Good to a Fault (32 page)

So she quit again.

M
arch 16th was Lorraine’s birthday. Thirty-six, but they didn’t make a big deal of it—she didn’t even mention it to the kids. It was a Friday, and Clayton had to work late that night, because Davis’s wife wanted him to get her guest-room headboard finished before her sister arrived. When he was done he was bringing home a bottle of white rum, Lorraine’s favourite, and they’d get drunk. After no alcohol for months and months, it was a night to look forward to.

She put the kids to bed, just as glad he was late, because she didn’t like them to smell it on her breath. Clayton would not want to share with Mom Pell, so Lorraine took a night snack down to the basement bedroom and listened to more complaints about there being no TV down there. Then she hauled herself back up the stairs and got the kids settled. They were all tired; even Pearce didn’t put up much fuss, although he was hard to get along with these days. He wanted Clary, or whatever she fed him. He would push against Lorraine’s chest sometimes, push himself away from her while she held him, and stare at her face with a frown. That was something Clary had done. The cancer had done.

In the dark bedrooms she gathered up dirty clothes, but she was too tired to go downstairs again. She gave up and left them spilling over the big chair Clayton had given her. Nobody ever sat in it, it was always piled with stuff. In the morning she’d have enough energy to pack them down the basement stairs. The dryer was making a weird noise, but she didn’t want to bug Moreland. Trevor had grown out of his pants.

She felt lousy. She had to pull herself together. No way she could work, like this. Good thing Bertrice had put the family allowance stuff through, so she had grocery money, and there’d be disability allowance for a while, when that came through. Good thing for Swingline, too. She was still worried about cash, but there was more coming in than they’d had for a long time.

And the duplex was so much better than the apartment. They were lucky.

When he finally got home, around eleven, Clayton brought her a plant from Davis and his wife, but she knew it was really Davis alone, since Mrs. didn’t have the time of day for the sickly wife who was actually supposed to have died. They drank the rum with cans of no-name cola Clayton had also brought.

“Thought of everything,” he bragged, almost in a good mood.

It was kind of fun. They sat on the couch drinking side by side, watching some teenage horror movie, pretty funny. No cable yet, but the reception was okay here in the duplex. In one of the commercials, Clayton said Davis was getting a big order in after Easter from some church redoing their kneeler cushions, meaning lots of overtime. Lorraine could feel some knots untying at the thought of more money.

“Maybe Paul’s church?” she asked. “I wonder how he’s doing. I guess we should go some Sunday, pay him back for helping us move.”

“You’re not too good company as a drinker. I wish Darwin was here,” Clayton said, sticking on the
shh
in
wish
. “I never thought I’d say that.”

“He’ll be back.”

“Yeah, next time, whenever.” He stuck his legs up over her knees and lay back farther.

“I don’t need him now, I’ve got you.” She still had to work to make him
feel better. Anyway, he was here, like she said. She was feeling dizzy—rum or leftover stress.

“You got me,” he said. “You got my number.”

He had worked his way halfway down the forty-pounder. Beer would have been better. She pushed back into the corner of the couch and adjusted his legs in her lap, her left hand cupping his warm neat feet in their clean socks. Look at him: drunk already, head leaning stupidly, eyes mostly closed. With her right hand she held his rounded knee.

What a birthday party. He put his hand on her hand.

“You left me,” she said, staring at his face, the bones in it. Knowing he wouldn’t answer her. “How am I supposed to trust you?”

But she knew, both what she could expect from him and what would be beyond him. It was a big deal that he had not left Saskatoon when she was in hospital—that he was still working for Davis. And Davis’s wife was not the attraction there. She knew him very well. She did not want to have sex with him, couldn’t even imagine ever wanting to again, but the teaching nurse had said that would happen for a while, after all the treatments. She hadn’t told him. Didn’t really matter anyway, he would not bug her.

He patted her hand, eyes still closed. Moved his knees against her legs, as if he was hugging her from the hips down. She tried to remember being in bed together, how it was—they were always better at that than at talking. But she couldn’t. Her memory was bad, and it was late. The rum was not doing her any good. The bad memory was good for one thing, it was easy to veer away from all the cancer stuff. Not to be that woman any more. Soon she would be able to go forward, pretty soon. She was not dead. This would not be her whole life, looking after Mom Pell, working when she could again. Saskatoon was better than Winnipeg, for one thing, and probably better than Fort McMurray. The kids were happy, they were worth it.

She got up and let him slide lower on the couch. She covered him with a blanket, then gathered all the laundry off the big chair, took the stairs very carefully with blind feet, and started a load of whites. She went back upstairs again, slowly, and lay beside Dolly in the bottom bunk in the kids’ room the
way she often did, snuggling along the back of her now that she was sleeping and couldn’t smell the rum-breath.

Dolly was still hers, even if Pearce was not.

In the morning Dolly climbed out from behind Lorraine early and woke up Trevor, and they went to watch TV. Lorraine heard them go, but she did not really wake up till Pearce started to scream, alone in the other bedroom waiting for someone to get him out of the high steel crib they had found at the Goodwill. That would be great, when he figured out how to climb out of it—how to fall out, Lorraine thought. Nine a.m. already. Her head was killing her.

She got coats on the kids and walked them over to the mall to get a few groceries. It wasn’t till they’d been back a while, a good hour, that she missed Trevor. Dolly helped look, Lorraine grabbed Pearce and they went up and down the alley and the street, but he was nowhere in the neighbourhood. They ran back to the mall—nowhere.

She felt sicker than she ever had with the cancer. Slicing waves of fear-pain ran down her arms. She was so tired and hungover she couldn’t think straight, and her head was drumming. There was nothing to do but call the police, so she did it, she called 911. She could imagine every dark grove of pines, every closet from here to downtown. Where Trevor was being tied up against a metal pole, in her mind’s eye—she shut that eye and lay down until the police came to the door.

She could not remember what he had been wearing, when they asked her. He only had one jacket, the blue parka, so that was a start. But was he still wearing the red sweat pants he’d slept in? What year was he born? She couldn’t make her mind give up the year. 1995? The headache was confusing her.

Dolly stood beside her in the doorway, pale and scared, and wouldn’t say a word, even when the policeman asked her where she thought her brother might be. They asked if they could come in, and there was Clayton still out cold on the couch, the rum bottle and glasses on the floor beside him. One of the police officers shook him by the shoulder. Clayton moved his arm vaguely, but didn’t rouse, thank God.

Pearce was yelling again from the kids’ room, and she squeezed Dolly’s hand to go get him, when Pearce appeared on his own.

“Rev!” he yelled. “Revvvv!” Drool coming down his chin. The woman police officer laughed. Pearce was wearing Dolly’s pink runners, on the wrong feet. He waved at Lorraine and pointed down the hall. “Rev!” he said again.

She finally got it. “Trevor?” She ran down the hall and up onto the ladder to look on the top bunk where she could have sworn she had already looked, and there he was, not just the blankets rolled against the wall, but Trevor under them, waking up.

She was up the ladder in a flash and holding him in her arms, more lightning jolts of acid up and down her arms and legs, saying “Oh, Trevor, oh Trev, I was so worried,” like a crazy woman. It scared him and he started to cry. Dolly was already crying, but the police were very happy that he was found. They turned pleasant. Clayton stayed asleep through the whole thing.

Darwin had not called Clary again. She had no claim on him. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t his sister. He was back to his own life. But she began to worry that Fern and Darwin were—it had not seemed to her, when they were staying with her, that they were sleeping together, but what did she know? Fern was pretty and kind; that old boyfriend of hers had been an idiot. But Darwin and Fern did not make sense, and that depressed her.

As everything did. The clean, empty house, the silence, the meted length of a day. Everything that had kept her frantic in the last months was gone: no children, no Mrs. Pell, no running back and forth to the hospital. Her ordinary life was gone too; no church—she could not go back there now—no work. She had to find a job, but had not yet made herself even work up a resumé or call insurance acquaintances from other firms.

In the middle of March Iris Haywood phoned, out of the blue.

“I hear from Paul that your friend has done wonderfully well,” she said.

Clary murmured yes, oh yes.

“And Dolly tells me that the children are with their parents again. That’s very good.”

Even to hear Dolly’s name was a spike of pain.

“But this must leave you with a bit of time on your hands, if you’ve finished your good work there.”

Clary said yes.

“So it occurred to me, when I was talking with the district superintendent yesterday, that you might possibly be interested in some work with the school board, a short-term contract—unless of course you’re planning to look for insurance work immediately.”

Iris Haywood was very well-informed. Did she know that Clary had quit Gilman-Stott?

“What kind of contract, Iris?”

“Three of our schools have lost librarians to maternity—a rash of Great Expectations! We won’t start their replacements this late in the year, but each school has a backlog of books to be catalogued. I have twelve boxes already here at Brundstone, and if we leave this till next September it will be a mess, so I’ve got permission to hire someone to go round all three schools and get this tidied up. I know it’s not up to your calibre, but it’s a pleasant, manageable task and I can pay you substitute-teacher wage. Would you like some time to consider it?”

“I don’t have to consider,” Clary said. “I’ll take it.”

Trevor could not believe his eyes when he saw Clary in the hall. He thought he was imagining her. She did not see him, in the press of kids heading out to recess. He felt his stomach go crazy. He ran to the bathroom and locked the door of the stall in case she came in. What should he do? Was she here to take him away? His eyes were smarting. How could she not have come to see them all this time? Did Dolly know she was here? He stayed in there the whole of recess, and he went to the toilet twice, all diarrhea. Once right in the middle of pooping he thought he had to throw up, it was awful. His dad was going to kill him if he talked to Clary. His mom! Trevor had never felt so bad, even when his mom was sick.

Dolly didn’t get surprised, because Trevor told her at lunch recess. He was still shaky and shivering even in the warm sun.

“What are you freaking out about?” she asked him.

“Because if she wants to take me to her house!” he said. How could she not get it?

“Well, so? You don’t have to go. Don’t worry, she won’t ask you anyway, she’s mad at us because we left without saying goodbye.”

That was exactly it. They had run out on her, and she would be so mad. Trevor gave up on Dolly, she just did not get it. He skulked around the school, shadowy against the walls, following behind other kids so nobody could see him. When they had library on Friday he tried to go to the bathroom but Mrs. Ashby said no, she held his hand. But Clary was not there. Then he was miserable, because he wanted to see her.

Dolly was surprised at how homesick Clary’s face made her feel. She stuffed that down—it didn’t matter, she told herself. But she kept thinking about going to the library and happening to run into Clary. She was wearing the grey wool dress. Dolly could smell it. She knew where it hung under the yellow boxes, and then around the corner into the clean bathroom with green towels. Clary’s house. Moreland’s house was okay but it was a mess. Her mom got even more tired now because that lady from her dad’s work had found some people who wanted cleaning, a couple days a week. She took Pearce with her.

When Dolly went home the day she saw Clary she was planning to clean up, but there was a mountain of clean laundry on the big chair, and she was no good at folding; there were dishes in slimy cold water in the sink, papers and beer cans and socks all over the living room. Gran in her housecoat and bare old blue feet, watching the soaps, doing nothing. Then her mom came home all crabby because she was so tired.

She stood Pearce, crying, in his crib, and told Dolly to watch him for a while so she could get supper. But she said it in a sharp voice, and when Dolly said “Forget it,” her mom slapped her.

Dolly slapped her right back. Then she burst into tears.

Lorraine grabbed her and held her and they dropped onto the bed, falling back tangled together. Lorraine’s kerchief slid off, showing her hair, short straw that she knew scared the kids. She tried to smear it back into place, then gave up and pushed it over her eyes for a blindfold.

“You don’t know how scary it is!” Dolly cried, tear-water everywhere on both their faces. “I have to go to school all the time—everybody knows you
almost died, you know. They all say,
She’s the girl whose mother got cancer you know, blah blah blah,
like it was something I could do a single thing about! They hate me because I’m weird, and it’s all because of you. You’re mean, you’re mean,” she tried to say, but it ran into all one loud screaming
eeeee
sound, because she was so furious, and there was nothing to be done.