After the Fire Read online

  Sally was asleep, but Sarah sat by the fire smoking a joint. The smell gave Karen an instant headache, which triggered her worst memories of social failures in Peggy’s world.

  Sarah offered her a toke. Karen shook her head.

  “You don’t, do you?” Sarah said quietly. “I forgot.”

  “Why should you remember?”

  “I would have made friends if you’d let me, you know,” Sarah said, her tone mildly reproachful. “I always used to admire you. Maybe envy’s a better word.”

  “Me?”

  “You and Peggy were together longer than anyone I knew. People get tired of me.”

  “Peggy got tired of me,” Karen said.

  “She didn’t,” Sarah said. “You could see through her, and she couldn’t stand it.”

  “That’s not true. Peggy’s a better person than most people give her credit for.”

  “She said the only reason you stayed for eight years was that she paid you to do it.”

  “That’s not true!” Karen cried.

  Sally stirred and opened her eyes. “You’re home. Oh, Sarah, do get rid of that stinking thing. That’s why I’ve been having such horrible dreams,”

  “It’s getting harder and harder to find friends with bad habits,” Sarah said, butting her joint.

  “I’ve got to sleep,” Karen said.

  But she couldn’t. She didn’t trust Sarah’s judgment, but her view of what had happened confronted Karen with the fact that she had no view of her own. She had simply accepted Peggy’s. What else could she have done? She could hardly have said, “I am not boring!” It hadn’t occurred to her to ask, “Do you really mean that?” She had seen Peggy willfully hurt other people with dismissive judgments but always as a defense against an attack she saw, or thought she saw, coming. Could she really have thought that Karen stayed on only for the free ride? Might Karen have simply gone out and found a job? Peggy hadn’t given her that option. Anyway, she would have hated it. Peggy needed to feel generous. She needed to feel in control.

  I didn’t see through her, Karen thought. I didn’t even see her clearly. Karen did not want to go over it all again now. It was over, and Peggy wasn’t anyone she needed to understand. She needed only to understand herself, to know that she would never again, under any circumstances, be dependent either financially or emotionally on anyone. Sally and Sarah would be gone tomorrow. For the first time the idea of being alone was a relief.

  Henrietta awoke both exhausted and restless after a day in town. Increasingly often now, she had a sense of living her life on hold, “spinning my wheels” was Hart Jr.’s expression for it; yet why it should be so she didn’t understand. She had no great plans in abeyance. Living life from day to day was what she had always done. It was hard to see Hart in his present state, but he was well looked after, and it was a job beyond her physical strength. She did not look forward to his death, for, even as he was, he was her anchor. She had no appetite for the drift that freedom would bring.

  But if there really was a plan to this life, these last years of Hart’s life might have better been allocated to Peter. Yet Peter might have been badly damaged rather than killed, and so perhaps Hart was living out a limbo his son had been spared. If you could just know that, if you could see the use, then not so much of life would seem such a terrible waste. Henrietta could not quite convince herself. Suffering so isolated people that it was hard to believe they might be doing it for each other. Henrietta could certainly understand why you’d want to believe that.

  I’m like a three-year-old, she thought as she got dressed, still asking why, why, why of God, a bored grown-up whose attention is almost impossible to get.

  When she remembered Red was due this morning, her tiredness lifted. She was always better off with her attention focused on someone else.

  The puppy bolted through the door ahead of Red, nails clattering across the linoleum of the kitchen floor, eager and then suddenly cautious, backing up against Red’s legs.

  “This is Blackie,” Red said. “I had to bring her, but I’ll tie her up outside.”

  “I’ve heard about you,” Henrietta said, offering her hand to the puppy to sniff and then to lick, while Red refastened her leash.

  “I just more or less have to put up with her for another month until she’s old enough to learn to behave,” Red said.

  There was a faint blush of color under Red’s usually very pale skin. Scarlet, Henrietta suddenly remembered and was surprised at how the name didn’t suit Red so much as describe some new life in her face, a pilot light glowing that hadn’t been there before.

  “What made you decide to get a dog?” Henrietta asked when Red came back from tying Blackie up.

  “For company,” Red said, “and I want her to be a watchdog, too.”

  Red’s answer to putting her money in the bank? Often Red took Henrietta’s suggestions and turned them to her own purposes.

  The puppy began to bark, outraged at being shut out and tied up. Red frowned.

  “She needs a shoe,” Henrietta decided.

  She went to Hart’s closet. She’d thrown out all his old gardening clothes, but she had not been able to get rid of clothes he might wear into town; yet going to the theater or a concert was as much beyond him as mowing the lawn. She ought to decide what he should be buried in and dispose of the rest. She took one of his oldest black dress shoes.

  “Oh,” Red said, “isn’t there an old slipper?”

  “He might still need those,” Henrietta said.

  “But somebody else could get wear out of this.”

  “Just this pair,” Henrietta said, “I’d rather give to the puppy to chew. I’m sure Hart would, too.”

  Reluctantly, Red took the shoe out to her indignant dog.

  “Now don’t get any fancy ideas,” Henrietta heard her say, “about chewing anything else as good as this.”

  For the moment, Blackie was pacified. The shoe was substantial enough to be a friend or an enemy or a teething comfort.

  Henrietta watched Red as she came back inside. “You know, you’re looking awfully well these days. I think you’re finally putting some flesh on those bones.”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’m pregnant.”

  Of course she was. The moment she said it, Henrietta greeted the fact as something she already knew, but she didn’t know what to make of it.

  “I want to be,” Red said. “I want a baby.”

  “And the father, does he …”

  “I want to have it just by myself,” Red said. “I can take care of it.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Henrietta said. “Have you been to see a doctor?”

  “I don’t want to be fussed at about it,” Red said firmly. “I know what to do.”

  “You get a puppy.”

  Red grinned. “Partly. By the time the baby’s born, Blackie will be old enough to help.”

  “Dogs can be jealous of babies.”

  “That’s why I got a bitch. They’re less likely to be, and I can train her.”

  Only when Red had turned her attention to her chores did the questions and concerns clamor in Henrietta’s head. The baby’s illegitimacy concerned her socially rather than morally. How would Red’s other employers react? Milly, Henrietta supposed, would enjoy being intolerant, but she was about to need Red’s help rather badly, and Red might keep her pregnancy from her for a while. About Miss James Henrietta wasn’t as sure. She might take it in her stride, or she might be grievously disappointed in a young person whose independence she identified with and admired. Sadie no sooner made a surprising entry into Henrietta’s mind than Henrietta knew why she was there.

  It was Dickie’s baby! How could Red not even have bothered to go to his funeral? Had he forced her? Surely, if she’d been raped, Red wouldn’t want the child. Sadie … she’d be sure to know. Would she blame Red the more or could she be glad of a grandchild? Henrietta couldn’t imagine Red tolerating such a grandmother for her child.

 
The whole island would know. How did Red think she could handle all that disapproval, all those claims? By ignoring them, of course, by isolating herself and the child, with a dog for a companion! If only Red would talk like an ordinary human being, share her fears, her plans, Henrietta might be able to help her, to defend her against criticism, Well, if Henrietta didn’t know it was Dickie’s baby, she couldn’t say, and that would be Red’s logic. Not liking to lie herself, she wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it for her.

  At lunch, Red was distant, and Henrietta didn’t try to raise the topic of her pregnancy again though she was bursting with advice about diet and exercise. She had to remind herself that, just because her pregnancies had been like illnesses, there was no reason to assume Red’s would be. She didn’t drink or smoke—she said there were less expensive ways to kill yourself. When Henrietta offered her a second helping, Red raised a warning eyebrow and then accepted.

  “I’m going to take care of myself,” Red said then. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Will you promise me, if you need anything, you’ll say?”

  Red nodded.

  “Will you let me help get things ready for the baby?”

  “My mother whored to keep me in good clothes,” Red said. “This is going to be a thrift shop baby.”

  “Is she still alive, your mother?” Henrietta asked cautiously.

  “She’s in jail,” Red said.

  “And your father?”

  “She never said,” Red replied. “She probably didn’t know.”

  Henrietta could not tell what emotion Red masked with that indifference of tone. These were facts Henrietta had long since supposed, and so they came as no shock to her. Her only concern was to treat this fragile confidence in a way that would encourage Red to say anything she needed to.

  “I turned eighteen last fall,” Red said. “Nobody can touch me.”

  Milly, having seen her gynecologist to tell him she was finally resigned to the operation, was irritated to discover that, because it was elective surgery, she would have to wait for a hospital bed. Forbes, with all his real estate deals, had always thrived on the policies of the Social Credit government, and, while Milly thrived with him, she supported the Bennett dynasty, though she had always wished they all looked less like petty criminals. Now that she lived in genteel poverty and couldn’t bribe her way to the front of the line, she was less sympathetic with the budget cuts which had created the shortage of hospital beds.

  “I don’t know when,” she had to tell her daughter when she phoned.

  “How can it be elective surgery?” Bonnie demanded.

  She didn’t come right out and accuse her mother of lying, and anyhow Milly hadn’t lied. She had simply said “tumors” and let Bonnie suppose what she would. But Bonnie was losing her original sense of urgency and complaining about difficulty at work if she didn’t know when her mother would need her.

  “Maybe you should ask Martin,” Bonnie said. “He’s not that far away.”

  “What earthly good would Martin be to me?” Milly demanded. “Anyway, men can’t ask leave for their mothers’ hysterectomies.”

  “The whole economic system would be in less danger of coming to a halt if Martin took a few days off than if I did,” Bonnie said.

  “It’s not his place,” Milly replied.

  “You begin to sound like a R.EA.L. woman!”

  “When wasn’t I a real woman?” Milly demanded.

  “I mean R, period, E, period—oh, never mind. Just let me know as soon as you can.”

  “Will your father pay for your ticket?”

  “Yes. And he said he’d send roses,” Bonnie said.

  If he does, I’ll send him my womb in a jar, Milly thought, but she didn’t say so. Both Martin and Bonnie had made it clear how little patience they had for her hostile complaints about their father.

  “Of course he’s a bastard, Mother,” Martin had said to her. “We all know that, but your pain gets tedious.”

  “It’s tedious to me, too,” Milly had snapped.

  The thought of Martin at her hospital bed did not inspire confidence.

  Bonnie, though she did what she could to hide it, had a gentle streak. Milly was surprised when she had left home to work rather than to get married. She hadn’t seemed to Milly the adventuresome girl she apparently was, working for a travel agent in order to get trips to all sorts of exotic places which were only old brochures in the lost future of Milly’s life. Maybe Bonnie had a point in seeing the world while she could. Milly was more envious than glad for her. Whoever thought living through your children could be a pleasure? Not even Henrietta seemed to, though no doubt she’d pay lip service to the idea.

  Milly picked up the phone again and dialed Henrietta.

  Red answered the phone and said, “She’s resting.”

  “Well, she doesn’t sleep!” Milly protested.

  Henrietta picked up the phone in her bedroom and said, “It’s all right, Red.”

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Milly said, “but I’ve just been talking to Bonnie. Now that the damned doctor can’t set a date, she’s not so sure she can get off work.”

  “What about your other daughter?” Henrietta asked.

  “I have no idea where she is,” Milly said flatly. “Nobody does.”

  “Oh, Milly, I am sorry. Should I have known that?”

  “It’s not something I remind myself of if I can help it,” Milly answered.

  “We can manage, just ourselves, if we have to,” Henrietta reassured her.

  Neither of Karen’s parents corresponded with her often. Peculiarly, though they had been separated for years, their letters to her nearly always arrived within a day or two of each other. Karen wondered if her parents communicated with each other about her, their one child who had not made them one flesh but was a symbol of the alien each felt in the other. Her father professed pleasure in her blue eyes, but he was clearly shocked, again and again, to find them in his daughter’s face. Her mother never commented on the color of her daughter’s skin. Of her hair, her mother had said only that she was lucky the fashion now was straight.

  Their two letters had been in her pocket all day, and Karen determined to use her evening off at home answering them. She also wanted this evening to repossess her cottage. She would build a fire for herself and find good music on the radio. Then she would cook herself a real meal and eat it from a plate at the table. She wondered if people like Henrietta and Miss James ever got into the habit of eating things straight from the pot or frying pan. It would not comfort her to think so. She imagined each of them setting standards for herself to be maintained in company or in solitude. And that was what Karen intended to do.

  Her mother’s letter came from a health spa in Mexico. As far as Karen could tell, her mother hadn’t had a fixed address for the last eighteen years. Sometimes her address was a hotel, usually in a large city, but for months of every year she was at one health resort or another in Europe, in the States, in Mexico. She never wrote of being ill, but she sometimes said she was feeling better. Karen wondered if she suffered from some kind of nervous disorder or was a secret drinker. Every two or three years her father presented Karen with a plane ticket and a letter of credit to visit her mother, once in London, once in New York, once in San Francisco. He spoke of them as trips to broaden her experience of the world rather than to maintain a relationship with her mother. Karen wondered if he actually chose the places and sent her mother to them for that purpose.

  Karen supposed her father still supported her mother, but maybe she had money of her own. Karen knew nothing of her maternal grandparents. Perhaps they were dead, or perhaps they had disowned their daughter for marrying out of her own race. All such questions went out of Karen’s head in the presence of her impersonal and timid little mother. The simplest communication was so awkward and embarrassing that neither of them attempted more than agreeing on the activities of the day.

  Her mother’s letters were muc
h easier to deal with. She had a certain flair for describing the places she was in, and there were even occasional flashes of wit. The mother of those letters could have been a charming companion, and Karen sometimes indulged in the fantasy that her mother really was this entertaining and amusing person rather than the woman who had infected Karen with her own tense and defensive shyness.

  In her letters to her mother, Karen was aware of creating the same sort of fantasy daughter. She saved up little vignettes from the pub and from the dock without ever making it clear that she actually worked in these places. For her mother’s benefit she had begun to learn the names of the trees and flowers native to the island, of the sea and shore birds. She took a certain tender pleasure in describing a very shy pair of variegated thrushes that hid in the ferns under the great cedar trees at the head of her path all through the winter. They were as large as robins but prettier with their flashes of black and white and orangy red.

  Writing to her father was another matter. He was her Parent, all too real and quite articulate in person or on paper. He had been being patient with her for the last nine years, waiting for her to decide what she was going to do with her life. Of her relationship with Peggy he had said, “If you’re going to be someone’s live-in help, you might as well come home. I could put you to better and more interesting use.” At that time he had just accepted a college presidency in Ontario and was feeling the lack of a wife. When Karen had come to the island and found first one job and then two, he said, “You go out there to declare your independence and immediately become a slave.” He wanted her to accept the real bondage of graduate school to make something useful of herself. He was a job snob for whom simply working for a living was not good enough.

  To be fair to him, once he had passed judgment on whatever she was doing, he didn’t exert pressure on her again. He was even on occasion unexpectedly supportive. When she had told him she wouldn’t marry ever, he said, “Why should you? Very few people are suited to it.” It was an attitude which rationalized his own life, but it was convenient for Karen, too. She assumed her father was aware of the nature of her relationship with Peggy and simply chose not to discuss it.