The Wives of Bath Read Free Page B

stream with her pockets full of stones. In my opinion, it always helps to remember there is somebody sadder than you.
    All three of us were staring grumpily at the rain-soaked windshield of Blinky, Morley’s new turquoise Olds 98. I called it Blinky as a joke, because its convertible top went down slowly, like a hydraulic lift, instead of in the blink of an eye. Even Morley called it Blinky in his relaxed moments, but that day he was cross, because the rain was forcing him to drive without his beloved fedora. With its top up, Blinky didn’t have enough headroom to accommodate Morley in a hat.
    His fedora sat crumpled and lonely on the top of my steamer trunk, which was jammed into the back seat beside me. The car trunk was too full of junk Sal had collected from the church rummage sale.
    I was out of sorts myself. That afternoon Sal had made me dress in the school uniform, although there was nothing in the school brochure asking girls to wear it on the first day. But she bullied me into putting on the green tunic and white blouse. (I’d negotiated myself out of the dumb-looking tie.) Just look at yourself, Mouse, I thought. You’re as conspicuous as a convict. Set apart from normal people by a little dress that nobody in their right mind would wear.
    Of course, Sal wasn’t happy, either. She always got carsick, although she didn’t think it was ladylike to say it out loud. Sal believed that suffering in silence was a woman’s lot. To look happy was a show of bad faith, a way of letting your sex down. Sal said we were born martyrs. Maybe we were even martyrs in the womb.
    In front of me, Morley pressed his push-button window, and now the rainy breeze was tugging at Sal’s knotted black bun. It nestled like a furry slug under the silly pillbox hat she kept in place with a pearl-studded hatpin. She sighed and fidgeted with the black strands of hair that fanned out across the white skin of her neck like sea anemones in a current. Her little dark head was hardly higher than Morley’s shoulder. I liked to wonder how a woman her size could have sex with a man as tall as Morley. I often sneaked looks at him when he walked down the hall without his pyjama bottoms, on those mornings he thought I was still asleep, and the size of him shut down my imagination. I guess Morley’s penis set a standard—something for other men to aim at.
    Morley accelerated over a small rise, and suddenly we were in a long, winding ravine. I saw a sign that said “Wilbury Hollow” and a parking lot where people carrying umbrellas were hurrying out of the rain onto red-and-grey buses. On the hill to the west, amedieval-looking stone house squatted in a grove of spindly trees. I recognized Bath Ladies College from the school brochure. It said the building had been commissioned by a Sir Jonathon Gilbert Bath, who’d hired a British architect to design it like a Norman castle, because he wanted a home in which to entertain Queen Victoria. Sal figured Sir Jonathon was a ne’er-do-well, because he’d only got as far as tea with the queen’s third son, Prince Arthur, before his debts forced him to sell the place. It was bought by a board of Anglican trustees who wanted to start a girls’ boarding school on the outskirts of Toronto. They kept the name of its original owner because the place was already known in the city as Bath Castle.
    “My God! It looks like a prison,” Morley said quietly to Sal, who was sitting in my place, the seat next to Morley.
    “All schools do,” Sal said, and she quickly turned up the radio so we could hear a news broadcast about the American president, John Kennedy, celebrating his wedding anniversary with his family. His anniversary was a little sad this year, the announcer said, because the Kennedys had lost their new baby son, Patrick, in August.
    “The poor tyke,” Morley sighed, and Sal turned the radio off. Slowly we climbed the ravine hill, until we came to a green sign on tall metal poles that said “Bath