Waiting for Time Read Free Page A

before, at the dispatch with which Charlotte disposes of things. My mother the minimalist, she thinks.
    “Everything's new except one piece—a desk of no particular value,” her mother says.
    A desk of no particular value—her mother has peeled the past, made it flat, one dimensional. Nothing is left—no stories, no keepsakes, not one of Saul's tools, none of his leather-bound books, no wedding certificate, no box of faded photos.
    Her mother replaces the receiver, bends over the drawer, flicking through file folders. Lav cannot see her face.
    “What's become of that small picture in the oval frame—the one that used to be propped beside Saul's pen holder?” It seems a safe question.
    Charlotte looks up, “The picture of the woman and two children,” she says. Her face is blank, guileless. “It's gone.”
    Lav feels a surge of anger. Who is this serene woman dressed in the pale wool, a silk scarf draped artfully around her neck, plain leather pumps on her small, neat feet?
    The childhood Lav recalls as bare—whose very bareness has become the subject of anecdote, a source of shared amusement for her and Philip—this bleak landscape is suddenly crowded with a multitude of things Lav wants to see, wants to own, to touch, to smell. Where had her mother's velvet, wedge-heel slippers gone? What became of those bits of coloured cloth she used to tie around her hair when she dusted books? Where are the floral, wrap-around aprons? The teapot decorated with ugly purple roses? Where is the green desk lamp, where is the shiny fold-out holder she used to bring toast on? Most of all, where is the picture? The small, brown photo of Saul's first family, his foreign wife and children—dead, tragically dead, though how Lav knows this she cannot say—neither Charlotte nor Saul had ever spoken of the picture or of Saul's having another family.
    As a child Lav had spent hours staring at the three faces contained inside that oval frame—a woman and two children. The woman wore a lacy summer dress. Her hands were beautiful, white, tapering, she wore rings, one hand was holding the hand of the boy who stood beside her, the other restrained a blonde baby who was squirming to be off her lap. The baby pressed forward, round-eyed, joyful, reaching towards the camera, toward Saul. The woman and boy are not quite ready. But Saul is looking at the baby, at the round beaming face, at the small fat hands inviting him into the picture—and this is the instant he chooses to capture. The boy wants to be gone, you can see that, see how he hates the starched shirt and short trousers he is wearing. He stands stiffly, impatiently, beside the woman, refusing to respond to the loving, half-coaxing smile she has turned on him.
    Those people were her real family. She was the baby, the boy was her brother, the smiling woman her mother. She had known them, known the room—could see things that were not in the picture—tables crowded with keepsakes, an open window, many-paned with billowing curtains. Through the window had come the voices of children—children the boy's age, laughing, playing ball—calling her brother's name. She could almost hear his name.
    “Why would anyone throw such things away?” she shouts, so savagely that her mother's head jerks up, hands fly to face, fingers are pressed against bottom lip. Losing her place in the files, Charlotte stares at her daughter with that familiar combination of bewilderment and annoyance, almost horror.
    Lav closes her eyes, takes a deep breath: “I mean, if you didn't want the picture I would have liked to have had it. Didn't that even occur to you?”
    “But neither of us ever saw the sky over the people in that picture…”
    “What does that matter? I always loved it and I don't have anything of Saul's—not one thing!” Plopping herself down on one of the uncomfortable chairs, Lav folds her arms across her chest and stares sullenly ahead. Flushed and awkward, she bears no resemblance to