Good to a Fault (6 page)

G
race and Moreland came in from Davina to inspect the children. Clara’s older cousin, her father’s sister’s daughter, Grace looked in on her from time to time, checking up on her. Davina was only an hour’s drive, close enough to come for errands, if they felt like it. They arrived first thing in the morning, while Clara was clearing up breakfast.

“What are you going to do with
three
of them?” Grace asked Clara. Unfriendly to this new wrinkle.

“I don’t know! The best I can, I guess. It’s only for—a while.”

“It’s not like volunteering for the Humane Society, taking in a few pups over the Christmas vacation,” Grace said. Moreland was dandling Pearce on his knee as if he had nothing else in the world to do. Which he hadn’t, truth be known, beyond a quick trip to Early’s for a bag of the larger dog chews.

“You must have lost your mind, if you don’t mind me saying so. Beyond the fact that you’ve never had anything to do with kids, you have no idea what these ones are like! Who knows how long you might be saddled with them. Don’t talk about causing the accident, we’re no-fault here, and that’s what insurance is for, anyway, you of all people know that—and where’s the father run away to? You can’t take this on.”

“I like Lorraine, and she’s alone. She needs help.”

Darlene ran through the living room between them. She gave Grace one of her sharp glares, and Grace gave her one right back.

“Are they safe, do you think?”

Clara watched Darlene going around the kitchen corner. Was Trevor still in the back yard? She got up and looked out the dining room window. Peeling bark off the birch.

“I think they’re okay, Grace. Safer here than wherever else they would be right now.”

“I meant safe for you,” Grace said.

“I know what you meant. I’m answering what you should have asked.”

They were silent for a minute. Then Grace laughed, her temper repaired. “You’ve been quiet long enough, maybe you can stand the racket. You were so good with your mom, we’ve been wondering how you’d keep yourself occupied.”

“Well, she’s gone.”

“I know. That’s hard to get used to.”

“Not for me, Grace. She was not herself any more. And really, she couldn’t have got out any easier.” Out through the door to death, that heavy door that sticks on its hinges and doesn’t want to push open. “I’ve got different concerns now,” Clara said.

Trevor raced through this time.

Grace’s look trailed after Trevor. “You sure do,” she said.

“I can see what’s happening to their mother, and I like her, and I’d like to help her.”

“That’s all it is, then?”

“It’s true, that I’ve wished for—I’ve missed—having children.”

“You’re not old, I’m not saying that.”

“I’m only forty-three! They’re better off with me, and I’m better off with them.”

Grace looked at Moreland, but did not allow her eyes to roll. The baby crawled to Clara across the berber carpet, new eight years ago, still creamy and clean in this spinsterish house.

“What’s the little one’s name?”

“Pearce.”

“Pierce your heart,” said Moreland. “Sweet boy.”

While Grace and Moreland were still there, Clara ran over to the hospital to see Lorraine.

“Your priest came,” Lorraine said. “He had a lot to say about you.”

Clara was wary about that. “Did he?”

“That you’ve been lonely since your mom died.”

“Well, that was two years ago now. I’m not really lonely. I just haven’t wanted to go back to church, to be honest.” Clara sat beside the bed, taking the upright blue chair.

Lorraine was sitting upright herself. She looked very tired, her wide face stretched taut around her nose and eyes, with purplish shadows. Her eyes were staring, a look that Clara knew from other people who were ill, not open to easy comfort. Her legs moved restlessly beneath the yellow sheets.

“He said I should be glad to have you for the kids. So that’s my plan,” Lorraine said abruptly. It was too much. She could hardly bear to speak. Her body was aching, and her head felt like a large glass ball she had been trusted to carry, that she was bound to drop.

“I brought you some soup from my neighbour, Mrs. Zenko, the best cook I know. It’ll do you good,” Clara said. She went to find the microwave down the hall.

Lorraine lay back, not at all wanting soup. She didn’t seem to be able to cry, but she had sometimes found herself sobbing, noise without tears, and she didn’t want to do that in front of Clara. She was tired in her chest and deep in each arm, in a way she found very frightening. Knowing herself to be really sick, knowing it from inside.

She wanted her brother Darwin. It had been hard to find the house occupied by a stranger, someone who’d never heard of him or Rose. She should have looked after Rose better in her last years, made her come live with them instead of Mom Pell. But now Clara had Mom Pell. Lorraine almost smiled. The tender unfamiliar feeling in her cheeks made her laugh, especially because it was about something kind of mean.

Coming back, Clara smiled too; relieved, probably, to see her more cheerful.

Lorraine slapped herself mentally and sat up. “Thanks,” she said, reaching for the bowl. It was homemade, invalid soup: pale gold, a few tiny noodles, shreds of chicken and delicate slivers of carrot and green onion.

Clara sat and watched her eat.

“How are they?”

Arranging her mind to tell what could be told, Clara said, “Trevor is happy, except for missing you, but he’s an easy, good-natured boy. Darlene is sad, but not complaining. Harder to tell with Pearce.”

“Eating lots?”

“Oh, like a monster. I’ll have to weigh him for you.” Clara paused. “I thought I might take him to the doctor, just to—”

“He’s sick?”

“In case you hadn’t been able to take him lately, to get him weighed, and so on.”

Lorraine looked at her for a minute. Clara felt like she had stones in her stomach, but she didn’t look away.
Nothing to be worried about,
she was saying to Lorraine’s eyes. Behind, she was thinking
Don’t ask about Clayton.
But Lorraine did not.

“Yeah,” Lorraine said, finally. “The health cards are in my wallet, in the cupboard.”

Clara unlocked the cupboard for her, and saw Lorraine’s scuffed shoulder-bag on top of the box and maps. Lorraine went through the skinny wallet to find the health cards. She pulled out a photo, not Clayton.

“My brother,” she said. “Darwin.”

Clara took the photo, a broad smiling face under dark hair.

“We thought he was in Saskatoon, but we couldn’t find him. The last place he was, they couldn’t tell me anything,” Lorraine said, searching for the health cards. “It seems like I’m all alone.”

“Well,” Clara began. “You’ve got your mother, and the children…”

Lorraine laughed. “That’s Clay’s mother. She’s sure as hell not
my
mother. Thanks a lot.” She handed three health cards to Clara.

“Oh!” That made more sense. “But her name is Pell, not Gage.”

“Husband three, Dougie Pell. He wasn’t around long, anyway. She’s had a rough life.”

Clara couldn’t think of anything to say to that that wasn’t rude.

“My mother’s dead,” Lorraine said. “She died when Darwin was little. My cousin Rose brought us up. Darwin’s got a different dad. My dad died before I was born, he was a long-haul trucker. After that my mom got married again.”

Clara wished she could respond, other than reciting the deaths on her own family tree. “I always wanted a brother or a sister.”

“That’s why I wanted to have lots, because it’s good for kids to have each other. They get along so good, it’s great to have them all, I’m glad I did.”

Lorraine stopped talking and looked away, overcome suddenly by the unpayable, unbearable cost of Clara looking after her kids. And no word from Clayton, so probably he’d skipped town. Shit. She just had to let go of all this for now.

Clara thought maybe Lorraine was trying to spare her feelings for not having children.

“They’re kind to each other,” she said. “And to Pearce, always.”

Lorraine nodded and lay back on the pillow. Clara knew she should go back and relieve Grace and Moreland, so they’d have time to shop. Only she didn’t want to leave Lorraine alone. She put the health cards in her purse, wondering what to talk about next, but when she looked up Lorraine had fallen asleep. Her mouth had fallen slightly open, relaxed, and her hand lying nearest to Clara had opened too. Long fingers, nicely shaped. She was worth helping.

At home, Moreland was lying on the floor in the living room, building block towers for Pearce. Grace had taken the older two children downstairs to look for sealer jars, since it was almost time for saskatoons.

“I know your mom had extra in boxes,” Grace called to Clara as she came down the basement stairs. “You ought to have a sale, get this basement cleared out. Looks like the Davina Museum shed down here.”

Being told what to do by Grace was a constant hazard. Clara murmured
at her, nodding. Her mother had refused to do anything about the basement, and Clara had grown blind to it, but it was a horrible dark cave. She ought to get it done, Grace was right.

She found the children bickering behind the furnace, Darlene telling Trevor to stop, and Trevor on the verge of tears, yelling, “
Make me!
”

“Children!” she said sharply, embarrassed in front of Grace. They stared up at her from the floor, where they’d been pawing through a box of oddments. “My old toys!” she said, setting irritation aside to peer into the box. “Let’s take them up and see if there’s anything you would still enjoy. They’re going to waste down here. But don’t fight over them.”

Trevor looked at her, crouching down by them. The soft round corner of her jawbone with the little hairs on it, and her eyebrows like brushes. He wondered if she was more beautiful than his mother, but even after this short a time he could not make his eyes remember exactly what his mother looked like, so he stared at Clara’s pretty brown shoe until she took his arm to pull him up.

“You help me carry the box, will you, Trevor?”

He would help. His chest uncramped, and he could breathe.

By Friday night they were more at home, watching TV in the room with the pullout couch, which in Clara’s mind was now Clayton’s room. She did not call it that to the children. She was careful not to shrink from speaking of him if they brought him up, but they hardly did. They let him go, he was gone.

Maybe it was always like that with fathers, Clara thought, picturing her own father dimly. But then the slide fell properly into focus in her mind: her bright-eyed father rootling in the drainpipe one fall afternoon when she came home from school, calling down from the ladder to say, “Don’t let your mother see you chewing your braid like that, County Clare.” No one ever gave her a nickname but Dad. She could see his kind, creased face another time, installing a new radiator in the guest room. He called her in to watch a bead of mercury slipping away from him along the shiny floorboards. You remember a thing and reach to pluck it closer, but it slides off as if it’s heard you coming. Only it leaves a residue on your fingers, mercury, much as you might think it did not. Dangerous, her father had said, even as he casually chased the bead across the floor. Don’t lick your fingers after that! Clara shook her
head, not sure how she’d gotten to licked fingers. She was like that these evenings, after a day of learning how to deal with the baby and the children, and the visits to the hospital—drifty, tending to trains of thought that stretched out too far to be traced.

Darlene settled better under Clara’s arm, not liking to be shifted when Clara moved. Trevor looked up from his puzzle, but saw that everything was still okay and bent his head back down to business. Soon he would have only the sky left to do.

The movie was almost over. The mice would bring Cinderella the key to open that locked door…Mrs. Pell had fallen asleep, stiff in the recliner, her thick socked toes pointing straight up. Almost over, almost bedtime. Clara hugged Darlene closer. The house was not warm enough, she thought, for children and old women. She should get out the blankets and cover the tomato cages. In a minute. The cat was going to spoil it all, that obnoxious cat. But the birds would help. A mouse cowered in a teacup, a drop of boiling tea trembling on the end of the spout…

On Friday evenings she went to a movie by herself, in her usual life. How could it be ordinary, so quickly, to stay in and be with three children and an old woman? Clara missed her mother—she would have enjoyed all this arranging and organizing.

They were getting married, the gold coach rode away.

Mrs. Pell sat up, wide awake again. “Darlene!” she said. “Get my purse.” She was not going to relax into this place.
Purse close
, was what woke her from her dream. The bones in her butt felt sharp and sore. No place to sit quiet here, and it was cold. Nobody helps you when you’re old. Her crooked old hand fussed irritably back and forth for a moment. She twitched the blanket and said “Darlene!” Shrill and disappointed.

Darlene put the purse close by her thigh, and she covered it with a corner of blanket.

“My mom calls me Dolly,” Darlene said in Clara’s ear, bending Clara’s head down fondly with her hands so it was farther away from her grandmother. Clara was not sure whether she did this to spare the old woman’s feelings or because it was a lie.

It didn’t matter which, she told herself, and she called Darlene
Dolly
from then on.

A
ching hip. The clock showed 5:04 a.m. Banjo eyes on the ceiling all night long. The room was blazing bright already, too far north here.

Mrs. Pell lay in bed, furious, and thought about Clayton. Thief. Abandoning them, no surprise there. Liar. The minutes chased through her mind: buying cherries, Clayton cursing—then the crash, and the ambulance and the hospital, blood everywhere, that snippy Chinese-or-whatever bitch sneering at her, being poked at by that teenage doctor with his busy hands, Clayton yelling, Lorraine lying there looking like a fresh corpse. Chicken dinner in the TV room. Clayton crying, the kids crying, Lorraine lying there, cherry juice on her sweater over the chair. A snake eating its own tail.

Well, none of it was her fault, they couldn’t pin any of it on her. Mrs. Pell stalked the border of sleep, huffing from time to time and rearranging her pillows. Her hip hurt, even lying still. Her chest felt tight—she wasn’t breathing too good. She flexed her foot sharply to relieve a cramp; flexed again. It was cold. The sheets were smooth and clean, give her that, her house was clean. Not for long, though, she wouldn’t be able to cope with all of them. Mrs. Pell saw her sister Janet, angry with her, making their bed the morning
after their mother died, snapping the sheet, black look on her face. Sour. Her purse. There.

In his corner, Pearce breathed, eyes clamped shut and mouth open.
Sleeping like a baby,
Mrs. Pell thought.
The sleep of the just.

Clara slipped in at 6:30 and lifted Pearce out of his crib, took him off to wash and dress and feed him. Mrs. Pell didn’t bother to speak. Nothing to say. Out in the hall she could hear the kids getting up, Trevor running around. What a place to end up.

Clara fed the children breakfast, explaining to Trevor why there was no Count Chocula.

“My mom lets us eat it,” he told her. “My dad lets us.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re travelling, Trevor,” Clara said, pulling the edge of the empty spoon over Pearce’s mouth to clear off the extra baby cereal. Pearce was fastidious, he liked to have his mouth clean. He turned his face to meet the spoon. “I’m sure when you get to Fort McMurray you’ll be…” She checked the Shreddies box while Trevor was campaigning. Sure enough, sugar was the second ingredient there too. She ought to be making Red River cereal for them.

Darlene’s—Dolly’s—eyes were glued to the kitchen television. She looked hollow and blanched. The sound was off because Clara could not tolerate it this early, but the silent cartoon people cavorted, wheeled, double-took and slammed into new scenes.

“Here, Dolly,” Clara leaned over to give her another piece of honey toast. “Eat up.”

Trevor put two Shreddies on a spoon, his face as sad as if his mother was dying.

“Trevor,” Clara said, “I think I’m going to reconsider on the Count Chocula. I think when I go for groceries this morning I’ll pick up a box so you can show me how good it is.”

“Yay!” Trevor said, kicking Dolly. “She reconsidered!”

“Yay,” she said to please him, leaning to the right to watch the coyote flutter off the cliff, anvil tied to his ankle. A little sign popped into his fist:
Goodbye, cruel world.

Mrs. Pell was already wearing her coat when Clara went to tell her she was going for groceries. There was no real reason they couldn’t all go. Clara had never shopped with children, but Mrs. Pell would be there; how bad could it be?

They got the special grocery cart with the red baby seat. Secretly, Clara supposed, she must always have longed to use this cart. And now she had every right to pop Pearce into the vinyl seat and wrestle with the knotted straps and bent buckles.

“You don’t have to pay for this one,” Trevor said, jumping on only the black squares. Dolly put her hand on the front of the cart, not pushing but connected.

Mrs. Pell peeled off to the chairs banked along the wall by the take-it-or-leave-it bookcase. “I’ll sit for a while,” she said, her voice old and tired.

Fine, fine, Clara thought. They started in the bread aisles, and the things that Trevor wanted to buy gave Clara waves of shock. White doughnuts—she had never heard of them. He found some to show her: twenty-four knobbly little knots packed in cellophane, chocked with chemical icing sugar. “No,” Clara said. Wagon Wheels! Joe Louis cakes! She should have started at the fruit aisle. Whole grain bread, two loaves.

“Granny likes white,” Dolly said. Almost a warning.

Clara resisted. “Whole wheat is much better for you.” Grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, Clara thought, dreaming of meals…A frowzy woman pushed past, her cart filled with young children wearing dirty pyjamas. Pyjamas! It’s not
that
early in the morning, Clara thought. Maybe that would have been their life, living in the car. The smell of old rubber, those butterscotch vinyl seats. Dolly almost pointed. Perogies? Clara tried to check without prying. “Shall we get some perogies, Dolly? Mrs. Zenko makes the best—why don’t we ask for some of hers?”

Dolly nodded. She smiled, first time that day. Her eyes darted up to Clara’s, and Clara was glad to see any spontaneous movement at all in her.

In the pharmacy aisles Mrs. Pell ranged in front of the Aspirin. Children’s Benadryl, there, she needed more of that, almost out. And somewhere here…222s, but she didn’t want those, too expensive, they watched them. Maybe
nighttime stuff would help. She blew her nose in disgust. A person needs a little help to sleep but they can’t get it, not here. The Kleenex fit nicely around the bottle of NyQuil and the Benadryl when she put it back into her pocket.

Pearce had fallen asleep. Trevor was hopping.
This?
he would say,
This?
popping things into the cart. Clara’s reins loosened. Lettuce, maybe the bland iceberg for the children, a good dark green today.

“Get me a lettuce, Trevor,” she said, turning away to the carrots.

Behind her she heard a yelp, and she turned in time to see the whole cannonball pile of lettuces tumbling off the tilted shelf, round and firm enough to roll all over. Trevor shook. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. His thin arms milled to grab lettuces, clutched three—two escaped. He tripped on the tiles to avoid the lettuces rolling beneath him, and when Dolly tried to help he hit her by mistake.

“They’re wrapped in plastic,” Clara said, to calm him. “No harm done. Look, under the potato table. You can get in more easily than Dolly or me. Hand those ones out to me.”

It was dark under there. Under the heavy potatoes—Trevor did not like being under things. He felt bad. He was all wobbling.

“Trevor! Come out,” Dolly said. She hauled on his arm. “Don’t pee!”

But it was too late. Trevor clambered in, farther under. His under-pants were warm with pee, and then his leg was cold. Oh no. Clary would be so mad.

Clara stood with her hand over her mouth. A small fjord flowed out from under the potato table. How could she have forgotten to make everyone go to the bathroom before they left the house? Painful awareness of her own incompetence flooded through her body.

Dolly pulled on her hand. “I should take him to the bathroom,” she said. “Where is it?”

Clara had no idea. Did they even have a public washroom in a grocery store? The vegetable manager came out with a rolling table of apples.

“Need help?” He was a shy man, with a port wine stain covering most of his face. Clara had never met his eyes before.

“We’ve had—a small accident,” she said. “Is there a washroom?”

“Through the double steel doors, turn right right away,” he said. “Not the cleanest, but it’ll do in a pinch.” He leaned down. “Hey, son,” he said. “Come on out, you’ll be okay. Whole place gets hosed down twice a day, we don’t worry about accidents.”

Trevor could see the double doors from where he squatted. He thought he could make it there. Dolly leaned down and said, “I’ll go with you, Trev.”

Clara opened the multi-pack of paper towels, and handed a big swath down to Trevor. “You mop yourself up, Trevor, and this kind man will get the rest. I’ll go find you a new pair of pants in the clothing aisle. What colour do you like best?” She prayed he would not say yellow or some unlikely pants colour.

“I like blue,” he said. Surely to God there would be blue.

Trevor crouched along under the table, awkwardly mopping with the bunch of towels, until he could crawl out the other end and take Dolly’s hand. They went up to the double doors with dignity. Clara saw them into the grimy bathroom; an unpleasant place to spend ten minutes, but she thought they would be safe. “I’ll be quick,” she said, and she went off.

Dolly locked the door. “Never mind,” she said. “Clary’s not mad.”

One good thing about Trevor—when awful things happened he didn’t mind for very long. He could put them out of his mind. She would be still blushing three years later, when she thought of any of the times she had embarrassed herself, but she wouldn’t think of them now. “I’ll sing for you,” she said. She started in on the pig song, and Trevor joined in, while he sadly hauled off his wet pants.

There was that Clara going too fast with the baby in the cart. He’d start screaming the place down. Four big chocolate bars in her basket; four up the sleeve. Those cameras were everywhere these days. A comforting weight banged against her leg from her coat pocket. Now she would not go hungry in the middle of the night. Now, salt. Sardines, she could put those in Clara’s cart. She steamed off toward the canned fish aisle. Smoked oysters, too.

Trevor liked the Spider-Man underwear Clara brought. And he couldn’t stop running his hands up and down his fleecy pants; it was beginning to bug Dolly. They were in line behind two other carts, and this was the shortest line.

Pearce had woken up fretful, but Clara didn’t want to take him out of the seat if she’d have to put him back in screaming. Where was Mrs. Pell? She must be roaming around the store.

“Can I have a doughnut?”

Clara stared at Dolly for a minute before she could get her mind back to doughnuts.

“The apple fritters, can I have one?”

“Me too,” Trevor said. Pearce started to cry.

“Oh, children, can’t you wait for ten minutes? We have to go through the cash.”

“You could just tell her we ate two of them,” Dolly said.

It was sensible enough. But her mouth formed to say no.

“Please reconsider?” Trevor asked her.

Pearce was squalling, Mrs. Pell was missing. She laughed anyway. “Okay, Trevor, I have reconsidered.”

Done shopping, Mrs. Pell left her basket in the aisle. Her pockets were too full, cookies would make a bulge. Wait, cherries, she needed some of those. She picked up the bright bottle and shuffled toward the checkout, where that woman had set the baby crying again. Typical.

The cart was already bumping up against the conveyor belt. Clara unloaded, shepherding the children through in front of her. She said no, no, not today, to gum, chocolate bars, and a picnic cookbook. She remembered to tell the cashier they’d eaten two fritters. It all mounted up, up, and Clara was shocked to see $127.62 on the window.

She got out her bank card, but Mrs. Pell’s grimy fist came slap on the conveyor belt.

“And these,” she said to the cashier, putting a large jar of maraschino cherries on the belt.

“$134.43,” the cashier said, and Clara didn’t have the strength of character to say no, or even to protest—seven dollars for cherries!

Bags in the cart, Pearce quieter, they processed out of the store, Mrs. Pell clanking gently with every step. One of the grocery managers followed them for a little while, trying to catch Clara’s eye.

“Thank you, I don’t need help,” she said, smiling, recognizing him—Jeff Fisher from church. Her good humour was restored by kind service. “I’ve got lots of helpers today!”

Mrs. Pell, too, gave him a big smile. Row after row of dirty teeth.