Read Online The Wife Tree by Dorothy Speak - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dorothy Speak
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bathroom, searched through the medicine cabinet and came back with a small box. She saw me struggling with the brittle wrapping.
Can I help? she asked. She had a soft mature voice. She took the Band-Aid from me, unwrapped it and stretched it over the scrape.
What sort of creature are you supposed to be? I asked, looking at her costume.
An intergalactic alien, she said. I hate Halloween, she added. It’s supposed to make you happy, but it never does.
Then why are you out? I asked.
My mother made me go. She says I have to get out and have fun.
Isn’t there someone you could have gone trick-or-treating with?
Only my sister. But she’s older. She wanted to be with her own friends. She’s very popular.
But you’re a pretty girl, I said, and intelligent-looking. Do you not have your own friends?
I’ve been sad all my life, said the girl. People don’t want to be with someone who’s sad.
Have bad things happened to you?
No. I was born this way. My mother says I got it from my father. It runs in his family.
You do look sad.
I’m best when I’m alone. But my mother says loners are lonely people.
My husband was a loner, I told her.
Where is he?
In the hospital — alone.
He must be happy, then.
Maybe he wasn’t a loner, I confided. Maybe he just didn’t like my company.
Either way, then, it’s good he got sick.
I don’t know, I said uncertainly.
She drew the plate of fudge toward her. You’re not supposed to give out stuff like this any more, she said, taking a piece. Didn’t you know? Everything has to be wrapped and sealed. Everything has to be professional. Homemade and unwrapped treats go straight into the garbage when we get home. Fudge. Popcorn balls. Candy apples. There are sick people out there. You could bite into a razor blade or a shard of glass. Rat poisoning.
She ate the fudge. This is good, she said.
It was a favourite recipe of my children, I told her…
November 1
Dear girls,
…Here in Canada the pale autumn sun is cooling day by day, like a dying planet…
Yesterday, on the way out of the hospital, I slipped into the chapel on the first floor. Alone, I knelt in one of the narrow blond pews, looking around at the stained glass windows and breathing in the smell of paraffin and chrysanthemums. At the front of the chapel stood a small organ, the sight reminding me of my soloist days. I opened my mouth, thinking I might sing a bit of Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” as an offering, a small prayer sent up, that William would soon recover his speech. But all that came out was a little yelp, like a trod-upon dog. Where, I wondered, my hand flying up to my throat, has my voice gone?
And suddenly I was a girl of ten once more, clattering down the stairs late on a Saturday night to sing for the company. The occasion was my uncle Harper’s birthday and my mother had decided to throw a party. We weren’t a party-giving family. It was an extravagance we couldn’t afford. But my mother had arranged a potluck supper and somehow scraped together enough money for sugar, candles, coffee. I’d been told to stay upstairs until summoned. From there, I smelled the aroma of food, heard the clattering of dishes and cutlery as my sisters at last cleared away the platters of ham and roast beef, the bowls emptied of potato salad, cucumber salad, coleslaw. Beneath the bedroom window, guffaws exploded. Parting the curtains, I saw a cluster of men in the lane below, passing a bottle of whisky around. I smelled a sweet herbaceous smoke and saw the tips of their lit cigars burning like red stars in the gathering dusk.Harper was out there. My father’s younger brother, a bachelor, he was fond of cutting up. He was a good-looker, a drinker, a tireless dancer, a champion teller of jokes.
Soon the fiddling commenced, the dancing began and the floor beneath my feet shook so violently that I thought the house would fall down. I listened with a raging hunger. My sisters, helping with the preparations late in the
Can I help? she asked. She had a soft mature voice. She took the Band-Aid from me, unwrapped it and stretched it over the scrape.
What sort of creature are you supposed to be? I asked, looking at her costume.
An intergalactic alien, she said. I hate Halloween, she added. It’s supposed to make you happy, but it never does.
Then why are you out? I asked.
My mother made me go. She says I have to get out and have fun.
Isn’t there someone you could have gone trick-or-treating with?
Only my sister. But she’s older. She wanted to be with her own friends. She’s very popular.
But you’re a pretty girl, I said, and intelligent-looking. Do you not have your own friends?
I’ve been sad all my life, said the girl. People don’t want to be with someone who’s sad.
Have bad things happened to you?
No. I was born this way. My mother says I got it from my father. It runs in his family.
You do look sad.
I’m best when I’m alone. But my mother says loners are lonely people.
My husband was a loner, I told her.
Where is he?
In the hospital — alone.
He must be happy, then.
Maybe he wasn’t a loner, I confided. Maybe he just didn’t like my company.
Either way, then, it’s good he got sick.
I don’t know, I said uncertainly.
She drew the plate of fudge toward her. You’re not supposed to give out stuff like this any more, she said, taking a piece. Didn’t you know? Everything has to be wrapped and sealed. Everything has to be professional. Homemade and unwrapped treats go straight into the garbage when we get home. Fudge. Popcorn balls. Candy apples. There are sick people out there. You could bite into a razor blade or a shard of glass. Rat poisoning.
She ate the fudge. This is good, she said.
It was a favourite recipe of my children, I told her…
November 1
Dear girls,
…Here in Canada the pale autumn sun is cooling day by day, like a dying planet…
Yesterday, on the way out of the hospital, I slipped into the chapel on the first floor. Alone, I knelt in one of the narrow blond pews, looking around at the stained glass windows and breathing in the smell of paraffin and chrysanthemums. At the front of the chapel stood a small organ, the sight reminding me of my soloist days. I opened my mouth, thinking I might sing a bit of Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” as an offering, a small prayer sent up, that William would soon recover his speech. But all that came out was a little yelp, like a trod-upon dog. Where, I wondered, my hand flying up to my throat, has my voice gone?
And suddenly I was a girl of ten once more, clattering down the stairs late on a Saturday night to sing for the company. The occasion was my uncle Harper’s birthday and my mother had decided to throw a party. We weren’t a party-giving family. It was an extravagance we couldn’t afford. But my mother had arranged a potluck supper and somehow scraped together enough money for sugar, candles, coffee. I’d been told to stay upstairs until summoned. From there, I smelled the aroma of food, heard the clattering of dishes and cutlery as my sisters at last cleared away the platters of ham and roast beef, the bowls emptied of potato salad, cucumber salad, coleslaw. Beneath the bedroom window, guffaws exploded. Parting the curtains, I saw a cluster of men in the lane below, passing a bottle of whisky around. I smelled a sweet herbaceous smoke and saw the tips of their lit cigars burning like red stars in the gathering dusk.Harper was out there. My father’s younger brother, a bachelor, he was fond of cutting up. He was a good-looker, a drinker, a tireless dancer, a champion teller of jokes.
Soon the fiddling commenced, the dancing began and the floor beneath my feet shook so violently that I thought the house would fall down. I listened with a raging hunger. My sisters, helping with the preparations late in the
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