“Pearly Everlasting Country Manor.”
“Yes.”
“This is it.”
Another woman appeared at the door. Heather noticed her dress first — black velour with a satin-trimmed neckline — then noticed the woman herself.
“Rosemarie?”
“Heather?”
“You two know each other?” the first woman said. “Come in, come in.”
The doors were fully opened and Heather entered a chilly entrance hall furnished with half a dozen derelict wicker chairs. Oddly, she and Rosemarie were embracing, as though they were old friends. Heather was immediately aware of Rosemarie’s improvement.
“What a coincidence,” the first woman said.
“Heather, this is my sister Brenda. She and her husband run the Pearly.”
“What a coincidence,” Brenda repeated. “Rosemarie is just back for a very brief visit.”
Both women were staring at her. Though her coat was bulky, Heather could no longer fasten more than the top few buttons because of her belly. She was conscious of her dirty pants and boots, not to mention the state of her hair now that she had removed her wool hat.
“So you’ve moved?” Heather asked.
“Alberta. I love it.”
“Why don’t you come in?” Brenda asked. “It’s awfully drafty out here.”
“Thank you. Actually I’m meant to meet a friend. ”
Brenda gave a short nod to her sister and turned, and the two women began to exit the room, their heels clicking over the tiled floor. As Heather followed them, she glanced back and saw clots of mud falling from the cleats of her boots.
At the far end of the room they climbed a short flight of steps and entered a dark bar decorated with the usual fishnets, lobster buoys, barometers and miniature ships. Heather, who was beginning to feel winded again, was introduced to Rob, Brenda’s husband and apparently the bartender. Heather hoped Darren would arrive soon.
“What can Rob get you?” Rosemarie asked.
It seemed imperative she order something. “Ginger ale, please,” she said.
“Rob?”
Rob, who had been leaning against the bar chewing on a swizzle stick, reached up for a glass. He had a trim runner’s body and thick silver hair.
“Actually,” Heather said. “I’m meant to meet a friend, Darren Foley. He should — ”
“Darren Foley, the biologist?” Brenda asked.
Heather nodded slowly.
“How is Darren?” Rosemarie asked her sister.
“But I can’t imagine what’s happened to him.”
“The same,” Brenda told her sister, and the two exchanged a look.
It occurred to Heather she could ask these women if Darren was married.
Rob was pointing to a drink on the counter. “That’s yours,” he said to Heather. He sounded a bit testy.
“Thank you. Perhaps he’s stopped to call his wife.”
“Who?”
“Darren.”
Rosemarie turned to Brenda. “Darren got married?”
“Darren did not get married,” Brenda said.
“That’ll be the day,” Rob said. He was looking at Heather.
“Don’t be so hard on him,” Rosemarie said to Rob. “Don’t forget about Jeanette.”
“Poor Jeanette,” Brenda said.
“Poor Darren,” Rob corrected, glancing up at the ceiling.
“Jeanette?” Heather asked.
“His sister, of course. She’s afraid to live alone.”
“Claims to be afraid of the dark,” Rob said.
“Can we change the subject?” Brenda asked.
With that Rosemarie and Rob became silent. Heather was aware of the three of them watching her. Presumably they were wondering why she had never heard of Jeanette, and whether Darren could possibly be involved with her present physical condition.
“I haven’t known Darren long. We were — ”
“And he’s never mentioned his sister?” Brenda asked.
“We were out birdwatching and he suggested — ”
“If I were you, I’d be wondering if he’s mentioned you to Jeanette.”
“Rob!”
“Darren and I just met,” Heather said quickly. “We were birdwatching and he suggested we have dinner on our way back.”
“Here?” Brenda asked.
Heather nodded.
Brenda looked at Rob. “By the way, how many do we have tonight?”
“Not sure. Will Derrick come down?”
“I don’t know if Derrick will come,” Brenda muttered.
“But will he sit down?”
“Rob, I have no more idea than you do if Derrick will sit down.” Brenda gave her husband a look that Heather was at a loss to interpret, then said to no one in particular, “Will you excuse me?” As she turned her wrap lifted off her back and hovered in mid-air behind her, as though fighting against all odds to keep up with her.
“She’s mad now,” Rosemarie said, as though she hadn’t been quite mad enough before.
“What are you doing in Alberta, Rosemarie?” Heather asked, knowing she had somehow upset these people, yet genuinely astonished by Rosemarie’s transformation: the black dress, pearls, makeup. There remained a mild edginess about her, but she had gained weight and smiled without effort. Heather told herself she had done the right thing by Rosemarie, sending her back to her psychiatrist. Prescription drugs had their place.
Then she remembered Dr. Redcliffe’s suggestion.
“We moved west for work. The pay is unbelievable.”
Had she overcome her counting routine? She wasn’t eating at the moment, or drinking. She was doing nothing that could be easy to count. And how were those three children?
Rob reached an arm across the bar and asked Heather, “Can I get rid of that coat for you?” He sounded as though his intention was to take it outside and burn it. Heather was embarrassed, which was ridiculous. What was more ridiculous was that she was comparing herself to Rosemarie.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll keep it with me.”
Rosemarie said, “You better tell the cook what’s up, Rob.”
At this, Rob forgot about Heather’s coat. He turned to his sister-in-law. “Brenda can deal with it.”
“Brenda’s left.”
“I’m not having anything to do with it.”
“Can I call her on the intercom?”
“I’ll call her.” He walked to the end of the bar. While he punched the intercom buttons, Rosemarie leaned over to Heather and said, “He’s never liked Jeanette.”
“What’s to like?” Rob called over his shoulder.
Rob returned and told Rosemarie he couldn’t get an answer from Brenda.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Heather said, wishing she could walk out the door. “Darren suggested we stop — are reservations required? Is that the problem?”
“Did you actually call her bedroom?” Rosemarie asked.
“I just said, she’s not up there.”
Rosemarie turned to Heather with an expression that was a combination of goodwill and fear — a flicker of Rosemarie’s former self. “We’re first cousins to Darren and Jeanette,” she explained. “Brenda is a little protective of Jeanette.”
“Protective in what way?” Heather asked. It was as though they were back in her office.
Rob cleared his throat, but Rosemarie cut him off. “I don’t know how well you know Darren,” she said to Heather. “But please don’t let him know we were talking about him. He’d die.”
“He wouldn’t die,” Rob said, sounding disgusted. Rosemarie was becoming more familiar to Heather, as though bit by bit she was reverting to the woman Heather had known. She was avoiding eye contact with Heather now and fidgeting with her pearls, and Heather suspected that Rosemarie’s family did not know about her days counting cereal boxes and candy bars.
“I’d never repeat anything,” Heather promised, but as soon as she spoke she realized she had already betray
ed Rosemarie to Benny, years ago, on the beach in Spruce Cove.
Rosemarie nodded but didn’t speak. Heather glanced around the room, still expecting Darren any minute. It appeared they had run out of things to say.
“I haven’t met Jeanette,” Heather offered.
“Yes,” Rob said. “You indicated as much.”
Rosemarie sucked in a deep breath. “When we were kids, Jeanette was a blast. But she could be odd. Just as easily talking to you a mile a minute as hiding in a closet. Still, she’s got a heart of gold.”
“She rarely leaves the house.”
“Rob, she’s a nervous person. Why can’t you accept that?”
“She had a first-class fit when he went to university.”
Rosemarie looked at Rob as though she’d like to clobber him, then explained to Heather, “Darren studied in New Brunswick.”
“Nervous in what way?”
“It would be difficult for her to live alone,” Rosemarie said, reluctantly. “Just for an example. Will you excuse me?” Then, to Heather’s dismay, she was gone, too.
Rob immediately started inching away from Heather, moving glasses around and straightening out things behind the bar. He threw a tea towel towards the sink, missed and went after it. Where was Darren? He didn’t have a wife — he had a sister. Who sounded agoraphobic. Surprising he hadn’t asked Heather advice about her.
But she was in no shape to offer advice to anyone. Not to neighbours, not to sisters.
She was just slipping her coat on when a waitress appeared at her side and said Darren had phoned. He was on his way. The waitress insisted on taking her coat.
Rob returned and asked if she’d like another ginger ale.
Heather shook her head. She already needed to pee. Rob’s restlessness was unnerving.
There was the sound of tires on the gravel outside and Heather said, “Thank god, there’s Darren.”
Rob sprinted to a tiny window meant to resemble a porthole and looked out, cupping his eyes with his hands. “It’s seventeen shades of grey out there. No, that’s not your Darren Foley.”
“Are you sure?”
He came back, shaking his head. “Retirement party. That’s all we get this time of year.”
Someone touched her shoulder. It was Darren.
“Where have you been, Darren? What took you so long?” She was surprised by how rattled she sounded.
“I had some trouble with the loon,” he said, sitting down beside her.
The retirement party spilled noisily into the room and Rob hurried off, fetching drinks.
“I never knew this place existed,” she said.
“No. Many people don’t.”
“You didn’t mention your relatives run it.”
He shrugged.
“Who’s Derrick?”
Darren looked around. “Derrick’s here?”
“You tell me.”
“Brenda and Rob’s son. Cerebral palsy.”
She felt the same sharp pain she had felt earlier. She ran her hand over her belly.
“He’s their only child. What a heartbreak that’s been. I can’t imagine anything worse, can you?”
As Darren spoke he watched her sideways, something she was getting used to. She was relieved he was here.
He wasn’t married. At least that mystery was solved. Then she felt a dizzying, formidable panic.
PART THREE
Chapter Eleven
During the last year of Benny’s life, Isabella developed the ability to be everywhere in their house at once. To be privy to everyone’s whereabouts, anticipate everyone’s movements. Pouring detergent into the washing machine, she might hear footsteps on the stairs. The slippery, strangely wet-sounding steps were Benny’s, moving so quietly she wondered if he had found out her sudden omniscience and was endeavoring to shake it off by sneaking into a room without her knowledge. But she knew. He might wander into the upstairs bathroom for half an hour, though no sound of running water or flushing toilet followed. What was he doing? He seemed only half present, as though he had become a figment of her imagination or memory, an illusion. She would wait for his next advancement through a large house that day by day grew smaller. When Cooper noisily exited through the front or back door, or climbed out one of the basement windows due to laziness or for some other more obscure reason, she knew. The emptiness that his departure created came careening down the hall or up the stairs like a bubble and found her, and for a moment she panicked. But she was adept at adjusting to the house’s shift in population, its chang-ing moods.
Once, sitting on the edge of her bed folding laundry, three baskets of wrinkled, clean clothes at her feet, she listened to Benny roaming through the upstairs rooms. Cooper was at school, and she heard Benny enter the boy’s room. He might do this half a dozen times a day. A ball bounced, a closet door opened, papers rustled. He had started leaving notes for Cooper. “Don’t forget I love you.” “You’re the man of the house now.” “Don’t do anything stupid.” Finding these notes — usually on Cooper’s pillow — made Isabella furious.
Benny was coming down the hall again, all the way to their bedroom. Seeing him now, her heart flip-flopped. His clothes hung from his shoulders and hips, his knees seemed slightly turned in, his hair had grown back grey above his ears. This was a man she had adored for a long time, though not, of course, at first. She hardly thought about that anymore.
He sat beside her on the bed, but for several minutes did not speak.
“There’s a concern of mine I’d like to speak to you about,” he said, and the way he spoke — authoritarian, almost magisterial — made her stiffen.
“Are those new?” he asked.
She ignored his question and snapped open a large towel. It gave her a remote pleasure to see it: fluffy, substantial, frivolous.
“I’d like to tell you this now because I don’t want anyone — you or anyone — coming to me later with a drippy guilty look, asking me these questions. Because then there will be that awful moment of knowing, of really knowing, that I’m doomed.”
“Ask you what?” “I’m about to tell you.”
This spark of irritability towards each other, given everything, surprised her.
“It’s about my wishes. If I tell you, you see, I can pretend to myself that I’m not actually going to die. You can even pretend you don’t need to hear what I’m going to say.”
She stared at him.
“I want to be buried with my parents, of course. I want a closed casket. And by the way, I have always despised the idea of wakes. All those women crying, even children, even men. It’s not about the dead person, is it? It’s about the people in the room bawling.”
He got up and left, then a moment later reappeared in the doorway.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re not going to forgive me, are you?”
She finished her folding. She carried the folded towels to the linen closet in the hall, then returned to their bedroom. She went into the master bathroom and sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi and turned on the water. She looked out onto the park where the trees had only recently leafed, but although she had expected to, she did not cry.
That evening the phone rang just as Isabella was finishing the supper dishes. Benny was by the refrigerator, inches from the wall phone, scooping himself ice cream. Isabella struggled to free her hands of the hot, clammy rubber gloves. Benny had stopped answering the phone, and often Isabella answered it only to be met by a quiet, almost courteous click.
By the time Isabella had one of the gloves off and was reaching for the phone, she was ready to crucify the caller. It was Miss McCue.
During Cooper’s early grades, self-doubt had characterized Lesley-Anne McCue, vice-principal of St. Margaret’s. But now, telephoning to notify Isabella that Cooper was, regrettably, expelled from Sports Day, Miss McCue seemed to express an unequivocal, albeit grim, sense of right and wrong.
Cooper had thrown a water balloon at another boy, Daniel Merck, a
t 3:45 that afternoon.
“A water balloon? Where was this, Lesley-Anne?” Isabella asked impatiently. Soapy water was running off the remaining glove and down her forearm into her sleeve. She exchanged a look with Benny, who had been leaving the kitchen with his ice cream. He turned back.
“Was it on school property?” Benny demanded of the phone.
“This incident occurred on the corner of Rosebank and King,” Miss McCue reported, then added apologetically, “You know how much I hate having to call you about this, with everything else you have to cope with right — ”
“So it was not on school property?” Isabella asked.
“Mrs. Martin, we’ve been through this before. Our policy is that students be on best behaviour at all — ”
“Tell that fascist I’m calling my lawyer,” Benny said.
“My husband says you’re a fascist, Lesley-Anne.” Isabella watched Benny place his bowl on the counter with a surprised, trembling pleasure. Even so, Isabella knew that by speaking disrespectfully to the vice-principal, she had only shocked and wounded herself. The desire to apologize was already overtaking her.
“Mrs. Martin, you know I sympathize. If we had a letter of apology from Cooper by tomorrow morning which I could pass on to Daniel and his parents, we’d be happy to have your family join us for Sports Day. They’re calling for a gorgeous day.”
“I’m sorry,” Isabella said. “I’ve got to go. There’s someone at the door.” She hung up.
Benny approached her slowly. He took her face in his hands, which smelled of ice cream. He kissed her forehead and said, “You’re a genius.”
“I regret that now. Cooper can’t be doing that.”
“It was a water balloon.”
The phone rang.
“Mrs. Martin? Lesley-Anne again. Forgive me. It’s been one of those days. It was Nick Hounsell who threw the water balloon. Cooper stood by and laughed. Mrs. Martin?”
“I’m here.”
“You know we have a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of thing. By failing to intercede on Daniel’s behalf, Cooper is as guilty as Nick. I wanted to give you the facts in case a letter of apology is written.”
“Guilty?”
“Guilty?” Benny echoed.
“From what I understand, Daniel was more upset with being laughed at than he was by getting his shirt wet.”
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