Good to a Fault (28 page)

F
rom morning to night, Christmas Eve was taken up with running and wrapping. Lorraine was supposed to have come home for two days, until the sepsis scotched that. But they’d manage. Clary was keeping her balance. Today, then tomorrow; then it would be Boxing Day and she could lie down. Grace was bringing Christmas breakfast, and Mrs. Zenko was putting their turkey into the oven at her house at 7 a.m., before she left to spend Christmas at her son’s house in North Battleford. They’d been taking food to Lorraine for months—Christmas dinner was only slightly more complicated. Picnic baskets, covered casseroles; it was exhilarating, coping with everything.

Clary was glad to see, when she stopped in on Christmas Eve morning, that Lorraine was clearly getting some relief from the sepsis. Hollow and white, though, and painfully thin. Bald again. A prehistoric chick, abandoned in a cold steel nest.

“I need,” she said slowly. “You to get.”

“I’m on my way to shop,” Clary said. “What’ll it be?”

“Darwin’s…”

“Darwin’s present?”

“Darwin’s getting some stuff.”

Clary slowed herself and waited.

“A watch, for Clayton,” Lorraine finally finished. “Got Darwin’s.” She fished weakly around under her pillow, and pulled out a plain old watch, a man’s watch with a leather strap. “Rose’s,” Lorraine said. “Her dad’s. Wrap it?”

“Of course,” Clary said. “What kind of watch for Clayton?”

“Cheap,” Lorraine said. Almost laughing. She had her wallet under the pillow too, and fumbled through it for a couple of twenties, her ashy fingers long and slow. “Army, you know. Iron thing.”

“With a stop watch and so on?”

“Yeah. All the stops.”

“Something athletic. Got it. Anything else?”

“Darwin has it covered.”

Clary adjusted the orange pillow and Lorraine let her head fall back. Poor face, poor swollen cheeks. Clary kissed her. “Thanks,” she said, with her eyes closed.

The shops were crowded, of course, but Clary found a good watch on sale, only twenty more than Lorraine had given her. She splashed out on wrapping paper and tags, bright ribbon and sprigs of real holly.

Christmas was always like this for most people, she supposed—complicated, urgent, full of events. For the last few years Clary had driven down to Davina early on Christmas morning. Gliding over the snowy prairie, on the one day in the year when nobody went anywhere, all alone under the sun-dogged sun.

Paul watched them troop into the midnight service: Clary carrying Pearce, Mrs. Zenko next, then Grace and Moreland holding Dolly’s hands and Darwin shambling up behind. Fern must be at home with Trevor. So many people to be connected to: last Christmas he’d never heard of most of them. Clary, with her red silk on. (Without it, the pale silk of her flank.)

He wandered through the last Mass of the old life, the first of the new. He lit the candles, sang where it was required, and listened to the readings as Frank Rich intoned them, his sad basset-hound voice trying to trumpet:
Fear not!
When it was time for the homily, Paul stood and spoke to the
congregation, but of course he was speaking to Darwin, to Clary, to the children, and Lorraine. “Angels, we’re told, have intense, painful, beauty. Shining with the grandeur of God—the invisible world made visible. Terrifying, for those ordinary people they spoke to. The first thing the angel told Zachariah was
Do not be afraid!
And to Mary, before telling her she would have a child who would be the son of God:
Do not be afraid!
On Christmas night, with the heavenly host, the angel says to the shepherds on their hillside,
Do not be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy, which will be to all people…

“Fear is always with us: that we are not good enough or strong enough, and so will fail; that we will be hurt. Fear that what we love will be taken from us. Fear of dying, even fear of God, or of no God. But God surprises us by giving us strength to bear what we must; by giving us joy when we think nothing but sadness is possible. God became human to experience the power that death had over us. Do not be afraid—God is aware of us in the world, aware of the world we live in, striving for the great good of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God, it will flame out like shining from shook foil.
”

He sat down.

Shook foil
made Dolly think of Mrs. Zenko’s house, where she smoothed out the tinfoil and used it again. She had a special drawer for keeping it. If Mrs. Zenko shook people, she would smooth them out again and save them for later.

Clary, tired and abstracted, felt a cold doubt about the Gerard Manley Hopkins she had wrapped for Paul. He must have it already—but this one was beautiful: heavy paper, all the poems. She could have got a pair of gloves for him, he needed gloves. But meeting his eyes as he sat in his chair to allow a moment of quiet, she thought, it’s all right.
It will flame out…

The hymn began, “Silent Night.” Dolly loved that one. Trevor could not keep awake this late, poor Trevor, but it was all right because Fern was with him. Grace said she had pyjamas to give her later, because in her and Moreland’s family everyone always has new pyjamas on Christmas Eve. Fern’s new ones had a little ragged silky frill around the bottom of the pants, maybe hers would be like that. Dolly leaned against Clary’s warm arm in her soft wool coat, that colour called taupe, with the black velvet collar. Dolly wished
her mom had a coat like that. But she leaped backwards from the brink of that.
Do not be afraid,
Paul said.
Dear God,
Dolly thought, but did not know what to put next.
My mom.
The organ was playing and Paul was coming down the aisle again and now past them and out, but he had smiled at them more than at anyone. Because he loved Clary, but also the rest of them. Maybe that would count for something.

At the church door Darwin said he would see them in the morning. “I like that surprise thing,” he said to Paul, and headed off for the hospital through the snow-floating night.

Clary held out her hand and was surprised herself when Paul put his arms around her tightly, in full view of all the parish, at least the late-night parish.

“I missed you today,” he said. He had snowflakes in his hair, and on his red satin stole. He looked strong and happy. She loved him.

“Will you come for breakfast?”

“I will,” he said.

“And for presents, and for dinner? We need you to carry turkey.”

“Mrs. Zenko told me how to make cranberry sauce, and I’m doing it before I go to sleep.”

The street was quiet, even with the departing congregation and their cheerful voices. Moreland fit Pearce’s seat into the holder while Grace got the sleepy Dolly in, and wedged herself in beside her.

“Home, James,” Grace said to Clary. “And don’t spare the horses.”

Paul watched them go.
The dearest freshness,
he thought. The night had a glow to it, streetlights refracted in the falling snow, the city lights staining upwards in a peachy aureole into the night sky.
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Cranberry sauce. No time to waste.

A
t 8 a.m. on Christmas morning Moreland opened the door to Paul and Clayton, standing together on the porch with their arms full of presents. Odd pair, Moreland thought, but Christmas makes strange bedfellows, probably on purpose. He gave them coffee and kept them out of Grace’s way while she got breakfast going.

Dolly felt mysteriously irritable, like she’d eaten too much candy. She unwrapped each present carefully, peeling the tape so slowly that Trevor begged to be allowed to open another one while they were waiting. Pearce beat on the drum Darwin had given him until Darwin said he’d changed his mind and put it away up high.

Dolly’s present from Clary was boots, red suede with rubber soles so you could run, embroidery up the sides, and sheepskin lining. They were so nice that she leaped up and hugged Clary with one boot in each hand, and the boots swung around and whacked Clary by accident, but she didn’t get mad. Fern gave her magnetic earrings, and Grace and Moreland gave her a fleece hoodie, and Gran gave both her and Trevor a lifesaver book. Then there were only Darwin’s present and her dad’s left to open. She was scared that
she would like Darwin’s present better, and that would make her dad mad. The grown-ups were opening too, so she could delay things by folding the wrapping paper, rolling up the ribbon around her hand, tidying her pile of presents so far. Darwin and her dad liked their sweaters from her and Trevor; they put them on right away. They were twins, except her dad looked uncomfortable, sitting cross-legged on the floor, but he always did.

Clary opened a present from Paul, a book of poems, and she laughed, and handed him one to open from her. “You’re joking,” he said—and when he unwrapped his, it was the exact same book by the same guy. That was funny.

“Great minds think alike,” Grace and Moreland said at the same time.

Dolly picked up the one from her dad. Whatever it was, she would make sure that she didn’t like Darwin’s better. It was bulky but not too heavy. She pulled the tape off. Purple, soft, what was it? She tore the paper. A big—a velvet pillow, with a round velvet button in the centre, frayed-out fringe all around it in different layers of purple and blue. The velvet was the softest thing she had ever touched. It went one way, and when you brushed your hand over it the other way it changed to a darker, sweeter colour.

She lifted her eyes and saw her dad looking at her. “I made it,” he said. “For you. For when I—”

“I love it,” she said.

He looked so happy.

Lorraine pulled herself up out of empty sleep and looked at the rectangular whiteness of the window. Christmas. The freckly nurse was on, she was a kind one. She found the new lipstick and blush from Clary, and propped up the mirror. Lorraine wiped off most of the lipstick because it looked so weird over the bled-out whiteness of her lips, but what was left probably cheered up her face.

The nurse looked at her critically, then flicked the blush again. “My mom always used to put a dab of rouge on her chin,” she said. “
Instant pretty,
she called it.”

Lorraine looked again. “Okay,” she said. She smiled, to test it. “Less sick, at least.”

“You’re doing well,” the nurse said seriously. Sherry was her name, like the drink, and her freckles were that colour. “You’re doing a good job.”

“Will you get the bag in the closet?” Lorraine asked. “Presents.”

If she lay on her side there was room for them on the bed, except for the tricycle Darwin had spirited up last night, with a huge bow on the handlebars. That could stay in the closet for Pearce to find.

She could hear them coming: Trevor’s voice piping closer, wanting to be the one to give her their present. The room filled up, the children all crowding up to the bed. She hugged them over the bright pile.

“Don’t wait,” she said, when Clary tried to stem the tide. “Open everything!”

Paper on the bed, on the floor, everywhere, ribbon wrapping around them. Darwin helped Pearce open the closet door. He stared at the trike for a while, touching the white handgrip, then the saddle, then the wheel; he let them help him onto it and sat while they put his feet on the pedals. Trevor offered to show him how to ride.

Where was Clayton? She pulled Darwin’s present out from under the pillow, and watched him open Rose’s dad’s watch. He put it up to his ear, to hear it ticking, with his eyes closed.

Six strange white orchids on a bending stalk from Paul; they found a good spot for it on the window ledge. A cream-coloured shawl from Clary, soft wool, very pretty. Flowers and a shroud, Lorraine thought, but she put it around her shoulders and thanked Clary nicely.

In a momentary silence they could hear footsteps coming down the hall. Dinner already? Dolly went to the door to see.

Her dad. He was carrying a chair, a big chair with legs that clumped on the floor every few steps, sounding like several people. He put the chair down at the door—then had to back it up awkwardly to get in himself. Finally he and the chair were both in the room.

“For you,” he said to Lorraine. “For our place.”

Lorraine pulled the covers away and Darwin helped her to sit up. Clary said, “Oh—” but stopped herself, even before Paul touched her arm. Dolly swivelled the rolling i.v. pole to let her mother walk across the floor slowly to reach the chair and sit, the arms holding her, the chintz pillow sinking under her back. “That’s
down
,” Clayton said, and she smiled at him in her old way.

Everyone exclaimed at the beautiful chair, the workmanship, the cord edgings. Trevor sat on one arm, Dolly leaned on the other, and Clayton showed how he had put wheels on the legs, so it could be rolled around to vacuum under it.

Grace and Moreland and Fern arrived in the middle of all that, and admired it too. The wheels were good enough to go down the hall, Clayton said, sure they were. After a little trouble getting the chair back out through the door, they rolled Lorraine down to the lounge where the movable feast was laid out on coffee tables. Lorraine asked Sherry the nurse to eat with them, and Clary was grateful when she sat chatting away to Mrs. Pell while still keeping one eye on Lorraine.

The food was hot, even the gravy; none of the good plates got broken; and even if only Clary and Grace knew how complicated the transport had been, everyone enjoyed the dinner better than any Christmas dinner they had ever eaten, so there was a considerable feeling of Dickens in the room, but nobody, not even Paul, said
God bless us, every one.

In the evening Clary heard Mrs. Zenko at the front door.

“Now tell me there’s a bite of pudding left, and some of your mother’s hard sauce,” she said, slipping out of her short boots. “That’s a long drive back from Battleford in the dark.”

“We saved some for you,” Clary said, taking the packages from her arms.

“One more present to open,” Mrs. Zenko said. “All mitts, I’m afraid, no originality at all. Well, slippers for Mrs. Pell,” she confided. “It’s bound to be cold on that floor out there.”

Clary found the package with her own name on it, and opened it. Not mitts: an elegant pair of black leather gloves. She kissed Mrs. Zenko and reached for the top of the hall shelf where she had left the tiny velvet box with her mother’s pink tourmaline chrysanthemum ring.

Two dew-drop tears came spilling out of Mrs. Zenko’s eyes when she saw the ring.

“I should have given it to you long ago,” Clary said.

Trevor brought Mrs. Zenko the knock-down birdie toy. “Do you want to hear China?”

“Yes.”

Trevor shook it. Little bells sounded inside. China.

Too much activity, too much company, left Lorraine shaky and sleepless for a long time. Finally, when all the lights were dimmed and the nurse (not Sherry now but the oldest one, Debbie) had given her a back rub, Lorraine fell asleep. She had a terrible dream of Dolly dying by falling into Christmas ornaments. She fell straight into the tree in the apartment in Trimalo, and all the glass ornaments shattered, and she was cut to shreds. Lorraine woke up with her heart pounding. It was not true. It was not true.

At home in his empty house, in his empty bed, Paul had a complicated dream, that Dolly had asked him to drive her out to a big field full of stones. They walked across the dry yellow grass to Lorraine’s grave, and Paul drifted off along yellow paths where every tilting old stone said
Robina Tippett, 1968–1998
. All the other stones were stones, with bones lying near them, but under that one was Binnie, still brightly alive. It didn’t matter that he’d seen her dead, and knew her to be gone. That parcel of bones and skin that had been shown to him was not her, anyway, it was a puppet of Binnie. The real one was down there under the dead grass. He looked back. Dolly was crouched low over the middle of Lorraine’s grave, right about where her mother’s stomach would be. Poor child, she was looking down at the yellow grass between her hands, flat on the slight round of the grave. “You left us all alone,” she shouted through the funnel of her hands into the earth, but the wind sucked her voice away. It was a wild wind. Dolly pounded on the turf with her fists and shrieked into the twisting roots of the grass, as loud as a train coming screaming around the track. Paul helped her up. Crying with dry, wide-open eyes, she kicked at the gravestone as he led her past it, and turned back to kick it again, hard. He almost woke, almost broke through the dream’s surface, but he dove back down and took Dolly for an ice cream cone. Then he could wake up.

Clary dreamed that she took Dolly to the graveyard by mistake instead of school, and she lay down on the cold grass on her mother’s grave. She cried and whispered
how good a mother, how good
. Whose grave was that? Was it Dolly’s mother or her own? What girl was lying on the grave? It was Clary herself. Paul lay on his sister’s grave nearby, whispering
good, good.
No response from them, the quick or the dead.

Waking, breathless, Clary knew that Lorraine would die soon.

Pearce was asleep beside her. It would be all right, she would look after him. She would take care of all of them. Even Clayton, only a lost sheep, not evil, making that good chair, which would actually look fine in the living room. The children would like that, to remind them of Lorraine.

She slid back to sleep, telling herself that this was the best thing she had ever done in her life. She loved how brave Lorraine was, how valiantly she struggled against this terrible illness. She even loved herself—how she had made a safe, orderly life for the children, had learned to do this hard good thing. Paul would come and live here too. They would come home in the evening, after a dinner party with the Haywoods, and carry the sleeping children in from the car. And although they would make love, she would have one ear open for Pearce, and for the children, who would be so sad when Lorraine was dead.

Dolly dreamed that she fell in love with a bald man, and he took her on a rollercoaster ride that lasted for hours.