Good To A Fault Part 28

She'd think about it later, when all those Valentines were done. The days seemed to be speeded up-time was moving like electricity, the meter-hands whirring around, ticking away money and energy and life.

On Tuesday, Clary went to the hospital in the afternoon, because Lorraine had left a message asking to see her. She left the children at home with Mrs. Pell in case Lorraine needed help with anything complicated.

She thought she had the wrong room. Lorraine was not there, and the bed was stripped. But-they were saying that she was doing well-she could not be- Not dead, no. She was in the washroom, the door slightly open, brushing her teeth. Wearing clothes.

"Lorraine?" Clary said, her voice sounding weirdly ordinary. "Are you all right?"

Lorraine spat into the sink and rinsed, and stood up. She dried her toothbrush with a white hospital washcloth and put it in her toilet bag.

"I'm good," she said. "I'm really good."

Clary stood in the middle of the room. The other bed was empty too-what had happened to that poor woman?

Lorraine said, "They say I can go home."

Clary did not speak, for a second. Then she shook her head, and smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Wonderful!" she said.

"Yes, so I'm going."

"Well, of course!"

"Clayton's got us a place, we'll go over there this afternoon."

That did not make sense. Clary's chest was tight.

Lorraine went to the closet and added her toilet bag to the already-packed suitcase.

"Seems pretty amazing to be getting out of here," she said. She moved a pile of magazines from the closet to the bed.

"But, Lorraine," Clary said. Then she didn't know how to continue. All her bones moved downwards, as if in deeper gravity.

"He's gone to get Dolly from school, and he'll get them packed up, but I wanted to tell you about it alone," Lorraine said.

She was carefully meeting Clary's eyes, every step of the way, every word she said. Not shying away from it, even though it would be bad. Clary looked like she'd been punched, but hadn't figured out what had happened yet. Lorraine thought her own face must have looked like that, her first day in here.

"Does Darwin-?" Clary was speaking too slowly.

"He phoned last night from Vancouver, I told him they would be letting me go home."

"Did he say-"

"He said, to give you a kiss from him."

Lorraine did not move, but Clary flinched anyway.

"So, Clary, I have to say thanks for everything," Lorraine said. "There isn't any way to thank you for looking after my kids all this time. But I know I owe you big time."

Inside the hollow globe of her head Clary was unable to figure this all out. She fought the pressure in her chest. She stood up straight, making more room for air.

"You're-Clayton has a place? Not the room?"

"It's okay, he says. An older building but they're renovating, and our suite is already done. He'll be the part-time super, there's a little money in it. Looks like a good deal."

"Where?"

Lorraine stopped talking.

Clary asked again, "Where is the apartment?"

Lorraine looked at her without smiling. "They are our kids."

"Well, I realize that." Her legs were shaking. "I realize that. But if you are planning to move them out of the school district, they would have to transfer, and which school would they be-"

"It's in City Park," Lorraine said. "It's not a bad place. It's an older building, a little run down, but it's what we can afford. The kids will be fine."

"You're not ready, though! This is impossible. You can't-you can't look after children in this state. And Clayton! You think he can manage them?"

But that was enough, for Lorraine.

"You can't stop thinking of us as low-cla.s.s, you can't stop!" she said. "You keep thinking you're better than me, even though you try not to. It's built into your whole life. But we're the same as you, we're just the same."

Clary felt hot tears welling up, like tears of blood. To be accused of prejudice, when she had worked so hard-how could Lorraine think so? She would, she would think so, with her trailer-park ignorance. Shocked, Clary smacked the thought away, but it was there. Less worthy. Less human.

Lorraine said, "Here's the difference between us: you got taken to the dentist more, and your mother filled your head with stuck-up s.h.i.t about how great you are, and you got to live in the same house all your life. That's most of it. You went to school for longer, and you worked in a clean office instead of cleaning the office. You have a better-looking face and better-looking clothes, and that gives you some feeling that you're better than me."

"I don't, I don't. You're mistaken."

"I'm trying to tell you how it is for me," Lorraine said. "Here it is: it's the same as it is for you."

Her eyes were hard to look at.

"When you're hurting because you have to lose Pearce, that means you know exactly how I hurt to lose him. I don't have less feelings because I don't know the words to say them, I don't have less to say to my kids because it's not always-" She shook her head sharply. "It's not just grammar. You think I'm not as good for them as you are."

"You're right," Clary said, sadly. The tears had receded, and the hot blood behind them. It was too important, it was the children. She could not be silent or polite, there was only now to say it. "It's not you, it's Clayton. I think it will be-hard for him to look after you all well enough." Still polite after all.

"Well, he gets to give it a try," Lorraine said, not angry any more. She gathered her paintbrushes from the water-cup and set things in place in the paintbox. "He was doing okay until you crashed into us."

That was the first time she had mentioned the accident since it happened. She had not blamed Clary for it then.

"But what will happen to you if things get hard-if you run out of money? You can't work, you have to be careful. You can't leave the hospital behind, or head for Fort McMurray-and the children, they need stability, and their ordinary life, not to be shunted around the country living from hand to mouth."

"We are their ordinary life, not you," Lorraine said. She stopped, the cup still in her hand, and looked straight at Clary, piercing her with the stern arrows of her eyes. "The kids don't give a rat's a.s.s whether they have money or a nice house, they just want me and Clayton with them. They love us. Him too, not just me. Don't kid yourself. You are a babysitter, to them. They'll be glad to leave you."

Clary didn't speak. She was having trouble with her ribs, like a st.i.tch. They didn't seem to want to expand properly to let her breathe.

"It's not your fault that you don't get it," Lorraine said, red smears of rouge bright on her cheeks. "You never had kids of your own, and you weren't very well brought up."

That was it.

Clary turned and left the room.

She drove out of the parking lot crying, tears splashing on the steering wheel, on her skirt, running down her face and into her collar, wetting her chest-which still wouldn't open to let her catch her breath. Her feet were clumsy on the clutch and the brake.

Without meaning to go there, she found herself at Paul's house. She stood on his porch trembling, pressing the doorbell. He was not going to answer, he would not be there.

He opened the door. He saw her distress and took her hand, her arm, and pulled her inside. "What? What is it?" he asked.

She could not answer, she could barely breathe.

"Clary, tell me. Is it Lorraine?"

She sobbed, nodding, not intelligible, yes, she sobbed, yes, yes, it is all Lorraine.

"Is she-what-has she died?"

"No! She has not! She-" It was too hard to say, to have to hear it out loud.

Paul sat her on a kitchen chair and pulled the other chair close enough to sit right beside her. He held her shoulders and arms, enclosed her. "She wants the children back?"

It was not really a question. She had known he would know, he would help her.

"Yes, she is, she is coming out today, and she will take them somewhere, Clayton has a place-she can't take them there! I can't-" Clary shuddered away from what she might have to do, reporting Lorraine to Family Services.

She couldn't do that. She had to find some way to stop it without betraying them-but only because if she did report them, betray them, they would take them away, and she would not be able to see the children any more. The yawning s.p.a.ce inside her chest spread larger, it was going to be impossible soon, no way to breathe at all.

"How can I stop them? You must know, who I should talk to, how I can get custody, just temporarily, to keep them safe."

"No," he said. "You can't do that."

"But you know they can't go live with Clayton-I told you what kind of-"

"I know," he said, not letting her go on. "But they're his children, Clary. And they're Lorraine's, and they have a right to raise them, however much you want to help."

"No! You don't-you aren't listening! She's taking them today, to some place Clayton's found, as if it's going to be all right. It will be some filthy place on Avenue X, they'll be surrounded by drug dealers and prost.i.tutes. The carpets-you haven't seen-"

"I have," he said. "I've seen bad. But Clary, they're theirs. We've been praying for Lorraine's recovery, but it was always going to lead to this, to the reunion of their family, whether we like to see them go or not. They need their independence again."

How could he be arguing in favour of this lunacy? Was there no help? Mrs. Zenko could not do anything, Moreland. Darwin. She could not bear it. She couldn't breathe.

"I have to-let me-"

She slid off the chair and lay down, curled in a half-moon on the carpet, but couldn't rest there-nowhere. She rocked back and forth, trying to sit up, her mouth wide open in a square gape of pain.

"Breathe slowly," Paul said.

He crouched on the floor beside her and looked into her face, and then got up. He ran to the linen closet for pillows and Binnie's mohair blanket, with lavender tucked in its folds-he shook the blanket loose, sprays of dead petals patterning the floor. He filled a gla.s.s with cold water and one with brandy. He lifted Clary slightly to let her blow her nose with a fresh Kleenex he found (a miracle) in his pocket, then made her drink, first brandy and then the water. He gave her a pillow and put the other one beside her, and let the blanket cloud over them, that soft purple Binnie had loved. He curved his knees close behind Clary's on the carpet she had given him and held her, one arm carefully around her waist, one arm fitted under her neck. Gradually her sobbing ceased. From time to time her body twitched, but her breath smoothed down again. He lay with her while she slept.

The afternoon was darkening down, time to think about supper. That might have been what woke her. His arm was too hard a bar under her neck, now that she had calmed down.

She had to go home. The children were alone with Mrs. Pell, if Clayton had not turned up, or if he had gone to get Lorraine. She was covered in shame, that Darwin had heard that she was losing the children-it was all confused. Why would that shame her? It was nothing to do with her, it was Lorraine's decision, it was a joy to them all that she was not dead, recovering, every possible good sign. She could weep again with shame.

Everything she had tried to do had been for nothing. Paul said he would drive her, but she would not let him. She was ashamed in front of him, too, and it made her brisk and cool, hurrying into her jacket and boots, not able to stay another minute, and not able to bear any longer his goodness and his f.u.c.king understanding.

41. Gone.

They were not there. None of them. Clayton had already taken them. Empty house. Drawers empty, closets. Beds not made, but already cold and empty.

She packed the clothes they had missed, the few things that had been in the laundry, in a cardboard box. Everything fit in one box. They must have worked hard. The valentines had all been cleared off the dining room table. That would have been Dolly.

Pearce's special bowl was sitting on the draining board. Like a dog's dish. Like they'd come to get their dog, their lost puppy that she had been looking after all this time, but they'd left his new dish behind, because they had their own special dish for him.

She cleaned the kitchen. She put oven cleaner in and let it sit searing away while she took all the pots and pans out of all the cupboards and drawers, stacked them on the kitchen table, and cleaned out the cupboards and drawers with the vacuum cleaner and hot, soapy, bleachy water. As if her mother was watching.

Paul came to the door at midnight and knocked until she let him in.

She had nothing to say, and neither did he. She put the kettle on to make tea. He put his arms around her but she couldn't do that, be comforted, and she excused herself to get the milk, to get cups. The kitchen smelled sterile. She thought she might ask him to help her dismantle the bunk beds, because she wanted to send them to the Gages, wherever they were. Would they even call to let her know where they were?

She didn't mention the beds. She couldn't say any of this to Paul, not now. He had said they were their children, as if she didn't know that. She could barely be polite to him, and yet when it seemed like he would leave, when he was turning to the front door, she said, "Please, stay."

"I will," he said, surprised. "I left my shaving kit in the car. I came to stay."

But she did not want him to stay, either. She did not want anything, except Pearce back, and Dolly, and Trevor; except the life she had left this afternoon to run over to help Lorraine-to help her again!

She was afraid she would start shouting. Instead, she said she thought she'd have a shower; that might make her feel a bit better. When she came back to her bedroom Paul was there, still standing. Looking at the books on her bedside table. He was kind, he was trying to help her. She could not bear to be helped. Even his vulnerability grated, but the shower had calmed her, and she could touch his arm and speak.

"Thank you for coming," she said.

Which put him in his place, Paul thought. A parish visitor. He lay down beside her and held her again, while she wept in silence and he could not console her.

In the morning her mother's car was outside the house.

Paul had left a cup of tea on her bedside table, with the saucer on top of it to keep it warm. He had kissed her, smelling of shaving cream, and said he would come back in the afternoon. She kept her eyes closed until he was gone, and by accident fell heavily asleep again. It was after nine when she woke and pulled herself out of bed, only because lying there meant thinking.

She opened the curtain and there was the car. How could even Clayton bring it back without saying anything? She dressed herself and drank the cold tea.

The keys were on the front seat, and there was a note on the dashboard: Thanks. We'll be in touch. Lorraine. It was spotlessly clean.

Clary went back into the house and rifled through her purse, her coat pockets-where else? Her own car-she ran back outside and found it, tucked into the notepad in her glove compartment. The social services woman's card. Bertrice Morgan.

Bertrice's voice was low-pitched and a little tight. "Family and Community Services, Bertrice speaking," she said.

"I am calling-this is Clara Purdy," Clary said. "I'm calling about Lorraine Gage."