Poached Egg on Toast by Frances Itani Page A

She lives on the hill in a large white wooden house, just above the river. The bridge, which can be seen from her front windows, gives the impression of being too modern for this old town. I always think, as I come over the hill and confront it anew, that it should be plucked out of the view, that it would look better painted on a new, green dollar bill.
    Karla loves Miss Ellis’ house with its jumble of ancient furniture, its woodpile and its root cellar, its plants twined up and down the stairs and, of course, its attic. We both love the company of Miss Ellis.
    “Everything in this house is
parched
with age,” she announces, as she opens the door.
    “Maybe the dinosaurs lived here,” says Karla, and adds, “but now they’re stinked.”
    “Extinct,” I say.
    Miss Ellis laughs her wonderful quick laugh, closing her lips a little. She is observant; she pauses, remembering. Although at first glance she seems small and white and frail, when one is with her, one senses strength, largeness. There is something of the artist in her, I am sure. She always describes herself as a picture, someone quickly painted into a moving canvas, someone things
happen
to. Today she tells the story of the boy who carries in her wood. Somehow, she manages to get to the bottom of people’s lives and stories. But she does not ask about mine, or about Alan’s; nor does she mention the government job which has taken him for a year to a country at war, a country to which Karla and I may not follow.
    While she prepares tea, to be shared on her veranda, she listens attentively to Karla, who tells about a dress
reversal
held by her Kindergarten. Karla then goes into an unexpected and long-winded story about a girl in her class who says mean things about the other girls.
    “Ah,” says Miss Ellis, “if you can see through a person, Karla, you can like them. It’s when you can’t, when there are surprises, that you can be caught off guard.”
    Karla and I ponder this on the way home. As we turn in at our street, we meet two neighbourhood women, Helen Jordan and Audrey Brooks. Audrey says to me, “Alan is away now, isn’t he, Simone? How is it for you, living alone?”
    “What did she mean, Mom?” Karla asks, after I’ve mumbled something incoherent and they have passed. But I cannot answer. Do I misunderstand because at this point I regard any question about Alan and me as intrusive? I do know that I have been wounded, by the encounter.
    All day Sunday, I stretch canvases until I think I have enough ready for what I want to do. The work is in my head, growing, murmuring. I feel, at times, that I am being taken over. I let myself move, back and forth, with the images. Karla amuses herself outside in the breeze and the sun as I work. Fall has come late this year and the leaves are past their full final colour. They seem to be having an earthward race; the ground and air are thick with them. My attention roams out and back from window to easel, where I stand looking at blank space. But Karla has caught my eye, her long black hair dangling from her tire swing where she sways upside down. I have all of this
space
. I feel excited, as if I could paint anything. I wonder suddenly whether I shall enjoy living alone this long time. A large part of me seems to desire, to stretch towards the boundless free state, the state of uncommittedness. Will there be no real impact now that Alan has gone? Almost two months have passed and little seems to have changed—except for the daily contact. Yes, the ordinary human contact with one’s partner—that is missing.
    As for Karla, she goes to school, comes home, hums about the house quite happily. I am not really certain what has been altered for her. And Alan? Is he sitting in a room somewhere? Reading? Lying in bed? Walking some foreign street? I have no visual background for him; there is nothing to fit him against. Nothing except descriptions in letters that arrive irregularly: details of long hours,