Estella couldn’t have been more shocked, and at the same time she wanted to laugh, because that’s why Clarence had been fussing about the missing jacket, he’d had an engagement ring in the pocket. She remembered herself pulling the jacket off him while he resisted, and it was farcical, like a situation comedy on television, I Love Lucy. And then she thought maybe he was joking and it wasn’t a real ring, it was a prize from a box of Cracker Jack. That would have happened to Lucy, wouldn’t it? Ricky would have lost the real ring, and given her a toy one.
But of course the ring was real. Clarence Angell was really asking her to marry him on the very night that it had become absolutely clear to her that there was no point continuing with their relationship, whatever it was. It wasn’t love. Not on her part, and she didn’t believe on his, either. She had no idea why he wanted to marry her.
The ring sparkled under the street light. It looked expensive. Clarence was looking impatient. He clearly hadn’t expected her to take so long to say yes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t marry you. I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought, except that we don’t love each other, not like that.” She was thinking about how annoyed Clarence had been when his jacket had gone in the ambulance—well, okay, she could see why he was worried about the ring, but if it hadn’t been for the ring, she was sure he would have foregone the trip to the hospital and stayed for the fights instead. She remembered how she had felt at the hospital, how what she’d really wanted was for Clarence to leave so she could wait out the uncertainty of Peter’s injury by herself. Peter Boone was of no interest to Clarence. It was wrong that he was there.
Clarence’s face said that he’d fully expected Estella to say yes to his proposal. He was left holding out the ring, a diamond of a pretty good size, until Estella finally reached out and closed the lid on the case and then slipped the box back into his jacket pocket.
“Is it the boxer?” Clarence asked. “Are you upset about him? Because the nurse said he’s stable. That’s good news.”
“It’s not that,” Estella said. “And there’s not really any good news yet, Clarence. They don’t know anything. He could still die, or end up with brain damage.”
“He’s not going to die,” Clarence said. “He’ll be back in the ring before you know it. What’s he to you, anyway? Small-town scrappers are a dime a dozen in boxing.”
And that did it. That one thing, that one phrase—dime a dozen—confirmed to Estella what she had known but had not wanted to admit to herself: that she didn’t even like Clarence Angell.
“Clarence,” she said, “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t think of you in that way. I thought you knew that. In fact, I thought you felt the same way.”
Clarence’s confusion turned to anger.
“Is that why you’re wearing that dress?” he asked. “To impress someone you don’t think of ‘in that way’?”
Estella looked down at her dress, the one she’d felt uncomfortable in all night and should never have bought. She had others like it, wrap dresses in good fabrics with white piping or covered buttons, sophisticated shoes to go with them. She regretted that she’d ever indulged herself. It must have had something to do with her age, her mother’s death.
“You’ve never told me I meant anything more to you than a friend would,” she said.
He laughed in a way that wasn’t funny, and then he said, “So what kind of whore does that make you? All those visits to the midnight hotels, you know them all now, don’t you. Maybe you knew them before you met me.”
That’s when she slapped him, right there under the street light for anyone to see who happened to be looking out a window, although it was late enough that the houses were in darkness and she hoped no one was.
He stood there rubbing his cheek.
“I certainly thought we were moving toward marriage,” he said, “but I guess I got it wrong. You’re not who I thought you were.”
“Clearly, since I turned out to be a whore,” Estella said.
Then, before she could say anything else, Clarence grabbed her roughly and kissed her on the mouth, one hand on the small of her back and the other behind her head, his tongue working to find its way between her lips. She tried to push him away, but then his hands slid down to her hips and he pulled her to him harder, almost violently. He was breathing heavily, out of anger, not passion. “Is that what you want?” he said. “I can give you that, but I thought you were a better sort. Although I suppose I should have known, considering the first day we met.”
“What in the name of God are you thinking?” she said, struggling to shove him away from her. “I’ve never said that I loved you. I don’t love you, and you don’t love me, either. I don’t know why you want to marry me, but get a hold of yourself.”
“It’s not enough,” he said, angry now to the point that she would have been frightened of him if they hadn’t been standing in the street in front of her house. “You owe me more than that.”
Owe? she thought, anger now growing in her as well. She didn’t owe him or any other man anything.
“Fuck you, Clarence,” she said. She turned around and walked away from him.
“You are middle-aged, and you live with your father,” he shouted. “You might as well be an old spinster who rides a horse to a one-room school every day.”
“That’s enough,” she said. “I’m sorry this is ending so badly. We’ve had some good times together.” She thought she saw a curtain move in the neighbour’s front window, and imagined gossip up and down the street.
“Maybe you have,” Clarence said.
She stopped. “What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. You’ve had a good time dining out on my money.”
Why, oh why, had she kept up this charade for so long?
“And that’s why you asked me to marry you?” she said. “Because I owe you money? Well, send me a bill. I’ll put a cheque in the mail.”
She was almost at the front steps, but she stopped, and looked at him again.
“Oh my God,” she said. “You want money, that’s why you’re asking me to marry you.”
Clarence shook his head.
“For a mathematics teacher, you are a stupid woman,” he said. “You think you’re the daughter of bloody royalty.”
“And you think I’m a catch because of my father’s money. You see that my father is old, and you think there’s bound to be a will with a pretty substantial bequest. Is that why you came to my mother’s funeral in the first place? If so, I have to hand it to you. You’re patient, but then I hear that’s a trait of a good con man.”
Clarence was no longer standing under the street light; he had moved toward his precious yellow sedan, and Estella couldn’t read his face. “I don’t need your father’s money,” he said. And then he got in the car and drove away.
Estella was relieved that he was gone. She was angry, but only at herself now, for having such bad judgment, for giving Clarence Angell even the time of day.
She hardly slept that night between disgust with herself and concern for Peter, and fear that everyone on the block was talking about her.
In the morning at breakfast she studied her father and thought that her mother had been right when she’d said he had turned into an old man. Since Beatrice’s death, he’d had at least one fall that he would admit to, and Estella suspected there had been others, and she was beginning to worry about the staircase. He’d recently run his car into the ditch on his way out to the plant and Estella had insisted he give up his driver’s licence. He’d reacted as though she’d just asked him to check himself into a home, and ever since, he’d been short-tempered with her. The word cantankerous came to mind, which he had never before been.
She thought about telling him that she was done with Clarence Angell, but she was afraid of what he would say, that he would find a reason to blame her for not being able to hang onto a man when she finally had one. She decided he didn’t need to know about
Clarence, and she told him instead about Peter Boone’s accident.
“You might remember him from the hotel at the lake,” she said. “His mother works there. He’s the young man who’s always wanted to be a boxer.”
Her father nodded, perhaps remembering the boy who picked up dishes in the restaurant.
“I wonder if anyone has thought to be in touch with his mother,” she said.
After breakfast, she went to the hospital, where she learned from an admittance clerk that Peter had been moved from emergency to intensive care. He was still listed as stable. She found the ICU but the doors were locked and a sign read “Authorized Personnel Only.” The nurses’ station was inside the doors and Estella couldn’t get anyone’s attention. She went back to the admittance desk and spoke to the clerk again.
“Do you know if his mother has been notified?” she asked. “Would the police have called her, or someone here?”
“I can’t say. I don’t have that kind of information.”
“Has anyone else been up to see him? Someone from the boxing club, a trainer? Anyone at all?”
“There’s nothing I can tell you except that he’s in the ICU.”
Estella decided she’d better call Peter’s mother in case no one else had. She found a pay phone and got a number for the hotel in Lake Claire from directory assistance, and then loaded the phone with coins and called. It was a good thing she did. Peter’s mother didn’t know anything, and so Estella was the bearer of the news that there’d been an accident and her son was lying in a hospital bed. She thought he was in a coma, although she didn’t know that for sure.
“He was knocked out, then,” Peter’s mother said. “In the ring.”
“No, not in the ring.” Estella then repeated the story, because she realized the woman was having trouble taking it in. “Not knocked out in the bout last night, Mrs. Boone,” she said. “He was hit by a car. In front of the boxing club. It was before the fight. He was just arriving when a car came out of nowhere. I’m so sorry to be telling you this.”
“And you’re calling from the hospital?” Peter’s mother said. “You’re a nurse at the hospital?”
“I am at the hospital,” Estella said, “but I’m not a nurse, and they won’t let me see him.” Then she gave her name again and explained that she had witnessed the accident because she’d been going to see the fight. She knew Peter from Lake Claire, she said, and explained that her family rented cottages every summer, that she had first met Peter when he was just a boy.
“Oh, yes,” his mother said. “I know now. The Diamonds. There are a lot of you. I don’t know which one you are. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Estella said. Then she said something impulsively. “If you want to come and see your son, why don’t you stay with us? We have a big house. We would be happy if you stayed with us, and I can drive you up to the hospital every day. It’s not that far from where we live.”
She imagined her own mother approving—It’s the right thing to do—and then Estella gave Peter’s mother their phone number and said to call from the bus depot.
Shirley Boone arrived the next day. Estella picked her up at the bus depot and took her right to the hospital to see her son. It had been a long trip, Shirley said, avoiding the question of her son’s current status. A two-hour wait in Prince Albert, then another transfer in Saskatoon. She’d gone for a walk after having a sandwich at the lunch counter there, and had become lost and had to ask a stranger for directions. She’d worried she’d gotten on the wrong bus and might end up in Edmonton and was relieved when she saw a highway sign that told her she was on the right road.
When they got to the hospital, Estella took Peter’s mother to the admittance desk, and this time the clerk found someone who would let her in to see her son. Estella delivered her to the locked doors and a nurse came and opened them. She would have let both of them in, but Estella didn’t think it was right, not until Shirley Boone spoke to someone and found out what was going on. She went for coffee in the cafeteria and told Shirley she would wait for her there.
Two hours later, Shirley sat down across from her and reported that Peter would be kept sedated until the swelling in his brain went down. He had a dislocated shoulder and a broken leg, and his jaw was wired shut. Shirley was the picture of self-control, Estella thought, sitting across from her at the long white cafeteria table, but when Estella asked her if Peter was in pain, she broke down. Estella found a package of tissues in her purse and Shirley pulled one out as she told Estella that they had her son on morphine, so she didn’t think he was in pain.
“Will he be addicted?” Shirley asked. “He wouldn’t want that. He’s never had a drink in his life because he thought it might affect his training.”
“I’m sure he won’t be addicted,” Estella said. “The doctors will know how to manage that.” She was thinking that Jack had come home from the war addicted to morphine, and what a hard time he’d had weaning himself off of it.
Shirley Boone stayed at the hospital that night, and then the next day she asked Estella to drive her back to the bus depot. Estella objected and tried to convince Shirley to stay with them, they had lots of room, but Shirley said she had to get back to work. There was only her, she said, running the hotel at this time of year. There was no else to do it. She would lose her job if she stayed away. Estella drove her to the bus depot and promised that she would visit Peter, and she would call her every day and let her know how he was doing.
She requested another leave from school, just a few weeks this time, she said, to care for a nephew who’d been in an accident. She’d just had an interview for a vice-principal’s job and she worried it might interfere with her chances of getting it, but she went ahead anyway. She knew it wasn’t necessary for someone to sit all day by Peter’s bed, but she felt responsible, and she thought of Jack, who had been the same age when he’d come back from the war nearly twenty years ago. She’d hoped then that Jack had had someone by his bedside during his time in the French hospital—a nurse, or a volunteer, or some French soldier’s mother—but there had been so many wounded soldiers they were probably lucky to have even a bed.
She remembered reading to Jack, so she took The Collected Works of Robert Service to the hospital and read poems to Peter. Sam McGee and Dan McGrew and “The Spell of the Yukon.” She did other things she’d done with Jack: rubbed his feet, brushed his hair, and trimmed his fingernails. She wondered if she was trying to do a better job than she had with Jack, because she had not managed to fix him and he was still broken, even though he and Rose now had two sons.
A week after the accident, the medical staff woke Peter up and got him breathing on his own again. He knew where he was, and the doctors were happy with his responses when they poked and prodded. Estella immediately phoned Shirley and gave her the news. Peter took himself off morphine as soon as he found out he was on it. He had a rough few days, but he was insistent that he didn’t want to be on any drug that he didn’t need to stay alive. He was in the city for another week before he was moved to Prince Albert to be closer to home.
All that week before he was transferred, Estella continued to sit with him, but it was different now that he was awake. He was a young man she did not know well and had not spoken to since he was a teenager helping his mother at The Travellers. It was hard for them to talk because of his wired jaw. Although he had recognized Estella right away, he had no memory of the accident and couldn’t figure out how she knew he was in the hospital, even though she explained several times.
When one of the nurses told him that it had been Estella who’d been keeping him clean-shaven, he grew embarrassed. The nurse made it worse by saying, “I guess she thinks you’re too handsome to lie here looking like Robinson Crusoe.”
After the nurse left the room, Estella picked up his hand and patted it. She understood. It would not be easy for a young man to realize he’d been cared for in such a personal way by a woman who was neither a nurse nor his mother.
The day Peter was transferred to Prince Albert and the ambulance was on its way to collect him, she went up to the hospital to say goodbye. He looked so much better than he had just a week ago, even with the wires in his mouth and the shaved head and the cast on his leg.
“I’m grateful for everything you did,” he managed to say through the wires.
“I really didn’t do much,” she said. What had she done other than keep him company? Especially since she believed the accident to have been at least partly her fault.
There was only a month left until the summer break but she returned to school anyway after Peter was gone, because she didn’t want to jeopardize her chance at the job she’d applied for. She fell back into her old routine, although without Clarence on Saturday nights. Her father didn’t seem to notice when she stayed home, and she didn’t tell him Clarence was no longer in the picture. She dreaded telling any Diamond that she’d broken it off, and imagined the looks of pity that would come because Clarence had been her last chance and now she truly was a spinster. She wondered what his version of the story was, and what words he was using to describe her when he told it.
A few days before the end of the school year, she was summoned from the classroom to take a call from a Mr. Willis in central office. The school secretary handed her the phone and then went to supervise her class. Mr. Willis informed her that she was not being offered the vice-principal position because her teaching record had too many interruptions when she’d taken leaves to care for her brother and her mother and, just recently, the nephew.
“All that is admirable, Miss Diamond,” Mr. Willis said. “But you have a lot of responsibilities outside of school, and we therefore don’t think you are a good fit for our administration cohort.” He then went on to say she was not to take this in any way as a reflection of their opinion of her as a teacher of mathematics, and that she had their full confidence in that regard.
The Diamond House Page 18