Pappy must have returned very late last night, while Marceline and I were asleep. Yet there must be some sort of supernatural force in The House, because I woke two hours early and I knew that she was home. When I came around the corner to her room with the coffee percolator in my hand, her door was wide open.
She was sitting at the table, looked up at me and smiled. Oh, so much better than she had looked when she went away! I hugged her and kissed her, poured both of us coffee, sat down. There were sheets of paper spread on the table, some blank, some with a few words written on them in purple ink.
“Ezra Pound—another Ezra!—had huge handwriting,” she said. “I wrote to him while he was in jail, and he answered me. Isn’t that amazing? I must show you his letter—written in pencil on a page torn out of an exercise book. His wonderful poetry! I’ve been trying to write a poem, but I can’t find the right words.”
“You will, later. How was it?”
She didn’t dodge the question. “Not too bad. I had a post-operative haemorrhage that kept me longer than usual. They treated me as if I had a fibroid tumour—that was the diagnosis on my chart. It’s a very well-run place. I had a private room, and they don’t let you see any of the other patients—very prudent. The food was good, and they were sympathetic to my going off meat. A dietician came and explained to me that I’d have to balance my food very carefully to get all the necessary amino acids—eggs, cheeses, nuts. So in future you won’t be able to rouse on me, Harriet, I’ll be eating sensibly.”
All this was spoken in a gentle voice that utterly lacked any kind of vitality.
“Harriet,” she said suddenly, “do you ever feel as if you’re nailed to the same spot by one foot only, going round and round?”
“Of late, often,” I said wryly.
“I’m so tired of going round and round.”
I swallowed, tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t open up her wounds, yet might comfort her. In the end I just sat and looked at her, my eyes full of tears.
“Can you teach?” she asked.
“Teach? Me? Teach what?”
“I want to sit for the nurses’ entrance examination, but I lack even elementary schooling. Funny, I can read and write like a real author, yet I can’t analyse or parse a sentence, I can’t add or subtract or multiply or divide beyond kindergarten level. But I’m fed up with being an aide. I want to do nursing,” she said.
What a relief! Her words didn’t indicate a return to those hectic, men-by-the-dozen weekends. Ezra may have almost killed her in one way, but in another he seemed to be freeing her.
I told her I’d try, suggested that she go and see Sister Tutor at Queens for an idea of what the examination was going to demand.
“Do you think Duncan would give me a reference?” she asked.
“I’m quite sure he’d leap at the chance, Pappy.”
She drew a breath, sighed. “Did you know that he offered to support me and my child? To give me enough money not to need to work, to educate it properly?”
Oh, Duncan! How good and kind you are, and how cruel I am! “No,” I said, “he didn’t tell me.”
“It upset him dreadfully when I refused. He didn’t understand.”
“I don’t either,” I said.
“It’s the father’s place to care for his child and its mother. If he isn’t willing to honour his moral and ethical obligations, no other man can take his place. If another man did, then in a court of law, lawyers could prove that that man was the father.”
“The Law is a ass,” I said, disgusted.
“I need to thank Duncan for everything he’s done. Ask him to visit me next time he’s here, please, Harriet?”
“You’ll have to leave a note in his box at Queens. I broke it off with Duncan,” I said.
That seemed to upset her more than dealing with her fibroid had. Nor could she grasp why I’d sent him packing. To her, I’d betrayed him, the finest man in the world. I didn’t try to explain my side of it. Why upset her even more?