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The thoughts that came to her, of Jeffrey, were not really thoughts at all-they were more like alterations in her body. This could happen when she was sitting on the beach (trying to stay in the half shade of a bush and so preserve her pallor, as Jeffrey had ordered) or when she was wringing out diapers or when she and Brian were visiting his parents. In the middle of Monopoly games, Scrabble games, card games. She went right on talking, listening, working, keeping track of the children, while some memory of her secret life disturbed her like a radiant explosion. Then a warm weight settled, reassurance filling up all her hollows. But it didn’t last, this comfort leaked away, and she was like a miser whose windfall has vanished and who is convinced such luck can never strike again. Longing buckled her up and drove her to the discipline of counting days. Sometimes she even cut the days into fractions to figure out more exactly how much time had gone.
She thought of going into Campbell River, making some excuse, so that she could get to a phone booth and call him. The cottages had no phones-the only public phone was in the hall of the lodge. But she did not have the number of the hotel where Jeffrey worked. And besides that, she could never get away to Campbell River in the evening. She was afraid that if she called him at home in the daytime his mother the French teacher might answer. He said his mother hardly ever left the house in the summer. Just once, she had taken the ferry to Vancouver for the day. Jeffrey had phoned Pauline to ask her to come over. Brian was teaching, and Caitlin was at her play group.
Pauline said, “I can’t. I have Mara.”
Jeffrey said, “Who? Oh. Sorry.” Then “Couldn’t you bring her along?”
She said no.
“Why not? Couldn’t you bring some things for her to play with?”
No, said Pauline. “I couldn’t,” she said. “I just couldn’t.” It seemed too dangerous to her, to trundle her baby along on such a guilty expedition. To a house where cleaning fluids would not be bestowed on high shelves, and all pills and cough syrups and cigarettes and buttons put safely out of reach. And even if she escaped poisoning or choking, Mara might be storing up time bombs- memories of a strange house where she was strangely disregarded, of a closed door, noises on the other side of it.
“I just wanted you,” Jeffrey said. “I just wanted you in my bed.”
She said again, weakly, “No.”
Those words of his kept coming back to her. I wanted you in my bed. A half-joking urgency in his voice but also a determination, a practicality, as if “in my bed” meant something more, the bed he spoke of taking on larger, less material dimensions.
Had she made a great mistake with that refusal? With that reminder of how fenced in she was, in what anybody would call her real life?
The beach was nearly empty-people had got used to its being a rainy day. The sand was too heavy for Caitlin to make a castle or dig an irrigation system-projects she would only undertake with her father, anyway, because she sensed that his interest in them was wholehearted, and Pauline’s was not. She wandered a bit forlornly at the edge of the water. She probably missed the presence of other children, the nameless instant friends and occasional stone-throwing water-kicking enemies, the shrieking and splashing and falling about. A boy a little bigger than she was and apparently all by himself stood knee-deep in the water farther down the beach. If these two could get together it might be all right; the whole beach experience might be retrieved. Pauline couldn’t tell whether Caitlin was now making little splashy runs into the water for his benefit or whether he was watching her with interest or scorn.
Mara didn’t need company, at least for now. She stumbled towards the water, felt it touch her feet and changed her mind, stopped, looked around, and spotted Pauline. “Paw. Paw,” she said, in happy recognition. “Paw” was what she said for “Pauline,” instead of “Mother” or “Mommy.” Looking around overbalanced her-she sat down half on the sand and half in the water, made a squawk of surprise that turned to an a
“Sand,” said Pauline, holding up a clot of it. “Look. Mara. Sand.”
Mara corrected her, calling it something else-it sounded like “whap.” Her thick diaper under her plastic pants and her terry-cloth playsuit gave her a fat bottom, and that, along with her plump cheeks and shoulders and her sidelong important expression, made her look like a roguish matron.
Pauline became aware of someone calling her name. It had been called two or three times, but because the voice was unfamiliar she had not recognized it. She stood up and waved. It was the woman who worked in the store at the lodge. She was leaning over the balcony and calling, “Mrs. Keating. Mrs. Keating? Telephone, Mrs. Keating.”
Pauline hoisted Mara onto her hip and summoned Caitlin. She and the little boy were aware of each other now-they were both picking up stones from the bottom and flinging them out into the water. At first she didn’t hear Pauline, or pretended not to.
“Store,” called Pauline. “Caitlin. Store.” When she was sure Caitlin would follow-it was the word “store” that had done it, the reminder of the tiny store in the lodge where you could buy ice cream and candy and cigarettes and mixer-she began the trek across the sand and up the flight of wooden steps above the sand and the salal bushes. Halfway up she stopped, said, “Mara, you weigh a ton,” and shifted the baby to her other hip. Caitlin banged a stick against the railing.
“Can I have a Fudgsicle? Mother? Can I?”
“We’ll see.”
“Can I please have a Fudgsicle?” “Wait.”
The public phone was beside a bulletin board on the other side of the main hall and across from the door to the dining room. A bingo game had been set up in there, because of the rain.
“Hope he’s still hanging on,” the woman who worked in the store called out. She was unseen now behind her counter.
Pauline, still holding Mara, picked up the dangling receiver and said breathlessly, “Hello?” She was expecting to hear Brian telling her about some delay in Campbell River or asking her what it was she had wanted him to get at the drugstore. It was just the one thing-calamine lotion-so he had not written it down.
“Pauline,” said Jeffrey. “It’s me.”
Mara was bumping and scrambling against Pauline’s side, anxious to get down. Caitlin came along the hall and went into the store, leaving wet sandy footprints. Pauline said, “Just a minute, just a minute.” She let Mara slide down and hurried to close the door that led to the steps. She did not remember telling Jeffrey the name of this place, though she had told him roughly where it was. She heard the woman in the store speaking to Caitlin in a sharper voice than she would use to children whose parents were beside them.
“Did you forget to put your feet under the tap?”
“I’m here,” said Jeffrey. “I didn’t get along well without you. I didn’t get along at all.”
Mara made for the dining room, as if the male voice calling out “Under the-” was a direct invitation to her.
“Here. Where?” said Pauline.
She read the signs that were tacked up on the bulletin board beside the phone.
no person under fourteen years of age not accompanied by adult allowed in boats or canoes. fishing derby.
bake and craft sale, st. bartholomews church. your life is in your hands. palms and cards read. reasonable and accurate. call claire.
“In a motel. In Campbell River.”