Every Time We Say Goodbye (10 page)

“I have a baby,” Grace said before she could stop herself. The words scorched her mouth, and she had to swallow hard to continue. “At home. Back home. With my brother and sister-in-law.” She looked at Theresa’s face, but it told her nothing except that she had been crying and now she was listening. “That’s why I came down here,” she said. “To earn enough money to get a place of my own. Being away from him is killing me. And Mrs. Barr is taking all my money.”

“You poor thing,” Theresa said.

Grace shook her head violently. She didn’t want Theresa to say “poor thing,” because she didn’t want to cry. “I can’t sleep because I miss him so much. I can’t think about him, and I can’t stop thinking about him.”

Theresa sighed. “I know.”

Grace stared at her. “Do you have a baby too?”

“No,” Theresa said. “I have a bad boyfriend. I just make myself unhappy.”

The whistle blew, and Theresa said, “Wait for me here after work.”

Ruth Ellis was wearing what Mrs. Barr must have meant by an odd getup: loose pale yellow pants with a tight band of gold braid at the ankles, a long silky tunic and an orange scarf with tiny mirrors sewn into the hem. It was from India, Theresa said, where Ruth Ellis had travelled with her parents one summer. It was beautiful. As for her odd manner, it turned out that, unlike
Mrs. Barr, Ruth Ellis did not pepper people with questions that couldn’t be answered or tell long stories about her heyday. She spoke because something needed to be said, and what she said always made sense.

She was putting together a bicycle on the front porch when Theresa brought Grace home. Theresa said, “Ruth, this is Grace,” and Ruth didn’t look up because her eyes were locked into the frame of the bike, but she said, “Hello, Grace. Theresa tells me you need a new place. Can you hold this wheel for me?”

Ruth Ellis asked her to stay for dinner, and afterwards, they took their coffee onto the porch and sat looking out over the lawn. On one side, an enormous maple tree cast a long shadow into the yard. One of the branches was low and sturdy enough to hang a swing from. The grass was green and soft; if a child fell off the swing, he wouldn’t be hurt. “This is a nice place,” Grace said. Ruth said the only thing she wanted to change was the fence: she wanted to tear it down and plant a hedge. “A flowering fence,” she said, “instead of a wall. Nicer on the eye. What do you think, Grace?”

Grace said, “A wall would be safer.”

Theresa explained why she had been crying: she was in love with Mike Vanderburgh. Grace said, “Mr. Vanderburgh?” which made both Ruth and Theresa laugh. Theresa said she couldn’t account for it. He wasn’t that smart. He was nothing special to look at, as Grace herself could attest to. And yet, whenever he spoke to Theresa, she just melted. “He does have a nice voice,” Grace said, and Theresa looked radiantly happy for a moment. “He does, doesn’t he?” Then she looked miserable again. She said she wanted to be with him so badly she felt sick, and she never really could be, because of Mrs. Vanderburgh.

“Maybe it’s because of Mrs. Vanderburgh that you want him so badly,” Ruth said. “Maybe if you could have him, you wouldn’t want him.”

“No,” Theresa said. “If she dropped dead, I would marry him in an instant. But she’s as healthy as an ox, and he won’t leave her. Even though she does nothing but complain. He leaves his socks lying around. He chews too loudly. He forgets things and slumps in his chair at dinner.”

“All complaints you might have if you had to live with him,” Ruth said.

Theresa hunched forward, squeezing her freckled hands. “When I’m away from him, I know it’s all wrong and I should end it, but when I’m with him, I’m convinced of the exact opposite. It’s so hard to know what’s true.”

Ruth turned to Grace. “What do you think, Grace?”

Grace said, “I don’t know. I only love my baby.”

Theresa said, “That’s not being
in
love, though. That’s instinct.”

Ruth said, “That’s the best kind of love. It doesn’t have to question itself.”

Grace’s head throbbed. “I left him!” she cried out. “He didn’t even know I was going. He doesn’t know where I am!” Ruth’s arm was around her and Theresa pressed a handkerchief into her hand. “It’s okay, Gracie,” Theresa was saying. “We’re going to help you get him back.”

M
rs. Barr was furious. “You can’t leave,” she said. “You have to give notice.”

“She just did,” Theresa said.

“Advance notice! Six weeks!”

“Six weeks? Are you
insane?”
Theresa shook her head. “Let’s get your things, Grace.”

Mrs. Barr followed them up the stairs, talking to Theresa all the way. “I’ll take her to court,” she said. “I’ll sue.”

Theresa slammed the door of Grace’s room and said, “Hurry, Gracie.” Grace pulled her clothes off hangers and stuffed them into her suitcase on top of the photo of Danny. Her heart was a wild bird trapped in a cage. Mrs. Barr was hammering on the door, threatening to call the police, Clockworks, Grace’s family. Grace froze at that. “Don’t listen to her, Grace. She won’t call anyone.”

“I’ll call her supervisor at work,” Mrs. Barr yelled, and Theresa jerked open the door. “I
am
her supervisor at work,” she said.

“I’ll go to the manager. I’ll have the money taken out of her paycheque.”

“Have it taken out of your ass,” Theresa said and closed the door. “Got everything, Grace?” Grace didn’t know what she had; she only knew they had to get out. Theresa picked up the suitcase, and they pushed past Mrs. Barr and hurried down the stairs and out the door, which Mrs. Barr slammed behind them, yelling, “And don’t darken my doorway again!”

“Gladly,” Theresa called back.

“Will she go to court against me?” Grace asked. Her veins were full of syrup, and she could hardly move her legs. If Mrs. Barr went to court, they would take all her money.

“Of course not.” Theresa opened the front gate for them.

Grace’s heart was still trying to escape from her chest. Then it stopped beating altogether. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

“What is it, Grace?”

“My money,” she managed to say.

“You left your money?”

Grace covered her face with her hands. Now she would have to start all over. It was hopeless. She didn’t know why she kept trying. Except that her other option was to tie a stone around her neck and walk into the river, and she couldn’t do that, because she couldn’t leave Danny twice.

Theresa pulled her hands away from her face. “Grace. Where did you leave it? In your room?”

“Under the mattress.”

Theresa looked at the house. Her eyes moved up and down, back and forth. “Here,” she said, handing Grace the suitcase. “Go knock on the front door and tell her you feel bad about leaving without notice and ask how much would she accept in lieu of six weeks.”

“But she already has all my money upstairs!”

“You’re not actually going to pay her. Just keep her talking.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’ll be around. Go on, Grace. Look contrite and keep her talking until I come back.”

Grace walked back up the steps and knocked on the door. She looked for Theresa, but Theresa was gone.

“Mrs. Barr?” she called. “Mrs. Barr? It’s me, Grace Turner. I’m very sorry. Please don’t take me to court.”

The door opened, and there was Mrs. Barr, smiling nastily. “Oh, so now you want to make amends.”

“I just don’t want to go to court.”

“Well, it’s too late for that. I just got off the phone with the judge.” She peered through the screen. “Where’s your friend with the mouth on her?”

“She went home. Please, Mrs. Barr. I don’t want to go to court.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already booked a date and I’ll have to pay to cancel it.”

“How much does that cost?”

“Fifteen dollars,” Mrs. Barr said. “So you’d owe that on top of the six weeks.”

“All right,” Grace said. They had reached the end of this conversation, and there was no sign of Theresa. “All right, but—”

“All right but what?”

“All right, but can we make it four weeks’ notice? It’s only I don’t have enough for six weeks.”

“Fine, but only because I’ll be glad to see the last of you. Plus fifteen dollars. And I want it right now.”

“All right,” said Grace. “But … but I was just wondering, can we make it two weeks’ notice?”

Mrs. Barr’s face reddened. “Get the hell off my property,” she hissed, “before I call the police.”

Grace fled, banging the suitcase against her leg. Out on the road, she leaned against a tree and tried to catch her breath.

Theresa appeared from around the corner.

“Where were you?” Grace demanded. “I made everything worse. Now she’s calling the police.”

Theresa shook her head. “She’s not calling the police, Grace. You have to stop being so afraid of people. Mrs. Barr has no power over you.”

“She has my money,” Grace said.

Theresa pulled an envelope from the waistband of her pants. “No, she doesn’t.”

Grace clutched Theresa’s arm. “How did you get it?”

“Well, my idea was to go up the drainpipe—”

“You climbed up the
drainpipe
to the second floor?” Grace was aghast.

“No. The back door was open. Thank Christ.”

Ruth and Theresa had already set everything up. Theresa had pushed her bed against the wall to make room for the cot and emptied out two drawers in the dresser, which turned out to be one and a half drawers too many for Grace’s things. Grace put the photo of Danny on the windowsill beside a pot of geraniums.

“Let me see him.” Theresa reached for the picture. “He looks like you, Grace.”

“Do you think so?” A warmth went through Grace.

“Where is his father?”

“I don’t know. He signed up and I didn’t hear anything after that.”

Theresa handed back the photo. “Were you in love with him?”

Grace thought for a moment. She remembered how John had squeezed her fingers and the heat of his breath. She remembered the sound he made when he pushed into her, like a small
cat that wanted something. She liked that little sound. Was that “in love”?

“No,” she told Theresa. “I didn’t really know him.”

“Did your brother and sister-in-law know him?”

“They don’t know he’s the father.”

Grace touched Danny’s face through the glass.

“Gracie.”

Grace looked up.

“Do they know you’re coming back for him?”

“My brother knows.”

“I meant her.”

Grace saw what Theresa was thinking. It was the thing that kept her awake and woke her when she did finally fall into sleep. One of the things. “She thinks I’ll stay down here and forget all about Danny,” Grace said. “She thinks she’ll never see me again.”

Ruth Ellis said she needed a plan. Moving out of Mrs. Barr’s and sharing Theresa’s room was only the first step. Theresa had asked Mike Vanderburgh to give Grace extra split-shifts, but when Danny was here, she wouldn’t be able to work such long hours. “You need to think about how you are going to provide for Danny in the long term,” Ruth said.

“Can’t we stay here?” Grace asked. She loved Ruth Ellis’s house. She and Theresa and Lucy were free to do exactly as they pleased: eat whenever they felt like it, read at the breakfast table, talk or not talk at dinner, try on all the outfits Ruth Ellis had brought back from her travels and then fall asleep in them on the sofa in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Lucy was a pretty, dark-haired teacher from Saskatchewan who had ten younger brothers and sisters back home; she sent back money every month and knew about things like colic and croup. She and Theresa said Danny was the loveliest baby and asked Grace to
read out Frank’s letters. They would never say, “Put the baby down, for heaven’s sake, you’ll spoil him.” In fact, Ruth Ellis said that in India and China, women carried their babies in slings
all day
. When she thought about bringing Danny to Peterborough, she thought about him here, in this house.

But it seemed Ruth Ellis did not. “Yes, of course you can stay, but that’s a temporary fix. Danny’s going to need his own room someday, and you need to know that you can stand on your own.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Grace said.

“If you can’t, you have no right bringing Danny down here. That’s your job as his mother.”

Grace closed her eyes.

“You need a plan, Grace. You need a place of your own, and you need a way to make more money. You also need a story for when people ask where Danny’s father is.”

“I don’t care about that,” Grace said. “What people think doesn’t affect me.”

“Thoughts give birth to actions, and actions do affect you.”

Grace pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. It was hard, talking to Ruth. She took your arm and started you in a certain direction, and she didn’t let you step down until you both got to the destination. It would have made her head hurt if she let it, but she wouldn’t let it. She could see that Ruth was right. Finally, she dropped her hands. “All right. Danny’s father and I got married down at City Hall in Sault Ste. Marie,” she said. “Two weeks after, he—John—shipped out. Two months later, I got the telegram.” She looked at Ruth. Ruth nodded, waiting. “I didn’t even know I was going to have a baby,” Grace said, but still, Ruth was not satisfied. “My brother and sister-in-law said they would look after the baby until I got settled down here.”

“What else?”

“And I came down here and … I don’t know what else,” Grace said.

“You lost your husband,” Ruth said. “How do you feel?”

“Oh!” Grace brightened. “I’m sad. Very, very sad.”

Ruth Ellis laughed. “That’s good, Grace. But try not to look so happy when you say it.”

The other part of the plan came to her in the courtyard at work, listening to the other girls; they reminded her of Vera in the way they listed everything they had to do before they did it. Unlike Vera, though, they could only do one thing at a time. They had to set their hair, so they couldn’t iron their skirts; they had to iron their skirts, so they couldn’t wash out their sweaters or mend their blouses, and they were simply exhausted. As a trial, she did Theresa’s laundry, then Lucy’s, and finally Ruth’s. They proclaimed themselves satisfied. “Now, you have to advertise,” Ruth said, and Theresa said, “You need to start going to the cafeteria, Grace. You need to be a little friendlier.”