Good To A Fault Part 34

Paul laughed. "Kind of you to offer, then."

They walked along the sh.o.r.e for a while.

"You know Clara pretty well?" Clayton asked.

"Pretty well," Paul agreed.

"You think she'll help out with the kids again?"

Paul nodded.

"Thought so. She likes them, eh?"

"So do I," Paul said.

"Yeah. You're her boyfriend?"

"No," Paul said.

"Huh! I thought you were."

Paul shook his head. "We're friends," he said.

Clayton laughed. "Right." He bent for a stone and threw it far into the river, the motion strong and fluid. Paul could see the athlete he might have been.

Drifting on the dunes on the other side of the sandbank, Trevor watched the birds landing on the water. Geese, crook-winged seagulls, birds he didn't know. When they landed on the water they followed no path. Even the huge white pterodactyl pelicans could come and go without leaving a trace. Around one spit of land he could see a mile down the river, n.o.body else in the world. Ahead, a long slender vase of a blue heron stood on a driftwood stump.

He stopped still. No thoughts, nothing but clean empty s.p.a.ce in his head. Then he turned around and walked back, his feet quiet on the sand. The funny little running birds left stick-man footprints on the sand so you could follow them back to the nest, but you would not because it would scare them. Trevor followed along one birdfoot trail and it led him straight to Darwin at the edge of the water.

He looked at Darwin's feet, and then up at his face.

"Let's go in," Darwin said.

It was hot, hot, and the water was running along warm over the shallows. They were all half wet from wading already. He and Trevor went in first, but Clary followed with Dolly, holding Pearce's hands between them. Lorraine stood on the sh.o.r.e, and Dolly waved back at her, beckoning. Mrs. Zenko came and put her arm around Lorraine, the light wind whipping up her short hair, the same length as Lorraine's. Silver and black; to Clary they looked like a time-lapse photo, thirty-five and seventy.

Darwin grabbed Pearce and swung him around, first into the air and then flying, diving under the surface and back up again, like a bird, Clary thought, a sea-bird used to the waves. Pearce was laughing, not at all scared. Trevor splashed deeper with Dolly until they stepped off the edge of a submerged sandbar and went under for a second-but Darwin grabbed them up and held them, one in each arm.

Downriver, Paul raised his arms in exaggerated alarm and waded into the water toward them. Clayton looked like he might follow, but his mother was calling from her willow-bush hideaway, wanting him to fix her chair, and he turned aside.

Clary cleaved through the water in Paul's direction. His face looked free, almost happy. This was the first time she had seen him happy in months-and even then, she thought, it had been dark at the time.

"Please, I don't want that carpet back!" She was desperate, suddenly, never to have it back in her house.

"No, no, I want to keep it," Paul said. "But I thought I should offer-"

Rising out of the water right behind them, Darwin hooked his foot in the back of Paul's knees, collapsing him into the water, and then pulled Clary in and under and up again, and gave her a big kiss. Then he sloshed away, back to the kids.

It was a relief to be wet all over. Clary took Paul's hand and pulled him into the current with her, in up to their waists. The river married them under the surface, the same water flowing through them.

"I will talk," he said. "Myself, my own words."

"Don't do anything different, I want what you, I mean you as-what you are. Except not to be worried, or fearful."

Oh, is that all, he thought. Well then.

"You smell good," she said. They fit together well. A driftwood stick floated by and Paul hooked it for a prop to brace them against the river current, stronger in this channel here.

"Look at them all, how big they are," Clary said, seeing the children from a perspective-creating distance. Pearce was up to Mrs. Zenko's sweater-hem already.

"Can you be friends with Lorraine now?"

"Yes." She stood straight, legs strong in the sweeping water, the sand carving away under her feet. "But I don't think I can go to church any more. That might be hard on you."

He nodded, looking down the river. "Well, you'll have to be-not be fearful either."

She touched his arm, his skin. Pretty well, she loved him.

"Did praying save her? One night, I thought my prayers were working. But they didn't work for my mother."

He poked his stick into the deepest channel, making it deeper. "I don't know," he said. "Why people die, when. I can't believe in a preordained arrangement, with death at the soul's most opportune time-or in a crafty, secretive G.o.d hunched over the plotting table in a war-room universe."

He pulled the stick downstream, winding it along, and the water followed the stick. "We're in the world. I think we are subject to the world, while we're here, and that G.o.d waits for us. That's all I can say."

"Not that prayer has no purpose," he added after a minute, looking up at her. "How could I say that? I pray constantly!"

"Yes," she said.

She bent down her head to see the shining rocks under the wavering prism of the current. Paul looked at the sky, where G.o.d was not. Or was. Mauve-tinted shafts in bright hot blue. That window opening in the sky, in the clouds: always a vision of the country of heaven.

Trevor straggled along the water's edge, maybe lonesome. Paul turned and followed down the sandbar after him. Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection. There was a beacon, wasn't there, an eternal beam? World's wild-fire, leave but ash... He sprinted ahead, tagged Trevor and raced him back to the fire.

Darwin rustled his paper bags and brought out more fruit and bags of chips, and Clary remembered the chocolate, which had melted but could be squeezed out of the wrappers straight into their mouths.

Dolly lay on her back on sand beside the umbrella shading drowsy Pearce. Above them, clouds moved over the blue. "Like a bunch of sheep," she said to Pearce. "Look! Bouncy legs, and wool!" He moved his head lazily to see around the umbrella, and pointed his finger up into the sky, but she was not sure he was seeing the same sheep she saw. Two people could never look at the sky the same way.

After one more sandwich Clayton stood up and gave his plastic net to Darwin to stick in the trash bag.

"I'm taking Mom back to town," he told Lorraine. "She's beat. These guys'll give you all a ride, right?"

Mrs. Pell was grey and sullen under her cotton hat. She had hardly spoken all afternoon. Clary and Paul said they had room for everyone, between them.

Clayton bent down to kiss Lorraine. The brim of his baseball cap got in the way; he took it off. His pale forehead under the springing hair caught her off-guard, and she kissed him back fondly.

"Later," he said.

She smiled at him, as free as ever. "See you," she said.

He turned away from them all and went back across the streams and the rough gra.s.s with his mother. Clary looked after them. Both short, one stumpy, one skinny. She'll be in a nursing home within the year, Clary bet herself, for some comfort. She poured a big gla.s.s of water for Lorraine, and one for herself. She sat in Mrs. Pell's abandoned folding chair, and let those two go.

People had drifted away from the fire. Heat still rose off the sand in wobbling waves. Near Mrs. Zenko, watching in her chair, Trevor and Pearce lay flaked out on the dune with red faces-burnt? Clary checked, but they were just red from running. Lorraine squeezed more sunscreen onto both their hands and they slathered the boys again, making them jump with the sudden cold.

"Paul needs some too, look at his neck," Lorraine said, pointing to where he and Darwin stood out in the streaming current.

"Not Darwin, though, he's impermeable."

Lorraine gave her the sunscreen and said, "What a good guy Paul is, eh? Good thing, you need some reward for taking in Mom Pell."

Clary turned her head to look at Paul. "I was-he wants to try again."

"Better get some sunscreen on him, then."

Dolly had a good big stick. She'd taken it from Pearce when he was going to poke Gran with it, and he ran off after a bird. She dragged it along the sand. It made a fine line. Swinging around in a big circle on this swath of smooth sand, she drew a huge circle on the sand, as far around as the tip of the stick could reach. She jumped outside it and stood looking at it. Her mom stopped by her and looked too.

"Looks like the world," her mom said. She borrowed the stick and sketched in continents quickly, not real ones, but to make it look more like a globe.

"Put us on," Dolly said.

Her mom drew a couple of people in the middle of the world, their arms around each other's waists. They looked st.u.r.dy, standing there together.

"Me, put me," Trevor said. He had a stick too, but Dolly batted it away, so their mom could do him.

"Let him," Lorraine said. "It's okay, it's just sand, we can smooth it over if we want."

Trevor drew himself beside the taller figure. A stick boy, waving his hand.

"That's really good," Lorraine said. It was, too, it had a weird look of Trevor. "Who else needs to go on?"

"Put Clary," Trevor said, standing back to let her do it. "And Pearce."

Lorraine added Pearce to the little group, and put Clary farther north, but facing towards them. She looked up and saw Clary and Paul talking in the water, both gazing over the river in the same direction, so she put Paul beside Clary. Might as well, whether or not. Just sand.

"Gran?" The children nodded, and she drew a sitting woman way south, in an antarctic zone, looking down. This was good. She drew in Mrs. Zenko-nice little portrait, she thought-over to the east, with her arms out, a jar in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. The kids knew her right away.

Dolly went to the other side of the globe, and said, "Fern, and Moreland, and Grace." Lorraine added them, all standing together, a barn behind them, off to the west. Then Trevor wanted Mrs. Ashby on there somewhere, and Dolly thought of Mrs. Haywood and Francine, and the southern continent filled up pretty fast. They didn't put names, but you could tell who people were by who they were standing beside, mostly.

Ann Hayter: but there was nowhere to put her. n.o.body knew where she had gone. There ought to be a moon, Dolly thought, and she drew a small one six feet away, and secretly put a little dot there for Ann. Her old Keys Books guy could be there too, he could look after Ann way out there on the icy moon.

Darwin came over to see what they were doing. He walked all the way around the circle, inspecting the people.

"Darwin!" Dolly poked her mom.

She drew in a chair at the north pole and sat Darwin in it.

"I got a good view from here," he said.

"And Dad," Trevor said, but his mom didn't draw him.

"I'll put him on the moon," Dolly said, and she drew a man standing on the moon, looking both ways, towards the world and away.

Lorraine looked at the man on the moon and laughed, and said, "Dolly, you are getting to be a good artist. That looks so much like your dad!"

"He has a hard time deciding," Trevor said.

Fern appeared over the edge of the horizon in the glowing early evening, Moreland and Grace in matching Hawaiian shirts carrying a big cooler between them. Fern's stomach was the first thing anyone could see. She was the full moon in the daylight sky.

"Pretty pleased with herself for a fallen woman," Darwin said.

Lorraine and Clary both went to meet her. How soon it must be! She was so huge! Fern kept laughing while she told them all the details of rolling baby acrobatics and no sleep, and she said right away, "The father's not interested, did Mom tell you? So no male role model, but I'm thinking my dad might be good for that, take another kick at the can, get it right this time."

Moreland had gone straight to the fire and was building it up.

"We brought marshmallows," Grace said. "Breaking the rules, I know, Darwin! And pop. And a few hot dogs-hey, I brought a pitcher of that limeade with strawberries we used to like, Clary, remember? We never did have any out at Clearwater."

"With the vodka or without?"

"Oh, without, without, because of Fern, but Moreland may have some up his sleeve. I brought blankets, too."

Grace and Clary set them out around and helped Moreland tend to the fire in case the children got cold when the sun went low, although now at eight it was still high and brilliant.

Dolly took Fern with her to see the world in sand, and she drew Fern's stomach, round as an apple, sticking out of her stick front. That made Fern laugh. Dolly thought maybe Fern would name the girl Darlene if it was a girl. Or her middle name-Rose-that would be good.

Mrs. Zenko had taken her cake out of the cake-carrier finally. Spice, Lady Baltimore, coconut...Clary craned her neck to see what kind: burnt sugar with burnt sugar icing, Clary's favourite. How could she, after an afternoon of sandwiches and chips, be so eager for a piece of cake? The burnt taste in the cake matched the fire, complicated on the tongue. Not bitter, exactly. Scorched. Once burnt, twice shy; but she did not want to be shy, she wanted to be with people.

Vestal in her white sweater, Mrs. Zenko handed around cake, bending to each person in turn. Mrs. Pell and Mrs. Zenko had both worn white today. My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes, my mother punched your mother, right in the nose-what colour was the blood? Clary's mother's blood always had to be blue in that game. Mrs. Zenko and Mrs. Pell would both be red. Soon enough, because they were getting old, their blood would still. Mrs. Pell and Mrs. Zenko in their white sweaters-who would be dead first?

Clayton ran by the duplex and left his mother dozing in the car while he packed a few things. Then he took her over to Clary's place and helped her lever herself out onto the sidewalk.

There was Clary's other car, sitting there wasting. What did she need two cars for? She was so crazy about Lorraine and the kids, let her contribute something.

"You still have that extra key I got cut for Clary's mom's car?"

She dug around in her beige purse and found it, on the old Playboy keychain.

"Don't come running to me for help," she said.

"Yeah, as if."

To prove him wrong, she pulled out her wallet and peeled apart the secret lining, and filched out four hundred-dollar bills.

"Don't say I never did nothing for you," she said.

He put the money in his pocket. "See you," he said. He threw the keys to Darwin's old beater through its window. Couldn't get far in that.

Then he walked ahead to where Clary's mother's car was parked-well over onto the old screamer's property line, right in front of his house. Clary could get away with it, just not him. Typical. He adjusted the seat to suit his legs again and drove away.

Lorraine sat with her back against a log, wrapped up in a blanket with Trevor on one side and Dolly on the other, telling them a nighttime story about camping with Rose. Clary held Pearce while he cried for a sand-sc.r.a.ped knee and for it being late, and no bottle left out here to comfort a tired boy. She rocked him slightly, slightly, the way he liked, slowing down as slowly as a cloud moving in a windless sky. At last her mind was not noisy with wanting, and her heart had satisfied its longing.

"Okay, I'm on my way," Darwin said, standing up.