Duet for Three
Authors: Joan Barfoot
DUET FOR THREE
DUET FOR THREE
A Novel by
Joan Barfoot
Copyright © 2013
Joan Barfoot
This edition copyright © 2013 Cormorant Books Inc.
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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
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Table of Contents
PART I
ONE
When Aggie wakens, it's to an impression that something has happened to alter the ordinary sensations of coming alert for the day, something not nice.
They are irritating, these moments of being not quite sure what is going on, being lost for the right word, rooting around for the proper explanation. That can happen to anyone, of course; even Frances says, “Oh gosh, Grandma, there are lots of times I can't remember somebody's name or where I've met them.” But Frances is young. Aggie is eighty, and knows that memory has dimensions Frances has no reason to imagine.
But this, this morning, is less to do with memory than with identification: what exactly is different, and wrong?
Smell. This old pink room where she has lain down her aging, now old, pink body for the past sixty years is as familiar to her as the freckles on the backs of her hands. It looks as it always does when the sun is just up, light in streaks across the hardwood floor. She is always grateful for the light.
But it smells unpleasant. Usually it would smell of dusting powder, and floor wax, and years of accumulated this and that. This, she sniffs, is acrid, piercing, sharp in the nose, and nasty.
There is further unpleasantness involving her skin. Half of her is warm, as it should be, but the rest is chilly and uncomfortable. The flannel nightie is rumpled around her hips, as it usually is in the morning, but cold. Wet.
Oh Jesus, hell and damn, can she have peed the bed?
It's one thing to be old, and to weigh two hundred and seventy-odd pounds, and so to be more or less helpless â well, not helpless, but needing help for certain things, like getting out of bed. Or even to be dying, which of course at eighty one is, and is aware of, if not reconciled to.
But to pee the bed! There are unconsidered horrors in that. If that's happened, she has crossed some boundary she hasn't taken into account; no minor lapse, like forgetting how much sugar should be combined with rhubarb for a pie.
How could she have done such a thing?
This is appalling, disgusting. If she is appalled and disgusted, what will June be? What in the name of God will June have to say? She will have something to say in the name of God, June who so often speaks in His name, as if He were not very adept at the language, a foreigner for whom she takes it upon herself to translate.
It's not as if this can be transformed with a joke. Sometimes it's possible to fool people that way, make them think something is less serious than it is, but there is nothing amusing about lying here with clammy hips.
Maybe she could get up? If she set her body rolling, like a child pumping a swing higher and higher, if she could get it going back and forth hard enough and fast enough, she might shoot right off the bed.
But would she land upright, on her feet, on her toes? More likely she would simply roll off the edge, and then she would be lying on the floor, in much the same position she's in now except that it would be hard instead of soft. Although, to be sure, dry instead of wet.
The mistake must have been the cup of tea too soon before going to bed, leading to this other grosser, more dangerous error. The chill is spreading upward, and she is shivering.
Awake now, she has a clearer recollection of the middle of the night. She remembers thinking, “I'd better call June and get up.” She remembers thinking how much effort was involved, for such a small result.
She would have to call out several times to waken June, who would finally come in, tying her old striped terrycloth robe around her bones, slip-slopping in her furry pink slippers, grumbling. Aggie would reach up, June would reach down, and they would push and haul until Aggie was on her feet, June sidestepping as Aggie swung upright.
“Go back to bed now, before you really wake up,” Aggie would say. “I can manage.”
But June would sigh and say, “It's too late, I
am
awake.” She wouldn't be lying, either, because she never lies, and would force herself to stay awake to prove the point. At breakfast, she would yawn heavily.
Aggie would take the six steps from her bedside to the doorway. The hall light would be on. She would turn left and take another eight steps to the bathroom door, reach in and turn on the light. Inside, she would close the door behind her. June might or might not be standing in the hall waiting, her arms folded across her skimpy chest. What a meagre bosom she has, compared with what in Aggie was once rather pert, then briefly became voluptuous, and now is heavy and inert.
Then there would be the relatively simple job of turning, hoisting her nightgown, and, leaning forward slightly, settling herself carefully on the seat. Letting go.
Finished, she would set one hand carefully on the edge of the sink beside her, the other beneath one buttock, and push herself upright. Retrace her steps, and apologize to June.
So much effort, so many details, such dislocation, all for a cup of tea too many. She remembers thinking, “Oh, to hell with it.”
Less sensible is a recollection of warmth, release, relief, a brief steamy kind of comfort, a pungent but not unpleasant smell, lulling her back to sleep. It seemed simple at the time, pleasing to have solved a difficulty, without effort, in the dark.
Quite a different matter now, however.
June is up; can be heard walking past Aggie's door to the bathroom. Water running, sound of flushing, then that irritating gargling. The steps returning and halting, the knob turning on Aggie's bedroom door, the door swinging inward. She must say something, must think of mitigating words.
But here is June, her expression altering as she stands there, and Aggie feels her own features must be changed, thinks all her dismay and shame and fear must be right there on her face, and when she says, “Oh, June, I think I wet the bed,” it sounds just awful.
TWO
Well, it's perfectly obvious that's what she's done. The smell. Oh God (a prayer, not a blasphemy), what next? This is too much. This is out of the question, beyond everything.
Really, is it not enough to have to haul Aggie out of bed, and help her get dressed, averting eyes from an appalling amount of old flesh, to get her settled downstairs in her creaky spring-broken chair in the living room, with a plate of something to nibble at and a pile of books beside her? To race around making breakfast for the two of them? To make sure before she leaves for school that Aggie is settled, has what she needs to get her through the day? And then to spend another, probably difficult day in the classroom, edging her way to retirement, which is still five years away?
Isn't it enough to come home and make supper for the two of them and spend part of the evening baking, if Aggie hasn't managed a turn in the kitchen during the day, which sometimes she still can. Baking so that Aggie will have more fattening fuel to get her through tomorrow, which will be much the same for both of them as today? And marking tests and setting lessons and going to bed exhausted and bone-weary and discouraged. Praying for forgiveness and hope? Forgiveness for small sins that have slipped out, not even, compared with what other people do, very serious ones. And hope, which is undefined. June cannot be sure what she might hope for, but hoping is certainly a Christian duty.
But this is too much. Now what is she supposed to do? Duty is one thing; facing this quite another.
“Oh, Mother,” she says, beyond anger at the moment, although she may be angry later, thinking about it. “How could you?”
“I don't know. It just happened. Help me up.”
This is different: no defiance or sarcasm or blasphemy this morning.
Wanting him to talk firmly to Aggie, June has complained to their doctor, George Bannon, about her mother's language. She thinks he should have some authority that she lacks. Unfortunately George, who is only in his thirties, seems more amused than upset. It seems to June that he treats her own concerns too lightly.
He told her, “Well, you know, age comes differently to different people. You should try not to let it bother you. I'm sure she doesn't mean anything in particular by it, and it may do her good, let things out. Be grateful she's alert enough to swear. It could be worse.”
“But it's unsuitable,” June argued. She is aware that despite the care she gives her mother, which should count for something, George doesn't like her much. He's delicate, a little refined, remote, with her, whereas with Aggie he's likely to be laughing, slapping her on the shoulder. “It's wrong, much less for a woman of eighty. It's embarrassing.”
He sighed. “Well, look at it this way: some old people become physically incontinent. In your mother's case, it may be other things that are loosening. Her tongue may be a bit incontinent, in a manner of speaking, and after all, of the two, which is worse?”
But both? What will he have to say now that this has happened? Surely this is corruption even he will be able to grasp.
Aggie's nightgown is cold and damp and clings to her hips. “We'd better get you out of that. Do you want a bath or just a wash?”
“A wash will be fine.” How meek Aggie sounds. How odd it is, to hear her meek. June wonders how far she might go with a chastened mother, but the thought, of course, is unworthy.
Aggie lifts her arms and June, bending to reach the hem, pulls the blue flowered flannel nightgown, now stained, over her head and hands her a robe. The covers of the bed have been pushed aside in their mutual efforts to get Aggie on her feet. Standing, they both regard the broad yellow stain on white sheets. “Excuse me,” says Aggie, leaving on the journey to the bathroom she should have made several hours ago.
June rips off the sheets and stares at the mattress, which is also marked. What does one do about such a thing? For once, it would be nice to have a man around. A man could do something with this, lifting the mattress, making it disappear, hairy muscled arms just â dealing with it.
She'll be late for school if she doesn't hurry. “I'll have to leave it until tonight,” she tells Aggie, who has reappeared in the doorway looking a little less meek. “I haven't time now.”
Carefully, trying not to touch the damp parts, she gathers up the sheets and takes them downstairs to the laundry. Then she washes and washes her hands.
She finds Aggie making breakfast, which is unusual. Ordinarily, Aggie says she finds breakfast too boring to bother cooking, although she will eat it, of course. “I only like making interesting food,” she has explained. “Surely that's all right, after all these years.” But today, maybe to disprove what she has done, to demonstrate that she is capable and useful, she is making breakfast. It is too bad, though, that she has fried the eggs sunny side up. They look, lying one on each plate, like yellow stains on white sheets.
“Sorry” â June pushes her plate away â “I'm not very hungry. Do you want to go to the bathroom before I leave?”
There are words that won't sound the same any more. Simple sentences will reverberate, hanging in the air with new significance.
Walking to school and walking home are June's own times. Frequently, she speaks with God, although not in some people's chatty way. Some people talk to Him as if He's their best friend, offering bits of information and making requests, trivial and informal. June examines her soul and prays. God is not her friend; He is the architect of her life, and sees the little sparrow fall. She seeks His help in getting through the day, but offers the day to Him. “Thy will be done,” she says in her prayers, somewhat nervously.
Today, however, there is this new development to contemplate. She can see that it is quite sad, in a way: that a woman like Aggie, so filled with pride, should come to this. There has to be pity for a humiliation like that. Aggie would hate being pitied. There is some satisfaction in feeling sorry for her. Anyway, pride is a terrible sin. Humiliation may offer a degree of redemption.
“To be in control, that's freedom,” Aggie has told her. June, disagreeing, argues that control, resting as it does in the hands of God, is an illusion. She supposes she still believes that, even this morning, but the illusion is exhilarating in a way. This is something new, a pleasant self-indulgence.
But June knows that freedom, whatever Aggie says, is something that can only be read about, not actually experienced. It's like the universe, or a television program about people starving far away. One supposes these things exist, all the distant stars and all the bloated bellies; but they can't be known, not really. That's what freedom is like: a concept only.
In the classroom she wields her pointer, instructing in the arithmetic of addition and subtraction and the parts of sentences. Her mind is elsewhere: on what to do with the mattress, and on what she might do with freedom, if there were such a thing. It's like looking into the sun: brilliant but painful, and possibly in the long run damaging.
This situation, that's something she cannot be expected to deal with. Not Aggie, nor George Bannon, nor June herself can reasonably demand that. Surely she has done enough.
There are places for people who have accidents in their beds. And then what? Then she would have the house to herself. And then what? Anything. Everything would be altered, from the moment of getting up to the thoughts in her head.
She must see George. He will be the first to realize, whatever his sympathies, that she cannot be expected to bear this, too.
At the end of the school day she stands and sighs. At the sound of the bell, the children have raced away. Their laughter and shouting fill the halls, and then the yard and then the street â released, they seem to expand in volume, increase in power like splitting atoms. It is discouraging to have spent so many years offering lessons, and then to see that the children's greatest desire is escape.
This, too, she will be free of, although not for five years.
“You see,” she tells George in his office, looking for the proper words, “when I went in to get her up his morning, I found she'd had an accident in the night. You know?” He does.
“I don't see how I can manage. I don't think I can keep going. Something's going to have to be done.”
“Yes,” he agrees, “I can see how hard it must be.”
“Besides, I'm out all day. It isn't safe. Anything could happen.”
And it is true that sometimes when she is coming home from school, going up the stone walk to the front door, she has a vision of her mother sprawled dead on the floor inside, probably the kitchen floor, having tried to do something a little too strenuous, or to get something just out of reach, probably a piece of food. Her dress will be up around her hips, her underwear will be showing, and there may be a little blood on her head if she's hit a corner of the table or a cupboard on the way down.
“It's just getting too dangerous, leaving her alone all day.” June spreads her hands helplessly.
He is regarding her gravely; she wonders whether he sees truth or lies, and how he assesses motives. “I'll drop around and see her in a day or so. We may have to do some tests. We'll see if we can't think of something.”
“George Bannon's going to drop around in the next couple of days,” she tells Aggie later. It is a little terrible to watch her understand that someone knows besides the two of them. June can at least let her absorb that by herself; and anyway there are things that need doing. The mattress, for one thing, but that turns out not to be so hard. The stain, touched tentatively, is almost dry, and turning the mattress is a manageable effort. Being thin doesn't mean she isn't strong, in a wiry way.
There is supper to get and schoolwork to do and Aggie to bathe and put to bed. Unspoken weapons hang in the air. They are both uneasy. Doing the dishes, June whistles hymns angrily. When June was little, Aggie whistled in anger. June whistles “Shall We Gather at the River”, and slams dishes in time. She wonders why she is upset; maybe because while something has changed, nothing has happened yet. Or because her motives are not pure. Or because, given the glimpse of freedom, possibilities, she is caught short, without plans.
She prays on her knees beside her bed. She remembers to say, Thy will be done, but, as always, suspects the words lack absolute sincerity. She also prays for perfect faith, although that is taking a terrible risk, since it is quite possible that perfect faith is only achieved in perfect pain.
When she sleeps, she dreams about putting up new curtains in the living room. In the dream, the curtains match the room's newly painted walls, all a dark blue, so that sitting down in the centre of it when the job is done is like sitting on the bottom of the ocean.
