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“The word ‘Manor’ doesn’t mean anything at all anymore, does it?” said Meriel. “It doesn’t even mean there’s an upstairs. It just means that you’re supposed to think that a place is something it doesn’t even pretend to be.”
The doctor said nothing-perhaps what she had said didn’t make any sense to him. Or just wasn’t worth saying even if it was true. All the way from Dundarave she had listened to herself talking and she had been dismayed. It wasn’t so much that she was prattling-saying just anything that came into her head-rather that she was trying to express things which seemed to her interesting, or that might have been interesting if she could get them into shape. But these ideas probably sounded pretentious if not insane, rattled off in the way she was doing. She must seem like one of those women who were determined not to have an ordinary conversation but a real one. And even though she knew nothing was working, that her talk must seem to him an imposition, she was unable to stop herself.
She didn’t know what had started this. Unease, simply because she so seldom talked to a stranger nowadays. The oddity of riding alone in a car with a man who wasn’t her husband.
She had even asked, rashly, what he thought of Pierre’s notion that the motorcycle accident was suicide.
“You could float that idea around about any number of violent accidents,” he had said.
“Don’t bother pulling into the drive,” she said. “I can get out here.” So embarrassed, so eager she was to get away from him and his barely polite indifference, that she put her hand on the door handle as if to open it while they were still moving along the street.
“I was pla
She said, “I might be quite a while.”
“That’s all right. I can wait. Or I could come in and look around. If you wouldn’t mind that.”
She was about to say that nursing homes can be dreary and u
As it was, they got out of the car and walked side by side across the parking lot, towards the front entrance.
Several old or disabled people were sitting out on a square of pavement that had a few furry-looking shrubs and pots of petunias around it, to suggest a garden patio. Aunt Muriel was not among them, but Meriel found herself bestowing glad greetings. Something had happened to her. She had a sudden mysterious sense of power and delight, as if with every step she took, a bright message was travelling from her heels to the top of her skull.
When she asked him later, “Why did you come in there with me?” he said, “Because I didn’t want to lose sight of you.”
Aunt Muriel was sitting by herself, in a wheelchair, in the dim corridor just outside her own bedroom door. She was swollen and glimmering-but that was because of being swathed in an asbestos apron so she could smoke a cigarette. Meriel believed that when she had said good-bye to her, months and seasons ago, she had been sitting in the same chair in the same spot-though without the asbestos apron, which must accord with some new rule, or reflect some further decline. Very likely she sat here every day beside the fixed ashtray filled with sand, looking at the liverish painted wall-it was painted pink or mauve but it looked liverish, the corridor being so dim-with the bracket shelf on it supporting a spill of fake ivy.
“Meriel? I thought it was you,” she said. “I could tell by your steps. I could tell by your breathing. My cataracts have got to be bloody hell. All I can see is blobs.”
“It’s me, all right, how are you?” Meriel kissed her temple. “Why aren’t you out in the sunshine?”
“I’m not fond of sunshine,” the old woman said. “I have to think of my complexion.”
She might have been joking, but it was perhaps the truth. Her pale face and hands were covered with large spots-dead-white spots that caught what light there was here, turning silvery. She had been a true blonde, pink-faced, lean, with straight well-cut hair that had gone white in her thirties. Now the hair was ragged, mussed from being rubbed into pillows, and the lobes of her ears hung out of it like flat teats. She used to wear little diamonds in her ears-where had they gone? Diamonds in her ears, real gold chains, real pearls, silk shirts of unusual colors-amber, aubergine-and beautiful narrow shoes.
She smelled of hospital powder and the licorice drops she sucked all day between the rationed cigarettes.
“We need some chairs,” she said. She leaned forward, waved the cigarette hand in the air, tried to whistle. “Service, please. Chairs.”
The doctor said, “I’ll find some.”
The old Muriel and the young one were left alone.
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“Pierre.”
“And you have the two children, don’t you? Jane and David?”
“That’s right. But the man who’s with me-”
“Ah, no,” the old Muriel said. “That’s not your husband.”
Aunt Muriel belonged to Meriel’s grandmother’s generation, rather than her mother’s. She had been Meriel’s mother’s art teacher at school. First an inspiration, then an ally, then a friend. She had painted large abstract pictures, one of which-a present to Meriel’s mother-had hung in the back hall of the house where Meriel grew up and had been moved to the dining room whenever the artist came to visit. Its colors were murky-dark reds and browns (Meriel’s father called it “Manure Pile on Fire”)-but Aunt Muriel’s spirit seemed always bright and dauntless. She had lived in Vancouver when she was young, before she came to teach in this town in the interior. She had been friends with artists whose names were now in the papers. She longed to go back there and eventually did, to live with and manage the affairs of a rich old couple who were friends and patrons of artists. She seemed to have lots of money while she lived with them, but she was left out in the cold when they died. She lived on her pension, took up water-colors because she could not afford oils, starved herself (Meriel’s mother suspected) so that she could take Meriel out to lunch-Meriel being then a university student. On these occasions she talked in a rush of jokes and judgments, mostly pointing out how works and ideas that people raved about were rubbish, but how here and there-in the output of some obscure contemporary or half-forgotten figure from another century-there was something extraordinary. That was her stalwart word of praise-”extraordinary.” A hush in her voice, as if there and then and rather to her own surprise she had come upon a quality in the world that was still to be absolutely honored.
The doctor returned with two chairs and introduced himself, quite naturally, as if there ‘d been no chance to do it till now.
“Eric Asher.”
“He’s a doctor,” said Meriel. She was about to start explaining about the funeral, the accident, the flight down from Smithers, but the conversation was taken away from her.
“But I’m not here officially, don’t worry,” the doctor said.
“Oh, no,” said Aunt Muriel. “You’re here with her.”
“Yes,” he said.
At this moment he reached across the space between their two chairs and picked up Meriel’s hand, holding it for a moment in a hard grip, then letting it go. And he said to Aunt Muriel, “How could you tell that? By my breathing?”