Good to a Fault (19 page)

A
fter a good supper on Saturday night Paul and Dolly stood washing dishes, looking out at the back garden: Trevor and Mrs. Zenko tossing the ball to bounce between them, bonk, bonk; Mrs. Pell in the rocker. The low-angled sun caught on fractured surfaces of yellow leaves and glass and droplets of water, the sun like God walking in the garden, touching everything.

“This is my favourite line of Paul’s,” Paul said to Dolly. She thought he meant of his own. He handed her a wet plate. “St. Paul. My namesake, or rather I am his.
For all that may be known of God by man lies plain before their eyes, God himself has disclosed it to them.
”

Dolly watched his mouth while he spoke, as if that might make it clearer. She loved the way he talked, and his beige mouth, that hardly had any lips until he smiled.

“
His everlasting power and deity have been visible ever since the world began, to the eye of reason, in the things that he has made.
To the eye of reason—to someone who thinks about what she observes, like you do.” He smiled at her, his nose stretching down. That’s right about me, Dolly thought. I think
about what I see. The plate was polished, so she added it to the stack on the table behind them.

Clary went through with Pearce under one arm, on the way to changing him, and lifted the clean plates up into the cupboard as she went. She was getting muscles from doing two things at once. She hefted Pearce higher and went on to the bedroom, where a neat pile of diapers and all the proper changing things pleased her as much as the muscles. It was orderly, and she had ordered it this way. Pearce stared up at the ceiling, at the glints of sun making arrows of burning gold. His mouth curved into an awed gasp that made Clary’s heart swoop with almost-painful love. Showing his teeth, five little white spades. Trevor’s new teeth stood like Chiclets in his mouth, she had to take him to the dentist. Dolly too, and Mrs. Pell—Clary fell into grim contemplation of whether Mrs. Pell’s teeth were her responsibility too. Was there was some kind of seniors’ welfare program for dentistry? “There must be something,” she told Pearce, taping him up snugly.

His feet beat at her abdomen, his fists hurled lightning bolts at the sky, or at least the gold-charged ceiling, and when she picked him up he twisted his head to a horrifying angle so he could still stare upwards, until she had to see the flooding light that he was seeing. All the things she wouldn’t notice without the children to point at them like hunting dogs.

She called out the window to Trevor, who had started up the big birch tree. They hadn’t had dessert. “Trev! Tre-ev!” she called, singing out to get his attention. “Ice cream?”

He slithered down the tree, leaving a green mark where his heavy new runners skidded, which Mrs. Pell crabbed across the grass to fuss over. Ice cream would lure her out of the garden too, Clary knew. One day last week Mrs. Pell had eaten six ice cream bars. Clary could imagine her huddled near the basement freezer, poor Gollum hugging his ring to his chest, ice cream hard for those old precarious teeth.
Oh Mrs. Pell, you are too hard for me,
Clary sang inside her head.

She was cheerful, because Paul was here, and she thought she had not been wrong about those raspberries. Darwin was going to take the children for a walk before bed. She would hold on to Pearce, he could take the others.

They were happy to go, they came leaping into the front hall, hearing
Darwin ready at the door. Trevor pushed his hands against the door frame and dashed back again and down the basement stairs to get the new bag of ice cream bars; he even knew in which corner of the freezer they lay waiting. He grabbed their jackets from the landing halfway up the stairs because Clary would say they needed them. Dolly wanted Paul to go for the walk with them, but Darwin said, “No, he has to finish the dishes, and then he has to make Clary stay in the garden and do nothing. It’s a big responsibility but I believe he is up to the task.”

He handed Paul a six-pack of beer in bottles, which made Paul laugh for some reason, and then they slid out the front door into the long evening sunshine. Trevor and Dolly ate their ice cream as they walked. Darwin would pounce on one or the other bar to take a wolfish bite, but they would pull the bars away just in time and he never got any. He doesn’t mind anyway, Trevor told himself, although he felt a bit bad that Darwin didn’t get one. There were fewer in the bag than Clary had thought there were, so she didn’t get one either. Or Paul, neither. Either. Only the kids did. Fair enough.

T
here was a girl in Grade 3 whose mother was dead. People’s mothers die. Dolly could not even stand to look at her. In assembly when they talked about about car accidents or crossing safety everybody would stare at her, because her mother had been killed by a drunk driver, and then the girl, whose name was Janine (but Dolly did not want to know it, did not want to see her face), would stare back at everybody, her eye twitching, which made Dolly want to throw up. She crossed the hall to avoid Janine, held back in line never to be next to her, as if she might catch it. That was stupid but she could not stand near her. Janine’s mother was dead, already dead.

Dolly put her head down and read. She stuck her book inside her language arts book, and she whipped through her math so she could read, the book under the desk and the textbook on top. She read
Mistress Masham’s Repose
as hard as she could. She did not mind reading about Maria whose mother was dead too, because it was in a book, and it was away from here. And it was pretend.

When she opened the front door, coming in with the groceries on Thursday, the house smelled bad. Clary was shocked. Everything had gone to hell in a
handcart again. Maybe she’d skimped, aiming for the false bishop’s deadline. Maybe it was harder than she’d allowed for, to keep three children and an old woman fed and clothed and reasonably clean.

The living room had not been picked up since the morning rush; toys and pyjamas were scattered over every surface. Useless to expect Mrs. Pell ever to lift a finger. Clary had the baby seat in one hand and six bags of groceries in the other, and Trevor trailing behind, tired and whiney. Dolly was due home any minute, and then it would be time for supper, and then homework—she put a video in and propped Pearce in front of it while she tidied up.

Trevor kept playing with Pearce’s hand, tapping on it no matter where he moved it, until Pearce was screaming with annoyance. Then she saw Trevor lean over and deliberately poke a finger in Pearce’s eye, and lost her temper in one furious shout: “
Trevor!
”

He flicked his eyes toward her and hid his hand under the cushion. Pearce wailed and collapsed, gibbering like a tragic old man, rubbing at his eye. When Clary bent to pick him out of the seat he swatted her away, curling more ferociously into his seat. She picked him up anyway, a squalling fiddle-head, and realized that he had a filthy diaper.

“You must not hurt Pearce. I’ll be back to talk to you in a minute,” she said to Trevor in a weighty voice which made him start crying loudly.

When Dolly came home, late, she banged the front door loudly enough to wake Pearce from a grouchy sleep. Trevor was still sobbing as he watched
Dumbo
, and Clary had reached a pitch of extreme annoyance as she circled the living room picking up what seemed to be every single article of clothing the children had. Dolly dumped her muddy knapsack on the living room carpet and announced that she had to have $15 for the field trip by tomorrow, or she would be the only person in school who didn’t get to go, and that Mrs. Kernaghan had kept her in and given her an X in organization. She headed for the basement in her dirty shoes, giving Trevor an idle swat as she went by.

Crossing the living room in a flash, Clary grabbed Dolly’s arm, snatched the shoes off her feet and threw them to the doormat.

“No hitting in this house!” she said, much more loudly than she’d intended.

She marched Dolly into the children’s room and stood outside the closed door to listen for any weeping or swearing she might give vent to. When noth
ing came, Clary went back to deal with Trevor and Pearce, hating herself, her own mean old voice and bad temper, as much as these horrible children.

Things went downhill from there.

The one comfort was that Darwin wasn’t home; he had started working odd days for one of Moreland’s pals, and must have gone straight from the hospital to work. Mrs. Zenko was visiting her daughter in Winnipeg, so there was no witness to Clary’s complete failure as even a surrogate mother.

She stood by the stove, stirring cheese sauce into whole-wheat macaroni, listening to Trevor and Dolly bicker over which cartoon they should watch. The noise was unbearable. She snapped the set off.

“Enough,” she said, staring into their frightened eyes. She was a monster.

She whipped the macaroni off the stove and peeled carrots briskly into the sink, a monster of cold efficiency, at least. When she put supper in front of them they ate quietly. Even Pearce was listless and subdued. Mrs. Pell had been pretending to be sick for a few days, so Clary took a supper tray out to her. The walk across the garden cooled her spirit enough that she could knock civilly and wait for Mrs. Pell to grunt “What?” before she opened the door.

A terrible mess out here too, visible even in the dim light. All Clary’s bad temper swept back like a wave going over her head. She put the tray down and left, wanting to shriek. This would be intolerable in serious winter, catering to that lazy old boot out here, shovelling a path back and forth, snow boots and parkas all over the house, plugging in the car—lugging the car seat in and out at forty below, dealing with cantankerous cabin-bound awful children. Everything was too much for her.

She could not do this any more.

Her head hurt with the effort of not thinking how stupid she had been to take all these people on, how bad she had proven to be at all this. But there was no way to get out of it.

That night Pearce couldn’t settle. At midnight Clary sat up in a frustrated rush, picked him up out of the crib and took him into bed with her. He rolled sideways between the pillows and squirmed himself into a comfortable position, leaving her not quite enough room on the edge of the bed. She sighed and turned off the light again.

She must have fallen asleep, but Pearce’s fever woke her, heat coming off him in rolling clouds. She crawled out of bed, sore and stiff, got the infant Tylenol, and managed to get some of it to stay in his unwilling mouth until he had to swallow. The sheets would be sticky, but she could change them tomorrow. The medicine seemed to work, he was cooler quickly.

They drowsed off again, Pearce curled into the curve of Clary’s arm. But there was a noise—Clary sat up, and was down the hall in an instant.

Trevor had thrown up from the top bunk. Whole-wheat macaroni, Clary thought. What is the harm in plain white macaroni, for God’s sake? I should have known they were ill when they were behaving so badly. Trevor was sitting upright, gasping, and Clary put her hand on his ankle to keep him calm.

“Here, Trevor, I’m here. I’ll get you down in a minute, let me get a towel.”

In the bottom bunk, Dolly was hot and damp, but fast asleep. Clary came back quickly with towels and paper towels, mopped up what she could and stripped the bunk, and then helped Trevor down and took him to the bathroom, wrapped up safe. She rolled his pyjama top so she could pull it over his head without getting any more mess on him. Nothing in his hair, thank goodness. She washed his face and dried him gently.

“Stand still, sweetheart,” she said, “Till I get you clean jammies.”

All the while Clary re-dressed him Trevor wept, saying, “I miss my mom,” which he had not allowed himself to say before. He said he missed his dad, too, and Clary had not heard him mention Clayton until then. But by the time he was cleaned up Trevor was happy enough to chew a Tylenol and crawl into Clary’s bed. He fit himself snugly against Pearce and fell asleep almost right away, and Clary got in too, in the space left on the other side of Pearce.

Five minutes later Dolly came in.

“Our room smells,” she said. There was room beside Trevor, if Dolly lay on her side. That was the most comfortable way. She was asleep again before Clary could get pills, and when she touched Dolly’s forehead it seemed a little less hot.

Clary lay in the dark deciding not to cry. She reached out and turned the alarm off. Nobody would be going to school. It was all school’s fault, the germs the children got there.

At 8 a.m. Mrs. Pell stuck her old turkey head through the bedroom door, looking for breakfast. By then Clary had a raging headache and a fever herself. She waved a hand toward the kitchen and let Mrs. Pell go off and make whatever mess she liked. The bedroom was dim and cool, and the children were sound asleep.

Clary managed another hour’s sleep before Darwin came knocking at the door with a cardboard cup of coffee.

“Pretty cozy in here,” he said.

Clary could only keep one eye open at a time, but there were still three children with her, and they were all breathing. Nobody had thrown up in the bed. All you could ask for.

Mrs. Pell checked the mailbox while the whole boiling of them were still sleeping. Finally! Miss Bossy Clara might have made her pay rent out of it. $446. It was a start.

She put on her shoes and set off down the street, turtle-pace on cramped feet, lists curling in her mind: mint chocolate cookies, teabags, smoked oysters. Cheque every month! One thing she needed: a little wire cart with wheels, or plastic like that Mrs. Zenko had. And these shoes were killing her. That doctor hadn’t even looked at her feet, and damned if she was going to say anything. She dawdled along the windows of the bargain store. Why not? A barette with a rainbow on it for Dolly. A Maple Leafs baseball cap for Trevor; her brothers had liked the Leafs on the radio. Nothing for Pearce, Clara was spoiling him already. In a tangled basket Mrs. Pell found a locket that opened up double to make four places for pictures. $1.99, you couldn’t beat that. A bent book of household cleaning tips in the bargain bin. That’d do for Clara. She stumped home.