Part 13 (1/2)

”She's probably done for now,” Dolly said.

”We'll go to my house for supper, I think, my dears,” Mrs. Zenko said. She was pressing her hand into her chest, just under the bone that goes across the shoulders, and that made Dolly worry about her. Her eyes were still damp and shocked.

”It's okay, really,” Dolly said, and Trevor said too, ”It's okay.”

But they both loved eating at Mrs. Zenko's, so they shepherded her down the stairs, not wanting to calm her completely in case she changed her mind about supper.

”You don't have to call 911, Darwin will fix her. When she's mad, she goes straight up and turns left,” Dolly said. It would have scared Fern too. She was already kind of weirded out by Gran. Good thing she hadn't seen this, or Clary!

Trevor shook his head, the straight, weightless hair floating away from his skull. ”She got a crazy temper, boy-”

He was going to say some more, tell about that time when she chased him around the house with the wooden spoon, going way fast, but Dolly poked him. Maybe Mrs. Zenko would give them perogies. He loved those. But not with sour cream, no, not that.

Moreland had happened to have a few errands in Saskatoon, and he stopped by to say h.e.l.lo. Quite an amount of lumber clutter in the front hall, and the door was wide open, the screen not even shut to.

”h.e.l.lo?” he called gently, stepping over the first pile. Acoustic tiles. Had Clary finally got somebody in to do the bas.e.m.e.nt? Grace'd be glad to hear it.

Darwin stuck his head around from the bottom half of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs and said hi.

Moreland said hi back, and then Darwin came all the way up. ”You a friend of Clary's?”

”Her cousin,” Moreland said. ”Cousin-in-law, I guess.”

”She should be back already-but it's a good thing she's not.”

Darwin was gathering metal braces, and Moreland automatically helped him.

”I've been telling her she ought to do the bas.e.m.e.nt for a while now,” Moreland said, making conversation as they took a load of lumber down the narrow stairs.

”Yeah, well, now's the time,” Darwin said. ”You want to help?”

Moreland was taken aback. What kind of contractor was this? Then he surveyed the surprising scope of the damage in the bas.e.m.e.nt and understood that something else was going on. ”I guess I better,” he said. He took off his jacket.

Loitering by the cafe in the hospital lobby, in his usual post, Paul waited for an empty pot of coffee to be refilled. Avoiding visits. When Clara Purdy came out of the elevator and headed for the door, Paul found himself dodging in front of her, almost tackling her. ”Sorry,” he said, catching himself up. ”I haven't seen you for-I wondered how Lorraine is holding up through this chemo, if I should visit her again?”

She looked distracted, but not unhappy to see him. ”Some days she seems better,” she said. ”It was like this for my father, but she's younger, and stronger-willed, maybe.”

”Whenever I think illness is all att.i.tude, along comes someone who gripes and complains and whines and still gets better,” Paul said. ”Will you have a quick coffee? It must be ready now. Joe Kane, upstairs, is eighty-seven, still snarling and scratching.”

”He was in hospital with my father, eighteen years ago,” Clary said. ”My mother called him irascible, and that's how I always think of him.”

Paul handed her a cup of burnt, caramel-coloured coffee. ”He demoralizes me. He's Candy Vincent's uncle. She's been-” He caught himself before mentioning her tale-bearing call to the bishop. ”She's something of a force in the parish.”

”You should have known her when she was Candy Kane, in Grade 8. She was a wild girl in those days, Elton John gla.s.ses and platform shoes. I thought she was amazing.”

”But you can't have known her then?”

”We were in school together. I'm pretty old, you know.”

He blushed. Clary was fascinated to see him redden from the base of his neck upwards, his ears included, while the polite expression on his face never altered.

”I'm forty-one,” he said, meaning that he was old too.

”Forty-three,” she said. ”I guess that makes me the boss of you. Sad, really.”

Then he laughed, the red receding. ”It is the blight man was born for,” he said. ”It is Margaret you mourn for.”

”I can never remember poems,” she said. ”But I like when you quote Rilke in sermons.”

He was grateful for that. What beautiful eyebrows she had.

”Joe Kane used to like to play chess,” she told him. ”He played my father in the sunroom at the old City Hospital years ago. See how irascible he'd be if you beat him.”

”Kind of you to suggest I might be able to,” he said. He took the cup she had finished, and she hurried away through the lobby, already gone from him, trying to remember where she had parked this time.

Clary walked in the front door and almost fell over a pile of metal struts. A man she'd never seen before was crouched down gathering the struts together, and he scrambled up to catch her; she caught herself, instead.

”h.e.l.lo?” she said.

Darwin came running up from the bas.e.m.e.nt. ”Hey, Clary! Good!”

He edged past the large man and helped him manoeuvre his load past the woodwork. She could see no place to put her grocery bags that wasn't covered with hardware.

”Give them to me,” he said. ”You're pretty heavy-laden.”

He side-stepped back through the kitchen doorway. Moreland was sitting at the kitchen table working something out on paper with a ruler and his trusty s.p.a.ce pen.

”Moreland!” Clary said, surprised. ”Is this your doing? You've met Darwin-Lorraine's brother?”

Moreland hadn't figured the exact relations.h.i.+p but had gathered something along those lines. He covered the paper with his arm, and then uncovered it, thinking maybe better she didn't go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. He didn't want her to see the big black lines he'd drawn on the wall downstairs, where they could put in a bigger window, if they dug four feet and lined the well...

”Where are the children?” Clary asked, refusing to ask about the rubble.

”That nice Mrs. Zenko of yours came over and said she had 'em,” Moreland said. ”Said she was feeding them supper and if we'd like to come along later she'd feed us, too.”

Clary squeezed her eyes shut. She was putting too much strain on Mrs. Zenko, she had to find a better way of doing this. She could not bear to think what all this new chaos was about, the piles of stuff, Moreland roped in somehow here, and all these strange friends of Darwin's-what disreputable people did he hang around with, normally? Petty criminals, carnies, drug dealers. But Moreland was here. And if they were making a better place for Darwin to sleep, that would be good.

Darwin said, ”Mrs. Zenko is glad to have something worthwhile to do.”

That was true.

”She's getting all those perogies cleaned out of her freezer,” he said.

”Perogies? That what's for supper?” Moreland asked.

”According to Trevor,” Darwin said. ”Might have been wishful thinking. Whatever she makes is good. Do you care what we do down in the bas.e.m.e.nt?” he asked Clary. ”Thought I could pay you back a bit, in kind.”

”I don't care about anything,” she said. What a pleasure to say that! Moth-eaten mink coats, old lamps, what was down there? An affliction of stuff in mouldy boxes. ”It's all junk I haven't shovelled out. If you'll deal with it I'll be grateful. Oh, Grace wants the jam jars. But I don't need any of it.”