Part 5 (2/2)

”Same deal.”

They had had to make a lot of practical arrangements in a fairly short time. Clear the front room of their house of all the files, the newspapers and magazines containing relevant articles that had not yet been put on disk-these had filled the shelves lining the room up to the ceiling. The two computers as well, the old typewriters, the printer. All this had to find a place- temporarily, though n.o.body said so-in somebody else 's house.

The front room would become the sickroom.

Jinny had said to Neal that he could keep one computer, at least, in the bedroom. But he had refused. He did not say, but she understood, that he believed there would not be time for it.

Neal had spent nearly all his spare time, in the years she had been with him, organizing and carrying out campaigns. Not just political campaigns (those too) but efforts to preserve historic buildings and bridges and cemeteries, to keep trees from being cut down both along the town streets and in isolated patches of - 57*

old forest, to save rivers from poisonous runoff and choice land from developers and the local population from casinos. Letters and pet.i.tions were always being written, government departments lobbied, posters distributed, protests organized. The front room was the scene of rages of indignation (which gave people a lot of satisfaction, Jinny thought) and confused propositions and arguments, and Neal's nervy buoyancy. And now that it was suddenly emptied, it made her think of when she first walked into the house, straight from her parents' split-level with the swag curtains, and thought of all those shelves filled with books, wooden shutters on the windows, and those beautiful Middle Eastern rugs she always forgot the name of, on the varnished floor. The Ca.n.a.letto print she had bought for her room at college on the one bare wall. Lord Mayor's Day on the Thames. She had actually put that up, though she never noticed it anymore.

They rented a hospital bed-they didn't really need it yet, but it was better to get one while you could because they were often in short supply. Neal thought of everything. He hung up some heavy curtains that were discards from a friend's family room.

They had a pattern of tankards and horse bra.s.ses and Jinny thought them very ugly. But she knew now that there comes a time when ugly and beautiful serve pretty much the same purpose, when anything you look at is just a peg to hang the unruly sensations of your body on, and the bits and pieces of your mind.

She was forty-two, and until recently she had looked younger than her age. Neal was sixteen years older than she was. So she had thought that in the natural course of things she would be in the position he was in now, and she had sometimes worried about how she would manage it. Once when she was holding his hand in bed before they went to sleep, his warm and present hand, she had thought that she would hold, or touch this hand, at least once, when he was dead. And she would not be able to believe in that fact. The fact of his being dead and powerless. No matter - 58*

how long this state had been foreseen, she would not be able to credit it. She would not be able to believe that, deep down, he had not some knowledge of this moment. Of her. To think of him not having that brought on a kind of emotional vertigo, the sense of a horrid drop.

And yet-an excitement. The unspeakable excitement you feel when a galloping disaster promises to release you from all responsibility for your own life. Then for shame you must compose yourself and stay very quiet.

”Where are you going?” he had said, when she withdrew her hand.

”No place. Just turning over.”

She didn't know if Neal had any such feeling, now that it had happened to be her. She had asked him if he had got used to the idea yet. He shook his head.

She said, ”Me neither.”

Then she said, ”Just don't let the Grief Counselors in. They could be hanging around already. Wanting to make a preemptive strike.”

”Don't harrow me,” he said, in a voice of rare anger.

”Sorry.”

”You don't always have to take the lighter view.”

”I know,” she said. But the fact was that with so much going on and present events grabbing so much of her attention, she found it hard to take any view at all.

”This is Helen,” Neal said. ”This is who is going to look after us from now on. She won't stand for any nonsense, either.”

”Good for her,” said Jinny. She put out her hand, once she was sitting down. But the girl might not have seen it, low down between the two front seats.

Or she might not have known what to do. Neal had said that she came from an unbelievable situation, an absolutely barbaric family. Things had gone on that you could not imagine going on in this day and age. An isolated farm, a dead mother and a mentally deficient daughter and a tyrannical, deranged - 59*

incestuous old father, and the two girl children. Helen the older one, who had run away at the age of fourteen after beating up on the old man. She had been sheltered by a neighbor who phoned the police, and the police had come and got the younger sister and made both children wards of the Children's Aid. The old man and his daughter-that is, their mother and their father- were both placed in a Psychiatric Hospital. Foster parents took Helen and her sister, who were mentally and physically normal.

They were sent to school and had a miserable time there, having to be put into the first grade. But they both learned enough to be employable.

When Neal had started the van up the girl decided to speak.

”You picked a hot enough day to be out in,” she said. It was the sort of thing she might have heard people say to start a conversation. She spoke in a hard, flat tone of antagonism and distrust, but even that, Jinny knew by now, should not be taken personally. It was just the way some people sounded- particularly country people-in this part of the world.

”If you're hot you can turn the air-conditioner on,” Neal said.

”We 've got the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind-just roll down all the windows.”

The turn they made at the next corner was one Jinny had not expected.

”We have to go to the hospital,” Neal said. ”Don't panic.

Helen's sister works there and she 's got something Helen wants to pick up. Isn't that right, Helen?”

Helen said, ”Yeah. My good shoes.”

”Helen's good shoes.” Neal looked up at the mirror. ”Miss Helen Rosie 's good shoes.”

”My name 's not Helen Rosie,” said Helen. It seemed as if she was saying this not for the first time.

”I just call you that because you have such a rosy face,” Neal said.

”I have not.”

- 60*

”You do. Doesn't she, Jinny? Jinny agrees with me, you've got a rosy face. Miss Helen Rosie-face.”

The girl did have a tender pink skin. Jinny had noticed as well her nearly white lashes and eyebrows, her blond baby-wool hair, and her mouth, which had an oddly naked look, not just the normal look of a mouth without lipstick. A fresh-out-of-the-egg look was what she had, as if there was one layer of skin still missing, and one final growth of coa.r.s.er grown-up hair. She must be susceptible to rashes and infections, quick to show sc.r.a.pes and bruises, to get sores around the mouth and sties between her white lashes. Yet she didn't look frail. Her shoulders were broad, she was lean but large-framed. She didn't look stupid, either, though she had a head-on expression like a calf 's or a deer's. Everything must be right at the surface with her, her attention and the whole of her personality coming straight at you, with an innocent and-to Jinny-a disagreeable power.

They were going up the long hill to the hospital-the same place where Jinny had had her operation and undergone the first bout of chemotherapy. Across the road from the hospital buildings there was a cemetery. This was a main road and whenever they used to pa.s.s this way-in the old days when they came to this town just for shopping or the rare diversion of a movie-Jinny would say something like ”What a discouraging view” or ”This is carrying convenience too far.”

Now she kept quiet. The cemetery didn't bother her. She realized it didn't matter.

Neal must realize that too. He said into the mirror, ”How many dead people do you think there are in that cemetery?”

Helen didn't say anything for a moment. Then-rather sullenly-”I don't know.”

”They're all dead in there.”

”He got me on that too,” said Jinny. ”That's a Grade Four- level joke.”

Helen didn't answer. She might never have made it to Grade Four.

- 61*

They drove up to the main doors of the hospital, then on Helen's directions swung around to the back. People in hospital dressing gowns, some trailing their IV's, had come outside to smoke.

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