Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

Meriel believed that when she had said goodbye to her, months and seasons ago, she had been sitting in the same chair in the same spot—though without the asbestos apron, which must accord with some new rule, or reflect some further decline. Very likely she sat here every day beside the fixed ashtray filled with sand, looking at the liverish painted wall—it was painted pink or mauve but it looked liverish, the corridor being so dim—with the bracket shelf on it supporting a spill of fake ivy.
    “Meriel? I thought it was you,” she said. “I could tell by your steps. I could tell by your breathing. My cataracts have got to be bloody hell. All I can see is blobs.”
    “It’s me, all right, how are you?” Meriel kissed her temple.
    “Why aren’t you out in the sunshine?”
    “I’m not fond of sunshine,” the old woman said. “I have to think of my complexion.”
    She might have been joking, but it was perhaps the truth. Her pale face and hands were covered with large spots—dead-white spots that caught what light there was here, turning silvery. She had been a true blonde, pink-faced, lean, with straight well-cut hair that had gone white in her thirties. Now the hair was ragged, mussed from being rubbed into pillows, and the lobes of her ears hung out of it like flat teats. She used to wear little diamonds in her ears—where had they gone? Diamonds in her ears, real gold chains, real pearls, silk shirts of unusual colors—amber, aubergine—and beautiful narrow shoes.
    She smelled of hospital powder and the licorice drops she sucked all day between the rationed cigarettes.
    “We need some chairs,” she said. She leaned forward, waved the cigarette hand in the air, tried to whistle. “Service, please. Chairs.”
    The doctor said, “I’ll find some.”
    The old Muriel and the young one were left alone.
    “What’s your husband’s name?”
    “Pierre.”
    “And you have the two children, don’t you? Jane and David?”
    “That’s right. But the man who’s with me—”
    “Ah, no,” the old Muriel said. “That’s not your husband.”
    Aunt Muriel belonged to Meriel’s grandmother’s generation, rather than her mother’s. She had been Meriel’s mother’s art teacher at school. First an inspiration, then an ally, then a friend. She had painted large abstract pictures, one of which—a present to Meriel’s mother—had hung in the back hall of the house where Meriel grew up and had been moved to the dining room whenever the artist came to visit. Its colors were murky—dark reds and browns (Meriel’s father called it “Manure Pile on Fire”)—but Aunt Muriel’s spirit seemed always bright and dauntless. She had lived in Vancouver when she was young, before she came to teach in this town in the interior. She had been friends with artists whose names were now in the papers. She longed to go back there and eventually did, to live with and manage the affairs of a rich old couple who were friends and patrons of artists. She seemed to have lots of money while she lived with them, but she was left out in the cold when they died. She lived on her pension, took up watercolors because she could not afford oils, starved herself (Meriel’s mother suspected) so that she could take Meriel out to lunch—Meriel being then a university student. On these occasions she talked in a rush of jokes and judgments, mostly pointing out how works and ideas that people raved about were rubbish, but how here and there—in the output of some obscure contemporary or half-forgotten figure from another century—there was something extraordinary. That was her stalwart word of praise—”extraordinary.” A hush in her voice, as if there and then and rather to her own surprise she had come upon a quality in the world that was still to be absolutely honored.
    The doctor returned with two chairs and introduced himself, quite naturally, as if there’d been no chance to do it till now.
    “Eric Asher.”
    “He’s a doctor,” said Meriel. She was about to start explaining about the funeral, the accident, the flight down from Smithers, but the conversation was taken away from her.
    “But I’m not here officially, don’t worry,” the doctor said.
    “Oh, no,” said Aunt Muriel. “You’re here with her.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    At this moment he reached across the space between their two chairs and picked up Meriel’s hand, holding it for a moment in a hard grip, then letting it go. And he said to Aunt