Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,42
I talked about her and Tracey would think I was odd. When we came to the street, however, it was just as quiet as it had been the first time I visited, and without seeing a single one of her neighbors we made our way into Tracey’s house.
Tracey’s mother was at home when we arrived. Slender and peachy-skinned, she wore an Alice in Wonderland headband to hold her straight blond hair out of her face, and a flowery ruffled smock.
“Hello, Tracey, love. Didn’t expect to see you back here so soon,” she said, her voice so soft and melodic that it made me realize how abrasive the tones of all my female relatives were. And while all the women in my family were big-limbed and hefty, Mrs. Grasby was thin, with small fine-boned hands and guarded, delicate gestures to match. I remembered that she was the president of the Bleakwick Young Wives Club. If all the other members were like that, I thought, no wonder my mother had been tossed out. “This must be your new friend,” she said, pressing her palms to each side of her face and regarding me as if I were a surprise gift that had just been delivered to her door.
“Her name’s Jesse,” Tracey said, rolling her eyes at me, apparently irked by her mother’s enthusiasm. “She moved into Johnson’s house. You know, that place on the road out of the village, the one that’s falling to bits.”
“Oh, Tracey, don’t be so rude,” her mother said, shaking her head and making a tut-tut sound with her tongue. “That’s not how we talk to guests, now is it?” She turned to me. “Don’t mind Tracey—she tends to forget her manners sometimes.”
Tracey rolled her eyes again. “We just came home for something to eat. I thought you were going out.”
“Oh, I was, but then I got carried away making that chicken casserole I saw in the new issue of Good Housekeeping. I thought your dad might want something different for a change. I think he’ll like it,” she said, pushing her hands into the ruffles of her smock. “At least I hope he likes it.” For a moment, her voice seemed to catch in her throat and her face pressed into an uneasy tightness, her mouth bracketed by two carved lines. Then, almost as fast it came, the expression was gone and she was all soft edges and smiles. “Why don’t you girls go and sit down and I’ll make you some sandwiches. Ham and tomato all right for you, Jesse?”
“Yes, please, Mrs. Grasby,” I said, following Tracey into the living room while her mother bustled down the hall toward the kitchen.
The furniture in Tracey’s living room was very much as I’d expected—a thick-piled fitted carpet, an unscratched coffee table and sideboard, a pristine settee and matching armchairs, porcelain ornaments on the windowsills. The only unexpected element was the glass cabinet in the corner filled with gilded plates, silver trophies, bronze cups, ribbons, and medallions, and a collection of photographs and certificates on the wall.
“I didn’t know your mum and dad did ballroom dancing,” I said, walking over to take a closer look at the photographs.
Tracey shrugged. “Yeah, that’s how they met.”
In the pictures, they were beautiful. Mrs. Grasby, her hair coiffed in elaborate, twisty piles, her body sheathed in sparkly, sequined gowns, looked glamorous. And Mr. Grasby was dark-featured and ruggedly handsome in a black suit, white shirt, and black bow tie, his hair slicked back and shiny as patent leather. Some of the photographs were posed, but most caught them in the exuberance of dancing—their bodies arced in elegant lines, heads tilted, faces shiny with perspiration and the brilliance of the ballroom’s lights. My eyes flitted from photograph to photograph, fascinated by the way, in those dancing shots, they cut such a dazzling spectacle, their two bodies converging in a single fluid motion, so that there was no doubt that they were meant to be together. I thought of my own parents, both terrible dancers in their own particular way: my father so robotically stiff that dancing hardly seemed the right word for the wooden movements of his limbs; my mother frenetic and out of sync with any rhythm in the music, making it obvious that in dancing, as in everything else, she occupied a world of her own.
For a moment, I felt such envy that it was a liquid filling me. Here was the neat little house I imagined for myself: a mother who