Duet for Three (17 page)

The women had brought sandwiches and cakes, and were making tea and coffee. People began to relax and chat. They were kind to her, and deferential toward her loss, but death itself seemed to have gone out the door with his body. In the kitchen, women exchanged recipes and discussed their children. In the front room, made spacious by the absence of the coffin, the men talked about the depression, and how long it might go on.

A lawyer said, “You come and see me when you feel up to it, and we'll go over how you stand. I have his will, you know.” She hadn't known, had never thought of him making a will.

The banker said, “When you're ready, come in and we'll get the bank account switched into your name, and I'll show you how to deal with all the forms.”

The doctor's wife said, “You'll be going back to your family, I suppose? This is such a big house, isn't it, for just the two of you. But you'll have no trouble selling it.” Aggie nodded blankly. She had no idea, no plans.

“There's plenty of food here, dear,” said the minister's wife. “You won't have to worry about cooking for a few days.” Yes, there was a good deal of food. It was interesting, this instinct so much like her own: that food could heal.

Some people hugged her lightly, but there were no real embraces. Perhaps she did not seem embraceable. Back in their own homes, she thought, they would be making tea and sitting in their warm kitchens, discussing the funeral and news they'd heard, and talking, too, about the teacher and Aggie herself. They might say, “She kept a good grip on herself.” Or, “She took it pretty calmly, I must say.” They would speculate on what she would do now.

She had no idea what to do, but June was upstairs. Poor little girl; although not so little any more, ten and at a gangling, awkward sort of stage. How would Aggie have felt if her father had died when she was ten? What would she have understood? She couldn't, at this point, imagine. And then June had been so close to him, and her grief would be special, however incomprehensible.

“Go away,” she told Aggie in that high, harsh voice that was so much like his when he was angry. She stared at Aggie with those pale-blue eyes, also so much like his, and so hard to see into.

“It'll be just like him watching me,” Aggie thought. Her first view, really, of the future since the event.

How strange it was, the silence of the house without him, considering he had never made much noise. No footsteps on the stairs, no creakings from the next room or snores filtering through the walls. Instead of lying awake irritated by his little rustlings, his presence, she was aware of absence. The sound of him brushing his shoes, the slap of the polishing cloth, the tapping of his pencil against his teeth when he was thinking, the little groan of relief he always made as he lowered himself finally into his bed, had been enraging. Silence, however, was nothing at all.

Here she was, free, but freedom seemed to be a vacancy, a lack of rules, a vacuum of passion. Still, there were edges and definitions about her now that distinguished her from the girl she had been. There were parts of her that would not be touched again, places that had been hurt that now would not feel pain. This freedom, she thought, must have more to do with who she would be than with what she would do. The thought was confused. Nevertheless, if it was too early to tell, it was obviously also much too late for going back.

PART II

TWELVE

The night before June's wedding, Aggie came tapping on her bedroom door, holding something behind her back and looking a little shy. “Are you excited, June?”

Excited? Yes; trembling, in fact, with anticipation of change. Herb Benson. Mrs. Herb Benson. June Benson. Tomorrow she would leave this house, go down that stone walk on the arm of her husband. For years she had seen herself doing this, and turning at the end, waving a dignified, adult farewell to her mother. Never mind that her new house was only blocks away. It would be hers.

“I was thinking downstairs about the night before my wedding.” June waited, but no unpleasantness seemed to be implied. “I do hope it works out for you. I hope you'll be happy.”

“I do too. I'm sure I will.”

And she was sure. Herb Benson was beautiful. Of course, one did not refer to a man that way, and he wasn't really beautiful. Good-looking enough, but that wasn't what June meant. She meant that he was everything: slim and outgoing and well-turned-out. He liked everyone. Everyone liked him. It was something, just going out with him, much less marrying him. All sorts of people said hello to him on the street. True, he was just a salesman. He travelled, selling wholesale lines of furniture to stores in different towns. But he was good at it; it would be different if he were not. He was the sort, people said when she announced they were engaged, who could sell ice-boxes to Eskimos. “I know I'm only a salesman, Junie,” he told her, one arm slung carelessly around her shoulder as they walked — daringly, she felt — along the main street after a movie, “but that's a talent too. I know it's not like being a teacher or a lawyer or whatever, but a person should do what he's good at, shouldn't he?”

Why, he was so good at selling (and he told her, “The first thing about being a salesman is selling yourself. People have to like you”), he was so good at it he even won Aggie. “Of course I like him, June,” she said. “Why wouldn't I?”

Oh, this was a man in a million: the one who really saw. Who said, “You have gorgeous cheekbones, you know, Junie,” and ran his fingertips over them. “And a pretty good body, too,” and poked a finger at her ribs. She hadn't thought of it that way before, had thought she was merely thin. But no: “You could be a model, except of course you're too smart.” He seemed to like it, that she was a teacher. All in all, they found things to admire about each other.

Tomorrow, in a mere twenty-four hours, she would be another person. Meanwhile, on this last evening of her girlhood, here was Aggie, looming large, spoiling the anticipation a little, but also reminding her how great an event this was: getting out.

“Do you remember our talk years ago about being married?”

Oh yes, indeed she did. But these were things she wasn't actually thinking about yet.

“You remember me saying it should be a pleasure for you?” That, too.

“So I made this for you.”

What Aggie pulled from behind her back and held out, an offering, was really quite extraordinary, like nothing June had ever thought of, much less owned. A delicate pink hand-embroidered nightgown, little vines and flowers stitched around the throat, the sleeves, and the hem, all a filmy, gauzy, flimsy sort of material. She was supposed to wear this? “But you can see right through it,” she said, astonished, holding it up.

“I know. Try it on. I had to guess about the size.”

Well, it fit, shaping itself around June's small bosom and her waist, falling in folds to the floor; it fit, but heavens, surely it didn't suit. It did add something: allure, perhaps? Or glamor? It was slinky, like a movie gown. Like something Myrna Loy might wear for William Powell. But like a movie gown, it was not quite decent, not quite her. It revealed too much, and seemed to promise someone she was not.

Still, consider how many hours Aggie must have spent, how many books she must have put off reading, how many loaves of bread had gone unbaked, or how many hours of sleep were given up, so she could do this. What had she been thinking, sewing away in secret?

“Thank you. It's lovely.” June had a momentary impulse to put her head down on her mother's shoulder, except she could not imagine what would happen then, how they would manage to end such a clumsy embrace.

“You wear it tomorrow night,” said Aggie. “I hope you enjoy it.” She patted June awkwardly on the shoulder and left.

This was June's last night in her old room. She looked around, trying to feel the significance of that, but tomorrow kept getting in the way. She could barely even feel her father here tonight, although for years she'd kept him hovering up in a corner of the ceiling, or just above the house. Heaven, although of course he would be there, too, seemed too far away. What would he say to her tonight? Something like, “Be well, bunny, do your best.” Not “Enjoy.”

He would put his arms around her. She still missed that, being touched with affection. Well, Herb touched her with affection, of course, but it wasn't the same. His hands seemed aimed at something else, purposeful and therefore not quite pure.

What she liked best was being seen with him: on the street, at a movie, in a restaurant. There she was, little skinny June, or the daughter of the fat woman who ran the bakery, or Miss Hendricks the teacher — all those versions of her that people saw, out with this man. That was really something.

Especially considering his choices. This nightgown, now, put her in mind of women who were quite different.

He knew by name the cashiers and usherettes at the theatre, the waitresses in restaurants. Those women who said hello to him were like foreign objects, shiny and flashy, like the jewellery in Woolworth's. They seemed to say things with their bodies. A waitress with dyed blonde hair, dark roots showing, jogged his shoulder with her elbow and threw back her head, laughing at his jokes. “She's a bit — cheap-looking, don't you think?” June asked him later, and he laughed. “I suppose. You now, you're the expensive type. You're the kind that really costs.” She had no idea what that meant, but laughed anyway, because he did.

His hands went around her, although she kept him away from certain places he would have liked to explore. “Look,” he said, stepping his fingers down her spine, “I can count the bumps.” She'd never really thought about her bones. Alone in her room she peered in the mirror, examining these cheekbones and collarbones he admired. Another foolish thing she did alone was pick petals off daisies, like a child.

His parents were dead, and his only sister lived out west, married to a wheat farmer. “Coming here is like having a family again,” he said, “you and your mother.”

And she had worried about introducing them, what he would think of Aggie, now badly overweight. “Look at the mother to see the daughter,” people said, although how anyone would look at Aggie and see June was hard to imagine. She worried, though, that he would take one look and bolt.

“It's too bad you never met my father,” she told him. “He was quite different. People always say I take after him.”

But when she did take him home, and Aggie came to greet them in the front hall, and June said, “Herb, I'd like you to meet my mother, Aggie; Mother, this is Herb Benson,” he didn't even blink. They got on, in fact, quite well. Aggie asked him about his work, his routes, the people he met, and he spoke admiringly about the courage it must have taken for her to start the bakery, making a living for herself and her child after her husband died.

“Well, I had to, you see. It was that or go back to my family, and that wouldn't have done at all.”

“But why a bakery?”

She laughed and slapped at her body, setting the loose undersides of her arms flapping. “Mainly because, as you see, I'm fond of food. But also, I was never trained for anything, not like June here. All I knew was cleaning and sewing and cooking, and since I don't like cleaning particularly and I'm not that good at sewing, it only left a bakery, really.”

“It must have been hard.”

“You bet. Still is, for that matter, but it's mine and I like it.”

That was about how she'd explained it to June, too, after a very brief period of mourning that looked more like a state of suspension than grief. “I have to do something, June; your father didn't leave us much.” As if he'd been worth only money.

This was after some weeks of coming home from school to find Aggie sitting — just sitting — at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, looking out, sometimes not even any supper ready. And then a day she came home and found Aggie whipping around making lists, surveying rooms, standing around regarding various walls, her finger on her chin, looking as if she were seeing things that weren't there. It was as if she'd swept him, and his death, and a whole past life, right out of her head. Mysterious, but of course quite typical.

And suddenly there were carpenters in the kitchen, and new shelves and counters, and two new stoves, and a bigger ice-box, and the cellar was all cleaned up and cleared, and two new windows were being punched into the front-room walls — every day when June came home, changes had occurred, and it was like finding a different house. There was sawdust tracked everywhere, and now they ate in the dining room, at her father's old table, because there was no room in the kitchen any more for a table and chairs. A sign went up at the front, with an arrow: “Aggie's Bakeshop, please use rear door”. Not even “Hendricks Bakery,” not even that much dignity. “I want it to be my own,” her mother explained. “Anyway, June, he wouldn't have liked his name used.”

This was true. It was also true that it was difficult, becoming the daughter of a woman who baked for a living, instead of being the teacher's daughter. And on top of that her own grief, missing him. He'd vanished so abruptly there was no chance to say things she might have told him if she'd known; his home, her home, was utterly transformed; and her mother was a whirlwind: planning and adding rows of figures, ordering workmen about, and shouting at the manager of the bank. “It's a gamble, June,” she said. “You must see, I've got to make it work. Otherwise I don't know what we'll do.”

Well, what did other widows do? Surely something more decorous, more subdued.

June pretty much lived upstairs in her bedroom. She often did her homework there, and said her prayers. She held long conversations with her father, who after all must still be watching. She kept him up to date on events, although of course he would know everything anyway. His mother, her grandmother, wrote from England (sending her letters, curiously, to June and not to Aggie). “He was a lovely little boy, your father,” she wrote. “I'm sure you're very much like him.” June read the letters aloud, so that he could also hear, and kept them in the top drawer of her dresser, with a lilac sachet. She took from his room a few important things: his mother's picture, and one of him as a little boy, smiling at the camera.

It was not hard to notice that her mother never cried. She avoided Aggie, but also tried to keep an eye on her. It was tricky, but there was no trusting a woman who could cause a man to vanish.

At least she was unlikely to present June with another father. Other widows might remarry, but even a child's eye could see that no man was apt to enter voluntarily into a union with such an overbearing, selfish, determined, and unsentimental woman as her mother. A man would more likely be looking for the opposite. (Although that did not explain that awful Barney, who eventually started hanging around the kitchen in the mornings. He, however, was already married, and so perhaps saw Aggie differently.)

As for June, she would be a teacher and a lady.

The second time they met, Aggie invited Herb to supper. At the table, his hand slipped into a pocket inside his vest and pulled out a silver-plated flask. “Would you have one with me, Aggie? June won't, but I thought you might not mind a drink.”

“Sure, I'll try it.” Aggie sipped, her face wrinkled, and they both laughed. “My, it's warm all the way down, isn't it?”

(Thank heaven she didn't take to liquor the way she did to food. “That's because I like a clear head,” she has explained, “and that's not easy at the best of times. As you know so well, June.” She still occasionally enjoys, however, “getting a little buzz on”, which was one of Herb's expressions and one of the few things besides his wife and daughter that he left behind him here.)

“Aggie's a great old girl, isn't she?” he said to June, and she didn't trouble to correct him. It was just as well they got along, she supposed; and anyway, when they had their own place it wouldn't matter.

“It's funny,” said Aggie, “he's not at all what I would have pictured for you.”

“What did you expect?”

“Oh, somebody more serious, maybe from the church, or another teacher, something like that. Someone more like your father, after all.”

“But you like him?”

“Well, yes, it's just — he seems so unlikely to be your type. Don't you find there's something — oh, what do I mean? — fleshy about him?”

“Not at all. He's very slim.”

“No, not that. Physical. He's a bodily sort of man.”

Yes, in a way. He liked to have his arm around things, or his hand resting on a shoulder, or slapping someone's back. If that's what Aggie meant. But it was nice to cross a street with his protective hand cupping her elbow, even though she'd never considered needing help to cross a street before.