Dance of the Happy Shades

“and cut her up in fifty pieces.”
    “Well I don’t want to hear about it,” my mother said. “And don’t come to my table like that.”
    My father made him go and wash the blood off.
    We sat down and my father said grace and Henry pasted his chewing-gum on the end of his fork, the way he always did; when he took it off he would have us admire the pattern. We began to pass the bowls of steaming, overcooked vegetables. Laird looked across the table at me and said proudly, distinctly, “Anyway it was her fault Flora got away.”
    “What?” my father said.
    “She could of shut the gate and she didn’t. She just open’ it up and Flora run out.”
    “Is that right?” my father said.
    Everybody at the table was looking at me. I nodded, swallowing food with great difficulty. To my shame, tears flooded my eyes.
    My father made a curt sound of disgust. “What did you do that for?”
    I did not answer. I put down my fork and waited to be sent from the table, still not looking up.
    But this did not happen. For some time nobody said anything, then Laird said matter-of-factly, “She’s crying.”
    “Never mind,” my father said. He spoke with resignation, even good humour, the words which absolved and dismissed me for good. “She’s only a girl,” he said.
    I didn’t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.

POSTCARD
    Yesterday afternoon, yesterday, I was going along the street to the Post Office, thinking how sick I was of snow, sore throats, the whole dragged-out tail-end of winter, and I wished I could pack off to Florida, like Clare. It was Wednesday afternoon, my half-day. I work in King’s Department Store, which is nothing but a ready-to-wear and dry goods, in spite of the name. They used to have groceries, but I can just barely recall that. Momma used to take me in and set me on the high stool and old Mr. King would give me a handful of raisins and say, I only give them to the pretty girls. They took the groceries out when he died, old Mr. King, and it isn’t even King’s Department Store any more, it belongs to somebody named Kruberg. They never come near it themselves, just send Mr. Hawes in for manager. I run the upstairs, Children’s Wear, and put in the Toyland at Christmas. I’ve been there fourteen years and Hawes doesn’t pick on me, knowing I wouldn’t take it if he did.
    It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blonde creature, lit upwith neon I suppose at night. She was saying
Sleep at my place—
that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read,
I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare
. The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word is irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that
we’re
as good as
them
.
    I used to say to Clare, write me a
letter
while you’re away, and he would say, what do you want me to write about? So I told him to describe the scenery and the people he met, anything would be a pleasure for me to hear about, since I had never been further away from home than Buffalo, for pleasure (I won’t count that train trip when I took Momma to Winnipeg to see relatives). But Clare said, I can tell you just as well when I get back. He never did, though. When I saw him again I would say, well, tell me all