Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976) (Dovetail Cove Series)

by Jason McIntyre

  No. It wouldn’t work. She looked down at those suds on the naked, ever-so-slightly rounded belly of this increasingly beautiful, glowing woman who possessed the intelligence of a six year old on her best day...

  ...and she remembered how the sheet had fallen away in the slanted, morning light from the kitchen as it mixed across the girl with a different colour of light from the family room. Nude, Mary had woken Bexy up—and that had not been a dream. The cat screaming at her had not been a dream either. Couldn’t have been.

  It had really happened. Or, at least, some of it had happened.

  “Honey?” Bexy asked, picking up a scoop of warm, sudsy water and pouring it on the girl’s shoulder.

  “What?” Mary said blowing on a wet, pink washcloth to see if it would become big and round like bubblegum. When it didn’t, Mary frowned at it with disheartened sadness.

  “Have you ever seen the tooth fairy?”

  Mary looked at her and blinked. “The toofairy?”

  “Right. Have you ever seen her?”

  “It’s not a ‘her’, silly!” Mary said, smiling her toothy (and toothless) smile. “It’s a boy. Da toofairy is a boy!”

  “Right, sweetheart. Okay. A boy. But have you ever seen the tooth fairy?”

  “Missa Cloud, you’re so silly. The toofairy is friends with Sandy Claus and Eezer Bunny. He only comes when I’m seepin.”

  “Oh right. Sleeping. Uh-huh. So you’ve never laid eyes on him?”

  “Uh-uh. Never. Tha’d be cheating.”

  Bexy sat in silence while Mary dribbled the wet cloth all over her breasts. They looked even bigger and fuller than yesterday. For Bexy they were a ticking clock. The girl was well in to her second trimester according to Doc but her measurements showed she was still at the end of her first, or, at most, into the fourteenth or fifteenth week. Bexy didn’t know a thing about the abortion procedure but was pretty certain they had to be handled in the first three months, or risk certain complications. Would they have to lie to Doc’s specialist from the mainland? Would he walk away if he had even a sniff they were further along than the first trimester?

  Ducky. Just ducky, she thought. I’m starting to lump me and Doc and Mary together, like a ragtag little family. Come on, Bex, old gal. You can’t get attached here. Especially to a baby that is most assuredly killing this girl from the inside. And even if that’s overly dramatic, it will be murder on Mary once it comes out and has six eyes and lives in a nearly vegetative state. Look around, you dolt! Look around! Mary has this big house now. She doesn’t need it, but you can help her sell it and get her something small. She can live a fairly normal life with some money in the bank.

  Bexy smiled a tilted, timid grin at the girl playing in the tub. Then she spat out her harder question—the one she’d really been angling at.

  “Sweetie? Did you, uhm, did you get any more...from the tooth fairy last night?”

  Mary looked at her. “Of course. Ever’time I put a Keenex under my pillow I wake up and the toofairy’s brought me two more stones. I put ‘em with my others. I have six now.” Beaming, the girl held up her five fingers on one hand and one finger on her other.

  Bexy’s heart thudded. She felt colour drain out of her face. Her neck tingled.

  Mary wiped away the suds from her chest and swiped them down off her shoulders. Then she hunched herself in the deep water and hugged them all back up to her like they were piles of warm blankets.

  “Close the door, okay, Missa Cloud?” she said. “It’s shivery in here.”

  “Okay, sweetheart,” Bexy said and made to do just that.

  Before she could, out in the kitchen, the phone rang. It made Mary jump and throw a splash of sudsy water out of the tub. It sloshed Bexy across her face, hitting her glasses—and making her jump too.

  2.

  Bexy dried her soapy hands on a tea towel slung sloppily over the handle of the Banatyne’s big oven. She got the phone on the fifth ring, and the shrillness still echoed as she brought it to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  Silence. And for a moment, Bexy wondered if it was a prank. She even went so far as to imagine it was someone from St. Dom’s parish who’d heard about this supposed life of shame she was living with Ol’ Doc Sawbones. Or worse, the shame of her helping to end Mary Smithson’s pregnancy against the good will of Father Frye, a man who could do no wrong in this town as long as he wore his roman collar and spoke of being a workman for the word of The Lord.

  “Hi, is this...Mrs. McLeod?”

  “It is, dear, who’s calling please?” Bexy could tell it was a woman, a relatively young one by the sounds of it. Pleasant enough, but touchy. Apprehensive, and not a voice she could place without a little help. At her age—and considering her only callers these days were solicitors, the mortgaging bank, and Doc Sawbones—she surprised herself with such spot-on phone manners as these.

  “Mrs. McLeod, this is Helen. I was...a friend of your daughter’s. Teeny? Tina McLeod? Went to school with her. Worked at the cafe together too. Do you remember me?”

  A pause. “Oh, Helen. Of course, I do. How are you, dear girl?” It was Helen Troyer, one or two years younger than Bexy McLeod’s own daughter. It was also Gladys Troyer’s only daughter, a vexing development. Bexy’s mind tried piecing together the girl’s reason for calling as she continued to talk.

  “I’m fine, Mrs. McLeod—”

  “It’s been a while—”

  “A long while. It sure has—”

  “How are the little darlings? How many do you have now—?” Bexy asked Helen.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, Mrs. McLeod. I can’t make pleasantries right at the moment. I’m calling to try and help. It’s about my mom—”

  “Yer mom—?”

  “Right. She’s been in an awful way since she got home from church yesterday. Delivering meals?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s been talking about you and that girl, that...uhm...retarded girl. Mary?”

  “Yes, Mary.”

  “Well, she’s gathered up some of her lady friends from the church. Some of the men, too. They got together here in Mom’s living room. I came by, that’s how I know. She had called me and I thought I’d better see what all the fuss was about. But, the thing is, Mrs. McLeod—”

  Bexy’s heart hammered as she sat at the kitchen counter with the long yellow phone cord spiralling out to her head in a flimsy life-line. “Go ahead, dear. You can tell me.”

  “Well, the thing is, they’re on the way over. You’re at the Banatyne place with Mary? There’s a pretty big group of them. I think they mean to talk to you. Or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “Uh-huh. I think they mean to stop you. Y'know. Stop you from getting Mary’s baby problem...under control. I think they mean to stop you dead in your tracks.”

  3.

  Bexy dropped the phone. It clattered against the linoleum and face of the lower cupboard doors before it bounced back up in the air a few times. She heard the younger Troyer’s voice calling at a tinny distance: “Hello? Hello?”

  The pleasantries were over. She didn’t thank the girl or even say goodbye—though a distant part of her considered the phone call a godsend. She reached out with shaking hand and stabbed the telephone’s hook with two fingers twice until she got the dial tone back. She recited the Doc’s number in her head once, then out loud—to make sure she didn’t misdial.

  She dialled. It rang.

  And it rang some more.

  “Come on, Doc. Come on,” she said under her breath. She heard splashing in the bathroom. She’d left the door ajar when she wheeled out to answer Helen Troyer’s call.

  Finally a click. Then the rustling of someone who was either struggling to get the phone to his ear or rolling over in a bed or off a couch to get it sorted that he was actually about to make nice into their handset. “H-hullo?”

  It was Doc. She was about two-thirds sure it was him. “Doc?”

  “A-yuh?” he sa
id, out of breath.

  “Doc, you need to come over to the house here.”

  “Uh, why?”

  “Don’t be a dolt, Old Yeller,” Bexy said. But there was no hint of humour, not like there normally would be when she used a pet name and jabbed him about his age. “There’s no time so here’s the guts of it. Gladys Troyer is on the warpath. I guess she’s pulled together a...posse...from the parish. They’re on their way over here. Pitchforks and all, I’d guess.”

  “Jesus-mother-mary-jehovah,” Doc said, mixing his profane callouts from every patient he’d ever had. A crash from somewhere in the background on Doc’s end. “I just—Christ, Bex—I just don’t think I can get out of here. Aggie, she’s had a real bad night. And she’s not herself. She doesn’t know me and she got a hold of some cleaner and a broom handle. Me an’ the nurse, we got her cornered in the den, but—”

  “Ducky,” Bexy said. “Just damned ducky. Well, your wife is your priority. Get her settled as soon as you can. I hate to sound the alarm, but I just don’t know what that busy-body coot is up to. I don’t want to be in the thick with her. Not when Mary’s with me. I’ll head out. I think I know the bus route this end o’ town to take me down Scagway and then to Main. Someone’ll help me up into the bus. They have to. When you get Agnes settled, you come for us at the Highliner. Okay?”

  “Okay, Bex. Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll come as soon as I—”

  Bexy hung up the phone. No time for pleasantries. “Mary! Get dressed. We’re going out for breakfast!”

  4.

  In slacks and mismatched socks, Bexy was already out of breath as she pulled the door closed behind her on the front stoop.

  “Missa Cloud, I’m hungry,” Mary said in a whine.

  “I know, love, I know.” Bexy heard the lock click and then patted the breast pocket of her blouse. She often threw things in there if she was wearing a top with a pocket, even though it made the shirt sag. She figured she was in a wheelchair and most folks would notice that before and above all else. Junk in pockets, that was an Oren McLeod trademark. Pens, keys, mints, sticks of gum, washers and rubber gaskets. She would find everything in his breast pockets when she went to do his laundry. But that was a long time ago. And Oren McLeod was long gone.

  Her chair clunked down off the concrete pad of the stoop onto the main walk. The day was overcast. A pall of grey hung not just in the sky but in the neighbourhood. Bexy identified it as a low-hanging, thin mist. Her face was wet.

  But the humid air and closely-cropped cloud-work over the island had raised temperatures. It wasn’t windy or cold this morning, and wide patches of brown grass peeked through snow, which was thinning and greying as the world starting to glean through it from beneath.

  When Bexy in her chair and Mary behind her, were halfway down the walk, Gladys Troyer arrived. She appeared as if from nothing, as though produced from the mist and the trees at the foot of the property. She didn’t so much walk up the cement path of the Banatyne front yard as stomp. She leaned into her walk. And when she realized she was coming face-to-face with her enemy, she poured further into her stride and took on the look of an angry dog.

  “Just where do you think you’re going?” she said, pointing one finger vaguely at the sky. She didn’t wag it, not yet.

  Behind her, a throng of other housewives, churchgoers, and a few business people appeared in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of gently babbling noise and movement.

  Apparently, this was a group effort, something the whole town could get behind.

  Bexy raised her chin, came to a stop, and surveyed the blockage ahead of her. Now the two women were about five feet apart. “Stay back a sec, Mary,” Bexy said, raising her hand as a shield to the girl behind her. “If you must know—Gladys—I’m taking Mary for pancakes. Is that all right with you?”

  Gladys Troyer stiffened up. She pulled the waist of her fall jacket down and stood more upright, her fur collar a tall halo of fuzz around her head. She raised her own chin and said, “That’s just fine—Rebekah—but before you go, I’m here—we’re here—to tell you a few things.”

  Bexy let out a tired sigh. “If you must,” she said. “Get it over with. Mary’s hungry. So’m I.”

  The crowd drew in tighter, flanking Gladys. But none of them moved onto the grass where snow was turning to slush. That was a no-no, in Dovetail Cove. The upper crust simply did not step on anyone’s lawn, winter or summer.

  Gladys took a breath. She had a speech to deliver, that was clear. And, likely, Bexy thought, the biddy had rehearsed it at home. She’s been in an awful way, Helen had said of her mother. Knowing Gladys since grade school, as she did, Bexy could wager that’s just what the woman had done to tip off her daughter—stood in front of the mirror and rehearsed all the things she was building the nerve to say to her long-worn nemesis.

  “Now you might think your poop doesn’t stink, lady, well let me tell you something—”

  Bexy cut her off, impatiently. “I washed your casserole dish, Gladys. It’s in the kitchen. I can get it for you, if you like. Or I can ask Doc to drop it by later this afternoon. The lasagna was delicious.”

  Caught by that, Gladys, cleared her throat. “No. That’s fine. Good. I’m glad it was...sufficient. Now you listen and you listen good. We’re here to tell you that whatever you’re planning with this—this girl, it’s no good. Do you hear me? It’s not something that we as a community will stand by and watch. There’s a rumour circulating and I don’t care much for rumours—”

  “Sure you don’t,” Bexy murmured under her breath.

  “—I don’t! I don’t care for rumours, not one bit. But I was there yesterday and I heard all I need to know, right from the horse’s mouth—”

  “Calling Father Frye a horse, now, are we—?” She said it again in a muffled, under-breath murmur.

  “—Hey, that’s enough! I’m trying to be civil with you. That’s all I’ve ever done with you, you...McLeods.”

  Gladys spat that word out like it was a filthy epithet. And that got under Bexy’s skin even more than everything else.

  “The McLeods? Now you listen to me, Missus Troyer—” Bexy hit Gladys’ last name in a mimicking mock of how the woman had said her married surname. “All this ‘telling me a few things?’, this all comes from your disgusting green jealousy—!”

  Aghast, Gladys turned and gestured to the crowd with a gregarious, who-me look of incredulity.

  “That’s right, missy,” Bexy said. “That’s exactly right! Ever since high school. You couldn’t get Oren—no matter how many times you offered to suck him off. Could you—?”

  The crowd immediately produced a mix of shocked gasps and the warble of rustic, street-borne gossiping, starting right at the grassroots level. Or next to the grassroots, since none of them had dared step foot on the Banatyne’s lawn.

  Another look of shock and outrage from Gladys. She tried to speak but Bexy threw up her own finger and cut her off before even one syllable could come out of her mouth.

  “Anyone who thinks otherwise, come by for tea and I’ll enlighten you. She couldn’t get Oren and when I did, that nearly did her in. She married Vance, a good-lookin’ enough feller—if’n you’re into skinny minnies who can’t talk fer themselves. But he’s made a good living. Refrigeration and cooling is a big business. And I’m glad for you, really I am. But you’ve carried that forever. And the jealousy is so obvious, it just oozes from you.”

  A moment’s pause. Then Gladys’ face grew into that of an angry dog again. She took two steps forward and leaned down into the diminutive Bexy McLeod, who cringed back into the seat of her wheelchair from the woman’s wagging finger.

  “Tut-tut-tut,” Gladys Troyer scolded. “You think I’m jealous? Of you?”

  She turned and raised her arms to the sky, making a big, mocking show. “No one’s jealous of you, my dear lady!”

  She turned back and her voice and her head both lowered a degree. “Why would anyone on God’s green earth be jealous of a
failure like you?” She took a heaving breath. She was just getting started.

  She took more steps toward her old school chum, who sat still and quiet, her heart rate increasing but otherwise not giving into any alarmist rebuttals. “A woman who steals boyfriends by going all the way when the rest of us are good Christian girls has such gall? Why, we good Christians would never get down on our knees for that. Not before our wedding bells—no matter what you’ve heard. A woman whose husband went crazy because he couldn’t stand to be with her and her own, particular brand of nuts—” Gladys turned around to address the crowd now. “He tried to kill her, you know. That’s why she’s in this stupid fucking chair.” She whirled back to Bexy whose eyes were welling up. “A woman who—even after that, still didn’t have the decency to go away quietly, she had to bamboozle half of the good people in town with a disgusting, evil pyramid scheme to raise money for a church she didn’t even belong to. They were never going to take you in. They were using you. Because you’re too stupid to know the difference between a scam and a fundraiser to build a church of fucking Zion.” Then Gladys really dug deep. And she said the things that finally made the tears drop from Bexy’s welling eyes. “...A woman who raised her kids like a pack of wolves and now they’ve grown up and realized how crazy she is, how crazy she made their father. And every last one of them, they’ve all flown like birds from her and this island because she was so awful and self-centred. And so…goddamn…crazy.”

  Gladys stood still and quiet, all except for her heaving breath. She was shaking. This likely hadn’t been the speech she’d rehearsed in the mirror. But it might have been bits and bobs from speeches she’d given that mirror over the last twenty-odd years, every time there’d been a development heard through the grapevine about the McLeod household. And there’d been a few.