Dot (Araminta Hall)

a second, and then the awful business of remembering, but I don’t think I ever forgot, I think I awoke with the desperate impression that I could change it.
    Her hair was still in her brush when I was allowed into her room after the body had been removed. I took it and held it as though it was the most precious thing I would ever own, but of course hair is dead even when it is on your head and nothing to get excited about. Alice looks so like Mother. She looked like her the moment she was born. I never told Howie that, it seemed too dangerous to say out loud, but I wish I had now, I wish I had shared some of the things I know with at least one other person. Because what if looks signify more than genetic alignment? What if my mother’s character has seeped through the generations as well? What if I am no more than a conduit of her, sandwiched between two women unable to love me as I love them? Certainly Alice has my mother’s distance, that disconcerting way of looking through you, as if there’s always someone more interesting over your shoulder. They both have the same icy blue eyes that stare when they don’t understand something, as if ordinary life is too banal for goddesses like them. They are dangerous women.
    To think that when they first walked in I presumed she was parading an unsuitable boyfriend before me and I felt a stab of excitement as I thought we might be moving on to a more normal footing. I allowed myself whole minutes of fantasy in which we raised our voices and came to agreements and learnt how to live with each other. But of course Alice had done something spectacular, how could I ever have imagined otherwise?
    I can’t remember much of our conversation, I lost all sense of myself when she told me that she was pregnant. She wanted to leave me though, I do remember that, as distinctly as I know every word on Howie’s grave. She thought they could go and live in Cartertown in one room and live off – what? – love, I suppose. You know nothing about love, she said to me and she is quite possibly right.
    At least Tony seems to have his head screwed on. I can see what she likes about him. He is obviously good-looking, although I don’t like his long hair or his tight jeans, but that is nothing. He also seems to be more than the sum of his parts. When he sat opposite me and said that Alice could not live in some room in Cartertown, I saw that he understood her. And more than that, he cared for her. He had weighed up the situation and made a choice, the right choice if you ask me. Of course they must live here and, who knows, maybe it will all turn out fine. Maybe a baby will be the making of Alice. I was having a hard time imagining what she might do with her life and maybe this is a good solution. We do not live in a world of nannies and entertaining like when my mother had me and so Alice will have to take on these responsibilities and maybe she’ll be good at it?
    The problem is that he is scared. I saw his eyes flicking over everything when he walked in; I heard the stammer in his voice when he spoke to me. And scared is not the best way to enter a marriage. It is hard enough to get right when you are as in love as Howie and I were, but when you are scared and bemused and feeling inferior it stands little to no chance.
    Howie used to laugh at me when I insisted on things being right, as I so stupidly called the traditions we pass down through the generations. But he understood what I meant. He could find me amusing because his mother had been almost the same person as me and so I was easy to love. But Tony will be lost in Alice and she in him. They will speak words in the same language and yet their meaning will be obscured by their experience.
    It’s strange because when I couldn’t get pregnant I don’t think Howie was really that bothered. He worried for me because I was so desperate, but if it had turned out that we never had children I don’t think he would have been heartbroken. But then when Alice came along he fell in love with her so easily and readily. I think with men it is always the actuality, whereas women prefer ideas. Women can live whole lives in ideas, create realities out of nothing. Oh Howie, what would you make of this? The best, I imagine, although if you were still here, no doubt she wouldn’t have got pregnant in the first place.
    You know, Howie, sometimes I hate you for leaving me. Often I hate you, Mother. Someone, I forget who, once said that love and