A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence

Author:Margaret Laurence
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780771093784
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1993-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

“Hello, dear. Have a nice evening? What time is it?” She’s wide awake. I swear she doesn’t take a sleeping pill on the evenings I’m out. She takes benzedrine instead.

“Very nice, thanks. It’s just twelve.”

“Oh, you are a Cinderella, aren’t you?” Mother cries with a carolling laugh.

This coyness, with its concealed undercoat, the tint of malice, for some reason shocks me. But when I turn on her light, I see she’s frightened. Why? Her face has a blanched-almond look, whitely wrinkled, unnaturally soft.

“What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, dear, perfectly all right. A little restless, perhaps, that’s all.”

“Too much bridge, maybe.”

“I would have thought that,” she says petulantly, “although the girls did think it was a little odd, your going off like that, not that they actually said anything.” Then, pinchingly, like a bee sting, “was it a party, Rachel?”

“No. Why should you think so?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that your breath is – you know. I suppose I’m a little more sensitive to that particular smell than most people.”

“I had precisely two drinks, if you want to know. Nick took me to his house – to meet his family.”

Why did I say that? Why did I have to? She’ll find out, likely, and then she’ll be more upset than if I’d told her straight out. She won’t find out. How could she?

Her face has gone even more wan and sunken.

“Rachel – is it serious?”

“Serious?”

“Yes – I mean –”

So that’s it. I ought to have seen. She’s wondering – what will become of me? That’s what everyone goes through life wondering, probably, the one absorbing anguish. What will become of me? Me.

“No, it’s not serious.”

“Well, dear, I mean to say, of course it’s your own life, as I’ve often said –”

“It’s not serious. He’s just – a friend. Try to sleep now. Did you take your sleeping pill?”

“Not yet, dear,” she says. Then with a cosy smile, certain she’s speaking the gospel truth, “I forgot.”

She sinks down, relaxed now, and when I give her the pill, she’s all prepared to sleep, out of sheer relief.

Is it serious, Rachel?

Sitting beside my bedroom window, in the darkness, I smoke and look at the stars, points of icy light in the hot July black of the sky. If only she wouldn’t question me. If only I could stop myself from answering. Why can’t she ever sleep and leave me alone? Or die.

Why can’t she die and leave me alone?

And if she did, it would leave me alone, all right, completely. Would that be any better? I don’t mean it, anyway. I couldn’t really mean that. Of course we have our ups and downs, she and I. But as for wishing anything bad to happen –

You mean it all right, Rachel. Not every minute, not every day, even. But right now, you mean it. Mean. I am. I never knew it, not really. Is everyone? Probably, but what possible difference can that make? I do care about her. Surely I love her as much as most parents love their children.

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