Fever (19 page)

“The old bastard!” Doug said. He seemed more surprised than upset. “So that was how you discovered sex.” I could hear Doug’s voice, deep and masculine, carrying across the table to me. It echoed faintly in the big, empty room. Donna’s fork clinked against her plate with a precise, musical sound. The air in the room seemed heavy to me, and much too warm. Donna was standing again, reaching for our empty plates to take them to the kitchen.

“My discovery of sex was so long ago, and since I was raised on a farm,” Doug said, “I suppose it had to do with calves and foals or dogs and cats. It seemed to be something I’ve always known. No trauma here,” he said, and raised his glass, tilted back his head, and drained it. I could hear Donna moving dishes around in the kitchen. Her breasts on the dirty, wooden floor, his big hands flat on her shoulder blades, visible through her white nylon blouse. The room was so stuffy, I was having trouble catching my breath.

Once he stood in front of my desk and read a story to us about one of the saints, and all the time he was reading he was rocking back and forth against my desk, the top of it meeting the top of his thighs; then he’d push away, a slight movement, barely noticeable to anybody else, lean toward me, push away, lean toward me—and all the time he read I watched, fascinated, the bulge in his grey flannel pants directly in front of my eyes, that grew more distinct as he leaned toward me and diminished as he pulled away.

“More wine?” Doug asked.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Just a drop,” he said and filled my glass again. “We’ll finish it off.” The wine was a dark red and it glowed as if the light from the chandelier above the table was inside the goblet.

I tried to think of something that would bring me back to the dining room, to Doug sitting across from me. Donna came in carrying the dessert, a pale meringue filled with glistening, multi-coloured fruit that shone like a jewel. I could see that even Doug was moved by its beauty.

After dinner we went back into the living room. Donna wouldn’t let me help her with the clearing away or the dishes so Doug and I were left alone sitting across from each other with a glass coffee table between us.

“Do you remember when we were all best friends?” he asked me. I nodded, although I did not and the longer I stayed, the less I could remember. “Your being here has brought it all back to me,” he went on. “The June-in-January dance, the wiener roasts, the weekend in Edmonton when none of us were married.”

“Doug, why do you think I blotted out that whole year?” I asked. “A whole year! And it was filled with such significance.” I was still remembering things: the winos on the hotel corner who used to try to touch our breasts when we passed by, roughhousing on the grass long after dark, boys and girls together, till the police came and chased us home.

“You should know,” he said mildly. “I don’t.” He was staring into his coffee cup, his hands lying loose on his lap. Was he trying to remember some faraway, lost moment? I wanted to ask him, are you happy?

“Why do you want to remember everything?” I asked, softly, so as not to disturb him. He didn’t lift his head, but I could see the movement of his lips.

“How else to forget?” he asked.

I drove home to my parents’ house through streets nearly deserted and black with rain. I longed for Ed and the comfort of his arms.

We had moved away. I had changed schools. I remember that for a long time afterward whenever we drove downtown and I saw the smokestacks of the power plant that marked the eastern boundary of that neighbourhood, I would think about my life there.

But time passed, things happened. I thought of the old lady with the shawl and the shopping bags. I began to doubt I had really seen her. My car hissed down the silent, wet streets, passing through pools of water and I could imagine behind me a long trail of bright reflections, shimmering and broken.

“I had the most wonderful dream last night,” Emmaline said, “and now, I am no longer afraid to die.”

Babette observed her warily. Emmaline lay propped up against her fat white pillows, her even whiter hair fluffed out like cotton wool around her face, her thin, crooked-fingered hands still wearing the worn wedding ring, holding the upper edge of the quilt. She was not looking at Babette. Babette swung her foot once or twice in an annoyed way, then stopped because it hurt, and because it tired her. She had so little energy.

“Oh?” she said, smiling. “What did you dream about?”

Emmaline raised one trembling hand and made a gesture which, had she been well, would have been sweeping. As it was, her hand moved an inch or two in each direction, then dropped back to hold the edge of the quilt again, as if a stranger who couldn’t quite be trusted not to try to touch her, were in the room.

“I was in a beautiful house, a most beautiful house which was filled with people. All kinds of people, fine people, good people, and the son of the owner came up to me and welcomed me. Then he took me all through the house and introduced to me the other
guests one by one. All of them gracious, all of them friendly, pleased to see me and to talk with me. It was a most lovely time.” She smiled, a little colour appearing in each cheek.

Babette thought, those drugs, oh, those drugs, and she shook her head, just a little, barely perceptibly. Her thigh had begun to ache, and she waited, testing, to see if the pain would leave or if she would have to rise and drag herself downstairs, she thought of it as dragging herself, to the kitchen where her Brompton’s Cocktail, a combination of morphine and cocaine and god knew what else, waited in the fridge.

They could hear someone mounting the stairs slowly, and Babette turned her head and Emmaline her eyes, to watch the open door. Ginny entered carrying a tray with a teapot, two teacups and saucers, a cream pitcher and a sugar bowl resting on it. She set it down carefully, without speaking, on the table between the two old ladies.

“There,” she said. “I hope it’s not too strong.”

Emmaline observed her daughter thoughtfully.

“They served us … champagne, I think. Yes, champagne, in crystal glasses that threw rainbows of light.” She seemed no longer to see her daughter, nor her daughter’s mother-in-law, so pale and fragile, sitting across from her. She paid no attention to the tea.

Ginny began to pour the tea. The amber fluid streamed soundlessly, steaming, into the blue-shadowed cups. His hands on her waist, she could feel the smallness of her waist under his hands, could feel him drawing back to thrust gently again into her, as she lay, face down, crosswise on the bed, her arms stretched out on each side of her head, feeling the cool sheet under her palms.

“Such a pleasant temperament your daughter has, Emmaline,” Babette said softly. Ginny couldn’t tell if she was being serious
or merely malicious. “Always with a little smile, a softness in her eyes.”

Emmaline said, “And the rugs, so soft and thick, so very blue they were.”

“What is that, Mother?” Ginny asked, turning to help her mother raise herself against her pillows so that she could hold her teacup herself.

“My dream,” Emmaline said. “I was telling Babette about my dream.” She looked hopefully at her daughter who was folding back six inches of quilt and sheet and smoothing them down neatly, just below Emmaline’s flat breasts. Ginny didn’t meet her mother’s eyes. The skin of his back as smooth as any woman’s, like satin to touch, but firm underneath, and low, where his buttocks began there was the hardness of his spine.

She handed her mother her filled teacup which Emmaline rested on the folded bedclothes. Ginny turned to Babette then, but Babette was already reaching to lift her cup and saucer carefully and bring it toward herself, her rings glinting.

“Such a dream,” she remarked. “I could use a dream like that,” and she sighed, half-smiling, half-wry. She dreamt of dark places, of black-bottomed wells, of empty spaces. When she was bad and had to take a lot of Brompton’s, she sometimes hallucinated her dead husband and mother.

“I’m glad you feel … ready,” she said to Emmaline. Ginny stood between them, but back a little, closer to the window, so that Babette and Emmaline could see each other. She appeared to be thinking about something, one hand raised to touch her cheek, her dark eyes, so like Emmaline’s, gazing at some spot in the air between the table and the doorway. It’s hard for her, Babette reminded herself, both of us sick, Emmaline dying, Armand away all day.

Ginny roused herself to ask, “Would you like a biscuit, Babette?”

“No, thank you,” Babette said. “A piece of toast was more than enough.”

“You don’t eat enough,” Ginny said mildly. “Half a biscuit? Mother?” She turned to Emmaline and looked down at her reflectively while Emmaline reset her cup in its saucer with a shaky hand, then leaned against her pillow and closed her eyes. The saucer tipped a little and the tea washed slowly up the side of the cup. Ginny reached down and took the cup and saucer from her mother and set them back on the tray. Emmaline’s mouth slowly opened.

She set them down as if she were thinking about something else and Babette thought with irritation how she had never liked that dreamy quality her daughter-in-law had. Armand so quick and brusque, as she had once been herself, before the tumours had begun to strike.

Tumours! she thought, although she had thought of all the things she might call them and had decided to call them tumours. She would have kicked out her leg fiercely, but refrained because of the pain. There was something new going on in her left arm, it had begun yesterday. She wasn’t ready to say anything yet. More radiation. She sighed, but thought, by the time I have it, I am always glad of the relief it brings.

“Did Armand talk to the doctor for me?” she asked Ginny without bothering to lower her voice. When Emmaline slept, nothing could wake her. It was the drugs, they were all sure.

“Armand?” Ginny asked, looking at her mother-in-law. “Oh.” She caught her breath guiltily.

“Your husband,” Babette said, wry again. Ginny laughed, colouring.

“I remember,” she said, lifting the tray and sliding it off the table. Babette set her teacup onto the tray and waited.

“He said he’d call from the office, and then he’d phone here if he could catch the doctor in.” And his mouth on her breasts. My god, his mouth. She caught her breath, then tried to turn it into a sigh. Beside her, as she passed her going out of the room, Babette was rising slowly, reaching for her cane.

“Just wait,” Ginny said. “I’ll run this tray down to the kitchen, then come back and give you a hand.”

“No need,” Babette said, her breath growing short already, but Ginny was gone, running lightly down the stairs, her feet making a swishing noise on the thick carpet.

Babette began the painful, slow walk to the doorway using her cane, concentrating on getting her right leg to move forward, so far, not too far, thinking, damn, damn. Why is Ginny the way she is? She thought of turning to Emmaline who might be awake now, behind her, watching her with her big dark eyes and asking her, what is it with your daughter? What is it she is thinking about?

Ginny was hurrying up the stairs now, coming toward her, for Babette had managed to progress out the door and the few steps to the top of the stairs. She waited, panting, while Ginny reached her, turned sideways, and took her arm.

“Lean on me,” Ginny said, and although Babette hated the very idea, she found herself leaning slightly against Ginny’s warm, plump arm and shoulder. In fact, as they began the slow, halting descent, she felt the heat from Ginny’s body beginning to warm her. She concentrated on each step with such intensity that there was only the mechanics of descending the stairs and the animal heat of her daughter-in-law’s body melting into hers. Against Ginny she suddenly felt how thin she had become, so
that she was all hard bones, yet against Ginny’s solidity, how light. My bones have hollowed, she thought, with surprise and certainty. She could sense Ginny’s bones, blood-filled and glowing, her curved abdomen full of round hot organs, her thighs, fleshy and plump, her breasts, warm as bread. She could have wept right there, descending the stairs in her daughter-in-law’s house, for the way she felt herself dissolving into air.

“Where do you want to go, Babette?” Ginny asked, her breath warm and moist on Babette’s cheek. Babette had not yet caught her breath and the tumour in her thigh was screaming. Her arm where Ginny had held it ached with a steady pain that threatened to grow worse.

“Tele … vision,” she said. Ginny waited, and when Babette finally began to turn, she turned too. “You take such good … care of me,” Babette said. “How hard it must be, the two of us.”

“It’s not hard,” Ginny said, but Babette heard how her voice had gone dreamy again. How I opened my legs. Did he open them for me? Yes, with his hands, gently. He put his mouth … Ginny helped Babette lower herself into the armchair in front of the television set. Without speaking again, she turned it on and tuned it to the late morning soap opera Babette had inexplicably taken to watching. She faced Babette, then quickly turned away again and left the room.

Babette had closed her eyes, but vaguely she could hear the fridge door opening and shutting. She heard Ginny say, “Here,” in a gentle voice. She opened her eyes again and saw Ginny’s face close to hers, holding in one hand a spoon filled with a clear liquid, and the dark brown bottle in the other. She was about to refuse, not yet, but her hip was swelling with pain, and all at once she relinquished something and opened her mouth as Emmaline had when she fell asleep. The Brompton’s tasted hateful. She could hardly bear to swallow it. When she had managed
to get it down without gagging or coughing, she leaned back and closed her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said.

In the kitchen Ginny set the spoon in the shiny sink, then stood looking out the small window above it at her neighbours’ snow-filled backyards. She remembered her mother, and almost ran upstairs to see how she was, then thought better of it. Later, in a minute. She sighed, thinking how he would stand behind her when she was undressing, bend to put his mouth on her neck and his hands would creep around her to flutter teasingly over her breasts, how …

She thought, I have to stop thinking about this, I can’t—but the thought of treading through these days, up and down the stairs, watching the looks on their faces, giving pills or fluids, emptying basins skimmed with their scanty vomit, and Emmaline’s occasional, embarrassing bedpan, washing their frail bodies, without the things she thought about, so appalled her as it sank in, that she spun around and stared at the patterned vinyl floor, one hand up on each side of her face.

She began to plan lunch, checking in the vegetable crisper in the fridge and lifting the quart of milk to see how much was left. She thought about her mother’s dream and wondered if it meant anything. She should go upstairs quietly, and sneak a look into her room.

But Emmaline was not asleep.

“He was very slender, the son,” she said, “and so beautifully dressed.” Ginny, who had paused in the doorway, was a little disconcerted by the look in her mother’s eyes, or perhaps by the absence of the look she had come, over more than forty years of daughterhood, to expect. She came all the way into the room and stood by her mother’s bed looking down at her.

“Would you like a little mushroom soup for lunch?” she asked.
“You always liked mushroom.” Unexpectedly, Emmaline laughed, a short, light sound in the still house. Ginny could imagine that the sound would not be heard beyond the doorway, that Babette, sitting exhausted in front of the television set, would not even know Emmaline had laughed. “And some fruit?” Ginny said. “I have some lovely ripe cantaloupe.”

“We used to call it muskmelon,” Emmaline said, then smiled slightly, looking beyond Ginny. Perhaps she’s gone to sleep again, Ginny thought. She went quietly back downstairs to the kitchen. The
tv
murmured faintly in the next room.

She hesitated, trying to decide whether to put in a little onion or not. Both women’s stomachs were so touchy, Ginny had to be careful about spices and flavourings. She found the plastic-wrapped package of fresh mushrooms and lifted them out from behind the left-over casserole she had served Armand for dinner the night before. She frowned when she saw it, but when the mushrooms bounced out of the package onto the counter beside the cutting board, she could feel herself smiling again. Buying them in the supermarket on the other side of town where she knew no one and no one knew her, alone, her flesh still hot from his touch, she felt as if she carried him invisibly surrounding her body, she had not felt alone at all.

Remembering Babette now, she set down her paring knife and went to the door of the family room. Babette, her long, elegant bones pronounced through her thin flesh, her rings gleaming, loose now on her long fingers, sat with her head back, her hands spread flat on her lap, watching the television set.

“Can I get you anything?” Ginny asked. Babette’s pale blue eyes shifted to her, held, then shifted back to the television. Her lipsticked mouth, its outline as austerely beautiful as ever, worked, as if she were saying something to herself she didn’t wish to say out loud.

“Cancer!” Babette said, still not looking at Ginny, taking her cane in her hand and grasping it tightly, angrily. She moved the head of the cane back and forth jerkily, not attempting to rise with it. Ginny watched her for a moment.

“The nurse comes this afternoon,” she said uncertainly, then went back to the kitchen.

She began to wash and slice the mushrooms. Their texture reminded her of flesh. He would run his hand up and down her back, over her hips, across her stomach. Such skin, he would say. Such skin. I’ve never known a woman with skin like yours. When he was kissing her abdomen, or the inside of her thighs, his face pressed against her, she would think, what else can there be but this? And she would not think about the two dying old women at all, or she would not have to because they were an unspoken presence wherever she was.