Good to a Fault (23 page)

“Want some gum?” he asked, talking to Ann, not Dolly. He had thick lips like that bad John Reed guy in
Jane Eyre.

Dolly couldn’t believe it when Ann took a piece. Didn’t she know anything?

“Want to go in the hotel?” he asked, still to Ann. “I got a friend who works in the kitchen, we can get a snack.”

“Forget it,” Dolly said. She pulled Ann’s arm, but Ann pulled back, like she wanted to stay talking to the guy. Not getting it at all. The boy turned his weird stare onto Dolly.

“You’re ugly,” he said. “But you can blow my friend.” He grabbed his crotch.

Dolly was scared, partly because he was wearing a lot of black eyeliner. She pulled Ann away onto the ice, thinking they could cross the rink to get to the road.

They flew inside the whirling circle of skaters, Christmas lights blinking between bodies and shadows like slides. Ann was heavy to pull, and Dolly’s boots slid, useless on the ice. The weird boy’s high Doc Martens had better traction. He was dodging between skaters to catch them. But the tall old man glided toward Dolly, long legs, long skateblades crossing, and swirled around her and crashed into the boy, who went down yelling on the ice. The old man was stooping to help the boy up, or to get in his way.

She ran, yanking Ann, off the ice on the other side and onto the hard-packed snow. It was getting dark. It would be a long way to run to the bus mall, now—but there was the church. They would take care of you, there was a word for it. She ignored Ann’s whining to slow down, and half-dragged her across Spadina Avenue to the big red church, around the brick corner of it and up the main steps. The door to the church was locked. But the boy wouldn’t know that. He probably wouldn’t follow them here. She hauled Ann past the big steps and made her crouch down behind them. Safe for a minute.

Dolly was tempted to go into the church office. The lights were on. She could ask them to call Paul, they would know him, and he’d come and get them. But he’d have to tell Clary, they’d better not.

“Can you run now?”

Ann shook her head. Her nose was running.

“Well, we’ll have to walk fast. That guy isn’t going to follow us any more. He’ll be scared by the church. Hey, spit out that gum! Don’t you know they can stick stuff in drinks? They could do it in gum too.”

“My mom is going to kill me, if she wakes up,” Ann said.

“Maybe you’ll be dead already from the gum. It’s five o’clock,” Dolly said, hearing the church bells begin. They were in so much trouble. She stood up like a gopher checking out of its hole. No guy.

In the distance, there was the bus barrelling toward them.

“Quick! We can make the bus!” They ran like racers, even Ann. They
reached the stop just before the bus, and it cranked to a halt, and they climbed on—and Ann had lost the change.

Dolly said, playing it with everything she had, “We are in so much trouble, we’ve got to get home, and we lost our money. Please, can we pay twice next time?” Well calculated, she thought, for the prim-looking bus driver. Already heading down Spadina, he checked their clothes—Dolly’s clothes, at least; Ann was sliding behind her—and Dolly’s face.

“Sit down, girls,” he said. “You can owe me.”

It was because she didn’t look like the kind of person who would cheat the bus system. Clary looked after her now, and she looked rich. But she could have done it before, anyway, even living in the Dart—made him believe that she was trustworthy.

Dolly sat back on the red vinyl seat, not touching any part of herself to Ann who was such a stupid idiot, and decided that she was pretty lucky. They would make it back before Clary came to get her. She wondered how she had gotten to be such a good liar, but when she went back over what she’d said, she hadn’t told any lies at all that time.

O
n the morning of the party Trevor helped Clary make a twelve-layer chocolate torte to take with them. They drew circles on skinny stiff paper and Trevor spread the dough inside the circles with the back of his spoon, his tongue sticking out at the corner of his mouth to get them perfect. Into the oven—out of the oven! Stack them on the racks. Another, another, another, six sets of twos. Six plus six was twelve. He was way ahead in math.

The fancy plate was in the top cupboard. Clary had to climb on a stepladder, not just a chair, to get it. Her smooth arm when she strained for the top shelf, the way her head had to turn away so she could stretch farther, her foot on the ladder: Trevor could not say even to himself how beautiful she was. He was so lucky. She had tied her hair with a black ribbon and one of the tails of the ribbon sat on her shoulder, curling towards her ear.

Clary found the pedestal plate, her mother’s wedding present from an Irish cousin. There was an envelope taped onto the plate—she flipped through it. Seven hundred pounds! Old sterling, from the 70s. A nest egg of her mother’s for a trip to England, maybe. Worth far less now, too bad. But it would be useful. She turned awkwardly to get down without breaking anything, and saw Trevor staring at her. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said. She was not his mother and you could not be saying you loved Clary. Instead he loved the carvey glass plate with one leg. They whipped a mountain of whipped cream and Clary let him fold the chocolate into it, slow and light, piling it on the spatula and turning it carefully. When it was all emptied out on the cake, he would get the bowl and Dolly would get the spatula. Even while he folded, Trevor’s mind stumbled blindly off, his tongue buds leading him down to that dreamy future, twelve layers, six plus six was twelve.
Twelve layers dancing,
like in the song for the school concert.
Twelve lays a-laying.

The torte assembled into a towering improbability of cinnamon-smelling dark and light stripes, pastry flake held together by chocolate air. Clary was pleased with it. She showed Dolly how to make the chocolate curls, pulling steadily to peel chocolate pencils off the marble slab. This was an occasion, Paul’s party. He must be still bruised from Lisanne’s leaving. Time for a party. In a post-lice fit of celebration she had bought the children Christmas clothes, the same red as her red silk. They would be a fine crowd.

Pearce clamoured for some taste, something to be doing, so Clary put a dollop of cream on his nose and watched his eyes cross to find it, his tongue reaching, reaching for whatever treasure it might be. It took him a long time to use his fingers to find it. He seemed to be convinced his tongue would have a lizard’s length, if he could only work it right.

Six p.m., and people would be coming at seven. Paul looked around his empty house. They might suppose that he’d taken the dining room chairs away on purpose to make buffet-style simpler. But the hollow shell of the living room had to be addressed. He’d put pine boughs along the mantel and up the stair rail, magazine-style, but even with borrowed church-hall chairs there were not enough seats for the older people. A new carpet sat blankly in the middle of the floor, like the raft of the
Medusa
.

In a flash of inspiration, using the folding luggage trolley, he brought his grandmother’s loveseat in from the garden shed, where it had sat for years. Dusted off and covered with a navy sheet it looked all right, he thought. Loveseat, the seat of love.
Tell me, Where is fancy bred? Or in the heart, or in
the head?
The cheap carpet smelled strongly of chemicals, even though he had left the windows open all day. He brought the spice bottle from the kitchen and sprinkled cinnamon all over it. Nobody would notice, brown on brown. Cloves would be even stronger. He sprinted back to the kitchen.

The doorbell rang while he was still dressing the carpet with cloves. Bill and Iris Haywood, their children behind them carrying trays of fruit and cheese and sausage. Bill said he would set up the bar, and Iris went straight to the kitchen, children like tugboats afore and aft her.

Paul let them go and ran up the stairs two at a time to change his shirt and put on his red tie.

Then there were more people at the door, Frank Rich the people’s warden and his family, with their famous fruitcake, all wearing identical Santa hats. Not St. Nicholas’s mitre, but never mind.

Candy Vincent was at the door, giving Paul a hug—a wash of perfume and a painful scrape of sequins from her glittering sweater. “The place looks so empty!” she cried. “We’re going to have to drum up some furniture for you, Paul! I’ll see what I can find in Uncle Joe’s things. Can’t have our priest living like a monk, what would the Lutherans think of us?”

He took her coat and hung it up, turning away with that vacant smile on his face that he struggled against. A Christmas party was no arena for strict honesty. Iris Haywood handed Candy a tray of hot hors d’oeuvres and asked her to find a place for it in the living room, so he was rescued. But quick, coats, because the door was filling again, old Mrs. Varney, Sally King and saintly Mary Tolliver, all carrying Tupperware, the whole parish tramping onto the porch. Still no Clary, no Darwin. Kerry Porter and her two monstrous little boys. The Carvers behind them, and the Newtons: benefactors of the church hall, but people he genuinely liked, and he turned to greet them with some non-building-fund gratitude.

Mrs. Pell wanted to go too. She had stumped herself over to Mira-Cal beauty school that morning for Seniors’ Day, and they had curled her hair, for heaven’s sake. She was wearing a purple outfit from the Goodwill store, and looked strangely presentable. There was no reason why she should not go, except that she was as unpredictable as a chimpanzee.

Clary shut her eyes to the purple suit and managed to be glad that Mrs. Pell could hold the chocolate torte in the car. They got her seatbelt fastened (she complained, so there was some predictability in her) and Clary ran back for the torte. She almost tripped coming down the porch steps in unaccustomed heels, but she recovered, and showed Mrs. Pell where not to put her thumbs, and they were off.

Paul’s house! A party! Clary had a vibrating beat of excitement under her breath, under her thoughts. People would be there, would they see that she and Paul were friends? She tried to erase that, but it kept popping back under her thoughts like an Internet ad screen.

The street was full of cars. Clary parked in the next-door driveway. Her father’s old friend Melvin John lived there; he spent every winter in Arizona, but of course he had a boy come and shovel the driveway anyway, in case thieves should see that no one was home and make off with the Zenith clock radio or the ten-year-old sixteen-inch colour television set. On this wintry Advent night, streetlights shining on floating snowflakes, household anxiety—any anxiety—seemed foolish. The Holy Spirit hung over the world, hidden or revealed, watching them all.

The torte! Mrs. Pell was struggling to get unbuckled, and the strap would behead it. Clary caught her arm in time, and said, “Wait—I’ll come around and help.”

Dolly helped too, taking the torte from Clary and standing in her new black shoes, their little heels making every step older and new. The world was so quiet in the snow that you could hear the noise of the party even over here, even with Granny grunting out of the car. Dolly did not know what to expect. Fancy food, probably, and people from Sunday school would be there, the Haywood girls who were snooty because their mom was the principal even though they went to the other school so she wouldn’t have to give them detention. Her Sunday school teacher would be there, Miss Tolliver, who had said that there were two Moseses in the Bible, when Dolly asked if the baby Moses and the old man Moses were the same guy. Clary had told Dolly later that there was only one, that the baby had grown up to free the Israelites and take them into the wilderness, but Clary had promised not to mention it to Paul because Dolly didn’t want Miss Tolliver to get in trouble.

Mrs. Pell was on her feet and steady enough, Pearce’s seat came out
without the handle jamming, and Dolly could carry the bottle of wine—wait. Clary reassigned all the duties, gave Trevor the diaper bag and asked him to help his grandmother on the icy sidewalk, and then took the torte and the car seat herself, one arm for each, with the wine tucked in beside Pearce. Then Dolly had to close all the car doors, and then they were off, down the driveway and up Paul’s walk.

The house was lit up, music spilling out and the porch light glowing with a wreath of berries around it. Clary had a moment of panic as they all went up the steps, stamping to loosen the snow, but she told herself it was only excitement. Trevor rang the bell, and there was Paul opening the door in high spirits, to welcome them. Surprised to see Mrs. Pell but turning it into happiness. The torte! How beautiful. Clary handed the torte off to Iris Haywood (who was suitably impressed and carried it off to the dining room respectfully). Bill Haywood shepherded Mrs. Pell into the living room and sat her beside Candy Vincent in the loveseat.

Naturally Pearce had filled his diaper in the car. The smell became obvious when they’d taken their coats off in the warm house. She swung him up the stairs ahead of her, Paul pointing to the bathroom at the back of the landing.

“Or the bedroom, or my study, whatever works,” he called up the stairs. He took Trevor and Dolly to the kitchen to give them punch glasses. He had rented those, proud of himself for remembering that such a thing was possible. Anyone could give a party.

Upstairs one door stood open, all white tiles. The bathroom was plain and spare, like the rest of the place, and dazzlingly clean. It took Clary a moment to realize that it looked so white and open because there was no shower curtain. Did he not need one?

Pearce was still almost asleep from the car, but he moved his head toward the noise of men laughing, filtered up the stairs. Clary could remember hearing that noise from her bedroom, almost forty years ago. Wild parties for a while in the 60s, the house smelling of cigars and rye, her mother nervous and angry in the afternoon. What a strange changeable time that must have been, society heaving into a new world. Her mother had urged her father to invite important people, so-and-so’s husband because he was head of the Chamber of Commerce. Trying to advance him to some level of prestige; not accepting for years that he did not want to be advanced. The store was the manageable
world. He was president of the Chamber one year, but it meant too many meetings and he bowed out; her mother subsided from ambition and turned to ferocious bridge and organizing the life out of the Ladies’ Auxiliary. How had they filled their days? How had she filled hers, till the children came? She could have grown old like Mary Tolliver, good and mild and empty.

Pearce’s golden bottom was perfectly clean, a false alarm. He was not smelly at all. He regarded her with steady thoughtful eyes while she refastened his diaper efficiently. “Clah,” he said, staring at her.

He was saying her name! She stared at him for a minute, then said, “Clary.”

“Clah,” he said again. He beamed and smacked his hands together. She almost wept but she didn’t want to spoil her make-up—ridiculous to be crying just because Pearce, now fifteen months old, was finally saying her name.

She said, “Yes, Clary, that’s right! Good boy!” and she popped him on her hip and took him downstairs to show him off.

As she arrived at the bottom of the stairs there was another peal of the doorbell—Darwin, taking up most of the doorway. Paul came through from the kitchen too, as happy to see him as she was.

“Darwin!” Clary cried. “Listen! Pearce, say Clary, say Clary.”

“Clah,” Pearce said, no bones about it.

“A
genius
,” Darwin said, taking Pearce and swinging him up in the air. At the top of the arc Pearce’s hand clutched for the mistletoe hanging from the hall light, and both Paul and Clary reached to keep it safe, their fingers touching.

“Mistletoe?” Darwin said, laughing. “You’re stuck now,” he said. They pulled their fingers away.

Mrs. Pell’s voice was loud in the living room, telling Candy Vincent, “That’s my brother-in-law, Darwin Hand.”

Clary was confused and embarrassed, and did not have Pearce to hold; she couldn’t sort out exactly what Mrs. Pell should be saying, what relationship Darwin really was to her. Amazing how carrying that thick old voice was in all this throng of people and music.

Dolly saw Darwin there—Trevor headed for the hall, but she ran the other way, to the dining room to get the torte, to show Darwin the incredible, unbelievable dessert that they had made.

A straight passage had opened in the crowd, from Mrs. Pell’s purple jacket out to the hall, so they could all see Dolly coming through from the dining room with the torte towering on its pedestal plate. She was holding it like a candlestick to make an entrance, maybe thinking of the crucifer carrying the big cross in church on Sunday, and Clary could see that it was going, it was already sliding. Dolly’s face was bright and excited and Clary could hardly bear to say
No,
but it was going—

The inch-high heel of Dolly’s new black shoe caught the edge of the new carpet in the living room, and the pedestal wobbled, and the twelve layers of chocolate torte and whipping cream went smearing, veering off in a long slide of damp puffing beauty, everyone in the room transfixed, watching the layers flying outward like owls’ wings that make no sound, until there was finally a series of little whumps as the pieces of torte landed, one after another, three or four of them on Candy Vincent’s legs and the rest segueing out over the whole carpet.

Dolly held on to the plate.

Mrs. Pell had tucked her own legs away, in an almost-elegant gesture, and she leaned back against the cushions of the loveseat and laughed out loud, her mouth wide open and all her awful teeth showing, helpless with heaving gulps of laughter. She patted Candy Vincent, who was staring at her heavy, suede-panted legs, and laughed all over again.