The Love of a Good Woman

back and it could look like he just drove in from the road and mistook his way. Like he turned off on the Jutland road, maybe it was dark and he just drove into the water before he knew where he was at. Like he just made a mistake.
    He did. Mr. Willens certainly did make a mistake.
    The trouble was it meant driving out their lane and along the road to the Jutland turn. But nobody lived down there and it was a dead end after the Jutland turn, so just the half mile or so to pray you never met anybody. Then Rupert would get Mr. Willens over in the driver’s seat and push the car right off down the bank into the water. Push the whole works down into the pond. It was going to be a job to do that, but Rupert at least was a strong bugger. Ifhe hadn’t been so strong they wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.
    Rupert had a little trouble getting the car started because he had never driven one like that, but he did, and got turned around and drove off down the lane with Mr. Willens kind of bumping over against him. He had put Mr. Willens’s hat on his head—the hat that had been sitting on the seat of the car.
    Why take his hat off before he came into the house? Not just to be polite but so he could easier get a clutch on her and kiss her. If you could call that kissing, all that pushing up against her with the box still in one hand and the other grabbing on, and sucking away at her with his dribbly old mouth. Sucking and chewing away at her lips and her tongue and pushing himself up at her and the corner of the box sticking into her and digging her behind. She was so surprised and he got such a hold she didn’t know how to get out of it. Pushing and sucking and dribbling and digging into her and hurting her all at the same time. He was a dirty old brute.
    She went and got the Quintuplets cloth where it had blown onto the fence. She looked hard for blood on the steps or any mess on the porch or through the kitchen, but all she found was in the front room, also some on her shoes. She scrubbed up what was on the floor and scrubbed her shoes, which she took off, and not till she had all that done did she see a smear right down her front. How did she come by that? And the same time she saw it she heard a noise that turned her to stone. She heard a car and it was a car she didn’t know and it was coming down the lane.
    She looked through the net curtain and sure enough. A new-looking car and dark green. Her smeared-down front and shoes off and the floor wet. She moved back where she couldn’t be seen, but she couldn’t think of where to hide. The car stopped and a car door opened, but the engine didn’t cut off. She heard the door shutand then the car turned around and she heard the sound of it driving back up the lane. And she heard Lois and Sylvie on the porch.
    It was the teacher’s boyfriend’s car. He picked up the teacher every Friday afternoon, and this was a Friday. So the teacher said to him, Why don’t we give these ones a lift home, they’re the littlest and they got the farthest to go and it looks like it’s going to rain.
    It did rain, too. It had started by the time Rupert got back, walking home along the riverbank. She said, A good thing, it’ll muddy up your tracks where you went to push it over. He said he’d took his shoes off and worked in his sock feet. So you must have got your brains going again, she said.
    Instead of trying to soak the stuff out of that souvenir cloth or the blouse she had on, she decided to burn the both of them in the stove. They made a horrible smell and the smell made her sick. That was the whole beginning of her being sick. That and the paint. After she cleaned up the floor, she could still see where she thought there was a stain, so she got the brown paint left over from when Rupert painted the steps and she painted over the whole floor. That started her throwing up, leaning over and breathing in that paint. And the pains in her back—that was the start of them, too.
    After she got the floor painted she just about quit going into the front room. But one day she thought she had better put some other cloth on that table. It would make things look more normal. If she didn’t, then her sister-in-law was sure to come nosing around and say, Where’s that cloth Mom and Dad brought back the time they went to see the Quints? If she had a different cloth on she could say, Oh, I just felt like a change. But no cloth would look funny.
    So she got a cloth