Duet for Three (6 page)

They weren't teasing today. They were a bit stiff, too, as if she were a different person now, unfamiliar, someone's wife and no longer their daughter or sister.

The back of the buggy was filled with her trunk and their wedding gifts. “Goodbye, then, girl,” said her father, lifting her up beside the waiting teacher, who was something of a cipher in all this. In a moment of panic, she almost leaped down, an impulse to run away. But she knew what it was. “Bride's jitters,” her mother had predicted, and so she took herself in hand.

She turned in her seat to look back. There was the familiar green and gold of the land; the short, plump, brown-and-grey-haired mother, in her best dress today; her stiff, bulky father; her brothers, both uncomfortable in their Sunday suits; Sylvia and her husband; and little Edith: all waving, as she waved back.

They vanished at the bend in the lane, Edith leaping up and down as if she were trying to keep them in view a little longer. And that was that.

And this was it. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

Facing ahead, it began to seem real. The muscles of the trotting horse rippled like those on the sort of man she had once assumed she would marry. But now she and the teacher were going somewhere. There was a new, unknowable life down the road. Home and the people there were far behind.

And oh, she must be a foolish old woman, to find herself missing them now. All the noises, of people laughing and talking, and the sounds of crickets and cattle; the smells, of cooking vegetables and steaming cowshit, skunk reek in the dusk and hot pie shells and boiling dates, all the heat contained in that old house.

Also, it is no doubt ridiculous, but sometimes she longs for her mother. She would like to be rocked in her mother's lap, her head on her mother's shoulder, her knees drawn up, being comforted.

But she is not small, and cannot curl up on anyone's lap, for comfort or anything else. Her mother is dead, and she herself is old, and her own daughter has never shown a sign of desiring an embrace.

SIX

June's dream of heaven is of rising, weightless, through clouds to a golden place. Angels, just the way they look in pictures, with their white robes and golden haloes and luxuriant feathered wings, will drift toward her. She will see, beyond them, her father glancing up. Slightly surprised, he will smile, the way he used to coming through the door at nights, and then step lightly toward her. He will take hold of her hands and because he is strong, or because she is weightless, he will swing her off her feet, around and around, hair and legs flying, hands gripped firmly in his so that she can't fall and hurt herself. They will both be laughing and dizzy. When he sets her down, he will say, “So, bunny, what have you been doing?”

Well, that's a child's sort of fancy, and she is no child. Heaven will not, of course, be so undignified. But still.

She will rise weightless through clouds to a golden place. Angels will greet her, and beyond them she will see her father looking up. He will step lightly toward her, take her hands and smile, gently and sadly, the way he did when he talked about his mother so far away. He will put his arm around her shoulder and they will walk together.

That vision lacks the joy, the leaping-up sort of feeling of the first one. On the other hand, it is more serene, and powerful enough to last eternity.

First, however, there is getting through all this to there, a matter not only of time, but of effort and faith. There are preparations to be made, a state of mind to enter. It's hard to get into the right frame of mind around Aggie, who loves food and no doubt Frances, greedy for both, but is otherwise never pleased or satisfied.

And who has done the right thing here? Who has been here? Who else would clean Aggie and get her meals and help her in and out of bed, and get up in the middle of the night for her? Who else, under these conditions, would touch her stained and nasty sheets?

Still, the point is to do the right thing. Not to love, or for that matter be loved.

It's like the bright young teachers talking about the fulfilment of their pupils, or their happiness. Just what, June would like to know, do fulfilment and happiness have to do with anything? Children are there to learn, not to be happy.

But if she is here to do the right thing, what is that? It is not necessarily mere selfishness, this wish to shift her mother. Aggie truly isn't safe, left on her own all day. Not really safe, the way she would be with professionals, people who knew what they were doing, how to handle her weight and keep an eye on her movements. If she fell down, or had some kind of attack, they would be there on the spot to lift and help her, to diagnose and fix her injuries. While in June's hands she might die waiting. Safety is something. You can give up a few things to be secure. Surely at Aggie's age that's not a bad bargain.

Then, too, Aggie has too much time on her hands. It's not healthy, having nothing to do all day but read and think and sometimes bake. There is about her occasionally a distressing sort of vagueness that suggests she could do with new interests.

In the place June is thinking of, there would be crafts and visitors and other old people, things going on, although it is admittedly difficult to picture Aggie bent over a heap of small tiles, making ceramic ashtrays for Christmas gifts, or crocheting bedspreads, and it is hard to imagine her willingly listening to visiting schoolchildren singing hymns or Christmas carols. She might argue with a roommate, and June might get calls from staff complaining of her language.

Aggie's the one who talks of the excitement of change, who preaches new experiences. She ought to leap at this.

June's heart leaps as she arrives home, late because she stopped to buy a plastic sheet (embarrassing to catch the sales clerk's curious glance). George's car is outside, and, stepping somewhat breathlessly through the door, she hears voices in the front room: his and Aggie's. How long has he been here? How much has she missed?

He stands. “June, hello, I was just waiting until you got home.” He is lanky and tall, and his hands, when they're not working, always look a little incoherent, confused by lack of purpose. Now he moves one as if to shake her hand and then withdraws it, as if that would be too formal.

“Sit down, June,” Aggie suggests. “Have a cup of tea with us. I made cookies, too.” That must be her idea of a challenge: proving competence with food. “We were just talking about who's going to run for mayor this year. I was telling George your father once thought of running for council.”

“I know. You told me.” June is unhappy to hear that she sounds abrupt, almost curt. In a campaign for the doctor's vote, Aggie is offering cookies, and June clipped words.

“Apparently he almost did,” Aggie tells him. “He didn't discuss it with me, of course, but I heard. Likely he'd have won, too, but for some reason he decided against it. I suppose he didn't like to take the chance of losing, he hated to lose, and then I don't imagine I'd have been the ideal candidate's wife.”

“But tell me,” June interrupts, addressing either or both of them, “have you figured out what's wrong?”

Aggie looks amused by the bluntness, George distressed. He smiles uncomfortably. “Not yet. And you mustn't tell anyone I've made a house call; I'd get drummed out of the medical profession.

“But seriously, we've gotten quite a few things done today — blood pressure, an internal, and I've got some blood samples. Which reminds me I can't stay much longer, I'll have to get them to the lab. Now, if things get worse, or if these tests show any abnormalities, we'll maybe have to check you into hospital for a day or so, Aggie, for X-rays and EEGs and so forth. Nothing strenuous, but I'd like to do as much as we can outside of hospital. Aggie tells me” — he smiles at June — “she'd prefer not to break her record of never being in a hospital except to visit somebody. And I'd prefer to avoid putting that sort of stress on her anyway. But we'll have to see how things go.”

This, June thinks, is much too vague and unsatisfactory, hardly a step in any direction, much less the right one.

“But as far as you can tell,” Aggie interjects, “I don't have some awful disease.” She grins. “I'm like June, you know — I'd like to get it cleared up, although for different reasons. Mine are quite immediate. You can't imagine how rank it is, waking up in a cold, wet bed.”

Well, you have to admire her, she doesn't back off. She runs right at a problem, even a shameful one. It's like a teenager with acne going around pointing at his pimples and saying, “Look at that, boy, isn't that something awful? I can't wait till I grow out of it.”

“But what can we do in the meantime, if it keeps on happening?” June doesn't want it forgotten, what the issue is here. “We can't just keep on this way.”

“Don't borrow trouble, June,” Aggie says. So smug she is, so settled, in her big broken chair, with her cup of tea and her plate of cookies.

“We have trouble, Mother, there's no borrowing about it. Something has to be done.”

“Tests are something.” George, unhappily trapped, is now flinging his hands about as if batting crisis out of the room. He may deal with physical issues of life and death with reasonable skill and equanimity, but this sort of thing is more difficult. Like a policeman called to a domestic dispute, he's in the centre of old, unknown passions, right in the middle, where it's most dangerous.

It's a bit much, the two of them looking at her with what, in Aggie's case at any rate, must be a deliberate and studied, detached and academic interest; as if it were nothing to do with her. “Go ahead, June, say what's on your mind, then.”

“Well, what about me?” But that isn't what she meant to say, nor is it the tone she intended. The words have twisted out bitter and sad, too much a plea and too little a statement, but now she can't change or stop. “It's too hard. I can't do everything, and then something like this happens.” She could weep, except that she never would, in front of Aggie.

In her grey skirt and yellow blouse and charcoal cardigan, in the black low-heeled shoes she wears for comfort, standing all day as she does, she takes a step toward them, threatening or appealing, and then steps back, with no threat or appeal to make.

They should never have let it come to this.

But her own skin is yellowing like old paper. It has become fine and wrinkled. There are purple veins that stand out in her legs. Even in these shoes, her feet hurt at the end of a day, and her hair has turned grey and lacks life. She is aging, she is almost old.

“Listen,” she says, although she may mean to say “Look”.

“I can't go on teaching and looking after the house and worrying about Mother. It's awful, coming home and wondering if she's been all right. And I don't weigh half what she does, but I have to help her out of bed, and then if anything happened, I'd never be able to lift her. I'm just not young any more, and I'm not strong enough. What am I supposed to do?”

There's silence for a moment as they look at her. What do they see? Someone pitiable?

Not Aggie. “I've never known what you were supposed to do, June,” she says. “You're the expert on that. You're the one who always knows what everybody's supposed to do.”

George, however — maybe drawn by June's passion? — says, “I can see it must be hard for you. But there must be a solution that would suit you both.”

Oh naive, hopeful, cowardly young man. “That would be a first,” Aggie says.

“Well, there are homemakers who come in, or the VON. I could probably arrange for somebody, say once or twice a week, even if it's just to keep an eye.”

“Look, this is my home,” Aggie objects firmly. “I don't want to be knee-deep in strangers. Let's get this straight. I do understand it's hard for June, I do realize she's getting on, and I know I'm not easy to deal with. After all, I'm the one who carries this,” gesturing across her body, “all the time. I know better than anyone how heavy I am. But I'm hardly helpless, and I'm not about to leave my home. You'll get it eventually, June, but I do feel you might wait.”

“Now, now,” George says, his hands patting the air, tamping something down that insists on bobbing up again, “there's no need, not until we know just what's wrong. And then I'm sure things can be worked out, it just takes some giving on both sides.”

“That's your only advice?” June asks, the sharpness of her tone, she realizes as soon as the words are out, offsetting her advantage.

“Well, I've made a suggestion or two to Aggie. I've got to go now. You two talk things over, and if I can do anything by way of arranging a homemaker or whatever, just let me know. And I'll let you know, of course, if we need to do any more tests.”

Aggie starts in as soon as he's left. “Well, June, it seems you do have things to say for yourself. I must say, you express yourself quite plainly when you put your mind to it.”

“We have to do something. You must see that. And anything could happen. Anything.”

“My dear girl, I've been telling you that for years. Why pick now to believe me?”

There is no nodding white-haired gentleness in Aggie now, with her little pig-eyes snapping out from the pouches of flesh. The bigger she gets, the smaller her features seem. Now she looks like one of those gingerbread cookies she used to make, just raisins set in for eyes.

“Look, June, it's my risk after all. It's my death you seem to be worrying about. And as I said before, it's my house. You may stay or go as you please, but I stay.”

But this house is in June's blood. This is the one place in the world she belongs. Here is where her father came through the door at night, and where he told her stories and read to her. Here is where she later felt his spirit hovering. She still has some idea of at least a part of him here, watching out for her. The one time she did leave, she found herself exposed, unsafe. She distinctly remembers her mother saying, years ago, “I hate this goddamned house.” That was when June's father was alive, so maybe she wasn't talking exactly about the house. But June loves this place, the home of her earliest, best self.

“So, June, what's it to you if I'm willing to take the chance that if I stand up, I might fall down, or if I try to move too fast my heart will stop? I don't see you'd have to actually
do
very much if you came home and found me dead on the floor. Make a couple of phone calls, maybe. But then you could step right over me and make yourself a cup of tea and be out of the room in no time, and by the time you looked again I'd be gone. One minute I'd be there, dead as a doornail, and the next minute you'd be free to do whatever it is you think you want to do. Think of it as a kind of climax: not a moment you'd want to miss, surely.”

How can she make jokes about death, or even speak of it so lightly?

“Be serious, Mother. We have to do something. I think,” and here is inspiration, “even Frances would agree with me there.”

It seems to work. For once, Aggie is short of words, a little shrunken. Had she not thought of that, of Frances finding out? Had she not considered her admiring granddaughter knowing she has accidents in her bed at night?