Good to a Fault (16 page)

Too bad her sister Janet couldn’t see her now, she thought. Too bad Janet had died, screaming her head off with her breast. And now Lorraine. Even in the dark Mrs. Pell could feel the tumbling blocks diamonding down the quilt.

One doughnut left in the box that she’d hidden under the bed when the kids came tearing over. With a grunt she slid off the bed onto her knees, and groped under the bed as far as she could reach with her swollen hands. Not so fresh anymore, but still. She hauled herself back up onto the bed and sat panting, taking a bite and breathing some more. She wasn’t too well. She pushed that out of her head. A bite. Behind her eyelids a parade of people walked: Dougie Pell, Clayton when he was a teenager, her dad, Clayton’s dad—that fucker. And herself, when she was six, sitting beside Janet, watching Janet’s needle go in and out, in and out, little stitches.

D
arwin wouldn’t take any money either. In lieu of rent, he said, and nowhere near enough; he cut off any argument by telling her the hospital was talking about sending Lorraine home when she was released from this isolation period after chemo. Clary went in to find out the details.

The dire smell of the ward hit her in the face after a grace period away. She walked the familiar route down the hall—then farther, because Lorraine had been moved to an isolation room, with an ante-room for visitors to wash. The little ritual took time, and attention to the instructions printed over the sink, before she could move through to the room itself.

Lorraine was sleeping. Narrow drip-lines draped her in a spider’s web.

A strange man sat in a chair against the wall; Clary saw he was there for the other patient in the room. He was staring at her: a young woman—a girl, lying flat down with no pillow, her closed eyes purple dents in her head. The man didn’t move, or acknowledge Clary. He was not sleeping.

After hesitating a minute, Clary passed close by him to go to Lorraine’s bedside. She put her hand on her own cheek first, to check its temperature in case she should be too cold, and then on Lorraine’s cheek to wake her gently. Nothing.

Lorraine’s chest rose and fell, her hair fell away from her brow and ears. She was as deep in sleep as Snow White, lying in this huge glass coffin. Clary turned from the bed and left.

Early in the evening, Paul knocked on the door. Clary was so surprised and glad to see his thin, sweet face that she almost leaned forward to kiss him, as if he were family, or Moreland.

She stopped herself in time, and opened the door wide.

To Paul’s ears the house thrummed with life: Pearce singing at the top of his voice in the kitchen, Dolly and Trevor racing each other to be first to the door.

“We went to the lake, and I nearly drowned,” Trevor said, beating Dolly to being interesting, at least. They crowded Paul with them into the kitchen, where ice cream was melting in their bowls. Pearce gave Paul a massive, tooth-splaying smile and shouted at him generally, waving a spoon. He had ice cream on the top of his head. Clary got a cloth from the drawer and ran warm water, adding to the wash of noise and light.

“You had dessert already!” Paul pulled a quart basket from the red-splotched bag he carried. “Look, I brought raspberries I picked myself.”

“I thought that was blood,” Trevor said.

“You probably can’t have any raspberries now,” Paul said sadly.

“No, no,” Dolly said. “Raspberries are good for us, but they give Darwin blisters.”

Clary washed Pearce’s head and face while he spluttered. “You can put them on your ice cream. You dole them out, Paul. Where did they come from?”

“I had to go out to St. Peter’s Abbey for a meeting, and the monks took me for a walk in the raspberry canes afterwards. Look, some are golden, not red—like beads of honey.”

She turned her head to see, and he popped a raspberry into her mouth, warm and perfect, a bud of light. Everything smelled of raspberries. His nervous fingers were stained from picking, so she could see the whorls marked red on the smooth skin, the maze-marks that were only his. She laughed and opened her mouth for another one.

Pearce opened his mouth too, and Dolly and Trevor, birds in the nest demanding theirs, all the little mouths to feed. And Darwin came shooting up the stairs to demand ice cream before he went to the hospital, and raspberries too, allergy or no. He slapped Paul on the back and thanked him for the help.

“Help?” Clary asked.

“He came and painted, Monday,” Darwin said, delicately sifting a huge fistful of raspberries past his lips, straight into his mouth. “You should see it now, man.”

“I happened to be driving by,” Paul said to Clary. “I stopped to see—”

The doorbell rang, one long buzz.

Clary sighed and unwound her hair from Pearce’s fingers. “You stay here,” she told him. “Sit with Paul, instead.” She plopped him down on Paul’s long, bony leg.

It was Barrett Gilman at the door.

She stepped back, wanting to shut the door on his rosy, self-flooded face. “Clara!” he said, jocular and benevolent, which she knew from experience meant he had unpleasant news. She wasn’t letting him in the house. Too bad Mrs. Pell had taken her dinner out to the shop and couldn’t be rude to him.

“Well, Clara,” he said, after a pause.

She stood waiting, door in hand, knowing that he was truly going to annoy her now, and said nothing.

“I’ve got some paperwork here, may I come in?”

“Sorry,” she said, stooping for a sandal. “I’m on my way out. Can I have a look at it on the porch?” She called back over her shoulder, while easing Barrett backwards, “Darwin, Paul, I’m going down to the hospital, will you wait till I get back before you go?”

A shout of assent from the men and the children, and she could shut the door behind her, keeping the pollution of Barrett out of her house.

“It’s awkward,” he was saying.

“Oh, no, it’ll be fine, here, on the bench.” She swept toys aside, and let Barrett find his own space. “I assume the company wants me to resign,” she said, before he could spin it out into endless blaming and condoling.

“Well. There were difficulties—I’ve got a form, and I’ll explain the notations…”

He fumbled in the attaché case, the one his mother gave him for Christmas in 1992. She knew too much about this un-friend, and none of it good: his everlasting excuses for indolence; his pink satin tie, stained with a gravy-spot after the ’97 awards lunch; the way he clung obsessively to the fountain pen he was now pulling out, to witness her signing away whatever rights she probably had.

“You know, I really don’t have time. Just point where to sign,” she said. She could hardly bear to be near him for another minute! But if she left now she’d have to see him again, to sign the damn forms.

“And here, and…” He gave her a Gilman-Stott ballpoint and pointed to the arrows where her signature was required. “This is really too bad,” Barrett said, watching her sign and flip, sign and flip.

Sign, sign, sign—she grabbed her copies. Her vacation pay, her waiver of claim, and a standard confidentiality agreement; a cheque attached, paying her out for the last year and a half of accumulated holiday time and employee benefits and disengaging her permanently from the firm. Several thousand dollars. That would be helpful, in the short term. Her pension buyout: a letter delaying that for a few months, but it would mean a lump for investing somehow; time to worry about that later.

“You’ll need my keys,” she said, yanking them off her ring.

“I’m distressed about all this, Clara.”

“So what?” she said, straightening up to look him in the eye. “You’ve made no effort at all to help me. After twenty years in your office, I deserved better.”

His eyes boggled. He must not have expected rudeness from her. Or truth.

Well, there’s a limit, she thought, skipping down the front steps and off away from his gravitational pull—a comet passing Jupiter and spinning away, free!

Lorraine was not completely coherent. She turned her head restlessly on the pillow, vaguely agitated, asking for Darwin.

“He’s coming soon. I got to come first,” Clary told her, damping a cloth in cool water to wash her face. A clump of stray hairs lay on her pillow. Clary gently brushed them off.

“That’s good,” Lorraine said. “That’s good.”

“I know. I was just washing Pearce’s face, and his head—he had ice cream all over.”

“Pearce.”

“He’s fine, he’s with Darwin, they’re all finishing their dessert while I run in to see you. Darwin says they’re going to boot you out of here soon, that’s wonderful.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he tell you about all the changes at the house? He’s got Mrs. Pell moved into my dad’s old shop, and she seems pretty tickled. As far as one could tell.”

Lorraine smiled, her cheeks not moving. Clary washed Lorraine’s hands, putting each in turn back on the green hospital coverlet, and they lay where she’d put them, limp and white under the brown remaining tan. There was great satisfaction in doing this small service for her.

“The children will be beside themselves with joy to have you home,” Clary said.

Lorraine nodded. Without any change in her expression two tears slid easily from the corners of her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks. She made no move to wipe them off.

“You’re too tired for chat,” Clary said. “You’ve been going through all this so well. A couple more days, and you’ll feel much better.”

Lorraine nodded again, even more briefly than before, her chin dipping slightly. Clary leaned forward and kissed her ashy cheek. She was careful not to cry herself.

In the other bed, the young woman lay flat, abandoned.

Checking the mailbox when she got home, Clary found the phone bill. She opened it as Darwin was getting his keys and his hat. $439 in long distance—all billed to her phone card, which she hadn’t used for months. There was some mistake. Darwin came through the hall and patted her shoulder as he went out, letting the screen door bang behind him. Calls to Spiritwood, to Onion Lake, Meadow Lake, Stanley Mission, Winnipeg, La Ronge—all within a couple of days last month. Fort McMurray. She knew it before her
plodding brain caught up. Clayton, calling around to find Darwin, using the phone card she had not missed from her wallet.

The doorbell rang early in the morning, before the children had eaten breakfast. Barrett again, Clary thought, because of the angry insistence of the bell. She went reluctantly to the door, Pearce on her hip.

It was Bradley Brent from next door. Brent Bradley.

He burst into hissing speech, like a shaken beer bottle fizzing over. “What’s next?” He glared at her, but didn’t give her any time to respond. “What will it be? This is a respectable neighbourhood, where the bylaws still get taken seriously. The construction, the noise, the constant crying of that baby! And now some kind of ramshackle flophouse in the back yard.”

“Our baby never cries,” Clary cried, honestly indignant. “For a minute, maybe, once in a long while. He is a very good baby!”

“The baby has nothing to do with it. There is no bylaw—would that there were—against a crying baby. But there are rules and regulations about construction. I saw no permit posted, I saw no notice of intent to convert the house into a rooming house!”

Clary’s heart was beating like a metronome, flap-flap-flap-flap, quick march time. Her mouth was open to rebut, but not being able to say
Mr. Brent!
or
Mr. Bradley!
with any kind of confidence seemed to be holding her back.

His little eyes looked crazy, and his lips pooched out when he talked. “I serve you notice, I intend to fight this thing to the limit of the law. You are lowering property values and introducing a very low-class element to the street.”

Trevor and Dolly had crept up to watch. How dared he say low-class in front of them?

“The property inspector assures me that he will be paying you a little visit, very soon. And when he does—”

“Listen!” she said, arresting him in mid-rant. “You’re disturbing us. If you don’t wish me to call the police, kindly get off my porch.”

He gaped, the whites of his eyes showing. “You
threaten
me?”

“Mr. Brent, stop! You’re mistaken. There was no construction, just
finishing drywall in the basement, and I’m certain that my cousin, the builder in charge, saw that regulations were meticulously followed. The existing structure in my garden has been a temporary habitation for thirty years. When the property inspector, who I believe is still my father’s old friend Stan Granik, visits, I’ll be happy to give him a cup of coffee and show him around. I know he’ll be too considerate to arrive before the children have eaten their breakfast.”

She shut the door. Her knees were shaking. Trevor squeezed her arm on one side, and Dolly patted her back on the other. She hoped that was true, that Moreland would have seen to permits. How badly she wanted to sit down! To be accused of lowering the tone of the neighbourhood—it was a joke. In a minute she would laugh.

But her house
was
ramshackle. Children’s jumble crowded the living room: the rocking baby seat, the playpen, a huge box of Lego that Moreland had brought in from Davina (an extra half-hour of picking up at the end of the night), crayons, shoes, clothes. On the kitchen counters baby-food jars and cartoon plastic cups jostled appliances: the blender, the toaster, the sandwich-maker. She shouldn’t give them grilled cheese sandwiches so often. The children’s room was so much theirs now that Clary couldn’t think what it had been before—the guest room, and before that, her own childhood room. She could hardly make her memory’s eyes refocus. Her father’s den had spun through the whole roulette wheel: first Clayton’s tainted room, then Mrs. Pell’s lair; now an empty shell waiting for Lorraine. At least that room was clean.

Clary called Paul.

“I’m going to pick Lorraine up from the hospital tomorrow,” she told him. “I didn’t want you to go looking for her and not find her.”

But that was only an excuse. She wanted to talk to him, and had no other earthly reason but Lorraine.

“Thank you,” he said. He sounded puzzled by her call, she could hear that.

He could too, and was quick to correct it. “I’m sorry—I just got off the phone with my wife’s lawyer. Thank you, I would have been worried about Lorraine.”

“They’re letting her come home, she’s officially in remission.”

“That’s wonderful!”

“No, it’s not real. They know they can knock out 99 per cent of the lymphoma, but it will definitely come back. This is just the first part. They’ll be waiting for her to recover for a couple of weeks and then she’ll go through it all again.” She felt an absurd hankering to cry. But it was not her who was in this terrible trouble.

“Clary,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know that your mother’s death must be refreshed every time you enter that hospital.”

Oh, why would he say that? Why get her started?

“My father’s, too,” she said. “I thought I had forgotten it.” She was not sure whether she was crying or only breathing too hard.