Unless   

A novel by Carol Shields

 

She’s lost her middle daughter,

or not lost – mislaid – or not

mislaid but found on a street corner

or not her daughter but her daughter’s

outline, a cardboard sign around her neck

inscribed with the word, Goodness.

 

I don’t recall the mother’s name,

though I remember she still orders

two tons of mulch for the garden, still

has sex on a Friday night, despite

Norah dropping out of University,

to sit on a street corner. The mother tries

to write her third novel, her first two

met with mild acclaim. She blames

feminism’s inability to fulfil its promise

for her daughter’s resignation.

 

Norah – that’s the daughter –

doesn’t speak, doesn’t beg, doesn’t

pick up the coins dropped at her feet.

Wears oversized gardening gloves.

Screams if anyone tries to remove them.

The mother and her other daughters sit

on the street with Norah on Saturdays,

leave clean underwear and a sandwich.

 

The mother; what’s her first name?

Was a Summer, married a man called

Tom Winters. He collects trilobites,

signs the cheques they send each month

to the hostel where Norah sleeps.

The boyfriend is as baffled as anyone.

Norah only left to buy a dish rack.

 

Mrs Winters writes – still that name alludes me –

fraught letters to her editor, who thinks Roman

should be her novel’s protagonist, not Alicia.

To the adjudicator who picks only male novelists

for a list of the century’s most influential writers,

to the paper that prints an article by a professor

objecting to mastectomy bras hung in shop windows.

 

Norah, it turns out, tried to save a refugee

who set herself alight in the mall car park.

The plastic dish rack Norah carried

melted into her hands, spiralled welts

between her fingers. Hence the gloves.

It’s the why, but the why no longer matters.

What matters is her daughter is home,

asleep in her childhood bedroom.

 

Mrs Winters’ third novel is published.

Alicia, the protagonist, leaves

her would-be husband at the altar.

 

At least, that’s what I remember.

It’s years since I read Unless. 

My memory may be fractured.

Feminism is still a disappointment.

 

Reta, that was her name. With an e, not an i.

 

Tina Sederholm is an Oxfordshire-based poet, performer and editor. Her two collections, Everything Wrong With You Is Beautiful, and This is Not Therapy, are published by Burning Eye. Creator of five solo spoken word shows, she has performed everywhere from The Royal Albert Hall and Edinburgh Fringe to her local aquarium. When she is not writing, she can be found riding racehorses or walking her Boxer dogs across the Cotswold hills.