Read Online Mister Sandman by Barbara Gowdy - Free Book Online Page B

of her stowed in there with only reading material and a radio like some blind midget scholar hiding from the Nazis, so she collected her dolls and stuffed animals from the shelf where they were gathering dust, loaded them into the wicker laundry basket and put that in, frankly surprised it wasn’t pushed back out the same day and then realizing that why it wasn’t was because, with the boxes gone, it served as a partial barricade when the closet door was opened.
    Which it only was for getting or hanging up clothes or when any of them were paying a visit. To Joan’s credit she suffered the door to remain open during visits from the family.
    And there were a lot of these, a regular pilgrimage throughout the day—Doris always racing in, Sonja dropping by whenever she felt like taking a break from pin-clipping, Marcy joining her before and after school, and Gordon going straight there as soon as he arrived home from work. The half hourbefore supper that he used to spend reading the newspaper Gordon now spent stretched out on the floor.
    The truth was, the best part of the day those bleak days in his life was lying with his head in his daughter’s closet. Shoes and tie off, listening to the turned-down radio, so unwound he often found himself talking to her as if she were the family dog. “I’m just not a corporate man,” he might say. Or even, “Between you and me I’m not cut out for married life.” Once, to his horror, he realized that he had asked her if she’d ever contemplated suicide. He was a private person, tormented by almost everything he felt. But here he was spilling his guts to a toddler. It was eerie, inconceivable. Sometimes the words he’d just said would boomerang back to him and he’d come to as if out of a coma. Aghast, but refreshed as well, he had to admit—and usually assuring himself he’d only
imagined
he’d spoken out loud—he’d sit up and take a peek at her sitting back there so straight with her legs out and a magazine opened on her lap.
    He couldn’t see the expression in her eyes, not with the sunglasses on, but her lips were almost always parted, and this, combined with her utter stillness, gave her a highly expectant look. He would reach in and pat her barrette-laden head. What fine hair! Like spider webs, her ears poking through the strands. He might click his tongue or whistle through his teeth to hear her imitation. To be wowed by her.
    Gordon wasn’t alone in confessing to Joan or using her as a sounding board. They all did it, although maybe not so involuntarily. Without a pang, Doris tried out lies on her. When the mail arrived and the sound of it coming through the slot sent Joan fleeing into the closet (if she wasn’t there already), Doris would chase after her and sit in the closet doorway to open the letters, never failing to get a charge out of Joan’s perfect echo of the envelopes ripping. If there were any overdue notices orfinal invoices Doris would announce them and ask how they were going to weasel out of paying. Joan would look at her, seemingly rapt. Then Doris would say something like, “I know! I’ll tell them I moved the bank account and they mustn’t have transferred the money yet!” If she snapped her fingers, Joan immediately snapped hers.
    When a letter arrived from Harmony, Doris would read parts ofthat, too. Harmony had a one-tracked, colourful mind. “My woman,” Harmony wrote, “I pine for your breasts like fattened geese. In reveries I taste your mango honey.” These were not the parts Doris read. “The mist falls like arpeggios” was what she skipped to, that kind of thing. Harmony’s envelopes were lilac-scented and had her initials embossed on the flap. “Feel,” Doris would say, extending the envelope into the closet, and Joan would touch the HLL with the tips of all ten fingers like a person reading braille. Then Doris would hold the envelope under Joan’s nose and say, “Smell,” and Joan’s nostrils would flare and contract