Good to a Fault

by Marina Endicott

  They trooped out into the cold air.

  Sparks of stars flew above the rooftops and northern lights were flaring, slashing, bright yellow and green and red flowing into each other. All the people who had left the party were still standing on the sidewalk, looking up, sighing as the curtains swayed.

  33. Rose window

  Paul stopped at the house on his way to do his hospital visits on Saturday morning. “In case I don’t see you there,” he said, when Clary answered the door. “I thought if I didn’t—I thought I’d stop to see you, just in case. In case you—”

  She laughed and asked him to come in, but he could see children in various stages of pyjamas running back and forth, and he said he wouldn’t, “Only I hoped—”

  He started again. “I wanted to ask if you could come for dinner tonight, to my house.” He was already halfway down the steps, as if to give her room to refuse.

  “Of course,” she said. “Yes!”

  He was off. “Six-thirty?” he called back. “Seven?”

  “Six-thirty, please,” she said, wondering what she would do about the children.

  At six p.m. Mrs. Zenko knocked on the door and stepped inside, calling for Clary.

  “Darwin and Fern and I are taking the little ones to the lobster place,” she told Clary. “It’s Seniors’ Saturday and I’ve got a coupon, so we’ll have a party too.”

  Clary found their jackets and tied two pairs of shoes and kissed Pearce, and then she went to do her hair and change her own clothes. She tried on the grey wool dress—too severe, cloisterish. She tightened the belt. Took it off. She put on the brown skirt. Without the sash it was plain enough. It was only dinner.

  Leaning in the doorway of her room, Darwin said, “He’s a seriously good guy. You know that. Why are you confusing yourself? Get over there.”

  She tried a necklace, then took it off. She shouted, “Oh!” and Darwin laughed at her. Nothing, unadorned. That was her. Darwin found her keys.

  Paul was watching through the window when Clary got out of her car. Her chestnut-hull jacket, hair in a low braid twisting over the collar. Autumn beech leaves, with a little plain white peeping through the neck. Always a pleasure to look at her. How familiar she was, her legs moving the way he knew, her back straight, her straight gait, and her heavy skirt moving easily through brown and gold. Dressed up for this, but still herself. He opened the door. They stood looking at each other.

  “What’s for dinner?” Clary asked.

  “Well. I thought—carbonara—I have some good pancetta.”

  Paul backed into the living room, giving her the room, empty as it was. No pungent sofa, at least; the church-hall chairs returned and the floor bare wood, this time, Murphy-soaped. His mother’s Jacobean crewel-work curtains vacuumed to banish the lonely settled dust. Clary’s clothes looked beautiful in there. Clary did.

  She was carrying a bottle of wine. He had bought wine glasses and some pretty good wine himself. He was competent. It was only spaghetti, he told himself. Even if it curdled, it would taste good. He talked about Italy while they grated cheese and broke eggs. He had not known that she’d lived in England, with her mother’s cousins. They compared notes on the plummy voices, the quaintness of the packaging, the beauty. He had done graduate work at Cambridge after U of T, cold and hungry all the time. His mother still lived in Toronto. His sister Binnie had died, she knew that. No other family to rush to his side.

  “My mother would, gladly. But it would only make everything harder. She and Lisanne never—could not—” He stopped. No need for this fumbling.

  “My mother hated Dominic,” Clary said. “That made it easier, because I didn’t have to justify anything to her—being left. She never sullied our ears with his name again.”

  Paul hated to hear the flat note in her voice when she spoke of her once-husband. He consciously brightened his own voice, saying, “What we look for first is someone as unlike our parents as possible—we did a good job on that, both of us. Congratulations!”

  He lifted his glass, but caught its base somehow on the wooden salad forks and spilled red wine into the greens waiting in the bowl.

  “Never mind,” Clary said, dabbing at them with a paper towel. “It’ll be a vintner’s salad. Take the edge off the vinegar.”

  As she did. Paul turned away to light the stove, quickly, in case he might touch her. While up from my heart’s root / So great a sweetness flows I shake from head to foot.

  The carbonara was the best he’d ever made. He was flushed with achievement, or with wine, didn’t matter. Able to talk freely, to hold forth to someone who didn’t look puzzled by his train of thought or ask what some word meant, who laughed when he made a mild joke. She might even have laughed at his marrying-Xanthippe epiphany, he thought. Xanthippany.

  He steered his thoughts away from Lisanne, but too late. She was present enough at the table, sneering at his attempts to be engaging.

  He fell silent. Clary, too, seemed to run out of talk, or the need to talk. She smiled at him. He understood that her kindness would not let her be stiff or seem uncomfortable. Her perfect courtesy, her upbringing. Or maybe, he told himself, she was not uncomfortable. Not conscious, as he was.

  There was a pint of fancy ice cream, frozen impermeable. He left it on the kitchen counter to soften, and found the old coffee grinder which Lisanne’s sister had scorned.

  While Paul made coffee, Clary went upstairs to find the bathroom.

  She had drunk a lot of wine, not too much. A little too much. The bathroom, straight ahead. Where she had changed Pearce, at the party, and he had said Clah! Perfect boy. She looked into the other doors, stepping lightly on the bare floors so Paul would not hear her snooping. A shelf-lined study, the desk not as untidy as his office desk; a little room with a daybed and a bookcase; then his bedroom, which had been his and Lisanne’s. A big pine bed, a dresser, nothing else. No night tables, so the bed stood bare against the wall. An ironing board set up in one corner for him to iron his clerical shirts. She must be drunk, she was getting sad.

  Back to the bathroom, that white empty shell. No shower curtain—Lisanne must have taken it, of course. It felt strange to be alone in Paul’s house with him, as if his house was an extension of his body. She was so bad at this! What was this, even?

  She splashed water on her face, then remembered that she had worn mascara. She carefully tissued off the raccoon eyes, and was left clean but no longer sultry. As she should not be. Ridiculous to try to be attractive, she was too old and he was too broken, never mind his sweet mouth and the pale, strained skin at his temples.

  No time for this, much as they might want it. Far too early for him, and unfortunately too late for her, as she could see in the mirror in that all-white bathroom. With any luck she had not made a complete fool of herself, and could gracefully say good night and go home to the children. She drank a palmful of water, then buried her face in the full white towel. At least his towels were new and rich-feeling, so he had one kindly, soft thing in his life. Her face was old, no matter how she turned her chin to look. She switched off the harsh light and opened the door.

  Paul was standing in the hall. “I came to find you,” he said.

  “Here I am,” she said. His face was so bare, it took up her whole field of vision. Open. Looking at her completely—who else saw her?

  She was old. She was who she was.

  “Your face is beautiful,” he said, needing to tell her that, at least. The light of hidden flowers. Her head was bent, looking down at her feet beneath the edge of the brown skirt. Where it curved, there it was golden, and then dark brown in the shadows.

  “This is impossible, isn’t it,” he said. To let her leave.

  Neruda, that was: I love you as the plant that never blooms, but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers. But that was between a husband and wife, together for twenty-five years. Why would he think that of Clary, whom he hardly knew, had known hardly any time at all? Who he knew as if she was himself, w
ho seemed to fit and match him everywhere. Clary looked into his eyes, and walked through the doorway, three steps, and was in his room.

  “I bought a new bed.”

  “I’m glad it’s new,” she said, and they sat down together on the edge of it, in the pale, empty room. After a minute he knelt down and took her shoes off.

  As they made love Clary thought of lines she had not believed, of images in art. She saw a rose window, and understood, in some translation of spirit, why cathedrals had them—that arching, redoubling, million-faceted rose-wide opening, that springing, flooding light. The reason of the rose, in the first place.

  They lay silent, Paul’s arm bent around her shoulder and collar-bone, his other arm beneath her. No need to move yet.

  He said, “Where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”

  But she could not fall asleep, because there were children at home. After what seemed like a long time, she got up and dressed in the darkness. She knelt beside the bed and folded her hand over his. His fingers twitched, lightly.

  She went home. Past midnight, but Mrs. Zenko waved a gay hand from the couch, saying, “Darwin took Fern off to some party, some old friend she wanted to see, you just missed them. Well, my sweet, I’ll say good night. You look like you had a lovely evening.”

  Mrs. Zenko gathered up her jacket and her purse. She squeezed Clary’s arm as she went out, and kissed her on the cheek. “Sleep well.”

  Clary dreamed that Lorraine came to her room and sat on her bed and asked for a report on the children. She began obediently with Pearce: gaining weight nicely, walking all the time, frustrated now if he was left in his playpen. She did not say that Pearce knew her name. Trevor: happy enough, a few friends he talked about, seemed to be doing well as long as they kept at the homework; she vowed to do better with printing practice, she promised faithfully.

  Dolly? Lorraine asked, her shadowy shape bending slightly.

  I have no idea, Clary had to say. I have no idea how she is doing. I have been too busy with my own affairs. Tears tracked down Lorraine’s ghost cheek, shining in the beam of the streetlight outside.

  Clary climbed up out of sleep and checked on Pearce; then she went down the hall to the children’s room. Trevor was breathing loudly in the top bunk. He muttered and then sighed, still in his dream. Dolly’s duvet had slipped off, and Clary straightened it, looking at the tangle of thin arms and legs, the wild hair straying on the pillow. She could not be in love, she had children to look after.

  At five in the morning Paul came down and found chocolate ice cream melted all over the kitchen counter. He whistled while he cleaned it up, even though it was before breakfast.

  34. Blood, bile

  Fern called Clary at 6 a.m., too scared to wait longer. She and Darwin had run into a little mayhem at the party, a fight had erupted; it was unclear. He had a broken nose, they thought, and concussion; he was still unconscious and they weren’t sure how bad it was. Darwin had not been fighting, Fern said, he’d been in the fight, but not—it was hard to understand her. Clary went to Emergency right away.

  Fern could not stop crying. “It was all pushing, coats and fists, and then he fell! There was ice—”

  But where had they been? When Clary asked, Fern just shook her head and wept some more. “It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have taken him there—everybody was wasted and—my friend—was mad and he wanted a fight, he was being an asshole. Darwin wouldn’t fight with him, he said he was too drunk to fight with, but he was swinging anyway, and the others, and then Darwin turned away and got dropped, his fist caught his nose, crack! And he went down backwards. It was all ice out there, they’d thrown Jack out, I was worried that he might get hurt because he was with these…They were all so drunk, and then the police came…”

  Clary could not untangle the hes and hims but gathered, mostly from Fern’s woe, that Darwin was blameless and unlucky. Fern seemed not to be drunk, but having a hard time getting herself back under control. Clary stood with an arm around her while she got it all out.

  “He sat up and his nose was bleeding and smashed, and I said, I think you’ve broken your nose, and he said, It’s all right, it’s been broken before—and then he passed out.”

  Fern was too old to be this young, Clary thought. She must have seen fights out in Davina. And Darwin was an idiot to have milled in there.

  He looked stricken, flat in the narrow bed, the energy that usually zinged around him gone dead. A huge scrape on the side of his cheek was cleaned, but still oozing blood. His nose was a swollen mess packed with gauze. In a while she’d go up and tell Lorraine, when they knew what was happening.

  They had not used any birth control—why think of that now? She had lost the knack of all this: how long of nobody, nothing, only the crumbs from under thy table.

  Clary got home at noon to find Moreland parking outside. Tears sprang into her eyes at the sight of his competent bulk. “Not enough sleep last night,” she said, hugging him. Remembering why she hadn’t slept enough, she turned her face so Moreland wouldn’t see that joy sparking through her. He’d think she was hiding tears for Darwin, but that was not dishonest.

  “Is he bad?”

  “He looks terrible! But he’s awake, and they’ve packed his nose.”

  “Well, I’m on a mission to calm Fern down. I forgot, Grace sent—” He opened the passenger door and slid out a large cardboard box. “Plug in the slow cooker right away for the barbecue beef, five hours, she said, and there’s three dozen buns for the freezer and two squares and that other pot is beans, and beet pickles and a bunch of new tea-towels.”

  Moreland hopped into his truck. Clary took the box—Grace in cardboard—and struggled with it up to the porch. Mrs. Zenko opened the screen and helped her manoeuvre it through the door. “No trouble here, I just popped over, busybody that I am,” Mrs. Zenko said. Mrs. Pell was snoring on the chesterfield, but the children were still watching TV in what seemed to be a contented stupor.

  While she was plugging in Grace’s slow cooker, Paul walked up the front steps. Clary could hear his feet stamping off the night’s dusting of snow, and knew it was him. He must be on his way home after church—she could tell him about Darwin. He opened the door without knocking, which made her happy, and came straight into the kitchen. She turned to look at him, now in some way her own.

  He walked across the shining tiles with his boots still on and put his arms around her. He said, “I forgot to say, but you must know: I love you.”

  Maybe it only seemed unreal because she was not used to it. Trevor had to tell Paul about the movie they’d been watching. He slid his chair against Paul’s, and Dolly came to find out what she was missing. Pearce in his high chair growled comments. Paul was enjoying them all.

  Clary had a dizzy sensation of artificiality. True/False. We are a little family. That was not a thought that was allowed. It is true, she insisted. But her other mind yelled False, and that was true too.

  She was not hungry. She put soup in front of Dolly, and some for Trevor; ladling, turning, but seeing Lorraine with the delicate oxygen tubes trailing over her ears and into her nose, and Darwin caught in the hospital’s web too, and Clayton, all of them, disappearing.

  The verdict was simply a bad concussion from the fall, the impact of the sidewalk on the back of Darwin’s head. Paul sat on the end of his bed, like Darwin sat on the end of Lorraine’s, and disliked it. He did not want to be Darwin for Darwin. I’m not up to it, he thought. Who did he care for like Darwin cared for Lorraine? Binnie, he told himself, but that was only partly true; he’d gone when he thought he could, for two weeks here and there. He had allowed his job and his marriage to rule his time, as if either one mattered. Darwin had simply left whatever his real life was and come.

  “I’ll sit with Lorraine tonight,” he told Darwin, who shut his eyes. Paul warmed Darwin’s ankle through the sheet, as he had seen Darwin doing a thousand
times to Lorraine’s, and was rewarded with a creeping smile.

  “You’re a model patient,” Paul said. “Patience on a monument.” It took him a moment to remember where that was from: Viola promising endless devotion to her secret love, wasn’t it? A flash of elation darted through him at the thought of the loved one, the electric linkage of love—loved one—Clary, all complete and coursing with current. He put on his coat, and with it, her smell. He took it off again, and put it on—there it was. She was in his coat, his hands, in his skin.

  Closing the coat around him, Paul went down two floors to sit with Lorraine.

  The change in her was frightening. She was horribly thin. Her colour was strange, and the nurse said that as engraftment took hold she slept most of the time, but fitfully, waking prone to panic. Understandably. Paul settled himself in the blue chair to wait for her to waken.

  “I slept with Clary last night,” he imagined telling her, the one safe person he could tell. He was grateful to be so rationally smitten with Clary, not to have to consider any possibility that this was revenge on Lisanne.

  Clary, the most beautiful—the broad map of her brow—who would have thought he could fall so Victorianly in love with a forehead? He loved her lovely face, her small strong hands; he loved the gentle decrease of her ribs, cello-shape on her side in his new bed. He remembered—he could see—the new map of blue veins on her breasts, the unfamiliar clasp of her body around him. His mind’s eye turned backwards to look at Lisanne’s sharp, angry body, and back farther, to when she could lie quietly beside him, their legs twined together, yielding to each other’s spirit. He found that tears were pouring out of his eyes as he thought of her.