spelling

in the store, in the old days, flo used to say she could tell when some woman was going off thetrack. special headgear or footwear were often the first giveaways. galoshes flopping open on asummer day. rubber boots they slopped around in, or men’s workboots. they might say it was onaccount of corns, but flo knew better. it was deliberate, it was meant to tell. next might come theold felt hat, the torn raincoat worn in all weathers, the trousers held up at the waist with twine, thedim shredded scarves, the layers of ravelling sweaters.

mothers and daughters often the same way. it was always in them. waves of craziness, alwaysrising, irresistible as giggles, from some place deep inside, gradually getting the better of them.

they used to come telling flo their stories. flo would string them along. “is that so?” she wouldsay. “isn’t that a shame?”

my vegetable grater is gone and i know who took it.

there is a man comes and looks at me when i take my clothes off at night. i put the blind downand he looks through the crack.

two hills of new potatoes stolen. a jar of whole peaches. some nice ducks’ eggs.

one of those women they took to the county home at last. the first thing they did, flo said,was give her a bath. the next thing they did was cut off her hair, which had grown out like ahaystack. they expected to find anything in it, a dead bird or maybe a nest of baby mouseskeletons. they did find burrs and leaves and a bee that must have got caught and buzzed itself todeath. when they had cut down far enough they found a cloth hat. it had rotted on her head andthe hair had just pushed up through it, like grass through wire.

flo had got into the habit of keeping the table set for the next meal, to save trouble. theplastic cloth was gummy, the outline of the plate and saucer plain on it as the outline of pictures ona greasy wall. the refrigerator was full of sulfurous scraps, dark crusts, furry oddments. rose gotto work cleaning, scraping, scalding. sometimes flo came lumbering through on her two canes.

she might ignore rose’s presence altogether, she might tip the jug of maple syrup up against hermouth and drink it like wine. she loved sweet things now, craved them. brown sugar by thespoonful, maple syrup, tinned puddings, jelly, globs of sweetness to slide down her throat. she hadgiven up smoking, probably for fear of fire.

another time she said, “what are you doing in there behind the counter? you ask me what youwant, and i’ll get it.” she thought the kitchen was the store.

“i’m rose,” rose said in a loud, slow voice. “‘we’re in the kitchen. i’m cleaning up thekitchen.”

the old arrangement of the kitchen: mysterious, personal, eccentric. big pan in the oven,medium-sized pan under the potato pot on the corner shelf, little pan hanging on the nail by thesink. colander under the sink. dishrags, newspaper clippings, scissors, muffin tins, hanging onvarious nails. piles of bills and letters on the sewing-machine, on the telephone shelf. you wouldthink someone had set them down a day or two ago, but they were years old. rose had comeacross some letters written by herself, in a forced and spritely style. false messengers; falseconnections, with a lost period of her life.

“rose is away,” flo said. she had a habit now of sticking her bottom lip out, when she wasdispleased or perplexed. “rose got married.”

the second morning rose got up and found that a gigantic stirring-up had occurred in thekitchen, as if someone had wielded a big shaky spoon. the big pan was lodged behind therefrigerator; the egg lifter was in with the towels, the breadknife was in the flour bin and theroasting pan wedged in the pipes under the sink. rose made flo’s breakfast porridge and flo said,“you’re that woman they were sending to look after me.”

“yes.”

“you aren’t from around here?”

“no.”

“i haven’t got money to pay you. they sent you, they can pay you.” flo spread brown sugarover her porridge until the porridge was entirely covered, then patted the sugar smooth with herspoon.

after breakfast she spied the cutting board, which rose had been using when she cut bread forher own toast. “what is this thing doing here getting in our road?” said flo authoritatively, pickingit up and marching off—as well as anybody with two canes could march—to hide it somewhere, inthe piano bench or under the back steps.

years ago, flo had had a little glassed-in side porch built on to the house. from there shecould watch the road just as she used to watch from behind the counter of the store (the storewindow was now boarded up, the old advertising signs painted over). the road wasn’t the mainroad out of hanratty through west hanratty to the lake, any more; there was a highway bypass.

and it was paved, now, with wide gutters, new mercury vapor street lights. the old bridge wasgone and a new, wide bridge, much less emphatic, had taken its place. the change from hanrattyto west hanratty was hardly noticeable. west hanratty had got itself spruced up with paint andaluminum siding; flo’s place was about the only eyesore left.

what were the things flo put up to look at, in her little porch, where she had been sitting foryears now with her joints and arteries hardening?

a calendar with a picture of a puppy and a kitten on it. faces turned towards each other so thatthe noses touched, and the space between the two bodies made a heart.

a photograph, in color, of princess anne as a child.

a blue mountain pottery vase, gift from brian and phoebe, with three yellow plastic roses in it,vase and roses bearing several seasons’ sifting of dust.

six shells from the pacific coast, sent home by rose but not gathered by her, as flo believed, orhad once believed. bought on a vacation in the state of washington. they were an impulse item ina plastic bag by the cashier’s desk in a tourist restaurant.

the lord is my shepherd, in black cutout scroll with a sprinkling of glitter. free gift froma dairy.

newspaper photograph of seven coffins in a row. two large and five small. parents andchildren, all shot by the father in the middle of the night, for reasons nobody knew, in a farmhouseout in the country. that house was not easy to find but flo had seen it. neighbors took her, on asunday drive, in the days when she was using only one cane. they had to ask directions at a gasstation on the highway, and again at a crossroads store. they were told that many people hadasked the same questions, had been equally determined. though flo had to admit there wasnothing much to see. a house like any other. the chimney, the windows, the shingles, the door.

something that could have been a dishtowel, or a diaper, that nobody had felt like taking in, left torot on the line.

rose had not been back to see flo for nearly two years. she had been busy, she had beentraveling with small companies, financed by grants, putting on plays or scenes from plays, orgiving readings, in high school auditoriums and community halls, all over the country. it was partof her job to go on local television chatting about these productions, trying to drum up interest,telling amusing stories about things that had happened during the tour. there was nothingshameful about any of this, but sometimes rose was deeply, unaccountably ashamed. she did notlet her confusion show. when she talked in public she was frank and charming; she had a puzzled,diffi-dent way of leading into her anecdotes, as if she was just now remembering, had not toldthem a hundred times already. back in her hotel room, she often shivered and moaned, as if shewere having an attack of fever. she blamed it on exhaustion, or her approaching menopause. shecouldn’t remember any of the people she had met, the charming, interesting people who hadinvited her to dinner and to whom, over drinks in various cities, she had told intimate things abouther life.

neglect in flo’s house had turned a final corner, since rose saw it last. the rooms were pluggedup with rags and papers and dirt. pull a blind to let some light in, and the blind comes apart in yourhand. shake a curtain and the curtain falls to rags, letting loose a choking dust. put a hand into adrawer and it sinks into something soft and dark and rubbishy.

we hate to write bad news but it looks like she has got past where she can look after herself. wetry to look in on her but we are not so young ourselves any more so it looks like maybe the timehas come.

the same letter, more or less, had been written to rose and to her half-brother, brian, who wasan engineer, living in toronto. rose had just come back from her tour. she had assumed thatbrian and his wife, phoebe, whom she saw seldom, were keeping in touch with flo. after all, flowas brian’s mother, rose’s stepmother. and it turned out that they had been keeping in touch, orso they thought. brian had recently been in south america but phoebe had been phoning floevery sunday night. flo had little to say but she had never talked to phoebe anyway; she had saidshe was fine, everything was fine, she had offered some information about the weather. rose hadobserved flo on the telephone, since she came home and she saw how phoebe could have beendeceived. flo spoke normally, she said hello, fine, that was a big storm we had last night, yes, thelights were out here for hours. if you didn’t live in the neighborhood you wouldn’t realize therehadn’t been any storm.

it wasn’t that rose had entirely forgotten flo in those two years. she had fits of worry abouther. it was just that for some time now she had been between fits. one time the fit had come overher in the middle of a january storm, she had driven two hundred miles through blizzards, pastditched cars, and when she finally parked on flo’s street, finally tramped up the walk flo had notbeen able to shovel, she was full of relief for herself and concern for flo, a general turmoil offeelings both anxious and pleasurable. flo opened the door and gave a bark of warning.

“you can’t park there!”

“what?”

“can’t park there!”

flo said there was a new bylaw; no parking on the streets during the winter months.

“you’ll have to shovel out a place.” of course rose had an explosion.

“if you say one more word right now i’ll get in the car and drive back.”

“well you can’t park—”

“one more word!”

“why do you have to stand here and argue with the cold blasting into the house?”

rose stepped inside. home.

that was one of the stories she told about flo. she did it well; her own exhaustion and sense ofvirtue; flo’s bark, her waving cane, her fierce unwillingness to be the object of anybody’s rescue.

after she read the letter rose had phoned phoebe, and phoebe had asked her to cometo dinner, so they could talk. rose resolved to behave well. she had an idea that brian and phoebemoved in a permanent cloud of disapproval of her. she thought that they disapproved of hersuccess, limited and precarious and provincial though it might be, and that they disapproved of hereven more when she failed. she knew it was not likely they would have her on their minds somuch, or feel anything so definite.

she put on a plain skirt and an old blouse, but at the last minute changed into a long dress, madeof thin red and gold cotton from india, the very thing that would justify their saying that rose wasalways so theatrical.

nevertheless she made up her mind as she usually did that she would speak in a low voice, stickto facts, not to get into any stale and silly arguments with brian. and as usual most of the senseseemed to fly out of her head as soon as she entered their house, was subjected to their calmroutines, felt the flow of satisfaction, self-satisfaction, perfectly justified self-satisfaction, thatemanated from the very bowls and draperies. she was nervous, when phoebe asked her about hertour, and phoebe was a bit nervous too, because brian sat silent, not exactly frowning butindicating that the frivolity of the subject did not please him. in rose’s presence brian had saidmore than once that he had no use for people in her line of work.

but he had no use for a good many people. actors, artists, journalists, rich people (he wouldnever admit to being one himself), the entire arts faculty of universities. whole classes andcategories, down the drain. convicted of woolly-mindedness, and showy behavior; inaccurate talk,many excesses. rose did not know if he spoke the truth or if this was something he had to say infront of her. he offered the bait of his low-voiced contempt; she rose to it; they had fights, she hadleft his house in tears. and underneath all this, rose felt, they loved each other. but they couldnever stop the old, old competition; who is the better person, who has chosen the better work?

what were they looking for? each other’s good opinion, which perhaps they meant to grant, infull, but not yet. phoebe, who was a calm and dutiful woman with a great talent for normalizingthings (the very opposite of their family talent for blowing things up), would serve food and pourcoffee and regard them with a polite puzzlement; their contest, their vulnerability, their hurt,perhaps seemed as odd to her as the antics of comic-strip characters who stick their fingers intolight sockets.

“i always wished flo could have come back for another visit with us,” phoebe said. flo hadcome once, and asked to be taken home after three days. but afterwards it seemed to be a pleasureto her, to sit and list the things brian and phoebe owned, the features of their house. brian andphoebe lived quite unostentatiously, in don mills, and the things flo dwelt on—the door chimes,the automatic garage doors, the swimming pool—were among the ordinary suburban acquisitions.

rose had said as much to flo who believed that she, rose, was jealous.

“you wouldn’t turn them down if you was offered.”

“yes i would.”

that was true, rose believed it was true, but how could she ever explain it to flo or anybody inhanratty? if you stay in hanratty and do not get rich it is all right because you are living out yourlife as was intended, but if you go away and do not get rich, or, like rose, do not remain rich, thenwhat was the point?

after dinner rose and brian and phoebe sat in the backyard beside the pool, where the youngestof brian and phoebe’s four daughters was riding an inflated dragon. everything had goneamicably, so far. it had been decided that rose would go to hanratty, that she would make thearrangements to get flo into the wawanash county home. brian had already made inquiries aboutit, or his secretary had, and he said that it seemed not only cheaper but better-run, with morefacilities, than any private nursing home.

“she’ll probably meet old friends there,” phoebe said.

rose’s docility, her good behavior, was partly based on a vision she had been building up allevening, and would never reveal to brian and phoebe. she pictured herself going to hanratty andlooking after flo, living with her, taking care of her for as long as was necessary. she thought howshe would clean and paint flo’s kitchen, patch the shingles over the leaky spots (that was one ofthe things the letter had mentioned), plant flowers in the pots, and make nourishing soup. shewasn’t so far gone as to imagine flo fitting comfortably into this picture, settling down to a life ofgratitude. but the crankier flo got, the milder and more patient rose would become, and who,then, could accuse her of egotism and frivolity?

this vision did not survive the first two days of being home.

“would you like a pudding?” rose said.

“oh, i don’t care.”

the elaborate carelessness some people will show, the gleam of hope, on being offered a drink.

rose made a trifle. berries, peaches, custard, cake, whipped cream and sweet sherry.

flo ate half the bowlful. she dipped in greedily, not bothering to transfer a portion to a smallerbowl.

“that was lovely,” she said. rose had never heard such an admission of grateful pleasure fromher. “lovely,” said flo and sat remembering, appreciating, belching a little. the suave dreamycustard, the nipping berries, robust peaches, luxury of sherry- soaked cake, munificence ofwhipped cream.

rose thought that she had never done anything in her life that came near pleasing flo as thisdid.

“i’ll make another soon.”

flo recovered herself. “oh well. you do what you like.”

rose drove out to the county home. she was conducted through it. she tried to tell flo about itwhen she came back.

“whose home?” said flo.

“no, the county home.”

rose mentioned some people she had seen there. flo would not admit to knowing any of them.

rose spoke of the view and the pleasant rooms. flo looked angry; her face darkened and she stuckout her lip. rose handed her a mobile she had bought for fifty cents in the county home craftscenter. cutout birds of blue and yellow paper were bobbing and dancing, on undetectable currentsof air.

“stick it up your arse,” said flo.

rose put the mobile up in the porch and said she had seen the trays coming up, with supper onthem.

“they go to the dining room if they’re able, and if they’re not they have trays in their rooms. isaw what they were having.

“roast beef, well done, mashed potatoes and green beans, the frozen not the canned kind. or anomelette. you could have a mushroom omelette or a chicken omelette or a plain omelette, if youliked.”

“what was for dessert?”

“ice cream. you could have sauce on it.” “what kind of sauce was there?” “chocolate.

butterscotch. walnut.”

“i can’t eat walnuts.”

“there was marshmallow too.”

out at the home the old people were arranged in tiers. on the first floor were the bright andtidy ones. they walked around, usually with the help of canes. they visited each other, playedcards. they had singsongs and hobbies. in the crafts center they painted pictures, hooked rugs,made quilts. if they were not able to do things like that they could make rag dolls, mobiles like theone rose bought, poodles and snowmen which were constructed of styrofoam balls, with sequinsfor eyes; they also made silhouette pictures by placing thumbtacks on traced outlines; knights onhorseback, battleships, airplanes, castles.

they organized concerts; they held dances; they had checker tournaments.

“some of them say they are the happiest here they have ever been in their lives.”

up one floor there was more television watching, there were more wheelchairs. there werethose whose heads drooped, whose tongues lolled, whose limbs shook uncontrollably.

nevertheless sociability was still flourishing, also rationality, with occasional blanks and absences.

on the third floor you might get some surprises.

some of them up there had given up speaking.

some had given up moving, except for odd jerks and tosses of the head, flailing of the arms, thatseemed to be without purpose or control.

nearly all had given up worrying about whether they were wet or dry.

bodies were fed and wiped, taken up and tied in chairs, untied and put to bed. taking inoxygen, giving out carbon dioxide, they continued to participate in the life of the world.

crouched in her crib, diapered, dark as a nut, with three tufts of hair like dandelion flosssprouting from her head, an old woman was making loud shaky noises.

“hello aunty,” the nurse said. “you’re spelling today. it’s lovely weather outside.” she bent tothe old woman’s ear. “can you spell weather?”

this nurse showed her gums when she smiled, which was all the time; she had an air of nearlydemented hilarity.

“weather,” said the old woman. she strained forward, grunting, to get the word. rose thoughtshe might be going to have a bowel movement. “w-e-a-t-h-e-r.”

that reminded her.

“whether. w-h-e-t-h-e-r.”

so far so good.

“now you say something to her,” the nurse said to rose.

the words in rose’s mind were for a moment all obscene or despairing.

but without prompting came another.

“forest. f-o-r-e-s-t.”

“celebrate,” said rose suddenly.

“c-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-e.”

you had to listen very hard to make out what the old woman was saying, because she had lostmuch of the power to shape sounds. what she said seemed not to come from her mouth or herthroat, but from deep in her lungs and belly.

“isn’t she a wonder,” the nurse said. “she can’t see and that’s the only way we can tell she canhear. like if you say, ‘here’s your dinner.’ she won’t pay any attention to it, but she might startspelling dinner,

“dinner,” she said, to illustrate, and the old woman picked it up. “d-i-n-n …” sometimes along wait, a long wait between letters.

it seemed she had only the thinnest thread to follow, meandering through that emptiness orconfusion that nobody on this side can do more than guess at. but she didn’t lose it, she followedit through to the end, however tricky the word might be, or cumbersome. finished. then she wassitting waiting; waiting, in the middle of her sightless eventless day, till up from somewherepopped another word. she would encompass it, bend all her energy to master it. rose wonderedwhat the words were like, when she held them in her mind. did they carry their usual meaning, orany meaning at all? were they like words in dreams or in the minds of young children, each onemarvelous and distinct and alive as a new animal? this one limp and clear, like a jellyfish, that onehard and mean and secretive, like a horned snail. they could be austere and comical as top hats, orsmooth and lively and flattering as ribbons. a parade of private visitors, not over yet.

something woke rose early the next morning. she was sleeping in the little porch, the onlyplace in flo’s house where the smell was bearable. the sky was milky and brightening. the treesacross the river due to be cut down soon, to make room for a trailer park—were hunched againstthe dawn sky like shaggy dark animals, like buffalo. rose had been dreaming. she had beenhaving a dream obviously connected with her tour of the home the day before.

someone was taking her through a large building where there were people in cages. everythingwas dim and cobwebby at first, and rose was protesting that this seemed a poor arrangement. butas she went on the cages got larger and more elaborate, they were like enormous wicker birdcages,victorian birdcages, fancifully shaped and decorated. food was being offered to the people in thecages and rose examined it, saw that it was choice; chocolate mousse, trifle, black forest cake.

then in one of the cages rose spotted flo, who was handsomely seated on a throne-like chair,spelling out words in a clear authoritative voice (what the words were, rose, wakening, could notremember) and looking pleased with herself, for showing powers she had kept secret till now.

rose listened to hear flo breathing, stirring, in her rubble-lined room. she heard nothing. whatif flo had died? suppose she had died at the very moment she was making her radiant, satisfiedappearance in rose’s dream? rose hurried out of bed, ran barefoot to flo’s room. the bed therewas empty. she went into the kitchen and found flo sitting at the table, dressed to go out, wearingthe navy blue summer coat and matching turban hat she had worn to brian’s and phoebe’swedding. the coat was rumpled and in need of cleaning, the turban was crooked.

“now i’m ready for to go,” flo said.

“go where?”

“out there,” said flo, jerking her head. “out to the whattayacallit.

the poorhouse.”

“the home,” said rose. “you don’t have to go today.”

“they hired you to take me, now you get a move on and take me,”

flo said.

“i’m not hired. i’m rose. i’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“you can make it. i won’t drink it.”

she made rose think of a woman who had started in labor.

such was her concentration, her determination, her urgency. rose thought flo felt her deathmoving in her like a child, getting ready to tear her. so she gave up arguing, she got dressed,hastily packed a bag for flo, got her to the car and drove her out to the home, but in the matter offlo’s quickly tearing and relieving death she was mistaken.

some time before this, rose had been in a play, on national television. the trojanwomen. she had no lines, and in fact she was in the play simply to do a favor for a friend, whohad got a better part elsewhere. the director thought to liven all the weeping and mourning byhaving the trojan women go bare-breasted. one breast apiece, they showed, the right in the caseof royal personages such as hecuba and helen; the left, in the case of ordinary virgins or wives,such as rose. rose didn’t think herself enhanced by this exposure—she was getting on, after all,her bosom tended to flop—but she got used to the idea. she didn’t count on the sensation theywould create. she didn’t think many people would be watching. she forgot about those parts ofthe country where people can’t exercise their preference for quiz shows, police- car chases,american situation comedies, and are compelled to put up with talks on public affairs and tours ofart galleries and ambitious offerings of drama. she did not think they would be so amazed, either,now that every magazine rack in every town was serving up slices and cutlets of bare flesh. howcould such outrage fasten on the trojan ladies’ sad-eyed collection, puckered with cold thenrunning with sweat under the lights, badly and chalk- ily made- up, all looking rather foolishwithout their mates, rather pitiful and unnatural, like tumors?

flo took to pen and paper over that, forced her stiff swollen fingers, crippled almost out of usewith arthritis, to write the word shame. she wrote that if rose’s father had not been dead long agohe would now wish that he was. that was true. rose read the letter, or part of it, out loud to somefriends she was having for dinner. she read it for comic effect, and dramatic effect, to show thegulf that lay behind her, though she did realize, if she thought about it, that such a gulf wasnothing special. most of her friends, who seemed to her ordinarily hard-working, anxious, andhopeful, people, could lay claim to being disowned or prayed for, in some disappointed home.

halfway through, she had to stop reading. it wasn’t that she thought how shabby it was, to beexposing and making fun of flo this way. she had done it often enough before; it was no news toher that it was shabby. what stopped her was, in fact, that gulf; she had a fresh and overwhelmingrealization of it, and it was nothing to laugh about. these reproaches of flo’s made as much senseas a protest about raising umbrellas, a warning against eating raisins. but they were painfully,truly, meant; they were all a hard life had to offer. shame on a bare breast.

another time, rose was getting an award. so were several other people. a reception was beingheld, in a toronto hotel. flo had been sent an invitation, but rose had never thought that shewould come. she had thought she should give someone’s name, when the organizers asked aboutrelatives, and she could hardly name brian and phoebe. of course it was possible that she did,secretly, want flo to come, wanted to show flo, intimidate her, finally remove herself from flo’sshade. that would be a natural thing to want to do.

flo came down on the train, unannounced. she got to the hotel. she was arthritic then, but stillmoving without a cane. she had always been decently, soberly, cheaply, dressed, but now itseemed she had spent money and asked advice. she was wearing a mauve and purple checkedpants suit, and beads like strings of white and yellow popcorn. her hair was covered by a thickgray-blue wig, pulled low on her forehead like a woollen cap. from the vee of the jacket, and itstoo-short sleeves, her neck and wrists stuck out brown and warty as if covered with bark. ‘whenshe saw rose she stood still. she seemed to be waiting—not just for rose to go over to her but forher feelings about the scene in front of her to crystallize.

soon they did.

“look at the nigger!” said flo in a loud voice, before rose was anywhere near her. her tonewas one of simple, gratified astonishment, as if she had been peering down the grand canyon orseen oranges growing on a tree.

she meant george, who was getting one of the awards. he turned around, to see if someone wasfeeding him a comic line. and flo did look like a comic character, except that her bewilderment,her authenticity, were quite daunting. did she note the stir she had caused? possibly. after thatone outburst she clammed up, would not speak again except in the most grudging monosyllables,would not eat any food or drink any drink offered her, would not sit down, but stood astonishedand unflinching in the middle of that gathering of the bearded and beaded, the unisexual and theunashamedly un-anglo-saxon, until it was time for her to be taken to her train and sent home.

rose found that wig under the bed, during the horrifying clean-up that followed flo’sremoval. she took it out to the home, along with some clothes she had washed or had dry-cleaned,and some stockings, talcum powder, cologne, that she had bought. sometimes flo seemed to thinkrose was a doctor, and she said, “i don’t want no woman doctor, you can just clear out.” butwhen she saw rose carrying the wig she said, “rose! what is that you got in your hand, is it adead gray squirrel!?”

“no,” said rose, “it’s a wig.”

“what?”

“a wig,” said rose, and flo began to laugh. rose laughed too. the wig did look like a dead cator squirrel, even though she had washed and brushed it; it was a disturbing-looking object.

“my god, rose, i thought what is she doing bringing me a dead squirrel! if i put it onsomebody’d be sure to take a shot at me.”

rose stuck it on her own head, to continue the comedy, and flo laughed so that she rocked backand forth in her crib.

when she got her breath flo said, “what am i doing with these damn sides up on my bed? areyou and brian behaving yourselves? don’t fight, it gets on your father’s nerves. do you know howmany gallstones they took out of me? fifteen! one as big as a pullet’s egg. i got them somewhere.

i’m going to take them home.” she pulled at the sheets, searching. “they were in a bottle.”

“i’ve got them already,” said rose. “i took them home.”

“did you? did you show your father?”

“yes.”

“oh, well, that’s where they are then,” said flo, and she lay down and closed her eyes.