Good to a Fault

by Marina Endicott

  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 yo
u’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.

  Too bad her sister Janet couldn’t see her now, she thought. Too bad Janet had died, screaming her head off with her breast. And now Lorraine. Even in the dark Mrs. Pell could feel the tumbling blocks diamonding down the quilt.

  One doughnut left in the box that she’d hidden under the bed when the kids came tearing over. With a grunt she slid off the bed onto her knees, and groped under the bed as far as she could reach with her swollen hands. Not so fresh anymore, but still. She hauled herself back up onto the bed and sat panting, taking a bite and breathing some more. She wasn’t too well. She pushed that out of her head. A bite. Behind her eyelids a parade of people walked: Dougie Pell, Clayton when he was a teenager, her dad, Clayton’s dad—that fucker. And herself, when she was six, sitting beside Janet, watching Janet’s needle go in and out, in and out, little stitches.

  20. Raspberry

  Darwin wouldn’t take any money either. In lieu of rent, he said, and nowhere near enough; he cut off any argument by telling her the hospital was talking about sending Lorraine home when she was released from this isolation period after chemo. Clary went in to find out the details.

  The dire smell of the ward hit her in the face after a grace period away. She walked the familiar route down the hall—then farther, because Lorraine had been moved to an isolation room, with an ante-room for visitors to wash. The little ritual took time, and attention to the instructions printed over the sink, before she could move through to the room itself.

  Lorraine was sleeping. Narrow drip-lines draped her in a spider’s web.

  A strange man sat in a chair against the wall; Clary saw he was there for the other patient in the room. He was staring at her: a young woman—a girl, lying flat down with no pillow, her closed eyes purple dents in her head. The man didn’t move, or acknowledge Clary. He was not sleeping.

  After hesitating a minute, Clary passed close by him to go to Lorraine’s bedside. She put her hand on her own cheek first, to check its temperature in case she should be too cold, and then on Lorraine’s cheek to wake her gently. Nothing.

  Lorraine’s chest rose and fell, her hair fell away from her brow and ears. She was as deep in sleep as Snow White, lying in this huge glass coffin. Clary turned from the bed and left.

  Early in the evening, Paul knocked on the door. Clary was so surprised and glad to see his thin, sweet face that she almost leaned forward to kiss him, as if he were family, or Moreland.

  She stopped herself in time, and opened the door wide.

  To Paul’s ears the house thrummed with life: Pearce singing at the top of his voice in the kitchen, Dolly and Trevor racing each other to be first to the door.

  “We went to the lake, and I nearly drowned,” Trevor said, beating Dolly to being interesting, at least. They crowded Paul with them into the kitchen, where ice cream was melting in their bowls. Pearce gave Paul a massive, tooth-splaying smile and shouted at him generally, waving a spoon. He had ice cream on the top of his head. Clary got a cloth from the drawer and ran warm water, adding to the wash of noise and light.

  “You had dessert already!” Paul pulled a quart basket from the red-splotched bag he carried. “Look, I brought raspberries I picked myself.”

  “I thought that was blood,” Trevor said.

  “You probably can’t have any raspberries now,” Paul said sadly.

  “No, no,” Dolly said. “Raspberries are good for us, but they give Darwin blisters.”

  Clary washed Pearce’s head and face while he spluttered. “You
can put them on your ice cream. You dole them out, Paul. Where did they come from?”

  “I had to go out to St. Peter’s Abbey for a meeting, and the monks took me for a walk in the raspberry canes afterwards. Look, some are golden, not red—like beads of honey.”

  She turned her head to see, and he popped a raspberry into her mouth, warm and perfect, a bud of light. Everything smelled of raspberries. His nervous fingers were stained from picking, so she could see the whorls marked red on the smooth skin, the maze-marks that were only his. She laughed and opened her mouth for another one.

  Pearce opened his mouth too, and Dolly and Trevor, birds in the nest demanding theirs, all the little mouths to feed. And Darwin came shooting up the stairs to demand ice cream before he went to the hospital, and raspberries too, allergy or no. He slapped Paul on the back and thanked him for the help.

  “Help?” Clary asked.

  “He came and painted, Monday,” Darwin said, delicately sifting a huge fistful of raspberries past his lips, straight into his mouth. “You should see it now, man.”

  “I happened to be driving by,” Paul said to Clary. “I stopped to see—”

  The doorbell rang, one long buzz.

  Clary sighed and unwound her hair from Pearce’s fingers. “You stay here,” she told him. “Sit with Paul, instead.” She plopped him down on Paul’s long, bony leg.

  It was Barrett Gilman at the door.

  She stepped back, wanting to shut the door on his rosy, self-flooded face. “Clara!” he said, jocular and benevolent, which she knew from experience meant he had unpleasant news. She wasn’t letting him in the house. Too bad Mrs. Pell had taken her dinner out to the shop and couldn’t be rude to him.

  “Well, Clara,” he said, after a pause.

  She stood waiting, door in hand, knowing that he was truly going to annoy her now, and said nothing.