Good To A Fault Part 14

"We forget. It's hard to live with the constant understanding of death in the forefront of our minds. Scholars of old kept a skull on their writing desks to help. The reminder of imminent death, memento mori, is one of the greatest spurs we have to right action.

"When I was a boy my mother fell gravely ill. I knew she was going to die, and that I would be left an orphan with my younger sister to look after. My mother knew it too, and our conversations during those months of her illness have been of use to me all my life. She was given radiation treatment and had a radical mastectomy-they were very radical in those days-and in fact she did not die. But the strength my sister and I received from her in those hard days stayed with us even when we returned to ordinary life and were able to go back to taking her for granted, which I still do, to this day, unless she phones to scold me for it..."

He allowed the congregation to laugh, to release some tension. He could not tell how Clary's children were taking this. They didn't seem to be listening, but of course appearances meant nothing, with children. With anyone.

"And there are other deaths. As you all must know by now, my wife Lisanne and I have separated."

He stopped, he remembered to breathe.

"A little death, the death of a marriage, is another one of those hard times when life becomes clearer. We thought we had stored up for the future, but we've had an early frost..."

His mouth turning down as if he disliked his own phrase, he shifted his cards again.

"G.o.d directs us to be joyful and free, unhindered by anxiety, and not to hang on to the stuff of this world, material goods or relationships, as our salvation. They cannot be. He tells us to have the courage to be open to one another, by compa.s.sionate understanding and by abiding, kind attention to our neighbours. To see G.o.d in those around us. If we are lucky, we see the G.o.d Hosea reminds us of, in those who lift infants to their cheeks, bend down to them and feed them."

That time Paul looked directly at the children, and at Clary, and smiled at them all.

She bent quickly to rearrange the car seat, unable to bear his approval. She'd been the catalyst for this disaster, let's not forget, she thought. The least she could do was try to keep them safe for a while, before...She prayed one word, Lorraine.

Then the congregation were rising for the hymn, and automatically she rose too.

Dolly and Trevor stuck close to Clary at coffee hour. Weaving through the heedless crowd of congregation to the coffee table, Clary carried a glum consciousness that, like her own goodness, church was a fraud and a sham, and she should not be there herself, let alone dragging children along with her. But Paul was not a sham, and he seemed to be pretty stalwart in faith.

Trevor tugged her arm, wanting to get closer to the cake: the August birthday cake, made by April Anthony, who remembered the birthdays of the parish. She had listed the August people in icing down one side, and Trevor badly wanted a piece with writing.

"Two pieces, please," Clary told Mrs. Anthony. Did she make birthday cakes because she was named after a month, Clary wondered, or had she even noticed that? Was April's birthday in April? Clary's mother would have known. Mrs. Anthony handed her two pieces of cake, one with plain icing, and one with names.

Trevor snaked his hand up and grabbed the name piece, so rudely that Clary stared at him in surprise. He crammed part of the cake into his mouth and ducked down, disappearing under the table.

"Trevor!" Clary said, remembering that last table he went under. "Dolly, take this-" She bent and reached blindly under the table for his skinny arm, and pulled him out. "Trevor, it's okay, you're allowed to have cake. There's lots." She was speaking almost in a whisper, her face close to his. "Do you have to pee?"

Trevor shook his head. Then he nodded.

"Okay, come on, I'll show you where the bathrooms are."

Dolly had vanished in the crowd, but Pearce, thank G.o.d, was still slumped sleeping in the car seat, safe enough among the church women. Clary took Trevor to the washroom.

Dolly was looking for the way into that secret room back there, behind the green velvet curtains. Everybody had left the church part, it was all hushed. She climbed the chancel steps on quiet feet and dodged around the altar to where Paul had stood. It was weird back there. She stroked the green velvet drape along the wall, searching for a break where you could go through. Nothing. Impatient, she reached over to the far edge and scooped the velvet up sideways.

Nothing! Just the wall. Well. That was a lesson all by itself.

"Dolly?" It was Paul. Her stomach swooped-what if she was trespa.s.sing?

"Hey, sweetheart," he called. "Your-Clary is looking for you. She's got Trevor and Pearce and they're ready to go home. Are you finding your way around up there?"

If the room behind wasn't even there, how holy was it anyway? Dolly skipped down the stairs and ran down the aisle, past Paul waiting at the back door. There might be seconds of cake.

Paul stood outside the church hall after they'd gone. The light blinding through the branches, a fluting bird's cascading whistle. A lost meadowlark, singing in the noonday sun, to the silent city around them. It wasn't so far for him to have flown from the river fields on a Sunday. Quam deus in mundi delectus est-G.o.d so delighted in the world...Paul lifted his face to feel the sun and thanked G.o.d, thanked G.o.d, as he did almost all the time. When he wasn't carping, carping for whatever ills he felt afflicted by at the moment. When light glanced around him and the bird poured light in his ears and the dust rose off the asphalt from the recently departed cars of his parishioners, he was convinced that he lived on G.o.d, that the earth itself was G.o.d itself, as self and selfless as- He went inside, leaping up the stairs three at a time. This was a workday, after all; there were doors to lock and service reports to sign, and then his hospital visits. And remembering his duty toward Joe Kane, he thought there might be a magnetic chess set in the Sunday school cupboard.

18. Clearwater.

While they were eating lunch after church Moreland came back, with Grace in full overdrive, wearing knife-pressed aqua, her grey hair permed tight. Up since four herself with Pearce, Clary felt a little bedraggled.

"You need a break," Grace announced to the children. "Moreland's going to hang around here getting in the way, helping your uncle, and I'm taking you out to Clearwater."

Grace and Moreland had a cabin at Clearwater Lake, a large slough in the middle of the bald prairie, where a sandy beach waxed and waned depending on the water level. By this time in August it would be drying, but it had its own charm. Impossible, though.

"Grace, we can't go anywhere, I have to be at the hospital-"

"Nonsense, Lorraine can do without you for a couple of days."

"And I can't leave Darwin to do all this by himself."

"Not by himself, I just told you. Moreland's got a bee in his bonnet, he thinks they can get it done by Tuesday. He's got Henley for the wiring, and Henley's cousin has end-of-roll carpet from when they redid the golf course-they've got it all figured out. We'll get the kids out of this rubble and dust, who knows what it's doing to the baby."

"But Mrs. Pell-"

"I'll take her too. She better not give me any grief, that's all."

Mrs. Pell stumped into the kitchen as Grace said that, but Grace was hard to faze. "Hey, there," she said immediately. "I was just telling Clary that I'm going to take them out to the lake for the weekend. You get yourself packed and you can come too."

Mrs. Pell wheeled around and headed to her room to pack.

"That was quick," Grace said. "Now can I have a coffee?"

Dolly wouldn't be allowed to see her mom anyway, so what did it matter where they went? She rode alone in the Pontiac with Grace, who blabbed on the whole time about Fern (interesting) and Davina (boring), so Dolly didn't have to worry about talking. At Rosetown, Grace got chicken for supper. Clary stopped too. Grace had told Dolly that Clary would see their car, but Dolly was still relieved. They sat at dingy picnic tables to eat, while trucks roared and blew fumes past them. It was a hot day.

South from Rosetown-stupid name for an ugly town, Dolly thought-another half hour, and another, and then Grace turned down on gravel and then b.u.mped along a dirt road, and over a little rise they found the lake, shining pinky-silver in the evening sun. Around it the land was flat. On one side of the lake stood a row of cabins and a few old trailers parked forever, grey plywood skirts nailed in around their bottoms. They drove along the row of haphazard huts, Grace pointing out a round one made of concrete blocks, and one sparkling green and brown with broken beer bottles set into the plaster. At the end of the row Grace turned into a little parking place behind the last cabin, and turned off the car. She stared back along the road.

"Hope she remembers the turnoff," Grace said.

Dolly hoped so too. She was worn out from being alone with Grace.

"We'll take our things in anyway, and get the cooler set up. Take your shoes off on the porch there-we don't need any housework here."

Dolly was embarra.s.sed not to have known to take her shoes off, even though this place was a tumbledown old shack. She left her new pink shoes side by side and hopped in the door. Inside, the cabin was painted pale green, like school bathrooms, and the walls were made out of flimsy pressed board.

"Moreland and I started building this place when we were in high school," Grace told her. "You go pick a bunk."

The other room was long, with three sets of bunks, curtains strung between to make fake bedrooms. A window looked out on the water. Dolly sat on the closest bunk. She thought she would wait there till Clary arrived. It all smelled funny.

"Hey," Grace said from the doorway. "I need some wood carried in from the back, and then you can run down to the store and get some pop."

Dolly stared at her, this woman who was not her mother, or her grandmother, not even Clary who was taking care of them. It was on the tip of her tongue to say no, but she didn't mind going out by herself. When they'd finished with the wood Grace gave her a twenty and told her two cartons: one c.o.kes, the other any kind she liked. Twenty dollars. It looked big in her hand. She put it in her pocket and walked back out to the little road. Way down by the road was the orange-painted shed that was the store. She walked along the dirt track, hearing the pop, pop of gra.s.shoppers exploding from the gra.s.s and sinking back down with a click of their legs, or their wings, she didn't know which. A coyote looked over the tall gra.s.s behind the fence, only twenty feet away, the same colours as the dry gra.s.s: half grey, half blonde. She walked closer, thinking she might tame it and then they'd have a dog, but it turned and loped away. Lope, that was the word for that kind of running. Lope, lope, she tried running that way herself, but it was too hot.

A pickup truck and another truck sat by the pumps in front of the store. A woman in the pickup putting on more lipstick. The closed-in truck was empty.

Dolly climbed the step onto the wooden slat porch and pulled open the door.

For a second she thought it was her dad standing at the counter. From the back his skinny legs reminded her, and the way his jean jacket hung over his b.u.t.t. Her heart jumped and she took two quick steps forward, but the guy turned with a mean look to see who was there, and it was not him, of course it wasn't. Her dad was far gone. This guy went out past her, walking too close so she had to pull back against the rack of candy. He had sungla.s.ses on. When he got to the door he looked back and saw her still staring at him. He stared back, then went out.

A round-cheeked girl with a bag of chips was next at the counter, must be the truck woman's daughter. "And $32 in gas," she said.

Dolly walked around the aisles looking for pop cans in cartons. There, at the back. They were going to get pretty heavy on the way back to the cabin. She lugged them up to the counter.

The pimply boy at the cash took her twenty and said, "$10.35."

Dolly said, "No way! They're $4.50 each. That's only nine dollars."

"Tax," the boy said. He was sure outgoing.

"Oh, right," she said, pretending she knew that.

The screen door spring snapped her in the arm when she went out. It was bright outside, compared to the store, and Dolly stood on the step, dazzled.

"You want a ride?"

It was the jean-jacket guy, over by his truck. Dolly shook her head.

"You come on with me, I'll take you for a ride into town."

What kind of stupid did he think she was? Dolly could feel the metal bar of the screen door across the middle of her back, and the saggy parts of the screen above and below. The truck with the women was gone, there was only the boy at the counter inside.

"I got some candy in the truck."

Dolly laughed. That made the guy mad. He took off his gla.s.ses. His eyes were big and pretty like a woman's. Bright blue, she could see, even so far away. He smiled at her like he knew her. How she was crafty, the same as him.

The pop was heavy. The sun flashed on the windshield of a car turning off the gravel. Dolly took off with a jump and ran across the dirt, straight at the guy, startling him. Then she swerved past him onto the dirt track. She flung the orange carton down with a rattling crash in the dirt as she stuck out her arm.

It was okay, it was them. Clary opened the window and called past Gran, "Hi! Sorry we're late, we stopped to get ice cream in Kyle."

"Hi," Dolly said.

"You got pop? So did I! Hop in, we can go as far as the cabin without your seatbelt on. You'll be safe out here."

Dolly picked up the pop she'd dropped and climbed in beside Pearce's baby seat. She leaned her head against Pearce's blanket and smelled how good he smelled. Trevor was sound asleep against the other window. What a nice boy he was.

Clary drove down the road, glad to have Dolly back with her. Grace was responsible and careful, of course, but she was no Mrs. Zenko. When Trevor opened his pop, ten minutes later, Grace's nice aqua outfit got totally soaked, orange everywhere.

On Sunday evening, without giving Paul any warning, Lisanne sent her sister Carol to get her things from the rectory. Her things-as if after twenty years there was any more such a thing as hers, or his. These things are all ours, he wanted to shout at Carol. Or sob. Which would come out, he wondered, if he pushed at that locked door? Instead he said, "Did you bring boxes, Carol, or shall I find some?"

Of course she had not brought boxes. She did have a list. And a van coming later on.

"Blake is coming to help, remember Blake?"

A paunch, and a small beard, Paul thought, finding it an exhausting effort to sort out Carol's sporadic boyfriends.

"We'd better have things ready for him, then," he said, amazed at his own civility.

She started up the stairs, getting right down to work. Lisanne had faithfully reported Carol's loathing of his "pa.s.sive-aggressive fake humility"-he wondered if she'd actually said that, or if Lisanne had just wanted to say it herself.

He went to find boxes.

When Carol and Blake left they had nine boxes and three large suitcases. They took the mahogany armoire from the living room, originally Paul's grandmother's, which had been Lisanne's sewing cupboard for twenty years. The dining room chairs, all eight, but not the table, because Lisanne had put on the list definitely not to take it. It had a wow in the middle and she was sick of it. The brown velvet couch, the armchair, the sideboard, the carpet.

Paul was mildly glad that Lisanne had said he could keep the bed, symbolically, although he'd never much liked it. He tried to take some satisfaction from it standing in the almost-empty bedroom. The comforter slumped on the floor, she didn't want that either. (Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?) The dressers and night tables had gone. He wondered where she would store all this in Carol's house. The good dishes (he'd always hated them), the good cutlery, the good pots, the pepper grinder, and-moving back into the living room-the television and the cordless phone. He had not let them take the iron or the ironing board; he did need to iron his shirts. Carol said never mind. The ironing board was teetery and usually stuck halfway up, and it could have done with a new cover.

Blake had been unable to meet Paul's glance. Ashamed of himself for helping with this wholesale fleecing, or ashamed of Paul as a failed example of manhood, Paul wondered. Carol, though, stopped at the door and looked straight into his eyes, one of those long looks people rarely have the effrontery for. Her eyes were like Lisanne's, he realized-light, with black rings around bright pale irises veering toward blue. Lisanne's were darker blue.

"How are you doing with all this, Paul?"

He was surprised that she should ask. "I'm going to be all right, in the end," he said.

"Lisanne's very good. Better than I've ever seen her," Carol said. As if it wasn't him she was talking to, as if it didn't matter what she said to him. "Well, off we go! Have a good night!"

They had been gone for ten minutes when Paul found the remote, sitting on the bookcase. He clicked it a few times, imagining the television set in the back of the van flickering on and off, whispering to itself in the crowd of furniture.

Tuesday night Grace took Clary and the kids to the Clearwater drive-in. They'd been lots of times, outside Winnipeg, so it was not that big a deal. Both Trevor and Dolly were tired. They sat staring through the windshield, glad not to have to talk. It was almost ten o'clock, but the sky was not yet dark, so it was hard to see the screen. The first movie was Dinosaur, animated and pretty old, but they hadn't seen it yet. The second feature was Dude, Where's My Car? but Clary had already said they would not be staying for that one. A man's voice kept breaking in over the movie lines on the radio, saying "Two cheeseburger, two fries, chocolate shake, Diet c.o.ke," or "bacon double cheeseburger, onion rings." Then you couldn't hear the movie. The little dinosaur was getting separated from his family, which reminded Trevor of that other movie, and Littlefoot's mother dying, and that made his eyes tear up. Then a comet came screaming down through the atmosphere, and hit, SPLASH, and there was a huge explosion and a great big tidal wave of water came swooshing along the screen.

It was the comet that meant the extinction of the dinosaurs, everybody knew that.

"Boy, that was a short movie," Trevor said. Clary burst out laughing. Trevor was happy to make her laugh but did not get why that was so funny.

Dolly could see, because the movie was going to keep on, so the dinosaurs must not be getting wiped out right away, even though everybody knew they did. Trevor was so young. She leaned closer up against Clary's arm. Pearcey was slurp-slurping from a bottle again. He never stopped eating these days, Dolly thought. "Can we have a cheeseburger?" she asked Clary, tilting her head up, so she could already see Clary's mouth making a No.

But Grace stretched her arms up over her head and beat a drum tattoo on the car ceiling. "I think that's a great idea," she said. "Who wants to come with me?"

Trevor was watching the dinosaurs in their long line trying to get away from destruction, so Dolly went with Grace by herself. Grace had changed into lime green shorts, pretty bright even in the twilight. She told the boy at the counter hi, and ordered four cheeseburgers and two onion rings and two, no, make it three fries. Four chocolate shakes. Good thing Gran had stayed at the cabin. Before they went home to the city, Dolly thought, she would have to go through Gran's pockets and put back whatever stuff she'd scarfed. She remembered the change still in her own pocket and handed it to Grace, who was happily talking to the counter boy, both of them leaning their elbows on the counter while the fryer sizzled away.

This was more like what they were used to, Dolly thought to herself. Like up by Espanola, or Trimalo, except for the no trees. It wouldn't last forever, being out here. She should be paying more attention.

She looked out at the empty field, stretching right out to the sky, as far as you could tell. Rolling bare-bone land going away, away, away into a blue distance, and the huge screen standing up against the blue sky that was both dark and light at the same time. The faint sound of the movie through open car windows mixed with the whispery whistling of the wind, and the noise of bugs creaking and fiddling toward the darkness. And the smell of the burgers frying and the onion rings. Six or seven cars away she could see Clary's head bending down to Pearce. Except for what she would not think about, Dolly was happy. She could breathe this mixed summer air forever. Up above the movie screen the few visible stars sprinkled in the periwinkle blue-look! One slipped out of its place and shot silently down, arcing around the edge of the screen and down and gone.

That night Pearce cried and cried, to remind them that he was only a baby. The whole camp would be awake, Clary knew, a little village of people who already didn't sleep well, and now this. By one a.m. he was only gathering strength, stomach ache or gas giving him no rest either.

"A walk," she told him, finding her shoes in the darkness. "That's what you need. We'll go walk along the sh.o.r.e. The cool night air will do us good."

She could walk in her pyjamas, here at Clearwater. Maybe a sweater. She slipped out the front and cobbled Pearce into his stroller. But it wouldn't roll on the rocky sand; after a hundred yards she hoisted him out and abandoned the stroller. Pearce was comfortable on her hip, and happier outside in the night. Above them, filling the huge sky, the stars in their millions flickered and stood. Someone said there are only two thousand stars visible, but it must be more than that, Clary thought. A thousand times more. That person must have lived in a city.

It was a bit cooler than she'd bargained for, and she'd left the blanket in the stroller. Clary took off her sweater and wrapped it around Pearce, making a sling with the sleeves around her neck so they could keep walking and be comfortable. She had missed walking in the last few weeks. Too much to do, not enough time to walk anywhere. She strode along, stretching her legs out. Familiar with this path since childhood, when Grace and Moreland and their little cabin had been so romantic, when she had heard them whispering late at night, both twined into one bunk. The sound of them kissing and Grace laughing, saying we can't-and Moreland, the handsome boy he was then, murmuring oh yes, oh yes.

Trevor trotted along the path some way behind Clary. He didn't want her to hear him; he just wanted to be with her. The lake on one side, the wilderness on the other, in the dark night. Finally dark, even though the sun took so long to set that you thought it would never go to black. There was something in the gra.s.s beside him, he thought, and he went a little faster. So did the thing, scuttering along making noise only when he did, quieting if he stopped. He couldn't be afraid, it must be something small. The moon was small, too, not very bright, slung low in the sky. The gra.s.s was too scary, too close. He did not want to call out to tell Clary he was following in case she got mad. Trevor edged down to the water, thinking he might walk along in the mud, because an animal might not like to get its feet wet, if it was a cougar or a fox. A coyote might not care about water, or a pack of coyotes. They had been yipping along the black horizon earlier. Grace had shown him one silhouetted against the orangey-blue sky when they got home from the movie. She'd pointed with her finger where the other yippers were.

His feet were tough. The rocky sand and mud on the bottom of the lake did not bother them. Once in a while a sharp rock made his knee suddenly bend. He rolled his pyjama bottoms past his knees and walked a little farther out, where it was warm, muddy, squelching smoothness. A little farther. There was no wind at all. No waves, and the water was still except for the stirring his shins made.