Read Online The Republic of Love by Carol Shields - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Carol Shields
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area of Toronto, and throughout the long winter months he slept on a shredded mattress between unwashed sheets. Every morning he looked into a square of broken mirror and winced at the grayness of his skin. There were mice in the apartment, possibly rats. Something, anyway, that gnawed on the electric wires. He could never find his own clothes, and his one pair of shoes seemed to be continually wet. Most of the time he was wretched and cold and worried about what would happen to him next, but that odd phrase – “Who needs it” – so brilliant, defiant, and novel, so explicitly emblematic of its time – carried him through. Like a flag, he unfurled it before sleep, and again on waking, and he applied its compacted and plenteous powers particularly to the new territory of love and accomplishment. He wasn’t sure what it meant – he still isn’t. “Who needs it.” Who needs
what?
But back in that foolish, puny time he needed a weapon he could hold next to his body, something that would make him brave, or make him appear to be brave.
∼
CHAPTER 5
∼
How Are You, How Are You?
F AY PUTS DOWN THE NEWSPAPER, STARES OUT THE WINDOW AT THE budding trees, and thinks: I’m getting along fine. Peter’s been gone for one week now. I’ve eaten seven breakfasts alone (seven single-toast breakfasts), and four dinners, and one lunch. I’ve slept alone for seven nights now, seven nights in that big bed.
There were only two nights when she’d slept badly, and only one when she’d curled to the edge of the bed and given way to a fit of whimpering – but that lasted for only about five minutes. Seven chaste nights punctuated by a single long engorged sexual dream that woke her suddenly with its intensity, leaving her limp, sweating – and mildly curious about who it was who entered her sleep and aroused her to such a pitch.
She’s bought a new tube of toothpaste, an expensive off-brand she’s never heard of. She’s bought herself a new summer robe, widely yoked and prodigal with poppies. She’s bought a large economy-size pack of Q-Tips – she doesn’t know quite why but suspects she’s preparing for a fanatical scouring and scourging of her flesh.
She thinks: It’s May now, a new month.
The idea is bracing, and so is the fact that June, July, and August will follow, a series of green arches she can walk under, reassuring herself as she goes, pinching herself awake and knowing she will always, somewhere, be driven into little deceptions of happiness. She has a knack, it seems, for deception.
Peter took Fay’s flowering cactus with him. She had insisted on it, an obscure gesture of good will, but now a bitter thought comes: I wish I’d kept that cactus, I was a fool to part with it.
Forget what’s in the past, go back to the newspaper.
One of the headlines says, “Buddhists Go on Rampage.” That makes her smile, and she’s pleased that she’s able to sit alone in a room and smile over a trifle. Then she reads another headline, which says, “Iowa Woman Fears Losing Looks; Drowns in Well.”
She says aloud, cherishingly: “The world is full of pathos,” and she is startled by the foreign quality of her voice, erupting, it seems, from some newly discovered vent in her throat, so rich with dignity, so cool and artificial it might have come out of a radio.
F AY’S BROTHER , C LYDE , and his wife, Sonya, went to Minneapolis for the weekend, and Fay offered to baby-sit.
High up in an upstairs bedroom she reads her nephews, Gordon and Matthew, a bedtime story. The three of them lie sprawled on a bed, a woolen blanket pulled up to their chins. A circle of yellow light from the small shaded Mickey Mouse lamp falls on the book’s pages and across the fluffed heads of the two boys. She feels a wrenching ache of love for them both, their two small heads on her shoulders, the rounded polish of bone and flesh, and a wondrous conjunction of bath soap and soft fur. The story she reads is one of her favorites,
what?
But back in that foolish, puny time he needed a weapon he could hold next to his body, something that would make him brave, or make him appear to be brave.
∼
CHAPTER 5
∼
How Are You, How Are You?
F AY PUTS DOWN THE NEWSPAPER, STARES OUT THE WINDOW AT THE budding trees, and thinks: I’m getting along fine. Peter’s been gone for one week now. I’ve eaten seven breakfasts alone (seven single-toast breakfasts), and four dinners, and one lunch. I’ve slept alone for seven nights now, seven nights in that big bed.
There were only two nights when she’d slept badly, and only one when she’d curled to the edge of the bed and given way to a fit of whimpering – but that lasted for only about five minutes. Seven chaste nights punctuated by a single long engorged sexual dream that woke her suddenly with its intensity, leaving her limp, sweating – and mildly curious about who it was who entered her sleep and aroused her to such a pitch.
She’s bought a new tube of toothpaste, an expensive off-brand she’s never heard of. She’s bought herself a new summer robe, widely yoked and prodigal with poppies. She’s bought a large economy-size pack of Q-Tips – she doesn’t know quite why but suspects she’s preparing for a fanatical scouring and scourging of her flesh.
She thinks: It’s May now, a new month.
The idea is bracing, and so is the fact that June, July, and August will follow, a series of green arches she can walk under, reassuring herself as she goes, pinching herself awake and knowing she will always, somewhere, be driven into little deceptions of happiness. She has a knack, it seems, for deception.
Peter took Fay’s flowering cactus with him. She had insisted on it, an obscure gesture of good will, but now a bitter thought comes: I wish I’d kept that cactus, I was a fool to part with it.
Forget what’s in the past, go back to the newspaper.
One of the headlines says, “Buddhists Go on Rampage.” That makes her smile, and she’s pleased that she’s able to sit alone in a room and smile over a trifle. Then she reads another headline, which says, “Iowa Woman Fears Losing Looks; Drowns in Well.”
She says aloud, cherishingly: “The world is full of pathos,” and she is startled by the foreign quality of her voice, erupting, it seems, from some newly discovered vent in her throat, so rich with dignity, so cool and artificial it might have come out of a radio.
F AY’S BROTHER , C LYDE , and his wife, Sonya, went to Minneapolis for the weekend, and Fay offered to baby-sit.
High up in an upstairs bedroom she reads her nephews, Gordon and Matthew, a bedtime story. The three of them lie sprawled on a bed, a woolen blanket pulled up to their chins. A circle of yellow light from the small shaded Mickey Mouse lamp falls on the book’s pages and across the fluffed heads of the two boys. She feels a wrenching ache of love for them both, their two small heads on her shoulders, the rounded polish of bone and flesh, and a wondrous conjunction of bath soap and soft fur. The story she reads is one of her favorites,
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