The Blind Assassin

The cubicle

From here on in, things take a darker turn. But then, you knew they would. You knew it, because you already know what happened to Laura.

Laura herself didn't know it, of course. She had no thought of playing the doomed romantic heroine. She became that only later, in the frame of her own outcome and thus in the minds of her admirers. In the course of daily life she was frequently irritating, like anyone. Or dull. Or joyful, she could be that as well: given the right conditions, the secret of which was known only to her, she could drift off into a kind of rapture. It's her flashes of joy that are most poignant for me now.

And so in memory she rambles through her mundane activities, to the outward eye nothing very unusual -a bright-haired girl walking up a hill, intent on thoughts of her own. There are many of these lovely, pensive girls, the landscape is cluttered with them, there's one born every minute. Most of the time nothing out of the ordinary happens to them, these girls. This and that and the other, and then they get older. But Laura has been singled out, by you, by me. In a painting she'd be gathering wildflowers, though in real life she rarely did anything of the kind. The earth-faced god crouches behind her in the forest shade. Only we can see him. Only we know he will pounce.

I've looked back over what I've set down so far, and it seems inadequate. Perhaps there is too much frivolity in it, or too many things that might be taken for frivolity. A lot of clothes, the styles and colours outmoded now, shed butterflies' wings. A lot of dinners, not always very good ones. Breakfasts, picnics, ocean voyages, costume balls, newspapers, boating on the river. Such items do not assort very well with tragedy. But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge.

It's April now. The snowdrops have come and gone, the crocuses are up. Soon I'll be able to take up residence on the back porch, at my mousy, scarred old wooden table, at least when it's sunny. No ice on the sidewalks, and so I have begun to walk again. The winter months of inactivity have weakened me; I can feel it in my legs. Nevertheless I am determined to repossess my former territories, revisit my watering holes.

Today, with the aid of my cane and with several pauses along the way, I managed to make it as far as the cemetery. There were the two Chase angels, not obviously any the worse for wear after their winter in the snow; there were the family names, only slightly more illegible, but that might be my eyesight. I ran my fingers along these names, along the letters of them; despite their hardness, their tangibility, they appeared to soften under my touch, to fade, to waver. Time has been at them with its sharp invisible teeth.

Someone had cleared away last autumn's soggy leaves from Laura's grave. There was a small bunch of white narcissi, already wilted, the stems wrapped in aluminium foil. I scooped it up and chucked it into the nearest bin. Who do they think appreciates these offerings of theirs, these worshippers of Laura? More to the point, who do they think picks up after them? Them and their floral trash, littering the precincts with the tokens of their spurious grief.

I'll give you something to cry about, Reenie would say. If we'd been her real children she would have slapped us. As it was, she never did, so we never found out what this threateningsomething might be.

On my return journey I stopped at the doughnut shop. I must have looked as tired as I felt, because a waitress came over right away. Usually they don't serve tables, you have to stand at the counter and carry things yourself, but this girl-an oval-faced girl, dark-haired, in what looked like a black uniform -asked me what she could bring me. I ordered a coffee and, for a change, a blueberry muffin. Then I saw her talking to another girl, the one behind the counter, and I realised that she wasn't a waitress at all, but a customer, like myself: her black uniform wasn't even a uniform, only a jacket and slacks. Silver glittered on her somewhere, zippers perhaps: I couldn't make out the details. Before I could thank her properly she was gone.

So refreshing, to find politeness and consideration in girls of that age. Too often (I reflected, thinking of Sabrina) they display only, thoughtless ingratitude. But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past-the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

Up to a point, of course.

The waitress in her blue smock brought the coffee. Also the muffin, which I regretted almost immediately. I couldn't make much of an inroad into it. Everything in restaurants is becoming too big, too heavy-the material world manifesting itself as huge damp lumps of dough.

After I'd drunk as much of the coffee as I could manage, I set off to reclaim the washroom. In the middle cubicle, the writings I remembered from last autumn had been painted over, but luckily this season's had already begun. At the top right-hand corner, one set of initials coyly declared its love for another set, as is their habit. Underneath that, printed neatly in blue: Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

Under that, in purple ballpoint cursive: For an experienced girl call Anita the Mighty Mouth, I'll take you to Heaven, and a phone number.

And, under that, in block lettering, and red Magic Marker: The Last Judgment is at hand. Prepare to meet thy Doom and that means you Anita.

Sometimes I think-no, sometimes I play with the idea-that these washroom scribblings are in reality the work of Laura, acting as if by long distance through the arms and hands of the girls who write them. A stupid notion, but a pleasing one, until I take the further logical step of deducing that in this case they must all be intended for me, because who else would Laura still know in this town? But if they are intended for me, what does Laura mean by them? Not what she says.

At other times I feel a strong urge to join in, to contribute; to link my own tremulous voice to the anonymous chorus of truncated serenades, scrawled love letters, lewd advertisements, hymns and curses.

The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears blot out a Word of it.

Ha, I think. That would make them sit up and bark.

Some day when I'm feeling better I'll go back there and actually write the thing down. They should all be cheered by it, for isn't it what they want? What we all want: to leave a message behind us that has an effect, if only a dire one; a message that cannot be cancelled out.

But such messages can be dangerous. Think twice before you wish, and especially before you wish to make yourself into the hand of fate.

(Think twice, said Reenie. Laura said, Why only twice?)

September came, then October. Laura was back at school, a different school. The kilts there were grey and blue rather than maroon and black; otherwise this school was much the same as the first, so far as I could see.

In November, just after she'd turned seventeen, Laura announced that Richard was wasting his money. She would continue to attend the school if he demanded it, she would place her body at a desk, but she wasn't learning anything useful. She stated this calmly and without rancour, and surprisingly enough Richard gave in. "She doesn't really need to go to school anyway," he said. "It's not as if she'll ever have to work for a living."

But Laura had to be busied with something, just as I did. She was enlisted in one of Winifred's causes, a volunteer organisation called The Abigails, which had to do with hospital visiting. The Abigails were a perky group: girls of good family, training to be future Winifreds. They dressed up in dairy-maid pinafores with tulips appliqu ©d on their bibs and traipsed around to hospital wards, where they were supposed to talk to the patients, read to them perhaps, and cheer them up-how, it was not specified.

Laura proved to be adept at this. She did not like the other Abigails, that goes without saying, but she took to the pinafore. Predictably, she gravitated to the poverty wards, which the other Abigails tended to avoid because of their stench and outrageousness. These wards were filled with derelicts: old women with dementia, impecunious veterans down on their luck, noseless men with tertiary syphilis and the like. Nurses were in short supply in these realms, and soon Laura was setting heir hand to tasks that were strictly speaking none of her business. Bedpans and vomit did riot throw her for a loop, it appeared, nor did the swearing and raving and general carryings-on. This was not the situation Winifred had intended, but pretty soon it was the one we were stuck with.

The nurses thought Laura was an angel (or some of them did; others simply thought she was in the way.) According to Winifred, who tried to keep an eye on things and had her spies, Laura was said to be especially good with the hopeless cases. It didn't seem to register on her that they were dying, said Winifred. She treated their condition as ordinary, as normal even, which-Winifred supposed-they must have found calming after a fashion, although a sane person wouldn't. To Winifred, this facility or talent of Laura's was another sign of her fundamentally bizarre nature.

"She must have nerves of ice," said Winifred. "I certainly couldn't do it. I couldn'tbear it. Think of the squalor!"

Meanwhile, plans were afoot for Laura's d ©but. These plans had not yet been shared with Laura: I'd led Winifred to expect that the reaction from her would not be positive. In that case, said Winifred, the whole thing would have to be arranged, then presented as afait accompli; or, even better, the d ©but could be dispensed with altogether if its primary object had already been accomplished, the primary object being a strategic marriage.

We were having lunch at the Arcadian Court; Winifred had invited me there, just the two of us, to devise a stratagem for Laura, as she put it.

"Stratagem?" I said.

"You know what I mean," said Winifred. "Not disastrous." The best that could be hoped for Laura, all things considered-she continued-was that some nice rich man would bite the bullet and propose to her, and march her off to the altar. Better still, some nice, rich, stupid man, who wouldn't even see there was a bullet to be bitten until it was too late.

"What bullet did you have in mind?" I asked. I wondered if this was the scheme Winifred herself had been following when she'd bagged the elusive Mr. Prior. Had she concealed her bullet-like nature until the honeymoon and then sprung it on him too suddenly? Is that why he was never seen, except in photographs?

"You have to admit," said Winifred, "that Laura is more than a little odd." She paused to smile at someone over my shoulder, and to waggle her fingers in greeting. Her silver bangles clanked; she was wearing too many of them.

"What do you mean?" I asked mildly. Collecting Winifred's explanations of what she meant had become a reprehensible hobby of mine.

Winifred pursed her lips. Her lipstick was orange, her lips were beginning to pleat. Nowadays we would say it was too much sun, but people had not yet made that connection, and Winifred liked to be bronzed; she liked the metallic patina. "She's not to every man's taste. She comes out with some very odd things. She lacks-she lackscaution."

Winifred was wearing her green alligator shoes, but I no longer judged them elegant; instead I judged them garish. Much about Winifred that I'd once found mysterious and alluring I now found obvious, merely because I knew too much. Her high gloss was chipped enamel, her sheen was varnish. I'd looked behind the curtain, I'd seen the strings and pulleys, I'd seen the wires and corsets. I'd developed tastes of my own.

"Such as what?" I asked. "What odd things?"

"Yesterday she told me that marriage wasn't important, only love. She said Jesus agreed with her," said Winifred.

"Well, that's her attitude," I said. "She doesn't make any bones about it. But she doesn't mean sex, you know. She doesn't meanems"

When there was something Winifred didn't understand, she either laughed at it or ignored it. This she ignored. "They all mean sex, whether they know it or not," she said. "An attitude like that could get a girl like her in a lot of trouble."

"She'll grow out of it in time," I said, although I didn't think so.

"None too soon. Girls with their head in the clouds are the worst by far-men take advantage. All we need is some greasy little Romeo. That would cook her goose."

"What do you suggest, then?" I said, gazing at her blankly. I used this blank look of mine to conceal irritation or even anger, but it only encouraged Winifred.

"As I said, marry her off to some nice man who doesn't know which end is up. Then she can fool around with the love stuff later, if that's what she wants. As long as she does it on the Q. T., nobody will say boo."

I dabbled around in the remains of my chicken pot pie. Winifred had picked up a good many slangy expressions lately. I suppose she thought they were up-to-date: she'd reached the age at which being up-to-date would have begun to concern her.

Obviously she didn't know Laura. The idea of Laura doing anything like that on the Q. T. was difficult for me to grasp. Right out on the sidewalk in full daylight was more like it. She'd want to defy us, rub our noses in it. Elope, or something equally melodramatic. Show the rest of us what hypocrites we were.

"Laura will have money, when she's twenty-one," I said.

"Not enough," said Winifred.

"Maybe it will be enough for Laura. Maybe she just wants to lead her own life," I said.

"Her own life!" said Winifred. "Just think what she'd do with it!"

There was no point in trying to deflect Winifred. She was like a meat cleaver in mid-air. "Have you got any candidates?" I said.

"Nothing firm, but I'm working on it," said Winifred briskly. "There's a few people who wouldn't mind having Richard's connections."

"Don't go to too much trouble," I murmured.

"Oh, but if I don't," said Winifred brightly, "what then?"

"I hear you've been rubbing Winifred the wrong way," I said to Laura. "Getting her all stirred up. Teasing her about Free Love."

"I never said Free Love," said Laura. "I only said marriage was an outworn institution. I said it had nothing to do with love, that's all. Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract. Then I said there was no marriage in Heaven."

"This isn't Heaven," I said. "In case you haven't noticed. Anyway, you certainly put the wind up her."

"I was just telling the truth." She was pushing back her cuticles with my orange stick. "I guess now she'll start introducing me to people. She's always putting her oar in."

"She's just afraid you might ruin your life. If you go in for love, I mean."

"Did getting married keep your life from being ruined? Or is it too soon to tell?"

I ignored the tone. "What do you think, though?"

"You've got a new perfume. Did Richard give it to you?"

"Of the marriage idea, I mean."

"Nothing." Now she was brushing her long blonde hair, with my hairbrush, seated at my vanity table. She'd been taking more interest in her personal appearance lately; she'd begun to dress quite stylishly, both in her own clothes and in mine.

"You mean, you don't think much of it?" I asked.

"No. I don't think about it at all."

"Perhaps you should," I said. "Perhaps you should give at least a minute of thought to your future. You can't always just keep ambling along, doing…" I wanted to saydoing nothing, but this would have been a mistake.

"The future doesn't exist," said Laura. She'd acquired the habit of talking to me as if I was the younger sister and she was the elder one; as if she had to spell things out for me. Then she said one of her odd things. "If you were a blindfolded tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire, what would you pay more attention to-the crowds on the far shore, or your own feet?"

"My feet, I suppose. I wish you wouldn't use my hairbrush. It's unsanitary."

"But if you paid too much attention to your feet, you'd fall. Or too much attention to the crowds, you'd fall too."

"So what's the right answer?"

"If you were dead, would this hairbrush still be yours?" she said, looking at her profile out of the sides of her eyes. This gave her, in reflection, a sly expression, which was unusual for her. "Can the dead own things? And if not, what makes it ‘yours' now? Your initials on it? Or your germs?"

"Laura, stop teasing!"

"I'm not teasing," said Laura, setting the hairbrush down. "I'm thinking. You can never tell the difference. I don't know why you listen to anything Winifred has to say. It's like listening to a mousetrap. One without a mouse in it," she added.

She'd become different lately: she'd become brittle, insouciant, reckless in a new way. She was no longer open about her defiances. I suspected her of taking up smoking, behind my back: I'd smelled tobacco on her once or twice. Tobacco, and something else: something too old, too knowing. I ought to have been more alert to the changes taking place in her, but I had a good many other things on my mind. I waited until the end of October to tell Richard that I was pregnant. I said I'd wanted to be sure. He expressed conventional joy, and kissed my forehead. "Good girl," he said. I was only doing what was expected of me.

One benefit was that he now left me scrupulously alone at night. He didn't want to damage anything, he said. I told him that was very thoughtful of him. "And you're on gin rations from now on. I won't allow any naughtiness," he said, wagging his finger at me in a way I found sinister. He was more alarming to me during his moments of levity than he was the rest of the time; it was like watching a lizard gambol.

"We'll have the very best doctor," he added. "No matter what it costs." Putting things on a commercial footing was reassuring to both of us. With money in play, I knew where I stood: I was the bearer of a very expensive package, pure and simple.

Winifred, after her first little scream of genuine fright, made an insincere fuss. Really she was alarmed. She guessed (rightly) that being the mother of a son and heir, or even just an heir, would give me more status with Richard than I'd had so far, and a good deal more than I was entitled to. More for me, and less for her. She would be on the lookout for ways to whittle me down to size: I expected her to appear any minute with detailed plans for decorating the nursery.

"When may we expect the blessed event?" she asked, and I could see I was in for a prolonged dose of coy language from her. It would now bethe new arrival anda present from the stork andthe little stranger, nonstop. Winifred could get quite elfish and finicky about subjects that made her nervous.

"In April, I think," I said. "Or March. I haven't seen a doctor yet."

"But you mustknow" she said, arching her eyebrows.

"It's not as if I've done this before," I said crossly. "It's not as if I wasexpecting it. I wasn't paying attention."

I went to Laura's room one evening to tell her the same news. I knocked at the door; when she didn't answer, I opened it softly, thinking she might be asleep. She wasn't though. She was kneeling beside her bed, in her blue nightgown, with her head down and her hair spreading as if blown by an unmoving wind, her arms flung out as if she'd been thrown there. At first I thought she must be praying, but she wasn't, or not that I could hear. When she noticed me at last, she got up, as matter-of-factly as if she'd been dusting, and sat on the frilled bench of her vanity table.

As usual, I was struck by the relationship between her surroundings, the surroundings Winifred had chosen for her-the dainty prints, the ribbon rosebuds, the organdies, the flounces-and Laura herself. A photograph would have revealed only harmony. Yet to me the incongruity was intense, almost surreal. Laura was flint in a nest of thistledown.

Isay flint, notstone: a flint has a heart of fire.

"Laura, I wanted to tell you," I said. "I'm going to have a baby."

She turned towards me, her face smooth and white as a porcelain plate, the expression sealed inside it. But she didn't seem surprised. Nor did she congratulate me. Instead she said, "Remember the kitten?"

"What kitten?" I said.

"The kitten Mother had. The one that killed her."

"Laura, it wasn't a kitten."

"I know," said Laura.

Beautiful view

Reenie is back. She's none too pleased with me. Well, young lady. What do you have to say for yourself? What did you do to Laura? Don't you ever learn?

There is no answer to such questions. The answers are so entangled with the questions, so knotted and many-stranded, that they aren't really answers at all.

I'm on trial here. I know it. I know what you'll soon be thinking. It will be much the same as what I myself am thinking: Should I have behaved differently? You'll no doubt believe so, but did I have any other choices? I'd have such choices now, but now is not then.

Should I have been able to read Laura's mind? Should I have known what was going on? Should I have seen what was coming next? Was I my sister's keeper?

Shouldis a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.

On a Wednesday in February, I made my way downstairs after my mid-afternoon nap. I was napping a lot by then: I was seven months' pregnant, and having trouble sleeping through the night. There was some concern too about my blood pressure; my ankles were puffy, and I'd been told to lie with my feet up for as much as I could. I felt like a huge grape, swollen to bursting with sugar and purple juice; I felt ugly and cumbersome.

It was snowing that day, I remember, great soft wet flakes: I'd looked out the window after I'd levered myself to my feet, and seen the chestnut tree, all white, like a giant coral.

Winifred was there, in the cloud-coloured living room. That wasn't unheard of-she came and went as if she owned the place-but Richard was there too. Usually at that time of day he was at his office. Each of them had a drink in hand. Each looked morose.

"What is it?" I said. "What's wrong?"

"Sit down," said Richard. "Over here, beside me." He patted the sofa.

"This is going to be a shock," said Winifred. "I'm sorry it had to happen at such a delicate time."

She did the talking. Richard held my hand and looked at the floor. Every now and then he would shake his head, as if he found her story either unbelievable or all too true.

Here is the essence of what she said: Laura had finally snapped. Snapped, she said, as if Laura was a bean. "We ought to have got help sooner for the poor girl, but we did think she was settling down," she said. However, today at the hospital where she'd been doing her charity visiting, she had gone out of control. Luckily there was a doctor present, and another one-a specialist-had been summoned. The upshot of it was that Laura had been declared a danger to herself and to others, and unfortunately Richard had been forced to commit her to the care of an institution.

"What are you telling me? What did she do?"

Winifred had on her pitying look. "She threatened to harm herself. She also said some things that were-well, she's clearly suffering from delusions."

"What did she say?"

"I'm not sure I should tell you."

"Laura is my sister," I said. "I'm entitled to know."

"She accused Richard of trying to kill you."

"In those words?"

"It was clear what she meant," said Winifred.

"No, please tell me exactly."

"She called him a lying, treacherous slave-trader, and a degenerate Mammon-worshipping monster."

"I know she has extreme views at times, and she does tend to express herself in a direct manner. But you can't put someone in the loony bin just for saying something like that."

"There was more," said Winifred darkly.

Richard, by way of soothing me, said that it wasn't a standard institution-not a Victorian norm. It was a private clinic, a very good one, one of the best. The Bella Vista Clinic. They would take excellent care of her there.

"What is the view?" I said.

"Pardon?"

"Bella Vista. It meansbeautiful view. So what is the view? What will Laura see when she looks out the window?"

"I hope this isn't your idea of a joke," said Winifred.

"No. It's very important. Is it a lawn, a garden, a fountain, or what? Or some sort of squalid alleyway?"

Neither of them could tell me. Richard said he was sure it would be natural surroundings of one kind or another. Bella Vista, he said, was outside the city. There were landscaped grounds.

"Have you been there?"

"I know you're upset, darling," he said. "Maybe you should have a nap."

"I just had a nap. Please tell me."

"No, I haven't been there. Of course I haven't."

"Then how do you know?"

"Now really, Iris," said Winifred. "What does it matter?"

"I want to see her." I had a hard time believing that Laura had suddenly fallen to pieces, but then I was so used to Laura's quirks that I no longer found them strange. It would have been easy for me to have overlooked the slippage-the telltale signs of mental frailty, whatever they might have been.

According to Winifred, the doctors had advised us that seeing Laura was out of the question for the time being. They'd been most emphatic about it. She was too deranged, not only that, she was violent. Also there was my own condition to be considered.

I started to cry. Richard handed me his handkerchief. It was lightly starched, and smelled of cologne.

"There's something else you should know," said Winifred. "This is most distressing."

"Perhaps we should leave that item till later," said Richard in a subdued voice.

"It's very painful," said Winifred, with false reluctance. So of course I insisted on knowing right then and there.

"The poor girl claims she's pregnant," said Winifred. "Just like you."

I stopped crying. "Well? Is she?"

"Of course not," said Winifred. "How could she be?"

"Who is the father?" I couldn't quite picture Laura making up such a thing, out of whole cloth. I mean, who does she imagine it is?

"She refuses to say," said Richard.

"Of course she was hysterical," said Winifred, "so it was all jumbled up. She appeared to believe that the baby you're going to have is actually hers, in some way she was unable to explain. Of course she was raving."

Richard shook his head. "Very sad," he murmured, in the hushed and solemn tone of an undertaker: muffled, like a thick maroon carpet.

"The specialist-themental specialist-said that Laura must be insanely jealous of you," said Winifred. "Jealous of everything about you-she wants to be living your life, she wants to be you, and this is the form it's taken. He said you ought to be kept out of harm's way." She took a tiny sip of her drink. "Haven't you had your own suspicions?"

You can see what a clever woman she was.

Aimee was born in early April. In those days they used ether, and so I was not conscious during the birth. I breathed in and blacked out, and woke up to find myself weaker and flatter. The baby was not there. It was in the nursery, with the rest of them. It was a girl.

"There's nothing wrong with it, is there?" I said. I was very anxious about this.

"Ten fingers, ten toes," said the nurse briskly, "and no more of anything else than there ought to be."

The baby was brought in later in the afternoon, wrapped in a pink blanket. I'd already named her, in my head. Aimee meantone who was loved, and I certainly hoped she would be loved, by someone. I had doubts about my own capacity to love her, or to love her as much as she'd need. I was spread too thin as it was: I did not think there would be enough of me left over.

Aimee looked like any newborn baby-she had that squashed face, as if she'd hit a wall at high speed. The hair on her head was long and dark. She squinted up at me through her almost-shut eyes, a distrustful squint. What a beating we take when we get born, I thought; what a bad surprise it must be, that first, harsh encounter with the outside air. I did feel sorry for the little creature; I vowed to do the best for her that I could.

While we were examining each other, Winifred and Richard arrived. The nurse at first mistook them for my parents. "No, this is the proud papa," said Winifred, and they all had a laugh. The two of them were toting flowers, and an elaborate layette, all fancy crocheting and white satin bows.

"Adorable!" said Winifred. "But my goodness, we were expecting a blonde. She's awfully dark. Look at that hair!"

"I'm sorry," I said to Richard. "I know you wanted a boy."

"Next time, darling," said Richard. He did not seem at all perturbed.

"That's only the birth hair," said the nurse to Winifred. "A lot of them have that, sometimes it's all down their back. It falls out and the real hair grows in. You can thank your stars she doesn't have teeth or a tail, the way some of them do."

"Grandfather Benjamin was dark," I said, "before his hair turned white, and Grandmother Adelia as well, and Father, of course, though I don't know about his two brothers. The blonde side of the family was my mother's." I said this in my usual conversational tone, and was relieved to see that Richard was paying no attention.

Was I grateful that Laura wasn't there? That she was shut up somewhere far away, where I couldn't reach her? Also where she couldn't reach me; where she couldn't stand beside my bed like the uninvited fairy at the christening, and say, What are you talking about?

She would have known, of course. She would have known right away.

Brightly shone the moon

Last night I watched a young woman set fire to herself: a slim young woman, dressed in gauzy flammable robes. She was doing it as a protest against some injustice or other; but why did she think this bonfire she was making of herself would solve anything? Oh, don't do that, I wanted to say to her. Don't burn up your life. Whatever it's for, it's not worth it. But it was worth it to her, obviously.

What possesses them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation? Is it what they do to show that girls too have courage, that they can do more than weep and moan, that they too can face death with panache? And where does the urge come from? Does it begin with defiance, and if so, of what? Of the great leaden suffocating order of things, the great spike-wheeled chariot, the blind tyrants, the blind gods? Are these girls reckless enough or arrogant enough to think that they can stop such things in their tracks by offering themselves up on some theoretical altar, or is it a kind of testifying? Admirable enough, if you admire obsession. Courageous enough, too. But completely useless.

I worry about Sabrina, that way. What is she up to, over there at the ends of the earth? Has she been bitten by the Christians, or the Buddhists, or is there some other variety of bat inhabiting her belfry? Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these, ye do it unto Me. Are those the words on her passport to futility? Does she want to atone for the sins of her money-ridden, wrecked, deplorable family? I certainly hope not.

Even Aimee had a bit of that in her, but in her it took a slower, more devious form. Laura went over the bridge when Aimee was eight, Richard died when she was ten. These events can't help but have affected her. Then, between Winifred and myself, she was pulled to pieces. Winifred wouldn't have won that battle now, but she did then. She stole Aimee away from me, and try as I might, I could never get her back.

No wonder that when Aimee came of age and got her hands on the money Richard had left her she jumped ship, and turned to various chemical forms of comfort, and flayed herself with one man after another. (Who, for instance, was Sabrina's father? Hard to say, and Aimee never did. Spin the wheel, she'd say, and take your pick.)

I tried to keep in touch with her. I kept hoping for a reconciliation-she was my daughter after all, and I felt guilty about her, and I wanted to make it up to her-to make up for the morass her childhood had become. But by then she'd turned against me-against Winifred too, which was some consolation at least. She wouldn't let either of us near her, or near Sabrina-especially not Sabrina. She didn't want Sabrina polluted by us.

She moved house frequently, restlessly. A couple of times she was tossed out on the street, for nonpayment of rent; she was arrested for causing a disturbance. She was hospitalised on several occasions. I suppose you'd have to say she became a confirmed alcoholic, although I hate that term. She had enough money so she never had to get a job, which was just as well because she couldn't have held one down. Or maybe it wasn't just as well. Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift; if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.

The last time I went to see Aimee, she was living in a shimmy row house near Parliament Street, in Toronto. A child I guessed must be Sabrina was squatting in the square of dirt beside the front walk-a grubby mop-headed ragamuffin wearing shorts but no T-shirt. She had an old tin cup and was shovelling grit into it with a bent spoon. She was a resourceful little creature: she asked me for a quarter. Did I give her one? Most likely. "I am your grandmother," I said to her, and she stared up at me as if I was crazy. Doubtless she'd never been told of the existence of such a person.

I got an earful from one of the neighbours, that time. They seemed like decent people, or decent enough to feed Sabrina when Aimee would forget to come home. Kelly was their last name, as I recall. They were the ones who called the police when Aimee was found at the bottom of the stairs with her neck broken. Fallen or pushed or jumped, we'll never know.

I should have snatched Sabrina up, that day, and made off with her. Headed for Mexico. I would have done so if I'd known what was going to happen-that Winifred would snaffle her and lock her away from me, just as she'd done with Aimee.

Would Sabrina have been better off with me than with Winifred? What must it have been like for her, growing up with a rich, vindictive, festering old woman? Instead of a poor vindictive festering one, namely myself. I would have loved her, though. I doubt Winifred ever did. She just hung on to Sabrina to spite me; to punish me; to show she'd won.

But I did no baby-snatching that day. I knocked on the door, and when there was no answer I opened it and walked in, then climbed the steep, dark, narrow stairs to Aimee's second-floor apartment. Aimee was in the kitchen, sitting at the small round table, looking at her hands, which were holding a coffee mug with a smile button on it. She had the cup right up close to her eyes and was turning it this way and that. Her face was pallid, her hair straggly. I can't say I found her very attractive. She was smoking a cigarette. Most likely she was under the influence of some drug or other, mixed with alcohol; I could smell it in the room, along with the old smoke, the dirty sink, the unscrubbed garbage pail.

I tried to talk to her. I began gently, but she wasn't in the mood for listening. She said she was tired of it, of all of us. Most of all she was tired of the feeling that things were being hidden from her. The family had covered it up; no one would tell her the truth; our mouths opened and closed and words came out, but they were not words that led to anything.

She'd figured it out anyway, though. She'd been robbed, she'd been deprived of her heritage, because I wasn't her real mother and Richard hadn't been her real father. It was all there in Laura's book, she said.

I asked her what on earth she meant. She said it was obvious: her real mother was Laura, and her real father was that man, the one in The Blind Assassin. Aunt Laura had been in love with him, but we'd thwarted her-disposed of this unknown lover somehow. Scared him off, bought him off, run him off, whatever; she'd lived in Winifred's house long enough to see how things were done by people like us. Then, when Laura turned out to be pregnant by him, we'd sent her away to cover up the scandal, and when my own baby had died at birth, we'd stolen the baby from Laura and adopted it, and passed it off as our own.

She was not at all coherent, but this was the gist of it. You can see how appealing it must have been for her, this fantasy: who wouldn't want to have a mythical being for a mother, instead of the shop-soiled real kind? Given the chance.

I said she was quite wrong, she'd got things all mixed up, but she didn't listen. No wonder she'd never felt happy with Richard and me, she said. We'd never behaved like her real parents, because in fact we weren't her real parents. And no wonder Aunt Laura had thrown herself off a bridge-it was because we'd broken her heart. Laura had probably left a note for Aimee explaining all of this, for her to read when she was older, but Richard and I must have destroyed it.

No wonder I'd been such a terrible mother, she continued. I'd never really loved her. If I had, I would have put her before everything else. I would have considered her feelings. I wouldn't have left Richard.

"I may not have been a perfect mother," I said. "I'm willing to admit that, but I did the best I could under the circumstances-circumstances about which you actually know very little." What was she doing with Sabrina? I went on. Letting her run around like that outside the house with no clothes on, filthy as a beggar; it was neglect, the child could disappear at any moment, children disappeared all the time. I was Sabrina's grandmother, I would be more than willing to take her in, and…

"You aren't her grandmother," said Aimee. She was crying by now. "Aunt Laura is. Or she was. She's dead, and you killed her!"

"Don't be stupid," I said. This was the wrong response: the more vehemently you deny such things, the more they are believed. But you often give the wrong response when you're frightened, and Aimee had frightened me.

When I said the wordstupid, she began to scream at me. I was the stupid one, she said. I was dangerously stupid, I was so stupid I didn't even know how stupid I was. She used a number of words I won't repeat here, then picked up the smile-button coffee mug and threw it at me. Then she came at me, unsteadily; she was howling, great heart-rending sobs. Her arms were outstretched, in a threatening manner, I believed. I was upset, shaken. I retreated backwards, clutching the bannister, dodging other items-a shoe, a saucer. When I got to the front door I fled.

Perhaps I should have stretched out my own arms. I should have hugged her. I should have cried. Then I should have sat down with her and told her this story I'm now telling you. But I didn't do that. I missed the chance, and I regret it bitterly.

It was only three weeks after this that Aimee fell down the stairs. I mourned her, of course. She was my daughter. But I have to admit I mourned the self she'd been at a much earlier age. I mourned what she could have become; I mourned her lost possibilities. More than anything, I mourned my own failures.

After Aimee was dead, Winifred got her claws into Sabrina. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and she was on the scene first. She whisked Sabrina off to her tarted-up mansionette in Rosedale, and faster than you could blink she'd had herself declared the official guardian. I considered fighting, but it would just have been the battle over Aimee all over again-one I was doomed to lose.

When Winifred took charge of Sabrina I wasn't yet sixty; I could still drive then. From time to time I would make the trip into Toronto and shadow Sabrina, like a private eye in an old detective story. I'd hang around outside her primary school-her new primary school, her new exclusive primary school-just to catch a glimpse of her, and to assure myself that, despite everything, she was all right.

I was in the department store, for instance, the morning Winifred took her to Eaton's to get her some party shoes, a few months after she'd acquired her. No doubt she bought Sabrina's other clothes without consulting her-that would have been her way-but shoes do need to be tried on, and for some reason Winifred had not entrusted this chore to the hired help.

It was the Christmas season-the pillars in the store were twined with fake holly, wreaths of gold-sprayed pine cones and red velvet ribbon hung over the doorways like prickly haloes-and Winifred got trapped in the carol singing, much to her annoyance. I was in the next aisle over. My wardrobe wasn't what it used to be-I was wearing an old tweed coat and a kerchief pulled down over my forehead-and although she looked right at me, she didn't see me. She probably saw a cleaning lady, or an immigrant bargain-hunter.

She was done up to the nines as usual, but despite this she was looking quite tatty. Well, she must have been pushing seventy, and after a certain age her style of maquillage does tend to make you look mummified. She shouldn't have stuck to the orange lipstick, it was too harsh for her.

I could see the powdery furrows of exasperation between her eyebrows, the clamped muscles of her rouged jaw. She was hauling Sabrina along by one arm, trying to push her way through the chorus of bulky, winter-coated shoppers; she must have hated the enthusiastic, uncooked quality of the singing.

Sabrina on the other hand wanted to hear the music. She was dragging down, making herself a dead weight in the way children do-resistance without the appearance of it. Her arm was straight up, as if she was a good girl answering a question in school, but she was scowling like an imp. It must have hurt, what she was doing. Taking a stance, making a declaration. Holding out.

The song was "Good King Wenceslas." Sabrina knew the words: I could see her little mouth moving. "‘Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,'" she sang. "‘When a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fu-u-el.'"

It's a song about hunger. I could tell Sabrina understood it-she must still have remembered that, being hungry. Winifred gave her arm a jerk, and looked around nervously. She didn't see me, but she sensed me, the way a cow in a well-fenced field will sense a wolf. Even so, cows aren't like wild animals; they're used to being protected. Winifred was skittish, but she wasn't frightened. If I crossed her mind at all, she doubtless thought of me as being somewhere far away, mercifully out of sight, in the outer darkness to which she had consigned me.

I had an overpowering urge then to snatch Sabrina up in my arms and run away with her. I could imagine Winifred's quavering wail as I barged my way through the stolid carollers, yelling so comfortably about the bitter weather.

I would have held on to her tightly, I wouldn't have stumbled, I wouldn't have let her fall. But also I wouldn't have got far. They'd have been after me in a shot.

I went out onto the street by myself then, and walked and walked, head down, collar up, along the downtown sidewalks. The wind was coming in off the lake and the snow was whirling down. It was daytime, but because of the low clouds and the snow the light was dim; the cars were churning slowly past along the unploughed streets, their red tail lights receding from me like the eyes of hunchbacked beasts running backwards.

I was clutching a package-I've forgotten what I'd bought-and I had no gloves. I must have dropped them in the store, among the feet of the crowd. I hardly missed them. Once I could walk through blizzards with my hands bare and never feel it. It's love or hate or terror, or just plain rage, that can do that for you.

I used to have a daydream about myself-still have it, come to that. A ridiculous-enough daydream, though it's often through such images that we shape our destinies. (You'll notice how easily I slip into inflated language likeshape our destinies, once I wander off in this direction. But never mind.)

In this daydream, Winifred and her friends, wreaths of money on their heads, are gathered around Sabrina's frilly white bed while she sleeps, discussing what they will bestow upon her. She's already been given the engraved silver cup from Birks, the nursery wallpaper with the frieze of domesticated bears, the starter pearls for her single-strand pearl necklace, and all the other golden gifts, perfectlycomme il faut, that will turn to coal when the sun rises. Now they're planning the orthodontist and the tennis lessons and the piano lessons and the dancing lessons and the exclusive summer camp. What hope has she got?

At this moment, I appear in a flash of sulphurous light and a puff of smoke and a flapping of sooty leather wings, the uninvited black-sheep godmother. I too wish to bestow a gift, I cry. I have the right!

Winifred and her crew laugh and point. You? You were banished long ago! Have you looked in a mirror lately? You've let yourself go, you look a hundred and two. Go back to your dingy old cave! What can you possibly have to offer?

I offer the truth, I say. I'm the last one who can. It's the only thing in this room that will still be here in the morning.

Betty's Luncheonette

Weeks went by, and Laura did not return. I wanted to write to her, telephone her, but Richard said that would be bad for her. She did not need to be interrupted, he said, by a voice from the past. She needed to concentrate her attention on her immediate situation-on the treatment at hand. That is what he'd been told. As for the nature of this treatment, he wasn't a doctor, he didn't pretend to understand such things. Surely they were best left to the experts.

I tortured myself with visions of her, imprisoned, struggling, trapped in a painful fantasy of her own making, or trapped in another fantasy, equally painful, which was not hers at all but those of the people around her. And when did the one become the other? Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway every day, we use the passwords of grammar-I say, you say, he and she say, it, on the other hand, does not say-paying for the privilege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on.

But even as a child, Laura never quite agreed. Was this the problem? That she held firm forno whenyes was the thing required? And vice versa, and vice versa.

Laura was doing well, I was told: she was making progress. Then she was not doing so well, she'd had a relapse. Progress in what, a relapse to what? It should not be gone into, it would disturb me, it was important for me to conserve my energies, as a young mother should do. "We'll have you well again in no time flat," said Richard, patting my arm.

"But I'm not really sick," I said.

"You know what I mean," he said. "Back to normal." He gave a fond smile, a leer almost. His eyes were getting smaller, or the flesh around them was moving in, which gave him a cunning expression. He was thinking about the time when he could be back where he belonged: on top. I was thinking that he would squeeze the breath out of me. He was putting on weight; he was eating out a lot; he was making speeches, at clubs, at weighty gatherings, substantial gatherings. Ponderous gatherings, at which weighty, substantial men met and pondered, because-everyone suspected it-there was heavy weather ahead.

All that speech-making can bloat a man up. I've watched the process, many times now. It's those kinds of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain. You can see it on television, during the political broadcasts-the words coming out of their mouths like bubbles of gas.

I decided to be as sickly as I could for as long as possible.

I fretted and fretted about Laura. I turned Winifred's story about her this way and that, looking at it from every angle. I couldn't quite believe it, but I couldn't disbelieve it either.

Laura had always had one enormous power: the power to break things without meaning to. Nor had she ever been a respecter of territories. What was mine was hers: my fountain pen, my cologne, my summer dress, my hat, my hairbrush. Had this catalogue expanded to include my unborn baby? However, if she was suffering from delusions-if she'd only been inventing things-why was it she'd invented precisely that?

But suppose on the other hand that Winifred was lying. Suppose Laura was as sane as she ever was. In that case, Laura had been telling the truth. And if Laura had been telling the truth, then Laura was pregnant. If there really was going to be a baby, what would become of it? And why hadn't she told me about it, instead of telling some doctor, some stranger? Why hadn't she asked me for help? I thought that over for some time. There could have been a good many reasons. My delicate condition would just have been one of them.

As for the father, whether imagined or real, there was only one man who was at all possible. It must be Alex Thomas.

But it couldn't be. How could it?

I no longer knew how Laura would have answered these questions. She had become unknown to me, as unknown as the inside of your own glove is unknown when your hand is inside it. She was with me all the time, but I couldn't look at her. I could only feel the shape of her presence: a hollow shape, filled with my own imaginings.

Months went by. It was June, then July, then August. Winifred said I was looking white and drained. I should spend more time outside, she said. If I would not take up tennis or golf, as she'd repeatedly suggested-it might do something about that little tummy of mine, which ought to be seen to before it became chronic-I could at least work on my rock garden. It was an occupation that accorded well with motherhood.

I was not fond of my rock garden, which was mine in name only, like so much else. (Like "my" baby come to think of it: surely a changeling, surely something left by the gipsies; surely my real baby-one that cried less and smiled more, and was not so pungent-had been spirited away.) The rock garden was similarly resistant to my ministrations; nothing I did to it pleased it at all. Its rocks made a good show-there was a lot of pink granite, along with the limestone-but I couldn't get anything to grow in it.

I contented myself with books-Perennials for the Rock Garden, Desert Succulents for Northern Climes, and the like. I went through such books, making lists-lists of what I might plant, or else lists of what I had indeed already planted; what ought to have been growing, but was not. Dragon's blood, snow-on-the-mountain, hen-and-chickens. I liked the names, but didn't care much for the plants themselves.

"I don't have a green thumb," I said to Winifred. "Not like you." My pretence of incompetence had now become second nature to me, I scarcely had to think about it. Winifred on her part had ceased to find my fecklessness altogether convenient.

"Well, of course you have to makesome effort," she would say. At which I would produce my dutiful lists of dead plants.

"The rocks are pretty," I said. "Can't we just call it a sculpture?"

I thought of setting off on my own to see Laura. I could leave Aimee with the new nursemaid, whom I thought of as Miss Murgatroyd-all our servants were Murgatroyds to my mind, they were all in cahoots. But no, the nursemaid would alert Winifred. I could defy them all; I could sneak off one morning, take Aimee with me; we could go on the train. But the train to where? I didn't know where Laura was-where she had been stashed away. The Bella Vista Clinic was said to be up north somewhere, butup north covered a lot of territory. I rummaged around in Richard's desk, the one in his study at the house, but found no letters from this clinic. He must have been keeping them at the office.

One day Richard came home early. He seemed quite disturbed. Laura was no longer at Bella Vista, he said.

How could that be? I asked.

A man had arrived, he said. This man claimed to be Laura's lawyer, or acting on her behalf. He was a trustee, he said-a trustee of Miss Chase's trust fund. He'd challenged the authority by which she had been placed in Bella Vista. He had threatened legal action. Did I know anything about these proceedings?

No, I did not. (I kept my hands folded in my lap. I expressed surprise, and mild interest. I did not express glee.) And then what happened? I asked.

The director of Bella Vista had been absent, the staff had been confused. They had let her go, in custody of this man. They had judged that the family would wish to avoid undue publicity. (The lawyer had threatened some of this.)

Well, I said, I guess they did the right thing.

Yes, said Richard, no doubt; but was Lauracompos mentis? For her own good, for her ownsafety, we should at least determine that. Although on the surface of things she'd appeared calmer, the staff at Bella Vista had their doubts. Who knew what danger to herself or others she might pose if allowed to run around at large?

I didn't happen by any chance to know where she was?

I did not.

I hadn't heard from her?

I had not.

I wouldn't hesitate to inform him, in that eventuality?

I would not hesitate. Those were my very words. It was a sentence without an object, and therefore not technically a lie.

I let a judicious amount of time go past, and then I set off to Port Ticonderoga, on the train, to consult Reenie. I invented a telephone call: Reenie was not in good health, I explained to Richard, and she wanted to see me again before something happened. I gave the impression that she was at death's door. She'd appreciate a photograph of Aimee, I said; she'd want to have a chat about old times. It was the least I could do. After all, she'd practically brought us up. Brought me up, I corrected, to divert Richard's attention away from the thought of Laura.

I arranged to see Reenie at Betty's Luncheonette. (She had a telephone by then, she was holding her own in the world.) That would be best, she said. She was still working there, part-time, but we could meet after her hours were up. Betty's had new owners, she said; the old owners wouldn't have liked her sitting out front like a paying customer, even if she was paying, but the new ones had figured out that they needed all the paying customers they could get.

Betty's had gone severely downhill. The striped awning was gone, the dark booths looked scratched and tawdry. The smell was no longer of fresh vanilla, but of rancid grease. I was overdressed, I realised. I shouldn't have worn my white fox neckpiece. What had been the point of showing off, under the circumstances?

I didn't like the look of Reenie: she was too puffy, too yellow, she was breathing a little too heavily. Perhaps she really wasn't in good health: I wondered if I should ask. "Good to take the weight off my feet," she said as she subsided into the booth across from me.

Myra -how old were you, Myra? You must have been three or four, I've lost count- Myra was with her. Her cheeks were red with excitement, her eyes were round and slightly bulged out, as if she were being gently strangled.

"I've told her all about you," said Reenie fondly. "The both of you." Myra wasn't too interested in me, I have to say, but she was intrigued by the foxes around my neck. Children of that age usually like furry animals, even if dead.

"You've seen Laura," I said, "or talked with her?"

"Least said, soonest mended," said Reenie, glancing around her, as if even here the walls might have ears. I saw no need for such caution.

"I suppose it was you who organised the lawyer?" I said.

Reenie looked wise. "I did what was required," she said. "Anyways, that lawyer was your mother's second cousin's husband, he was family in a way. So he saw the point of it, once I knew what was going on, that is."

"How did you know?" I was savingwhat did you know for later.

"She wrote me," said Reenie. "Said she wrote you, but never got an answer. She wasn't allowed to be mailing any letters as such, but the cook helped her out. Laura sent her the money for it afterwards, and a little extra."

"I didn't get any letter," I said.

"That's what she figured. She figured they'd seen to that."

I knew? who was meantby they. "I suppose she came here," I said.

"Where else would she go?" said Reenie. "The poor creature. After all she'd been through."

"What had she been through?" I very much wanted to know; at the same time I dreaded it. Laura could be fabricating, I told myself. Laura could be suffering from delusions. That couldn't be ruled out.

Reenie had ruled it out, however: no matter what story Laura had told her, she'd believed it. I doubted that it was the same story I'd heard. I doubted especially that there had been a baby in it, in any shape or form. "There's children present, so I won't go into it," she said. She nodded at Myra, who was gobbling up a slice of grisly pink cake and staring at me as if she wanted to lick me. "If I told you all of it you wouldn't sleep at night. The only comfort is that you had no part in it. That's what she said."

"She said that?" I was relieved to hear it. Richard and Winifred had been cast as the monsters then, and I'd been excused-on the grounds of moral feebleness, no doubt. Though I could tell Reenie hadn't entirely forgiven me for having been so careless as to let all of this happen. (Once Laura had gone off the bridge, she forgave me even less. In her view I must have had something to do with it. She was cool to me after that. She died begrudgingly.)

"She oughtn't to have been put in such a place at all, a young girl like her," said Reenie. "No matter what. Men walking around with their trousers undone, all kinds of goings-on. Shameful!"

"Will they bite?" said Myra, reaching for my foxes.

"Don't touch that," said Reenie. "With your sticky little fingers."

"No," I said. "They're not real. See, they have glass eyes. They only bite their own tails."

"She said, if only you'd known, you'd never have left her in there," said Reenie. "Supposing you'd known. She said whatever else, you weren't heartless." She frowned sideways, at the glass of water. She had her doubts on that score. "Potatoes was what they ate there, mostly," she said. "Mashed and boiled, she said. Skimped on the food, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor nutcases and loony birds in there. Lining their own pockets, is my guess."

"Where has she gone? Where is she now?"

"That's between you and me and the doorpost," said Reenie. "She said it was better for you not to know."

"Did she seem-was she…" Was she visibly crazy, I wanted to ask.

"She was the same as she always was: No more, no less. She wasn't like a loony bird, if that's what you mean," said Reenie. "Thinner-she needs to get some meat back on her bones-and not so much talk about God. I only hope he stands by her now, for a change."

"Thank you, Reenie, for all you've done," I said.

"No need to thank me," said Reenie stiffly. "I only did what was right."

Meaning I hadn't. "Can I write to her?" I was fumbling for my handkerchief. I felt like crying. I felt like a criminal.

"She said best not. But she wanted me to say she left you a message."

"A message?"

"She left it before they took her off to that place. You'd know where to find it, she said."

"Is that your own hankie? Have you got a cold?" said Myra, noting my snifflings with interest.

"If you ask too many questions your tongue will fall out," said Reenie.

"No it won't," said Myra complacently. She began humming off-key, and kicking her fat legs against my knees, under the table. She had a cheerful confidence, it appeared, and was not easily frightened-qualities in her I've often found irritating, but have come to be grateful for. (Which may be news to you, Myra. Accept it as a compliment while you have the chance. They're thin on the ground.)

"I thought you might like to see a picture of Aimee," I said to Reenie. I had at least this one achievement I could show, to redeem myself in her eyes.

Reenie took the photo. "My, she's a dark little thing, isn't she?" she said. "You never know who a child will favour."

"I want to see too," said Myra, grabbing with her sugary paws.

"Quick then, and off we go. We're late for your Dad."

"No," said Myra.

"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home," Reenie sang, scrubbing pink icing off Myra 's little snout with a paper napkin.

"I want to stay here," said Myra, but her coat was pulled on, her knitted wool hat was flumped down over her ears, and she was hauled sideways out of the booth.

"Take care of yourself," said Reenie. She didn't kiss me.

I wanted to throw my arms around her, and howl and howl. I wanted to be comforted. I wanted it to be me that was going with her.

"‘There's no place like home,'" Laura said one day, when she was eleven or twelve. "Reenie sings that. I think it's stupid."

"How do you mean?" I said.

"Look." She wrote it out as an equation. Noplace = home. Therefore, home = no place. Therefore home does not exist.

Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had no heart any more, it had been broken; or not broken, it simply wasn't there any more. It had been scooped neatly out of me like the yolk from a hard-boiled egg, leaving the rest of me bloodless and congealed and hollow.

I'm heartless, I thought. Therefore I'm homeless.

The message

Yesterday I was too tired to do much more than lie on the sofa. As is becoming my no doubt slovenly habit, I watched a daytime talk show, the kind on which they spill the beans. It's the fashion now, bean-spilling: people spill their own beans and also those of other people, they spill every bean they have and even some they don't have. They do this out of guilt and anguish, and for their own pleasure, but mostly because they want to display themselves and other people want to watch them do it. I don't exempt myself: I relish these grubby little sins, these squalid family tangles, these cherished traumas. I enjoy the expectation with which the top is wrenched off the can of worms as if from some amazing birthday present, and then the sense of anticlimax in the watching faces: the forced tears and skimpy, gloating pity, the cued and dutiful applause. Is that all there is? they must be thinking. Shouldn't it be less ordinary, more sordid, more epic, more truly harrowing, this flesh wound of yours? Tell us more! Couldn't we please crank up the pain?

I wonder which is preferable-to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin-everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone-and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

I carry no brief, for better or for worse.

Loose Lips Sink Ships, said the wartime poster. Of course the ships will all sink anyway, sooner or later.

After indulging myself in this way, I wandered into the kitchen, where I ate half of a blackening banana and two soda crackers. I wondered if something-food of some sort-had fallen down behind the garbage can-there was a meaty smell-but a quick check revealed nothing. Perhaps this odour was my own. I can't overcome the notion that my body smells like cat food, despite whatever stagnant scent I sprayed on myself this morning-Tosca, was it, or Ma Griffe, or perhaps Je Reviens? I still have a few odds and ends of that sort kicking around. Grist for the green garbage bags, Myra, when you get around to them.

Richard used to give me perfume, when he felt I needed mollifying. Perfume, silk scarves, small jewelled pins in the shapes of domestic animals, of caged birds, of goldfish. Winifred's tastes, not for herself but for me.

On the train coming back from Port Ticonderoga, and then for weeks afterwards, I pondered Laura's message, the one Reenie said she'd left for me. She must have known, then, that whatever she was planning to say to the strange doctor at the hospital might have repercussions. She must have known it was a risk, and so she'd taken precautions. Somehow, somewhere, she'd left some word, some clue for me, like a dropped handkerchief or a trail of white stones in the woods.

I pictured her writing this message, in the way she always set about writing. No doubt it would be in pencil, a pencil with a chewed end. She often chewed her pencils; as a child her mouth had smelled of cedar, and if it was a coloured pencil her lips would be blue or green or purple. She wrote slowly; her script was childish, with round vowels and closed o's, and long, wavery stems on her g's and her y's. The dots on the i's and j's were circular, placed far to the right, as if the dot were a small black balloon tethered to its stem by an invisible thread; the cross-strokes of the t's were one-sided. I sat beside her in spirit, to see what she would do next.

She'd have reached the end of her message, then put it into an envelope and sealed it, and then hidden it, the way she'd hidden her bundle of bits and scraps at Avilion. But where could she have put this envelope? Not at Avilion: she hadn't been anywhere near there, not just before she was taken away.

No, it must be in the house in Toronto. Somewhere no one else would look-not Richard, not Winifred, not any of the Murgatroyds. I searched in various places-the bottoms of drawers, the backs of cupboards, the pockets of my winter coats, my supply of handbags, my winter mittens even-but found nothing.

Then I remembered coming upon her once, in Grandfather's study, when she was ten or eleven. She'd had the family Bible spread out in front of her, a great leathery brute of a thing, and was snipping sections out of it with Mother's old sewing scissors.

"Laura, what are you doing?" I said. "That's the Bible!"

"I'm cutting out the parts I don't like."

I uncrumpled the pages she'd tossed into the wastebasket: swathes of Chronicles, pages and pages of Leviticus, the little snippet from St. Matthew in which Jesus curses the barren fig tree. I remembered now that Laura had been indignant about that fig tree, in her Sunday-school days. She'd been furious that Jesus had been so spiteful towards a tree. We all have our bad days, Reenie had commented, briskly whipping up egg whites in a yellow bowl.

"You shouldn't be doing this," I said.

"It's only paper," said Laura, continuing to snip. "Paper isn't important. It's the words on them that are important."

"You'll get in big trouble."

"No, I won't," she said. "No one ever opens it. They only look in the front, for the births, the marriages and the deaths."

She was right, too. She was never found out.

That memory was what led me to pull out my wedding album, where the photographs of that event were stored. Certainly this volume was of scant interest to Winifred, nor had Richard ever been found leafing fondly through it. Laura must have known that, she must have known it would be safe. But what-she must have thought-would lead me ever to look into it myself?

If I'd been searching for Laura, I would have. She'd know that. There were a lot of pictures of her in there, stuck to the brown pages with black triangles at the corners; pictures of her scowling and gazing at her feet, dressed in her bridesmaid's outfit.

I found the message, although it was not in words. Laura had gone to town on my wedding with the hand-tinting materials, the little tubes of paint she'd nicked from Elwood Murray's newspaper office back in Port Ticonderoga. She must have had them squirrelled away all this time. For a person who claimed such disdain for the material world, she was very bad at throwing things out.

She'd altered only two of the photographs. The first was a group shot of the wedding party. In this, the bridesmaids and groomsmen had been covered over with a thick coat of indigo-eliminated from the picture altogether. I had been left, and Richard, and Laura herself, and Winifred, who had been a matron of honour. Winifred had been coloured a lurid green, as had Richard. I had been given a wash of aqua blue. Laura herself was a brilliant yellow, not only her dress, but her face and hands as well. What did it mean, this radiance? For radiance it was, as if Laura was glowing from within, like a glass lamp or a girl made of phosphorus. She wasn't looking straight ahead, but sideways, as if the focus of her attention was not in the picture at all.

The second was the formal shot of bride and groom, taken in front of the church. Richard's face had been painted grey, such a dark grey that the features were all but obliterated. The hands were red, as were the flames that shot up from around and somehow from inside the head, as if the skull itself were burning. My wedding gown, the gloves, the veil, the flowers-these trappings Laura had not bothered with. She'd dealt with my face, however-bleached it so that the eyes and the nose and mouth looked fogged over, like a window on a cold, wet day. The background and even the church steps beneath our feet had been entirely blacked out, leaving our two figures floating as if in mid-air, in the deepest and darkest of nights.