Good to a Fault

by Marina Endicott

  Mrs. Pell staggered down the alley pulling the big beige suitcase she’d got at the Goodwill. The zipper was tetchy but she had Clayton’s pliers in her purse if it gave her trouble.

  She’d had to wait twenty minutes for a bus. Poor service early on a Saturday. She ran through the supplies in her head: peanut butter, vienna sausages, quilt, pillow, fleece nightie, the old Niagara Falls playing cards. Her pills. Bank card. Socks, other pants, white sweater. It beat the basement at the duplex. She got a tight, nasty feeling in her chest when those goddamn kids bugged her. The noise played on her eardrums like tom-toms, not that she could hear what any of them were saying.

  Mrs. Pell leaned on the door-post and fumbled with the sticky catch, but she had the trick of it pretty quick.

  Dusty in there. She rolled the big case in. Clary was simple, it was Mrs. Zenko she’d have to watch out for. Always prying, like Sally Caslo back in Bonner, when Clayton was two and Lenny Gage hadn’t left yet. Sally happening along the one time she lost her temper and took into Clayton, calling the district nurse on her. Like it was an accident—she’d been lying in wait, peering out her window waiting for an argument and scuttling over, cockroach hearing the can opener. Like that old bitch in Brandon telling her off. What was that about? Something sly—to get a memory back you had to pull at it like a hank of wool, teasing out whatever was caught in there. Lights. The power was still on out here, that was good. Mrs. Pell wandered around the workshop, her mind drifting from Brandon back to that place over the store on Main where she’d lived with Lillian Parr, to Lillian’s brother in the middle of the long, baking-hot night while Lillian worked the late shift at the midway, sawdust on the floor. The floor slid sideways to Lenny Gage, and backwards down all the men on that slippery slide until she hit the side of her head with her closed fist and skipped the needle over a groove to her sister Janet. She spread the tumbling-blocks quilt on the bed.

  Clary looked out the kitchen window and watched Mrs. Pell pacing back and forth, silhouetted against the blinds. She should do something, but what would be best? Ignore her, tell Lorraine, call social services, call the police—It all went downhill from ignore.

  Paul would know what should be done with a wandering old woman. Lorraine could come and get her. But she didn’t need to call anybody, Clary knew what should be done. She made a cup of strong coffee with too much cream, found a set of clean sheets and a couple of towels, and went out into the pearly morning air.

  Long after Mrs. Pell had turned out her lights that night, Darwin drove up on his motorcycle. Clary was out on the grass in front of her flower beds, looking at the veronica and wondering if she was letting it choke, if a little attention earlier in the year might have done wonders. She turned when she heard the bike, and was surprised when it stopped at her house. Then not surprised, when the rider took his helmet off and was Darwin.

  He unstrapped a case and brought it across the grass. “Few things she didn’t pack,” he said, smiling with his huge open face, like the sun in the evening.

  “Anything she’ll need tonight?” she asked, being as casual as he was.

  “Don’t think so.”

  How tall he was. “I’ll leave it outside her door, then,” Clary said. “How did you know she was here?”

  “Dolly told me. But where else would she be?”

  Clary nodded.

  “Want to go for a ride?”

  She looked at the motorcycle. “Is it safe?”

  “Hardly.” Insulted that she might think so.

  He left Mrs. Pell’s bag on the porch, handed Clary the other helmet, and showed her where to put her feet. He swung the bike around, started it and rolled over the edge of the driveway as if it was the edge of the world, and away with a growl down the never-ending street, outwards. It was late enough that there was no traffic, and early enough in the year that there were no bugs. Only the crickets swinging on their creaking hinges, audible above the motor. The pavement slid away beneath them. Clary hung on, her arms halfway around his broad, flat back, and gradually found that she could straighten her spine and sway with the bike as he went around the last corner and headed south past the racetrack and the museum, past Early’s where Moreland always went, and out into the night country.

  The bike glided on, up and down the unexpected hills. Darwin did not talk, but he pointed once to a coyote standing by the side of the road and up, another time, to the bright spill of stars. He slowed at a long banking arc in the road, and around the blind corner Clary gasped to see a throng of deer spread out along the road. The noise of the motorcycle set them leaping into the grass, tails flashing.

  Darwin swung around and headed back into the city, the lights spread out like a diamond necklace on the horizon. The lights swelled up into town again, the noise of the bike dulled, and they went swooping along under the street lamps, down her own street again, home.

  He idled the motor and let the kickstand take the weight. She undid the helmet and found her head all in one piece. She went up the steps, her legs a bit unsteady after all that hanging on with her knees.

  “Good work, with Mom Pell,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Clary said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Any night,” he said. He rolled around in a circle again and vroomed off. She stood and watched him go, his balance unwavering. Like a gyroscope upon the earth.

  49. Ascension

  On the 24th of May, Darwin phoned Clary in the morning to say it was hotter than hell already and why didn’t she come out to the river with them for a picnic? “Bring the old lady, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  It was a PD day, no school. She thought about it. “Are you asking Paul, too?”

  “Already on board.”

  She looked out the kitchen window. Mrs. Pell was in the garden, sitting in the wooden rocker, but she looked movable. She’d been hunkered down in the workshop for two weeks and must be feeling safe by now, Clary thought, the way a turtle brought home from the store needs a while to acclimatize. “What can I bring?”

  “All taken care of. Come right now.”

  But she had been to the river before. She brought all the chocolate she had in the house, and two large thermos jugs of water. They were heavy to lug across the meadow, once she had parked by Darwin’s old green car that he’d given Lorraine, and the Triumph parked beside it. Mrs. Pell was no help, of course. She stumped off, carrying her folding chair. Not talking today. Fine.

  Paul drove up while Clary was working out the best way to carry the jugs, and Mrs. Zenko got out of Paul’s car, holding her ancient aluminum cake-carrier with the black Bakelite handle. What kind of cake might be in there?

  “Did Darwin ask Paul to bring you?” Clary asked, hugging her. Why had she not thought of it herself? She was such a rule-follower.

  Paul was climbing out too, empty-handed. “I thought of it on my own,” he said. He took a thermos from Clary. “Hey, he said not to bring anything!”

  “It’s only water. You can’t have too much water. And Mrs. Zenko disobeyed too.”

  “Darwin called me yesterday,” Mrs. Zenko said, tying the arms of her sweater around her waist. “So I’d have time for baking. My, it’s hot!”

  “That’s how transparent I am in my independent thinking,” Paul said.

  It was hot for May, but the trees still held their first bright green. The tall new grass was green too, springing through last year’s brown and gold. A bird sang, invisible, cheerful, as they wandered along the half-beaten path, swinging their burdens. They found the track down the riverbank and crossed the fast-running stream to the first of the sandbars. Clary and Paul forded the water in their sandals, helping Mrs. Zenko to cross by the rocks. This early in the season, and a Thursday, there was nobody out at the river.

  “It’s Ascension Day, did you know?” Paul asked them. “It’s unlucky to do any work today.”

  “What a good excuse,” Mrs. Zenko said.

  “Not till next week, for you Orthodoxers,” Clary said.
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  “I’ll take the day off then too.”

  Across the sandbanks and scrubby bushes they could see a little fire burning on a stretch of beach, heat spirit rising from the wood-coals.

  Darwin raised an arm to greet them, and the children ran over the sand. Pearce scrambled down from Lorraine’s lap. She was sitting in a black cloth folding chair, wrapped up in a jacket, but her dark hair, grown in, was blowing loose in the wind. She looked happy, waving both her hands at them.

  Clayton was crouched at the water’s edge with a beer, maybe fishing; Mrs. Pell already arguing with him about something, her mouth snapping at a distance. Clary sighed to think of her.

  Pearce smacked Clary with a quick flowery kiss and pulled Mrs. Zenko away to show her the river. Then Trevor reached them, and stood in front of her, eyes strained, and Clary sank down on her heels in the sand.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to you, Trev,” she said, putting out her hand to touch his arm. “But I see you all the time at school,” she said, at the same time as he said, “I see you all the time…” He leaned forward gratefully onto her knees.

  “It’s nice to see you,” she said, holding him tight. Not saying that she had missed him, in case that made him feel guilty. He hugged her back.

  Dolly took Clary’s other hand to bring her to the fire. “Even when it’s hot out, the fire is nice,” she said. “Like a camp.”

  Lorraine stayed folded in her chair, looking cautious, but she put out her hand as Clary got close, and Clary took it: the same hand to hold, the long fingers, but with more strength.

  Clary sat on a nearby rock, one of a few arranged around the fire. She smiled at Lorraine (who she had worked hard for, after all, and was very happy to see alive), and made herself glide through that membrane she could never pierce, and just talk. “You look so good,” she said. “Even better than that day at the school play.”

  “Thanks for coming,” Lorraine said. All she needed to say. “Nice to have a party with everyone. All we need is Fern and them.”

  “They’re coming,” Darwin said. “Takes longer from Davina, but they’ll get here.”

  He was digging in brown paper grocery bags and called Dolly to help him hand out paper plates of sandwiches. Plate after plate of crustless tuna and salmon sandwiches, cut in triangles. Mrs. Pell said she didn’t like fish and took her chair into the willow grove in the middle of the island, where she fell asleep with her hat on. Clary bit into a tuna sandwich with parsley around the cut edges, wondering if Darwin might have stolen them from somewhere—the United Church come-and-go tea for Edith and Willard Stepney’s 75th, for instance, which she ought to take Mrs. Zenko to this evening. The Stepneys had owned the store between her father’s hardware store and John Zenko’s jewelry store. They’d been old even then. The window of time when you could do anything was so brief, Clary thought. The Stepneys had probably had all kinds of ideas of what they would accomplish, not including spending the last twenty years sleepwalking in the seniors’ lodge. Good sandwiches. Darwin was laughing at her again. She screwed up her nose at him and had another. Salmon this time.

  “I have half a mango here somewhere,” Darwin said, rummaging through the supplies again. He hauled out a large bag of fruit, every kind, each one perfect. Dolly washed them at the water’s edge and brought an orange to Lorraine and a ripe, medieval-perfumed pear to Clary. The orange sprayed a smarting arc when Lorraine bit into it to start peeling. Orange and pear, mixed with fire-smoke, wound and twined with the wind in their hair.

  The children wandered along the shoreline eating sandwiches. Mrs. Zenko and Pearce walked more slowly, bringing treasures back to show Lorraine and Clary as they sat chatting carefully about nothing much—the heat, and school, and how it was to be working again.

  Lorraine did not talk about anything that was on her mind: Clayton, money, or the slightly painful lump just over her left pelvic bone. That was most likely just a swollen lymph node, left over. She was not going to worry about it. The stress-acid that flooded through her arms and legs could run out on the sand and seep away, today. Every day. No more useless worry. She told Clary a funny story about the spectacled kid at one house she was cleaning, who came racing home early to tell her how amazing it was to find his clothes in the right drawers for a change. “His system made sense to me,” she said. “He’s a neat kid, tidy I mean, but the rest of his family, wow! I just start at one end of the house and do what I can. His room is a little sanctuary.”

  Clary listened with one layer of her mind while another breathed in the pear and checked Lorraine carefully for physical clues. She seemed tired, but calm.

  “You look great,” Clary said again. “You look ordinary. I’m so glad.”

  Lorraine nodded. “I’m good,” she agreed, not having to work to convince Clary of it. She believed her.

  “Gifts to the blind or the lame on Ascension Day will be rewarded with wealth,” Paul said, walking with Darwin at the water’s edge. “Eggs laid on this day never go bad, and bring good luck if placed in the roof…Clouds appear in the shape of the Lamb of God, and rain collected on Ascension Day is good for inflamed or diseased eyes.”

  “Does your head hurt, with all this stuff flapping around inside it?”

  Paul half-laughed, feeling sorry for his monkey mind.

  “You could choose to forget,” Darwin said. “Pain, resentment, religious trivia…”

  “But eggs in the roof, maybe that’s what I need. Better than bats in the belfry, flap-flapping…”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Oh, the best I can. Keeping on with my work, doing my duty, making my visits,” Paul said. Not a very noble recitation. “I don’t know what more I can do.”

  Darwin stretched his arms up, flaring up, to the sun flashing in the blue-white sky above them. “Why not be totally changed into fire?” he asked. Then he danced his fingers around and laughed his head off.

  Dolly wandered away from her mom and Clary, letting them look after each other. Mrs. Zenko was there for Pearce, and Trevor liked to be alone outside, although he always wanted her to be with him at school. She swung her arms out wide and twirled in a circle on the empty sand, wanting to be dizzy, to be in orbit around herself. She stopped, and staggered, and felt the vortex of the world whirling around her. But her legs braced her stable on the earth, even though it was just sand. She was wearing her gypsy skirt that Gran had bought her at the Sally Ann store. When she whirled it flared way out into the air. Her dad had said not to wear it to the beach, keep it for good, but her mom had said why not? This was good. She had her bathing suit on underneath and she tucked the skirt up into the waistband when she wanted to wade. When she ran through the dunes and the grass, the skirt flew out behind her and whipped in the wind, a blue-green swirl like imaginary water. Not like this river water that was all colours, clear over the rocks, brown in the shadowy deep channels, racing along grey-blue in the rapids. She splashed through the shallows and ran down the long wet sandbar in the middle of the river, like a movie of a beautiful girl running on a desert island.

  Absent-mindedly following Dolly’s running footprints, not noticing where he was going himself, Paul found Clayton blocking his way at the brink of a cut-away bank.

  “Beer?” Clayton asked him, dangling the last can from an empty net of six-pack plastic.

  “No, no thanks,” Paul said.

  “Good, ’cause I don’t think Darwin brought any and this is my last one.”

  Paul laughed. “Kind of you to offer, then.”

  They walked along the shore for a while.

  “You know Clara pretty well?” Clayton asked.

  “Pretty well,” Paul agreed.

  “You think she’ll help out with the kids again?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Thought so. She likes them, eh?”

  “So do I,” Paul said.

  “Yeah. You’re her boyfriend?”

  “No,” Paul said.

  “Huh! I thought
you were.”

  Paul shook his head. “We’re friends,” he said.

  Clayton laughed. “Right.” He bent for a stone and threw it far into the river, the motion strong and fluid. Paul could see the athlete he might have been.

  Drifting on the dunes on the other side of the sandbank, Trevor watched the birds landing on the water. Geese, crook-winged seagulls, birds he didn’t know. When they landed on the water they followed no path. Even the huge white pterodactyl pelicans could come and go without leaving a trace. Around one spit of land he could see a mile down the river, nobody else in the world. Ahead, a long slender vase of a blue heron stood on a driftwood stump.

  He stopped still. No thoughts, nothing but clean empty space in his head. Then he turned around and walked back, his feet quiet on the sand. The funny little running birds left stick-man footprints on the sand so you could follow them back to the nest, but you would not because it would scare them. Trevor followed along one birdfoot trail and it led him straight to Darwin at the edge of the water.

  He looked at Darwin’s feet, and then up at his face.

  “Let’s go in,” Darwin said.

  It was hot, hot, and the water was running along warm over the shallows. They were all half wet from wading already. He and Trevor went in first, but Clary followed with Dolly, holding Pearce’s hands between them. Lorraine stood on the shore, and Dolly waved back at her, beckoning. Mrs. Zenko came and put her arm around Lorraine, the light wind whipping up her short hair, the same length as Lorraine’s. Silver and black; to Clary they looked like a time-lapse photo, thirty-five and seventy.

  Darwin grabbed Pearce and swung him around, first into the air and then flying, diving under the surface and back up again, like a bird, Clary thought, a sea-bird used to the waves. Pearce was laughing, not at all scared. Trevor splashed deeper with Dolly until they stepped off the edge of a submerged sandbar and went under for a second—but Darwin grabbed them up and held them, one in each arm.