Part 20 (2/2)

”It's him skulking around that makes it sinister. He could come here any time,” Clary said, hearing the false note in her voice. ”They're his children, he doesn't have to be-”

”He may feel a little sheepish,” Mrs. Zenko said.

The word made Clary laugh, and made her see Clayton differently. Sheep, not wolf. Maybe. That night when she leaned down into the cave of the lower bunk to check on Dolly, Clary remembered to be kind, and on an impulse, kissed the top of her head.

Dolly said, ”Give me a kiss, please, Miss, I like your nose.”

Clary said, ”What?”

Then Dolly was stuck. She wished she hadn't said anything.

”It's from my book, the one I bought with my five dollars that you gave me.”

Clary laughed. ”Say it again?”

”Give me a kiss, please, Miss, I like your nose. It's a poem, in their language. I do like your nose,” Dolly said. Then she shut her eyes to prevent any further talk.

They always had to be careful about Clary, to keep the balance between them and someone who was not their mother, who they couldn't be too nice to; but they couldn't make her mad either, or be mean to her, because she might give up on them, or because it wouldn't be fair. They had to be good, and then they got to expect things from her, but there was a set of invisible rules about how much they could be hers. There was almost math in it: pluses and minuses, even brackets like they were learning (Trevor + Pearce + herself), but it all had to come out with an equal sign in the end, you had to get the equation right. Like in Mistress Masham: Maria found those poor little people and took care of them and bought them candies, but then she started bossing the death out of them, and then one of them almost did die, and they told her to back off! So she did, but her heart was broken. But there was more book, maybe they could somehow be able to be friends with her again. She had learned her lesson.

Lorraine lay curled behind her curtains, which the nurse had pulled to get a new patient into the next bed. The curtains and the glazed light made a kind of sanctuary. Noise beyond them turned into waves, like the ambient machine at Clary's. This was one of the crests of the waves she was becoming accustomed to.

The BMT test had come back. Darwin was a good match, they said, so they would go ahead with a stem cell transfer as soon as they could get her healthy enough. The pretty doctor said, Dr. Cormarie. Dr. Lester with her. Dr. Tatarin, Dr. McCluskey, Dr. Starr. In the creamy twilight Lorraine told over the doctors' names like rosary beads, but the big bead at the bottom must be Darwin. Because it seemed, they said, that he was her full brother. Which gave her a lot to think about. Her mother, pregnant with her before her father died, before her mother married Dennis Hand: if they were full siblings then it seemed like something had been hidden. Maybe back then there was plenty of reason for hiding, when to have a baby without a husband was disgrace. Somehow there must have been some time in there after Don Berry died, before she could get married to Dennis Hand-Lorraine gave up. Some things you could never find out, because the people were all dead. Whatever her mother had had to do to survive as long as she had done...Not long. Every current flowed to that flat sh.o.r.e of death. Driftwood.

Clayton wouldn't like it, though, he'd always been glad to say half-brother about Darwin. What made them brush together so badly Lorraine could not say. Clayton was always expecting to be judged, waiting to be put down, not that Darwin ever did. One thing she was sure of, no matter how she rocked upon the waves: she'd been better for her children than Clay's mom, or than her own. She and Darwin had had Rose. Clayton had n.o.body, except her. She wondered, before sleeping, where he was.

On Sunday Pearce threw a complete shrieking fit because she would not let him bang the kneeler on the floor, and Clary had to carry him out of church. He writhed under her arm and pounded on her stomach with his hands, so furious that it made her laugh and clench him tight. She sped down the side aisle, sliding out the rear door before he had time to explode.

Lisanne Tippett was in the vestibule. Pearce stopped yowling to examine her. Clary found it hard to look at her smug, sly-minx face. She's probably pretending so no one will know how sad she is, Clary told herself, and nodded a greeting, but Lisanne was staring off into some private distance, so that was wasted. She must be waiting to talk to Paul.

The final hymn came swelling through the doors, ”...that soul, though all h.e.l.l should endeavour to shake, I'll never-no, never-no, never forsake...”

Paul was there, on the church side of the closed doors, turning back to give the congregation the blessing. Clary found it uncomfortable to be near Lisanne, and she moved aside, using Pearce as her excuse, joggling him peaceably and talking to him in a whisper.

At last Paul opened the doors and came through. Seeing Lisanne, his s.h.i.+ning face went dull. He smiled, being civilized, but with a feeble mouth that made Clary sad.

Then people were filing out, and his hand was demanded, and he could turn away. Lisanne stood in the brilliance of the outer doors, staring out as light streamed in. She did not move out of the light or give ground for the leaving congregation, so the ebb-tide had to part around her.

Pearce on her hip, Clary went round the line and took her turn too. She shook Paul's hand and held it for a minute. He must be shrinking from all these eyes. ”Sorry,” she said. ”Never mind.” As if those two things would help.

She should not be sorry. With his other hand Paul touched a bright spike of sunlight on Pearce's round cheek, a happy boy again after his tantrum. He felt Lisanne's gaze behind him, scorning his surplice, the mask of office. Like that year in Dunnett, when she'd stopped going to church: 1989. The Sunday she'd shouted at him in the sacristy that she was leaving. Her turn had come round that morning to play the organ for the service, but n.o.body had told her of some change-Crimond for the hymn instead of Dunfermline, or some new Alleluia the choir was singing while she played the wrong tune. She was through! When he walked home after the second service, the car was packed (the K-car from Bishop Perry's mother that they had bought for $2,000), her suitcases and books and the good duvet stacked in the back seat: regimental columns, crimson and black, on the border, and the cla.s.sical gold box of its burning centre.

But she had not gone. Another dozen paris.h.i.+oners filed through the door; he smiled, he greeted them by name, he asked pertinent questions, but all the time his pinhead brain was asking him, why had she not gone then?

Old Mrs. Chapman next in line, her sparkling, squashed-pansy face turned up to him wearing all her eighty-six years, reminded him. Lisanne had stayed because they had gone upstairs and made love, and it had been a startling time, wide open, in flames, because he was as angry as she was. He remembered her beside, beneath, above him, her white thigh under his cheek; and the holy tent, the covenant-box of the gold duvet over and around them. Mrs. Chapman's accepting expression-like Lisanne's, when she did not go.

She was gone now. The tide of paris.h.i.+oners ebbed, all of them in a seemly hurry to let Paul and Lisanne be alone. The big doors shut them into sudden twilight; the ACW ladies headed back up to the nave to tend to the flowers and the linen. His heart pounded, painful in his chest.

Then the left door creaked open again, a glare of sun peeling in with a two-headed shadow, Clary and Pearce. ”Forgot the car seat,” Clary said, apologizing. ”You'd think I would remember by now.”

Lisanne laughed, a sharp bark, suddenly attending to Clary. ”You had a baby?” she asked, her eyebrows arcing on defined ridges of muscle.

Was the incredulity for her age, or her old-maidishness, Clary wondered. She s.h.i.+fted Pearce to the other hip, smooth in practice, and shook her head. ”Not mine,” was all she said.

Lisanne laughed again. ”Well, I didn't think! But you never know, these days. Anyone can have a baby now. That sixty-year-old in Italy.”

Paul's temper ran out, like water flooding out of a broken gla.s.s. As much because Clary could not explain, as from Lisanne's scorn. ”Clary has taken on the care of three small children while their mother is in hospital,” he said, his voice neutral. Neutered.

Clary ducked through into the church and left them to it.

Paul looked at Lisanne's face, her mixed att.i.tude of defiance and regret, but did not pity it this time. If she flailed less she would have less to regret. Nothing he did would change her.

In the church, Clary took her time finding the car seat and unwedging it from the pew. With any luck they would go off to the church office to have their talk. Pearce saw the seat and pointed fiercely, cawing out something, almost car. In her pride she forgot to dawdle, and had pushed the door to the porch open before she saw Lisanne still there. Alone-waiting for Paul? Clary gave a nod, her mouth jerky with nervousness.

”Sorry,” Lisanne said. ”I was rude.”

Now Clary was stuck.

”I'm bad-tempered these days, at least around here.”

”No, no,” Clary began, and then didn't know how to carry on.

”I'm remarrying,” Lisanne said. Out of the blue, like most of her remarks.

It caught Clary by surprise. ”Oh good!” she said, and then felt her face heating up like a stove element. ”I mean, I'm happy for you. Everyone in the parish wishes you well.”

”Yeah,” Lisanne said, looking up with her narrow jealous eyes. ”They love me.” She had perfectly cut dark hair, almost black, falling in sleek threads around her head. What a nice child she and Paul would have had, her vivid colouring with Paul's bones.

”Well, I guess it's a loss for the whole parish, in a way. That you and Paul have split.”

”My heart breaks for them. It's all about the parish.” She ignored the rules of polite conversation. Clary was bored by her, suddenly, which was a relief.

”Goodbye, then,” Clary said, and took Pearce and the car seat out into the fresh cold morning, to the children waiting at the bottom of the steps.

Paul was spotting Trevor as he high-wired along the concrete curb.

”I came looking for you,” Paul said. ”I have to go to Toronto, they've made me the Diocesan rep on the Faith and Wors.h.i.+p committee. It's supposed to be an honour. I'm gone for ten days-but I'll go to see Lorraine as soon as I get back. And I'll call you.”

”All right,” she said. She was tempted to add something light about seeing him in church, anyway-to make him think it was not important to her that he was going away, or that he would come back, that he would telephone. But she stopped. He was going to call her because they had become friends. And he liked the children. She smiled properly, and held out her hand to say goodbye. What a lovely hand he had to hold.

She let go quickly, and scooped up Dolly and Trevor with her to the car. It was good to have company through all this: Mrs. Zenko, Darwin, Fern and Grace and Moreland, all of them. But Paul was her friend.

29. Test.

Most transplant patients who survive the procedure and who do not relapse (experience a return of their disease) lead active and productive lives. Lorraine read that sentence over. It was fully loaded-that little twitch in the middle about the relapsing, and the helpful definition because you would probably be too stupid to understand a big word like relapse.

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