At the bottom corner of Whitney’s paper was a figure with a red dot between the eyebrows, a guitar in hand, and a large number three next to it. Audrey felt an impulse take flight within her. “I think three is generous,” she said. “Don’t you think Seeta is more of a two?”
A kind of darkness fell, clarifying everything. Audrey could see the constellation of expectations realigning themselves.
Arabella drew a pencil out of her bun and cocked her head. “Give the new girl the paper, Whit. You’re being too PC.”
From around the corner came the sound of humming, and before Audrey had a chance to meet Whitney’s glacial half smile, Arabella’s cheeks flushed. She put a finger over her lips, then reached into her knapsack and pulled out a sheet of orange construction paper. “Behold,” she whispered. With ironic demureness, she held up what was clearly another note to Seeta. The message was again made up of magazine letters pasted messily together: “The sweetest songs have the saddest endings. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and turmeric…” She smiled at the note fondly, with a mother’s soft affection for her child’s handiwork.
“Awesome!” squealed Dougie.
Whitney shushed her angrily.
Arabella looked around to make sure no one had heard. “A little discretion, Ms. Douglas?” she said, lowering the note face down into her lap. She held out a gallant hand to Audrey. “Luckily, we have the master of discretion with us today.”
The bell rang, and Arabella held out the note. Audrey made no pretense of contemplation. Alongside her habitual fear had lit something much more alive. In Arabella’s smile was the perverse resurrection of all the things Eliot had once meant to her.
As Audrey slid the note into her knapsack, Dougie sprinted to the top of the stairwell, where she let out a muffled whoop. Seeta was standing outside the classroom door, ukulele in hand. “Fuck me, it’s music now,” Whitney said.
Arabella strode towards the classroom. “So tell me, Seeta,” she said. “Is it true, what they say about a man with perfect pitch?”
Seeta looked puzzled.
“’Cause I was going to ask your bro to the semi, but, you know, you seem to have a pretty special bond.”
“She wouldn’t want to get in the way,” Whitney added.
But before Seeta had a chance to respond, they galloped off down the hallway, leaving Audrey behind them, as they laughed with deranged delight.
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” said Richard, advancing on Ruth from the kitchen before she’d even closed the front door.
“What do you mean?” she said, looking studiously away as she hung her coat.
Her cheeks were flushed from the attacking wind outside, the redness conveniently masking the burn left by Henry’s stubble. There had been no question in her mind, until that second, that she had been safe. Henry had been to the house just once, and she was certain they hadn’t been sighted. Even if a neighbour had seen him coming or going, there would have been no cause for suspicion. Yet as carefree as she had been when she left Eliot with Henry that afternoon (for the parking lot of a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart, as it turned out), as insulated in her certainty that there had been no fractures in the shell of her protectiveness, all the way home she had worried that she had made a mistake.
With artificial gaiety, she rubbed her numb hands together and faced Richard. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Well, gee. Think about it for a minute, Ruth.”
She frowned in reflection.
“Where were you at lunch?”
“I was at work, of course. Where else might I be?”
Richard’s words were clipped. “Well, you were supposed to be here, if you’ll recall. I came home at six o’clock, thinking I had made a very clear arrangement with my wife that she would come home at lunch and let the dogs out, and what did I find but Marlow lying by the back door next to a pool of his own urine. Wagging his tail apologetically, might I add.”
“Oh!” Ruth clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oops,” said Richard.
“I totally forgot. I’m sorry. I am. You know I am. I have all this extra work, the lit mag Larissa is making me do, end of term marking. It’s been crazy.”
Richard withdrew to the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said.
“Richard, give me a break. I made a mistake,” she said. But her protest was feeble; she didn’t truly want to come home at lunch.
She noticed Marlow, lying in the middle of the living room, thumping his tail ardently. His molten brown eyes were locked on her, unreservedly welcoming. She crumpled beside him, patting his ear and resting her cheek against the top of his head. The steady thudding of his tail accelerated.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, my boy.”
With effort, he rolled onto his back, his tail still oscillating with undiminished happiness between his hind legs, where the feathers were still damp with what she assumed was urine.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
She rubbed his belly for several minutes, until she heard Richard collecting cutlery to set the table. “I’m not hungry,” she called out, heading up the stairs. “You and Audrey go ahead and eat without me.”
Richard’s voice, returning from the dining room, was too far away for her to make out his reply.
Upstairs, Ruth ran a hot bath and tried to set the scene for relaxation. She lit freesia candles and put on a meditation CD playing music that wasn’t really music, but birdsong and trickling water set against a bland tune played by an echoing electronic flute. Once she was immersed, her unease grew. The water was too hot, and within minutes she was sweating. The candles, too far away to blow out, produced a sickeningly sweet smell, and the music—how could people listen to this stuff? She had not listened to meditation music in fifteen years, not since Richard had played it for her during thirty-five hours of labour, and now she remembered why, shocked by how viscerally her body recalled the connection. But she felt too lazy to get out of the water and correct any of these blunders. The bath was irrelevant.
What she was really doing was avoiding the disapproving gaze of her family. Cloistered in the bathroom, she had stopped time, in a sense, removed herself from its passage, thereby securing a respite from the consequences of her actions, and her equally odious inaction. She was doing everything poorly—being a wife, a mother, a dog owner. Yet on top of her unrest still floated that guiltless high, an unfaltering selfishness. (In self-forgiving moments, she hoped that admitting her own selfishness somewhat mitigated the vileness of its presence.) She felt far worse about what she had done to Marlow than anything she had done to Richard. But she knew how despicable she was. Nobody, hearing the things she’d done over the past months, would deny that she was a terrible person.
With her toe, she rubbed at the water spots on the faucet. The fixtures had been a mistake, the result of overreaching: brushed nickel, easily stained, intolerant of regular cleaner. She had been warned away from them by the man in the store. The marble countertop of the bathroom vanity was also covered in subtle stains. Why had she bought so many expensive things for the bathroom? She had been so sure they would make her happy. On the floor was the bath mat, white and plush, she had bought for Marlow, so that he could lie by her while she took baths. But it had been some time since Marlow had kept her company by the tub. His hips were too weak to propel him up the stairs; at night, he waited in the front hall for Richard to carry him up to the bedroom.
She pushed these thoughts from her head. Before her lay the Christmas holidays, a stretch of Henry-less time. How would she conjure the requisite festive spirit? Ruth had always placed a great onus on Richard and herself to generate unparalleled levels of merriment. She bought so many presents for Audrey that she often felt embarrassed by the abundance as she descended the stairs in the morning. She dressed the dogs in Santa hats and presented them with a special cake made of caro
b. In the week leading up to the day, they baked enough cookies for a family of ten. Richard had sometimes resisted the extravagance, but Ruth had insisted upon it. Without this vaguely offensive level of decadence, it was too easy to be aware of certain absences.
There came a knock on the door, and Richard entered before she had a chance to deter him. He lowered the toilet seat and sat down.
“We missed you at dinner,” he said. “Couldn’t you have taken your bath after eating?”
“I’ve had a long day.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Later.”
“You may have missed your one chance to see Audrey in a good mood,” he said.
She attempted to smile, but there was no levity to be found in that subject. Audrey moved on the margins of her consciousness, always, like a nagging and imperative task that needed to be addressed, that could not be delegated, and yet that she continued to procrastinate with a fluttering anxiety in her stomach. “That’s nice.”
“Listen,” he said. “We need to talk about Marlow. You know that.”
“Can’t I just take a bath?” she moaned.
“His health is not an issue that can be avoided indefinitely.”
“No! I’m not talking about that. Not yet.”
“No decisions need to be made. But we need to review the situation if only so that we know we’ve reviewed it. Our actions have to be a choice, not an evasion.”
“He still loves his food,” Ruth said. “He’s still happy. End of conversation.”
“That’s not a conversation at all.”
“Richard, it’s just stained rugs.”
“You think I care about stained rugs?” Richard’s voice rose in anger.
She had never liked being naked in front of Richard when they argued, but her sense of vulnerability had evaporated. She was barely aware of her body. She could have stood, naked and dripping, screaming, and it wouldn’t have bothered her. “Look, he’s happy,” she said. “If you could ask him, he would not choose that. You know that. What about that other drug you mentioned? I met a woman in the park who said it took years off her dog.”
Richard was quiet for a moment. “I just don’t want this to end up like Heathcliff.”
Ruth sat forward in a furious whoosh of water. “I am not my mother! I’m not making this decision for my own needs. He’s happy!”
Richard studied Ruth as though undecided on the extent of his opposition. “Yes, I think he is,” he said finally.
The argument thrummed in the air around them. Already, though, Ruth regretted the spectre of accusation in everything she had said. Even in the throes of anger, she had known how wrong footed she was, how baseless and unfair the implication that Richard treated Marlow as a burden and had a needle at the ready. He loved Marlow, and Marlow adored him. When Marlow was younger, he had followed Richard everywhere, and she had fumed with jealousy at their bond—he was supposed to be her dog. But marriage had taught her that there was no division of ownership. And there was certainly no controlling the tides of affection.
She was about to apologize when Richard pressed the heels of his hands to his temples as though he had a headache. “Look, I’ve had a hard day, too,” he said.
“Oh?”
Richard shook his head. “Max. The pit.”
Ruth’s heart surged into her throat. “This sentence better not end the way I think it’s going to.”
“What was I supposed to do? The guy was determined the dog was not adoptable.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“It’s his dog, not mine, Ruth.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Bring it here!”
“How simple it is for you!” he said angrily. “You don’t have to make these decisions. Isn’t it all so goddamn clear? Bring them all home. A dog for every room.”
Sweat and water streamed off Ruth’s forehead. She felt very close to vomiting. “How dare you heap all that guilt about Marlow on me when you killed a dog today for no reason?”
Richard was silent, and for a second, even in her fury, Ruth feared she had gone too far. But there was a part of her that wanted to go even further. She was aching for release, for the pugilistic heat of a certain kind of fight. “You pretend to be so moral, but you’re weak. You were too weak to say no. It comes down to that.”
Richard began nodding slowly. “Yes, I’m sure my weakness is something you’re frequent witness to.”
Ruth continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “You hold up this claim of professionalism, but you’re just hiding behind it.”
Richard still nodded, saying nothing more.
“Say what you think!” she cried. “You make these wishy-washy statements. Say what you want to say!”
She waited. But she saw that he would not give her this, could never give her this. He would leave her floundering forever, fighting with herself. She stood and grabbed a towel, threw it carelessly around her chest.
“I just wanted to tell you about my day,” he said, retreating to the bedroom, trailing a piece of used dental floss on his black sock.
Chapter Eleven
JANUARY CAME IN WITH an eerie quiet. The weather itself seemed to express the anticlimax of holiday cheer. It was too cold for the softening countenance of new flurries, and the hard banks of old, dirty snow looked like permanent fixtures in the streetscape. The class was still waking up on Monday morning when Ms. McAllister appeared in the doorway of the classroom with a curt rap. Even before she spoke, a murmur rose from the class. Rare were the occasions when Ms. McAllister made use of her autocratic right to commandeer the class in the middle of a lesson. Even Henry Winter, who had just begun a discussion of Frost’s “Birches,” was startled by her interruption. Offering an obedient nod, he moved to the side of the room and fixed her with a glassy-eyed stare.
“A serious matter has been brought to my attention,” she declared, taking up position in front of the blackboard, her hands behind her back. “I wish I were here speaking to you under happier circumstances, but alas, that is not the case.”
Up rose a chorus of whispers, which she swiftly terminated with a militaristic raise of the hand.
“It has been brought to my attention that a member of your class has been receiving threatening notes. The particulars shall remain private. It is, however, my duty to inform you of this harassment. I know that most of you are in agreement that this type of anti-social behaviour has no place at our dear school. George Eliot Academy was created as an intellectual haven, and so it shall remain.” She paused and looked around with majestic severity, taking the pulse of her audience. The girls returned her gaze, riveted by her restrained fury, afraid to speak. “Perhaps at public learning institutions, this type of behaviour is met with laxity, but I assure you that here, bullying is considered the lowest form of interaction, and offenders will be punished very severely indeed.”
The tiny metronome of alarm in Audrey that had begun to subside just before Christmas started up again. Seeta sat stiffly beside her, tracing with her finger a groove someone had carved in the wood. Audrey kept her eyes fixed on Ms. McAllister, careful not to betray her guilt inadvertently. She had never particularly considered the consequences of the notes. She feared getting caught in the act, certainly, but her mind had looked no further into the future than that. Arabella’s world demanded a surrender to immediacy. And Seeta had made it so easy. She carried on as she always had, singing in chapel, raising her hand at every question. Her imperviousness was stunning. It granted freedom from accountability.
Yet the notes had gotten to her, clearly. As Ms. McAllister spoke, Seeta stared, wide-eyed and unblinking, at her desk. It was possible that she was holding back tears. Although Audrey was still far from remorseful, she was taken aback by the realization that she might ha
ve been wrong in presuming Seeta’s sense of self to be so durable that no unkindness could penetrate.
Arabella, Whitney, and Dougie sat at the back of the room, wearing elaborately serious expressions, a dead giveaway that tempests of laughter were being suppressed. It was clear from Arabella’s dancing eyes how much this outcome was exactly what she had hoped for. They were not in the least afraid of getting caught. This lecture did not, for them, represent the rallying forces of official protection, but the breakdown of Seeta’s spirit. The danger of the enterprise, the confrontation with the possibility of exposure and punishment, only added to Arabella’s glee.
“I don’t need to remind you what a fortunate position you are in, as Eliot girls. I know that most of you wear your uniform with pride, and your teachers and I rely upon you to do it justice. I will need you to be my partners now, my sleuths on the ground, as it were, to honour the uniform that it is your privilege to wear. Together, we will catch this culprit, who is not, at heart, an Eliot girl.”
As Ms. McAllister spoke, her eyes moved systematically from girl to girl, as though prolonged eye contact would help her ferret out the offender. Arabella raised her hand.
“Ms. McAllister, how do we know that the ‘culprit’”—here she made quotation marks with her fingers—“is in our class?”
“That is a very astute question, Ms. Quincy. The sad and intolerable truth is that we know nothing. No avenue will be left unexplored. Until then, I am speaking to each grade separately in order to circumvent the sensationalist effects of a public announcement.”
“Well,” replied Arabella, smiling sweetly, “I think I speak on behalf of the entire class when I say that we will do everything in our power to see that justice is served.”
THEY RAN DOWN THE long hill to the ravine, tripping on the twig-strewn path, the frosty gravel underfoot. Arabella was out in front, and her run was loose, ungainly, as if she were a bike veering out of control. The wind lifted up her laughter and whisked it away over Audrey’s head. Winter made the ravine more approachable, its density thinned by the absence of leaves. The pale sky lay flat on the tops of the bare branches, and the weak ripple of the creek and their own footsteps on the crunchy path were the only nearby sounds. When the girls reached the bottom, they headed into the trees, following the path single file, as if single-mindedly.
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