A Good House

by Bonnie Burnard

  “It’s the middle of the day,” he said. “There will be people on the street.” He waited for her to come around, to be sensible, but she wasn’t going to give an inch. “We will have to be quiet,” he said.

  “This time quiet in the quiet.” She moved toward him, reached down to his lap, and urged him to his feet.

  They went out the kitchen door and followed the porch where it turned at the corner of the house. When they came to the place where the lowest branches of the spruce trees were almost as dense as a man-made wall, Murray stopped.

  Daphne stood very still. She was facing him, staring at the creamy surface of his shirt, at the still-hidden chest and shoulders. She was making for herself a sharp, reliable memory of the time before she saw him exposed to the light of day, before she knew every part of his daylight body.

  Almost always, until now, when she was with a man, trying like a child to guess exactly what was wanted and, more exactly, what was not wanted and, more crucially, what the final cost of all of it might turn out to be, she recognized in herself and quickly tried to blunt a nearly irrepressible and surely hurtful impulse to cringe when the hands reached out for her. Standing quietly on the porch protected by the spruce trees, she was thoroughly enjoying the absence of that impulse. And she believed that she understood the reason for its absence. This understanding was a release, a fine, small release. “I’m thinking it might be important, it might be best if we try to keep some space between us,” she said. “Quiet should help.”

  Let her get this said, Murray told himself. It’s only what she believes now. He took for his own memory the top of her small, beautiful head which was almost ready to lift itself up. Her face is going to be calm, he thought.

  It was not absolutely quiet on the porch. There was a bird of some kind hidden among the boughs of the spruce. The bird was agitated, likely fearful for the safety of a nearby, recently constructed nest. They couldn’t see it but they heard its loud defence.

  * * *

  MARY AND ANDY were out by the garage deadheading end-of-July roses when Daphne came into the backyard to tell them that she, too, was pregnant. The boys were busy with their trucks in the sandbox and “Midnight Cowboy,” a song Andy especially liked, a song she was humming along with, was playing on the stereo in the screened porch.

  Mary and Andy didn’t know each other well. When Mary and Patrick were first married, Andy had had her hands full with her kids and lately Mary had been equally busy with her own two and now she was going to have a third, a last baby. Paul was the one who had encouraged Andy to start coming into London, to make the effort to get to know Mary a bit. What he really meant, what almost everyone meant, was, Get away, take some time for yourself. Get your mind off Meg, at least for a few hours. You’re entitled.

  Andy’s first response to Daphne’s news was a loud yelp. Then she reached out to embrace her husband’s slightly older sister, moving aside when she was finished to give Mary a chance. When Mary didn’t take the chance, Andy quickly began to talk nonsense, starting with the first thing that came into her head. “But all this time I’ve been hoping for one more bridesmaid’s dress,” she said. She looked over at Mary, who was about to speak, and carried right on. “Mary and I decked out in matching peau-de-soie, and with pretty little pumps dyed to match. I was thinking baby blue. You’re saying there won’t be any baby blue peau-de-soie in our future?” She was trying to give Mary some time, to fill up the air between them so Mary could take a minute to think, so she wouldn’t speak any of the words that looked to be banging around in her angry head. It didn’t do any good.

  “Did I hear you right?” Mary asked. She had taken a step back, an actual step back, from Daphne and Andy beside her.

  Daphne said it again, just the one word. “Pregnant.”

  Mary looked at Andy to see if this might have been a set-up, prearranged, to see if Andy had been already told and won over. But Andy’s face was blank. She looked back to Daphne. “Is there a man connected with this?” she asked, her voice scraping like fine steel wool across the word this. “You don’t have anyone…”

  Mary’s tone of voice was brand new to Andy, but hearing it, Daphne recognized the stilted cadence and the quick drop to a lower, deadly serious pitch. Knowing without a doubt that she had heard hints of this tone of voice before she wondered at her own foolhardiness, at her own casual assumptions. If it had been even slightly appropriate, if there had been any room back there beside the roses for a quick acknowledgement of absurdity, she would have smacked her own forehead hard with the heel of her hand. If they’d been alone, Andy would have laughed. Margaret certainly would have laughed, hearing it.

  “Yes, there is a man,” Daphne said. “Likely the difficulty is not going to be with the word ‘man’ but with the word ‘connection.’”

  Andy felt exactly as she did when she was trying to drive the loaded half-ton up an incline through greasy spring mud. She geared down, hoping for traction. “Okay now,” she said.

  “Kids need a father,” Mary said, gearing up. “And so will you. You’ll need help. It’s a hell of a lot harder than it looks. About a thousand times harder. Childbirth is nothing. Childbirth is a bloody piece of cake.”

  Aware that this could get very bad very fast, Andy decided that she was not going to get sucked in any further. She would do whatever Daphne wanted, whatever she needed, anything at all short of turning on Mary. Because the only future she could actually see had all of them in it. As far as she knew none of them were going anywhere. Mary would just have to stretch her mind to accommodate this little bit of reality. But in her own time. Because how else did people do this kind of thing? She could not credit herself with a tolerance greater than Mary’s or a heart that was bigger or more yielding. She just didn’t care, she just truly didn’t give a damn, not as long as Daphne was all right with it. Whatever it was.

  Daphne was turning to go, not in anger, not crying but turning firmly, ready to head for the gate and down the driveway to her car.

  Mary reached to put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re not some hippie freak, you are a nurse, for God’s sake. You’re a grown-up.”

  Daphne had anticipated this from Patrick, maybe. Patrick, probably. Although she would not have claimed to know her well, she had thought Mary was a bit like Margaret, perhaps because they had always got along so well. She had expected Mary to offer some variation on what Margaret had said that morning.

  Margaret had taken time for one of the deep breaths she always took in the instant before she reconciled herself to something and then she’d said a mere “I see.” Such fine words. And by the time Daphne had finished her tea and muffin and was ready to come back into the city, to Patrick and Mary’s, Margaret already had her strategy prepared. “Leave me to get your father through this,” she’d said. “There are far worse things and he is one of the people who knows what some of them are. If he thinks he’s forgotten, I can remind him.”

  “I’m thirty,” Daphne said to Mary. “I have thought this through. I can work until I start to show and I’ve got a bit of money and I’ll be getting some help.”

  “From…?” Mary said.

  “From the person who wants to help this baby.” Daphne could hear her own tone of voice adapt itself to the circumstances, a ready weapon, automatic. “If you can’t take my news in the spirit in which it is offered, then don’t take it at all.”

  “But this isn’t just your problem,” Mary said.

  Andy flinched, not at the tone of voice but at the word. This was not a problem. She was the one who got to define the meaning of the word problem, thanks anyway, and these two lucky, lucky women were the last people in the world who should have to be told that. Meg not walking quite when she should have, not talking when she should have, and then talking strangely, slamming her fists, hitting out all the time now when she was frustrated, which was practically every waking minute of the day. Meg changing everything, changing even breakfast into ten
sion. That was what you could call a problem.

  In her head she already had Daphne’s baby safely born. She couldn’t stop herself. The baby was perfect, as her own first two had been. She already had it dressed in some of the things she’d kept, against this time, she realized now. She let it grow up quickly in her mind because that’s what kids do, had it visiting them at the farm with Daphne, who would be a good mother, an easygoing mother, had it sitting on Paul’s knee on the tractor for a picture with Neil and Krissy perched on the wheel wells and Meg standing behind Paul on the hitch, Meg happy about all of it, jumping and squealing with excitement.

  She threw her garden gloves down on the grass and told them she had to go home. She walked along the path and out the gate without a sound, the muscles in her shoulders braced so they would heave only slightly, almost imperceptibly.

  Mary was the one who broke down.

  Daphne watched her, unmoved. She didn’t reach across to touch her and she was not for a New York minute prompted to offer the consolation usual to such circumstances: I know you didn’t mean to be hurtful. And Andy knows it too. I’m sure she does.

  She looked at this pregnant Jackie Kennedy lookalike, this small, dark, bony-shouldered, thick-haired woman who would remain connected to her as long as Patrick was alive and likely long after, and thought, Mary, you’ve pulled yourself away. Nobody did it for you. And how do you like being away? Is it better out there?

  And then she left, stopping for a minute at the sandbox to tousle John’s hair and smile down at Stephen, who was just old enough to have been listening, to have noticed his mother crying into her hands back beside the roses.

  * * *

  WHEN MURRAY PHONED, Patrick had asked him to come up to the office. He’d started a file, made some notes. He didn’t have much information yet, only October 1962, Toronto, which was the date and place of their marriage, and a sketched-out offer of settlement that he had deliberately lowballed. He had no idea how much money Murray made, or how much Charlotte made. He didn’t know if they had saved any money themselves because from what he’d gathered they had been living a fairly extravagant life, but he assumed Murray’s inheritance would constitute the bulk of the assets. He was sure Charlotte’s parents were both alive and well, so her probable future security would not be up for discussion, not in front of any judge that he knew. He wondered what the late Mr. McFarlane would have made of this, Murray allowing his carefully husbanded money to dissipate to this god-awful woman.

  Murray had said on the phone that he would rather they meet for dinner downtown some place, so Patrick booked a table at the Iroquois. He deliberately arrived one drink early and after his drink was served he took the file out of his briefcase and placed it squarely in front of him. He wasn’t happy, he had even considered passing this thing off to one of his colleagues, but he wanted it done as fast as it could be done. Just to look at her, you wouldn’t know Daphne was pregnant, but walking to the restaurant in the muggy August heat he had thought about late February, how fast late February could come. Normally he could not truly remember winter in summer or summer in winter. Normally he found it impossible to bring to mind the opposite season, its pleasures and drawbacks.

  When Murray walked into the restaurant he was empty-handed, no briefcase, nothing. Maybe he had an accountant. Maybe he was going to refer Patrick to his Toronto accountant.

  As Murray sat down, he glanced at the open file laid out on the table. “Nice suit,” he said. “New?”

  “Hardy Amies,” Patrick said. “Not all that new.”

  The very attentive waiter had watched Murray settle into his chair and was soon right there with his “What will it be for you, sir?” They ordered their drinks and after the waiter left them Murray said, “What the hell’s happened to us that middle-aged men are required to call us sir? If this is achievement, I don’t think I like it. We’re not nearly smart enough to make people feel servile,” he said. “Are we?”

  “No, we’re not,” Patrick said. “How are things?”

  “Good,” Murray said. “Extremely good. I just found out that I’m going to Saigon in September, which almost, but not quite, makes up for the fact that I didn’t get there last year.”

  The waiter was back with the drinks and two oversized menus. He recommended the veal and they both said veal would be fine, although they’d pass on the salads. When he left again, Patrick asked, “Should we get at this or do you want to wait until after we’ve eaten?”

  Murray reached across the table to close the file.

  Patrick set it down beside the legs of his chair. “Fine by me,” he said. “I won’t start the meter until we actually begin our discussion.”

  “I’m going to pay you for the work you’ve done so far,” Murray said. “Just send me the bill. But I’ve decided to hold off on anything legal.”

  Patrick found his horizon, the restaurant’s name painted in heavy black capitals across the plate-glass window. He held his drink steady in his hand, an inch above the pink tablecloth. “You might as well keep talking,” he said.

  “She won’t marry me,” Murray said. “There is less than nothing I can do about it, so don’t you go weird on me. Don’t lay all of this at my door.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Patrick said, meaning that he hadn’t yet found the words for his contempt.

  “So I’m not going to put anything to Charlotte immediately,” Murray said. “Things have not been exactly spectacular for her lately. At work. With her parents.”

  “This would be the same woman you couldn’t stand the thought of carrying on with three short months ago? The one with the legs and the breasts and the extreme, what was your word, vanity?”

  “Charlotte and I are nearly but not quite played out,” Murray said. “Nearly but not quite dead. And I think it will be better all around if I stay until we are absolutely finished, until it is obvious to both of us. And thus unavoidable. Why should I get to miss the worst of it?”

  “Some people might call that commendable,” Patrick said. “But the reason you should get to miss the worst of it is, of course, because you are soon to be a father. I had assumed you would not want it to be born a bastard. That is what many people have agreed to call kids who arrive mysteriously without fathers. You’ve likely heard the word.”

  “Of course it has a father,” Murray said. “I am the father.” The waiter was there again, silently placing their plates of veal in front of them. Murray thanked him and he padded away. “Did she tell you I’m the father?” he asked. “Did you ask her?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me,” Patrick said. “And no, I didn’t ask her. No one is asking her. Except Mary, who had to take a large load of abuse for her trouble, which she did not in any way deserve. Not from Daphne or anyone else.” He was not going to go on much longer with this. He was going to pull the discussion up out of this shitheap. Practising law, he was required to keep clients focused, disciplined, well away from the murky, useless, self-indulgent talk that could waste hours of his time and truckloads of their money. He was required to keep them firmly concentrated on what the law allowed and he was extremely good at it.

  “She won’t have me,” Murray said. “Not now or any time soon.”

  “And if she’s got a kid, nobody’s going to be having her. I don’t think you two realize what you are playing at. This kind of mindlessness has repercussions all the way down the line.”

  “And when did you get to be the great moral centre of our lives?” Murray asked. “You must be a busy man.…”

  “You can’t expect non-reactions all around,” Patrick said. “Dad isn’t exactly jubilant.”

  “Margaret will be able to help Bill with it,” Murray said.

  “Jesus,” Patrick said. He used his fork to lift the overcooked asparagus and drop it onto his side plate. “Everyone depends on good old Margaret. There’s no escape. Almost for as long as I can remember. Almost that long.” He scraped the sauce from his veal, turned it over to check the oth
er side. “And she’s always right in there, ready and willing to decide what everybody thinks. Christ. As if it’s been agreed she’s got some kind of wisdom. Which she does not have.” He had cut a slice of his veal but it stayed on his fork.

  “Margaret’s only solution is to smooth things over,” he said. “Make the phone calls, smooth things over, clean out a cupboard or two, and build a stack of salmon sandwiches. And then assign her little jobs to keep us busy, in case we might want to articulate what’s on our own God damned minds.”

  “That sounds a bit like hatred,” Murray said.

  Patrick leaned back from his dinner. “I shouldn’t have to explain this to anyone and certainly not to you,” he said. “We should have been left alone longer after my mother died,” he said, making his summation. “It should have taken a lot longer.”

  “I have always thought Margaret was a bloody saint,” Murray said.

  Patrick counselled himself, swallowed the words sitting ready to go at the back of his throat. He offered instead a calmer, “I have always thought her moving into our lives was perhaps not entirely altruistic, not without significant and obvious benefit to Margaret herself. And if my understanding is correct, you don’t get to be declared a saint unless you’re dead. It’s my mother who is dead,” he said. “Do you remember any small part of how deathly…?”

  “Why should you be the only one who remembers?” Murray asked. He hadn’t stopped cutting his veal. He hadn’t stopped eating and he wasn’t about to. “I was there. You haven’t got a lock on it.”

  “Do you know what she said to me after Daphne fell?” Patrick asked. “After all the surgery and the wires and the clamps, when it became obvious the price Daphne was going to have to pay and still she refused to even cry a little, to even let on that something serious had happened to her?”

  “I know what she said to me,” Murray said.

  “She said it had to stop at Daphne’s jaw,” Patrick said. “Right there. She said if I went through life blaming myself, it would only make things that much worse. And that I was to take care of her, that Paul couldn’t do it because he didn’t have the right kind of heart, Paul had her own soft heart. She said I had exactly the kind of heart Daphne would need.”