A GRAND FEELING CAME OVER THE LITTLE GIRL EVA Mott; she was sitting on a train. She had never been on a train before—and a very kind black man gave her a chicken sandwich, wrapped in wax paper. She had never seen a black man before. And he spoke French. She didn’t know French. And then he stood over her a moment to see if she opened it correctly, and when she took a bite, he smiled and said, “Good, isn’t it, young lady!”
Then he opened a bottle of 7Up. In all her life she had not yet had a 7Up, and he poured it into a glass and placed it on the tray, with the green bottle beside it. And some lingering sunlight touched that bottle and made it shine.
And there was snow in the fields, and the smell of something—diesel fuel. She knew her uncle Mr. Bell had paid for everything, and one must be on their best behaviour when one went there. Of course she wasn’t told this; she understood it in her mother’s harried stern look as the platform disappeared.
Night was coming on, the grainy kind of twilight of mid-winter, but if you asked her, When was the first time you felt delighted? she would have said, It was that time—the time I went by train, to visit my cousin.
In fact that is what she told Professor Albert Raskin years later. “I took a train ride to see Clara Bell, Mr. Raskin—that’s a memory I cherish.”
“Ah, dear,” he said, “and you’ve had so little to cherish.”
And she felt special when he had said that. She had felt special with Professor Raskin at that moment. Nothing bad could happen to her if she did what he said.
If her cousin Clara Bell was not rich, or not really rich, they had far, far more money than her own mother or father and were accustomed to greater events. Her cousin had gone skiing, and had been to New York and Toronto. Her cousin’s father was an accountant, who worked out of his own office and did work for the Raskin group of mines. And her grandfather had been premier during a time they said of upheaval. Although she travelled through sparseness to get to the house that seemed perpetually dark, a wooden three-storey house off the highway by a great deal, everything looked extraordinary to her. She thought of keeping the 7Up bottle, but she forgot it on the train.
An accountant for the mines, she said. My uncle is an important accountant.
To her that was a very, very special thing. For her mother especially always talked so proudly about them and what they did, and they owned a sailboat. So Eva must show—decorum.
She was only staying two days so it seemed pointless, but with a great deal of decorum, the decorum of a little girl who wanted to please others, she unpacked her suitcase, hung up her blouse and skirt, put her socks in the second drawer of the dresser, folded her slacks and sweater, placed her underwear in the third drawer, and after the late-night lunch, and the game of Scrabble, went to bed in some presentiment, because of the knocking sound in the pipe far below her. And the wind that started a clicking in the iced-over trees. There were small shadows on the walls, like small dancing fingers, which made her shut her eyes tightly and say, “Clara? Clara?”
Not only, but that she might do something that would embarrass her parents—that she would not fit into the great house in some way.
Portico.
That was the word Clara put down to win the game of Scrabble. An entrance or doorway. Eva must remember it, for she had not heard it before. She had written it down, to remember, in its moment of transient meaning, its complete independence from what it actually meant. Which means she thought of it in some especial way that really had nothing to do with the word, but more to do with the very specialness of her cousin’s family.
It was February, the night before Saint Valentine’s Day. She said a prayer for her mother and father. Her father never knew what to do—he was always being told what to do, by his boss, or her mother—and she thought when she got married she would like someone who knew what to do, who actually knew what they wanted to do. Her father’s bosses all wore tight grey suits with narrow ties and were younger than he was. He was now on his sixth job in eight years. He had sold furniture, he had installed windows, he had helped lay patios, he had driven a delivery truck. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment, but she heard her father saying they might have to move back to the very side road he was born on.
He didn’t simply buy her a bicycle—no, not Ben Mott, he couldn’t just buy her a bicycle. He ordered one from China that was cheaper. That was when she was ten years old. She waited the whole summer and into fall, every day, and finally it came in a box and it took her mother three days to put it together. Eva went out on her bicycle, smelling the new rubber tires as they got stuck in the snow, and the cold drifts made the new bike wobble.
Sooner or later with everything Ben Mott did, he would come home sad, and frustrated that people did not take him seriously. That the boss and his co-workers thought him ridiculous. But also all his life he had hit people up for money. At first Eva did not notice this, but now she was of an age to notice, and to feel shame.
That is why she was glad to be here now, because once again her father had made a mistake, and as she thought of it she worried and curled up, and tucked her legs under her, and shut her eyes tight to make the mistake go away.
Then the old house groaned in the wind, and she looked out the window. The snow came up on the porch, but that porch seemed to be cheerful; those lights still made the wisping snow glitter. The moonlight, too, made the mounds of snow look dark and warm against the pine trees. Her cousin was happier too. It was her and her cousin’s thirteenth birthday party on February 14.
They were born the same day, twelve minutes apart. Her cousin was the older by twelve whole minutes. So they always had a cake, shaped like a heart, at her cousin’s house. Still this was the first time she had ever taken the train, and the first time she had travelled there alone.
This longing that came over her when her cousin spoke of things Eva did not have was really innocent envy, not spite or bitterness, but the kind that made her say to herself, Wait until I tell Cheryl or Did even Mommy know that?
But she also said: Someday I will have everything Clara has too. You wait and see.
Just two days later she was packing everything to leave. While packing her socks and underwear she saw the tea-coloured stain at the bottom of the dresser drawer that had looked special. Now it was simply the reminder of how little she had actually done here. She had imagined doing many fine things, and in fact she had done so little.
This trip would have a profound effect on her life. That over time she would try to compete with her cousin, and also be more and more like her.
Because of this trip she would want things in her life to be perfect—to reach a perfection, to be sublime.
There was something that was said that would bother her—not right away so much as when the months and years passed.
Her uncle dressed well, so fashionably in a button-up cardigan and a pair of grey dress slacks, with black loafers. And he was on the phone all day with the minister of finance, about the construction of the highway bypass to go into Suffers Lake where a new mine was being opened. This was a mine, she learned later, that didn’t get authorized, because of problems with financing. But at the time, she did not understand all those matters.
Everyone spoke deferentially about his work. It is what she noticed as soon as she arrived at the house.
Early the day she was leaving, she had asked her cousin Clara to take her to the dollar store on the main street—she wanted to buy her mom and dad a present. Her cousin had gone outside, and she, still putting on her boots in the hallway, heard her uncle, who thought she had left as well, say: “Your sister dresses her like a goddamn little slut.”
“Oh please, will you shhhh—she’s in the hall. They have very little money.”
“Still, she could be dressed appropriately. Her father couldn’t spend a cent on anyone. I’ve never seen anyone quite so miserable, and in the end he will cause her misery in some way we do not yet know, mark my words. I feel very bad for her—very badly.”
Eva didn’t know what that word slut was, or why at that moment she felt deep, deep shame. Her own parents were happy she had been invited; of course neither of them knew her appearance would be used against them.
Her cousin that day would help buy a bra for her—pretending it was all her own idea: “Hey—here you go. You try this one and I’ll get one too.”
I will be perfect, Eva Mott thought later that night. Because I have to be.