The Young in One Another's Arms Read online

  “He might have thought it up in church. He might have read it in one of those penny dreadfuls of his. You can blame the city hall, the police, Gladdy, Tom, me. I suppose Mrs. Steele has thought for a long time he shouldn’t have been born. Even Clara can think that about Hal.”

  “Is it all a way not to blame Willard himself?” Mavis asked. “He could have killed Tom.”

  Ruth was shocked at the hard anger in Mavis’ voice.

  “Well, what else could the police have done?” Mavis asked, then added quickly, “I’m sorry, Ruth. It must be awful for you, and there’s no point in talking about it, but Gladdy’s so wrongheaded and Tom’s so unrealistic that something like this could get either one of them killed.”

  “It’s hard to be so frightened, I know,” Ruth said.

  “Sometimes I wish I just didn’t care,” Mavis said.

  For Ruth, the caring she had tried to wish away herself, the terrible vulnerability of it, was now not armor so much as deep distraction. As the obsession of events began again in her head, she could force her concern for any one of them between her and the honor. She did not know how, with fifty thousand dollars, she could invent a world for them all to live in again. She had no conviction that it would work, but she knew, even if she had to ask Hal for help, they all had to get out.

  Boy was still asleep when the others left in the morning, Gladys to be dropped at work, Ruth at the hospital, before Mavis went to meet Mrs. Steele.

  “He won’t be as groggy today,” Gladys said. “I’ll catch the bus down after work, and you can meet me there at dinnertime.”

  She kissed them both before she got out of the car.

  “She’s scheduled for her abortion day after tomorrow,” Mavis said quietly.

  “Is she going to go through with it?”

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t said anything about it.”

  “I’m going to tell Tom this morning that I’ll be ready to talk business with him anytime he is.”

  “Business?”

  “Ever since I sold the house, he’s been after me to go into business with him, and now that Willard’s gone …”

  They were driving down Broadway, just a few blocks from the house, and the fear of the traffic was building in Ruth again.

  “What kind of business?” Mavis asked.

  “He was thinking of a café in the Gulf Islands.”

  “I can’t see Gladdy and me as waitresses,” Mavis said wryly, “though Gladdy thinks we’ll be lucky to have any sort of job at all in another six months.”

  “When does your grant run out?”

  “In May, and surely I’ll have a job by then,” Mavis said, “but Gladdy thinks they’ll be cutting back staff by then, and she’ll be the first to go. It’s a shame. She’s the best they’ve got.”

  Mavis stopped in front of the main entrance of the hospital.

  “I’ll be out here at eleven-thirty,” Ruth said.

  Tom’s color was reassuring, and, though Ruth was aware and concerned about his weakness, she had to be careful not to reach out to his returning strength.

  “We mustn’t talk a lot,” she said against his excitement at her proposal. “There’s plenty of time.”

  Back on the steps, waiting for Mavis and Mrs. Steele, Ruth found herself wondering if she had made Willard face the problem of the house on his own, if she had followed her desire rather than her duty, might he still be alive, settled into some other routine of minimal comfort? The responsibility for what he had done was such a heavy, meaningless burden for them all. Ruth read it in Mrs. Steele’s face the moment they met, so clearly the mother of the man, a face as revealing in this backward movie of life as Hal’s. But Mrs. Steele looked as Willard would have looked if he’d had all his wits about him, intelligent enough to suffer what was really happening.

  “Is he really going to be all right?” was her first question. Reassured that Tom was healing, she asked, “Should I go to see him? I want him to know how sorry I am. I want him to know if there’s anything I can do … I have a little set aside. I never knew when Willard might need … he’s my only one. You were always so good to him. I’ve always wanted to thank you. I couldn’t … I just couldn’t handle him once he was grown, but I didn’t think he’d ever …”

  From the brace of Mavis’ shoulders, Ruth could tell that this monologue had gone on ever since Mrs. Steele’s arrival. It took Ruth a few minutes to adjust to the flow of articulate feeling coming from a face so reminiscent of Willard’s.

  “He had such a hard time expressing himself. Oh, I knew he was upset when he was at home, but he couldn’t say anything about it, more than what a troubled world it was. I never thought he’d do anyone harm … not that. But he wasn’t normal … ever. You do what you can. It’s awful. And you were so kind to him, taking him with you like that …”

  “I’m sure he was trying to help me,” Ruth said.

  “If I’d let him stay home … he didn’t really want to go back after Christmas. I knew that, but I made him go. I had to force him sometimes. I had to try to make him have a life of his own, some kind of life.”

  Though the car was claustrophobic with her distress, it was obvious, that they couldn’t go into a public place for lunch. Mavis took them to the White Spot drive-in, and they sat chinning themselves on the high narrow trays, the food they had ordered nearly untouched.

  “It’s so hard to know what’s right,” Mrs. Steele was saying. “You do what you can, don’t you? And you try to believe that you do. I tried to be responsible. I wanted him to have what life he could, and he seemed all right. You were so kind to him. How could he have done such a thing?”

  “It was an accident, Mrs. Steele. He was trying to do something he thought was right. Nobody’s to blame,” Ruth said firmly, and she met Mavis’ eyes as she said it.

  “He should never have been born,” Mrs. Steele said, weeping.

  “That’s nonsense,” Mavis said with gruff kindness, “unless it’s true of us all.”

  Against her vow of yesterday that she’d never go back into that apartment again, Ruth insisted on accompanying Mavis and Mrs. Steele. She did not have to explain that the police had already been through Willard’s things, looking for esoteric or political motives for a simple stubborn gesture against change and loss.

  “What a lovely place!” Mrs. Steele exclaimed. “What a beautiful view! Now, why couldn’t he be happy with this?”

  “It was lonely for us both,” Ruth said.

  Mavis was folding up the tea cart and putting the clamps in a paper bag.

  “I don’t know what to do with any of this. Could Tom use any of these clothes?”

  Ruth shook her head. “We can put them in boxes and call the Salvation Army if you like. That’s what I did with my daughter’s clothes … finally.”

  Mrs. Steele was crying in a grief with so much shame in it that she obviously did not know herself whether she was burdened or relieved. Mavis stood in the doorway watching her as if it were a performance in a film rather than something taking place in the same room. Her detachment irritated and troubled Ruth. Was she imagining her own death and her mother’s ambivalent sorrow?

  “Help me,” Ruth said quietly, startling Mavis into activity.

  Finally they were able to deposit Mrs. Steele at the railway station to supervise the loading of Willard’s coffin onto the train.

  “I need a drink,” Mavis said.

  Perhaps the only choice she had was anger, and it did relieve Ruth of the necessity of comforting her, but Ruth wanted to get Mavis back into a human circle where she had to care whether she wanted to or not.

  “Let’s wait until we get home.”

  Gladys was in the main lobby of the hospital and met them as they came in the door.

  “Don’t go up now. He’s tired,” she said.

  “Is anything wrong?” Mavis asked.

  “No, really, he’s all right. Stew was in to see him, too, and he’s just tired.”

  “We all a
re,” Ruth said.

  Anticipating that, Boy had a welcoming fire burning and dinner ready to put on the table. Only Ruth and Mavis wanted a drink. Boy, who had already eaten, wanted to be off, and Gladys wanted to get out of her teaching clothes.

  “I suppose,” Mavis said, after a couple of silent sips of whiskey, “he was trying to talk her into having the baby.”

  Ruth put down her drink and absently stroked Coon Dog, who lay at her feet, his head across her shoes.

  “I guess he misses Tom,” Mavis said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Trying not to,” Ruth admitted.

  Gladys came in and joined them by the fire. Though her face was pale and rather puffy, the languor of her body in the soft robe gave Ruth easing pleasure. The kitten jumped up, stretched, and climbed to Gladys’ shoulder, where it began to chew a strand of her hair.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just sleep for a week and wake up to everything solved?” Gladys asked with a sigh.

  “It would take longer than a week,” Mavis said, “or we should all have slept through the last three days.”

  “I’m hungry,” Ruth said, surprised. “I guess we didn’t really have lunch.”

  “I’d rather drink my dinner.”

  “Well, you’re not going to,” Gladys said, asserting herself suddenly by taking possession of the bottle. “Alcoholics are boring.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My sister, the one with the five kids, is a drunk.”

  “The one doesn’t necessarily follow the other,” Mavis said, following Gladys out into the kitchen.

  I don’t know what you ought to do, Gladdy. There’s no wisdom in me. Today I wondered if the unwanted ones wore out more quickly like a badly made pair of shoes, the damage done even before life surprises you into joy or regret, and, if that were so, you shouldn’t have this one, the womb already become a cell for the condemned, who’d have to come into the world only by means of a pardon, being forgiven instead of given life. But that’s all nonsense. I didn’t shorten my child’s life. I am not guilty of all the grief I feel, and there’s no wisdom in that either. There’s only fear and anger.

  “Come eat,” Mavis said.

  Gladys only flirted with the subject through dinner, wanting to know who ever coined the term “nuclear family,” wondering if Willard was a victim of genetics or brain damage or childhood illness, thinking maybe she’d like to work in a gas station if she lost her job, speculating about the toilet training of the world’s leaders.

  “How can we be serious about anything if we don’t understand anything?” she demanded.

  “Simple,” Mavis said, “people are seriously silly.”

  “I’m trying not to be, Mavis,” Gladdy shouted, “but I don’t think having an abortion is like Willard’s shooting Tom!”

  “Did he say that?” Mavis asked, shocked.

  “No, I said it,” Gladys admitted. “Everything’s so fucking unreal and super-meaningful.”

  “Talk about it,” Ruth said.

  “I don’t want to be scared or bullied into having a kid,” Gladys said earnestly. “And I don’t want to kill anything either. I guess it’s just too fucking awful that the first really revolutionary act of my life would be to kill Tom’s child. It does seem about as sensible as Willard’s trying to kill Tom, and I probably talked him into that. I can feel so guilty and confused about that, I think the baby’s got to be born now because I killed Willard. And that’s just fucking stupid. It’s all crazy.”

  “What did Tom say?”

  “He said we could just go ahead and have it and love it, and was that really so hard to imagine? I don’t think for Tom a baby’s all that different from a puppy, you know? A bit more responsibility for a while, but then it grows up and leaves home.”

  “What is so hard about loving a baby?” Mavis asked.

  “Then why don’t you have it?” Gladys demanded.

  “Easy,” Ruth said, back in the familiar role of referee.

  “Look,” Mavis said, stung to anger, “we’ve had this argument about twenty-five thousand times in the last three weeks, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Tom’s being hurt or Willard’s being dead, but I’ll tell you this, if Tom were the one to be buried, you’d have the baby, and I don’t see why Tom alive is less important than Tom dead.”

  “Would I?” Gladys asked.

  “Yes, you would! I’m going to bed.”

  Gladys sat, staring at her hands. Then she looked up at Ruth, who smiled at her.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” Gladdy said, “because the only way I can see to do it is if we all have this baby. If there’s no other solution, it’s got to stop being a problem, right?”

  “That sort of a problem anyway,” Ruth said. “Now, let’s all get some sleep.”

  “Yes,” Gladys said. “I’ll just say good night to Mavis.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The farmhouse was neither large nor convenient enough for Clara to join them there. Once Tom had come home from the hospital, his convalescence was all that prevented them from looking for a place where they could all be together again. The chief debate, as they studied the ads, was where to look.

  “Why are you so fixed on an island?” Gladys demanded of Tom.

  “Why are you so set against an island?”

  “Answer both questions,” Ruth said.

  For Tom the isolation and definition of an island were its advantages. Urban sprawl might not be permanently daunted by the twenty-mile barrier of water, but it could be postponed. The very fragility of an island, with its clear limits of fresh water, of good growing soil, made people live more thoughtfully in their environment, perhaps more thoughtfully with each other as well. Oh, Tom knew about small-town pettiness and gossip; he’d grown up with it, but he also knew about small-town interdependence which required kindness and resourcefulness. And the Gulf Islands were not like small towns of homogeneous culture. Very different sorts of people chose to live there.

  “With one thing in common,” Gladys said. “They’re all dropouts.”

  Tom argued that there was just as much opportunity to be responsible in a small community as in a large one, perhaps more, since the scale was still human.

  “That’s the only thing that worries me,” Boy confessed. “I don’t expect there’s much choice in steam baths over there.”

  “You might find a friend instead,” Mavis suggested.

  “I got friends, Mavis, and I got a bias against mixing lust with other pleasures. It gets complicated.”

  Mavis did not pursue that argument. She sat at the edge of most of the discussions, too intent to be detached but making it clear that she held herself and her own life in reserve. She still hoped that a teaching job would insure that she was, at most, only a summer member of the community.

  Boy supposed that, for the sake of his friends, he could combine their need for mainland supplies with his need for sexual simplicity. When Clara was consulted, she had no objection to the distance from hospitals.

  “At my age, you don’t worry about dying; you worry about being kept alive.”

  So Gladys was the only one who continued to resist the idea. Tom had enough sense not to use her pregnancy as a weapon in the argument. Finally Gladys used it herself against herself.

  “I guess I won’t be marching in demonstrations for a while,” she said, “until whoever this is can walk anyway, and we aren’t talking about the rest of our lives, are we?”

  Tom didn’t answer.

  “Even if we are,” Ruth said, “we don’t have much real say even about day after tomorrow.”

  No one took issue with that view now, not even Gladys. They had all been too much wrenched out of themselves for any naïve confidence. Still, on the day after tomorrow, they were all together on the deck of the Gulf Island ferry as planned, looking out at the silhouette of Galiano Island.

  “About sixteen miles long and a mile wide,” Tom was saying, “except at the fa
t southern tip. Macmillan Bloedel owns about seventy percent of the island in tree farms.”

  “Don’t object,” Mavis said to Gladys, who was about to. “It means you have a capitalist enemy right on your doorstep. You don’t even have to go to the mainland when you’re looking for a fight.”

  “Don’t seem quite fair to fight with trees,” Boy said. “You know, I half expect the waters to part so that we can just walk the rest of the way.”

  He expressed an excitement, a sense of extraordinary purpose they were all experiencing, even Ruth, for whom the beautiful day, the escort of sea gulls, and the ferry horn which sounded three short and one long blasts for landing were simple omens of hope. It was a moment in which she felt truly innocent of all that had happened, blessed with the present.

  “We have to go down to the car,” Mavis said.

  Coon Dog barked joyfully at them and made it more difficult to crowd five people into Mavis’ Volkswagen.

  “What we need is a bus,” Mavis grumbled, but a laughing shove and hug from Gladys made her grin.

  “I seen them ads for bugs floating on the water,” Boy said. “But you just drive right out onto dry land, hear?”

  The ferry jarred up against the pilings, and then slowly maneuvered into place. The sign GALIANO ISLAND—STURDIES BAY arched over the dock, and a tattered British Columbia flag snapped in the late April breeze. The ramp was lowered, and they were driving up onto land from the narrow dock to a narrow country road.

  “The real estate office is the first turn on your left,” Tom directed.

  They had come to look at the café, which still had not found a buyer, probably because anyone willing to work long hours needed more reward than the thin trade the winter island could offer. Even in summer, people arrived on the island to visit friends or hike for the day, bringing their food with them.

  The kitchen was well equipped, and there were the beginnings of an outdoor patio. The indoor eating space was drab and dark.

  “But we could make something of it,” Tom said, “a driftwood counter and stools here …”

  “And get rid of those curtains,” Mavis said. “Maybe even open up that whole wall to light …”