Duet for Three (25 page)

“No, I'd pay our way. I wouldn't come for nothing, I'd have to think of something else.”

“All right, whatever, it's up to you.” And then, “I haven't really said it properly, but you know, I'm very sorry.” Reaching out a hand to June; could she touch her?

No. June slid away, tightening again. “I don't need your pity, Mother. I'm fine.”

Oh dear. “It wasn't pity. I only said I'm sorry, not that I'm sorry for you. When do you want to move back?”

“A week or so? When I get everything together? Is that all right?”

“It's fine. You can have your father's old room and Frances can have yours. What about your house?”

June shrugged. “It's his. It's up to him.”

“Oh God, Barney,” Aggie confided next morning, “it's awful, but my first thought was that I really don't want this. I love Frances and having her around, but I'm not sure about so
much
.”

“But it's only for a little while, isn't it? Look at how much fun you'll have, and a bit of a change, too.”

“I know, I thought of that. You're right.” She was cheered now, and began looking forward to the move. This, she thought, was the value of a friend: talking things over, having possibilities affirmed. She thought she might recommend friendship to June; although not yet.

June might be deaf, the way she moved around, oblivious. She repainted her father's old room a flat, glaring white and added a small desk and a straight-backed chair. She brought very little with her. Except for Frances, it didn't seem to Aggie there was much to show she'd ever been away. Except, of course, looking at her, Aggie could see tracks of experience. Skin stretched tauter, and lines creasing downward. For some time she was less slender than gaunt.

But Aggie could remember needing a period of recovery herself, and she'd bounced back. After a time, June would pick herself up and take herself off somewhere, to do something, and Frances would go with her, which meant Aggie had better pay attention while it lasted.

Eventually a For Sale sign went up at June and Herb's house. Aggie assumed he'd requested another route, since he wasn't seen around town any more. He sent cheques for a while, and June continued to tear them up and mail them back, and after a time he stopped.

When would June make a move? Nothing was done, and nothing was done. June wafted around in her old silent way and Aggie, getting accustomed, continued to work and read and visit with Barney and listen to customers, but Frances was at the centre now. Aggie remained astounded by love.

Frances was:

A five-year-old coming home at noon from kindergarten, running into the shop calling, “See the picture I made, Grandma? I made a picture of you.” A crayoned portrait of a tiny head, mounted on a massive body, bigger than the trees beside it. They taped the drawing to the door of the refrigerator.

A seven-year-old home with measles, and all the running up and down stairs involved, having to stick a “Back in 10 minutes” sign on the shop door every time. A little girl examining her spotted face in Aggie's small hand-mirror, crying, “Oh, Grandma, make them go away. They're ugly.”

“They'll go away, don't you worry. But don't scratch at them, you'll just make them worse.”

A nine-year-old sitting on a stool by the kitchen window, watching the first snowfall of the year and asking, “Is it really true snowflakes aren't ever the same as each other?”

“So I understand.”

“But how does anybody know that?”

An eleven-year-old face looking up earnestly, sitting in the kitchen between customers, asking, “Grandma, when we pray for you in church, can you feel it? Does it make you better?”

“What?” Maybe she spoke too loudly, or sharply, because Frances looked uneasy. But really! “You pray for me?”

“Mother says to. She says we should pray for all those who haven't found God. Why haven't you, don't you know where He is?”

Deep breath. No point in being cross with Frances, it wasn't her fault. “Tell you what. It's very nice of you to pray for me, and I appreciate the thought, but you don't have to. Grandma and God have their own arrangement.”

“Do you talk to Him? Mother does.”

“We don't need to. We just try to keep out of each other's way.”

Frances looked puzzled but impressed, apparently accepting the reasonableness of Aggie and God defining their exclusive territories, respect between equals.

“How dare you,” Aggie began once Frances was in bed, “tell her she ought to pray for me?”

“She prays for everyone who needs it.” Whatever else she'd permanently lost, June had certainly regained her primness.

“Well, I told her she didn't have to any more. I said I didn't need it. I won't have it. I forbid you to put nonsense like that into that child's head.”

“Really, Mother, even you can hardly stop people's prayers.” What a wonderfully dry tone June could produce when she wanted to. Aggie was impressed, and then amused. Really, laughter took the zip out of a dispute.

Funny, this idea of June as someone meek, or weak, whatever. Because she always answered back, always stood up for herself. Just like Frances, except that it
felt
different; irritating instead of admirable.

When she thought about it, or for some reason caught a glimpse of June unguarded, trudging pale-faced through her days, Aggie worried. Or at least had twinges of concern. Years were going by here, not mere months, and when, exactly, was June going to take the next step, make some change? Not that Aggie now wanted them to leave, but for June's own salvation?

“What would you know about salvation, Mother?” June demanded. “Leave me alone.”

“But you know, you can't go on this way. You have to do something. I know about needing time to lick wounds and figure things out, but it's gone on far too long. You have half your life ahead of you. Surely you don't want to waste it.”

“Is that what you think, that I'm wasting it? I'm earning a living and raising a child — what have you done that I'm not doing, anyway?”

Good point. “But friends, June,” was all Aggie could think to say. “Going out and doing things. Getting interested in something. Not just going to school and coming home and once a week going to church. What kind of life is that?”

“Mine.” Curt and cold. Well, who would want to be told their life had no apparent meaning? Aggie could see she had handled it badly.

On the other hand, June did begin to go out sometimes in the evenings, joined a church group, and occasionally went to someone's home for dinner. Even, very briefly, went out with a man. Something, at least.

How, though, could she go on and on living here when she seemed to dislike it so much? Coming downstairs in the morning into the kitchen, June still regarded Barney with disfavor. She still spent a great deal of time in her own room, or in the dining room working, as her father had, marking and setting lessons. She might accuse Aggie of spoiling Frances, but she was easily worn out by the child, it seemed, and abandoned her own efforts after only short spells. In particular, she couldn't manage Frances's questions about Herb, a subject that came up periodically.

“How come,” Frances asked, after she'd made friends at school and visited other homes, “I don't have a father any more? Everybody else does.”

“He left,” June said in that snippy way she had whenever he was mentioned. “Don't you bother your head about him.”

“But where did he go? Didn't he like us?”

“Never mind about him. I told you, it's not important now.”

Aggie, overhearing, wondered how June, of all people alert to fathers, could be so stupid. “Your father,” she told Frances later, “was very sad when he left. Do you remember when he said goodbye? You were coming to stay over with me, and when he brought you he said goodbye, and he was very sad.”

“Why did he go if he didn't want to?”

“Well, he wanted to, I guess, but sometimes grown-ups do things that make them sad because it's better in the long run.”

“Didn't he love me?”

“Of course he did, pudding.”

“Then didn't he love Mother?”

“At first, I expect, but then maybe later he didn't.”

“Is that why he left?”

“Partly, I suppose. I don't really know the reasons, though.”

“But when you get married, that means you love somebody, doesn't it?”

“It's supposed to, yes, but sometimes people make mistakes.” Young Frances, her face screwed up, trying to make sense of that.

“Did Mother do something bad so he didn't love her any more?”

“Oh no, I'm sure not. It's just that feelings change, and it's not necessarily anybody's fault.”

“So,” very serious, trying to get it quite straight, “if you love somebody, it doesn't mean you always will?”

“Sometimes that's what happens, I'm afraid.”

“Does that mean,” with a child's inexorable logic, “you might not love me some day?” Unimaginable. She put her arms around Frances — what a gift, a child who responded to embraces — and said, “Oh no, pudding, of course not. That's a different kind of love, it doesn't change.”

“What if I did something really bad?”

“For one thing, I don't think you would. Doing something bad is different from mischief, or just making a mistake. Anyway, it wouldn't matter, I'd still love you.”

(“You wouldn't care, Mother,” June has accused, “if Frances murdered somebody, you'd twist it around so it wasn't her fault.” Aggie thinks that's likely true.)

“Do you love my mother?” Frances asked.

“Well, she's my daughter. What do you think?”

“Do you love Barney?”

“In a way. He's my friend.”

“Did you love my grandpa?”

“I may have thought I did, but I didn't, really.”

“How come you got married?”

“I don't really remember. A lapse of judgment, I guess,” although that was mainly for the benefit of June, who could hear them from the next room.

“What's a lapse?”

Even then, Frances was a natural interrogator. Sometimes even Aggie grew a little weary of all the questions. “Tell you what,” she would suggest, “if you can sit still and not say a word for five whole minutes, I'll give you the first raspberry tart I take out of the oven. Watch the clock now. Ready? Go.” But Aggie wasn't often too tired to listen; and was repaid by Frances's gift for spontaneous affection. Even if sometimes an embrace came at an awkward moment, say when Aggie's hands were covered in flour or busy with bread dough, it was irresistible.

“You can do it,” Aggie urged, out in the back yard with her on a Saturday, between customers, “it won't hurt, just let yourself roll.” That was the day Frances learned to turn somersaults.

“Come and see what I can do,” Frances cried, dancing indoors to her mother, pulling at her until she came out to watch, and be horrified. “Frances, stop that, you'll break your neck.”

“No I won't. I know how to do it.”

“You may think you do, but you could still break your neck.”

Thereafter Frances turned somersaults and climbed, quite high sometimes, into the big maple tree at the back, so that even Aggie watched nervously out the window, when June couldn't see.

Poor June, who only dared small and timorous movements — how could they expect her to take pleasure in her daughter's capacity for risk? She reminded Aggie of Neil: courage for taking big steps worn out too soon. He, of course, had died then. June didn't even seem to have the energy for that.

EIGHTEEN

What June should have done, of course, was what she'd intended in the first place: live with Aggie just long enough to pull herself together, save a little money, get used to her new and dreadful circumstances. Really, she'd had no intention of staying on.

It exhausted her, just asking; she never would have asked, if there had been some other choice. Who would have thought the house belonged to Herb alone? Before Frances, her own salary had helped to make the payments. She had nothing, it appeared, except a child.

She felt as if this abrupt disintegration might leave her permanently wide-eyed with shock, although she had to suppose that she could get used to it; she had gotten accustomed to other blows, after all. So just for a little while she would live with her mother, and pull herself together.

When she and Frances moved in, she undertook to paint her new room, formerly her father's. A flat, stark white was what she wanted; clean blankness that wouldn't jar.

Just moving her limbs was an effort, never mind uprooting her life. Walking down the street, she felt people staring and talking. She would be poor June Benson, who couldn't hold onto her husband. Going back to school, where she was kindly, perhaps pityingly, offered her job back, was worse: little boys snickering, and teachers discussing her behind her back.

It was extremely difficult to maintain a faith that all this was God's will. “Why me?” she would have liked to ask. It was barely comforting that it might be some sort of test, setting her up for a greater reward. Still, there was nothing to do but believe. It was all she could hang onto of what once had been herself.

She did have to be grateful to Aggie, though, for taking her in without question (except for a sort of flinch that was spontaneous and unmistakable), and for taking care of Frances, although Aggie certainly didn't seem to mind that. Also for letting June be, so that she could spend hours in her freshly painted white room. Just sitting. She had a feeling that if she could sink into that whiteness, enter right into it, she might finally be clean again.

There were also times when she leaned her face into her hands and wept; not specifically for Herb, whose memory made her skin leap, but for loss. She wondered if other people had what they seemed to have: normal lives. Were there people who simply went on with things, in an ordinary sort of way, without disruption?

It hardly helped when Frances asked about her father. “When's Daddy coming home?” she inquired in the early days. Aggie must have managed to set her straight on that, but later she asked, “Why did Daddy leave?” Oh, June would have liked to shake her, take her by the shoulders and shake her until all those memories fell right out of her little head. “He's not coming home,” she answered curtly.

The money he sent was undeniably tempting; would have made it easier. There were things, after all, that Frances needed, like any growing child: clothes and shoes and school supplies. But mainly she needed an ordinary home with two ordinary parents. Apparently he thought money could replace him. That was some view of his own importance, or his responsibility.

It was the gold signet ring that kept rearing up, and the flashy linings of his suits. The hair on his knuckles as he gripped a glass, and the smell of the oil he used on his hair. Sometimes, out on the street or in a store, someone passed by her trailing the same sweetish, sickish scent, and she thought she might faint.

From her room, she could often hear voices downstairs: Barney's rumbling early in the mornings to start the day. She no longer had the energy to dislike him. In the beginning, when he started coming around years ago, she'd been terrified: he and Aggie were so obviously becoming important to each other. When June learned he was already married, her first reaction was relief. When she'd had time to consider it, however, she was disgusted. What sort of woman was her mother, encouraging a married man? And never mind any nonsense about friendship. Also, what sort of married man gave part of each day for years to another woman? (She had the answer to that now: a man like Herb.) Although she never supposed Aggie and Barney got up to anything really wrong. How would they, in a kitchen? Just that it was inevitable that the intention, or desire, must be lurking.

Her own daughter's voice also floated upstairs, shouts and questions and occasional sobs. Customers, too. A high-pitched babble, heard from this distance. Laughter even, sometimes. Was it not cruel of people to laugh when she was suffering? This was real abandonment: that other lives went on, with routine chores and laughter.

She watched herself carry on. Her feet on the stairs seemed far away and not hers at all, so that she had to watch them very carefully to make sure they did what they were supposed to, and didn't let her down. She washed her face and hands, and bathed her body, but it didn't seem that the water ever touched her skin. In the classroom, her own voice came to her from a distance.

She turned thirty with her life a shambles. She lived with her mother, and her child was stubborn and unruly. Aggie baked a cake, and Frances sang happy birthday to her. June considered vaguely that the thought, at least, was kind.

It was a good thing Aggie took over so much of the care of Frances. June had no idea how she would have managed otherwise. Sometimes, though, Aggie's supervision left a good deal to be desired. She seemed to encourage dangerous pursuits and, like Herb, did not appear to care that the child might be injured. June pictured Frances lying broken at the bottom of a tree she'd tried to climb, brain-damaged, perhaps, or paralysed. It seemed to June there was quite enough danger in the world, without going out looking for it.

What did Aggie and Frances talk about? There were times, coming home, when it seemed that the two of them had secrets from her. Their conversations might halt, and sometimes she thought she caught conspiratorial glances between them; or felt them speaking to her with a sort of benign protectiveness, as if she were too frail to hear what they'd been up to, or would disapprove. Or that it wasn't worth the trouble of telling her.

When June was young, Aggie hadn't given her anything like the amount of attention Frances got. And now June couldn't even complain, or worry out loud about Frances, without Aggie springing to her defence. “Never mind,” Aggie said, “she'll be fine.” As if a child could tell what was safe or unsafe, what was right or wrong, what was important and what was not.

How stubborn and wilful Frances was: refusing food, kicking up a fuss at bedtime — where did she learn this? “Really, Mother,” June complained, “I wish you wouldn't let her get away with whatever she wants. It makes it very difficult.”

“But I don't. I just deal with her differently. I divert her. You know, I bet if you didn't tell her she has to have her carrots, she'd eat them with no problem. She just gets her back up.”

“But she should do what she's told.” Anyway, it seemed a terribly energetic undertaking, trying to seduce a child into obedience.

“If you wonder where her stubbornness comes from,” Aggie grinned, “just look in the mirror.”

“I was never like this.”

“Well, you were, but it came out differently. Let me tell you, carrots are easy compared with how you were stubborn.”

June thought Aggie must have her memories confused. Probably she made them up to suit herself.

At least she could try to balance Aggie's influence, tilt one way as Aggie tilted the other. Maybe Frances would come down in the middle, then. It was hard, though, to outweigh her mother's devotion. Love, like many other things now, was simply exhausting.

She did insist, however, on taking Frances to church with her, and she seemed to enjoy it, heading happily downstairs to the Sunday school, emerging later to retell, as they walked home, the Bible stories she had learned, or show a drawing she had made. There was a bit of an uproar one time when Aggie found out that Frances prayed for her, but otherwise she didn't seem to care one way or the other. Another time she roared with laughter at a picture Frances did in Sunday school of Jonah. It showed a man's thin legs dangling feebly from between the sharp white teeth of an enormous black whale, and Aggie said, “I'm sorry I laughed, honey, it's just that it reminded me of your grandfather. Those poor little legs like toothpicks,” and roared again.

Frances's drawings were pinned up all over the kitchen, wherever there was space on the walls, or the refrigerator. This too was different from when June was young, although she couldn't precisely recall any drawings she had made that might have been pinned up.

There were, in fact, a great many things she couldn't quite seem to recall. Looking at Frances, face alight with some discovery in a book, or panting and pink as she skipped rope, she couldn't imagine having ever felt anything like such a wholehearted joy. But it was hard to tell; everything was changed and in a different light now.

Well, she supposed it must be like any break: a leg knitting itself through time. A question only of whether it mended properly or left a person a little crippled, with a little limp.

The great thing was never to be injured again.

Aggie said, “You know, if there are things you want to do, don't worry about Frances. I'm here anyway. You don't have to feel you should be home every night.”

Go out? Where? It was all she could do to get through a day, much less a night out. “I'm all right, Mother, leave me alone.”

“You can't be all right. Look, I know it takes time, getting over something like what happened (how would Aggie know what had happened? How could she imagine?), but at some point you have to pull yourself together and make a new life. You've got thirty, forty years ahead, maybe. You should be making something of them.”

Forty years! She could barely get up in the morning, never mind imagining forty years of mornings.

“June, honestly, I'm not trying to nag. It's just that I worry about you.”

Really? That would be a change. She might have worried and warned some years ago, when it might have done some good.

“What do you think I should be doing, then?”

“
I
don't know,” throwing up her hands. “Something that interests you. Join a club, go out with friends. You know,” assessingly, “you might meet someone. But you certainly won't, sitting here.”

Oh no. Go through all that again? The one good thing about her life now was the freedom from hands. Anyway, she lacked trust, had no faith any more.

“I know how you feel, June. Remember, I had to start again too.”

But that wasn't the same at all. It had never been in June's mind to make Herb vanish, the way Aggie had let her husband disappear.

“Look,” Aggie said firmly, “you're the one who used to say life was a gift from God. Think of the trouble you'll have, explaining why you didn't do much with it.”

Oh, really, talk about laughing behind her hand, Aggie of all people trying to use an argument like that. Except June could recall saying that, and she could imagine Him telling her, on judgment day, “It's not that you did anything wrong, heaven knows. But then, you didn't do much of anything at all. Really, I'd have thought you'd have done better, considering the gifts I gave you to work with: faith and health. What more did you want?”

“Anyway,” Aggie went on, “do think about it. I may not have put it very well, but I mean it for the best.”

She sounded almost forlorn; June was almost touched. “All right, I'll think about it. I'm sorry you've been worried.” She reached out to pat her mother's hand, and found hers trapped between Aggie's pudgy palms.

Nothing was more unbearable than tenderness. Tenderness could shred her will, which was all that kept her sitting upright in the chair. She was sorry, though, about the flicker of hurt, and then anger, that flashed in Aggie's eyes when she pulled away. It didn't seem possible to save yourself and not cause pain elsewhere.

Maybe that was what Herb had thought? Not likely, though. He acted on pleasure and sensation, never thought. He would at least have considered his daughter and his duties, if he'd been a thinking man.

But what might God be expecting of her, having tested her so far? At least she might join a church group, something appropriate that would also get her out of the house and out from under Aggie's eye.

The couples club, of course, was out of the question, as was the young people's group. She no longer qualified for either. The women's group didn't appeal, since its members seemed largely concerned with catering weddings and other church events, and June had no intention of getting involved in cooking and baking and similar sorts of drudgery. The only possibility she could make out, scrutinizing the church calendar, was a group that met twice a month to discuss various scriptures.

“Oh, well, if that's what you want,” said Aggie. “At least it's something.”

The group was led by the minister, the same one who had replaced the white-haired, piercing-blue-eyed man of June's adolescence. There were no particular complaints about this one, who was soft-spoken, not riveting, but probably kind and certainly dutiful. He picked out a passage for the group to read, which would be discussed at the next meeting. The discipline of such assignments pleased June. She did not, however, speak out at the meetings, was content to leave words to the others. Anyway, there wasn't a great deal to be said. It was not as if there were radically different interpretations. Mainly she stared down at the Bible in her lap.