Good To A Fault Part 13

"She's probably done for now," Dolly said.

"We'll go to my house for supper, I think, my dears," Mrs. Zenko said. She was pressing her hand into her chest, just under the bone that goes across the shoulders, and that made Dolly worry about her. Her eyes were still damp and shocked.

"It's okay, really," Dolly said, and Trevor said too, "It's okay."

But they both loved eating at Mrs. Zenko's, so they shepherded her down the stairs, not wanting to calm her completely in case she changed her mind about supper.

"You don't have to call 911, Darwin will fix her. When she's mad, she goes straight up and turns left," Dolly said. It would have scared Fern too. She was already kind of weirded out by Gran. Good thing she hadn't seen this, or Clary!

Trevor shook his head, the straight, weightless hair floating away from his skull. "She got a crazy temper, boy-"

He was going to say some more, tell about that time when she chased him around the house with the wooden spoon, going way fast, but Dolly poked him. Maybe Mrs. Zenko would give them perogies. He loved those. But not with sour cream, no, not that.

Moreland had happened to have a few errands in Saskatoon, and he stopped by to say h.e.l.lo. Quite an amount of lumber clutter in the front hall, and the door was wide open, the screen not even shut to.

"h.e.l.lo?" he called gently, stepping over the first pile. Acoustic tiles. Had Clary finally got somebody in to do the bas.e.m.e.nt? Grace'd be glad to hear it.

Darwin stuck his head around from the bottom half of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs and said hi.

Moreland said hi back, and then Darwin came all the way up. "You a friend of Clary's?"

"Her cousin," Moreland said. "Cousin-in-law, I guess."

"She should be back already-but it's a good thing she's not."

Darwin was gathering metal braces, and Moreland automatically helped him.

"I've been telling her she ought to do the bas.e.m.e.nt for a while now," Moreland said, making conversation as they took a load of lumber down the narrow stairs.

"Yeah, well, now's the time," Darwin said. "You want to help?"

Moreland was taken aback. What kind of contractor was this? Then he surveyed the surprising scope of the damage in the bas.e.m.e.nt and understood that something else was going on. "I guess I better," he said. He took off his jacket.

Loitering by the cafe in the hospital lobby, in his usual post, Paul waited for an empty pot of coffee to be refilled. Avoiding visits. When Clara Purdy came out of the elevator and headed for the door, Paul found himself dodging in front of her, almost tackling her. "Sorry," he said, catching himself up. "I haven't seen you for-I wondered how Lorraine is holding up through this chemo, if I should visit her again?"

She looked distracted, but not unhappy to see him. "Some days she seems better," she said. "It was like this for my father, but she's younger, and stronger-willed, maybe."

"Whenever I think illness is all att.i.tude, along comes someone who gripes and complains and whines and still gets better," Paul said. "Will you have a quick coffee? It must be ready now. Joe Kane, upstairs, is eighty-seven, still snarling and scratching."

"He was in hospital with my father, eighteen years ago," Clary said. "My mother called him irascible, and that's how I always think of him."

Paul handed her a cup of burnt, caramel-coloured coffee. "He demoralizes me. He's Candy Vincent's uncle. She's been-" He caught himself before mentioning her tale-bearing call to the bishop. "She's something of a force in the parish."

"You should have known her when she was Candy Kane, in Grade 8. She was a wild girl in those days, Elton John gla.s.ses and platform shoes. I thought she was amazing."

"But you can't have known her then?"

"We were in school together. I'm pretty old, you know."

He blushed. Clary was fascinated to see him redden from the base of his neck upwards, his ears included, while the polite expression on his face never altered.

"I'm forty-one," he said, meaning that he was old too.

"Forty-three," she said. "I guess that makes me the boss of you. Sad, really."

Then he laughed, the red receding. "It is the blight man was born for," he said. "It is Margaret you mourn for."

"I can never remember poems," she said. "But I like when you quote Rilke in sermons."

He was grateful for that. What beautiful eyebrows she had.

"Joe Kane used to like to play chess," she told him. "He played my father in the sunroom at the old City Hospital years ago. See how irascible he'd be if you beat him."

"Kind of you to suggest I might be able to," he said. He took the cup she had finished, and she hurried away through the lobby, already gone from him, trying to remember where she had parked this time.

Clary walked in the front door and almost fell over a pile of metal struts. A man she'd never seen before was crouched down gathering the struts together, and he scrambled up to catch her; she caught herself, instead.

"h.e.l.lo?" she said.

Darwin came running up from the bas.e.m.e.nt. "Hey, Clary! Good!"

He edged past the large man and helped him manoeuvre his load past the woodwork. She could see no place to put her grocery bags that wasn't covered with hardware.

"Give them to me," he said. "You're pretty heavy-laden."

He side-stepped back through the kitchen doorway. Moreland was sitting at the kitchen table working something out on paper with a ruler and his trusty s.p.a.ce pen.

"Moreland!" Clary said, surprised. "Is this your doing? You've met Darwin-Lorraine's brother?"

Moreland hadn't figured the exact relationship but had gathered something along those lines. He covered the paper with his arm, and then uncovered it, thinking maybe better she didn't go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. He didn't want her to see the big black lines he'd drawn on the wall downstairs, where they could put in a bigger window, if they dug four feet and lined the well...

"Where are the children?" Clary asked, refusing to ask about the rubble.

"That nice Mrs. Zenko of yours came over and said she had 'em," Moreland said. "Said she was feeding them supper and if we'd like to come along later she'd feed us, too."

Clary squeezed her eyes shut. She was putting too much strain on Mrs. Zenko, she had to find a better way of doing this. She could not bear to think what all this new chaos was about, the piles of stuff, Moreland roped in somehow here, and all these strange friends of Darwin's-what disreputable people did he hang around with, normally? Petty criminals, carnies, drug dealers. But Moreland was here. And if they were making a better place for Darwin to sleep, that would be good.

Darwin said, "Mrs. Zenko is glad to have something worthwhile to do."

That was true.

"She's getting all those perogies cleaned out of her freezer," he said.

"Perogies? That what's for supper?" Moreland asked.

"According to Trevor," Darwin said. "Might have been wishful thinking. Whatever she makes is good. Do you care what we do down in the bas.e.m.e.nt?" he asked Clary. "Thought I could pay you back a bit, in kind."

"I don't care about anything," she said. What a pleasure to say that! Moth-eaten mink coats, old lamps, what was down there? An affliction of stuff in mouldy boxes. "It's all junk I haven't shovelled out. If you'll deal with it I'll be grateful. Oh, Grace wants the jam jars. But I don't need any of it."

Moreland gave her a wink. "Good to let go once in a while, eh?"

She laughed, and headed next door, where she could hear the children yodelling in the garden.

When Darwin stepped into the darkened room, Lorraine opened her eyes.

"You're late," she said, in a slow voice, stupid with drugs. He looked tired too. "Working too hard?"

"Hardly working," he said, and sat on the edge of the bed. He held her foot, forming its shape under the sheet. His hand felt safe.

"How's everything?" She meant at home, the children.

"Mrs. Zenko next door took them over for supper. Mom Pell blew a fuse."

"Oh, no."

"She's settled down now, off sulking somewhere. She's a crazy woman."

"What set her off?"

"I got some guys helping me do a few things down in Clary's bas.e.m.e.nt, fix it up for her a bit. Mom Pell wants a room down there when it's done, but I told her no."

Lorraine wanted to think about Mrs. Pell's everlasting selfishness and about Clary's house turned upside down in the usual chaos of Darwin's projects, but she felt herself sliding backwards. A pleasant/unpleasant sensation, beginning to whirl. Like being drunk, only none of the giddy tickle. It was uncomfortably like dying. She could hear Darwin talking, she could feel his foot, no, his hand, on her foot...There was something...Darwin carried on telling her all about it, about Moreland coming and the little refinements they'd decided on, the new window Moreland was going to bring in the morning, so they'd have to dig the window well deeper; how the kids had comforted Mrs. Zenko when Mom Pell went round the bend.

Lorraine didn't have to talk. In between sentences he would hum, hum, one of Rose's tuneless, wordless songs from Avenue H, Rose sitting with them while they drifted off to sleep. Lorraine was unable to be afraid, half-listening. Freed from the long bead-string of things she had to finger over and over: money, the children, Clayton, the cancer, the bad feeling just there on the left side, hum, hum. Can't even remember the list, she thought.

At five in the morning, staring out the window while she waited for Pearce's bottle to warm, Clary saw Darwin roaming around in the garden. She went out onto the concrete patio to say h.e.l.lo. Pearce joggled along with her, wakeful but not grumpy this pale blue early morning, watching the sparkle on the gra.s.s where light was beginning to glance.

"Hey, Pearcey," Darwin said, looking back.

He had been staring at the back garage, Clary's father's workshop. Wide as a single car garage, but twice as long, opening onto the alley-it had become invisible to Clary, as familiar things do. Overgrown lilac bushes almost hid it from the house. She should trim those back.

"Mom Pell," Darwin said. "She's sleeping in a chair out there, an old recliner."

Clary hoped that the words would translate into English if she waited.

"She's mad at me," Darwin told her. Birds were singing their crazy morning alarms. "No need waking her up now. Wait till she comes out on her own, eh?"

"Okay," Clary said. Thinking, like Fern, whatever...

"You keep anything in there?"

"Oh, my father's old tools, and a table saw. It was his hideout. He was tidy, there's not much clutter. There's a furnace, he worked in there all year round. It's insulated, too-probably with asbestos."

Darwin smiled at her. A very personable, loopy smile, she thought. "Be a nice little house."

Pearce twisted around in her arms to stare at the windows of the shop, shining with reflected early sky. He pointed strongly toward it, meaning Take me there! but she said, "No, no, not now, Pearce," and turned to go into the house instead.

"Whatever," she said to Darwin. "Whatever you like."

Darwin just hummed. Clary left him to it. She went back to make Pearce's bottle, and maybe, with any luck, get a little more sleep.

17. Service.

Time to introduce the children to church, Clary thought, with the house a little more orderly and breakfast over by nine. Banging reverberated in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and Dolly and Trevor kept slipping down to check on things and being sent back upstairs with urgent messages like Tell Clary we need a three-p.r.o.nged grommet by Thursday, go tell her right now. Before Clary got the joke, she had started making a list on the fridge. 3-p.r.o.nged? it read. Electric hat-saw w. grinder, and 6 gross b.u.t.ton-head hybrid bingo-nails(?).

Church would get them out of Darwin's hair for a while. And that overbearing chin-wagging redound woman last week had made her determined to take them. She re-dressed Pearce and collared Dolly and Trevor to put on clean shorts the next time they came up to tell her what Darwin needed. (A dark balance umbrella, if she's got one.) She washed all their faces and combed their hair. They made a little crowd in the pale green bathroom, filling the big mirror when she glanced up. She brushed Dolly's bangs back from her face again and rummaged in the top drawer for a pretty bobby pin, the one with a b.u.t.terfly on it.

Dolly stared at Trevor's fine hair flying up off the back of his head from static, at Pearce perched on Clary's hip. Clary's smooth head was bent in the top half of the mirror, checking to see if they looked good enough for church. This was their life now: to be with Clary. Dolly stopped. No thinking about anybody else, white as a sheet on yellow hospital sheets.

In the porch of the church Clary thanked Frank Rich and took a second bulletin for Trevor to share with Dolly, since he could not yet read. But he looked heartbroken, so she gave hers to Dolly and smiled at Trevor.

"What was I thinking?" she said. "You need your own."

She led them through into the opening arches and pillars, the airy height. They were early, plenty of empty pews. Clary chose one near the front to give the children a better view. She tried balancing the baby-seat on the pew, but it slid off sideways, so she left it on the floor and took Pearce out to stand on her knee. He stared up at the stained gla.s.s windows arrowing high above, which Clary had not noticed for years.

Paul walked by in his black ca.s.sock, not yet robed for the service, going to check the readings. What a pure face, Clary thought. A medieval knight's face. He was thinner. In a month he would be reduced to eyes and a nose. Hard to advise the congregation on love and understanding and human relationships, when his own had failed.

Trevor watched Paul striding along up to the front. Wearing a long black dress! Nice b.u.t.tons, and a long pleat in the back, swish, swish-with each long step the dress swung open and closed, swirling around the bottom like icing, or curtains. Paul went to a carved golden eagle with wings holding a big book. Up on the wall was the cross, bare. A big Jesus was right on it in the Catholic church their mom had cleaned in Espanola. Trevor could not look at him poked up on the cross like that: big nails through his feet, between the narrow bones, and a big drop of purply-red blood. Just plain wood was easier to take.

Dolly found church very irritating. The organ playing too quiet to hear was like something pressing on her. Behind the altar green velvet curtains hid the room of G.o.d, the inner secret part, she guessed, where only Paul would be allowed. He came back down the aisle, and Dolly thought he looked happy to see them, like they'd come over to his house by surprise. He leaned over and smiled at Dolly so his face made clean creases and he looked like an older angel. He must like us, Dolly thought.

"Good to see everybody here," Paul said to Clary.

Pleasure welled up in her at the achievement of getting them all here, all dressed and fed, all in a row.

Behind Clary a woman leaned forward to touch Pearce's cheek. "You have a lovely baby!" she said.

The music changed, and everyone was standing, so Clary didn't have time to explain. She helped Trevor and Dolly leaf through their hymn books, and sang softly to help with the tune. Pearce pulled her head down toward his face. He smelled good, he was all right. No more Benadryl. Clary prayed the first successful prayer she'd managed lately: thank you, thank you that he was not hurt.

Church was like a movie, Trevor thought, but you're in it. The words mostly washed over him, but when the bald guy from the audience walked up to read, he heard parts of that: I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks, I bent down to them and fed them. Like Clary's cheek. Everything tucking in so nicely there beneath her pointy little chin. When she lifted Pearce to her cheek Trevor always wished it was him. When she bent to kiss him at night, he saw the lines on her face, and breathed in her looping shiny hair and her neck. She smelled like soap. His own mother smelled like apples. He could feel the middle of his body empty, a dark cave running up and down through him, because his mother was sick. He decided he would kill Jesus, and be the new Jesus, and then he could get her better. Who cares that he would be the devil then.

Dolly prayed at first-since she had to be there-a short ferocious prayer that was no question but an order: Get her well. Her forehead pressing on the pew, staring into her clenched fists. When she stopped, exhausted, she watched Pearce's foot dangling beside her. His foot trembled like a bird's as he reached up to touch Clary, to be sure he was still being held. Poor Pearcey, Dolly thought, and tears began the long ride up into her eye. Then she remembered how boring stupid church was, and tears receded, and she yelled at G.o.d again in her head.

Clary was pleased by how peaceful the children were. This meditative time was good for them. Unfortunately the lesson was that difficult letter of St. Paul, put to death fornication. But maybe they had drifted off to whatever thoughts children drift to. Watching Pearce's intelligent gaze she wondered what he was thinking, with his white-paper mind; what images were being painted on his brain. What indelible photographs were printed on Trevor's and Dolly's, already.

"You must change your life," Paul said, and it was obviously the opening of the sermon, so she'd missed the Gospel. "Rilke says that-and I know I've quoted Rilke before,"-he glanced at Clary-"In the poem called The Archaic Torso of Apollo... St. Paul says it too, in the letter to the Colossians. He promises change in the new life in Christ, in which all are equal.

"Don't get distracted by the list, the fornicating and the unclean desires and so on. Go straight to the core: when we have clothed ourselves with the new self, there will no longer be any distinctions: Christ is all and in all." Paul stopped and shuffled his index cards, which he never referred to but seemed to use as a prop against nervousness. "It's a tempting list-to be on the lookout for nasty stuff, in ourselves and in other people, that dingy side of life. But the injunction continues: we must get rid of all the dross. Anger, wrath and malice, slander and abusive language-Of course I include myself in this. We must struggle against the temptation to malice, even when it's clothed in a self-righteous vestment of indignation against someone else's perceived sin."

His own indignant energy made his face look burnished. He needs to let himself be angry, Clary thought. Candy Vincent sat in the choir, her permanent can-do smile in place.

"One of the failings St. Paul warns against comes up again in today's Gospel-greed. Jesus warns us against a specific kind of greed in Luke 12: greed for the future. The rich man has had a miraculous harvest, too big for his barns. Instead of allowing the extra to flow into the hands of the poor he says to himself, 'I'll tear down these petty little barns and build big barns so I can keep all this for my Self, and eat and drink and be merry for a long time.' I'm paraphrasing, of course." Paul had an una.s.suming smile, acknowledging his own inadequacy but relying on your great mercy and kindness. "The rich man glorying in his harvest and thinking ahead to the party is going to die. He forgot that."

He looked down to Dolly and Clary, with one arm around Trevor and Pearce in her lap.