Free More in Anger by J. Jill Robinson Page A

and a cup of tea in the living room with Mac, Opal drew the drapes across the living room windows, across the stars and the deep blue sky, and went up to bed.

    Their next trip to Beresford was no better than the last, except that the children were older. It rained the whole time and the sky was so dark and gloomy that the atmosphere both inside and out was truly oppressive. Pearl complained endlessly about her lot, and about Tom and all that he was not doing that Pearl thought he should be doing. Tom was uncommunicative. Tom shirked his responsibilities. Every day, the wife of Tom’s medical partner went off in her pickup truck to spend the afternoon in the beer parlour (how sordid! thought Opal). The four girls sulked and wailed and fought and clamoured for attention Pearl did not give them, until Opal felt she couldn’t hold her tongue one minute longer, though she had.

    At home, Mac spent much of his time fishing, or golfing, or reading up in his study, while Opal puttered about below. Mac liked spending time alone more than she did. But they did go out together. Just last Tuesday they had gone to the Jubilee Auditorium to see the National Ballet, and the performance was on the whole pretty good, Opal had thought, especially the part called “Offenbach in the Underworld.” But Mac had not cared much for the second part, which featured five male dancers wearing ballet tights. If she and Mac hadn’t been in the middle of the row, he might have got up and left. In the car on the way home, Mac had ranted about the performance and how he did not get muchof a kick out of seeing men cavorting around in tights. Indeed, he said, once or twice he had felt like bursting out laughing. Thank goodness, thought Opal, that he hadn’t.
    Well, Mac was in better humour overall these days, why she could not say, but as a result so was she. He hadn’t flown into a rage since who knew when, and he got more upset about golf scores than about anything else. There were good things about getting older, though not many, as far as Opal could tell. She disliked the weight she had gained; she disliked how much more difficult it was for her to get around, even to go up and down the stairs. When the last girl had quit on them, Mac had suggested doing without, but she had put the kibosh on that in a hurry.

    Both she and Mac had felt pretty tired after their Christmas vacation in Beresford. Between the two of them they must have washed and dried a thousand dishes. Every time they turned around there were more to do, stacked up by the sink. Their dishwashing machine was on the blink, Pearl said, and the repairman hadn’t shown up. Pearl was still adding to her long list of Tom’s failings, the most recent entry being that he was lazy. It did not seem so to Opal. Tom appeared to be busy as could be, coming and going from the hospital and going out on calls in the middle of the night in addition to his office hours, but Pearl did not see it that way. Any word Opal or Mac might murmur in Tom’s defence was construed by Pearl as a word against her. “Youalways take his side,” Pearl would have objected had Opal said a word, and yet another topic would be closed and another source of tension added to the growing heap.
    Pearl never seemed to respond to any of the little affectionate advances Tom made, which didn’t help matters, and the goingson of the children, who seemed particularly unruly—as if Pearl was letting them run wild and waiting for him to take charge in the discipline department while he clearly felt otherwise—obviously got on Tom’s nerves. The children were not even required to remain at the table from the time they sat down until they finished their meals. Tom would get fed up and go off to the living room and play the piano for an hour, off in his own little world, as if that was the only peace and enjoyment he could find in his own home.

    Opal would have to write a