Good to a Fault

by Marina Endicott

  “No! She has not! She—” It was too hard to say, to have to hear it out loud.

  Paul sat her on a kitchen chair and pulled the other chair close enough to sit right beside her. He held her shoulders and arms, enclosed her. “She wants the children back?”

  It was not really a question. She had known he would know, he would help her.

  “Yes, she is, she is coming out today, and she will take them somewhere, Clayton has a place—she can’t take them there! I can’t—” Clary shuddered away from what she might have to do, reporting Lorraine to Family Services.

  She couldn’t do that. She had to find some way to stop it without betraying them—but only because if she did report them, betray them, they would take them away, and she would not be able to see the children any more. The yawning space inside her chest spread larger, it was going to be impossible soon, no way to breathe at all.

  “How can I stop them? You must know, who I should talk to, how I can get custody, just temporarily, to keep them safe.”

  “No,” he said. “You can’t do that.”

  “But you know they can’t go live with Clayton—I told you what kind of—”

  “I know,” he said, not letting her go on. “But they’re his children, Clary. And they’re Lorraine’s, and they have a right to raise them, however much you want to help.”

  “No! You don’t—you aren’t listening! She’s taking them today, to some place Clayton’s found, as if it’s going to be all right. It will be some filthy place on Avenue X, they’ll be surrounded by drug dealers and prostitutes. The carpets—you haven’t seen—”

  “I have,” he said. “I’ve seen bad. But Clary, they’re theirs. We’ve been praying for Lorraine’s recovery, but it was always going to lead to this, to the reunion of their family, whether we like to see them go or not. They need their independence again.”

  How could he be arguing in favour of this lunacy? Was there no help? Mrs. Zenko could not do anything, Moreland. Darwin. She could not bear it. She couldn’t breathe.

  “I have to—let me—”

  She slid off the chair and lay down, curled in a half-moon on the carpet, but couldn’t rest there—nowhere. She rocked back and forth, trying to sit up, her mouth wide open in a square gape of pain.

  “Breathe slowly,” Paul said.

  He crouched on the floor beside her and looked into her face, and then got up. He ran to the linen closet for pillows and Binnie’s mohair blanket, with lavender tucked in its folds—he shook the blanket loose, sprays of dead petals patterning the floor. He filled a glass with cold water and one with brandy. He lifted Clary slightly to let her blow her nose with a fresh Kleenex he found (a miracle) in his pocket, then made her drink, first brandy and then the water. He gave her a pillow and put the other one beside her, and let the blanket cloud over them, that soft purple Binnie had loved. He curved his knees close behind Clary’s on the carpet she had given him and held her, one arm carefully around her waist, one arm fitted under her neck. Gradually her sobbing ceased. From time to time her body twitched, but her breath smoothed down again. He lay with her while she slept.

  The afternoon was darkening down, time to think about supper. That might have been what woke her. His arm was too hard a bar under her neck, now that she had calmed down.

  She had to go home. The children were alone with Mrs. Pell, if Clayton had not turned up, or if he had gone to get Lorraine. She was covered in shame, that Darwin had heard that she was losing the children—it was all confused. Why would that shame her? It was nothing to do with her, it was Lorraine’s decision, it was a joy to them all that she was not dead, recovering, every possible good sign. She could weep again with shame.

  Everything she had tried to do had been for nothing. Paul said he would drive her, but she would not let him. She was ashamed in front of him, too, and it made her brisk and cool, hurrying into her jacket and boots, not able to stay another minute, and not able to bear any longer his goodness and his fucking understanding.

  41. Gone

  They were not there. None of them. Clayton had already taken them. Empty house. Drawers empty, closets. Beds not made, but already cold and empty.

  She packed the clothes they had missed, the few things that had been in the laundry, in a cardboard box. Everything fit in one box. They must have worked hard. The valentines had all been cleared off the dining room table. That would have been Dolly.

  Pearce’s special bowl was sitting on the draining board. Like a dog’s dish. Like they’d come to get their dog, their lost puppy that she had been looking after all this time, but they’d left his new dish behind, because they had their own special dish for him.

  She cleaned the kitchen. She put oven cleaner in and let it sit searing away while she took all the pots and pans out of all the cupboards and drawers, stacked them on the kitchen table, and cleaned out the cupboards and drawers with the vacuum cleaner and hot, soapy, bleachy water. As if her mother was watching.

  Paul came to the door at midnight and knocked until she let him in.

  She had nothing to say, and neither did he. She put the kettle on to make tea. He put his arms around her but she couldn’t do that, be comforted, and she excused herself to get the milk, to get cups. The kitchen smelled sterile. She thought she might ask him to help her dismantle the bunk beds, because she wanted to send them to the Gages, wherever they were. Would they even call to let her know where they were?

  She didn’t mention the beds. She couldn’t say any of this to Paul, not now. He had said they were their children, as if she didn’t know that. She could barely be polite to him, and yet when it seemed like he would leave, when he was turning to the front door, she said, “Please, stay.”

  “I will,” he said, surprised. “I left my shaving kit in the car. I came to stay.”

  But she did not want him to stay, either. She did not want anything, except Pearce back, and Dolly, and Trevor; except the life she had left this afternoon to run over to help Lorraine—to help her again!

  She was afraid she would start shouting. Instead, she said she thought she’d have a shower; that might make her feel a bit better. When she came back to her bedroom Paul was there, still standing. Looking at the books on her bedside table. He was kind, he was trying to help her. She could not bear to be helped. Even his vulnerability grated, but the shower had calmed her, and she could touch his arm and speak.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  Which put him in his place, Paul thought. A parish visitor. He lay down beside her and held her again, while she wept in silence and he could not console her.

  In the morning her mother’s car was outside the house.

  Paul had left a cup of tea on her bedside table, with the saucer on top of it to keep it warm. He had kissed her, smelling of shaving cream, and said he would come back in the afternoon. She kept her eyes closed until he was gone, and by accident fell heavily asleep again. It was after nine when she woke and pulled herself out of bed, only because lying there meant thinking.

  She opened the curtain and there was the car. How could even Clayton bring it back without saying anything? She dressed herself and drank the cold tea.

  The keys were on the front seat, and there was a note on the dashboard: Thanks. We’ll be in touch. Lorraine. It was spotlessly clean.

  Clary went back into the house and rifled through her purse, her coat pockets—where else? Her own car—she ran back outside and found it, tucked into the notepad in her glove compartment. The social services woman’s card. Bertrice Morgan.

  Bertrice’s voice was low-pitched and a little tight. “Family and Community Services, Bertrice speaking,” she said.

  “I am calling—this is Clara Purdy,” Clary said. “I’m calling about Lorraine Gage.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Lorraine’s children were staying with me while she was in hospital, and I—”

  “You’re her mother-in-law?”

  “What?”

  “The
kids were with her mother-in-law.”

  “No, I had—Yes, they were. They were all with me. Staying in my house. Or at least—while she was in treatment.”

  “So what can I do for you, Ms. Purdy?”

  “They’ve gone, they’ve moved out.” What could she say? She sounded insane. She adjusted, tried not to let uneven breath crack her voice. “I have—some of the baby’s things here, and some schoolwork for the children, but I’ve misplaced the address of their new place.”

  Bertrice did not answer right away.

  “I wanted to send them on, you see, to give the children—I need to be able to get these things to them.”

  “You sound a little upset,” Bertrice said.

  “Clayton brought back my car,” Clary said, and then stopped talking.

  There was a long pause.

  “I’m worried,” Clary said.

  “I can hear that.”

  “I’m afraid of what will happen to them,” Clary began, but she could not bring herself to say anything more. Partly because it was not fair, and she knew it. More, at this moment, because if she said anything hulking sobs would come up into her throat and drown her. She was a lunatic, she should not be doing this. She wanted—

  “Ms. Purdy?”

  Bertrice must get a lot of calls from lunatics.

  “How about you give me your number, Ms. Purdy, and then if Lorraine needs to get in touch with you, I can give it to her.”

  Clary was afraid she was going to scream. Her hand was shaking on the receiver. She let it fall down in its cradle.

  The hospital knew her. The oldest nurse, Debbie, was on duty, and that was a stroke of luck.

  “She did, she—where did we stick that?” Debbie flipped taped papers and stickies up and down behind the nursing station counter. “She left a number for Darwin, because he was going to call, and I think he did, but did we—hmmm. That’s the question.”

  Clary leaned as far as she could, to help look.

  “There! I knew nobody would have torn it down. It’s always me who cleans this place out. Huh! I thought it was a phone number, but it’s just this.”

  Debbie handed her a yellow sticky, with Darwin’s name and an address on 38th Street.

  “Thank you,” Clary said. “You have all been so kind, all the way through this.”

  “Well, look who’s talking. I don’t think she’d have done it without you and that brother of hers pulling her through. You take care,” Debbie said. She put her warm, plump hand on Clary’s arm, and Clary felt like she’d been branded. She accepted the mark.

  “Oh, and we found these, too,” Debbie said, handing her a manila envelope.

  Clary’s shoes made a loud noise on the floor, walking away. The elevator was too slow; she ran clack-clack down the stairs. Backing out of her parking stall she nearly hit an elderly man, and she braked sharply, heart clanking, trying to calm down. The bridge poured her over the river, the streets led her north like iron filings, and there was 37th, and there was their street.

  But she could not turn down it. She drove down 39th instead. Post-war houses, horrible apartments; that block must be it. Maybe their windows looked back this way, and they would see her, spying on them.

  Across the freeway she could see the cemetery. She wound her way over there, and walked along the lanes close to her mother’s grave, and her father’s. No flowers, nothing to leave. It didn’t matter, anyway. Her mother was not there. Just an old dress and a pair of black shoes. Shoes for a corpse, what stupidity. We really should put our dead in trees and let them blow away, she thought. Her father: something of him was still there. Probably because she had visited this place so often with her mother. Iron filings, iron filings. She bent down and kissed the gravestones, one after the other. George Purdy, Elizabeth Purdy, United in Death.

  Back in the car, the sun was coming through the car window, warm for February. The manila envelope was lying on the seat. She tore it open: a bunch of sketches and a half-finished watercolour of Pearce, done by the rules from the portraits book, with a penciled cross through his eyes and forehead, abandoned. Lorraine must not have liked it. But it was pretty close.

  Clary stared at her boy, at his eyes, his mouth. What could she do? She could try to do better.

  The truth was she did not need her house any more. She should have moved when her mother died. She needed to get shucked of it, and now, with all the empty rooms rattling around her, it only made sense that they have it.

  Paul would let her stay at his house, while she found something small. She booked a truck, rented a storage unit, and spent a couple of days packing the china and crystal as carefully as their value required, clearing out sideboards and doing the sorting she had been putting off for years. Her mother’s treasures would need appraisal before selling; about time to get rid of this burden of glittering pride.

  Thinking of burdens, she put a For Sale sign in the window of her mother’s car, with her phone number and the price. An hour later Mrs. Bunt knocked on the door and offered to buy it for cash. Nice for her to have some independence from Mr. Bunt, Clary thought, and gave her the key. Mrs. Bunt started the car and drove it forward twenty feet. It looked right at home.

  Once everything breakable was packed, and the place ready, she washed her hair and dressed in jeans and drove over to 38th Street. The apartment complex was as bad from the front as from the back. Tattered curtains in some of the windows, tinfoil creased onto others. Dirty snow drifted the courtyard, baring odd patches of dirty grass. There was a bell for Super, with no name plate. Clary pushed that one. The linoleum tiles in the foyer were lifting and broken. The glass between the mailbox area and the inner lobby had been cleaned, though, so Clary could see when a door opened down the hall and someone came out.

  Lorraine. Her step checked, seeing Clary. But she pressed the lever to open the door.

  “Hi,” she said. No questions.

  “Hi,” Clary said. She didn’t know how to start, now, seeing Lorraine. A kerchief on her head to cover the cropped hair; navy pants and a blue blouse. Too big for her shoulders, but her poor abdomen was still rounded from the steroids. Maybe she had more colour in her skin; it was hard to tell in the bad light of the lobby. Her eyebrows were drawn on. Clary remembered kissing her cheek.

  “Come in,” Lorraine said, holding the door wider.

  “I don’t—I didn’t come for a visit, really.” The children wouldn’t be home, but Pearce would. She stopped in the doorway, and took over holding the heavy glass.

  Lorraine turned her head back to see the apartment door, still open a few inches.

  “What’s up, then?”

  “I have a proposition,” Clary began, as she had decided to. “You need—naturally, you need your own place. But I have been thinking of—”

  Lorraine interrupted her. “He already called. This place isn’t great, you were right. Clay hasn’t had much luck talking to the management, either. We were going to find something better, but then we lucked into the duplex, and we’re very—It will work out good. It was really kind of him. I probably have you to thank about that too.”

  Clary tried to understand all that.

  “I know he’s giving us a break on the rent, but he won’t have to for long. And we’ll take good care of it, so you don’t have to be worried about him and Grace losing out.”

  Moreland’s duplexes. Clary leaned against the steel door frame. From the open apartment door she could hear Pearce, his grizzling complaint-cry.

  Her chest hurt. She was going to have to see somebody about this. She could not bear so much physical pain.

  “Darwin said Fern called her dad to ask if he had any ideas, and it was so lucky because those tenants were leaving this week, so we don’t even have to wait. Moreland arranged it all over the phone. It’s the blue set on Palmer, the right-hand one. The kids are going to like it way better over there, and the other thing is, it’s just inside the Brundstone School area—you’ll be glad to hear that. They’ll have
to bus, but it’ll work out good.” Lorraine smiled, almost a laugh. Wasn’t she going to see what was wrong with Pearce?

  “So what did you—?”

  “Oh. I was at the hospital, and they gave me this envelope for you,” Clary said. She handed it to Lorraine.

  “Huh!” Lorraine shuffled the papers out of the envelope. “These were just garbage.”

  The picture of Pearce was not there. Clary had left it on the kitchen table. Because she had known, all along, that this would not work.

  “Well,” she said. “I wanted to say that I would send over the bunk beds, for the kids.” She never used the word kids, it felt strange in her mouth.

  “That would be great, if you can’t use them.”

  What for, would she use them? She looked at Lorraine, and Lorraine looked back at her, matching her weight for weight.

  “Bertrice told me you called,” Lorraine said. “She wondered who you were.”

  Clary said nothing. Nothing to say.

  “I said you were our friend, who had helped out. What was your plan there?”

  Salt taste licked at the back of Clary’s throat. They were both very angry, the small lobby was full of heat.

  “I’ll tell them you said hi,” Lorraine said, taking back the glass door to let Clary go.

  Clary just nodded, because she had a dragon inside her mouth, and it would come out in fire if she opened her lips and let it.

  42. So various, so beautiful, so new

  So she did not need to ask Paul if she could stay at his house. And now she had to stay in hers.

  She left a message on his machine at the church, saying that she was going to Davina for a few days. He would not know that she could not drive out to Davina, as she might if she was in trouble, because nobody was there—and because of the amazing betrayal of Moreland giving them the duplex. She put the painting of Pearce in the kitchen junk drawer, turned the ringer off on her phone, and didn’t answer the door. When Moreland and Grace called from Hawaii she did not answer; she did not listen to her messages. She lay in bed, not knowing how to get up, and gradually slept herself out of the worst of it.