“Oh,” Clarence said, obviously puzzled, and then, “Well, well.” He lifted his napkin from his lap and wiped his mouth with it. He might even have frowned, it was hard to tell in the dim lighting.
That was not exactly the reaction Estella had been expecting, but the truth was now pretty obvious: Clarence didn’t love her any more than she loved him.
What were they doing, then? They really ought to end it, she thought. They had a good enough time together, but they weren’t young. If either one of them wanted to meet someone else, this was just getting in the way. She considered breaking it off that very evening, but she worried she was being hasty and the wine had gone to her head. Clarence took her home without going to a hotel first, which was happening more and more frequently, but when he walked her to the door he said, “See you next week,” as though nothing was wrong.
She closed the door and made the decision to end it, she was too old to continue out of apathy or inertia.
The next weekend they went to a boxing match. There was a café a few doors down the block from the club called the KO Diner, and Clarence liked to go there for hamburgers before the bouts. There were sometimes questionable types at the lunch counter who looked as though they might happily steal a wallet or a purse if the opportunity presented itself, but mostly the place was a regular diner that had been in the neighbourhood for years and served families and working men and even a few students from the College.
As she prepared in her head for the talk she and Clarence would have later, they went to the KO Diner for a meal. They were early enough that Railway Avenue was pretty much empty. They pulled up to the curb in Clarence’s sedan, and Estella knew he’d be pleased to have a spot where he could keep an eye on the car. He parked carefully, watching out for the whitewalls, and he walked around the car to open the door for Estella. A couple of what looked to be students passed by on the sidewalk heading for the diner, and Estella heard through the open window some kind of political discussion. Clarence had obviously not heard because he didn’t mention it. He had no use for politics or students.
He opened her car door and she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She was wearing a new summer dress, green with a pattern of bright-red flowers. The dress was probably too young for her, but it was the fashion, and she’d loved the colour when she’d seen it in the Eaton’s window downtown. Clarence had wolf-whistled when she’d come to the door in it, and she’d almost turned around and gone back to her room to change, but at the same time, it meant the dress looked good on her so she hadn’t. She was getting vain, she thought. She never used to care.
After Clarence locked the car, they walked up the block toward the diner. Estella now felt conspicuous in the colourful, sleeveless dress. It was warm for the first week of May and she hadn’t brought a sweater, knowing it would be warmer still inside the boxing club. She wished she could cover her arms.
They passed the club’s entrance and Clarence stopped to look at a poster that described the night’s card. Estella glanced at the names along with Clarence, not expecting to see one that she recognized. But she did see a familiar name: Peter Boone’s. He was one of the two boxers vying for the light welterweight championship. So he was still at it, she thought. She’d lost track of him several years ago when he left Lake Claire.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing. “Peter Boone. He’s in the championship bout.”
“The nobody, you mean,” Clarence said. “Some kid from Prince Albert.”
“He’s not a nobody,” Estella said, offended on Peter Boone’s behalf. “He’s someone I know, from the lake in the summer.”
“Really? Well, my bet’s on the other guy.”
“Then we’re betting against each other.”
“Since when did you care enough to have an opinion?” Clarence asked, putting his arm around her waist and squeezing. The squeeze felt like an affectation, like something he’d seen in an old black-and-white movie. “Anyway,” he said, “ladies don’t bet.”
Ladies don’t bet. The wolf whistle. She couldn’t believe she had managed to spend as much time with this man as she had. She resolved to bet a whole lot of money on Peter Boone, just to show Clarence that some ladies do whatever the hell they want. She thought of the old home economics teacher at her school, the one who gave the girls a lecture at the beginning of every year on the difference between “ladies” and “women.” Everyone in the school had been waiting for her to announce her retirement so they could hire someone who lived in the twentieth century.
A train passed just then behind the diner and the boxing club, and Estella and Clarence had to stop talking. Clarence took Estella’s arm and guided her up the street to the diner as the train rumbled slowly by. She thought about Peter Boone, the boy who had trained on his own in the hotel where he’d lived with his mother. How old would he be now? In his twenties, twenty-three or twenty-four. Perhaps he was married. She was amazed that he’d apparently stuck with his childhood passion. She’d never imagined that a young man built like a jockey would have any kind of future in boxing.
When Clarence opened the door to the diner and Estella stepped inside, she saw a man who looked as if he might be an assassin staring back at her. He was seated at the counter, and his eyes followed her as she and Clarence walked all the way to the back of the diner to an empty booth. Estella thought Clarence might say something—Put your eyes back in your head—but he didn’t notice. She slid into the booth and tucked her dress under her legs, hiding as much as she could. There was no hiding her bare arms or the deep V of her dress, though. The man let his eyes roam from her ankles under the table up to her neck, and then he turned back to his plate of fries.
“Best burgers in town,” Clarence said, picking up a menu from the Formica tabletop.
“Didn’t you see that?” Estella asked.
“See what?”
Estella shook her head with disgust. “Surely there are other places with good burgers,” she said.
“This one has atmosphere,” Clarence said. “Don’t you like it here? I thought you did.”
“I don’t really,” she said, but she opened a menu anyway. They were bickering, she thought. Or at least, she was.
They ordered burgers. There was a newspaper on the bench seat beside Clarence and he picked it up and found the sports section.
As Estella waited for her burger and Clarence read the paper, she thought again about Peter Boone, and hoped he would not lose as badly as Clarence seemed to think he would. She wondered if she’d be able to talk to him later in the evening after his bout. She wondered whether he’d even recognize her. She had certainly never worn anything like this dress at the lake. At the lake she wore shorts over a bathing suit and tied her hair back.
The man at the counter paid his bill and left. Another train went by. Estella could see that cars and trucks were beginning to pull up and fill the empty spots on Railway in front of the boxing club. Soon they’d be parking around the corners on the side streets. The waitress brought their burgers and slid them onto the table, and Clarence folded up the paper and put it back on the seat.
“Anything else I can get ya?” the waitress asked. Her name tag identified her as Peggy.
“Thanks,” Estella said. “I’m good.”
“So, who’s going to win the title tonight?” Clarence asked the waitress.
“Don’t ask me,” Peggy said. “I wouldn’t know a boxing glove from an oven mitt.” She was looking at Clarence, waiting for him to tell her whether he wanted anything else. She had a pencil tucked into her hair.
“We have everything we need,” Estella said, and Peggy left.
Clarence took a bite of his hamburger and savoured it. Beef fat dripped onto his plate.
They watched a big Cadillac cruise slowly past, driven by a woman, a bottle-blonde. She was no doubt looking for a place to park.
“Should have come early, Blondie,” Clarence said.
Irritation again. Calling the woman Blondie. Acting so pleased
with himself that he’d found a good parking spot so he could keep an eye on his car.
But why was she being so ungenerous? Now she couldn’t tell if she was cranky with herself, or with Clarence. She was as bad as her high school students. She picked up her hamburger and ate it, taking care not to drip anything on her new dress.
When they’d both finished, Clarence left a dime by his plate and went to pay the bill at the counter. Estella slipped some more change onto the table. Another point of irritation: he was a cheap tipper. She caught up with him and they left the diner, the bell on the door clanging again as they opened it to step outside onto the cement. Music was now coming from the boxing club, a radio station playing popular music through the sound system.
Clarence shadow-boxed as they walked up the street. He was enjoying himself. A spring robin was singing like mad in an elm tree about to leaf out, competing with the music coming from the club. There was no breeze at all. It was going to be hot inside. If it hadn’t been for Peter Boone, she’d have asked Clarence to take her home.
At that moment a taxi pulled up across the street from them. The windows were down, and Estella saw a small man hand the driver a bill over the back of the seat and then open the street-side door and step out. He hauled an enormous gear bag out of the car after him and hiked it onto his shoulder. As he started across the street toward them, Estella saw that it was Peter. He appeared to recognize her at the same moment. She stepped toward the curb, lifting her arm to wave at Peter, when the same Cadillac that had cruised by earlier came flying around the corner, fishtailing this time, and ran right into Peter Boone, who was now in the middle of Railway, looking at Estella, heading for her and the boxing club.
Estella tried to warn him but it was too late. Peter was instantly separated from his gear bag, and he and the bag flew in front of the big car, which came to a sudden, screeching stop. Peter and his bag hit the pavement twenty feet in front of the Cadillac. He lay there, not moving. A pair of boxing gloves bounced out of a rip in the bag, which was still sliding down the street, and one of them landed by Peter’s head. It was sickening, the way he lay there in the street. Everything seemed to come to a halt, everything but the music.
The woman driving got out of the car and started to scream, “Where did he come from? I didn’t see him. Where the fuck did he come from?”
Estella ran toward Peter. Clarence followed and tried to grab her arm and stop her, but she shook him off. One of Peter’s legs was at the wrong angle, and blood spilled from a terrible gash above his temple. The bloated boxing glove lay beside him, as though it had delivered a blow and then quit. The taxi driver, who had not yet moved, now suddenly pulled away from the curb and left as though he did not want an accident that he’d had no part in to interfere with his evening’s fares. He didn’t even look. He pretended that he hadn’t seen a thing.
“Call an ambulance,” Estella shouted, but no one moved. She was kneeling now beside Peter, and Clarence stood behind her looking as though he might keel over, his face drained of colour.
“Clarence,” she said, trying now to sound calm. “Go into the diner and tell them to call an ambulance. Now. Right now. And then the police. Call them, too.”
He finally did as she told him.
A man with grey hair who had apparently got out the passenger side of the Cadillac was now stuffing the blond driver into the back seat, and Estella used her teacher voice and yelled at them: “Don’t you dare leave. And don’t move that car. I have your licence number.” She didn’t, but they must have believed her because they stayed put. The man got into the back seat of the car too, and the two of them sat there.
When Clarence returned, she made him take off his suit jacket—she had to practically pull it off him because he resisted—and she draped it over Peter. She didn’t know if he was dead or alive. People started filing out of the diner and the boxing club, and then a man from the club came running and said he was a doctor. He was carrying a leather bag, like doctors in the movies. Estella supposed boxing matches had doctors in attendance. She stood up and let him check Peter as best he could. Someone else started directing traffic around the accident scene. The doctor said they couldn’t move Peter without a backboard. There was one at the club, and someone went to get it, but then the ambulance came, and then the police, and Estella and Clarence had to get in the back of the police car and tell them what had happened while the attendants took Peter away in the ambulance, lights flashing. Clarence kept asking about his jacket, could he get it back, and the policeman said, “In time.” Estella could see Clarence looking up the street where the ambulance and his jacket had disappeared as she told the policeman what had happened.
“It was my fault,” she said. “He saw me and he wasn’t watching.”
“How could it be your fault?” Clarence said. “We were just standing there on the sidewalk.”
“Let the lady talk,” the policeman said. “Your turn will come.”
“That car came flying around the corner,” Estella said. “And I mean flying. Fishtailing. I wonder if she was drunk. The driver. Do you check for that? I saw the look on her face. She looked terrified. Maybe they were fighting. Maybe that was it.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Clarence said.
“Clarence, shut up,” Estella said.
“Right,” said the policeman, giving Clarence his own warning look.
Estella tried to slow down then and tell the rest of the story just the way it had happened. Peter getting out of the taxi and crossing the street. The car hitting him. The taxi driver leaving, even though he had clearly seen what happened.
When it was Clarence’s turn, he simply said, “What she said. She’s better at details than me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. The guy got out of a taxi and was crossing the street. The Caddy came around the corner and hit him. Blondie was driving, even though the guy is probably going to try and tell you he was. The Caddy stopped. The taxi left. That’s about it. Can we go now? I need to get my jacket.” Estella thought he was pouting because she’d told him to shut up.
“I know his name,” she said. “Did I tell you that?”
“No,” the policeman said.
“Peter Boone. From Lake Claire, north of Prince Albert. At least that’s where he grew up. His mother still lives there. She works at The Travellers Hotel. He was here for the fight tonight.”
The policeman wrote it all down, and then Clarence and Estella got out of his car. Another policeman was in the Cadillac talking to the driver and the grey-haired man. Peter’s gear was still scattered in the street, and Estella thought she could see blood where his head had lain. More policemen were blocking the road to traffic and placing orange cones in the street. A crowd was gathered on the sidewalk in front of the boxing club. They knew by now that the accident victim was on the evening’s card.
“I wonder why they took my jacket,” Clarence said.
“Stop worrying about your damned jacket,” Estella said. “I’m sure we can collect it at the hospital.”
“At the hospital?” Clarence said.
“Yes,” Estella said. “We’re going to the hospital now. Unless you think the other contender—the one you said was the favourite—is going to fight with himself for the title. If so, you can stay and watch and I’ll go alone.”
“You’re upset,” Clarence said.
“Of course I am,” Estella said. “I know that man. Now are we going or not?”
“Yes, we’re going,” Clarence said.
The Grey Nuns’ Hospital was just around the corner so they assumed that Peter had been taken there. They went to the emergency entrance and asked if he’d been brought in and were told yes, but that was as far as they got. They sat in a waiting room. There were others there—a man who had been stabbed, a crying child with a fever, a woman who appeared to be having an allergy attack—but they were all waiting for treatment, and Estella and Clarence were the only ones waiting for word on th
e condition of someone else. And they were certainly the only ones there in any kind of evening attire. Estella once again felt self-conscious about the colour and the neckline of her dress. Clarence kept going on about his jacket, and she wished he did have it so she could ask him for it to cover up her bare shoulders. At the same time, she wanted to tell him to be quiet, his missing jacket was not the most important thing about the evening.
When Estella inquired at the counter for the third time, a nurse finally told her that Peter was stable for now.
“So he’s not dead?” Estella said.
“He’s not dead,” the nurse said. “He has broken bones. He’s stable for the moment. That’s all I can tell you. You aren’t family.”
Clarence convinced the nurse to get his jacket back, and she did, perhaps just to get rid of them, and he checked it over carefully, for blood, Estella thought, growing more and more annoyed with him.
They went home.
Under the street lamp in front of her parents’ house, after they’d spent hours at the hospital and it was at least midnight and Estella was exhausted, she could see that Clarence had something to say. She assumed he was about to break it off with her, and she wanted to speed things up and tell him it was all right, she agreed, they should stop seeing each other, no hard feelings.
She had it altogether wrong, though, and Clarence did not want to break it off. Instead, he asked her to marry him. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a ring, and he proposed marriage.
The Diamond House Page 17