Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright

Author:Anne Enright [Enright, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-55199-314-0
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1989-10-31T05:00:00+00:00

At first she thought it was the change of life. She stood in the bed department and waited for hot flashes. She did not mind growing old as long as it meant growing easy, but it did not seem to be working out that way. There was an agitation, a turbulence in her blood. She rode all the way up to accounts to query her payslip, and she landed back down in the bed department with a thump. She walked the floor and sat on the beds. She had a terrible need to lie down on one of them. One Monday evening during stocktaking, she actually did lie down. She simply reclined. She let her back sink into a double-sprung Slumberland, and felt she might never rise again.

It was not until she bought three pots of apricot jam that the penny dropped. She did not even bother to take a test. She felt that swooping blankness she had felt with each of the boys, so delicious, like diving into a pool and finding you could breathe. The child was no bigger than a pip in the flesh of her stomach. She took it for walks and little outings. She gave it a go on the escalators and on a park swing, scuffing the coarse sand under her feet and feeling a little mad. What would she tell the boys? As for the people in the bed department – Jackie, who shared the floor with her, and the customers who came in to look or buy – they all looked empty to her, like husks. As though she were the only real thing left. It was like that film with the pods, and she wanted to run away somewhere, to a deserted lighthouse, or a shack by the beach, and sit in a shaft of light while her baby grew.

Tom rang. His voice was a shock.

‘I just thought I’d check up on you.’ He sounded close, he sounded right inside her ear. Kitty had to remind herself that there were miles of cable between them, a maze of electricity and static.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘How are things?’

‘Good. Good.’

In the pause, she felt sorry for him. He wasn’t used to this kind of thing.

‘And yourself?’ he said.

‘Oh, flying,’ she said. ‘Flying form.’ And he took the hint and let it go.

Then one morning the down elevator sighed and stopped. People clumped down the steps carefully, almost aslant, squinting at the lines that were strangely solid, though they still seemed to shift beneath their feet. Kitty was glad she wasn’t on the thing when it ground to a halt. It would make you look so foolish. As it happened, the escalators had been empty apart from a young woman on the other side, who seemed to surge suddenly up. Whoosh.

Kitty knew it didn’t mean anything, but she feared for her baby, that was now just eleven weeks old. She could not bear the lopsided sight of the stalled steps, like someone endlessly limping at the other end of the shop floor.

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