Read Online Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner - Free Book Online Page B

of hooks and eyes. For dances she had a strapless version of the same foundation, which I had to help her into through a three-part process of folding her skin, having her take a deep breath, and then hooking her in Scarlett O’Hara–style.
    Her outfits were invariably accompanied by high-heeled shoes, and she even had high-heeled rubber boots to fit over them in bad weather. When my father suggested she wear flats at home because her spike heels were digging into the linoleum, she said she couldn’t wear them. Her calves hurt when she wore flats; since she’d been wearing high heels from the age of thirteen, the tendons in her calves had shrunk over time. Each pair of shoes had a matching bag — alligator, spectators, patent leather, suede — and most of these had a matching pillbox hat. I always thought “pillbox” was a perfect hat for a pharmacist’s wife. On Sundays she wore feathered hats to church in what she referred to as “fall transitional colours,” with black diamond meshed veils descending over her eyes, making her look as remote as the priest behind his grid in the confessional. In winter she wore white fur hats and carried a white fur muff with red satin lining.
    She was ready an hour early for every occasion. While waiting to leave for church in the summer she sat with arms outstretched in a wing chair, with a Kleenex tucked into each armhole of her sleeveless dress and her feet stretched out, resting on top of a floor fan. Often we left so early for Sunday mass that the previous mass wouldn’t have let out yet, and we’d have to circle the parking lotfor a half-hour. Strict punctuality and silence in church were her only rules. The first was easy for her to follow because she rarely went anywhere and when she did she never attempted to undertake more than one activity, such as going to the bank, in a single day. When anyone questioned her about why we had to be early for anything, she said, “Then no one could say we were late.”
    I could whisper before mass began but I had to be silent the second the priest walked up to the altar.
Once
she spoke when we were filing out of mass. She put her hand on my shoulder, bent her veiled face close, and whispered for my ears only that she’d heard a rumour that Susan B. Anthony was going to be canonized. When I asked why it was a secret, she said I should keep a lid on it so she and I could start praying to her before everyone else got on to it.
    She was a member of the garden club, Altar and Rosary Society, and a member of a bridge club where she excelled at the game and was designated “a master bridge player.” However, she dropped out of bridge saying it was full of “eggheads” and she was sick of taking it
so
seriously. She’d say, “Who needs it?” She was also a member of the historical society, which she took seriously, and she sometimes discovered new documents in people’s basements or through previously unnoticed published material. I firmly believed that Lewiston was more important than ancient Rome in its store of hidden treasure.
    She was in a study club with other women who met weekly to give papers or progress notes on their research. Each one of these reports was of momentous importance in our household. She read them aloud to my father and me every night for weeks before her presentations. We always clapped at the end and my father whispered to me beforehand that I should ask a question to showI was following — which I wasn’t. She was interested in Africa and the different tribes and their habits. I remember the tiny but fierce pygmies in her paper “Emerging African Nations.” She was also interested in ancient history and in the history of medicine. She used my father’s old prescription drawers in the basement for keeping thousands of notes in case we ever needed to access the information quickly. Once when I came across the