Wallflowers (21 page)

That night, she sat on her living room floor with a bowl of tea and a box of water biscuits. The dog lay beside her, the loose skin of his chin puddled between his paws. She broke a fragment off the biscuit and nibbled. The crumbs fell to her lap. She brushed them onto the floor. Every few minutes, she peeked behind the blinds to watch the cardiologist’s headlights drift around the corner. He had circled the block three times. After the fourth lap, he parked the SUV on the boulevard, and the girls capered out of the car. They both carried flashlights. The tall girl sulked up the path to their door. The smaller girl shouted the dog’s name. Beside her, the dog’s ears pricked. He sat up. The cardiologist lifted the small girl onto his shoulders and shouted the dog’s name also. The dog barked. She let the blinds drop. The dog skidded across the floor into the hall. He whined at the back door. She fetched the chicken from the fridge. He barked again. She rubbed his belly and scratched the dip between his shoulder blades. She fed him chicken.

She could not quite hear the name they called. It sounded like Oo-er. Maybe Cooper. Or Stewart.

“Cooper?” she said to the dog. She had set the chicken on the floor. He tongued the flesh off the carcass.

“Rupert?”

He clamped down on a drumstick. She tugged the bone from his jaw so that he would not choke.

Outside, she could no longer hear them. She padded back to the living room and pulled the string of the window blinds. She opened each one. It looked like the neighbours had gone to bed. Her only light shone from the lamp on the secretary. She bent down and yanked the cord. The room dipped into a sunken, nocturnal blue. She lay on the wood and let her limbs flop outward. She could sink there, in the deepwater light from the windows. She held her breath and let it submerge her.

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The next morning she woke to the dog barking, the sun wedging through her eyelids. It sounded like the dog was outside, rapping the window. He barked when she didn’t respond, then tapped again, lower on the glass, near her ear. Then he whimpered and pounded the upper window with his fist. She opened her eyes. Outside, the entire family stood on her deck. The cardiologist leaned into the pane with his wrist above his eyes to shade the sun. His wife, whom she had never seen, frowned beside him. She wore a hemp skirt. The small girl crouched between her heels with the skirt’s hem hooded over her forehead. It was she who tapped the glass by her ear. The taller girl wore her mother’s handbag over her shoulder. She needled the strap with her thumbs.

They looked like a portrait from a history textbook, taken before it was conventional to smile in photos. The dust bowl period. Stony-eyed peasants with their squints and long mouths, a bale of alfalfa behind them, a pitchfork.

She opened her eyes again. The cardiologist pounded on the window. She sat up. It took a moment to understand. When she did, her cheeks flushed. She pointed to the back door. She made a walking motion with her fingers. She pointed again to the back door. The family stared at her. She pulled herself off the floor and walked into the hall.

When she opened the door, the dog bounded past her onto the porch. The family picked their way across her lawn, and the dog greeted them. He barked and thrust his nose between their knees. The cardiologist stooped to clap the dog’s flank.

The mother and the small girl continued to meet her on the porch. She stood with the door propped behind her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when they reached her. “I left the door open. He walked right in.”

The mother didn’t respond right away. She cupped her palms over her daughter’s shoulders.

“I fell asleep,” she added. “I hope you weren’t too worried.”

“He doesn’t like his collar,” said the mother. “If it happens again, could you phone us?”

“Of course. I should have phoned you.”

“Do you have our number?”

“No.”

The mother reached into her handbag, which she had reclaimed from her other daughter. She slid a business card from her wallet. The small girl stood between her legs and clutched a spear of Indian grass. She guided the spear over the door jamb, toward the woman’s toes.

“That’s Nate’s cellphone,” said the mother, indicating one of the numbers. “This is home.”

The tip of the grass bumped over her big toe and grazed the outline of her foot. She and the girl both watched it. The grass felt nice. She wanted to laugh.

“Sophie, stop that.” The mother pulled the little girl back into her hip.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said as she took the card. “Can I offer you tea?”

“Not now,” said the mother. “Thank you.”

“How about coffee? My husband bought this espresso machine. I’ve got biscotti in the freezer.”

The girl arched away from her mother. She dangled the grass above her nose.

“Have you tried biscotti?” she asked the girl.

The girl shook her head, strands of hair catching her eyelashes.

“Well, this one is macadamia nut and apricot,” she said. “It’s dipped in white chocolate.”

The girl plucked the hair tangled in her eyelashes and grinned into her palm.

“No, thank you,” said the mother. “One of those weekends. You know how it is.”

“Oh,” she said. “I can imagine.”

“Come on, Sophie.”

The girl followed her mother down the steps. When they reached the lawn, she examined the woman one more time, purling her eyebrows together. The mother continued to the driveway. The girl skipped to catch up and the spear of grass drifted from her fingers.

The woman closed the back door. The chicken carcass sat on the floor beside her Wellingtons like a third, empty boot. She wondered if the mother saw. She found she did not care. She lifted the chicken by its scapula and walked to the kitchen. She tossed it in the trash.

The biscotti were folded in waxed paper, in a reindeer tin in the freezer. She pried off the lid and gnawed at a biscuit, though it was still frozen. The cookie cracked between her teeth, the white chocolate chipping like shards of teacups. She set the kettle on the stove. She ground the biscuit in her jaw. When the water boiled, she did not move the kettle, but leaned against the fridge and listened to it. She tried to match the whistle with a whine from the roof of the mouth. This ached her palate, but she found she could harmonize. Like how you do with humpbacks. The kettle wailed and she harmonized, but the achy feeling didn’t fall away.

Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One's Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies

 

 

FASHION AND DRESS

 

The plainest dress is always the most genteel. Ladies with pale pigments should abstain from palettes of undue intensity. Never wear coloured gloves. Never wear jewellery before noon. Embrace lace. If you've a gangly neck, moderate exaggeration of the collar reduces the appearance of awkwardness.

Tonight I don't care. My sister-in-law's black and white Thanksgiving ball: I wear red instead. Scarlet moiré and rubied bust, a dyed ostrich plume in my hair.

My husband's mouth is knotted. He weaves me through murmurs, gawks, glimmers of smiles, his fingers cold and clenched on my elbow.

“Exhibitionist,” he says, as I place my hand on his shoulder for a dance.

We waltz one, two, three, and soak their stares like pickled lemon. He spins me in hard circles, so I clutch his shoulder tighter and arch my heart to the chandelier. When the violins dwindle, his nails still dig into the palm of my glove. He tells me to retrieve my cloak. Instead, I smile luminously at his colleague from the bank. The colleague bows. His lady averts her eyes. I twist my wrist from my husband's grasp and lift my gown and curtsy. I say, “How do you do?” because it is poor taste for married women to pose such inquiries at unfamiliar men.

“Very well,” says the colleague.

“An arresting gown,” says his wife.

“And yours,” I reply, “is so very columnar.”

My husband hisses in my ear.

“Now, now, my pet,” I say, and paw the breast of his waistcoat. The threads rip when he reels for the door, his satin pocket dangling from my fingers.

 

 

AGREEABILITY OF SUBMISSION IN PRIVATE DISPUTE

 

He locked me out. So I warm my lips with rum from a flask and recline beneath the gargoyle in my opera cape. I watch the horses trot mutely over snow. Watch the lamplighter fill lanterns with oil. Watch the snow melt into my shoe until the suede turns glossy. I can count the years of my marriage like rings of a tree. Year one, a snapped rib; year two, fractured jaw. The day after tomorrow, year five. At least we've no children. They can't be mended like bones; can't be rolled in plaster, shrouded under furs.

My toes have frozen together. I try to separate them inside my shoe. On the lowest rail of the porch, there is a crow. Happy Thanksgiving, crow. Tonight I forgot to give thanks. So: thanks. For my cape and the wolf that trims my hood. For the rum. Thanks especially for the rum. Ingratitude is so unappealing in a wife.

I topple inside when the front door opens. My heels land apart on the porch, my skull flat on the oriental rug in the hall. I see the hydrangeas drying on the wall behind me, then Bernard's face, upside down.

“Madam, I couldn't let you in until Mr. Irvine retired.”

He looks concerned.

“I've drawn a bath,” he says. “Your lips are blue.”

“I'll take a hot toddy in the scullery,” I say. “And fetch me Mr. Irvine's waistcoat.”

 

 

ON MENDING

 

A stitch in time saves nine. Keep a cushion with threaded needles at the end of your ironing board to complete the mending and pressing at once. To repair a pocket, hold the edges in place with adhesive tape rather than pins. Stitch through the tape and peel it off once you've finished. When you iron the garment, press a spoon over each button so the buttons do not melt.

The needle doesn't puncture as smoothly as I'd like. The point wriggles through the satin, puckers the weave.
Once around the back
, my fingers still fuchsia with cold.
In through the front door
. Almost. I twist the needle deeper. There. In through the front, again around the back. This time I stab. The needle pierces the tape, glides through the fabric, but the other side's blocked, like I'm sewing through cork. Where my left hand holds the reverse side, the thread is sticky. I open the vest. Three tidy stitches link the satin to the pad of my index finger. The blood is thin and florid.

 

 

CARRIAGE OF A WIFE

 

To keep a happy home is the office of a woman. Her elegance is paramount to domestic stability. Vexed will be the husband who returns to find the house in disorder and his wife
en déshabille
. When domestic storms brew, only a meek, blithesome disposition will shelter you from the rain. Learn to keep silence even if you know your husband to be wrong. The stoutest armour is a cordial spirit (and spirit in the glass doesn't hurt).

I wear a mint-green dress with silk cuffs and buttons the size of thumbtacks. My stockings are grey wool, the heels of my shoes sensible and low, and my palm balances a tumbler of Scotch.

I say, “Ice, darling?”

He wears a tweed vest and trousers that sit fashionably above the ankle. His socks are brown wool, he reads the newspaper, and his fingers clasp a cigarette.

“You know I drink whisky neat.”

“Tomorrow I'll take your waistcoat to the tailor's.”

He says nothing.

“He'll mend the pocket,” I say, but his eyes never waver from the page.

“I tried to mend it myself last night, but silly me I pricked my finger.”

I set his Scotch on the lamp table beside his elbow and sit in the opposite chair. “Serves me right for sewing without a thimble.”

He stares over the brim of his glasses at the newspaper.

“They say a woman is fundamentally selfish until she has children.”

He turns the page.

“How silly.” I press a pleat that jets from my waist to the dress's hem.

“And we've tried.”

“Not very hard,” he says.

I allow my mouth to twitch.

“Indeed.”

“We sleep separately.”

“You hate children.”

“People pose questions.”

Bernard slides through the double doors with a tray, which holds an open velvet box and a sherry glass.

“I'd like you to see someone about your fertility,” my husband continues.

Bernard lowers the tray to me. A diamond paste choker lies balled in the corner of the box. I pinch an edge of the choker and drape it against my knee. I swipe the sherry glass next and spill the liquid to the back of my throat. When I dangle the glass above my lip, it looks like a church bell.