Duet for Three (23 page)

“I don't know about pretty, exactly, but sure, I can see she's attractive in a way. Me, I like a woman with more meat on her bones, but plenty of men wouldn't agree.”

“I worry, you know. She's had no experience.”

Barney only heard about Herb, never met him. Aggie tried to describe a man who told jokes he'd heard on the road, sometimes not especially nice ones, although that was neither here nor there, but followed them by slapping not only at his own thigh, but at June's, or her own. A man who liked his pleasures shared. So what did he see when he looked at June?

Aggie was afraid he saw virtue. For all that Herb was charming enough, she never thought he was particularly bright. He might well be one of those men who married virtue, whatever their own diversions. She hoped he didn't see June as someone he could mold.

“It's nice,” she told Barney during the courtship, “how happy she looks sometimes. Maybe she's mellowing.” Aggie thought there were possibilities in the way June leaned toward Herb when they sat together on the front-room couch, or the way her arm might touch his shoulder when she poured his tea.

Equally, however, there might be portents in her tiny frowns when he swore, or the little sighs and pursings when he made drinks for Aggie and himself. June had a habit of spreading her disapproval around, like a deodorizing household spray.

Maybe Herb didn't notice. Maybe he thought that someone wound so tightly would unwind dramatically, given the licence. Really, though, Aggie couldn't see it. “What do you think, Barney? Should I say something to her?”

“Would she listen?”

“Not likely.” He spread his hands and shrugged.

Nevertheless, she baked a wedding cake and invited guests and, hoping for the best, kept her hands occupied during Barney's visits, stitching for June a nightgown that, if she were so inclined, should invite passion. Barney held up the material and whistled at the sheerness.

“I know,” Aggie said, “but you won't be able to see through it really, when it's falling in folds properly.”

“
I
”, he laughed, “don't expect to be able to see through it under any circumstances.”

Some time later, when she asked June why she married such an unlikely man, June snapped, “To get away from you.” But that wasn't true, she could have left at any time. Herb might just have been the first to pay attention, and Aggie could certainly understand how that might happen.

Sometimes after the wedding, on a Saturday night when Herb was home, she was invited for supper. She could see that June no longer leaned over him to pour his tea, but not much else. She didn't feel sparks between them, but then thought that the electricity she might have recognized would be the silent, shooting type of her own time with the teacher, and she wouldn't wish that on anyone.

There was in any case little point in worrying — or time. She had her own business, her books and stories, facts and speculations, quite a few grey hairs, and, in recent years, a friend. She got bigger and bigger. She felt, sometimes, as if her strong and rolling body might contain whole towns and cities, countries and continents, of characters: her own and others that she learned about. Memories as well: the child she had dreamed of still inside her, and a tiny figure of the teacher. Certain smells lingered. Her time to herself was in the very early morning, before Barney came rolling up, in a small truck now instead of behind the horse, and in the evenings. In the early morning, she was busy getting ready for the day. At nights she read, and soaked in the bathtub with a book and perhaps a rye, now that Herb had introduced her to that pleasure. She no longer felt especially uneasy at such a relatively calm and comforting life. Barney seemed to have made that difference, rounding it out. The trick, however, was not to fall into mere habit; to keep alert to possibilities, and the continuing need to weigh them.

If her life bore some resemblance to a cocoon, well, it was an extremely busy one; and did she not deserve a certain amount of pampering? Anyway, who knew what might emerge at some point, a new creature struggling free.

The new creature turned out to be Frances; struggling so hard to be free that June, for whom, Aggie sighed, nothing went smoothly, had to be opened with a knife.

And Aggie discovered love, an abrupt and puzzling emotion.

She tried to describe it to Barney. “I had tears in my eyes, real tears, when I saw her at the hospital. I can't think when anything like that has happened before.”

“I know. I felt something like that when the boys were born.”

“Did you make promises? It sounds ridiculous, but I stood there thinking about making sure she'd never come to grief, that I'd love her so much she'd never be hurt. Is that silly?”

“Not silly. But not very likely, either.”

He was right, of course. There is no such thing as perfect protection, and no one could have kept Frances behind glass.

Aggie's love came unexpectedly only to her, took only her breath away. Frances, never knowing any different, took it entirely for granted. And June was understandably a little bitter. Was this not what Aggie should have felt, looking down at her own daughter at her breast? She might claim to have loved June then, but she couldn't deny it was nothing like this. And, further back, when she had thought she might love the strange and knowing teacher, it had only been a shadow, something hunched in the dark. This love, now, was in full light, a clear, distinct, distinguishable form, piercing, sharp, and occasionally painful.

She happily sacrificed some of her hours of quiet solitude to baby-sit when Herb was out of town and June wanted to go to church. In June's absence, she whispered pledges of love, wise advice, an unjudging ear, to Frances. She imagined this as something like an addiction, to something even stronger than food: a powerful, illicit craving. She trembled at the thought of never having enough. She bored, and knew she bored, her customers and even patient Barney, showing pictures of Frances, but couldn't help it. She was amazed at something she couldn't help.

She thought she could now discern the difference between individual days filled with small but significant pleasures, and being able to make out a future. She looked at Frances and saw someone who would, with luck, see this century turn into the next. She herself, born not so long after this century began, would be gone by then. June linked the centre. Aggie saw them stretching on and on. It put things in a different light, a series of lights.

She wanted not only different circumstances for Frances, freer than her own and with a universe of choices, but also that Frances herself should be different: more refined and alert, braver and lighter.

Even the ants and the bees, scurrying in their preparations for generations that would scurry in their preparations for the same end, made more sense than they used to. It was, she told Barney, a point of view that had a certain amount to be said for it, and he laughed.

Worried that she might forget, she was determined to pay attention: to burn pictures into her memory so vividly that they would never turn brown and fade, like real ones. To see the particular shade of dusty blue of a small pair of overalls, or the embroidered flowers across the narrow child-chest. The pleased concentration and determination as Frances's arm pumped, up and down, up and down, faster and faster, the handle of a top, so that the circus figures painted on the side whirled, blurring. A laughing face, tempting playful eyes glinting above a mouth ringed with Sunday breakfast porridge. Warmth and softness in a small body curled into a lap, light and limp with trust. Sitting on the back step, bent over, earnestly picking rolls of black dirt from between her toes, rubbing at the skin until it was pink and raw. A plump tummy in the bath, and an inquisitive finger exploring the belly button and diving into mysterious places between the legs. Instants of pain: on her tricycle, hair flying, turning to wave back proudly, running smack into a curb. Frances always looked more startled than hurt when she fell down, or touched a cake pan that hadn't cooled from the oven. Pain seemed to surprise her.

These pictures, as handy as a photo album, were also better. There was motion in them, a leading up to and a falling away from, with the instant of clear picture, unposed, in the centre. But while they did not fade or turn brown, time still curled them around the edges, turning them into more a memory than an event.

“You spoil her,” June accused. “You have to say no sometimes.”

Let other people say no.

Looking into Frances's eyes, Aggie saw her own. She remembered Frances's dark and curly hair from pictures of herself. She admired the child's appetite, and her curiosity. Aggie, free to be foolish, took her out to build a snowman, and found pieces of coal for the eyes and mouth and a carrot for the nose.

They played. “You count, Grandma, and I'll hide.”

Aggie, searching June and Herb's house on a Sunday morning, following, but not too closely, the little snorts and muffled giggles, saw with one eye, an adult one, that there wasn't much life showing. June kept the place tidy, but there was a shortage of knick-knacks, or vases, mementoes of interesting times, or decoration of any sort. There were Frances's toys, but even those were kept neatly in her room. No one who didn't know, she thought, would be able to tell who lived here, or what sort of people they might be, with what sort of life. They might be dead people, except for Frances. Tidiness was understandable — what else did June have to do, after all? — but the aridity was odd.

But searching, looking under beds and inside closets, hoisting her bulk to peer onto shelves, or lowering it to peer under furniture, Aggie also, with her child's eye, played. “Where is that girl, where did she get to? Is she under this pillow? No? Behind the dresser? I guess not. Where did she go?” It was harder when Aggie had to hide; more difficult to find a space to contain her body. She thought how ridiculous she must look, crouching in a closet.

When June came in, things tightened up considerably. She fussed when Frances's clothes got dirty. “Eat up,” she ordered. “You won't get dessert until you finish your main course.”

“Don't want to.”

“No cake then.”

“Don't care.”

And when it came down to a choice between cake and her own will, Frances really didn't care. Aggie watched with admiration, although she kept it to herself. Poor June, longing for control, must have thought a child would be within her grasp. Her luck to have one who declined.

“I don't know,” June sighed. “She's so stubborn. She can't get it through her head that she can't always have her own way.”

“Why should she get that through her head?”

“Well, because life isn't like that.”

“Then she'll find out in her own time.”

“Oh, Mother, you don't understand. You never paid attention to me, how would you know?”

“It seems to have worked, whatever I did or didn't do. You have more rules than I'd have ever dreamed of.”

“But I had to find out for myself, didn't I?”

Frances watched them, apparently puzzled. Did June and Herb quarrel? Aggie, trying to remember herself at two, and three, and four, couldn't tell how much Frances might comprehend.

In her reading, she turned her attention to love, but found in the books mainly romance, which wasn't the same thing at all. Pap about melting into arms, flushed cheeks, embraces — all very well at some point, she supposed, but it was a point she had missed. The teacher, unwilling to sweep her into his unbrawny arms, had merely coughed and died. Mother-love as described in the books sounded like mush. She supposed she must have a case of mother-love of sorts, though its fierceness shocked her. Nothing soft about it, nothing melting or wishy-washy or demure or fragile. She even believed she might be willing to die on Frances's behalf.

How remarkable it would have been to have loved a man that way. Two people like that together would be perfectly enormous. Friendship, even with Barney, wasn't the same, although it was a form of love, no doubt.

Frances, she thought, must learn not only June's lessons — that she could be bent and hurt and dented — but also that she could do anything. She must not fall for the first opportunity to come along, through fear of nothing else. The trick was making all this clear to Frances.

Things work out though, even if sometimes somebody has to suffer along the way. If Herb's arrival was one sort of gift — taking care of June, taking her away — his departure, for Aggie at any rate, was another: it gave her Frances.

SIXTEEN

June spent the entire day he left scrubbing and cleaning like fury.

There was so much of him. Upstairs in the bedroom, rumpled sheets were flung back. In the bathroom, the brushes and combs were gone, and there was a splatter of fresh shaving-cream on the mirror above the sink, and a sweet humid smell. A drop of hair oil lay on the white surface of the sink.

With a square of toilet paper she erased the oil from the porcelain. With another, she took care of the dot of shaving-cream on the mirror. Turning, she glimpsed a curling dark hair in the bathtub.

Like a butchered body, it seemed he'd left bits of himself everywhere.

She got rags, soaps, and scrubbers from the kitchen, and began to do the bathroom properly: the toilet bowl, and all around its rim and base, right down to the floor; the mirror, the sink, the walls themselves, and the door and its knob; the tub; everything sanitized and disinfected, getting beyond the dirt to the smallest germs and remnants of him, the invisible remains too small to see.

Stripping the bed, she wrapped the sheets into a bundle, carried them downstairs, took them out to the shed at the back, and dropped them into the trash barrel there. In the living room, she wiped away fingerprints keenly, like a criminal destroying evidence. She dusted and polished, swept vigorously at the rugs, raising lint, dust, stray hairs, into small heaps, collecting it all. There was an ashtray with two cigarettes stubbed out, and glasses into which drinks had been poured, and bottles from the bottom of the china cabinet. All of it went.

She wiped down the stairs and banister. Going through the bureau drawers upstairs, she found a new tie, forgotten in its box, and put it also in the garbage.

Down on her hands and knees, she washed the kitchen floor, scrubbing at where his footprints might have been. Her dress tore beneath the arms as she reached inside the oven, cleaning away lingering smells of the casserole she made last night — just last night? — for his supper.

Looking around, heart pounding, panting, perspiring because anyway it was summer and hot to begin with, she peered and searched. Windows he had looked out of. And the drapes he insisted on flinging open — they would go to the cleaners.

At some point during the past six years, he must have touched each dish. She filled the sink with water as hot as she could bear, and washed them all, and dried them.

The sharp, dry smell of all the cleaning fluids — the soaps and polishes and waxes and disinfectants — was corrosive, but certainly obliterated any traces of sweet aftershave.

But what else, what else? There must be more. Everything hurt. Some of the pain was outside and some inside; mere muscles, but also the heart. Was this a broken heart, or a heart attack? Was it some sort of rheumatism of the spirit, which she could now expect to suffer from forever?

Oh, but if his hands had touched dishes and sinks and drapes, if his fingerprints might have lingered on a table, what about her skin? One way and another, the filthiest thing in the house now was her body.

Dirt clung to her and rolled; she could feel little particles of it on her neck. Her fingernails were broken, and blackness was ground into her knuckles and knees. Her dress was ripped and stained. She could smell herself, but beneath that thought she might still detect the scent of him.

She ran hot water into the bathtub and set out to boil herself. She scrubbed and scrubbed, watching the water darken. Flinching, she reached soapy fingers inside and got clean what she could.

Quite a ring of dirt remained when she got out. That, too, had to be scrubbed. Then a second bath, a guarantee she'd gotten underneath the surface. She came out pink, and wondered if she might have been scalded, but it was hard to distinguish one pain from another.

It was getting dark now, late. That meant she had spent a whole day erasing him; also that she must be twenty-four hours into this pain. She supposed it would be possible to get used to it. Just now it seemed unbearable, but of course it was not, since she appeared to be bearing it anyway. One thing it did was alter time: the moment of the impact was as immediate as if she were still hearing his voice fading to his conclusion, and it also seemed like something in the distant past, as if it had all gone on as long as she could remember.

It was in her mind that the filth lingered, quite out of reach of any scrubbing brush. He'd made her memory dirty, and she couldn't think what to do about that.

She couldn't keep still; paced on through her amazingly clean house that seemed now also amazingly empty. Always she had to keep trying to catch up. Things happened to her and then she had to catch up to them. It wasn't what she did, it was what was done to her, and then she was left to deal somehow with it. Now, when she felt quite violent, might have pounded on his chest, struck out, there was nothing to turn her rage to. She might weep, but tears were too small. A prayer, a word with God? It wasn't fair, she might tell Him that. She might tell Him lots of things, bad words spilling out of control. She was a person who cultivated control; how did things get out of hand? It hurt where she drilled her knuckles into her temples, and when she took her hands away, caught by a dreadful reflection in the hallway mirror, the white spots flushed red as the blood flowed back. Was this her? This wild, pale woman with flying hair? She could not have imagined she could look like this: glittering eyes, and her features seemed askew, as if even her nose had been knocked sideways; like one of those modern paintings, geometric planes instead of portraits.

How could he do this and drive away? She wasn't finished. Where was he when she needed him? He was never here when she might need him: when Frances got sick, or when she was ill herself and had to send the child to Aggie. If she heard a noise outside at night, he wasn't here. Now she had things to say, and where was he?

She must, after all, try not to think about him. Because this was his dirt, not hers.

What could she have said? There must have been a way of stopping it, some words that would change what he was saying, but she hadn't been able to think what they might be. She had said some, but not the undoing ones. What would she say now?

She'd seen something different about him the moment he came through the door Saturday morning; not even Friday night, as usual. He was pale, and two weeks ago when he'd been home, he'd seemed to be getting quite a tan. His body seemed wound, lacking its customary looseness. His fingers twisted on the glass of rye he poured himself. He crossed and recrossed his legs, sitting in the living room, and he stared, rather vacantly at times, out the window, and then with a peculiar sharpness at herself and Frances. He held Frances on his lap and tried to read her a story, until she got bored and wriggled away. “Give your dad a kiss,” he asked, and then held an arm around her until she ducked from under it. “She likes to be outside, doesn't she?” he said to June. Regret? Sadness in his voice? A little curiosity, or concern?

How could he bring himself to do this to his daughter? Along with all the rest, an unnatural father.

Hindsight. In fact, she hadn't paid much attention at the time; had thought he might be coming down with something. “Are you ill?” she'd asked.

The cruellest thing was that he knew and she was in the dark. She spent the day thinking it was a reasonably normal one, when it was actually the end of her world, and he knew that and she didn't. Hindsight was the only truthful view.

That ringing must be the phone. Funny, having to stop and identify the sound. And then Aggie's voice. “June, it's past Frances's bedtime and I don't know if Herb's coming to pick her up or if she's staying another night. What do you want me to do?”

Do? How should June know? Except, of course, Herb wasn't here to go and pick his daughter up, and she couldn't imagine all the effort that would be involved in fetching Frances and getting her undressed for bed and tucked in and kissed good night, and then, what if Frances asked where he was?

“Could she stay with you?”

“Of course. I just wanted to know what you wanted. You should have called.”

“Sorry. Thanks for keeping her. She can come home tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow what? What on earth was she going to do? People would know. She must have a face ready for them. Certainly she couldn't show them this one.

At least tonight she was tired. An improvement over last night, when she was so dreadfully alert.

“Do you think,” he'd begun, “that your mother would mind taking Frances overnight?”

“Whatever for? She'll be going to bed in an hour anyway.”

“Just because I'd prefer it. I have something I want to talk to you about. I'll drive her over, if it's okay with Aggie.”

Well, what, she wondered while he was gone. She could only think he had somehow lost his job. What would they do, with no money coming in? What could he have done that would lose him his job?

“Junie,” he said. Junie? “Come into the living room and sit down.”

So she did; watched him make a drink and wondered irritably why he couldn't get on with it. Why he had to make a production out of things. With the word job on her mind, she didn't think she'd heard quite right when he sat down opposite her, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands around his glass, and said, “You know, I don't think we've made a very good job of this. Do you?”

“A good job of what?” Did he mean he wasn't a very good salesman any more?

“Oh,” waving a hand vaguely, “all this. Marriage. It hasn't turned out the way we thought. At least not the way I expected. We don't seem to have made much of a go of it.”

She frowned, puzzled and impatient.

“Look, June, I can't see that either of us is very happy. I thought we'd have a home and kids and do things together, I thought you liked a bit of fun. But that's not how it's been. You won't go out with me and you don't like the things I like. It's like you changed the rules. You won't even go to a movie with me. You used to, before we got married.”

“I haven't changed,” she blurted. How could he say these things? “I am what I have always been.”

“Maybe. But I didn't know before. Look, I'm not saying it's your fault. I've made mistakes, and maybe I'm not what you thought I was either. I'm just saying it hasn't worked.”

She wouldn't hear the last part. “No, you're not what I expected.” Her voice, she could hear, had gone high and thin. “You were
nice
before.” How could she put it? “I thought you'd be a gentleman.” The word was so many things — duty, honor, respect, a sense of proper distance. Anyway, what was the point of this?

“Well, then, maybe it's all my fault, maybe I'm not a gentleman, whatever that is, and maybe you're just too refined for me.” Now he sounded bitter, on the verge of anger. “It doesn't matter. Whatever we wanted, neither of us got it. We've given it six years and I think that's enough. I've thought about it a lot, and I think once you get used to the idea, you'll see it's the best thing for both of us.”

“What, for goodness' sake? I can't tell what on earth you're talking about.”

“Calling it quits, how much clearer can I say it? While we're both young enough to start again. I can't see another forty years of this when we could maybe both be happy instead.”

This didn't happen. It wasn't happening. Where was her blood going, off to her feet, or up to her head? He really wasn't sitting there staring at her, saying these things.

“So, June? Say something.”

All right then, she would. She just wanted to get this straight, what he was saying. “Do you mean live apart?”

“I mean get a divorce and we both start again.”

“Oh no.” How could she say how this knocked everything off its pins, so he'd realize how impossible it was? “But the scandal! We couldn't possibly.”

He looked for a moment as if he might hit her. “I knew that's what would bother you, what people would think. Jesus Christ, who cares? Surely to God it's more important to have a life you want than worry about what people are going to say.”

“We made promises,” she said. “And there's Frances. What would become of us? You don't just disregard promises, you don't just walk out of a marriage.”

“Well, you can, you know.” In the last few moments he had gained confidence, seemed larger and determined; courageous in the way of someone who has gone so far he has nothing to lose any more. He stood. “Look, there's no easy way of doing this, but at least it's better if it's quick. I'm going up to pack, and I'll leave in the morning. I know it's a shock, but you'll see, it's best.”

“But Frances.”

“I know. I hate leaving her.” His eyes suddenly filled with tears, and that made her hate him. His tears, like everything else about him, like his promises and his flashy clothes, were cheap. Look at him standing there with that garish signet ring and the glass of whiskey and shoes all shined like a fancy man.

“But I thought about her, too. It can't be good for a kid, growing up in a house where her parents aren't happy. She'll be okay with you, you're a good mother.”