Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

by Margaret Atwood

  “It isn’t about her, I promise!” says Jorrie. “That was more than fifty years ago! How could it be about her when I can’t even remember her name? Anyway, she was so wispy! She was such a pipsqueak! I could have blown her over with a sneeze!” She gasps with laughter.

  Tin considers. Such bluster, in Jorrie, is a sign of vulnerability; therefore, she needs his support. “Very well. I’ll go,” he says, with unfeigned reluctance. “But I’m not having a happy feeling about this.”

  “Shake on it like a man,” says Jorrie. The phrase is from a Western matinee movie routine they used to do when they were kids.

  “Where is the dreaded affair?” Tin asks on the morning of the memorial service. It’s a Sunday, the one day Jorrie is permitted to cook. Mostly her cooking is a matter of opening takeout containers, but when she gets ambitious there will be smashed crockery, swearing, and incinerations. Today is a bagel day, praise the lord. And the coffee’s perfect because Tin made it himself.

  “The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse,” says Jorrie. “It offers a gracious atmosphere reminiscent of a bygone era.”

  “Who wrote that?” says Tin. “Charles Dickens?”

  “I did,” says Jorrie. “Years ago. Right after I went freelance. They wanted an archaic tone.” She hadn’t exactly gone freelance, as Tin recalls: there had been a civil war at the company and she’d been on the defeated side, having unfortunately told her antagonists what she really thought of them. However, she’d collected a reasonable parachute, which had enabled her to go into realestate speculation. That had kept her in designer foot-fetish objects and vulgar, overpriced winter vacations until one of her menopause-era lovers made off with her savings. Then she was overleveraged, had to sell in a down market, and lost a crock of gold, so what could Tin do but offer her a refuge? His house was big enough for the two of them, just barely: Jorrie takes up a lot of space.

  “I hope this schoolhouse venue isn’t a hotbed of kitsch,” says Tin.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  After ferreting through her closet, Jorrie holds up three of her outfits on hangers so Tin can evaluate them. It’s one of his demands – one of his requests – on the days when he agrees to attend events with her. “What’s the verdict?” she says.

  “Not the shocking pink.”

  “But it’s Chanel – an original!” Both of them frequent vintage clothing stores, though only the upmarket end. They’ve kept their figures, at least: Tin can still wear the elegant three-piece 1930s ensembles he’s sported for some decades. He even has a lacquer cane.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he says. “No one’s going to read the label, and you are not Jacquie Kennedy. Shocking pink would draw undue attention.”

  Jorrie wants to draw undue attention: that’s the whole idea! If any of Gavin’s wives are there, and especially if What’s-her-name shows up, she longs to have them notice her the moment she walks in. But she backs down, because if she doesn’t, she knows Tin won’t come with her.

  “And not the faux-leopard stole either.”

  “But they’re in fashion again!”

  “Exactly. They’re far too in fashion. Don’t pout, you look like a camel.”

  “So you’re voting for the grey. May I say yawn?”

  “You may say it, but that won’t change reality. The grey has a beautiful cut. Understated. Maybe with a scarf?”

  “To cover up my scraggy neck?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “I can always depend on you,” says Jorrie. She means it: Tin saves her from herself, on those occasions when she takes his advice. By the time she walks out the door she’ll be confident in the knowledge that she’s presentable. The scarf he chooses for her is muted Chinese red: it will perk up the complexion.

  “How do I look?” says Jorrie, turning before him.

  “Stupendous,” says Tin.

  “I love it when you lie for me.”

  “I’m not lying,” says Tin. Stupendous: causing astonishment or wonder. From the gerund of stupere, to be astounded. That about covers it. After a certain moment, there is only so much a beautifully cut grey outfit can redeem.

  At last they are ready to set forth. “You’ll have to wear your warmest coat,” says Tin. “It’s frore out there.”

  “What?”

  “It’s very cold. Twenty below, that’s the predicted high. Glasses?” He wants her to be able to read the program for herself, without pestering him to do it for her.

  “Yes, yes. Two pairs.”

  “Handkerchief?”

  “Don’t worry,” says Jorrie. “I don’t intend to cry. Not over that bastard!”

  “If you do, you can’t use my sleeve,” says Tin.

  She sticks out her chin, the flag of battle. “I won’t need it.”

  Tin insists on driving: being in a car with Jorrie at the wheel is too much like Russian roulette for him. Sometimes she’s fine, but last week she ran over a raccoon. She claimed it was dead already, though Tin doubts that. “It shouldn’t have been out anyway,” she said, “in all that weather.”

  They proceed cautiously through the icy streets in Tin’s carefully preserved 1995 Peugeot, tires squeaking on the snow. The accumulation from the day before still hasn’t been cleared away, though at least it was only a blizzard, not an ice storm like the one that hit over Christmas. Three days in the Cabbagetown house without heat or light had been trying, since Jorrie viewed the storm as a personal insult and complained about its unfairness. How could the weather be doing this to her?

  There’s a parking lot north of King – Tin has taken care to identify it online since the last thing he needs is Jorrie issuing false directions – but it’s a surprisingly tight squeeze: several cars behind them are turned away. Tin extracts Jorrie from the front seat and steadies her as she slides on the ice. Why didn’t he nix those spike-heeled boots? She could have a serious fall and fracture something – a hip, a leg – and if that happens she’ll be propped up in bed for months while he carries trays and empties bedpans. Grasping her firmly by the arm, he propels her along King Street, then south on Trinity.

  “Look at the all people,” she says. “Who the hell are they?” It’s true, there’s quite a crowd heading to the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse. Many of them are what you’d expect – the geezer generation, like Tin and Jorie – but oddly enough there are quite a few young ones. Could it be that Gavin Putnam is now a youth cult? What an unpleasant notion, thinks Tin.

  Jorrie presses closer to his side, her head swivelling like a periscope. “I don’t see her,” she whispers. “She’s not here!”

  “She won’t come,” says Tin. “She’s afraid you’ll call her What’s-her-name.” Jorrie laughs, but not very heartily. She doesn’t have a plan, thinks Tin: she’s charging in blindly the way she always does. It’s a good thing he’s here with her.

  Inside, the room is crowded and overly warm, though it does have a gracious atmosphere reminiscent of a bygone era. There’s a subdued gabble, as of distant waterfowl. Tin helps Jorrie out of her coat, struggles out of his own, and settles back for the duration.

  Jorrie elbows him, emits a sizzling whisper: “That must be the widow. Crap, she looks about twelve. Gav was such a perv.” Tin tries to see but fails to spot the likely candidate. “In blue,” says Jorrie. How can she tell, from the back?

  Now there’s a hush: a master of ceremonies has taken the podium – a younger man in a turtleneck and a tweed jacket, a professorial getup – and is welcoming them all to this commemoration of the life and work of one of our most celebrated and best-loved and, if he can put it this way, most essential poets.

  Speak for yourself, thinks Tin: not essential to me. He tunes out the audio and turns his mind to the honing of a phrase or two from Martial. He doesn’t publish his efforts any more because why bother to try, but the impromptu translation process is a private mental exercise that passes the time agreeably on occasions when the time has to be passed.

  Unlike you, who court our view,r />
  They shun an audience, those whores;

  They fuck in secret behind closed doors.

  In curtained, sealed chambers;

  Even the dirtiest, cheapest ones

  Sneak off to ply their trade behind the tombs.

  Act more modestly, like them!

  Lesbia, you think I’m being mean?

  Shag your head off! Only – don’t be seen!

  Too much like Mother Goose, the rhyme, the rhythm? Then, perhaps, even more succinctly:

  Why not emulate the strumpet?

  Bump it, pump it, multihump it,

  Lesbia! Just don’t blow your trumpet!

  No, that won’t do: it’s sillier than Martial at his silliest, and with too much detail sacrificed. The tombs in the original deserve to be preserved: there’s much to be said for a graveyard assignation. He’ll have another run at it later. Maybe he should take a crack at the one about the cherry versus the prune …

  Jorrie elbows him sharply. “You’re falling asleep!” she hisses. Tin comes to with a start. Hastily he consults the pamphlet that outlines the order of events, with Gavin’s photo glowering magisterially from its black border. Where are they in the timeline? Have the grandchildren sung? Apparently so: not even some lugubrious hymn, but, oh horrors – “My Way.” Whoever proposed that should be flogged, but luckily Tin himself was zoned out during it.

  The grown-up son is now reading, not from the Bible, but from the oeuvre of the deceased troubadour himself: a late poem about leaves in a pool.

  Maria skims the dying leaves.

  Are they souls? Is one of them my soul?

  Is she the Angel of Death, with her dark hair,

  with her darkness, come to gather me in?

  Faded wandering soul, eddying in this cold pool,

  So long the accomplice of that fool, my body,

  Where will you land? On what bare shore?

  Will you be nothing but a dead leaf? Or …

  Ah. The poem’s unfinished: Gavin had died while writing it. The pathos of it all, thinks Tin. No wonder there are repressed weeping noises rising around him like spring frog-song. Still, when further refined, the poem could have yielded a passable result, apart from its illconcealed rip-off of the dying Emperor Hadrian’s address to his own wandering soul. Though possibly not rip-off: allusion is how a well-disposed critic would frame it. That Gavin Putnam knew Hadrian well enough to steal from him has improved Tin’s view of the expired versifier considerably. As a poet, that is; not as a person.

  “Animula, vagula, blandula,” he recites under his breath. “Hospes comesque corporis/Quae nunc abibis in loca/Pallidula, rigida, nudula/ Nec, ut soles. Dabis iocos …” Hard to put it better. Though many have tried.

  There’s an interlude of silent meditation, during which they’re all invited to close their eyes and reflect on their rich and rewarding friendship with their no longer present colleague and companion, and on what that friendship meant to them personally. Jorrie digs Tin with her elbow again. What fun this will be to recall afterwards! that dig is saying.

  The next funeral baked meat treat is not long in coming. One of the less successful Riverboat-era folksingers, much bewrinkled and with a straggling goatee that looks like the underside of a centipede, arises to favour them with a song from the period: “Mister Tambourine Man.” A curious choice, as the folkie himself admits before singing it. But this is isn’t about being, like, mournful, right? It’s about celebration! And I know Gav’s probably listening in right now, and he’s tapping his foot in joy! Hey up there, buddy! We’re waving at you!

  Choking sounds from here and there in the room. Spare us, Tin sighs. Beside him, Jorrie is shaking. Is it grief or mirth? He can’t look at her: if it’s mirth they will both giggle, and that could prove embarrassing because Jorrie might not be able to stop.

  Next there’s a eulogy, spoken by a criminally pretty coffee-skinned young woman in high boots and a bright shawl. She introduces herself – Naveena something – as a scholar of the poet’s work. Then she says she wants to share the fact that, although she met Mr. Putnam only on the last day of his life, the experience of his compassionate personality and his contagious love of life had been deeply moving for her, and she is so grateful to Mrs. Putnam – Reynolds – for making this possible, and though she has lost Mr. Putnam, she has made a new friend in Reynolds through this terrible ordeal they have gone through together, and she is just glad she hadn’t left Florida on the day it happened, and was able to be there for Reynolds, and she is sure everyone in the room will join her in sending warm wishes to Reynolds at this tragic and difficult time, and … Tremulous breakdown of the voice. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I wanted to say more, about, you know, the poetry, but I …” She hurries from the stage in tears.

  Touching little creature.

  Tin consults his watch.

  At last, the final musical number. It’s “Fare Thee Well,” a traditional folk song said to have been inspirational to Gavin Putnam when he was writing his nowfamous first collection, Heavy Moonlight. A copper-haired young man who can’t be more than eighteen stands on the stage to sing it for them, backed up by two lads with guitars.

  Fare thee well, my own true love ,

  And farewell for a while;

  I’m going away, but I’ll be back

  If I go ten thousand miles.

  That will do it every time: the promise to return, coupled with the certain knowledge that no return is possible. The singer’s quavering tenor fades away, followed by a fusillade of sobbing and coughs. Tin feels a nuzzling against his jacket sleeve. “Oh, Tin,” says Jorrie.

  He told her to bring a handkerchief, but of course she didn’t. He digs out his own handkerchief and hands it to her.

  Now there’s a murmuring, a rustling, a rising, a mingling. There will be an open bar in the Salon and refreshments in the West Hall, they are informed. There’s a discreet stampede of footsteps.

  “Where’s the washroom?” says Jorrie. She’s blotted her face, inexpertly: there’s mascara running down her cheeks. Tin recovers his handkerchief and dabs away the black smudges as best he can. “Will you wait outside for me?” she asks plaintively.

  “I’m heading there myself,” says Tin. “I’ll meet you at the bar.”

  “Just don’t take all day,” says Jorrie. “I need to get out of this henhouse.” She’s waxing querulous: her blood sugar must be down. In the fracas of preparation, they forgot to have lunch. He’ll funnel some alcohol into her for a quick lift and steer her over to the crustless sandwiches. Then, after a lemon square or two, for what is a funerary occasion without a lemon square, they’ll skedaddle out the door.

  In the Men’s he runs into Seth MacDonald, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Languages at Princeton and the celebrated translator of the Orphic Hymns and, as it turns out, an old acquaintance of Gavin Putnam. Not professionally, no, but they’d been on a Mediterranean cruise together – “Hotspots of the Ancient World” – where they’d got on well and had followed up with a correspondence over the past few years. Commiserations are exchanged; Tin does some routine prevarication and invents a reason for his own presence.

  “We were both interested in Hadrian,” he says.

  “Ah, yes,” says Seth. “Yes. I noticed the allusion. Skilfully done.”

  The unexpected delay means that Jorrie makes it out of the washroom before Tin does. He should never have let her out of his sight! She’s gone to town with the sparkly metallic bronzer, and on top of that she’s applied something else: a coating of large, glittering, golden flakes. She looks like a sequined leather handbag. She must have smuggled these supplies in her purse: payback for his redaction of the shocking-pink Chanel. Of course she hasn’t been able to take in the full effect of her applications in the washroom mirror: she wouldn’t have been wearing her reading glasses.

  “What have you …” he begins. She shoots him a glare: Don’t you dare! She’s right: it’s too late now.

  He grasps her elbow
. “Forward the Light Brigade,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Let’s get a drink.”

  Inexpensive but passable white wines in hand, they head for the refreshments table. As they near the crowd surrounding it, Jorrie stiffens. “With the third wife, look! There she is!” she says. She’s quivering all over.

  “Who?” says Tin, knowing all too well. It’s the gorgon What’s-her-name – C. W. Starr in person, recognizable from her newspaper photos. A short, whitehaired old lady in a frumpy quilted coat. No glitter powder on her; in fact, no hint of makeup at all.

  “She doesn’t recognize me!” Jorrie whispers. Now she’s bubbling with merriment. Who would recognize you, thinks Tin, with that layer of stucco and dragon scales on your face? “She looked right at me! Come on, let’s eavesdrop!” Shades of their childhood snooping. She tugs him forward.

  “No, Jorrie,” he says, as if to a poorly trained terrier. But it’s no use; onward she plunges, straining at the invisible leash he’s failing to tighten around her neck.

  Constance W. Starr is clutching an egg salad sandwich in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She looks beleaguered and wary. To her right must be the bereaved widow, Reynolds Putnam, in chaste blue and pearls. She is indeed quite young. She doesn’t look overly afflicted, but then, time has passed since the actual death. To the right of Mrs. Putnam is Naveena, the fetching young devotee who’d broken down while delivering her funeral oration. She appears to have recovered completely, and is holding forth.

  But not on the subject of Gavin Putnam and his deathless verbiage. As Tin attunes himself to her flattish Midwestern speech, he realizes that she’s effusing over the Alphinland series. Constance W. Starr takes a bite of her sandwich: she’s probably heard this kind of thing before.

  “The Curse of Frenosia,” Naveena is saying. “Book Four. That was so … with the bees, and the Scarlet Sorceress of Ruptous walled up in the stone beehive! It’s such a …”