A Good House (7 page)

Margaret Kemp began to come directly from work at the hardware to cook supper. She was an exceptionally tall, plain-faced, buxom woman in last year's low-heeled shoes who took care to camouflage the fullness of her figure with a slouch and close attention to dress patterns and pretty print blouses that she did not tuck into her narrow skirts. She wore just a touch of lipstick and it had never occurred to her to pluck her eyebrows. She would sometimes lick a finger to shape her brows but she would have been surprised to hear this.

Margaret dug right in. She scoured pots, scrubbed the kitchen floor on her hands and knees, stood Paul up on a kitchen chair to unscrew the ceiling light fixture so she could rinse the long-dead flies down the drain.

She could cook all right, but with no past experience judging appetites, she had a difficult time getting the quantities right. After a week of it she decided there was no such thing as too much, that whatever might be left over could be used up some other way, in a soup or a casserole or a stew. She decided better too much than too little and often she didn't have to decide anything at all because Bill's mother had sent a pot roast or someone from down the street had dropped off another ground-beef casserole.

She didn't sit down with them at the table. While Bill and the kids ate she went into the living room and found some nice music on the radio beside Sylvia's bed and then she brought basins of hot water and a washcloth and the softest of the towels, closing the door to the others and pulling the paisley drapes, turning back the sheet. When the bathing was finished she returned with a fresh basin and they washed Sylvia's hair, which had been cut short for the first time in her life and was now completely without sheen. There was always a jar of Noxzema on the table beside the bed and Margaret rubbed it on Sylvia's back and arms and legs and feet, vigorously working the skin to try to keep the circulation going.

After Sylvia was clean,
refreshed
was the word she used, she chose one of the dozen nighties she'd been given since she'd been known to be sick and the two of them got it on her. Margaret changed the bedding religiously and quickly, helping Sylvia up and over to a chair, stripping the bed and making it new in no more than a minute. Without asking anyone's permission, she brought out the best quilts, after she'd found them carefully wrapped in the linen cupboard on one of her few trips upstairs.

She cooked separately for Sylvia, holding back a little on the salt and spices as Cooper had advised. She made good cream soup, mushroom or chicken or potato, served it in one of Sylvia's china soup plates. Sometimes she made salmon croquettes or Waldorf salad, enough for the two of them and no one else.

Sylvia appreciated all of this, particularly the bathing. She said that was almost the worst of it, not being able to keep herself fresh, and she refused to let her mother or Bill or Daphne bathe her. One late afternoon, while Margaret held a large hand mirror so she could comb her wet hair into place, Sylvia said to her, “Isn't life strange?”

Margaret held the mirror steady, tried to keep her own face hidden behind it. She had no way to guess what Sylvia was going to say. She had heard that some people spoke honestly when they believed they were dying, and sometimes to near strangers. She attempted to prepare herself, wondering how she could possibly be of any help to Sylvia when she herself had no faith, no magic, no way to believe in anything except the life that was right there in front of her. All she believed, all she'd ever been able to tell herself, was, You can't know what is going to happen to you and there usually isn't much choice when it does. Of course she could be strict with herself about this, that there was nothing whatsoever to be gained by crying or complaining or quitting, but how could she say such things to this pale woman in this bed? If there were other things you could say, they were not presenting themselves today.

But it wasn't about that, not at all. When Sylvia continued she said only, “We have known each other all this time and never really been friends until now.”

Margaret put the mirror down on her lap and bravely reached to tuck a strand of hair behind Sylvia's ear. “Oh, well,” she said. “Separate lives.”

“But not now,” Sylvia said. “Not any more.”

Margaret nodded.

“I need you to help me with something,” Sylvia said. “If you could.”

“Yes,” Margaret said, anticipating something practical now.

“Some time soon this is all going to get quickly worse,” Sylvia said. “Like everyone else, I've been thinking about the kids.” She stopped for a minute to measure her words. “I'd guess Patrick will go to anger, and Paul to tears. Daphne, I just don't know. Is there any way you could…?”

“Yes,” Margaret said, not because she understood what was expected of her but only because Sylvia believed it had to be a woman, otherwise she would not have asked. And here she was, a woman. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

Margaret sometimes showed up with a few groceries and one time books from the library, some light history, a couple of dog-eared mysteries, but none of the books got read. Sylvia did ask for a good atlas, which Margaret drove into London to buy, and she spent some of her hours studying the changes in the world.

After a few weeks Margaret brought Daphne in to sit on her mother's bed and gave her the tray with the china soup plate and the silver spoon. She stood at the dusty picture window until the soup was half gone, asking Daphne questions about her schoolwork and her friends. She knew who Daphne's girlfriends were because she often saw them walking on the street together uptown, nudging shoulders as they talked, still a bit playful but serious too, newly careful with Daphne and with each other. You could see it in their posture, in their stern faces, the eyes that brazenly searched another's eyes with the promise of understanding. None of the girls came inside the house now, the farthest they could be coaxed was just inside the kitchen door, but this was easily recognized as one more clumsy, misplaced, well-meant gesture of respect.

As Daphne finished spooning the soup to her mother, Margaret wondered how the boys would feel if she sent them out to the dusty windows with some newspapers and a bucket of vinegar water and then after the dishes were cleaned up she got her Harris tweed coat and her purse, said her goodnights, and let herself out the back door.

*   *   *

THE GRANDPARENTS USUALLY
dropped in after supper, after Margaret had left. They were sometimes accompanied by one of Sylvia's brothers and his wife or by her sister from out of town or by Bill's brother from Windsor with his cheerful wife and their young children. Kitchen chairs were carried in and placed haphazardly around the room, facing Sylvia. The nieces and nephews were allowed to sit briefly on the bed to embrace their aunt and then they sprawled out on the carpet to play secret little whispering games or snap or jumping jacks.

The adults tried to talk about things Sylvia might find interesting, Sandy Koufax and the Brooklyn Dodgers, Lassie, James Dean being killed like that, but everyone listened too politely, too attentively to the speaker, almost all of them were too unnaturally quick to laugh or offer agreement. Sylvia heard their words not as sentences deliberately formed to tell a person something but as dull, one-at-a-time thuds against the dull silence that had begun to wall her in. She heard the words as small, well-meant blows against a concrete bunker. Although she did not ever ask, Could they please just shut up and go home.

Occasionally they would forget themselves and talk just to each other, for which she was occasionally grateful. The most astute among them watched her closely as they talked, recognized for what they were the small, jerking movements of her hands, the slight ducking of her head as if to avoid something flying too low above her.

Daphne decided it would be nice to use the silver tray from the buffet to serve the cookies or squares the women always brought, and Bill's father, a heavy, large-boned man who spoke slowly and loudly, made a huge fuss over her as she circled the room with the tray, said she was coming along so nicely. Sylvia's father, thin and wiry and wheezing with emphysema, paid no heed to the conventions expected of him. He cried openly and said awful heartfelt things like “You were always the strongest,” and “Half a life,” and “Why can't I be taken instead,” and always when he started the others took a deep, collective breath and prepared themselves to put an end to it.

The third or fourth time this happened Paul had to turn his suddenly streaming face to the living-room wall and, recognizing himself in his grandson, Sylvia's father left his armchair to go to Paul, making it worse. Patrick, who in just these few short months had learned to carry love as an unspeakable pressure inside himself, got up from his chair so fast he knocked it over. He took the stairs in five great leaps and slammed the bedroom door and after that night he wouldn't sit with them, would not even say hello when his grandfather came in the kitchen door.

Sylvia's mother remained stoic. A born coordinator, she discussed practical matters with Margaret to reassure herself that everything was well in hand. She took the laundry home with her because she had a new clothes dryer in her basement and she wrote the letters that had to be written to tell the news that had to be told, attempted to supervise the homework at the dining-room table. And privately but firmly she scolded Paul. “I can't abide this crying, Paul,” she said. “Not now. And trust me, there will be plenty of time for it after.”

One evening in the middle of a week when Sylvia appeared to have a resurgence of strength, she called Daphne to come into the living room alone. When the door was shut and Daphne was comfortable on the bed, Sylvia said she wanted to tell her how much she regretted that she wouldn't be around to help later, with her marriage and her babies. She lifted her hand when Daphne tried to speak, tried to say, Don't say that, Mom. Don't say that. Sylvia wanted badly to be frank, to be truthful. She wanted to say, Take your time when you think you're ready for a husband, don't just go by looks, make him talk, find out how he thinks. Or, Don't let your heart outshout your head. Or, Whatever happens to you, don't just settle. But she said what she had rehearsed.

“It seems to me that smart women look for comfort and loyalty when they're deciding on a husband and I think men want more or less the same thing. And it never hurts to have a bit of laughter thrown in.” She didn't mention the long-ago break in Daphne's jaw, or her apprehension about men whose interest might be queered by the malformed face, who might, instinctively, turn away.

“Childbirth,” she said, “isn't nearly as bad as some women will happily lead you to believe. A young body can be trusted.” She put her hands on her own distended stomach. “There are specialized muscles in there with a job to do and one job only.” She didn't say anything specific or descriptive about sex, except that Daphne shouldn't be afraid of it. “Sex is mostly just for comfort and fun,” she said. “And meant to be.”

Listening now with her eyes wide open and her hands covering her mouth, Daphne nodded and tried to lift her hands away. “I want three babies,” she said. “I'm going to have three.”

“Three is a very good number,” Sylvia said. “Tell me what you'll call them.”

“Girls will be Maggie or Jill or Paula,” Daphne said. “Boys will be David or Daniel or Michael.”

“Those are very fine names,” Sylvia said. “I like those names a lot.”

The next evening she called Patrick and Paul and Murray in and sat them down to tell them that they would soon have wives and children, which made them look down through their knees at their feet and shake their heads. Thinking about this talk all afternoon, she had known she would have to thread her way carefully between one son's rage and the other's anxious tears, and looking at them now she could see her boundaries announcing themselves in Patrick's clenched fists, in Paul's wet cheeks. What she wanted to say to them was, Take it slow, as slow as you can. And, Before you decide, have a good long look at the mother because a daughter usually turns out just the same or just the opposite. She wanted to say, Loud, silly girls often grow up to be loud, silly women, and sullen girls tend to stay sullen.

Instead, she told them, “Women expect strength from men, and gentleness and absolute loyalty. And a good ear.” She said, “You will have to work hard if you expect to raise a family.” Looking just at Patrick and Paul, meaning it as a joke, she said, “You might even have to think about giving up hockey.” Then she took the deepest breath she could take. “Of course sex is fun,” she said. “Likely, you have already discovered that. But you should try to get it into your heads that with just a little extra thought, a little extra time taken, it can be something altogether different, altogether more.” She didn't make them sit there wondering if they had to say anything back to her about any of this. She shooed them out of the room like small boys told to stay away from the creek in the spring, hoping only that she hadn't lied to them.

Bill had offered to set up a small bed for himself in an empty corner of the living room in case his rolling around in his sleep disturbed Sylvia or gave her discomfort. As proof of his consideration, he borrowed a foldaway cot from the McKellars down the street and wheeled it into the dining room where it stood ready, sheets and all, but Sylvia told him no, she didn't want that, not yet. All these months they had continued to do what they could, when they could. Cooper had told them early on and pointedly to go ahead and take whatever pleasure was available to them.

Cooper told Bill now that Sylvia was on a very high dosage, which he was more than ready to up if he became convinced she needed it. He said that death comes in different ways to different people, more ways than an average layman could imagine, and that an easy death was still possible. He said there was no reason to anticipate extraordinary pain, not with the dosage he had her on.