progress as she plunged from one room to the next. Our very presence made the rooms untidy; sitting on the new chintz slipcover we pulled the pattern off-centre, and our school books on the sideboard disturbed the balance of her ornaments. Once I chipped the Chinese blue kitchen cupboards with the broom handle, thus necessitating a frantic search through all the hardware stores in Scarborough for patch-up paint, a search she suddenly abandoned when it was decided that the cupboards should be painted a pale pumpkin to match the striped cafe curtains which she planned to “run up” as soon as she finished gluing on the moulding in the front bedroom.
Suddenly it stopped. Overnight her obsession became a memory, the way she was before she got old. Judith says it was about the time our father died. I think it was a little earlier. It’s been years now since she has made even the slightest alteration to the house. All the upholstery is faded, slightly soiled on the arms, and when I was last there five years ago I actually saw a patch of the old Chinese blue paint in the kitchen showing through the pumpkin. And under that? A scratch of pink? Perhaps.
I don’t know why she stopped. I must ask her when I see her. Casually mention something like, “Remember how interested you used to be in decorating—why is it you don’t do it anymore?”
But of course I won’t actually say anything of the kind. These offhand conversations which I always rehearse in my mind before seeing my mother never materialize because, once in her presence, I freeze back to sullen childhood when all such phenomena were accepted without comment. To question would be to injure the delicate springs of impulse and emotion. For an obsession such as the one which ruled my mother’s life could only have existed to fill a terrible hurting void; it is the void we must not mention, for, who knows, it may still exist just below the uneasy quaking surface. Quicksand. So easy to get sucked under. Better to walk carefully, to say nothing.
She may have lost her nerve and become, in the end, finally doubtful about what she had once taken to be taste. Perhaps she simply became exhausted. Or the cost of paint and paper may have strained her small pension. It may be that she suddenly realized one day that all her energy was being poured into an unworthy vessel. Or perhaps she was struck with the heart-racking futility of altering mere surfaces and never reaching the heart: her world was immutable, she may have decided. What was the point of trying to change it?
Because the Vistadome is packed with people, Eugene and I sit side by side in the day coach, I by the window and he in the aisle seat. We are leaving the mountains behind and for an hour we’ve watched their angles collapse; they are softening and melting into green, elongated hills which, with their hint of cultivation, are mannerly and almost English. Eugene tells me he has never crossed the Rockies by train before.
“Why not?” I ask.
He shrugs; he is a man much given to shrugging, resignation being the principal inheritance of his forty years. “I don’t really know.”
“How did you get out of Estevan in the first place?” I demand.
“Bus,” he says. “I left on a Thursday afternoon and got into Vancouver late on a Friday night. September. It was the first Friday in September, I remember exactly. I’d just turned eighteen.”
“Why didn’t you take the train?” I ask, wanting details.
“The bus was cheaper,” he explains carefully as though I were exceedingly simple. “Probably only a buck or two, but to my folks—” he stops, shrugging again.
“How did you get home for holidays,” I ask, “when you were at university?” These questions are necessary, for though Eugene and I
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