The Love of a Good Woman

it.
    “I just wanted you,” Jeffrey said. “I just wanted you in my bed.”
    She said again, weakly, “No.”
    Those words of his kept coming back to her.
I wanted you in my bed.
A half-joking urgency in his voice but also a determination, apracticality, as if “in my bed” meant something more, the bed he spoke of taking on larger, less material dimensions.
    Had she made a great mistake with that refusal? With that reminder of how fenced in she was, in what anybody would call her real life?
    T HE beach was nearly empty—people had got used to its being a rainy day. The sand was too heavy for Caitlin to make a castle or dig an irrigation system—projects she would only undertake with her father, anyway, because she sensed that his interest in them was wholehearted, and Pauline’s was not. She wandered a bit forlornly at the edge of the water. She probably missed the presence of other children, the nameless instant friends and occasional stone-throwing water-kicking enemies, the shrieking and splashing and falling about. A boy a little bigger than she was and apparently all by himself stood knee-deep in the water farther down the beach. If these two could get together it might be all right; the whole beach experience might be retrieved. Pauline couldn’t tell whether Caitlin was now making little splashy runs into the water for his benefit or whether he was watching her with interest or scorn.
    Mara didn’t need company, at least for now. She stumbled towards the water, felt it touch her feet and changed her mind, stopped, looked around, and spotted Pauline. “Paw. Paw,” she said, in happy recognition. “Paw” was what she said for “Pauline,” instead of “Mother” or “Mommy.” Looking around overbalanced her—she sat down half on the sand and half in the water, made a squawk of surprise that turned to an announcement, then by some determined ungraceful maneuvers that involved putting her weight on her hands, she rose to her feet, wavering and triumphant. She had been walking for half a year, but gettingaround on the sand was still a challenge. Now she came back towards Pauline, making some reasonable, casual remarks in her own language.
    “Sand,” said Pauline, holding up a clot of it. “Look. Mara. Sand.”
    Mara corrected her, calling it something else—it sounded like “whap.” Her thick diaper under her plastic pants and her terry-cloth playsuit gave her a fat bottom, and that, along with her plump cheeks and shoulders and her sidelong important expression, made her look like a roguish matron.
    Pauline became aware of someone calling her name. It had been called two or three times, but because the voice was unfamiliar she had not recognized it. She stood up and waved. It was the woman who worked in the store at the lodge. She was leaning over the balcony and calling, “Mrs. Keating. Mrs. Keating? Telephone, Mrs. Keating.”
    Pauline hoisted Mara onto her hip and summoned Caitlin. She and the little boy were aware of each other now—they were both picking up stones from the bottom and flinging them out into the water. At first she didn’t hear Pauline, or pretended not to.
    “Store,” called Pauline. “Caitlin. Store.” When she was sure Caitlin would follow—it was the word “store” that had done it, the reminder of the tiny store in the lodge where you could buy ice cream and candy and cigarettes and mixer—she began the trek across the sand and up the flight of wooden steps above the sand and the salal bushes. Halfway up she stopped, said, “Mara, you weigh a ton,” and shifted the baby to her other hip. Caitlin banged a stick against the railing.
    “Can I have a Fudgsicle? Mother? Can I?”
    “We’ll see.”
    “Can I please have a Fudgsicle?”
    “Wait.”
    The public phone was beside a bulletin board on the other side of the main hall and across from the door to the dining room. A bingo game had been set up in there, because of the rain.
    “Hope he’s still hanging on,” the woman who worked in the store called out. She was unseen now behind her counter.
    Pauline, still holding Mara, picked up the dangling receiver and said breathlessly, “Hello?” She was expecting to hear Brian telling her about some delay in Campbell River or asking her what it was she had wanted him to get at the drugstore. It was just the one thing—calamine lotion—so he had not written it down.
    “Pauline,” said Jeffrey. “It’s me.”
    Mara was bumping and scrambling