A Good House

by Bonnie Burnard

  Since Watergate, which at the end of the day had been understood most usefully to be a signal, it seemed to Murray that journalists had split into two distinct camps, those in the muckraking camp who positioned themselves right up against privileged power and dug around there for the dirty truth like private dicks, like archaeologists, and those in the other camp, his own, who roamed the almost beaten world like sometimes bombastic but nearly always terrified, appalled explorers. Although that was the one word you never heard. Appalled.

  He had taken the train down to London to talk to Daphne because for a long time he and Charlotte had owned only the one car, the old Volvo, which as far as he knew would be sitting unused in the parking stall under the townhouse in Toronto. For years Charlotte had wanted to get rid of it because she always took cabs and she said he could more cheaply rent a car to get himself home, but now she said they’d better wait to see how things shook down, by which he assumed she meant that she wanted the option of saying, You can have the Volvo and I’ll take the prints. There were prints he wanted, that he’d found and bought, but he doubted he had the strength to get them. He wasn’t going to waste his time and energy going after any of the furniture, the beloved neutrals that Charlotte and the decorator had chosen, the decorator an enthusiastic, courtly young man looking for referrals who had promised that they themselves would give colour to their rooms.

  He hadn’t been on a Canadian train in years and he wasn’t liking it. Flying, you had no control but at least you got there fast, and while driving soaked up time, at least it was your foot on the gas. The train was both slow and tedious, and where in other circumstances he might have chatted up the shy but friendly, hefty, middle-aged woman sitting beside him, who looked exactly like Andy might look in fifteen years if she stopped taking care of herself, while he might have taken the trouble to learn all about her town and her no-doubt-gifted grandchildren, it wasn’t going to happen today. He might have killed the time working but he was empty-handed because he had nothing back at the hotel except a new shaving kit and one new change of clothes.

  Everything had stayed with Charlotte in the townhouse: the prints, his typewriter, his files, his books, most of his clothes, the overpriced magnetic travel chess set that he’d bought in Madrid but never used, never taking the time to learn, his prayer wheel, which he’d seen masses of men use in earnest, his mother’s tarnished silver tray packed away somewhere, the crystal snifters Bill and Margaret had given them as a wedding gift along with a bottle of Courvoisier, which they drank a lot of then, in their confident, pretentious youth.

  Charlotte had agreed that he could come to pack up his personal things, which he assumed all of these to be, some time very soon. She had just asked for notice. She said she didn’t want him dropping in unannounced. Murray guessed she had enjoyed that, setting up and then offering the image of a relaxed Mike wandering around the townhouse, wrapped in a towel that had not so long ago dried his very own ass, rinsing their dinner plates in the sink, flossing his pretty teeth, getting ready to climb back into their great big king-sized, maple four-poster bed. Back into her bed. The thing had cost Murray more than he ever thought he’d be paying for a bed but he didn’t guess he would be listing it when it was time to divide the assets.

  He didn’t torture himself long with this kind of thinking. And anyway, thoughts of Mike with his hands on Charlotte didn’t grate nearly as much as thoughts of him pouring brandy into one of Bill and Margaret’s for-all-these-years-unbroken crystal snifters. Or blithely opening his filing cabinet, lifting out his files, one of which held the few letters from Patrick about Maggie’s money. He had been a cretin leaving those letters in an unlocked cabinet.

  He had already decided that he was not going to tell Charlotte about Maggie or about Daphne. There would have been some pleasure in it, watching her digest the meaning of what he’d said, watching her try to think back, to recognize in hindsight some comment, some averted glance for what it was, but there would be more pleasure in keeping it back. He would probably hurt her, sure. But not with that. Not with them.

  When he’d phoned Daphne, he had asked if he could come this time when Maggie would be in school. He was quite used to tempering his conversation when Maggie was around, to offering his affection for Daphne in a way that would not confuse anyone. You could get good at some things after six years. And he was very careful with Maggie’s affection. Every time he came in the door she would pull off his jacket, perch him on the edge of a chair, and climb up behind him to play artist, using her small index finger to draw pictures on his back: a horse, a lunch box, a watermelon, the turtle she’d seen crawling along the bank of Grandma’s creek. He always made her draw the same picture again and again, struggling to guess what it could be, carefully guessing the wrong thing, prolonging the delicate touch of her hand long after he began to recognize the shape.

  He and Daphne had adapted to the inconvenience of their occasional intimacy, always going out to a motel, telling the sitter in Maggie’s presence that they would be at dinner and a show, that they hadn’t yet decided which show, and that they might stop off somewhere for a drink or two on the way home. But he was about to be divorced and now things had to be talked about straight up. He’d decided he wanted the talk to be direct.

  He caught a cab to Daphne’s apartment, which was in a modest, orange-brick, four-storey bunker over near the river. She took his jacket from him and sat him down near the window in one of the two chairs that overlooked the Thames, actually the large parking lot and then the Thames, although she said that sitting there herself she always saw the greater distance, the better view. She offered him a coffee, which he wanted. Needed, he said.

  Holding her own cup in both hands Daphne took a hard line, as she had on the phone when he’d called. “You two,” she said, as if they were merely one more self-indulgent, middle-aged couple. “God,” she said. “Why go looking for misery? Really.”

  She was wearing a dark blue cashmere sweater, Murray knew it was cashmere because Charlotte had four of them, and he was hoping he’d bought it, that she had taken some small part of the money and used it for herself. “I said I’d wait until it died on its own and now it’s dead,” he said. “I am soon to be a free agent.”

  Daphne tried something different. “They say there’s a grieving period with divorce,” she said. “Anger, grief, refusal to believe. Not in that order but in some order. You will have to give yourself time to get used to this.”

  “I’ve just had a two-hour train ride,” he said. “How about I believe it, I accept it, and I’m happy?”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t be too happy,” she said. “Not too publicly happy. It might hit you later, people often talk about a delayed reaction and then you’d feel like a fool. You have a lot invested in her.”

  “Will you move to Toronto now?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I can,” she said.

  “Not right now?” he asked.

  “Not for a long time,” she said. She got up to get the coffee from the stove, to reheat their not-even-half-empty cups. “You know better than anyone,” she said, pouring, “how good it’s been for Maggie living here. Not too close to home but close enough. That’s the thing with family. When you need them they can be like family.”

  This was precisely the answer he had expected.

  “I’ve just got back on at the hospital full-time,” she said. “Patrick has probably told you. Nights, Mrs. Warren across the hall comes to sleep over. She needs the money and Maggie likes her and I trust her. She raised six kids of her own and I think I’ve met them all. They look like they’ve turned out all right.”

  “I’ve thought about moving up here,” he said. “I might be able to make it work. Staying in Toronto maybe four nights a week, keeping a small apartment.”

  “When you’re around,” she said. “When you’re not away.”

  “Of course,” he said. “When I’m not away.”

  “I can see how it might work in the
practical sense,” she said.

  “But not otherwise?” he asked.

  “When was the last time we were together?” she asked. “Three months ago?”

  “And that too will be a thing of the past,” he said. “Now we don’t have to go without each other. Not for so long.” He looked at her the way all lovers look when they are remembering some of what they’ve had from each other.

  “I think I might like that part,” she said. “Although I’ve been doing quite well with your random hits, with your intermittent affection. I must store it up somewhere. Sort of like a camel.”

  “You are not saying you want me here,” he said. He swivelled his chair. Her face in coffee-sipping profile gave not a hint of damaged, reconfigured bone. “I’ve been listening closely and I haven’t heard it.”

  “No,” she said. She took a minute. Murray had gathered up his nerve coming here and now looked like the time for her to gather hers. “If you’re a free agent you could adopt Maggie,” she said. “I’d like that very much. And no one would object. They might think it was just an exceptionally decent thing for you to do.”

  Murray had not considered adoption because it had never been feasible but hearing the word, he thought he would like to adopt Maggie right now. Today. They could call Patrick at his office to get the legal work started. They could tell Maggie when she came in the door from school. Then he thought again. If this was what Daphne wanted, it had to be worth something. “That would be unusual,” he said. “Given that her mother won’t have me.”

  “Oh, I’ll have you,” she said. “But I don’t see how we can turn ourselves into some kind of normal married family. It would be a shock to Maggie, and to me. And to you. And at the end of the day,” she said, “it might be true that I love best, that I’m best loved, from a slight distance. It might be true for you as well. Have you given any thought to that? Your own affection for distance?”

  “If you let me slip away again this time, I don’t know.…” He drained his coffee, turned the cup upside down on the saucer. “When I was a kid I hated being alone. The feeling doesn’t leave you.”

  “I’ve always thought you were alone because you preferred it that way,” she said. “Because you judged the rest of us and found us wanting. I thought you did it because you were smarter than we were. That’s why your circus was so great for the rest of us, because it allowed us to think that maybe we were smart too, like you.”

  “I was just a clumsy, scared little boy,” he said. “Smarter than nobody. Of all those ragged kids, you were the only one who made any effort, the only one who sat down beside me once in a while, on the Town Hall steps or up in the balcony at the arena. You don’t likely even remember making the trip.”

  “No,” she said. “Did I?” She tried to remember but couldn’t. It was a long time ago, it would have been long before he had established himself in her, what? Heart? “But you’re not clumsy now,” she said. “You’re not that boy now.” She had never before heard him go backwards in time and this softness in him, this remembering was not something she wanted to embrace. Because what did it matter, their childhood? “You’ve got more than what it takes now, my friend. I look at Maggie, how bright she is, and I think, That’s her father in her. She’s intelligent like her father. Like your dad and your mother. Your mother was an accomplished woman. That’s so clear from this vantage point.”

  “Maybe you should allow Maggie the chance to see who she’s smart like.” This was as rough as he was prepared to get. There wasn’t going to be anything after this. “It must be a bit strange for her. At school, for instance.”

  “She is a cherished child,” she said. “You have seen the evidence. Regardless, who doesn’t have some place to go to find grief? If this does turn out to be a grief for her, which I really, really doubt, given the fact that she is so beloved, at every turn.” She waited for him to say something, to argue his position. But he wasn’t going to argue. “I was secure and safe and extremely legitimate and my mother still died on me,” she said. “My mother still moved down to the living room and died.”

  “Marry me,” he said.

  “Adopt Maggie,” she said.

  “I’ll adopt her,” he said, “the minute after you say you’ll marry me.”

  She covered her jaw. So much talk. Too damned much. But now that it was started, there didn’t seem to be any reason to stop before something at least had been achieved. “If you won’t adopt her, then give her a brother,” she said. “Or a sister.”

  “Jesus,” Murray said. “What I want is not abnormal.” He dropped his head to look down through his knees at the floor. “I’m crazy in love with her.”

  “And she knows that,” Daphne said. “She is rock solid sure of you. You can believe what I’m saying here.”

  “When I finally got away from home,” he said, “I promised myself I would never expect to influence a child. I would never try to turn a child into just some renewed version of myself.”

  “You’re talking about your parents,” she said. “Religion.”

  “They just assumed I’d be content to believe what they believed,” he said. “That there was no need for me to work through my own life. They thought they’d done the work for me, took it as their right to do that work. As in, this is your name, this is your town, your country, these are the rules you’ll live by and, oh, by the way, here is your faith, here is your God. And no questions, please. No asking where did this nonsense come from and why is it called sacred.”

  “You survived them,” she said.

  “Just,” he said. “And now I’m realizing that what I really want is to have an influence on Maggie. I want to help her shape her life. This is extremely important to me. And of course I am sitting here assuming, I am convinced my influence would not be presumptuous or simple-minded or absolute. As did they, no doubt.”

  “You can help her shape her life,” Daphne said. “You’ve already helped her. And you can always, always see her. At a moment’s notice. When she’s old enough, you can take her with you sometimes, wherever, in to Toronto, down to the States, to Europe later when she can handle it. That day will come soon enough and she’ll love it. All I’m asking now is that you give her someone to grow up with.”

  “Why have you never connected with someone else?” he asked. “Made a family for her that way? There must have been guys.…”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. “How could you think that such a thing would be possible for me?” She was looking out her window at the distant muddy Thames. “It’s you.”

  “It’s me what?” he said.

  “All right,” she said. “Okay.”

  She had never said it. He believed she would never say it.

  “We’ve got an hour before she gets home,” she said.

  He stood and pulled her up out of her chair. “Maybe I should just figure out a way to make you very lonely,” he said. “Maybe I should make you sit and wait for what you think you want. Waiting can unsettle a person, you know. It can make a person ready to agree to anything. In desperation. Pathetic desperation. You should give it a try.”

  “I don’t think either one of us is going to be lonely,” she said. “I think we’re going to be lucky. Same as always.”

  “Lucky?” he said. He had not once associated this word with this woman. He reached to lay his fingers on the skin of her exposed throat, which was always warmer than he expected it to be. Then he quickly had her naked and she began to work on him, uncovering his narrow, fuzzy chest, unbuckling his belt to expose the sand dunes of his belly, which she would recognize blind.

  “Lucky,” she said. “Think about it.”

  He was watching her hands. “Are you saying this should happen now?”

  “Probably,” she said. “It’s that time, or close. I feel quite fertile and you certainly appear to be.”

  “What about your job?” he asked. “You just got back.”

  “I wasn’t planning this,” she said. “
I didn’t see how I would get the nerve to put it to you. I wouldn’t have asked if you hadn’t decided you were finished with Charlotte or, I guess more accurately, if Charlotte had not decided she has had enough of you. But now it seems, well, not unreasonable.”

  “Only if you can tell me why it has to be me,” he said.

  She looked out at the muddy Thames. “You can likely manipulate me enough to make me say what you want to hear,” she said, lifting her head, lifting her hand to touch his mouth. “I think I can feel the words just on the tip of my tongue.”

  She turned to lead him to the quiet of her bed. They had from the beginning got into the habit of quiet, perhaps because twice it had been required, perhaps for other, better reasons. On the way to the bed she was deciding that this time she would tell him what he wanted to hear. It was an easy word, she knew that now, having Maggie and wanting another, and it looked to be true.

  “You are one crude woman,” he said, following her close enough to touch her again, to run a lonely finger down the deep furrow of her back, which made her go weak every time he did it, made her quiver, as if she had never before in her life been touched there, not like that.