Good To A Fault Part 8

"We met in church this morning," she said, putting out her hand to shake his, giving him the dignity of an ordinary person. She kept her voice carefully unjudgmental, not to betray to Lorraine how drunk he had been. He reached forward and took her hand, his big brown hand swallowing up hers.

"Church?" Lorraine said, and Darwin raised his eyebrows high.

"Me?" he asked.

She blinked. At the sound of his easy voice she realized that it could not have been him, how could she have thought so? It was the same kind of hat, a black rumpled jacket. Not surprising, if he'd been here all night. But she could have sworn-she felt a blush flood up from her neck to her hair. She had been so cool and gracious and proud of her compa.s.sion. She tried to let his hand go, but he held on little longer, smiling, and gave her the orange chair.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought..." She couldn't go on. I thought you were a derelict, I thought I would keep your shabby secret. Her scalp was hot.

"Everybody always knows me," he said. "I have Face Number 3." He was younger than Lorraine. He had the biggest head she'd ever seen on a human being.

Lorraine was overflowing with happiness. "You kill me," she said. "Church!" She pulled her eyes away from Darwin and turned to Clara. "How're the kids doing?"

"Trevor and Dolly are well." She hoped it was it all right to say Dolly, if that was Lorraine's own pet name for her.

Lorraine didn't seem to care. "What about Pearce?"

"Happy enough-he's too young to tell us that he's missing you," Clara said. "Clayton found Darwin, you know. How many places did he have to try, Darwin?"

Darwin had tipped back in his chair, looking out the big window. "He must have called all over," he said.

Still off balance, Clara tried not to stare at him. Had it been him?

"He caught me up at Fort Smith, I'd been up there working a couple weeks."

"Too long, Darwin," Lorraine said. "I missed you too much."

He kissed her hand. Clayton had done that too, Clara remembered. Clayton had darted down and stabbed at her fingers with his lips; Darwin brought her hand up and met it, kissing the heel of her palm and holding it to his cheek for a moment. Clara had always wished for a brother.

"You enjoying the kids?" Darwin asked.

She nodded, and tried to be more sociable. "We all went to the grocery store, it was an adventure for me."

"This is such a good day!" Lorraine said, rearranging herself in the bed. "First time you ever had three kids in a grocery store, eh? You don't need to say another thing."

"Well, Mrs. Pell came too."

Lorraine looked alarmed. "Did you check her pockets?"

Clara didn't understand.

"She shoplifts," Lorraine said. "Three convictions in Winnipeg. Her case worker was so mad."

Clara said nothing. I am such a fool, she thought.

"She's off probation now, or we wouldn't have taken her out of the province. The lady she was living with, Mrs. Lyne, she kind of threw her out."

Darwin groaned.

"Well, Clayton couldn't just leave her."

Clara nearly laughed at that, but her stomach was too unsettled. She remembered the clanking in Mrs. Pell's coat climbing into the car after the grocery store. She could see the manager following them-Fisher Jr., from church. Oh G.o.d.

She looked up, and thought she saw in Darwin's face that he was laughing at her. Enough. She stood quickly. "The children-my neighbour is too kind already, and I've left them with her."

Darwin said, "I'll walk out with you." The last thing she wanted. He was already kissing Lorraine, and at the door.

"Thanks," he said, as they reached the lobby.

For what? She pressed the b.u.t.ton for the elevator. She couldn't meet his eyes, having mistaken him for a drunk.

"You're doing a great thing, here. Big job, taking on three kids."

Clara nodded. She was still smarting too much about Mrs. Pell to cover his thanks with mannerly protests.

"I haven't been much help to her these last few years. Been moving around a lot."

The elevator was taking forever.

"She's bad, isn't she?"

Clara looked up. "Have you talked to the doctor? Or did she tell you?"

"I talked to the nurse while she was asleep, and Clayton. He must have spent a bundle on phone calls. He says she's dying. Couldn't handle it, he said." No censure in Darwin's face about that. Clayton couldn't take cancer, like other people couldn't take the sight of blood.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"He wouldn't say. Around, I guess. He phone you?"

She nodded. The fear from that call was draining away. Had to, she thought, to make room for Mrs. Pell's shoplifting. Her hands dewed with sweat again at the image of Mrs. Pell getting caught, with all the children standing there, and everyone so surprised that it would be Clara Purdy-George Purdy's daughter!-in charge of her.

Darwin got into the elevator with her. "She needs a sleep. I'd like to see the kids."

"Oh," Clara said. "Of course."

The elevator sank to the ground, and they sank too.

10. Bunk beds.

Trevor was shy of Darwin until Dolly ran past him and got twirled in the air and pulled Darwin to show him Mrs. Zenko's kitchen, plastic containers everywhere from their bath. Trevor had been looking forward to fitting them back into their intricate nests in the bottom drawer.

"You can finish these after supper," Mrs. Zenko whispered to him. She picked up his kangaroo jacket from the chair, slipped it on swoop, there, done, the tidy way she did everything, and zipped it up for him. "You go enjoy your uncle, he looks like good fun to me."

She nipped his earlobe with her two first fingers and gave him a big container of tarts, like the witch with the gingerbread house, only not wicked. She was so little and compact, like a grandmother in a book. He wanted to carry her in his pocket.

His own Gran was more of the bad witch, or the wolf. "n.o.body saw fit to tell me where you'd all gone," she was complaining to Clary when they went through to their yard. Darwin gave her a hug and said Clayton wanted to know was she okay, but she went off in a bad mood to watch TV.

After Trevor and Dolly took him for a quick tour round the house, Darwin offered to make scrambled eggs, his specialty, while Clara bathed the baby. Especially after Clayton's hostility, Darwin's undemanding friendliness was a relief. And Dolly was so happy to see him.

"We can make a bed for you here too," Clara said, when she brought Pearce into the kitchen for supper. "There's the bas.e.m.e.nt but I'm afraid it's only roughed-in down there, and a bit cold."

"I'm going back to the hospital," he said. "The nurse said she'd give me a cot. I think Lorraine could use someone there overnight."

Clara was ashamed. She should have thought of that herself.

"You couldn't," he said. "You're looking after the kids so Lorraine doesn't worry about them. But can I have a nap here tomorrow? A good dark bas.e.m.e.nt-I can catch some sleep in the afternoon."

While the others were finishing supper, Clara took Pearce to Mrs. Pell's room to find that special soother she was always boasting of. The room was a pigsty.

Holding Pearce up against her chest with one arm, she rummaged through the mess on the dresser and the bedside table. Nothing. Fallen into the wastebasket? She squatted down in one smooth slide, keeping Pearce vertical, and sifted through the basket gingerly. No soother. But two empty bottles of Benadryl. Three. In a wastebasket that had been empty last Sunday. Clara stood up, her head pounding with the effort, clutching the third bottle. 0-6 mos., teaspoon. 7-12 mos., 1 teaspoon. She knew perfectly well what Mrs. Pell had been doing, and she wanted to kill the old harpy.

Mrs. Pell croaked from the doorway, "You take him in with you, see how you like it."

"Yes," Clara said. "I will."

"You'd be amazed at how many people do it," Dr. Hughes said, his tone calm enough to rea.s.sure Clara. "I've been tempted myself, on a long night. You check the dosage, you think how nice a little sleep would be...No real harm to the baby, but let's change the arrangements, no?"

"I kept him with me last night. I can look after him."

She felt her whole head hot and swollen, her neck swelling like it might burst, with the shame and horror of not having noticed this before. And it had been a long night out there in the living room with a wide-awake baby. Things would have to change.

Pearce batted the stethoscope dangling in his view. He was a good weight and size for his age. His birthday was on the health card-September 10th. Dr. Hughes admired his st.u.r.dy legs, and the way he stood holding onto the desk chair, joggling slightly as if there was music they couldn't hear and grinning at them with his wide, drooling mouth.

"More teeth coming there," the doctor said. "You may be using that special soother after all." But he was joking. She knew him well enough to smile and shake her head. Pearce grabbed the stethoscope again, but Dr. Hughes caught it in time.

Dolly and Trevor would be all right with Mrs. Zenko for another hour. Clara stopped at the mall, where the BUNK BED SALE sign had been up for a month. Strange, she thought, to have noticed that sign long before she could ever conceivably have had a use for bunk beds.

They cost more than she thought they should, even on sale. But she had money lying useless in the bank, and something had to be done. Duvet covers were two-for-one. She popped Pearce into a handy crib to keep him happy while she flipped through the colours. When she turned back, he was tracing the outline of a bear with one finger, singing to it. So she bought the crib, too, and paid extra to have the whole shebang delivered right away.

Darwin came back from the hospital in time to help Clara move the pull-out couch out of the TV room, and the single bed into it. It wouldn't be Clayton's room any more. They abandoned the heavy couch in the kitchen doorway till they could think how to get it down the stairs. Mrs. Pell sat stony in the living room through the upheaval. Clara had moved the television in there, onto the carpet. How horrified she would have been, even last week, to think of the TV in the living room-but it was only pretension to hide it, as if they were too cultured to watch.

This was going to be much better! Clara had a bubble of joy in her chest, even in the middle of the chaos, because now the children would be across the hall from her, and she'd be in her bed again. The crib would fit under the window in her room, close enough that she could reach out and touch Pearce's hand through the bars, to rea.s.sure him.

And Mrs. Pell would be safely stashed in the little room, farther away. She was easy to dislike: surly, criminal, sly; but Clara could not be bothered. New things! Since her mother's death Clara had been clearing things out, not bringing things in.

Mrs. Zenko came across before noon, just as the delivery truck pulled up, and led the children out the back and through the hedge to give them some lunch at her place. Darwin talked the delivery guys into carrying the couch to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and then Clara asked them to bring the small bureau in from the garage, for the television to sit on. She tipped them $20 each and they walked out, slapping Darwin on the back.

And of all the days, Paul Tippett drove up as the delivery van pulled away.

"I thought I should render an account of my visit to your friend," he told Clara in his shy, stilted way, climbing the steps. "But perhaps this is not a good time..."

Dusty and giddy, Clara couldn't stop herself from repeating, "Render an account?"

He laughed at himself, dutifully. "Well. I thought you'd like to hear how it went."

"I would," she said, sorry to have mocked him. "Come in, we're moving furniture, please come in. Oh, this is Lorraine's brother, Darwin."

Paul shook Darwin's hand. "Of course," he said.

Darwin gave him a grin and a thumbs-up and went down to sleep on the demoted pull-out couch.

Clara drew Paul down the hall to see the bunk beds, still in pieces. He unfolded the cryptic instructions and squatted down in the middle of the rubble as if he was finally home. She offered to make coffee and he nodded, immersed already. But he called her back to hold the first headboard steady while he fit the supports into slot B, and by the time they had managed to put the beds together properly and went back for it, the coffee was stone cold. Paul put it in the microwave without even asking her.

"I'll make fresh," she said, shocked at the idea of microwaved coffee.

"It's the way I like it," he said. "I make a pot in the morning in the church office, but I'm the only one there most of the time, so I reheat it all day."

Clara was about to ask why he didn't go to the good coffee place beside the church, but remembered in time that of course he didn't make enough money for lattes and Americanos.

"Good thing you happened to come over today," she said, instead.

He took his cup out of the microwave and went back down the hall to the new children's room. She thought he had not heard her, and she followed to say again, "Good that you chose today-"

"My wife left this morning," he said.

He put his cup down carefully on the dresser and opened the exacto knife to slit the plastic on the first mattress. It made a satisfying zipping sound as it ripped.

"Where's she off to?" Clara asked, before she realized that it could not be a trip. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, idiotically.

Paul laughed slightly again, that deprecating, priestly laugh he used to make people more comfortable. Clara was sorry to have occasioned it twice in one visit.

"No-yes, she's left me," he said. "Everyone will know, soon enough."

"I'm sorry," Clara said.

"Well. I'm sorry about it too." He took the corner of the mattress cover she handed him, and they fitted it around the square edges of the new mattress.

When Paul stood up from stretching the last corner he cracked his head on the upper bunk, and yelped. He smacked his hand to the b.u.mp and ground it around, as if to smear the pain away.

"Ice?" Clara asked.

"Ow. No. Thank you. It's making my eyes water," he said, and he sat down on the edge of the bed.

She sat beside him. "How long were you married?"

"Twenty years next May. A long stretch," he said, thinking of an elastic band pulled all that time, getting thinner and thinner. How it would hurt when it snapped on the fingers.

An egg had bulged on his forehead. Instead of bustling off to fetch ice or rubbing alcohol as he would have expected, Clara sat still beside him.

"Are you heartbroken?" she asked.

He bent his head toward his knees. "I think I'm stomach-broken, more than anything. I threw up after she left, and again after lunch. Do you think that's normal?"

"I felt terrible when my husband left me," Clara said. "Physically. I lay in bed for days. It was an ache in my chest. I thought I was dying."