A round-cheeked girl with a bag of chips was next at the counter, must be the truck woman’s daughter. “And $32 in gas,” she said.
Dolly walked around the aisles looking for pop cans in cartons. There, at the back. They were going to get pretty heavy on the way back to the cabin. She lugged them up to the counter.
The pimply boy at the cash took her twenty and said, “$10.35.”
Dolly said, “No way! They’re $4.50 each. That’s only nine dollars.”
“Tax,” the boy said. He was sure outgoing.
“Oh, right,” she said, pretending she knew that.
The screen door spring snapped her in the arm when she went out. It was bright outside, compared to the store, and Dolly stood on the step, dazzled.
“You want a ride?”
It was the jean-jacket guy, over by his truck. Dolly shook her head.
“You come on with me, I’ll take you for a ride into town.”
What kind of stupid did he think she was? Dolly could feel the metal bar of the screen door across the middle of her back, and the saggy parts of the screen above and below. The truck with the women was gone, there was only the boy at the counter inside.
“I got some candy in the truck.”
Dolly laughed. That made the guy mad. He took off his glasses. His eyes were big and pretty like a woman’s. Bright blue, she could see, even so far away. He smiled at her like he knew her. How she was crafty, the same as him.
The pop was heavy. The sun flashed on the windshield of a car turning off the gravel. Dolly took off with a jump and ran across the dirt, straight at the guy, startling him. Then she swerved past him onto the dirt track. She flung the orange carton down with a rattling crash in the dirt as she stuck out her arm.
It was okay, it was them. Clary opened the window and called past Gran, “Hi! Sorry we’re late, we stopped to get ice cream in Kyle.”
“Hi,” Dolly said.
“You got pop? So did I! Hop in, we can go as far as the cabin without your seatbelt on. You’ll be safe out here.”
Dolly picked up the pop she’d dropped and climbed in beside Pearce’s baby seat. She leaned her head against Pearce’s blanket and smelled how good he smelled. Trevor was sound asleep against the other window. What a nice boy he was.
Clary drove down the road, glad to have Dolly back with her. Grace was responsible and careful, of course, but she was no Mrs. Zenko. When Trevor opened his pop, ten minutes later, Grace’s nice aqua outfit got totally soaked, orange everywhere.
On Sunday evening, without giving Paul any warning, Lisanne sent her sister Carol to get her things from the rectory. Her things—as if after twenty years there was any more such a thing as hers, or his. These things are all ours, he wanted to shout at Carol. Or sob. Which would come out, he wondered, if he pushed at that locked door? Instead he said, “Did you bring boxes, Carol, or shall I find some?”
Of course she had not brought boxes. She did have a list. And a van coming later on.
“Blake is coming to help, remember Blake?”
A paunch, and a small beard, Paul thought, finding it an exhausting effort to sort out Carol’s sporadic boyfriends.
“We’d better have things ready for him, then,” he said, amazed at his own civility.
She started up the stairs, getting right down to work. Lisanne had faithfully reported Carol’s loathing of his “passive-aggressive fake humility”—he wondered if she’d actually said that, or if Lisanne had just wanted to say it herself.
He went to find boxes.
When Carol and Blake left they had nine boxes and three large suitcases. They took the mahogany armoire from the living room, originally Paul’s grandmother’s, which had been Lisanne’s sewing cupboard for twenty years. The dining room chairs, all eight, but not the table, because Lisanne had put on the list definitely not to take it. It had a wow in the middle and she was sick of it. The brown velvet couch, the armchair, the sideboard, the carpet.
Paul was mildly glad that Lisanne had said he could keep the bed, symbolically, although he’d never much liked it. He tried to take some satisfaction from it standing in the almost-empty bedroom. The comforter slumped on the floor, she didn’t want that either. (Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?) The dressers and night tables had gone. He wondered where she would store all this in Carol’s house. The good dishes (he’d always hated them), the good cutlery, the good pots, the pepper grinder, and—moving back into the living room—the television and the cordless phone. He had not let them take the iron or the ironing board; he did need to iron his shirts. Carol said never mind. The ironing board was teetery and usually stuck halfway up, and it could have done with a new cover.
Blake had been unable to meet Paul’s glance. Ashamed of himself for helping with this wholesale fleecing, or ashamed of Paul as a failed example of manhood, Paul wondered. Carol, though, stopped at the door and looked straight into his eyes, one of those long looks people rarely have the effrontery for. Her eyes were like Lisanne’s, he realized—light, with black rings around bright pale irises veering toward blue. Lisanne’s were darker blue.
“How are you doing with all this, Paul?”
He was surprised that she should ask. “I’m going to be all right, in the end,” he said.
“Lisanne’s very good. Better than I’ve ever seen her,” Carol said. As if it wasn’t him she was talking to, as if it didn’t matter what she said to him. “Well, off we go! Have a good night!”
They had been gone for ten minutes when Paul found the remote, sitting on the bookcase. He clicked it a few times, imagining the television set in the back of the van flickering on and off, whispering to itself in the crowd of furniture.
Tuesday night Grace took Clary and the kids to the Clearwater drive-in. They’d been lots of times, outside Winnipeg, so it was not that big a deal. Both Trevor and Dolly were tired. They sat staring through the windshield, glad not to have to talk. It was almost ten o’clock, but the sky was not yet dark, so it was hard to see the screen. The first movie was Dinosaur, animated and pretty old, but they hadn’t seen it yet. The second feature was Dude, Where’s My Car? but Clary had already said they would not be staying for that one. A man’s voice kept breaking in over the movie lines on the radio, saying “Two cheeseburger, two fries, chocolate shake, Diet Coke,” or “bacon double cheeseburger, onion rings.” Then you couldn’t hear the movie. The little dinosaur was getting separated from his family, which reminded Trevor of that other movie, and Littlefoot’s mother dying, and that made his eyes tear up. Then a comet came screaming down through the atmosphere, and hit, SPLASH, and there was a huge explosion and a great big tidal wave of water came swooshing along the screen.
It was the comet that meant the extinction of the dinosaurs, everybody knew that.
“Boy, that was a short movie,” Trevor said. Clary burst out laughing. Trevor was happy to make her laugh but did not get why that was so funny.
Dolly could see, because the movie was going to keep on, so the dinosaurs must not be getting wiped out right away, even though everybody knew they did. Trevor was so young. She leaned closer up against Clary’s arm. Pearcey was slurp-slurping from a bottle again. He never stopped eating these days, Dolly thought. “Can we have a cheeseburger?” she asked Clary, tilting her head up, so she could already see Clary’s mouth making a No.
But Grace stretched her arms up over her head and beat a drum tattoo on the car ceiling. “I think that’s a great idea,” she said. “Who wants to come with me?”
Trevor was watching the dinosaurs in their long line trying to get away from destruction, so Dolly went with Grace by herself. Grace had changed into lime green shorts, pretty bright even in the twilight. She told the boy at the counter hi, and ordered four cheeseburgers and two onion rings and two, no, make it three fries. Four chocolate shakes. Good thing Gran had stayed at the cabin. Before they went home to the city, Dolly thought, she would have to go through Gran’s p
ockets and put back whatever stuff she’d scarfed. She remembered the change still in her own pocket and handed it to Grace, who was happily talking to the counter boy, both of them leaning their elbows on the counter while the fryer sizzled away.
This was more like what they were used to, Dolly thought to herself. Like up by Espanola, or Trimalo, except for the no trees. It wouldn’t last forever, being out here. She should be paying more attention.
She looked out at the empty field, stretching right out to the sky, as far as you could tell. Rolling bare-bone land going away, away, away into a blue distance, and the huge screen standing up against the blue sky that was both dark and light at the same time. The faint sound of the movie through open car windows mixed with the whispery whistling of the wind, and the noise of bugs creaking and fiddling toward the darkness. And the smell of the burgers frying and the onion rings. Six or seven cars away she could see Clary’s head bending down to Pearce. Except for what she would not think about, Dolly was happy. She could breathe this mixed summer air forever. Up above the movie screen the few visible stars sprinkled in the periwinkle blue—look! One slipped out of its place and shot silently down, arcing around the edge of the screen and down and gone.
That night Pearce cried and cried, to remind them that he was only a baby. The whole camp would be awake, Clary knew, a little village of people who already didn’t sleep well, and now this. By one a.m. he was only gathering strength, stomach ache or gas giving him no rest either.
“A walk,” she told him, finding her shoes in the darkness. “That’s what you need. We’ll go walk along the shore. The cool night air will do us good.”
She could walk in her pyjamas, here at Clearwater. Maybe a sweater. She slipped out the front and cobbled Pearce into his stroller. But it wouldn’t roll on the rocky sand; after a hundred yards she hoisted him out and abandoned the stroller. Pearce was comfortable on her hip, and happier outside in the night. Above them, filling the huge sky, the stars in their millions flickered and stood. Someone said there are only two thousand stars visible, but it must be more than that, Clary thought. A thousand times more. That person must have lived in a city.
It was a bit cooler than she’d bargained for, and she’d left the blanket in the stroller. Clary took off her sweater and wrapped it around Pearce, making a sling with the sleeves around her neck so they could keep walking and be comfortable. She had missed walking in the last few weeks. Too much to do, not enough time to walk anywhere. She strode along, stretching her legs out. Familiar with this path since childhood, when Grace and Moreland and their little cabin had been so romantic, when she had heard them whispering late at night, both twined into one bunk. The sound of them kissing and Grace laughing, saying we can’t—and Moreland, the handsome boy he was then, murmuring oh yes, oh yes.
Trevor trotted along the path some way behind Clary. He didn’t want her to hear him; he just wanted to be with her. The lake on one side, the wilderness on the other, in the dark night. Finally dark, even though the sun took so long to set that you thought it would never go to black. There was something in the grass beside him, he thought, and he went a little faster. So did the thing, scuttering along making noise only when he did, quieting if he stopped. He couldn’t be afraid, it must be something small. The moon was small, too, not very bright, slung low in the sky. The grass was too scary, too close. He did not want to call out to tell Clary he was following in case she got mad. Trevor edged down to the water, thinking he might walk along in the mud, because an animal might not like to get its feet wet, if it was a cougar or a fox. A coyote might not care about water, or a pack of coyotes. They had been yipping along the black horizon earlier. Grace had shown him one silhouetted against the orangey-blue sky when they got home from the movie. She’d pointed with her finger where the other yippers were.
His feet were tough. The rocky sand and mud on the bottom of the lake did not bother them. Once in a while a sharp rock made his knee suddenly bend. He rolled his pyjama bottoms past his knees and walked a little farther out, where it was warm, muddy, squelching smoothness. A little farther. There was no wind at all. No waves, and the water was still except for the stirring his shins made.
Pearce was heavy, and Clary was tired. She sat down on a slight hummock above the lake. She should have brought him a bottle. She could hear motion, nighttime animals moving through the grasses. Fish in the lake coming up for sleeping bugs, an occasional tiny plop. A sound like something wading: a deer, or a fawn. Pearce pointed his finger up to the moon. He always pointed at the moon; he laughed when he saw it through the window at home. This time he was silent with attention. Wrapped in the soft darkness, Clary lay down on the grass and curled herself around Pearce. He was wide awake and not in pain any more. He stood against her hip and leaned forward over her body to get closer to the black sky over there, and the black fronds of grass.
Trevor had a bad moment, in water over his knees, not knowing which way to go back to the shore. The lake was not very deep in the daytime, not until you were way out there, he told himself. He was fine. He took a step one way, and thought maybe the bottom sloped down. He took a step back, and that was definitely sloping down. Any way he stepped, it got deeper.
He was frightened, but on the other hand, there he was in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the night, alone. No waves, no wind. He was in the world, himself completely, no part left out. The moon was in the sky. He stood still.
His flashlight carving a small oval of real world out of the darkness, Moreland walked down to the cabin from behind the store, where he’d parked the truck so as not to wake anyone up along the cabins. He was stiff from that marathon of work. Beautiful night, a far cry from the last few days of dust and paint. Grace didn’t know he was coming out, wouldn’t be waiting on him. There was time for the luxury of a walk around the lake.
His wobbling flashlight picked and pricked out to the lake, dancing on the mud as he walked—and what was that in the distance? It was a head shining over the water.
Hair flying upwards: Trevor. Fifty yards out, the nut. Moreland took his shoes off, since he hated cleaning shoes, and after thinking a minute, took off his pants too. His boxers were shorts, after all.
Trevor had crouched down to feel with his fingers which way the bottom sloped, and at first he didn’t see the flashlight moving on the surface. Then he thought it was the moon. But it was a light coming bobbing from the land. So that was the direction! He would have walked the other way, he thought.
“Stay still, Trev,” Moreland called gently over the water, not to alarm him. “I’ll come out to you, and we’ll have a wade together.”
Clary felt a clutch on her waist, and heard Pearce answering Moreland, before she realized that she had heard Moreland. She had fallen asleep! Would she have woken if Pearce had crawled away down into the water? Her slow brain finally re-heard Moreland, saying Trevor, saying something—she sat up, grabbing Pearce, and stood to scan the darkness.
There on the lake, a moving light caught something—
“Trevor?” she cried, too afraid to keep her voice steady. The water’s dimpling surface broke up the light—she had made Trevor fall backwards into the water.
“Oh!” she cried again, stumbling along the path with Pearce hanging awkwardly from her arm, the sweater swinging around her neck, no use now.
Then she saw Moreland, and heard him calling back to her to calm down, calm down, he had him. Moreland had him.
Grace made cocoa and found Trevor a soft old pair of Fern’s shorts to wear to bed. He lay on the couch and listened to Grace scolding Moreland for coming out in the middle of the night and scaring them all, although if he had not, who knew what might have happened, and for letting Trevor have a midnight swim once he’d found him, which was just childish, and so on.
Clary was silent, sitting at the other end of the couch holding Trevor’s feet in her hands, which were not warm themselves but seemed to make him warmer.
In the wicker rocking c
hair Moreland held Pearce, watching his drowsing baby face. “Good boy,” he said. “I missed you, Grace, that’s all. I’m allowed to miss you.”
19. Tumbling blocks
The house was still standing. No lumber or workmen around, no debris on the grass. It looked to Clary as if Moreland might have done some yardwork. The children were hungry, so she let Mrs. Pell stump off around the side of the house—mad again—and went straight to the kitchen, stepping lightly to let Darwin stay asleep in the basement. But Trevor and Dolly ran down the stairs before she thought to stop them: clatter, clatter, and then wild shouts.
Trevor galloped back up the stairs to grab her arm and pull her. She checked that she had fastened Pearce properly into the high chair, because everything was dangerous, and then let Trevor have her hand.
The stairwell seemed lighter. Fresh paint, she realized, as she was rushed down. At the bottom of the stairs, an empty field of bright green carpet was splotched with squares of light. A big window—Moreland must have helped with that, he was a great one for windows. They had scooped out a well to put it in, and lined it with ridged aluminum and pea gravel in the bottom, like one of Moreland’s new buildings. The window was beautiful. The carpet was lurid, green as Astroturf.
“Look! See?” Trevor said, as the boy had in Clary’s earliest school reader, showing Mother the new puppy. He flung open a pair of over-ornate louvred doors, and there were the washer and dryer.
Dolly found a separate room with the old basement window, looking small now, behind a gathered green panel. A single bed against the wall. She wanted it to be her room, she wanted it so bad—but that would mean that Darwin was gone, that the wind had changed. It would mean that her mom was dead and so Darwin was finished helping her. That thought caught Dolly up short. She’d been doing so well not thinking. She almost had to throw up, but she ran out into the big room and rolled around on the floor. She would go to the canning cupboard and break the jars into a million pieces. Trevor jumped on her and hurt her stomach but she didn’t even mind. She grabbed him and hugged him as hard as iron, like a clamp.
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