An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark

Author:Joan Clark [Clark, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37536-0
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2005-03-31T05:00:00+00:00

When Ginger arrived on the weekend and saw the books Bonnie and Brianna had made, she was consumed with envy and went to work on her parents to let her stay in Baddeck with Aunt Moranna the following week. When they turned a deaf ear, she threw herself on the kitchen floor and banged her feet while her cousins watched with interest—they had never seen a full-blown tantrum. The tantrum left Ginger’s parents unmoved but the tearful implorings that followed met with success and by Saturday night Davina had persuaded Murdoch to allow their daughter to stay.

Sunday morning Moranna was at the kitchen sink running herself a glass of water when she overheard Murdoch ask Davina if she would stay in Baddeck with Ginger until the following weekend—they were sitting in lawn chairs outside the open window.

“Not on your life,” Davina said. “Your sister doesn’t need me. She has the girl next door helping her.”

Murdoch said he wasn’t thinking of his sister. He was thinking of Ginger and whether she’d be homesick staying here without them.

Moranna heard Davina sigh. “Murdoch, she’s slept over at Tanis’s three times without being homesick. She’ll be all right.”

“Even so I’d feel better if you stayed.”

Davina began speaking emphatically. “Murdoch, I am not spending the week with your sister. When she’s not ignoring me, she’s insufferable. Yesterday when I was sitting here crocheting, she asked me what I was making and I said a doily for the back of your easy chair. She said, ‘You’d put a string doily on an easy chair! What’s next, a lampshade made from seashells?’ Then she barked out that creepy laugh. Do you know what I said to her? I said, ‘You think you’re a genius, don’t you, Moranna? You think you’re the only one in the family who has any creative ideas. Well, I’ve got news for you.’”

Moranna remembered Davina huffing inside, but she hadn’t known that it had anything to do with her. Her remark about the doily had been meant as a joke, but Prissy Missy didn’t get it because she had no sense of humour. And what was wrong thinking herself a genius? Her sister-in-law was jealous of her accomplishments and talent, that was the problem.

On Sunday evening, after Murdoch and Davina left, Moranna was putting the little girls to bed when Ginger had second thoughts about being left behind and announced that she wanted to go home. To distract her, Moranna suggested a marshmallow roast and the three little girls followed her outside where fireflies flitted through the summer dusk. While the children ran around trying to catch them, Moranna found marshmallows, coat hangers and a used tire she dragged onto the gravel in front of the barn. Arranging crumbled newspaper and kindling inside the tire ring, she lit the fire and placed a wooden bench between the open barn doors, to provide a shelter for the girls—now that the sun had gone down it was cool and a light breeze had swept in from the lake.

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