Home Truths by Mavis Gallant Read Free Book Online

all the uneaten cake to an aged religious who had once been a teacher of hers and was now ending her life bedridden in a convent for the old. The home was seventy miles north of the city, but might have been seven hundred. One son-in-law had undertaken to drive her. Instead of coming back with him, she proposed to spend the night. This meant that another son-in-law would have to fetch her the next day. The interlocked planning this required surpassed tunnelling under the Alps. “Hell day,” she said, but she said it so often that Gérard supposed most days were some kind of hell.
    T he first thing he did when he wakened was light a cigarette, the second turn on his radio. He felt oddly drunk, as if he might miss his footing stumbling down to breakfast. She was already prepared for the last errand of the day. She wore a tweed suit and her overnight case stood in the hall. She moved back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. His father, still in underwear and pajamas, sat breakfasting at the counter in the kitchen. She paused and watched him stir too much sugar into his coffee, but did not, this time, remark on it. The old man, excited, tapped his spoon on his saucer.
    “It was a movie,” he said. “Your dream. I saw it, I think, in a movie about an old man. You’ve dreamed an old man’s dream. I’ve looked through the paper,” he said, pushing it toward his son. “There’s nothing about that funeral. It couldn’t have been a funeral. Anyway, not anyone important.”
    “Leave him,” said the mother, patiently. “He dreamed it. There is something you can do today. Take over the dog.
Completely
. Léopold has him now.” Gérard knew it was his father thus addressed. He held his cup in both hands. “As for you, Gérard, I want a word with you.”
    “Another thing I thought,” continued the old man. “Maybe they were making a movie around there and you got mixed up with the crowd. What you took for a railway was some kind of scaffolding, cameras. Eh?”
    “Gérard, I want you to …” She turned to her husband: “Back me up! He’s your son, too! Gérard, I want you to tell that girl you’re too young to be tied to one person.” Her face was blazing, her eyes brilliant and clear. “What will you do when she starts a baby? Marry her? I want you to tell that girl there’s no money to inherit in this family, and that after Léopold’s education is finished there won’t be a cent for anybody. Not even us.”
    “She’s not really a dancer,” said the old man, forestalling the next bit. “She gives dancing
lessons
. It’s not the same thing.”
    “I don’t care what she gives. What about your son?”
    Gérard was about to say, “I did tell her,” but he remembered, “I never got there. I only started out.”
    He stopped hearing them. He had set his cup down as his mother spoke his name, and pushed it to the back of the counter. As his father handed him the paper, he remembered, he had taken it with his left hand, and opened it wide instead of carefully folding it, as he usually did. This was so important that he did not hear what was said after a minute or two. He had always given importance to his gestures, noticing whether he put his watch or his glasses to the left or the right of a bedlamp. He always left his coffee cup about four inches fromthe edge of the counter. When he studied, he piled his books on the right, and whatever text he was immediately using was at his left hand. His radio had to be dead center. He saw, and had been noticing for some time, that his mind was not keeping quiet order for him anymore and that his gestures were not automatic. He felt that if he did not pay close attention to everything now, something literally fantastic could happen. Gestures had kept things controlled, as they ought to be. Whatever could happen now was in the domain of magic.
II
    T he conviction that she was married against her will never leaves her. If she had been born royal it could