A Jest of God (2 page)

After school I sit at my desk, waiting for Calla to appear. But when the knock sounds and the door opens, it is Willard Siddley. He’s always very nice to me. I can’t claim he isn’t. There is no real reason why I should dislike him, none at all. It’s that pompous manner of his, I think, the way he has of seeming to insist that his slightest word has significant meaning, and if you aren’t able to see it, the lack is yours. He is a good principal, though. I don’t question that. Everyone says so.

“That’s an enigmatic smile, Rachel. Is it the Sphinx or the Mona Lisa?”

His humour. I didn’t know I was smiling. If I was, it was only out of nervousness. Which is ridiculous. I’ve nothing to be afraid of, with him. He has never given a bad report to the School Board on my teaching, as far as I know. I don’t know why I should even think he might have. I can feel my face paling to the peculiar putty colour it takes on when I’m thrown a little off balance.

“I didn’t know I was smiling.” I have to explain my presence. “I was just going now. I’ve been sorting out the mimeographed pages for the –”

“Yes,” Willard says. “Well, I won’t keep you a moment.”

I know I must not stand up now, not until he’s gone. I am exceptionally tall for a woman, and Willard is shorter than I. He arranges it whenever possible so that when we are talking either he is seated or I am, and there is no comparison. He hates to be considered a short man. He makes up for what may seem to him his stunted stature by being six hundred times more brisk than anyone needs to be. He calls this efficiency. He reads books on Time-Motion Study and draws charts on how to make your head save your heels.

He strides across to my desk now, places his hands on the edge of it, leans down and looks at me earnestly from behind his glasses. His eyes are pallid, like the blue dead eyes of the frozen whitefish we used to get in the winter when I was a child, and I always choked on that fish, recalling the eyes.

At morning recess today James tripped Gil Maitland and made him go down on his knees in the gravel. I saw. I was standing near by and had my back half turned, so there was no necessity to let on I’d seen. Willard saw, too, did he? That’s what he wants now. “Just a word, Rachel – I’m not an old-fashioned disciplinarian, as I am sure you know, but – must restrain the child against his or her own violence – we must not hesitate, must we, Rachel, when it is in the child’s own best –”. I know he’ll say it. What he doesn’t know is that Gil jumped off the teeter-totter yesterday, purposely, when James was at the top end, way up in the air, and the plank crashed down. I didn’t go to James, although I knew he was hurt. I never do with any of them, because I know I mustn’t, unless they’re crying. He didn’t cry, of course. I should have told him off today, though, I guess. Tripping is forbidden. Willard likes using the strap on boys. He claims he only does it as a last resort. But he’s always looking for occasions.

“What is it?” An hour seems to have passed since he spoke, but it’s only a second. I can’t keep this stupid edge of anxiety out of my voice. “Anything the matter?”

“Oh no,” Willard says, looking surprised. “Angela and I wondered if you’d come over for dinner tonight, that’s all.”

That’s all he had to say. An invitation for dinner. Angela, his petulant do-gooding wife, forever proffering kindness to the single teachers. I don’t want to go. I can’t, I really can’t anyway.

“Oh – thanks – that’s awfully nice of you, but I’m afraid I can’t. Tonight is Mother’s bridge night. I always do the coffee and sandwiches. She gets too fussed if she has to do everything herself.”

Willard nods. There’s something reptilian about the look of him. Not snakelike – more a lizard, sleek, dry-skinned, dapper, and his eyes now dartingly quick and sly, glinting at me, thinking he knows all about me. The skin on his hands is speckled, sun-spotted, and small hairs sprout even from his knuckles.

“Well, I’m sorry you can’t make it,” he says. “An old friend of yours is going to be there.”

Then he is off, at the door already, with that scurrying walk of his.

“Who?”

He turns and shakes a finger at me.

“Uh-uh. Too late now. Unless you’ll change your mind?”

“I’m sorry. I told you – I can’t go.”

He’s gone. My own hands, spread out on the desk, are too large. Large and too thin, like empty gloves.

Why did I have to ask him who? Like that. So eagerly. Was that how it sounded? As though I couldn’t wait to be told. And he, so malicious, replying like that. Once Calla said to him,
“Don’t be mean, Willard,” over something he’d said to me, and he replied, “Oh come on, now, can’t you take a joke?”

It is only now, concentrating on my hands, the nails nicely manicured and coated with colourless polish, that I realize something else. When Willard Siddley’s spotted furry hands were on my desk, I wanted to touch them. To see what the hairs felt like. Yet he repulses me.

I didn’t. I won’t. I didn’t feel that way. I’m only imagining things again.

“Hallo, child.”

Calla. I wish she wouldn’t call me
child.
It sounds ridiculous. I’ve asked her not to, but she doesn’t stop. She’s carrying, I see now, a potted plant. A hyacinth, bulbously in bud and just about to give birth to the blue-purple blossom.

“Here you are. For your desk. So you’ll be convinced spring is upon us.”

“Calla – it’s lovely. How kind of you.” It really is, and I’m not thanking her sufficiently. She may guess how awkward I feel about her generosity. “Thanks ever so much. You shouldn’t have.”

“Bosh,” she says, waving a brawny chintz-encased arm. “I was getting some for the Tabernacle. It’s my week to do the flowers. So I thought I might as well get two extra, one for you and one for me. It’s rather a nice one, isn’t it? I got them at Zimmer’s. They had some gorgeous lilies as well, but I have a mean prejudice against those, as you know.”

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 divine 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.