Good to a Fault (15 page)

She looked out at the empty field, stretching right out to the sky, as far as you could tell. Rolling bare-bone land going away, away, away into a blue distance, and the huge screen standing up against the blue sky that was both dark and light at the same time. The faint sound of the movie through open car windows mixed with the whispery whistling of the wind, and the noise of bugs creaking and fiddling toward the darkness. And the smell of the burgers frying and the onion rings. Six or seven cars away she could see Clary’s head bending down to Pearce. Except for what she would not think about, Dolly was happy. She could breathe this mixed summer air forever. Up above the movie screen the few visible stars sprinkled in the periwinkle blue—look! One slipped out of its place and shot silently down, arcing around the edge of the screen and down and gone.

That night Pearce cried and cried, to remind them that he was only a baby. The whole camp would be awake, Clary knew, a little village of people who already didn’t sleep well, and now this. By one a.m. he was only gathering strength, stomach ache or gas giving him no rest either.

“A walk,” she told him, finding her shoes in the darkness. “That’s what you need. We’ll go walk along the shore. The cool night air will do us good.”

She could walk in her pyjamas, here at Clearwater. Maybe a sweater. She slipped out the front and cobbled Pearce into his stroller. But it wouldn’t roll on the rocky sand; after a hundred yards she hoisted him out and abandoned the stroller. Pearce was comfortable on her hip, and happier outside in the night. Above them, filling the huge sky, the stars in their millions flickered and stood. Someone said there are only two thousand stars visible, but it must be more than that, Clary thought. A thousand times more. That person must have lived in a city.

It was a bit cooler than she’d bargained for, and she’d left the blanket in the stroller. Clary took off her sweater and wrapped it around Pearce, making a sling with the sleeves around her neck so they could keep walking and be comfortable. She had missed walking in the last few weeks. Too much to do, not enough time to walk anywhere. She strode along, stretching her legs out. Familiar with this path since childhood, when Grace and Moreland and their
little cabin had been so romantic, when she had heard them whispering late at night, both twined into one bunk. The sound of them kissing and Grace laughing, saying
we can’t
—and Moreland, the handsome boy he was then, murmuring
oh yes, oh yes.

Trevor trotted along the path some way behind Clary. He didn’t want her to hear him; he just wanted to be with her. The lake on one side, the wilderness on the other, in the dark night. Finally dark, even though the sun took so long to set that you thought it would never go to black. There was something in the grass beside him, he thought, and he went a little faster. So did the thing, scuttering along making noise only when he did, quieting if he stopped. He couldn’t be afraid, it must be something small. The moon was small, too, not very bright, slung low in the sky. The grass was too scary, too close. He did not want to call out to tell Clary he was following in case she got mad. Trevor edged down to the water, thinking he might walk along in the mud, because an animal might not like to get its feet wet, if it was a cougar or a fox. A coyote might not care about water, or a pack of coyotes. They had been yipping along the black horizon earlier. Grace had shown him one silhouetted against the orangey-blue sky when they got home from the movie. She’d pointed with her finger where the other yippers were.

His feet were tough. The rocky sand and mud on the bottom of the lake did not bother them. Once in a while a sharp rock made his knee suddenly bend. He rolled his pyjama bottoms past his knees and walked a little farther out, where it was warm, muddy, squelching smoothness. A little farther. There was no wind at all. No waves, and the water was still except for the stirring his shins made.

Pearce was heavy, and Clary was tired. She sat down on a slight hummock above the lake. She should have brought him a bottle. She could hear motion, nighttime animals moving through the grasses. Fish in the lake coming up for sleeping bugs, an occasional tiny plop. A sound like something wading: a deer, or a fawn. Pearce pointed his finger up to the moon. He always pointed at the moon; he laughed when he saw it through the window at home. This time he was silent with attention. Wrapped in the soft darkness, Clary lay down on the grass and curled herself around Pearce. He was wide awake and not in pain any more. He stood against her hip and leaned forward over her body to get closer to the black sky over there, and the black fronds of grass.

Trevor had a bad moment, in water over his knees, not knowing which way to go back to the shore. The lake was not very deep in the daytime, not until you were way out there, he told himself. He was fine. He took a step one way, and thought maybe the bottom sloped down. He took a step back, and that was definitely sloping down. Any way he stepped, it got deeper.

He was frightened, but on the other hand, there he was in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the night, alone. No waves, no wind. He was in the world, himself completely, no part left out. The moon was in the sky. He stood still.

His flashlight carving a small oval of real world out of the darkness, Moreland walked down to the cabin from behind the store, where he’d parked the truck so as not to wake anyone up along the cabins. He was stiff from that marathon of work. Beautiful night, a far cry from the last few days of dust and paint. Grace didn’t know he was coming out, wouldn’t be waiting on him. There was time for the luxury of a walk around the lake.

His wobbling flashlight picked and pricked out to the lake, dancing on the mud as he walked—and what was that in the distance? It was a head shining over the water.

Hair flying upwards: Trevor. Fifty yards out, the nut. Moreland took his shoes off, since he hated cleaning shoes, and after thinking a minute, took off his pants too. His boxers were shorts, after all.

Trevor had crouched down to feel with his fingers which way the bottom sloped, and at first he didn’t see the flashlight moving on the surface. Then he thought it was the moon. But it was a light coming bobbing from the land. So
that
was the direction! He would have walked the other way, he thought.

“Stay still, Trev,” Moreland called gently over the water, not to alarm him. “I’ll come out to you, and we’ll have a wade together.”

Clary felt a clutch on her waist, and heard Pearce answering Moreland, before she realized that she had heard Moreland. She had fallen asleep! Would she have woken if Pearce had crawled away down into the water? Her slow brain finally re-heard Moreland, saying
Trevor
, saying something—she sat up, grabbing Pearce, and stood to scan the darkness.

There on the lake, a moving light caught something—

“Trevor?” she cried, too afraid to keep her voice steady. The water’s dimpling surface broke up the light—she had made Trevor fall backwards into the water.

“Oh!” she cried again, stumbling along the path with Pearce hanging awkwardly from her arm, the sweater swinging around her neck, no use now.

Then she saw Moreland, and heard him calling back to her to calm down, calm down, he had him. Moreland had him.

Grace made cocoa and found Trevor a soft old pair of Fern’s shorts to wear to bed. He lay on the couch and listened to Grace scolding Moreland for coming out in the middle of the night and scaring them all, although if he had not, who knew what might have happened, and for letting Trevor have a midnight swim once he’d found him, which was just childish, and so on.

Clary was silent, sitting at the other end of the couch holding Trevor’s feet in her hands, which were not warm themselves but seemed to make him warmer.

In the wicker rocking chair Moreland held Pearce, watching his drowsing baby face. “Good boy,” he said. “I missed you, Grace, that’s all. I’m allowed to miss you.”

T
he house was still standing. No lumber or workmen around, no debris on the grass. It looked to Clary as if Moreland might have done some yardwork. The children were hungry, so she let Mrs. Pell stump off around the side of the house—mad again—and went straight to the kitchen, stepping lightly to let Darwin stay asleep in the basement. But Trevor and Dolly ran down the stairs before she thought to stop them: clatter, clatter, and then wild shouts.

Trevor galloped back up the stairs to grab her arm and pull her. She checked that she had fastened Pearce properly into the high chair, because everything was dangerous, and then let Trevor have her hand.

The stairwell seemed lighter. Fresh paint, she realized, as she was rushed down. At the bottom of the stairs, an empty field of bright green carpet was splotched with squares of light. A big window—Moreland must have helped with that, he was a great one for windows. They had scooped out a well to put it in, and lined it with ridged aluminum and pea gravel in the bottom, like one of Moreland’s new buildings. The window was beautiful. The carpet was lurid, green as Astroturf.

“Look! See?” Trevor said, as the boy had in Clary’s earliest school reader, showing Mother the new puppy. He flung open a pair of over-ornate louvred doors, and there were the washer and dryer.

Dolly found a separate room with the old basement window, looking small now, behind a gathered green panel. A single bed against the wall. She wanted it to be her room, she wanted it so bad—but that would mean that Darwin was gone, that the wind had changed. It would mean that her mom was dead and so Darwin was finished helping her. That thought caught Dolly up short. She’d been doing so well not thinking. She almost had to throw up, but she ran out into the big room and rolled around on the floor. She would go to the canning cupboard and break the jars into a million pieces. Trevor jumped on her and hurt her stomach but she didn’t even mind. She grabbed him and hugged him as hard as iron, like a clamp.

Mrs. Zenko called down the stairs from the back door.

Clary said, “Come and see!” like the children. She wondered how much money she owed Moreland for all this, and if she could ever get used to this carpet. The furnace room was lined with boxes, more orderly and well-labelled than before; and the ancient rolled-up Persian carpet of her mother’s. But she couldn’t put that over the violent green, which would after all be a good playground for the children.

“My, my, my,” Mrs. Zenko kept exclaiming, even as she was coming down, even before she saw the hidden laundry, and the secret door to the cold-room.

“They worked like bees down here the last few days. Your dad would have been so pleased,” Mrs. Zenko said as they trooped back upstairs. That was true—although Clary’s mother had resisted the tiniest change in the house after his death, in life her father had been a relentless fiddler and improver.

Clary felt strange, standing in the kitchen over top of that clear empty space down there. She felt like the graves of her parents had been hollowed out and aired, like their clinging spirits were lifting and drifting out of the house and up, beyond the garden into the tops of the trees. Not desecration, but opening. Out the kitchen window the tall birch tree was shaking its leaves in a light wind. Her mother would tangle in the gold lace leaves and her father would wind himself calmly around the trunk. Older in death, and more stable.

Darwin said he had a box of doughnuts.

“What kind?” Mrs. Pell asked him through the workshop door, not wasting breath on chat. Fine with her if he wanted to suck up.

“Maple glaze,” he said.

She undid the lock, hooked the box out of his hand and shut the door again. She checked. He knew what she liked. She went back to the recliner, draped with an old quilt from the pile left out here for covering tomato plants. He was free with his money, give him his due. A dozen, and no
save some for the kids
. Trying to make up for manhandling her, the bugger. She crammed her mouth full of doughnut. The door scratched open, light streaming too bright for her eyes. He couldn’t bully her. That Rose was a bootlegger or some such thing. She ran a still for a years, that’s what Clayton had heard. Darwin upturned a garbage can and sat, making himself right at home.

“You don’t want to live with Clary,” he said. Like he was hypnotizing her.

“Maybe I do!” she said, quickly. Where else was she going to go, now that Millie Lyne had thrown her out for good? She was out here to make a point.

“You need a little privacy, a little independence,” he said. “At your age.”

Mrs. Pell agreed, it was not what she had coming. “I’ll have the old age pension by the end of August. $450 a month. And she’s looking into retroactive. I’ll get what I’m owed.”

“But you don’t want to be at somebody else’s beck and call. You need a place of your own, that’s what I’m saying.”

“You’re the one with the fancy basement,” she said, doughnut making her voice thick.

“You don’t want to be climbing stairs all day long. Besides, you’re not private in a basement. Them all walking around on top of you.”

That was true. But she wasn’t going to be parked in some seniors’ poorhouse. Clayton had a duty, and if he wasn’t here, then Lorraine had it—and she was getting everything done by Clary. Mrs. Pell’s reasoning trailed along like a dog looking for the source of a meaty smell. They owed her. She bit another doughnut.

“I’m thinking this is a pretty good place, this shop out here,” Darwin said.

She followed his eyes as he looked the place over: long room with windows along one wall. Blinds, so snoopers wouldn’t see your every move. Sun coming in. Alley door down there. The long shape of it was like the cabin in Nanton where her sister Janet had lived when she first got married. The rag-pieced quilt was like what Janet used to make.

“You know this was here?” Darwin opened a door she hadn’t bothered with. Washroom, with a sink and toilet. “Her dad was a plumber, first. Good carpenter, too. Built this place sound.”

She’d peed in a cup the other night, thrown it on the gravel out the back alley. He had a grin on his face. Up to something. He wasn’t pulling the wool over her eyes. They were trying to get rid of her. No way she was getting kicked out of Clary’s.

“You set yourself up in here, nobody can tell you what to do. Your cheque comes to Clary’s mailbox. Same address. I could find you a bed, some furniture. Give it a lick of paint.”

Mrs. Pell got up and walked slowly, favouring her cramped hip, to check the little washroom. She flushed the toilet. That worked. She went back to the lounger. The quilt had been pieced properly, using up old clothes, not one of these fake quilts you got now. It was that one, Tumbling Blocks. Tiny stitches: the dotted line on a highway. Sweet itch under the fingers.

“I don’t want to be stuck paying for power,” she said. “And there’s no TV!”

Darwin went out the open door. A minute later he came back, staggering a little, with the white TV in his arms. He waggled the TV side-to-side onto the counter, and pulled the remote out of his pocket.

“No cable,” Mrs. Pell said.

He burst out laughing. “Hook into Clary’s,” he said. “I’ll get my buddy at the cable company to run it out for you. All legal.” Pleased with himself, big banana smile.

When the children were asleep, Clary knocked on Mrs. Zenko’s door. Mrs. Zenko was quite likely to be choosing her numbers for the lottery at 10 p.m., or washing the kitchen floor. She was a nighthawk
and
a morning glory, she liked to say.

“Darwin says you lent him some furniture for Mrs. Pell,” Clary said. She hugged Mrs. Zenko, reaching down because she was so compact.

“I was glad to find a use for that old couch,” Mrs. Zenko said, blushing at the touch. She stepped outside and waved Clary to sit on the porch chairs. “And the bed’s been in my garage since Nathalie went to England. I can’t pretend to like that woman very much, but it’s better for the children if she’s less dissatisfied, isn’t it? She washed that old pieced quilt your Dad’s mother made—did a good job of it.”

“She likes it,” Clary said.

“Are you off to the hospital? I’ll check on the children every little while, if you like.”

“Darwin says she doesn’t want me. They’re pleased with the results, but she’s not in good shape.”

Mrs. Zenko’s eyes filled. “I remember so well when your dad was ill,” she said. “And John.” She flicked away the tears and stood up to go in. “A lot of people have to go through this type of thing. It seems like the world is badly run, some days.”

Clary drove over to do the banking on her computer in the office; easier when no one was around. The building was dark. She felt like a thief, though she’d come in to work in the evening countless times. Twenty years at the firm, but she shut the door quietly. The situation was a little grey. She hadn’t heard from Barrett yet about her leave of absence, and wasn’t sure whether she was still technically employed.

Her finances, once she got online, were a shock. At first she thought her salary must have already been stopped, but it had been deposited as usual. She had known that she’d need to transfer money, but she couldn’t believe how much she had spent in the last few weeks. How could she have let this get so out of hand? And now Moreland to pay back for the renovations. Five thousand? If she was lucky.

She called Moreland in Davina.

“The basement is beautiful,” she told him. “I thought Darwin was talking about a few sheets of dry-wall.”

“Oh well, if you’re going to do a thing at all,” Moreland said. “Might as well do it up right. That Darwin, he’s a good worker, he and Fern made short shrift of the painting, and she made that little curtain in the bedroom, did you notice it?”

“Of course I did,” Clary said, seeing in her mind Fern’s thin, tendril arms stretching up to set the panel in place. “Tell Fern it’s the nicest curtain I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, we’re happy if you’re happy,” Moreland said.

Clary felt a weight of shame. Moreland had rescued Trevor while she slept. She wondered if he was worried about the children in her care. “Moreland,” she started, then didn’t know how to go on. “You obviously laid out a lot of money on the basement, and I’d like to reimburse you right away. I can mail you a cheque, or deposit it into your account, if you like.”

A little silence, and then Moreland laughed.

“I mean it, Moreland,” she said, jumping over his laughter. “I’d like to get this off my conscience right away.”

“I’m just laughing because you’re such a prickle-puss. Like your Mom.”

Clary felt that pinch in her throat that she always got when anyone compared her to her mother. She was
not
, actually, anything like her mother.

“Okay, okay. I got the carpet for fifty bucks from Murray Frayne, end-of-roll from the golf course, as you might guess. Darwin’s pals brought the lumber and the ceiling tiles, so you’ll have to go to him about that, and the labour was all given. The window was a credit from Patterson’s I never thought I’d get a chance to use, so you’ve done me a favour there, and Henley turned up with those godawful louvred doors because his wife hates them and he’d had to take them out of his own house; brand new, but she wants walnut. So—oh, I forgot one thing, you owe me a hundred dollars for the paint. It took four gallons, but I did get it on sale.”

Clary was silent.

“And if you think you’re the only person around here that can do the decent thing, you’re sadly mistaken, Miss Clary. You get a grip on yourself and write me out a cheque for a hundred dollars, and I’d like to see it in the mail by Monday.”

She didn’t know how to allow him this.

“I had a good time, Clary, and I like that Darwin guy, and those kids. I got a kick out of doing this one little thing, and I’ve told you the honest truth about the costs.”

She knew he hadn’t, by him saying that. She knew him pretty well too.

“A hundred and fifty,” she said.

“What?”

“You said you paid fifty for the carpet.”

“Oh, right.”

“Liar.”

“Like I say, we lucked out there on the roll-ends.”

She said, “Well, we’re going to need more carpet—Darwin moved Mrs. Pell out to my dad’s old workshop, and it’s a concrete floor. Darwin’s going to call Murray to see if he can find some more, but I want to pay for it properly.”

Moreland laughed. “Good for Darwin,” he said. “Get that old bat out of your hair.”

The office was darker after she hung up the phone. The cold light from the computer screen didn’t help. She still had to transfer money from her savings account, and without her salary for the next few months the best thing might be to cash in some GICs. She hadn’t realized how much people eat, and the cost of clothes and diapers, let alone furniture. It was fine—she could have spent the same money on a Caribbean cruise. This was better. What was the worst that could happen? She remembered asking herself that as she went out the door to the grocery store, where Trevor had wet his pants and probably gained another emotional scar, and Mrs. Pell had robbed the place blind.

Clary reached into her desk drawer for ibuprofen, but her hand met nothing. The drawer was empty. She opened the file drawer below: empty hanging files, jingling faintly as they swung. In the bottom drawer, nothing. Barrett, hurt, must have ordered her desk cleaned out.

She found Mat’s stash of blank CDs, opening her cabinet boldly in spite of a ridiculous impulse not to leave fingerprints. It took almost an hour to sort and burn her current work files, but she had them, she’d be covered. She erased anything personal and reset the password to ABC123, feeling both paranoid and sensible.

The evening cleaner came up behind her as she was locking the outer
door of Gilman-Stott. She gave him a jaunty “Goodnight!” That would set Barrett’s nerves jangling, when he heard that she’d been at the office. What did it matter, she thought. Time to check on the children.

Mrs. Pell turned in the new bed. Hadn’t taken her long to get moved in over here, once the place was scrubbed down. Kids wanted to scurry all over the place, flushing the toilet and what-not. Getting them chased out took the longest. She turned again, then heaved off the covers and sat up, taking a long time over it, hand over hand. She could switch on the TV if she wanted to. Go to her own bathroom. Sock feet planted on the piece of green rug they’d given her, she laughed to herself.