Good to a Fault (4 page)

A
t ten that night Clara went back through the hospital to Lorraine’s silent room. The window was a dark rectangle in the white wall. She turned off the overhead fluorescent light, left on the small yellow bulb over the sink, and pulled the alcove curtain partway across so it wouldn’t glare in Lorraine’s eyes. Now they could see the lights of the city across the river, the pretty bridges, the night sky. Deep shadowy blue, not black, even so late.

“I’m worried about the kids,” Lorraine said. Easier to talk in the darkness. “I’m worried about Clayton too, but not as much. He can take care of himself, more or less.”

Now would be the time to mention Clayton’s departure.

But Lorraine said, “I’m afraid.”

All Clara could think of was, “Don’t be.” An unforgivable, asinine thing to say. She did not want to remember her father dying, or the horrors her mother went through. “I’m sorry. Of course you are afraid. I guess I mean, don’t let superstition trap you into pretending to be positive all the time. There is no jinxing, and being blindly optimistic doesn’t help.”

“What does help then?”

“I pray, but it does not always—” She could think of no word but
suffice,
which would sound pompous. “It’s hard to know what to pray for.”

Lorraine snorted, and flapped her hands onto the sheet. “I know what to pray for! That my, this,
thing
will go away. That I will have my kids back with me. That everything will go on the way it was the day before we came to Saskatoon, when I was worrying about how to find work and a place to live, not how to
live
.”

It was not a tirade, but a considered statement.

“I had enough worry before. I’m not going to worry now. I’m not going to pray either. I’m going to be patient and wait for this to happen.” She corrected herself. “Wait for this to go away.”

There were blue marks under her eyes, and her skin was puffy. The steroids, affecting her already. If her fever could be brought down they were assessing her for chemo in the morning, Clara knew, and then would come a bad time. For a moment she was glad she had been with her mother during that long struggle, so she knew a little about it, to be able to help Lorraine.

“Is there anything you like to read? Magazines?
People
? Or something more serious while you’ve got some quiet time?”

“Some of each,” Lorraine said. Her pointy smile was very tired.

One more thing, though. “I don’t know what to do about Darlene. She wants to see you, of course. Should I put her off, or bring her in?”

“Don’t bring Trevor, not right now. But you could bring Darlene. I need her to get some stuff from the car, now that I think of it. Good thing you said.”

Clara had forgotten their car, in the impound lot. “They gave us the knapsacks, that first day…I’ve got the children’s things.”

“Yeah, but I got some stuff hidden in there, in the Dart. We were living in there for the last couple weeks. You know how it is. You have to keep your stuff somewhere.”

From her tone Clara supposed it was money, or even drugs. But she would not be a good judge. Maybe papers, that kind of treasure. “I’ll bring Darlene tomorrow. I meant to ask if there is anyone that I should call for you. I’m not sure if Clayton has had a chance to do that.”

“Nice way of putting it,” Lorraine said. “No, there’s no one. No one that I know where they are, anyways.”

This time Clara stopped herself from saying she was sorry. She decided again not to get into Clayton’s absence. “You look like you could sleep,” she said. “I’ll bring books tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Lorraine said. “I’ll catch up on that summer reading I’ve been meaning to get to. Don’t bring Pearce. That would be hard on him.”

“All right,” Clara said. “I’ll keep him at home. He’s good, he’s doing well.”

“Thank you.” Lorraine closed her eyes and turned her head away from Clara before she opened them again. The window looked out on all the lights across the river, a million glinting sparks.

Walking down the hall, thinking ahead to breakfast for the children, Clara did not see Paul Tippett until he took her arm, right beside her. She jumped, and he apologized, both of them speaking in whispers because it seemed so late. The hospital was closing down around them, patients being put into storage for the night.

“How is your family?” he asked.

“The mother, Lorraine, is not doing very well,” Clara said. It felt disloyal, to say it out loud. Superstition. She was as bad as anyone.

Paul Tippett looked sad, the clear lines of his face blurred. She was sorry, because she liked him, as far as she knew him. He seemed crippled by diffidence, but always kind.

“Will you do something for me?” she asked. “Will you visit her?” She could see him pull away involuntarily, like she had pulled away from Darlene’s snatching hand. “Tomorrow, I mean, or—not as a parishioner, to comfort her—but I’ve got her children, and her husband’s gone—oh, but don’t tell her that. Just to ease her mind, that I’m not a monster, because she has no choice, she has to put them somewhere, and I’m the only—” Clara stopped. She was making a fool of herself.

He stared at her, in the lowered light of the night hall. “The husband has gone?”

“Yes,” she said, not mentioning the car, or the teapot, or his weak threat. “But he might come back.”

Paul thought Clara Purdy had experienced a radical change since he’d
last seen her. She seemed charged with energy.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
. It was involvement that put you into time, perhaps. He shook his head, astonished at the brightness of her face, then saw that she thought he was refusing her request.

“No, no—I will,” he said quickly. “I will visit her. Sorry, I was thinking of something else. I’ll tell her how fortunate her family is, to be with you.”

He couldn’t remember her house. A bungalow. “You have enough room for all of them, do you? What’s her last name?”

“Gage. Lorraine Gage—in this ward.”

He wrote it in his little calendar book and gave her a quick apologetic smile, for his reluctance. She could not help smiling back. She did like him. Too bad about Mrs. Tippett, that cold fish.

Lorraine lay in bed counting money. Seventy-seven dollars in the glove compartment. Lucky sevens. Three twenties, a ten, a five, the $2 bill saved for years. Whore’s money, Clayton would call that. Not loose, for anyone to find (meaning Clayton, of course), but stuck between the back two pages of the map book. They were not going to get to Newfoundland or Labrador. $189 left in the bank, but she thought Clayton probably had her bank card, and he knew her PIN. A hundred dollars—one $100 bill—hidden, taped inside a box of tampons in the cardboard box in the trunk. He would not have found that, but the worry was that someone might throw out the box.

She could hardly stand to think about money. What would Clayton do? He had $300 and some left on the Husky Gas card before it maxed out. But no car, so gas wasn’t going to do him much good. They could eat, though, at Husky station restaurants. If he decided to take the kids on to Fort McMurray, which she wondered if he was planning on doing, since he was obviously not at Clara’s any more.

$189, $300, how long would that last?

At a certain point every time in all this figuring, Lorraine would feel her neck stiffen and swell from tension, and she’d fling the whole thing out of her mind.

She lay still, mostly. Moving made her feel weird, and whatever drugs she was pumped full of seemed to make it easier to be still. If things were or
dinary, she’d be in the car, Pearce nestled in her elbow, worrying about money and thinking ahead to what work she could get in Fort McMurray. Worrying about who would look after the kids while she waitressed or cleaned houses again; about gas and how much a bunch of bananas and some fig newtons had taken out of the purse. She moved her feet under the pale green sheet and stared with torn-open eyes around the room. Here she was.

The moon made bars of yellow light that gradually drifted across the room. She could tell she must have slept when she saw the moonlight farther advanced on her sheets, on the end of the bed, on the wall. The moon rose in the east and set in the west, just like the sun. Sometimes with the sun. She’d sat nursing Pearce in the car while the others ate outside in the sun at a Taco Bell, last week. His mouth pulling, pulling, his eyes staring at her in a trance of happiness, and the white moon visible in the blue day sky.

She could not die on them. $77, $189, $100. It took her a few minutes to work it out in her foggy head. $366. Well, that was a lucky number. She liked threes and sixes. Clayton couldn’t feed them all on that for long. He’d have to go to the food bank. Mom Pell had money somewhere, but she wouldn’t give it up for food, at least not for the kids. Lorraine let herself hate Mom Pell for the cherries she’d insisted on buying, that huge six-dollar bag of BC cherries that had probably caused the whole thing, anyways. Making Clayton drive too fast to make up for stopping. Bits of red pulp clinging to everything after the crash, like your own body and brains turned inside out, like one of the children had been badly hurt. Lorraine’s chest ached, the breasts and the inside too, wanting to have Pearce and the others there with her. She was filled with panicky rage just thinking about Clay and Mom Pell, but the children were so sweet. Except there was no money.

$77, $189, $100. How long did it take for welfare to kick in last time? But they weren’t residents of Saskatchewan, they’d get sent back to Winnipeg on the bus. They couldn’t leave her, though, and she was entitled to health care anywhere in Canada, they were always saying.

They needed $1200. Six for an apartment, another six for the damage deposit. First and last months’ rent. Who knew how long it would take for Clayton to get paid, no matter how fast he found a job. There was no way. They’d be in housing, if there was room. Or a shelter. Clayton would not be good at looking after the kids on his own in a shelter, and Mom Pell was
worse than useless. She would have to talk to the kids. They’d need some kind of—the thought of a weapon for them: a nail file, a pin—

Lorraine sat up and vomited neatly into a green plastic kidney basin. She lay back down. It might all be a dream. The moon had floated off, leaving the room dark and deserted. In a while, she slept.

I
t was impossible, being with these children. After four days of it Clara was exhausted by their clatter and the grime that attended them, and their easy assumption that she would do everything for them. The cooking alone never seemed to end. The perpetual low-grade noise started at dawn with Pearce waking up, and might have been the worst thing—but Clara wasn’t sleeping anyway, too conscious of everyone else, of the new disturbing mass of people surrounding her. There was far too much to do in the house, keeping any kind of order, but they had to deal with the car, too, and she’d promised.

Darlene was eager to press the elevator buttons and fly up to her mother’s room. But as they came closer she seemed to be repelled, as if the poles had suddenly reversed on her interior magnet. She took Clara’s hand, three or four doors away, and whispered, “Wait.”

Clara stopped. Darlene didn’t look at her. She stared at the wooden rail that ran along the wall.

“I guess this is for people who are walking but might fall down?”

“I think so.” Clara was frightened by how dire everything seemed, when she thought of things from Darlene’s perspective. Or Lorraine’s. “It’ll be all right,” she said, inanely.

Darlene let go of Clara’s hand, and walked past the last few doors to Lorraine’s room.

Lorraine was sitting up in bed when they went in. “Hey, sugar plum,” she said. Her eyes were over-bright, her skin palely glowing.

“Mama,” Darlene said. She was across the room instantly, leaning up on the bed, close to Lorraine’s face. Their two faces pressed together, cheeks and noses, their whole faces, not just kisses. Lorraine’s arms met around Darlene’s back, and she lifted her up onto the high bed with her as if she didn’t weigh anything.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” she said, as well as Clara could make out, the words muffled in Darlene’s hair.

Darlene did not speak, she only lay curled against her mother on the green sheets, her arm over her mother’s waist.

“You look good,” Clara told Lorraine, when she looked up and noticed her.

“I better look good, I’m on twenty different pills.” Lorraine waved at the rolling table, where three or four paper cups held an assortment of coloured pills. “Six, seventeen, everything I need right here.”

She bent again, curling lightly over Darlene’s tense back. “Mmm, you smell good. Clean laundry, I love that smell.”

Watching the hard work Lorraine was having to do, to be as healthy as possible for Darlene, Clara felt a painful tension herself. And Darlene was so quick to pick up on things.

“Hey, Clara brought me this nice nightie, gives me a little colour, don’t you think?”

Darlene looked up at her mother’s face, still not speaking. No colour in Lorraine’s face, only the brilliant darkness of her eyes. She hugged Darlene close, rocking in a narrow range, back, forth, back, forth.

Clara went outside and stood to the right of the door where they could not see her. She studied the wooden handrail, remembering her own mother—for some reason remembering her as a young woman in a grey dress with
a white collar. Standing at the foot of the front porch steps, waiting for Clara’s father to come down and take them to church. A hat on her head, one of those little bands you had to pin on, grey velvet. Her dimpling cheek, smiling at Clara’s father, her wide, childish, heartbreaking mouth. She missed her mother so badly. Impossible as she was.

When Clara went back into the room they both looked at her sideways. They’d been talking in low voices, and for the first time she saw a resemblance between Darlene and her mother. The broad planes of their cheeks, and their eyes, with well-defined corners and dark line of brows. Their bodies, too, their strong open shoulders and the same narrowness across the back.

“I’ll go down and get some juice,” she offered, but Lorraine said not to leave. “I’m just telling her where things are—it’s no big secret any more, we got to get the stuff out before they crush it or whatever.”

“Oh, I’m sure they won’t do that until…” Until the insurance investigators were through with it, she meant, but Lorraine ran over her words.

“I want Darlene to get the stuff, it’ll ease my mind.” Her voice was flat, almost rude—fever burning civility away.

Clara took a notebook from her purse and wrote down:
pillow.

Lorraine talked directly to Darlene, giving her the job. “In the glove compartment, I want the map book. The registration and insurance. My box from the trunk. The kitchen box and the duffle bags—you can take those to Clara’s place, if she’s got a garage or somewhere to stash them?” Clara nodded. Lorraine turned her gaze back to Darlene. “Okay, for a while, until we figure out where you guys are going next, while we’re working on first and last month’s rent.”

Darlene looked at Clara. Clara did not know exactly how to interpret the look. Was she asking Clara not to tell about Clayton being gone? Or considering whether, or when, Clara planned to throw them out of the house?

Lorraine nodded, and Darlene slid down off the bed, obedient to some understood command. She went into the bathroom and shut the door.

“I wanted to ask you about that,” Lorraine said, making an effort to sit up straighter. The debt racking up was too much to bear, she wanted to scream and throw Clara out of the room. “About the next few days…”

She couldn’t get it out properly, and it seemed like time was speeding, contracting.

“I know we’ve got to get the kids out of your hair.”

“I’m happy to keep the children,” Clara said. “The family. As long as they need a place to stay.”

“I don’t have enough money to pay you,” Lorraine said as baldly as she could, to cut through all those words of Clara’s.

“No, no! Don’t—” Clara said.

“We’re lucky to have the chance, lucky you’re being so kind.” Lorraine said. She could not bring herself to mention the shelter, the nail file, the need to train Darlene to fend people off of both her and Trevor—she pressed her fingers into her eye sockets, under the brow bone, to get rid of those thoughts.

“It’s not
kind
,” Clara was saying. Lorraine could hear her getting all chokey.

“You might be doing it from guilt or something, but it’s kind, you’re good,” Lorraine said, dismissing all that bullshit. “Darlene, you finished in there?”

The door popped open, and Darlene came in her quick, sidling way back to the bed. She didn’t meet Clara’s eyes.

Clara felt weighed down by the burden of obligation that all this was putting on everyone. If she was a better person she would be able to lift all that, say how happy she was to have company in the house, to have them. Her mother could have done it. All she could do was stop herself from false joviality. She closed her notebook and picked up her purse.

“We’d better get going, then.”

“Good,” Lorraine said. She closed her eyes. Not interested, for the moment, in obligation or gratitude or convention.

Darlene put her cold fingers on her mother’s eyelids, and went with Clara to the hall.

Before heading for the impound lot Clara stopped for lunch at a little rundown café, because Darlene said “How about there?” Darlene had chicken soup and Clara sat watching, unable to eat for the great lump that pity had
jammed into her throat. Darlene’s arms were trembling by the time the soup came, her hand shaking her spoon. It looked like good soup, at least. Darlene’s arms were too thin. That tank top was not fit to wear. She needed sleeves to stay warm, even in July. The sharp bones were almost visible under her skin, making her seem insubstantial, but also strong. Clara hoped that was how children looked who were naturally thin. Lorraine was thin, but was that natural, or because of her illness? Mrs. Pell was built like a propane tank, a little head and a big squat body. Darlene did not look like she could ever become that. She’ll have to be strong, Clara thought. She asked, “Is the soup good?”

Darlene nodded. She said, as if further to the soup, “There’s a girl in Trimalo, where we lived, whose mother died. She was run over by a car, so it wasn’t the same.”

“Oh, no—I’m sorry for the girl, it must have been hard to lose her mother so suddenly.” Why say such stupid things? No easier to lose her slowly.

“She had to do all the work when they moved. Her father couldn’t do anything, like get the phone hooked up or anything, he was too sad.” Darlene’s voice was flat and quick, almost mocking, as if she thought she’d sound older that way.

“How old was the girl?”

“Twelve. She babysat us when my mom worked. She had to go down to see her mother at the place. The police place. She felt her mom’s face. It was all cold.”

Still the quick words without proper feeling attached. Too risky to let deep feeling loose, maybe especially in childhood. “Darlene, do you want to talk about something a little less sad?”

“Everything is sad.”

“Yes, you feel that, don’t you?” Clara could remember that so clearly, how there was nothing in the world that was not sad. “What a heavy feeling. Do you need some dessert to lighten you up? Ice cream?”

Distracting a child with food—a recipe for obesity, Clara thought. But ice cream appeared to be just the ticket. Darlene’s sundae came in a tulip glass, with whipped cream and a cherry. It made them both happy, briefly, and when they went back to the car the sun seemed to have come out, or a breeze had picked up. The air was clearer.

The impound lot was at the end of a paved road with so much dust and dirt packed over it that it looked like gravel. Driving along with the windows up, Clara tried not to think about the end of this malevolent cancer, of all these people who would be so sad. But she couldn’t pretend to herself that she expected Lorraine to recover, because it was clear to her that Lorraine would not. Although she hoped that she was mistaken.

The high fence had outward-jutting barbed wire at the top. Clara felt she should have come alone to this depressing junkyard. But Darlene yelled, “There it is! There’s the Dart!” Threading her narrow hand through the fence, straining her finger to make Clara see.

The attendant let them in, and gave Clara an envelope and a clipboard with a form on it to sign. He didn’t offer to come back to the car with them. He was what her mother would have called “rough”—grizzle-haired with strong-smelling clothes. She smiled at the man to make up for her mother’s opinion, as she had so often done in her company.

Darlene dashed ahead through the warren of paths, around the corpses and ghosts of cars. How much life we pack into our cars, Clara thought, missing her own. And missing her mother’s car, that Clayton had now. Who knows in what town he’s selling it, she thought. Good riddance. Time to get rid of some of her mother’s baggage.

The Dart had keeled over to the left, both wheels gone on the crumpled driver’s side. Darlene was already around on the passenger side, yanking on the front door.

“Wait!” Clara said. “I’ve got the key here, I think…” Yes, in the envelope. On a Playboy Bunny keychain. How could any man?

Darlene slipped it from her hand and into the lock, jiggled it as if she knew the secret, and it opened for her. It was a heavy door. The car smelled stale, smoky, of rubber and burning. Darlene leaned forward and up onto the seat, to flip open the glove compartment. But it stayed shut.

“It won’t—it won’t
open
!” she said, too loudly, pulling harder to show Clara. Her sharp young voice sliced through the still air.

The man at the gate called something, and Clara turned, letting the door slip out of her hand. Just in time she turned back and caught it, before it slammed shut.

“Oh!” Clara pushed the door wide open again and leaned on it, her stomach leaping. She could have broken Darlene’s hand.

“Yikes,” Darlene said, not particularly worried. “The thing’s broken, the thing that makes the door stay open.”

The gate man, beside Clara, had brought a short crowbar and a rubber mallet.

“Times things’re stuck,” he said. “Might need these.”

“Thanks,” Darlene said.

She took the crowbar and pried the sharp end in at one edge of the glove compartment.

“Should you?” Clara was saying, when the little door popped open.

“Okay,” Darlene said, giving the gate man as big a smile as her mouth would make. “Go now.”

He grinned back at her, ignoring Clara’s hand-flap of apology. Off he went.

“You can’t be so—” Clara hesitated to say rude. “He might have been insulted.”

“Why?”

Clara decided it would be stupid to try to explain. Darlene had pulled out the maps, four or five separate provinces and the one larger book of all Canada. She flipped through it, but quickly, as if she didn’t want Clara to see. Clara made a business of looking for her notebook in her purse, to find the list. “Map book, yes, registration folder.”

The interior of the car was a mess, but no worse than any vacation trip. A garbage bag must have gone flying in the crash, full of wrappers and orange peels. Clara was shocked to see a burned patch on the back seat, blurred by cherry juice.

Darlene looked past her. “That’s not from the accident, that’s from the laundromat. We were doing the laundry in Yorkton, and Gran was smoking in the car.”

“She burned the car?”

“She fell asleep. No more smoking in the car
ever
, my mom said. Pearce was in the front seat sleeping, and my mom freaked when she saw smoke coming out of the window. And you should of seen Gran jumping around
in the parking lot, putting out her skirt!” Darlene laughed out loud, with a mean gleam in her eye.

Clara was suddenly worn out with all this eventful life.

After laughing Darlene was quiet, her hand on the warm gold vinyl of the front door. Then she slid into the front seat and pried out a small orange corduroy log, the size of a doll bed pillow.

“My mom likes this little one under her neck,” she said, stroking the corduroy with the welt, the velvety way, and then back, her fingernails dragging the pile up. “It’s not dirty, look.” She scrubbed her cheek against it, then climbed out and handed it to Clara, who tucked it in her bag and carefully crossed out
Pillow
on her list. Darlene slammed the car door as hard as she could. A huge sound in the silent impound lot.