“Yes.
“By name?”
“I think so.”
“So it’s only a matter of time until everybody in town knows. My God, how can I face it?”
“You have friends.”
“Ron’s friends, and Harry’s. None of my own, not one.”
“There’s still a solution,” Turee said. “If you’ll accept it, if you’ll be reasonable.”
But she turned away, closing off the face of reason as if by a stone door. “I won’t.”
“You haven’t even...”
“Hide behind Harry, that’s your solution?”
“Harry’s willing, I told you that. Don’t underestimate him. He’s a fine man, a generous man.”
“Oh, I know. Good old Harry, always willing to give his last shirt to a friend — or lose it to him in a poker game. Harry’s such a good loser, is that why everyone likes him so much? He loses so gently and gracefully. But he loses. He always misses the boat. Why?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to go any place.”
“Well, I do. And I will. Anything will be better than going on living with Harry, in this house, in this town.”
Her tone was final, and as if for emphasis she picked up her needle again. In and out of the holes of a button her hand moved, quick, precise, without a tremor. Either the pendulum had stopped swinging, or Thelma had let go of it.
Turee rose and crossed the room, awkwardly and painfully. His legs had gone numb and his feet felt as if they were being pierced by a thousand needles, all sharper than the one Thelma was wielding. She looked up and met his questioning gaze. “Stop worrying about me,” she said bluntly. “I’ll be all right as long as I keep busy, keep doing things. Tomorrow I’ll start on the baby’s layette. Everything will be sewn by hand... You’re not leaving, Ralph?”
“It’s getting rather late.”
“I was hoping you’d stay until Harry comes for his clothes. He’s probably seen the papers and he’ll be very upset. He’s terribly emotional about things — friends, home, mother, lost dogs.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Me? I haven’t any friends, and I never had either a home or a mother or owned a dog. Does that answer your question?”
“Not very satisfactorily.”
“How you love to analyze people, Ralph, but please don’t try it on me.”
Turee remembered Harry’s saying similar words early Sunday morning while they were driving from Wiarton back to the lodge: Just don’t start analyzing Thelma. I love her the way she is. Let her have her dreams.
Well, she had them, Turee thought dryly. What a blind fool Harry had been. Not like a husband, but like a too-permissive parent, overly ready to cover up a child’s errors, and eager to accept the most comfortable explanations.
“I’ll make you some tea, Ralph. Perhaps you’d like a sandwich, too?”
“No thanks to both. I’ll wait for Harry, though.”
“That’s good of you.” She picked up the pile of clothes from the chesterfield and rose, a little clumsily, as if she were not yet used to the new proportion of weight in her body. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll finish Harry’s packing.”’
“Where is he going to stay?”
“He told me he’s taking a room at a hotel. I don’t know which one. I didn’t ask.”
“Will he keep on with his job here?”
“I didn’t ask that either.” She paused in the doorway. “I keep telling you, but you still don’t seem to understand. Harry and I are through. He is part of the past. We must both start right now forgetting each other. I’ve made my decision — it wouldn’t be fair to Harry if I kept in touch with him, if I fostered any hope in him that we would get together again. I don’t want to know where he’s living or what he’s doing. I wish him good luck, that’s all. And happiness too.”
“How magnanimous.”
She missed the irony. “I bear no grudge against Harry. Why should I? He did his best.”
After she’d left the room, Turee picked up a magazine, but it was impossible for him to read. He found himself listening to Thelma’s step, on the stairs and along the hall, heavy and uncertain as if she were dragging something behind her. He could hear her moving around in the bedroom directly overhead, opening drawers, closing them, mumbling to herself now and then, muted sounds that disintegrated before they could reach Turee as words.
She’s frightened silly, he thought. If Harry could force himself to take a really firm stand with her, she might be willing to give in, to lean on him. Thelma’s repeated protestations of independence seemed to be covering up a real need to lean. Perhaps the reason she couldn’t yet do it was her fear that Harry might not be able to bear her weight. It was now up to Harry to prove his strength.
The telephone began to ring in the next room and Thelma came downstairs to answer it, quite slowly, as if she knew in advance that the call couldn’t be important, all the important things had already happened to her.
“Hello... Yes, this is Mrs. Bream... Is he hurt?... Oh, I see... No, I can’t come myself, it’s impossible. I’ll see if I can get somebody else... Thank you for telling me. Good-bye.”
Turee met her at the door of the living room. “Harry’s been injured?”
“Not badly. He jammed the back of a street car on College Avenue and he has a few head cuts. He’s in the emergency ward at Toronto General. They’re going to keep him there overnight.”
“Why, if it’s nothing serious?”
“Why?” The corners of her mouth twisted in bitterness. “Because he’s too drunk to go anywhere.”
Fifteen
The curtained cubicle was so small that Turee barely had room to stand beside the bed. Harry lay on his back, his eyes closed, his entire head bandaged very tightly, so that the skin of his forehead had contracted into a petulant frown.
“Harry...”
“He’s out,” the nurse said. She was a type Turee recognized, stout, middle-aged, efficient, with a false front of maternality that wouldn’t deceive a child but had fooled many an adult. She added, “He talks a blue streak, then passes out, and a minute later he’s talking again.”
“I thought he was only slightly hurt. All those bandages...”
“They don’t mean anything. Head cuts bleed a lot so the doctor usually applies a pressure bandage for a day or two in case of hemorrhage. Actually he’s only got eleven stitches. He’ll suffer more from the hangover. And other things.”
“Such as?”
“As soon as he’s released from here they’ll take him down and book him for drunk driving. He’ll get a stiff fine. Too bad, him with no job and his wife pregnant. Maybe that’s why he did it.”
“Did what?”
“Drank so much. Some men get all emotional over their first baby. I guess it strains their sense of responsibility. Do you want to stay here with him for a while?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I have things to do. If he gets rambunctious, just give me a buzz.”
“All right.”
“I’m Miss Hutchins.”
Turee stood in silence at the foot of the bed, observing the differences that lack of consciousness emphasized. Harry’s affability seemed to be unmasked as weakness, his urge to please as anxiety. And this is what Thelma sees, he thought, Harry with his guards down. This is what she based her decision on. She can’t afford to lean on a straw.
“Harry.”
Harry shook his head back and forth on the pillow as if he was trying to shake off the sound of his own name nagging him back into a world he wanted to forget.
“It’s Ralph, Harry. You don’t have to talk. I just want you to know I’m here.”
“Thelma?”
“She’s all right. She’s at home. The next door neighbor is staying with her, a Mrs. Mal — somebody.”
“My head hurts. Wanna sit up.”