Part 7 (1/2)
”I've got a right to know,” he said, louder.
”Of course,” she said. ”They've told us it's non-Hodgkins lymphoma. They are going to start chemo on Monday, if they can keep her fever down. You could phone the hospital, they would tell you.” She didn't want him phoning Lorraine, though.
”I don't have time for that. You tell me.”
”Well, this kind of chemo is very strong, so she will stay in the hospital. If the chemo does what it's supposed to do-I don't really know what's next. There are different kinds of bone marrow transplants...They're worried, because she's younger than most people who have non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but that means they'll try harder for her.”
”Yeah.” He was quiet for a minute.
”That's really all we know, we're waiting for them to find out more.” Don't let him phone Lorraine, she was praying, so Lorraine wouldn't be worried that he was not with the children. Or so she wouldn't find out that Clara had lied.
Clara's fingers were clammy on the receiver. She changed hands.
”Okay, well, I got a line on a job. I'm moving around now, I needed the vehicle to get the work.”
What could she say to that? ”Yes,” she said. Whatever he would think she meant: yes, that's fine, have my mother's car...
”Tell the kids I called.”
She nodded, and then said ”Yes,” again. She could hear traffic going by behind him.
”I've been doing things for Lorraine, too,” he said. As if he had to justify himself to Clara. When she didn't speak, he said loudly, ”f.u.c.k you.” He hung up.
Dolly's new pink running shoe flashed in at the back door, and Clara dodged backwards and fled down to the bathroom. She scrubbed at her hands, managing not to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. He hadn't inquired after his mother, she noticed.
She longed for bedtime. After the dishes she took the children to the park, hoping to tire them out, but they were alone in the playground and their own company was wearing thin. She jounced Pearce up and down to console him for not riding the merry-go-round, and cheered at their speed or prowess when requested. She had to find them some friends.
Except that then Clayton would come and take them away, and all her work would be wasted, and then they'd have to miss the friends, as well as everything else.
At home Clara tried to put the sleeping baby down, slow as a river of lava flowing into his basket, but he felt the change and woke, crying.
Mrs. Pell jumped up from the TV to catch Clara at fault. She would have let Pearce cry, any other time. ”You leave him with me,” she croaked, in a mixture of impatience and triumph. ”He'll behave for me, he needs his special soother.”
Sure enough, the crying did not continue for long.
After the children were in bed Clara went through the house turning off lights and checking the stove, trying to bring order and safety back into her house. By the time she had put away the toys and tidied up the bedtime snack and folded the clothes from the dryer she expected to fall asleep at once, but she lay wide awake, her mind playing ridiculous scenes of Trevor drowning in the bathtub, or Mrs. Pell poisoning the baby. Clayton stealing into the house, taking his children. After midnight she remembered: she had not gone to the hospital to see Lorraine. She cried, then, and had to go to the kitchen for Kleenex to blow her nose.
Her life had been turned upside down and violently shaken, like the peaceful winter scene in a snowglobe, and she was some poor flake of snow twisting and hurtling in the demented storm. Imagine how Lorraine must feel, she told herself.
At 6 a.m., too early for the hospital, she went out to pull weeds from the front beds for an hour. Mrs. Zenko came over from her garden to have a look at the John Cabot rose bush, and Clara remembered to ask if she had any perogies in her freezer.
”I made cracked wheat buns for her last night,” Mrs. Zenko said. She cheered Clara up, joining in the caretaking work as if it was only natural. ”Yes, perogies, oh my yes.”
”Their father called yesterday,” Clara told her. ”He scares me.”
”He's an angry fellow,” Mrs. Zenko said, without judgement. ”Is he bringing back the car?” Clara had not mentioned the car, but of course Mrs. Zenko knew.
”He said he needed a vehicle for getting work.”
”Well, that would be good. He's going to need something steady.”
Clara found it hard to imagine Clayton in anything steady.
The neighbour from the other side of Clara's house, a large, pale-beige man who had moved in a few months before, came down his front steps. His difficult name was either Bradley Brent or Brent Bradley.
”I don't know what you're doing over there,” he shouted over, when he caught sight of her. As if he'd been trying to get hold of her for days, to get this off his chest. ”But if you're renting rooms, there's a bylaw for that. You could find yourself in hot water.”
Clara and Mrs. Zenko stared at him.
”One call to the city,” he said. ”That's all it would take.”
He got into his truck and backed loudly out of the driveway.
His plump little hen-wife scrambled out their front door and ran down to the truck, carrying a covered dish. She climbed up and in, and they drove off in a tearing of loose stones over the asphalt.
”What's with him?” Clara asked Mrs. Zenko.
”They're off to church. An awful lot of these men are impatient nowadays,” she said, sad for them. ”My John was a great one for keeping his temper. Your father, too.”
”I feel sorry for Mrs. Bradley. Mrs. Brent.”
”I can never remember either,” Mrs. Zenko said, with her deep little laugh.
To give herself a clear mind, or else to delay, Clara went to church before going to the hospital. She slipped in late to the early service and did not genuflect, but crossed herself quickly. She always felt slightly snooty crossing herself, but her mother had ingrained it in her. All this ritual was so complicated: whether to stand for communion or kneel, stand or kneel for prayer, fold hands or adopt the charismatic pose, swaying and open-palmed. Many of the older women, surprisingly, swayed.
It was all superst.i.tion, anyway. Just sitting there, being there, was the essential thing, she had come to believe. But of course she could be wrong.
The Gospel was Mary choosing the better part, to let the dishes go and listen to Jesus talking in the living room-a reading that always annoyed Clara, although she'd never considered herself a Martha. What would happen if she let go of the dishes now? It would be all right, because Mrs. Zenko would do them for her, popping in and out of the kitchen with her bright glance catching everything, tidy little ears p.r.i.c.ked for the conversation while she got supper cleared up without a wasted movement or a sigh or a fuss. Occupied with Mrs. Zenko's holiness, Clara had trouble keeping her mind on the sermon. Paul Tippett was telling an anecdote. She wondered if he made them up, since so many were apropos, but that was ungenerous. Anyone's life is full of meaning. She should have phoned to thank him for visiting Lorraine.
He was contrasting Mary and Martha with last week's Gospel on the Good Samaritan-she hadn't consciously heard a word of it, as she sat fretting and deciding.
”A man no one would think of as saintly, a dirty Samaritan, took practical action to save the life of someone left to die by the side of the road. Today, Jesus scolds Martha for her brand of practicality, and insists that spiritual discussion is more important than putting the supper on. Why is practicality praised in one case, and in the other, reviled? I don't think that's too strong a word, reviled, for the way we call women Marthas with an edge of contempt, because they are busy in the kitchen feeding the ma.s.ses. Jesus himself was good at feeding the ma.s.ses. And staying under budget.”
Paul seemed so pleased with this loaves-and-fishes nudge that Clara couldn't help laughing. She hoped she hadn't been too loud.
”The Samaritan acts in a moment of genuine crisis, when no one can see his goodness. But the flavour of self-importance in Martha's actions, and her peevishness toward her sister, may be uncomfortably familiar to us when we think of our own acts of goodness and how we look for recognition of our work.”
Clara wondered whether Lisanne Tippett scolded Paul for idleness or lounged at the feet of bishops while he did the dishes. Or both. Then she erased that, mean-spirited.
”These stories remind me of Hebrews 13: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. I've been inspired this week by an instance of practical charity, one of our own paris.h.i.+oners-I'll let her remain anonymous-who has opened her house to strangers.” He did not look at her. Clara felt hot and ashamed anyway, and hoped her face was not flushed. Or maybe he was not talking about her, she thought, hare-brainedly.
”Her ordinary, private action reminds me that as humans together in the world we are essential to the purposes of G.o.d.”
It felt like lying, to be called essential to the purposes of G.o.d when she was doing exactly what she wanted to do. It was only luck that her purposes and G.o.d's coincided this time.
The others sang while Clara stood silent, acidly aware of her own falseness in being there at all. None of the words of church made sense to her. The Creed-what part of that could she say she believed? Resurrection of the body, life everlasting, not those...She thought of her mother and father falling to shreds in their graves, and then, sharply, of Lorraine. But Lorraine would get better.
But she did not think so.
The long communion prayers wore on, and Paul lifted the cup. A slight commotion rose in the back of the church: a man came in, walking too loudly. Frank Rich, the doe-eyed sidesman, helped him to a leaflet out of habit. From the corner of her eye Clara could see that it was a stumbling drunk. She was glad the children were at home.