My clothes were the least of it, she implied. Clothes could always be purchased, naturally, but I would have to learn to wear them to effect. “As if they’re your skin, dear,” she said. My hair was out of the question—long, unwaved, combed straight back, held with a clip. It was a clear case for a pair of scissors and a cold wave. Then there was the question of my fingernails. Nothing too brash, mind you; I was too young for brashness. “You could be charming,” said Winifred. “Absolutely. With a little effort.”

I listened humbly, resentfully. I knew I did not have charm. Neither Laura nor I had it. We were too secretive for charm, or else too blunt. We’d never learned it, because Reenie had spoiled us. She felt that who we were ought to be enough for anybody. We shouldn’t have to lay ourselves out for people, court them with coaxings and wheedlings and eye-batting displays. I expect Father could see a point to charm in some quarters, but he hadn’t instilled any of it in us. He’d wanted us to be more like boys, and now we were. You don’t teach boys to be charming. It makes people think they are devious.

Winifred watched me eat, a quizzical smile on her lips. Already I was becoming a string of adjectives in her head—a string of funny anecdotes she would retail to her chums, the Billies and Bobbies and Charlies. Dressed like a charity case. Ate as if they’d never fed her. And the shoes!

“Well,” she said, once she’d poked at her salad—Winifred never finished a meal—“now we’ll have to put our heads together.”

I didn’t know what she meant. She gave another little sigh. “Plan the wedding,” she said. “We don’t have very much time. I thought, St. Simon the Apostle, and then the Royal York ballroom, the centre one, for the reception.”

I must have assumed I would simply be handed over to Richard, like a parcel; but no, there would have to be ceremonies—more than one of them. Cocktail parties, teas, bridal showers, portraits taken, for the papers. It would be like my own mother’s wedding, in the stories told by Reenie, but backwards somehow and with pieces missing. Where was the romantic prelude, with the young man kneeling at my feet? I felt a wave of dismay travel up from my knees until it reached my face. Winifred saw it, but did nothing to reassure me. She didn’t want me reassured.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” she said, in a tone that indicated scant hope. She patted my arm. “I’ll take you in hand.” I could feel my will seeping out of me—any power I still might have left, over my own actions. (Really! I think now. Really she was a sort of madame. Really she was a pimp.)

“My goodness, look at the time,” she said. She had a watch that was silver and fluid, like a ribbon of poured metal; it had dots on it instead of numbers. “I have to dash. They’ll bring you some tea, and a flan or something if you like. Young girls have such sweet tooths. Or is that sweet teeth?” She laughed, and stood up, and gave me a shrimp-coloured kiss, not oh the cheek but on the forehead. That served to keep me in my place, which was—it seemed clear—to be that of a child.

I watched her move through the rippling pastel space of the Arcadian Court as if gliding, with little nods and tiny calibrated waves of the hand. The air parted before her like long grass; her legs did not appear to be attached to her hips, but directly to her waist; nothing joggled. I could feel parts of my own body bulging out, over the sides of straps and the tops of stockings. I longed to be able to duplicate that walk, so smooth and fleshless and invulnerable.

I was not married from Avilion, but from Winifred’s half-timbered fake-Tudor barn in Rosedale. It was felt to be more convenient, as most of the guests would be from Toronto. It would also be less embarrassing for my father, who could no longer afford the kind of wedding Winifred felt was her due.

He could not even afford the clothes: Winifred took care of those. Stowed away in my luggage—in one of my several brand-new trunks—were a tennis skirt although I didn’t play, a bathing suit although I couldn’t swim, and several dancing frocks, although I didn’t know how to dance. Where could I have studied such accomplishments? Not at Avilion; not even the swimming, because Reenie wouldn’t let us go in. But Winifred had insisted on these outfits. She said I’d need to dress the part, no matter what my deficiencies, which should never be admitted by me. “Say you have a headache,” she told me. “It’s always an acceptable excuse.”

She told me many other things as well. “It’s all right to show boredom,” she said. “Just never show fear. They’ll smell it on you, like sharks, and come in for the kill. You can look at the edge of the table—it lowers your eyelids—but never look at the floor, it makes your neck look weak. Don’t stand up straight, you’re not a soldier. Never cringe. If someone makes a remark that’s insulting to you, say Excuse me? as if you haven’t heard; nine times out of ten they won’t have the face to repeat it. Never raise your voice to a waiter, it’s vulgar. Make them bend down, it’s what they’re for. Don’t fidget with your gloves or your hair. Always look as if you have something better to do, but never show impatience. When in doubt, go to the powder room, but go slowly. Grace comes from indifference.” Such were her sermons. I have to admit, despite my loathing of her, that they have proved to be of considerable value in my life.

The night before the wedding I spent in one of Winifred’s best bedrooms. “Make yourself beautiful,” said Winifred gaily, implying that I wasn’t. She’d given me some cold cream and some cotton gloves—I was to put the cream on, then the gloves over it. This treatment was supposed to make your hands all white and soft—the texture of uncooked bacon fat. I stood in the ensuite bathroom, listening to the clatter of the water as it fell against the porcelain of the tub and probing at my face in the mirror. I seemed to myself erased, featureless, like an oval of used soap, or the moon on the wane.

Laura came in from her own bedroom through the connecting door and sat down on the closed toilet. She’d never made a habit of knocking, where I was concerned. She was wearing a plain white cotton nightgown, formerly mine, and had tied her hair back; the wheat-coloured coil of it hung over one shoulder. Her feet were bare.

“Where are your slippers?” I said. Her expression was doleful. With that, and the white gown and the bare feet, she looked like a penitent—like a heretic in an old painting, on her way to execution. She held her hands clasped in front of her, the fingers surrounding an O of space left open, as if she ought to be holding a lighted candle.

“I forgot them.” When dressed up, she looked older than she was because of her height, but now she looked younger; she looked about twelve, and smelled like a baby. It was the shampoo she was using—she used baby shampoo because it was cheaper. She went in for small, futile economies. She gazed around the bathroom, then down at the tiled floor. “I don’t want you to get married,” she said.

“You’ve made that clear enough,” I said. She’d been sullen throughout the proceedings—the receptions, the fittings, the rehearsals—barely civil towards Richard, towards Winifred blankly obedient, like a servant girl under indenture. Towards me, angry, as if this wedding was a malicious whim at best, at worst a rejection of her. At first I’d thought she might be envious of me, but it wasn’t exactly that. “Why shouldn’t I get married?”

“You’re too young,” she said.

“Mother was eighteen. Anyway I’m almost nineteen.”

“But that was who she loved. She wanted to.”

“How do you know I don’t?” I said, exasperated.

That stopped her for a moment. “You can’t want to,” she said, looking up at me. Her eyes were damp and pink: she’d been crying. This annoyed me: what right had she to be doing the crying? It ought to have been me, if anyone.