The Arcadian Court

Outside the window, in the darkened yard, there's snow. That kissing sound against the glass. It will melt off because it's only November, but still it's a foretaste. I don't know why I find it so exciting. I know what's coming: slush, darkness, flu, black ice, wind, salt stains on boots. But still there's a sense of anticipation: you tense for the combat. Winter is something you can go out into, confront, then foil by retreating back indoors. Still, I wish this house had a fireplace.

The house I lived in with Richard had a fireplace. It had four fireplaces. There was one in our bedroom, as I recall. Flames licking on flesh.

I unroll the sleeves of my sweater, pull the cuffs down over my hands. Like those fingerless gloves they used to wear-greengrocers, people like that-for working in the cold. It's been a warm autumn so far, but I can't let myself be lulled into carelessness. I should get the furnace serviced. Dig out the flannel nightgown. Lay in some tinned baked beans, some candles, some matches. An ice storm like last winter's could shut down everything, and then you're left with no electricity and an unworkable toilet, and no drinking water except what you can melt.

The garden has nothing in it but dead leaves and brittle stalks and a few diehard chrysanthemums. The sun is losing altitude; it's dark early now. I write at the kitchen table, indoors. I miss the sound of the rapids. Sometimes there's wind, blowing through the leafless branches, which is much the same although less dependable.

The week after the engagement had taken place I was packed off to have lunch with Richard's sister, Winifred Griffen Prior. The invitation had come from her, but it was Richard who had packed me off really, I felt. I may have been wrong about that, because Winifred pulled a lot of strings, and may have pulled Richard's on this occasion. Most likely it was the two of them together.

The lunch was to take place in the Arcadian Court. This was where the ladies lunched, up at the top of Simpsons department store, on Queen Street-a high, wide space, said to be "Byzantine" in design (which meant it had archways and potted palms), done in lilac and silver, with streamlined contours for the lighting fixtures and the chairs. A balcony ran around it halfway up, with wrought-iron railings; that was for men only, for businessmen. They could sit up there and look down on the ladies, feathered and twittering, as if in an aviary.

I'd worn my best daytime outfit, the only possible outfit I had for such an occasion: a navy-blue suit with a pleated skirt, a white blouse with a bow at the neck, a navy-blue hat like a boater. This ensemble made me look like a schoolgirl, or a Salvation Army canvasser. I won't even mention my shoes; even now the thought of them is too discouraging. I kept my pristine engagement ring folded into my cotton-gloved fist, aware that, worn with clothes like mine, it must look like a rhinestone, or else like something I'd stolen.

The ma ®tre d' glanced at me as if surely I was in the wrong place, or at least the wrong entrance-was I wanting a job? I did look down-at-heels, and too young to be having a ladies' lunch. But then I gave Winifred's name and it was all right, because Winifred absolutely lived at the Arcadian Court. (Absolutely livedwas her own expression.)

At least I didn't have to wait, drinking a glass of ice water by myself with the well-dressed women staring at me and wondering how I'd got in, because there was Winifred already, sitting at one of the pale tables. She was taller than I'd remembered-slender, or perhapswillowy, you'd say, though some of that was foundation garment. She had on a green ensemble-not a pastel green but a vibrant green, almost flagrant. (When chlorophyll chewing gum came into fashion two decades later, it was that colour.) She had green alligator shoes to match. They were glossy, rubbery, slightly wet-looking, like My pads, and I thought I had never seen such exquisite, unusual shoes. Her hat was the same shade-a round swirl of green fabric, balanced on her head like a poisonous cake.

Right at that moment she was doing something I had been taught never to do because it was cheap: she was looking at her face in the mirror of her compact, in public. Worse, she was powdering her nose. While I hesitated, not wishing to let her know I'd caught her in this vulgar act, she snapped the compact shut and slipped it into her shiny green alligator purse as if there was nothing to it. Then she stretched her neck and slowly turned her powdered face and looked around her with a white glare, like a headlight. Then she saw me, and smiled, and held out a languid, welcoming hand. She had a silver bangle, which I coveted instantly.

"Call me Freddie," she said after I'd sat down. "All my chums do, and I want us to be great chums." It was the fashion then for women like Winifred to favour diminutives that made them sound like youths: Billie, Bobbie, Willie, Charlie. I had no such nickname, so could not offer one in return.

"Oh, is that the ring?" she said. "It is a beauty, isn't it? I helped Richard pick it out-he likes me to go shopping for him. It does give men such migraines, doesn't it, shopping? He thought perhaps an emerald, but there's really nothing like a diamond, is there?"

While saying this, she examined me with interest and a certain chilly amusement, to see how I would take it-this reduction of my engagement ring to a minor errand. Her eyes were intelligent and oddly large, with green eyeshadow on the lids. Her pencilled eyebrows were plucked into a smoothly arched line, giving her that expression of boredom and, at the same time, incredulous astonishment, which was cultivated by the film stars of that era, though I doubt that Winifred was ever much astonished. Her lipstick was a dark pinkish orange, a shade that had just come in-shrimpwas the proper name for it, as I'd learned from my afternoon magazines. Her mouth had the same cinematic quality as the eyebrows, the two halves of the upper lip drawn into Cupid's-bow points. Her voice was what was called a whisky voice-low, deep almost, with a rough, scraped overlay to it like a cat's tongue-like velvet made of leather.

(She was a card player, I discovered later. Bridge, not poker-she would have been good at poker, good at bluffing, but it was too risky, too much a gamble; she liked to bid on known quantities. She played golf as well, but mostly for the social contacts; she wasn't as good at it as she made out. Tennis was too strenuous for her; she would not have wanted to be caught sweating. She "sailed," which meant, for her, sitting on a cushion on a boat, in a hat, with a drink.)

Winifred asked me what I would like to eat. I said anything at all. She called me "dear," and said that the Waldorf salad was marvellous. I said that would be fine.

I didn't see how I could ever work up to calling her Freddie: it seemed too familiar, disrespectful even. She was after all an adult-thirty, or twenty-nine at least. She was six or seven years younger than Richard, but they were pals: "Richard and I are such great pals," she said to me confidingly, for the first time but not for the last. It was a threat, of course, as was much of what she would say to me in this easy and confiding tone. It meant not only that she had claims that predated mine, and loyalties I could not hope to understand, but also that if I ever crossed Richard there would be the two of them to reckon with.

It was she who arranged things for Richard, she told me-social events, cocktail parties and dinners and so forth-because he was a bachelor, and, as she said (and would continue to say, year after year), "Us gals run that end of things." Then she said that she was just delighted that Richard had finally decided to settle down, and with a nice young girl like me. There'd been a couple of close things-some previous entanglements. (This was how Winifred always spoke of women in relation to Richard-entanglements, like nets, or webs, or snares, or merely like pieces of gummy string left lying around on the ground, that you might get caught on your shoe by mistake.)

Luckily Richard had escaped from these entanglements, not that women did not chase after him. They chased after him indroves, said Winifred, lowering her whisky voice, and I had an image of Richard, his clothing torn, his carefully arranged hair dishevelled, fleeing in panic while a pack of baying females coursed after him. But I could not believe in such an image. I couldn't imagine Richard running, or hurrying, or even being afraid. I couldn't imagine him in peril.

I nodded and smiled, unsure of where I myself was assumed to stand. Was I one of the sticky entanglers? Perhaps. On the surface of things however I was being led to understand that Richard had a high intrinsic value, and that I'd better mind my p's and q's if I was to live up to it. "But I'm sure you'll manage," said Winifred, smiling a little. "You're soyoung." If anything, this youthfulness of mine should have made managing less likely, which was what Winifred was counting on. She had no intention of giving up any managing, herself.

Our Waldorf salads came. Winifred watched me pick up my knife and fork-at least I didn't eat with my hands, her expression said-and gave a little sigh. I was hard slogging for her, I now realise. No doubt she thought I was sullen, or unforthcoming: I had no small talk, I was so ignorant, sorural. Or perhaps her sigh was a sigh of anticipation-of anticipated work, because I was a lump of unmoulded clay, and now she would have to roll up her sleeves and get down to moulding me.

No time like the present. She dug right in. Her method was one of hint, of suggestion. (She had another method-the bludgeon-but I didn't encounter it at this lunch.) She said she'd known my grandmother, or at least she'd knownof her. The Montfort women of Montreal had been celebrated for their style, she said, but of course Adelia Montfort had died before I was born. This was her way of saying that despite my pedigree we were in effect starting from scratch.

My clothes were the least of it, she implied. Clothes could always be purchased, naturally, but I would have to learn to wear them to effect. "As if they're your skin, dear," she said. My hair was out of the question-long, unwaved, combed straight back, held with a clip. It was a clear case for a pair of scissors and a cold wave. Then there was the question of my fingernails. Nothing too brash, mind you; I was too young for brashness. "You could be charming," said Winifred. "Absolutely. With a little effort."

I listened humbly, resentfully. I knew I did not have charm. Neither Laura nor I had it. We were too secretive for charm, or else too blunt. We'd never learned it, because Reenie had spoiled us. She felt thatwho we were ought to be enough for anybody. We shouldn't have to lay ourselves out for people, court them with coaxings and wheedlings and eye-batting displays. I expect Father could see a point to charm in some quarters, but he hadn't instilled any of it in us. He'd wanted us to be more like boys, and now we were. You don't teach boys to be charming. It makes people think they are devious.

Winifred watched me eat, a quizzical smile on her lips. Already I was becoming a string of adjectives in her head-a string of funny anecdotes she would retail to her chums, the Billies and Bobbies and Charlies. Dressed like a charity case. Ate as if they'd never fed her. And the shoes!

"Well," she said, once she'd poked at her salad-Winifred never finished a meal-"now we'll have to put our heads together."

I didn't know what she meant. She gave another little sigh. "Plan the wedding," she said. "We don't have very much time. I thought, St. Simon the Apostle, and then the Royal York ballroom, the centre one, for the reception."

I must have assumed I would simply be handed over to Richard, like a parcel; but no, there would have to be ceremonies-more than one of them. Cocktail parties, teas, bridal showers, portraits taken, for the papers. It would be like my own mother's wedding, in the stories told by Reenie, but backwards somehow and with pieces missing. Where was the romantic prelude, with the young man kneeling at my feet? I felt a wave of dismay travel up from my knees until it reached my face. Winifred saw it, but did nothing to reassure me. She didn't want me reassured.

"Don't worry, my dear," she said, in a tone that indicated scant hope. She patted my arm. "I'll take you in hand." I could feel my will seeping out of me-any power I still might have left, over my own actions. (Really! I think now. Really she was a sort of madame. Really she was a pimp.)

"My goodness, look at the time," she said. She had a watch that was silver and fluid, like a ribbon of poured metal; it had dots on it instead of numbers. "I have to dash. They'll bring you some tea, and a flan or something if you like. Young girls have such sweet tooths. Or is that sweet teeth?" She laughed, and stood up, and gave me a shrimp-coloured kiss, not oh the cheek but on the forehead. That served to keep me in my place, which was-it seemed clear-to be that of a child.

I watched her move through the rippling pastel space of the Arcadian Court as if gliding, with little nods and tiny calibrated waves of the hand. The air parted before her like long grass; her legs did not appear to be attached to her hips, but directly to her waist; nothing joggled. I could feel parts of my own body bulging out, over the sides of straps and the tops of stockings. I longed to be able to duplicate that walk, so smooth and fleshless and invulnerable.

I was not married from Avilion, but from Winifred's half-timbered fake-Tudor barn in Rosedale. It was felt to be more convenient, as most of the guests would be from Toronto. It would also be less embarrassing for my father, who could no longer afford the kind of wedding Winifred felt was her due.

He could not even afford the clothes: Winifred took care of those. Stowed away in my luggage-in one of my several brand-new trunks-were a tennis skirt although I didn't play, a bathing suit although I couldn't swim, and several dancing frocks, although I didn't know how to dance. Where could I have studied such accomplishments? Not at Avilion; not even the swimming, because Reenie wouldn't let us go in. But Winifred had insisted on these outfits. She said I'd need to dress the part, no matter what my deficiencies, which should never be admitted by me. "Say you have a headache," she told me. "It's always an acceptable excuse."

She told me many other things as well. "It's all right to show boredom," she said. "Just never show fear. They'll smell it on you, like sharks, and come in for the kill. You can look at the edge of the table-it lowers your eyelids-but never look at the floor, it makes your neck look weak. Don't stand up straight, you're not a soldier. Nevercringe. If someone makes a remark that's insulting to you, say Excuse me? as if you haven't heard; nine times out of ten they won't have the face to repeat it. Never raise your voice to a waiter, it's vulgar. Make them bend down, it's what they're for. Don't fidget with your gloves or your hair. Always look as if you have something better to do, but never show impatience. When in doubt, go to the powder room, but go slowly. Grace comes from indifference." Such were her sermons. I have to admit, despite my loathing of her, that they have proved to be of considerable value in my life.

The night before the wedding I spent in one of Winifred's best bedrooms. "Make yourself beautiful," said Winifred gaily, implying that I wasn't. She'd given me some cold cream and some cotton gloves-I was to put the cream on, then the gloves over it. This treatment was supposed to make your hands all white and soft-the texture of uncooked bacon fat. I stood in the ensuite bathroom, listening to the clatter of the water as it fell against the porcelain of the tub and probing at my face in the mirror. I seemed to myself erased, featureless, like an oval of used soap, or the moon on the wane.

Laura came in from her own bedroom through the connecting door and sat down on the closed toilet. She'd never made a habit of knocking, where I was concerned. She was wearing a plain white cotton nightgown, formerly mine, and had tied her hair back; the wheat-coloured coil of it hung over one shoulder. Her feet were bare.

"Where are your slippers?" I said. Her expression was doleful. With that, and the white gown and the bare feet, she looked like a penitent-like a heretic in an old painting, on her way to execution. She held her hands clasped in front of her, the fingers surrounding an O of space left open, as if she ought to be holding a lighted candle.

"I forgot them." When dressed up, she looked older than she was because of her height, but now she looked younger; she looked about twelve, and smelled like a baby. It was the shampoo she was using-she used baby shampoo because it was cheaper. She went in for small, futile economies. She gazed around the bathroom, then down at the tiled floor. "I don't want you to get married," she said.

"You've made that clear enough," I said. She'd been sullen throughout the proceedings-the receptions, the fittings, the rehearsals-barely civil towards Richard, towards Winifred blankly obedient, like a servant girl under indenture. Towards me, angry, as if this wedding was a malicious whim at best, at worst a rejection of her. At first I'd thought she might be envious of me, but it wasn't exactly that. "Why shouldn't I get married?"

"You're too young," she said.

"Mother was eighteen. Anyway I'm almost nineteen."

"But that was who she loved. She wanted to."

"How do you know I don't?" I said, exasperated.

That stopped her for a moment. "You can'twant to," she said, looking up at me. Her eyes were damp and pink: she'd been crying. This annoyed me: what right had she to be doing the crying? It ought to have been me, if anyone.

"What I want isn't the point," I said harshly. "It's the only sensible thing. We don't have any money, or haven't you noticed? Would you like us to be thrown out on the street?"

"We could get jobs," she said. My cologne was on the window ledge beside her; she sprayed herself with it, absent-mindedly. It was Liu, by Guerlain, a present from Richard. (Chosen, as she'd let me know, by Winifred. Men get so confused at perfume counters, don't they? Scent goes right to their heads.)

"Don't be stupid," I said. "What would we do? Break that and your name is mud."

"Oh, we could do lots of things," she said vaguely, setting the cologne down. "We could be waitresses."

"We couldn't live on that. Waitresses make next to nothing. They have to grovel for tips. They all get flat feet. You don't know what anything costs," I said. It was like trying to explain arithmetic to a bird. "The factories are closed, Avilion is falling to pieces, they're going to sell it; the banks are out for blood. Haven't you looked at Father? Haven't youseen him? He's like an old man."

"It's for him, then," she said. "What you're doing. I guess that explains something. I guess it's brave."

"I'm doing what I think is right," I said. I felt so virtuous, and at the same time so hard done by, I almost wept. But that would have been game over.

"It's not right," she said. "It's not right at all. You could break it off, it's not too late. You could run away tonight and leave a note. I'd come with you."

"Stop pestering, Laura. I'm old enough to know what I'm doing."

"But you'll have to let himtouch you, you know. It's not just kissing. You'll have to let him…"

"Don't worry about me," I said. "Leave me alone. I've got my eyes open."

"Like a sleepwalker," she said. She picked up a container of my dusting powder, opened it, sniffed it, and managed to spill a handful of it onto the floor. "Well, you'll have nice clothes, anyway," she said.

I could have hit her. It was, of course, my secret consolation.

After she'd gone, leaving a trail of dusty white footprints, I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my open steamer trunk. It was a very fashionable one, a pale yellow on the outside but dark blue on the inside, steel-bound, the nail-heads twinkling like hard metallic stars. It was tidily packed, with everything complete for the honeymoon voyage, but it seemed to me full of darkness-of emptiness, empty space.

That's my trousseau, I thought. All at once it was a threatening word-so foreign, so final. It sounded liketrussed -what was done to raw turkeys with skewers and pieces of string.

Toothbrush, I thought. I will need that. My body sat there, inert.

Trousseaucame from the French word fortrunk. Trousseau. That's all it meant: things you put into a trunk. So there was no use in getting upset about it, because it just meant baggage. It meant all the things I was taking with me, packed away.