The Center Cannot Hold ae-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Only a couple of customers were working on coffee and, in one case, a sandwich. Business would pick up after government offices closed in another forty-five minutes. Nellie hoped it would, anyhow. It had been a slow day-whenever snow fell in Washington, it tied the city in knots.

  Nellie expected Edna to go into one of the back rooms before saying whatever was on her mind. That way, the men wouldn't be able to eavesdrop. But her daughter said, "Oh, Ma, I don't know what to do! Merle's found out about Nick Kincaid!"

  "Oh," Nellie said, and then, "Oh, Lordy."

  "Who's Nick Kincaid, Edna?" Clara asked.

  "He was a… a fellow I used to know, a soldier," Edna answered. "I was going to marry him, maybe, but he got killed in the war."

  That told Clara enough to satisfy her. It didn't say everything there was to say on the subject, not by a long chalk. Edna had certainly been about to marry Lieutenant Nicholas H. Kincaid; she'd been walking down the aisle with him when U.S. artillery fire tore off his head. The other thing she'd neglected to tell her half sister was that Kincaid had been a soldier, all right, but one who fought for the Confederate States.

  "Well, dear," Nellie said, as coolly as she could, "you knew this was liable to happen one of these days." She was, if anything, amazed it hadn't happened sooner.

  Edna said, "When it didn't happen for so long, I reckoned it never would. And you know how Merle is, how he always put me on a pedestal."

  Most men, Nellie was convinced, put women on pedestals so they could look up their skirts. But she found herself nodding. Merle Grimes was different-or had been different. He'd lost his first wife during the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Since meeting Edna and falling in love with her, he'd made as good a husband as any woman could want-better than Edna deserved, Nellie often thought.

  Edna never would have gone up on that pedestal if Merle (who had a Purple Heart-a U.S. Purple Heart) had known everything-or even most things-about Nick Kincaid. What he would have thought had he known Kincaid had got Edna into bed… Nellie shied away from that. Sometimes the quiet ones were the worst when they did lose their tempers. Even finding out Edna's former fiance had worn butternut and not green-gray was liable to be enough.

  "What am I gonna do, Ma?" Edna wailed.

  "How'd he find out?" Nellie asked.

  "This fellow from the CSA came into his office for some kind of business or other." Now Edna had the sense to keep her voice down; one of the men drinking coffee had leaned forward to snoop a little too obviously. She went on, "They both wore Purple Heart ribbons, dammit-you know how the Confederates give 'em, too. And they got to talking soldier talk: where'd you fight, how'd you get hurt, that kind of thing."

  "And?" Nellie asked.

  "And one thing led to another, and they got to liking each other," Edna said. "And Merle said how he'd married a Washington gal, and that was the closest thing you could get to marrying a gal from the Confederate States. And the other fellow said that was funny, on account of his cousin had almost married this Washington gal who worked in a coffeehouse when he was here on occupation duty during the war."

  "Uh-oh," Nellie said.

  Edna nodded bitterly. " Uh-oh is right. Merle said his wife-me, I mean-was working in a coffeehouse when he met her, too. And they went and talked a little more, and they figured out they were both talking about the same gal. And I got this phone call from Merle, and I didn't like the way he sounded, not for beans I didn't, and so I left Armstrong with Mrs. Parker next door-he was playing with her boy Eddie anyways-and I came over here."

  "All right, dear," Nellie said. "I may not be much, but I'm what you've always got, and that's for sure." Edna nodded, biting her lip and blinking back tears. There had been times when Nellie hoped she would never see her daughter again, not a few of them when Edna was fooling around with the late Confederate Lieutenant Kincaid. But Edna was what Nellie had, too, and always would be. It wasn't that she didn't love Clara, but her younger daughter often felt more like an afterthought or an accident than flesh of Nellie's flesh. Of course, Edna had been an accident, too, but that was a long time ago now.

  "What am I gonna do, Ma?" Edna asked again.

  "Just remember, sweetie, your husband ain't the only one in the family who's got himself a medal," Nellie said. "He starts going on about you selling out your country, you hit him over the head with the Order of Remembrance. For heaven's sakes, Teddy Roosevelt put it on you his very own self."

  "That's true." Edna brightened a little. "That is true." But then she turned pale. She pointed out through the big glass window in front. "Oh, Jesus, Ma, there he is."

  "Nothing bad's going to happen," Nellie said, though she knew she couldn't be sure of any such thing. Edna's husband was a quiet fellow, yes, but…

  The bell above the door chimed cheerily as Merle Grimes walked into the coffeehouse. The rubber tip on his cane tapped against the linoleum floor. Behind the lenses of his spectacles, his eyes had a blind, stricken look, as if he'd had too much to drink, but Nellie didn't think he was drunk.

  He nodded jerkily to her before swinging his gaze towards Edna. "When you weren't home, I figured I'd find you here," he said. She nodded, too. Grimes gestured with his cane. By the way he aimed it at Edna, Nellie thanked God it wasn't a Springfield. What came out of his mouth, though, was only one more word: "Why?"

  Before Edna could say anything, Nellie told Clara, "Go upstairs. Go right now. This is grownup stuff." Clara didn't argue. Nellie's tone got through. Her younger daughter took her homework and all but fled.

  "On account of if I told you I was… friendly with a Confederate soldier back in them days I thought I'd lose you, and I didn't want to lose you," Edna answered. "I didn't want to lose you on account of I love you. I always have. I always will."

  It was, Nellie thought, about the best answer her daughter could have given. But when her son-in-law said, "You lied to me," Nellie knew it was liable not to be good enough. "You lied to me," Merle Grimes repeated. It might have been the very worst thing he could think of to say. "I thought I knew you, and everything I thought I knew… I didn't know."

  One of the customers got up and left. A moment later, more reluctantly, so did the other one. Nellie went to the door behind him. She closed it in the face of a woman who started to come in. "Sorry-we're closed," she told the startled woman. She flipped the sign in the window to CLOSED, too. That was going to cost her money, but it couldn't be helped.

  When she walked back behind the counter, Edna was saying, "-so sorry. But that was before I knew you, Merle, remember. I've never done nothing to make you sorry since, so help me God I haven't."

  "I'd have believed you yesterday, because I'd've been sure you were telling me the truth," her husband said. "Now… How do I know it's not just another lie?"

  "Edna wouldn't do nothing like that, Merle," Nellie said. "You think about that, you'll know it's true." She liked Merle Grimes enough to want to do everything she could to keep him in the family. Even if she had her problems with Edna, her son-in-law was the kind of man who tempted her to forget her low opinion of half the human race.

  She didn't mollify him, though. The look he gave her was colder than the weather outside. "You must have known about this Kincaid fellow, Mother Jacobs-you couldn't very well not have. And you never said a word about him to me. So why should I believe you, either?"

  "We said Edna had a fiance during the war, and that he got killed," Nellie said. "Is that the truth or isn't it?"

  "It's less than half the truth," Merle Grimes said stubbornly. "That's the best way I know how to lie-tell the part of the truth that goes your way, and leave out everything else."

  He was right, of course. That was the best way Nellie knew how to lie, too. She said, "The man's dead, Merle. He's more than ten years dead now. You can just forget about him. Everybody else has."

  Grimes shook his head. "That's not the point. What's more, you know it's not the point, Mother Jacobs. The point is that he was a.. darned Confederate,
and that Edna never told me about that. I've tried to take care of her and Armstrong. I've saved money. I've bought stocks. If she had told me, I don't know what I'd've done. Washington was occupied, after all. Those things happened. But trying to sweep 'em under the rug afterwards…" He shook his head again. "No."

  Nellie didn't like the grim finality in his voice. Tears trickled down Edna's face. Sweet Jesus, she really thinks she's going to lose him right here and now, Nellie thought, fighting against panic of her own. She may be right, too.

  Before she or Edna could say anything, the bell over the door chimed again. In came Hal Jacobs. "I saw you put out the CLOSED sign from across the street," Nellie's husband said. "Why so early?"

  "We're having a-a family discussion, that's why," Nellie answered.

  "I've found out about Nicholas Kincaid, Father Jacobs," Merle Grimes said, sounding even harder than he had before. "I've found out all about him."

  "Have you?" Hal whuffled out air through his gray mustache-almost entirely white now, in fact. "I doubt that. Yes, sir, I doubt it very much."

  "What do you mean?" Grimes demanded. "I know he was a Confederate officer. I know he was going to marry Edna till he got killed. And I know she never told me what he was. What else do I need to know?"

  As far as Nellie could see, that was plenty. But Hal Jacobs said, "The other thing you need to know is what Teddy Roosevelt knew, God rest his soul-Edna and Nellie were both spies during the war, working with me and Bill Reach, God rest his soul, too, for I'm sure he's dead." Nellie was even surer, but her secrets, unlike Edna's, were unlikely to come out. Her husband went on, "Whatever Edna told you-and whatever she didn't, too-she asked me about first, because of what we were doing. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  Behind his spectacles, Grimes' eyes widened. "I… think I may, sir," he answered. Unconsciously, he straightened towards, if not quite to, attention. But then his gaze swung back to Edna. "Don't you think almost marrying a Confederate went too far?"

  Oh, she went further than that, Nellie thought. Wild horses wouldn't have dragged the words from her, though. And Edna did a splendid job of picking up the cue Hal had given her. "I didn't almost marry him on account of I was a spy," she replied. "But Washington was occupied, like you said yourself. And Hal asked me not to talk about anything that went on that had to do with the coffeehouse and spying even a little bit, just to be on the safe side. So I didn't."

  Hal had never asked her to do any such thing. He knew that, and so did Nellie, and so did Edna herself. But Merle Grimes didn't know it, and he was the one who counted here. "All right," he said after a long, long pause. "We'll let it go, then. God knows I do love you, Edna, and I want to be able to love you and trust you the rest of my days."

  Edna did the smartest thing she could have: instead of saying even a word, she threw herself into Merle's arms. As the two of them embraced, Nellie caught Hal's eye. Thank you, she mouthed silently. Her husband gave a tiny nod and an even tinier shrug, as if to say it wasn't worth getting excited about. They'd been married for almost ten years. Till that moment, Nellie had never been sure she loved him. She was now.

  H ad Lucien Galtier not cut himself, he might not have found out for some little while that his life was about to change. It wasn't a bad wound, like the time when he'd laid his leg open with an axe. But he was sharpening a stake that would support some green beans when spring came, and the knife slipped, and he gashed himself between thumb and forefinger.

  " 'Osti," he hissed. "Calisse de tabernac." He put down the knife and the stake, pinched the lips of the wound shut, and went to the house to get a clean bandage. He hoped that would do the job, and that he wouldn't need stitches. If he did, though, he was reasonably sure he could get them for nothing. There were advantages to having a doctor for a son-in-law, even if Leonard O'Doull would tease him for being a clumsy old fool even as he sewed him up. Lucien hurried up the stairs, quietly wiped his boots on the thick, soft mat in front of the kitchen door, and went inside.

  Marie was sitting at the kitchen table, one hand on her belly, tears running down her face.

  "Marie?" Galtier whispered, his own cut forgotten. His right hand dropped to his side. Blood started dripping on the floor. "Qu'est-ce que tu as?"

  "It's nothing," she said, springing to her feet with as much dismay and guilt as if he'd caught her in the arms of another man. "Nothing, I tell you. What have you done to yourself? You're bleeding!"

  He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his left hand. "This is truly nothing," he said. "A slip of the knife, that's all. But you.. "

  Marie might pause during her day's work for a cup of tea. Never, in all the years he'd known her, had she paused because she was in pain. That was literally true; she'd gone on working till ridiculously short stretches of time before she bore her children, and she'd got back to work after each birth much sooner than the midwife said she should. For her to hold herself like that and weep was… The end of the world was the first thing that occurred to him.

  An instant later, he wished he'd thought of a different comparison.

  "I think it could be that we both should see our beau-fils," he said.

  Marie shook her head. "It's nothing," she insisted. "I'm just.. tired, that's all."

  Hearing her say that frightened him as badly as seeing her sit there crying. He knew she must have been tired at times through their close to thirty-five years of marriage. She was a farm wife, and she'd raised six children. But she'd never admitted it, not in all the time he'd known her, not till now.

  "Here." He went to the closet and got her a coat. "Put this on, my dear. We are going into town, to talk with Leonard O'Doull."

  "I don't need to see the doctor," Marie insisted. "And how can you drive the motorcar with your poor hand hurt?"

  To keep her from going on about the hand, he let her bandage it, which she did with her usual quick competence. As long as she was taking care of him, she seemed fine. But, once she'd done the job, she argued less than he'd expected when he draped the coat over her shoulders. "Come on," he said. "Our son-in-law will tell you why you are tired, and he will give you some pills to make you feel like a new woman."

  "It could be that you are the one who feels like a new woman," his wife retorted. But, that gibe aside, she kept quiet. She let him lead her out to the Chevrolet and head for town. Her acquiescence worried him, too.

  Leonard O'Doull's office was on Rue Frontenac, not far from the Eglise Saint-Patrice on Rue Lafontaine-the church over which Bishop Pascal no longer presided. Dr. O'Doull's office assistant exclaimed when she saw the bloody bandage on Lucien's hand. "He's vaccinating a little boy right now, Monsieur Galtier," she said. "As soon as he's done, he'll see you."

  But Lucien shook his head again. "It's not me he needs to see. It's Marie."

  That made the office assistant start to exclaim again. Just in time, she thought better of it. "Sit down, then," she said. "He'll see you both soon."

  A howl from the part of the office out of sight of the waiting room told Galtier exactly when the vaccination was completed. A couple of minutes later, a city woman in a fashionably-even shockingly-short dress came out with her wailing toddler in tow. Normally, Lucien would have eyed her legs while she paid the assistant. That Marie was sitting beside him wouldn't have stopped him. That Marie was sitting beside him not feeling well did.

  Their son-in-law stuck his head out into the waiting room as soon as the city woman and her son left. Like his assistant, he saw Lucien's bandage and wagged a finger. "What have you gone and done to yourself now?" he asked with mock severity. "Don't you think I get tired of patching you?"

  Again, Galtier said, "I didn't come to see you on account of this scratch. Marie is not well."

  "No?" Dr. O'Doull became very serious very fast. He almost bowed to his mother-in-law. "Come in, please, and tell me about it." As Marie rose, O'Doull nodded, ever so slightly, to Lucien. "Why don't you wait here?"

  "All right," Galtier said. He knew what t
hat meant. His son-in-law would have to look at, perhaps even have to touch, parts of Marie only Lucien would normally look at and touch. He could do that much more freely if Lucien weren't in the room with the two of them. Galtier understood the necessity without liking it.

  He buried his nose in a magazine from Montreal. All the articles seemed to talk about ways in which the Republic of Quebec could become more like the United States. Galtier was far from sure he wanted Quebec to become more like the USA. The people writing the magazine articles had no doubt that was what Quebec should do.

  Every so often, he noticed he was reading the same sentence over and over. It wasn't because the sentences sounded so much alike, though they did. But he couldn't stop worrying about what was going on on the far side of that door.

  After the longest half hour in Galtier's life, Marie came out again. Dr. O'Doull came out with her, saying, "Please sit here for a moment, if you would." She nodded and sat down beside Lucien. O'Doull continued, "Mon beau-pere, I would speak with you for a few minutes. Come in, please."

  "Very well." Galtier didn't want to get up. He wanted to stay there beside Marie. But he saw he had no choice. "Is everything as it should be?" he asked his son-in-law.

  "Well, that is what I want to talk to you about," O'Doull answered.

  Numbly, Galtier walked to the door. Dr. O'Doull stood aside to let him go through. Galtier had thought he was afraid before. Now his heart threatened to burst from his chest at every beat. O'Doull waved him into his own personal office. Lucien sat in the chair in front of the desk.

  His son-in-law opened a desk drawer. To Galtier's surprise, he pulled out a pint bottle of whiskey. "Medicinal," O'Doull remarked as he yanked out the cork and took a swig. He held out the bottle to Galtier. "Here. Have some."

  "Merci." Lucien drank, too. It wasn't very good whiskey, but it was plenty strong. He coughed once or twice as he set the bottle on the desk. O'Doull corked it. With a smile that might have come straight from the gallows, Galtier asked, "And now, mon beau-fils, have you a bullet for me to bite on?" He'd forgotten all about his cut hand.