Free The Custodian of Paradise by Wayne Johnston Page B

the roof. I asked Miss Long what the weather was like. She ignored me. She would not speak to this girl who had caused such profound upheaval in what she clearly thought of as
her
house.
    I fell out of rhythm with the hours of the day. I was as likely to sleep while Miss Long sat by my bed as after Miss Long had left the suite, as likely to read throughout the night as after I had finished breakfast. It was partly that it was more bearable to read in solitude than while Miss Long sat in silence beside me. Had I dispensed with my calendar, lost faith in Miss Long and asked no questions of my mother or Dr. Breen, I could easily have lost track of the date.
    Whatever book I asked for was brought to me, bought new for me, not borrowed from a library. My mother told me I could take the books with me when I left.
    “I arrive with a baby and I leave with books,” I said. But, perversely, I asked for far more books than I had time to read. They lay like a second, variously coloured blanket on my bed and spilled over onto the floor. Novels. Histories. Miss Long regarded them all with the same degree of distaste and suspicion, as if she were comparing their collective worthlessness to the infinite value of the Bible she held open on her lap, as if my desultory reading habits were evidence of a dissatisfied and restless soul.
    “So, tell me what is new at Bedside Manor?” I liked to ask her, though I knew she wouldn’t answer.
    “She never speaks to me, never,” I complained to Dr. Breen. “I would rather she sermonized me all day than just sat there, saying nothing.”
    “I have told her to say nothing that might upset you, so she says nothing at all because every word
you
say upsets
her
. She would speak to you if you were less—provocative.”
    “Tell me, Stepdoctor Breen, what is the silent treatment meant to treat?”
    He grinned as if to say that he knew that my wit was but bravado, knew I was afraid because I had no idea what giving birth was like, unlike him who had witnessed, overseen and managed it a thousand times before.
    “What a marvel of conversation she would be if only she had time to learn a language.”
    “Miss Long has always been a woman of few words,” my mother said. “She has been with my husband’s family all her life.”
    “If only you had known her years ago,” I said, “you could have learned from her example.
You
might have been with your husband’s family all your life.”
    “You make a mockery of things that you will never understand.”
    Dr. Breen examined me daily, palpating my belly gently with his fingers and hands, now and then looking at my face as if my belly were some strange musical instrument and the score for the piece that he was playing at a pitch that only he could hear was written on my forehead.
    The only other doctor who had ever examined me was my father, whose palpations were nowhere near as gentle as Dr. Breen’s. My father would put one hand atop the other and press down until I winced or protested that it hurt, at which point he would grunt and move on as if taking inventory of my organs, trying to confirm that all were present and properly located. I suspected that Dr. Breen was a better doctor than my father, to whom, in spite of everything, I felt a filial loyalty. It seemed that by submitting to Dr. Breen’s ministrations, I was being unfaithful to my father. To have been examined only by this pair of father-doctors—how strange that seemed.
    “I find that one drink of Scotch at bedtime helps me sleep,” I said, wondering if my mother had repeated those words to him.
    He shook his head to indicate that I would not be getting any Scotch, but also, it seemed, in wonderment at the word “find,” implying habitual use of whisky by a girl who was only fifteen.
    Again that condescending smile. “I will give you some laudanum if your sleeplessness persists.” A couple of times he drew from a bottle some drops of laudanum that he mixed with water. Each time,