The Progress of Love

with masking tape and paper), and when the primer was dry, they had to be scuffed off with a copper pad and cleaned again with a wax-and-grease remover. Ross had all this planned out.
    They worked all morning and then all afternoon. Glenna made hamburgers for lunch. When Colin told her he couldn’t do the kitchen ceiling because the panels hadn’t come, she said he couldn’t have worked on the kitchen anyway, because she had to make a dessert.
    Ross went uptown and bought a touch-up gun and some metallic charcoal paint, as well as Armor-All for the tires. This was a good idea—the touch-up gun made it a lot easier to get into the recesses of the wheels.
    Nancy arrived about the middle of the afternoon, driving her dinky little Chevette and wearing a strange new outfit—rather long, looseshorts and a top that was like a bag with holes cut for the head and arms, the whole thing dirt-colored and held at the waist with a long raggedy purple sash. Nancy had been brought in that year to teach French from kindergarten to Grade 8, that being the new requirement. She was a rangy, pale, flat-chested girl with frizzy, corn-yellow hair and an intelligent, mournful face. Colin found her likable and disturbing. She came around like an old friend, bringing her own beer and her own music. She chattered to Lynnette, and had a made-up name for her—Winnie-Winnie. But whose old friend was she? Before last September, none of them had ever set eyes on her. She was in her early thirties, had lived with three different men, and did not think she would ever marry. The first time she met Sylvia and Eddy, she told them about the three men and about the drugs she had taken. Sylvia egged her on, of course. Eddy didn’t know what she was talking about, and when she mentioned acid, he may have thought she was referring to battery acid. She told you how she felt every time you saw her. Not that she had a headache or a cold or swollen glands or sore feet, but whether she was depressed or elated or whatever. And she had an odd way of talking about this town. She talked about it as if it were a substance, a lump, as if the people in it were all glued together, and as if the lump had—for her—peculiar and usually discouraging characteristics.
    “I saw you yesterday, Ross,” said Nancy. She sat on the step, having opened a beer and put on Joan Armatrading, “Show Some Emotion.” She got up and lifted Lynnette out of the playpen. “I saw you at the school. You were beautiful.”
    Colin said, “There’s stuff lying all around here she could put in her mouth. Little nuts and stuff. You have to watch her.”
    “I’ll watch her,” said Nancy. “Winnie-Winnie.” She was tickling Lynnette with the fringe of her sash.
    “Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux,” she said. “I had Grade Three all looking out the window and admiring you. That’s what we decided to call you. Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux. Monsieur of the Two Hats.”
    “We do know some French. Strange as it may seem,” said Colin.
    “I don’t,” said Ross. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
    “Oh, Ross,” said Nancy, tickling Lynnette. “Aren’t you my little honey bear, my little Winnie-Winnie? Ross, you were beautiful. What an inspiration on a dull dragged-out old Friday afternoon.”
    Nancy had a way of making Ross turn sullen. To her face behind her back, he often said that she was crazy.
    “You’re crazy, Nancy. You never saw me. You’re seeing things. You got double vision.”
    “Sure,” said Nancy. “Absolutely, Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux. So what are you doing? Tell me. You taking up car-wrecking?”
    “We’re painting these wheels, at the moment,” said Colin. Ross wouldn’t say anything.
    “I once took a course,” said Nancy. “I took a course in elementary mechanics so I would know what was going on with my car and I wouldn’t have to go into the garage squeaking like a little woman.” She squeaked like a little woman, “Oh, there’s this funny noise and tell me what’s under the hood, please? Good heavens, it’s an engine! Well, so I wouldn’t do that I took this course and I got so interested I took another course and I was actually thinking about becoming a mechanic. I was going to get down in the grease pit. But really I’m too conventional. I couldn’t face the hassle. I’d rather teach French.”
    She put Lynnette on her hip and walked over to look at the engine.
    “Ross? You going to steam-clean this?”
    “Yeah,” said