More in Anger Read Free Page B

as he spoke, didn’t move a muscle lest he stop, lest the slightest movement interrupt this fragile, rare intimacy. “My mother’s primary occupation,” he told her, “was getting me, her elder son, educated; she was that desperate that I should escape the poverty we lived in. She saw to it that I stuck to my books, and to that end she kept a whip handy.”
    Opal was horrified. A whip! He continued. It had been his mother’s idea from the day he was born that he should go to Edinburgh University and become a lawyer, and she never let him forget what she expected of him. If he forgot everything else in his life, he said, he would not forget the look of grim determination on his mother’s face as she refused him affection and denied him indulgence. He recalled that as a child he had brought her treasures he found on his walks. Flowers. Pebbles. Yet nothing was ever enough for her, or right, and she had hit the flowers from his hands.
    â€œI am unable to think of her,” he said, “without choking in anger.” As he had on the telephone. She might remember that time.
    â€œYes,” she said. But was his mother always unkind? she dared ask. Was she never good to him?
    â€œNot that I recall,” he said. “My father was the one for kindness, not her, and she held him in contempt for it. She was always unreasonable,” he went on, words tumbling irregularly now from his mouth as he unburdened himself. “ Always . I would have tried my best to please her,” he said angrily, pain in his voice. “I didn’t need her constant threats.” After he dutifully finished law school, he had gone home to Thornhill one last time, to tell his parents his news: he was leaving for Canada. His father had looked sad, but had wished him well.
    â€œAnd your mother?” asked Opal.
    â€œIf revenge were sweet,” he said, “it should have been candy-coated by the look on her face when I told her. For once, she could barely speak.” Mac chuckled bitterly. But that didn’t last long. Soon enough, she had found voice, and told him he couldn’t go, she wouldn’t allow it. She told him she would not contribute a penny to his leaving Scotland. “I told her I had never expected her to contribute.” And that was the end of that.
    Poor Mac. Opal felt melancholy as she undressed for bed and brushed her thick brown hair a hundred strokes before plaiting it into a braid. She would be gentle, and kind, and a good wife to him. She pledged that he would always feel loved with her.
    She slipped her nightgown on over her head and slipped off her slippers. She was feeling a little anxious, because lately Macwas becoming less and less real to her. He needed to appear, to confirm for her and the world that he was the flesh-and-blood man she had fallen so deeply in love with, and he with her. Really, all she wanted now was to be alone with him, away from the limelight that was claiming so much of her. Some days the stream of celebrations seemed more like hurdles and duties and less like fun, there were so many of them. And over the past few months doubt had been creeping more often into her thoughts. What if he no longer loved her? What if he didn’t come? What if he abandoned her and stayed in Calgary and never gave her another thought and she was made an utter and complete fool of like Pearly K had been, only much, much worse?
    She stood before her mirror with her hands on her hips, turning herself sideways and back, and thinking about Mac and hoping he would like what he saw. She had found herself wondering more and more about the physical part of married life. How was she going to manage? was what she was thinking, meaning the making of children, and all that went with it. The most intimate details of married life. Allowing him to put that in her—what would that be like? Putting his body against her body. Perhaps they would at some