The Republic of Love by Carol Shields

Author:Carol Shields [Shields, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-00-738564-5
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1992-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

THE COMBED YELLOW HAIR of Maja van Ginkel was unyielding, the rectangularity of her eye sockets fixed. English words burst from her throat with a puncturing explosive rattle. She was beautiful, and her particular kind of waxy beauty made her opaque. After their meeting Fay was struck with the shocking thought that this woman was probably two or three years younger than she herself was.

That night she dreamed about her. The two of them were perched on the ridgepole of a small dwelling, making polite conversation, and behind them, lost in a mottled sky, were the eyes, mouth, and hairline of Tom Avery.

The next morning, her fifth in the hotel, Fay looked into the bathroom mirror, puzzling over the disguise of her body. She was still there, her long dark straight hair cut with bangs across her forehead, a decent-looking woman whose smooth skin concealed her body’s other secrets, its leakages and cracks. Who was it, she asked herself; who was the woman Tom Avery had offered to drive home?

A dozen harmless vanities keep her balanced. A man once said to her – and she remembers exactly who he was and all the details of their meeting – that she had lovely earlobes. A manicurist, years ago, had commented passingly on the length of her nailbeds. (She hadn’t even known the word “nailbed” but was grateful nevertheless for this minor tribute.) Her sister, Bibbi, confided once, “You have the kind of face that doesn’t have to smile all the time. You can just go around with your face as it is, not having to try too hard.” All of these casually offered comments have been stored carefully at the back of her brain.

Earlier in the day Dr. van Ginkel, with her beautiful solid Dutch mouth, had delivered a nervous creed. “Our bodies are inescapable,” she said to Fay. “They are the only bodies we can ever know.”

And Fay, who cannot now recall what Tom Avery looks like, had nodded in agreement.

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