Montreal Stories by Mavis Gallant Read Free Book Online

Before long, her mother moved in and took over the empty bed. She was having her change of life and had to get up in the night to put on a fresh nightgown and replace the pillowcases soaked with sweat. After about a week of it, Ray came to the door and turned on the overhead light. He said, “How long is it going on for?”
    “I don’t know. Go back to bed. You need your sleep.”
    He walked away, leaving the light on. Nora went barefoot to switch it off. She said, “What does it feel like, exactly?”
    Her mother’s voice in the dark sounded girlish, like Gerry’s. “As if somebody dipped a towel in boiling-hot water and threw it over your head.”
    “I’m never getting married,” Nora said.
    “Being married has nothing to do with it.”
    “Will it happen to Gerry?”
    “Nuns get all the women’s things,” said her mother.
    The August heat wave and her mother’s restlessness kept Nora awake. She thought about the secretarial school where she was to begin a new, great phase of her life on the Tuesday after Labor Day—twelve days from tomorrow. Her imagination traveled along unknown corridors and into classrooms where there were rows of typewriters, just delivered from the factory; the pencils, the erasers, the spiral notebooks had never been touched. All the girls were attractive-looking and serious-minded. At a front-row desk (should they be seated in alphabetical order) was Miss Nora Abbott, with her natural bilingual skills and extensive wardrobe—half of it Gerry’s.
    As children, she and Gerry had taken parental magic on trust, had believed their mother heard their unspoken thoughts and listened from a distance to their most secret conversations.Now her mother said, “Can’t you get to sleep, Nora? You’re all impressed about taking that course. Are you wanting to leave home with your first paycheck? Papa wouldn’t want that.”
    “Gerry was eighteen when she went away.”
    “We knew where she was going.”
    “I’ll be over nineteen by the time I start to work.”
    “And starting off at fifteen dollars a week, if you’re lucky.”
    Nora said, “I’ve been wondering how Dad’s going to manage to pay for the course. It’s two hundred dollars, not counting the shorthand book.”
    “It’s not for you to worry about,” said her mother. “He’s paid the hundred deposit. The rest isn’t due until December.”
    “Uncle Victor had to chip in.”
    “Uncle Victor didn’t
have
to do anything. When he helps out, it’s because he wants to. Your father doesn’t beg.”
    “Why couldn’t he pay the whole hundred dollars on his own? Did he lose some of it at Blue Bonnets?”
    Her mother sat up all of a sudden and became a looming presence in the dark. “Did you ever have to go to bed on an empty stomach?” she said. “You and Gerry always had a new coat every winter.”
    “Gerry did. I got the hand-me-down. Grandma Abbott sent Gerry presents because she had red hair.”
    “Gerry’s old coats looked as if they came straight from the store. She never got a spot or a stain on any of her clothes. Grandmother Abbott sent her a chocolate Easter egg once. It broke up in the mail and your father told her not to bother with any more parcels.”
    “Why would Uncle Victor have to lend Dad fifty dollars? What does he do with his money?”
    “Did you ever have to go without shoes?” said her mother. “Did you ever miss a hot meal? Who gave you the gold chain and the twenty-four-karat crucifix for your First Communion?”
    “Uncle Victor.”
    “Well, and who was he trying to be nice to? Your father. He’s been the best father in the world and the best husband. If I go before he does, I want you to look after him.”
    I’ll be married by then, Nora thought. “It’s girls that look after their old dads,” Ray had said when Victor had once commiserated with him for not having a son. Ninette was now back from the place in the Laurentians—cured, it was said—and had taken Aunt Rosalie’s