Good to a Fault (21 page)

Clayton wouldn’t like it, though, he’d always been glad to say
half
-brother about Darwin. What made them brush together so badly Lorraine could not say. Clayton was always expecting to be judged, waiting to be put
down, not that Darwin ever did. One thing she was sure of, no matter how she rocked upon the waves: she’d been better for her children than Clay’s mom, or than her own. She and Darwin had had Rose. Clayton had nobody, except her. She wondered, before sleeping, where he was.

On Sunday Pearce threw a complete shrieking fit because she would not let him bang the kneeler on the floor, and Clary had to carry him out of church. He writhed under her arm and pounded on her stomach with his hands, so furious that it made her laugh and clench him tight. She sped down the side aisle, sliding out the rear door before he had time to explode.

Lisanne Tippett was in the vestibule. Pearce stopped yowling to examine her. Clary found it hard to look at her smug, sly-minx face. She’s probably pretending so no one will know how sad she is, Clary told herself, and nodded a greeting, but Lisanne was staring off into some private distance, so that was wasted. She must be waiting to talk to Paul.

The final hymn came swelling through the doors, “
…that soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake, I’ll never—no, never—no, never forsake…
”

Paul was there, on the church side of the closed doors, turning back to give the congregation the blessing. Clary found it uncomfortable to be near Lisanne, and she moved aside, using Pearce as her excuse, joggling him peaceably and talking to him in a whisper.

At last Paul opened the doors and came through. Seeing Lisanne, his shining face went dull. He smiled, being civilized, but with a feeble mouth that made Clary sad.

Then people were filing out, and his hand was demanded, and he could turn away. Lisanne stood in the brilliance of the outer doors, staring out as light streamed in. She did not move out of the light or give ground for the leaving congregation, so the ebb-tide had to part around her.

Pearce on her hip, Clary went round the line and took her turn too. She shook Paul’s hand and held it for a minute. He must be shrinking from all these eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “Never mind.” As if those two things would help.

She should not be sorry. With his other hand Paul touched a bright spike of sunlight on Pearce’s round cheek, a happy boy again after his tantrum. He felt Lisanne’s gaze behind him, scorning his surplice, the mask of
office. Like that year in Dunnett, when she’d stopped going to church: 1989. The Sunday she’d shouted at him in the sacristy that she was leaving. Her turn had come round that morning to play the organ for the service, but nobody had told her of some change—Crimond for the hymn instead of Dunfermline, or some new Alleluia the choir was singing while she played the wrong tune. She was through! When he walked home after the second service, the car was packed (the K-car from Bishop Perry’s mother that they had bought for $2,000), her suitcases and books and the good duvet stacked in the back seat: regimental columns, crimson and black, on the border, and the classical gold box of its burning centre.

But she had not gone. Another dozen parishioners filed through the door; he smiled, he greeted them by name, he asked pertinent questions, but all the time his pinhead brain was asking him, why had she not gone then?

Old Mrs. Chapman next in line, her sparkling, squashed-pansy face turned up to him wearing all her eighty-six years, reminded him. Lisanne had stayed because they had gone upstairs and made love, and it had been a startling time, wide open, in flames, because he was as angry as she was. He remembered her beside, beneath, above him, her white thigh under his cheek; and the holy tent, the covenant-box of the gold duvet over and around them. Mrs. Chapman’s accepting expression—like Lisanne’s, when she did not go.

She was gone now. The tide of parishioners ebbed, all of them in a seemly hurry to let Paul and Lisanne be alone. The big doors shut them into sudden twilight; the ACW ladies headed back up to the nave to tend to the flowers and the linen. His heart pounded, painful in his chest.

Then the left door creaked open again, a glare of sun peeling in with a two-headed shadow, Clary and Pearce. “Forgot the car seat,” Clary said, apologizing. “You’d think I would remember by now.”

Lisanne laughed, a sharp bark, suddenly attending to Clary. “
You
had a baby?” she asked, her eyebrows arcing on defined ridges of muscle.

Was the incredulity for her age, or her old-maidishness, Clary wondered. She shifted Pearce to the other hip, smooth in practice, and shook her head. “Not mine,” was all she said.

Lisanne laughed again. “Well, I didn’t think! But you never know, these days. Anyone can have a baby now. That sixty-year-old in Italy.”

Paul’s temper ran out, like water flooding out of a broken glass. As
much because Clary could not explain, as from Lisanne’s scorn. “Clary has taken on the care of three small children while their mother is in hospital,” he said, his voice neutral. Neutered.

Clary ducked through into the church and left them to it.

Paul looked at Lisanne’s face, her mixed attitude of defiance and regret, but did not pity it this time. If she flailed less she would have less to regret. Nothing he did would change her.

In the church, Clary took her time finding the car seat and unwedging it from the pew. With any luck they would go off to the church office to have their talk. Pearce saw the seat and pointed fiercely, cawing out something, almost
car
. In her pride she forgot to dawdle, and had pushed the door to the porch open before she saw Lisanne still there. Alone—waiting for Paul? Clary gave a nod, her mouth jerky with nervousness.

“Sorry,” Lisanne said. “I was rude.”

Now Clary was stuck.

“I’m bad-tempered these days, at least around here.”

“No, no,” Clary began, and then didn’t know how to carry on.

“I’m remarrying,” Lisanne said. Out of the blue, like most of her remarks.

It caught Clary by surprise. “Oh good!” she said, and then felt her face heating up like a stove element. “I mean, I’m happy for you. Everyone in the parish wishes you well.”

“Yeah,” Lisanne said, looking up with her narrow jealous eyes. “They love me.” She had perfectly cut dark hair, almost black, falling in sleek threads around her head. What a nice child she and Paul would have had, her vivid colouring with Paul’s bones.

“Well, I guess it’s a loss for the whole parish, in a way. That you and Paul have split.”

“My heart breaks for them. It’s all about the parish.” She ignored the rules of polite conversation. Clary was bored by her, suddenly, which was a relief.

“Goodbye, then,” Clary said, and took Pearce and the car seat out into the fresh cold morning, to the children waiting at the bottom of the steps.

Paul was spotting Trevor as he high-wired along the concrete curb.

“I came looking for you,” Paul said. “I have to go to Toronto, they’ve
made me the Diocesan rep on the Faith and Worship committee. It’s supposed to be an honour. I’m gone for ten days—but I’ll go to see Lorraine as soon as I get back. And I’ll call you.”

“All right,” she said. She was tempted to add something light about seeing him in church, anyway—to make him think it was not important to her that he was going away, or that he would come back, that he would telephone. But she stopped. He was going to call her because they had become friends. And he liked the children. She smiled properly, and held out her hand to say goodbye. What a lovely hand he had to hold.

She let go quickly, and scooped up Dolly and Trevor with her to the car. It was good to have company through all this: Mrs. Zenko, Darwin, Fern and Grace and Moreland, all of them. But Paul was her friend.

M
ost transplant patients who survive the procedure and who do not relapse (experience a return of their disease) lead active and productive lives.
Lorraine read that sentence over. It was fully loaded—that little twitch in the middle about the relapsing, and the helpful definition because you would probably be too stupid to understand a big word like
relapse
.

Some patients, however, develop chronic (long-lasting) or delayed complications. These complications have many causes, including the transplant itself, pre-transplant radiation and/or chemotherapy, and
…Her eyes wouldn’t read any more. There was no point, because knowing would not help her. Ignorance might help her to be oblivious, and strong, and placid.

November was cruel, Paul thought, not April.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease.
Toronto at least had charcoal smoke and chestnut vendors. Back here in the west it was full winter. Seven parishioners in hospital, and Lorraine.

He pulled into the parking lot and checked in the visor mirror that he did not have blood on his mouth from that morning’s shave. He remembered
Binnie’s mouth in hospital, the dear pearly teeth and her lips all cracked and painful with thrush. The little spaces between Binnie’s teeth had kept her face always young. Well, she was young. He could not do any more of this. He could not go upstairs.

He went up. But he took the stairs to give himself a little more time, winding up the echoing, wheeling metal flights.

When he got to the door and Lorraine looked so happy to see him, he was sorry not to have taken the elevator. She was tired but talkative—couldn’t seem to stop talking, in fact.

“You know what I want? People I used to know, to know how their stories are turning out. How many kids they’ve got, and what they do now, and where they live, and who they married.”

He said, “We can find out some of that, if you want.”

“I don’t want to actually call anybody, or look people up on the Internet or whatever. I’m just thinking about them. Like there was one set of brothers, one called Dog and the other called Pickle. Darwin remembers them too.”

Paul said he had people like that in his own memory.

“Or the girl who lived over the Chinese restaurant, Rosalind. Or that girl who took me to the revival meeting where the woman spoke in tongues—I want to tell them I liked them, or something.” She was silent for a while. “It’s obviously got to do with thinking I might not be able to, later.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Only thing is, I don’t want to tell anyone. I can’t stand talking about all this.” She put down the brush. This one was not working out. “I didn’t think I’d be ashamed.”

“I don’t think it’s shame. People are devastated when they find out, not just for you but for all the people they’ve known before, and you have to lift their spirits for them, you have to make them think you’re not dying.”

“Yes.”

They sat quietly.

Dolly went for a walk after school, not telling Clary she was going, not telling Trevor even. She was sick and tired of this place. Her math test came back marked 4 out of 12 and Clary had to sign it, and she was going to be all
concerned. Dolly wanted her mother to sign it, but her mother’s bones were being sucked out and tested and if the bones got 4 out of 12 she would die.

Dolly said
crap
when she stepped on her left foot and
shit
on her right foot, walking down 8th Street in the grey snow and traffic-scum. Way up ahead she saw Key’s Books and realized that was why she was walking down here. She needed a new book. The fat librarian at school made you sign up on lists for books, and anyway she was sick of ordinary books, she wanted something good, like
Mistress Masham
. She had no money again but maybe she could talk the old guy into letting her work for him, dust the books for cash. He bought books, too—maybe she could find some of Clary’s old books to bring in. Or Mr. Bunt’s.

The door was wide open this time. A metal ramp sloped up the stairs, covered with moving rugs laid in a path to a big truck.

Dolly jumped up on the ramp and sidled quickly through the door before a man in grey coveralls came out with a huge box blinding him. He blundered down the ramp too close to the edge, but saved himself and stomped up into the truck.

The store was dark inside. Dolly couldn’t see anything but movement: grey men going around with boxes. They were emptying the shelves, throwing the books into boxes like they were leaves or wood chips. The old guy was sitting by his computer but it was not turned on.

“We’re closed!” he yelled. A man packing books almost dropped his box.

“Why?” Dolly asked.

“Retirement.”

She knew he was lying. He looked drunk. She should have come in before and dusted his books for him. What a mess this place was, as usual. Even worse with the people trampling around. There were books splayed open on the floor. The men with boxes were just walking on them. She picked one up:
Bleak House
.

“Take it and go!” the old giant shouted. There was a loud crash from upstairs.

“How much?” Dolly asked.

He leaned forward in his chair and reached his arm out for the book, flipping the inside cover page with huge clumsy fingers. “$95. Nice early edi
tion.” He closed his eyes. Dolly looked at the dark eyelids under his flaring white eyebrows.

“Well, I don’t have that much,” she said, speaking only to him in the crowd of workmen.

The old guy got up from his kitchen chair—taller than the busy grey men. He bent to grab his stick, and walked around the store picking books off shelves, looking at them, dropping them on the floor.

“Always orphans, eh? You’ll like this better, for now,” he said, hanging on to one. He held it out to her. “
Vanity Fair,
she’s an orphan. Good tips in there, how to cope.”

She took it. It was a very old red book, the pages still creamy inside, with little pictures at the front of every chapter. She smelled it, it smelled like church.

He grabbed it back and smelled it too. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “No,” she said. “I like it.”

Suddenly moving fast, he grabbed the one he’d dropped,
Bleak House,
and then more, pulling from the shelves—
The Secret Garden
was on top, she couldn’t see the others.

“Jane Eyre. Oliver Twist. Mary What’s-her-name—orphans galore,” he said. He shoved the stack into her arms, and pushed her toward the door.

“How much?”

He waved his stick around at the destruction of his store.

“Forty thousand dollars,” he said. “You can owe me.”

Darwin said he’d seen Paul walking away down the hall. “Did he tell you that his sister died of cancer a couple of years ago?”

“What kind?”

“Leukemia.”

Lorraine let her eyes drift off, away from Darwin. He didn’t blame her for being sick.

“He’s still cut up about it—maybe he didn’t want to cry in front of a girl.”

Lorraine laughed. “A bald girl.” She pushed the rolling table aside. Her scalp-fuzz had promptly fallen out again; her head was as smooth as a pear. The daily blood transfusions buoyed her up physically, although it made her feel trembly in her spirit to think of all those arms, all those Red Cross cots at all those donor clinics that had poured blood into her.

She was grateful to this round of chemo, which had given her back lucidity and seemed to be calming her down almost the way Darwin did, and gave her a window of time to talk to him. It made her want to talk to the kids too, but it was too hard a burden to place on them. When Clary suggested bringing Dolly for a visit, Lorraine did not want to say no. “Wait, okay?” she said. Clary said yes, of course, and they left it.

The full team of doctors trooped in to announce it: Lorraine was in remission, and ready for transplant; Darwin had had all his tests and passed them. He said he felt like a matchbook career-college graduate:
be a donor, or just look like one!
Only Dr. Cormarie and Dr. Lester smiled. They were the kind ones. They conditioned Lorraine’s marrow—ridiculous euphemism, Clary thought: they killed it by sticking her in a room and giving her total body irradiation, four days in a row. Clary and Darwin sat down the hall on turquoise vinyl seats waiting for the small Hiroshima to pass over her. Clary found it strange to think of that bone-blood, that pale, innocuous, powerful fluid, made sterile. It made her own bones feel hollow and frail.

The buzzer went and the door was opened, and Lorraine was rolled out. No outward sign of the destruction showed, but she was sleepy. Clary held her hand all the long way back to the ward, keeping her face mildly positive, as always at the hospital. And then all it was was a blood transfusion. Just her regular old i.v. blood-bag. A little disappointing, after all the waiting.

Then there was was longer to wait.