A Good House (11 page)

Patrick knew something was required, that he had to offer something up in return for the weight of her breasts in his hands, the strength of her legs locked behind his back, so he said he'd likely still be in school, he wanted to keep going as long as he could, so why didn't she just plan on Western? Thinking this and saying it too soon after thinking it, he was for the first time annoyed with her, and then, almost immediately, with himself.

On the way back into town from the lake his annoyance solidified and shifted and landed square in his lap. Yes, they were having a good time, and yes, he hadn't had any satisfactory action at Western, and yes, it was all normal and usual and probably expected, but there was no damn way it was going to be so thoroughly nailed down, not with him in it.

He replayed the blanket conversation in his head and then pushed back to a couple of other conversations he hadn't paid enough attention to. Now he was mad, and sitting tight beside him in the front seat of Margaret's Pontiac, Sandra picked up on his anger. She pulled away to get a good look at his face.

Almost from the beginning she had said the word
love
when there was no good reason to say it. He didn't need to hear it, he had never given her any reason to believe he needed to hear it. He thought now, turning onto her concession, that he should have told her right from the beginning that he didn't particularly like all the romantic talk, the love stuff, that he thought in fact it was a bit simple-minded.

And even at the start of this first dissolution of what he would much later in his life describe with a hard-won edge in his voice as a first affair, he knew that ending it was not going to be a cold-blooded exercise. This urge to stop her, to stop himself, was as hot as the urge to begin had been, easily as hot.

How to get it done, that was what he thought about as the summer cooled down. Fast or slow? And was there anyone to ask? Murray wouldn't know. Paul wouldn't know. But not Bill and certainly not Margaret.

*   *   *

MURRAY HAD FINISHED
the year on the dean's honour roll and he was more than happy to stay on in London at the apartment for the summer. After exams he quickly got himself a job as the night desk clerk at the Ancaster Inn out near the highway, undercutting any assumptions people might have had that he was counting on a free ride. He had never before found a job on his own, although he'd done his time in the office at the mill learning how to keep a ledger and he always helped out at Bill and Margaret's and cut the grass at home, washed the cars, sometimes washed the dishes if his mother had one of her migraine headaches.

His parents had called him every two months or so that first year to say they were coming into the city and would he like to meet them downtown at the Iroquois for dinner, and one time they'd invited Patrick and Daphne to come along too, but they never went near the residence and they didn't have many questions. They were content to let him manage the details of his life on his own. When he told them about the desk clerk job, they both said that sounded fine. His mother said he would get to meet people he perhaps wouldn't get to meet otherwise and his father said working with the public was valuable experience for anyone.

He'd got lucky with his residence roommate, a studious Jewish guy from Toronto named Geoff whose marks hadn't been high enough for U of T, but who wanted to transfer there after first year if he could pull it off. Geoff studied all the time, was devoted to his books, asked for and got Murray's help with some of his essays. His father was a big-name journalist who had covered the war in France and Italy and then in the Philippines, and although his expectations never left the room, Geoff didn't see him because he still had to be out of the country a lot, even in peacetime. He just couldn't take the time to visit, understandably. Geoff said his father had a million stories, fantastic stories, and he tracked him through the world not by the pieces he wrote for newspapers but by the postcards taped above his bed, a small but growing gallery of exotic locales with the private, scribbled messages turned to the wall. He went home with Murray and Patrick a few times for the weekend and occasionally they hauled him down to the Ceeps for a wasted evening, buying him beer and telling him his skin was turning a putrid green from too much time at the books, that he'd never get laid if he didn't put out at least a bit of effort. They won't come to you, they told him, all the pretty horses.

Pretty horses notwithstanding, Geoff's marks had been high enough for the desired transfer to U of T and after they were packed up he'd offered Murray his hand and thanked him for the help with the essays and told him if he was ever in Toronto, if he ever needed anything at all, to look him up, for sure.

In June, almost comfortable with his desk clerk job, Murray agreed at the last minute to book a night off sick so he could go home to take Daphne to her high school formal. She hadn't really explained herself when she called to ask him so he assumed her on-again, off-again nonsense with Roger Cooper had left her stranded with a new dress and no date. At the dance, feeling a bit out of it, he spent perhaps too much time standing under the streamers talking to the teachers, but they had a nice time, Daphne told him she'd had a really nice time. And she got to show off the dress, which he understood to be the purpose of the exercise.

He drove home whenever he had a few days free to see everyone. When Margaret began to really show, it seemed all right to say something so he told her she looked great. She continued to make him feel welcome, setting a place for him at the table without making a big deal about it. Once she took his hand and brought it to her stomach so he could feel the soft punch of what she said was probably an elbow or a foot or a baseball bat.

At the Ancaster Inn he hardly saw anyone after midnight. He learned to put the registrations and the receipts in order for the bookkeeper and to clean up any mistakes made during the day shifts, which were the busy shifts. He always had a novel under way. Over the summer he went through all of Faulkner and then Steinbeck, ignoring Hemingway because even though Hemingway was supposed to have been a journalist and Murray was interested in journalism, from what he'd heard he was pretty sure he wouldn't like the fiction. He wasn't all that drawn to the tough stuff, the bulls and balls.

He didn't see many of the motel's usual clientele, the families. By the time he came on they were all tucked in for the night and when he left at dawn they were still sleeping or just up, just getting organized to go back on the road. He did see the evidence of a few obviously illicit affairs, men who registered late and alone and good-looking women who walked out through the lobby quickly in the middle of the night.

And he met Crystal, his first high-class hooker, a long-legged bottle redhead in very expensive clothes who arrived at the inn every three weeks through the summer on the arm of a man who called himself Mr. Crystal, who was her manager, her pimp. Mr. Crystal was a slight, boisterous man in a high-gloss white summer suit. When they registered he always left his mauve Lincoln Continental under the awning out front with the keys in it, running, and he always took two connecting rooms.

Crystal was a busy lady. All of her calls came in through Murray, through the switchboard which looked just like he had imagined a switchboard would look and which he'd almost mastered by the end of the summer. Sometimes, wide awake and brisk in the middle of the night, she would call down to the desk for tea and a muffin or something. There were no busboys on after midnight and, except for the calls prompted by the presence of Crystal herself, the switchboard was pretty quiet, so Murray would go into the kitchen and make her a pot of tea and grab a muffin or a Danish and take them down the inside corridor to her room. Eddie, the second-in-command maintenance man, would sometimes be in the kitchen with a couple of his crew, eating yesterday's Danish, drinking coffee, and they would razz him, tell him he should demand a real good tip from a woman that well off.

Twice Crystal called down for two pots of tea and Murray found her sitting in a negligee talking to Mr. Crystal, who was always, at least any time Murray saw him, dressed in his classy white suit.

One night she opened the door wrapped in a peach see-through nightie thing with a thick ridge of fluffy feathers at the cuffs, the kind of thing Doris Day might wear to seduce Gordon MacRae. She sat down on the bed to watch Murray put the tray down and when he turned to look at her, not expecting a tip or anything, just looking, she patted the bed with her stubby fingers. He could see her jewellery on the bedside table, a watch surrounded with a heavy circle of diamonds and several large rings that looked cheap but likely weren't. When she asked, clearly making it a question, “Take a load off?” he could feel quarts of blood rushing up through his neck to fill his face. Then she said, “I guess not,” and smiled a coy, almost kind smile. He saw when she smiled that she might be older than she looked.

They checked out a few days after her offer, moving on to Windsor or Toronto or some other city on their circuit. Mr. Crystal paid the bill with cash and handed Murray a crisp ten for all his trouble.

When they returned for another week at the end of the summer, and Crystal patted the bed again, Murray set the tray down on the small table by the window, locked all the doors, and climbed in beside her fully dressed, leaving the front desk unprotected and soon entirely forgotten. Unbuttoning his shirt, Crystal told him this one was on the house, because he had been such a sweetheart, such a darling. When he was naked, and shivering, she laughed a little and called him very fine, a fine specimen indeed. If she guessed it was his first real time, she didn't let that spoil things. Halfway through, he decided that she most certainly was older than she looked and that this was not a bad thing but a good thing. She didn't always wait for him to think of things to do and when she was finished with him he was almost laughing too, because now he knew, oh yeah, now he had the inside information.

*   *   *

IN JULY, DAPHNE
got a job cooking at the drive-in restaurant out near the golf course and soon she couldn't eat much of anything, couldn't stand the smell of meat especially. At home Margaret fixed her cold plates, devilled eggs and cottage cheese and jellied fruit salads and marshmallows rolled in toasted coconut. Already feeling puffed up and clumsy with her pregnancy, she made the same plate for herself and by the end of the summer she said she felt much better.

Daphne had been briefly embarrassed about Margaret's condition, mainly because at forty-two her eggs would probably be stale or at least no longer in their prime, which was exactly the reason not many women that old had babies. Not many women that old even got married. But she didn't say anything because it wasn't really her business and anyway what could she say? Have a nice baby?

After a month of Margaret's cold plates, she dropped down to just over a hundred pounds and stayed there so the next time she drove over the Bluewater Bridge to Port Huron on a shopping trip with her friend Catharine she bought a black two-piece bathing suit, black to show off her tan, two-piece to show off her small midriff.

Climbing up after her onto the raft that was always anchored in front of Doc Cooper's cottage, Roger Cooper told Daphne that he really liked the bathing suit but missed her old breasts. When she stretched out to sunbathe and didn't laugh or even smile he said of course it didn't matter, he understood, he understood completely.

Daphne had started to go out with Roger, who was a grandson to Doctor Cooper, in October of grade eleven. Roger was someone to want, someone to be pleased about getting. She had no idea why he'd asked her out, but if she'd had to guess she would have guessed that Doc Cooper, who had been at their house so often that spring, must have mentioned her name somehow.

Roger wasn't tall but he was on the hockey team and the basketball team anyway because he was muscular and fast and accurate under pressure. He was handsome in a Montgomery Clift kind of way, dark, slick, very blue eyes. And he had nice square shoulders. If anyone had been asked to name just five guys in grade thirteen, Roger would have got named.

Daphne was not one of the grade-eleven girls who would have got named. But now she knew about some of the things she thought her mother likely couldn't make herself say that night in the living room. She assumed that Patrick and Paul and Murray would be the same as Roger, anxious with their hands, eager with their tongues, quiet when they wanted something. Why wouldn't they be?

She had not needed Murray's help with grade eleven. He'd started her off with some useful habits when she was in grade nine, how to set logical priorities, when to bluff it through, when to dig deeper, when to quit. Occasionally, if he was home for the weekend, he still sat down with her at the dining-room table after Sunday lunch, leafing through her notebooks the way a teacher would. She told him twice that she didn't appreciate this and when she finally told him please don't do it any more, that she was getting first-class honours on her own, thank you, he quickly lifted his hands up and away from her work and pushed back his chair. He said he knew she didn't need him, he was just curious.

In March, she did go into London with Murray's parents for dinner at the Iroquois. The McFarlanes picked her up at home in their Buick, Mr. McFarlane knocking gently on the kitchen door, Mrs. McFarlane sitting patiently in the driveway. She had agreed to go partly because she had always thought they must be lonely, just the three of them, and partly because Margaret said what reason did she have to refuse? She wore the deep green wool dress that Margaret had given her for Christmas and she had to wear her duffel jacket over it because she had no good coat but Margaret said it wouldn't matter, there would be a coat check any place the McFarlanes ate and she would leave her jacket there, before she went into the restaurant.