Page 107 of We All Live Here
Lila is still stunned by his intervention, and it takes her a moment to gather her thoughts. “Uh—okay. I mean, not okay. But I think he’s good for now.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to pick up the slack with the girls. It’s been—” He shakes his head and lets out a long breath before he speaks again. “This thing with the placenta. They are literally trying to keep the baby inside her day to day just to give it…to give it a chance.”
Lila stares at him, at the tension in his jaw as he speaks, at Hugo’s wide eyes as he gazes up at them both. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know it was so serious.”
“Yeah. Well. It didn’t feel like information you needed.”
They stand beside each other, in silence, this man she had once loved, and the child of his lover. She feels a strange sensation, unfamiliar and half forgotten. She thinks, with surprise, it might be sympathy. And then Hugo tugs at Dan’s hand. “Can we go home?”
Dan’s eyes slide toward Lila’s, perhaps braced for her reaction to that word, and when there is none, he nods, his mouth compressed. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure.” He forces his face into a smile that isn’t really a smile, and starts to move away. “Give Bill my love, will you?” he says, turning his head, as he leaves.
She nods. “Thank you,” she says suddenly. “For sticking up for me, I mean.”
He lifts his shoulders in a brief shrug that could mean any number of things.
“I—I hope she’s okay,” Lila says. “And the baby.”
He nods again, not speaking, and then he and Hugo make their way slowly toward the school gates.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Bill lasted twelve days before he moved back to the bungalow. He announced his plans gently on Sunday morning, while Violet sat on the sofa in her pajamas playing a video game that seemed to emit either bleeps or explosions every five seconds. He explained that, while he loved being with Lila and the children, right now his need for his own quieter space was paramount. “Penelope is going to stay with me for a while,” he said, when Lila had opened her mouth to protest. She had experienced a strange swell of mixed emotions: grief, at not being able to give him what he needed, but also relief, because she couldn’t give him what he needed, not without locking her girls in the shed.
“Penelope is going to keep an eye on me. And it’s probably time I worked out what to do with that bungalow. It can’t stay empty forever.”
He had it all planned out. Jensen’s Polish friends were going to come in two days’ time and move Bill’s things, so that all he needed to do was oversee the process. Penelope had already been in and thoroughlycleaned and warmed the house. He would visit them still, he assured her. Perhaps even cook dinner occasionally. Everything was going to be fine.
Except Lila didn’t feel everything was fine. She felt as if she was being abandoned all over again.
“I’m so sorry,” she had said, holding his hand. “I’m so sorry it turned out like this.” She suspected she might be holding it a little too tightly, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Not your fault, darling girl.” He had placed his other hand over hers. And then he straightened. “Anyway, I’m getting back to my usual self. Doing my exercises. The doctors are most satisfied with how things are going. And, of course, Penelope is a blessing. She’ll keep an eye on me.”
And now here they are on Monday morning, and Lila is watching the three heavyset Polish men wrestle once again with the piano on a pair of dollies. (Penelope has removed Bill to the kitchen for this one, sensing correctly that watching his beloved instrument swaying precariously on the tiny wheeled trolleys will not be good for his blood pressure.) His wardrobe has already been carried downstairs, with boxes full of his clothes and books, and loaded into the battered white van. It is only now, as she watches his belongings leaving her house, that she sees how much had ended up here.
Lila helps him into Penelope’s car when the van’s tail lift rises with a whine for the last time, and after a final round of sweet tea, the Polish men are ready to go.
“I’ll come and see you later,” Lila tells Bill, hugging him. “Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”
“I’m fine, darling,” he says, and gives her a reassuring smile.
“It’s all under control,” says Penelope, brightly. It has become her constant mantra, this last few weeks, no matter what is going on around them.It’s all under control!she says through gritted teeth, or from a slightly manic smile.It’s all under control!
“You’re still coming to Violet’s school play next Friday, though, yes?” Violet had brought home six tickets. Apparently divorced parents got special dispensation, and hospitalized grandparents further special privileges from Mrs. Tugendhat. Lila hopes this means she is forgiven for the costume debacle.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he says, with the relaxed expression of someone who is no longer going to have to wear earphones to drown out the sound of Public Enemy orAmerica’s Next Top Model, atop the frantic barking of a neurotic dog. “Oh, and, darling, they couldn’t fit the garden bench into the van, so someone will come for it later. I hope that’s okay.”
Lila watches Penelope pull her red Ford Fiesta out carefully into the quiet road, indicating and driving at a steady 15 mph all the way up to the junction with the main road, even though it is a 30 mph limit and no other traffic is visible.Bill will be safe with her, she thinks, and that’s something.
It is only when Lila steps back inside her house that it really hits her. Where the piano had sat in the hallway there is now just a dusty patch on the rug. The bookshelves have thinned, and the semi-reclining easy chair he had brought from home is now an empty gap in the middle of the living-room floor. Truant walks around slowly, sniffing suspiciously at the floor space where these items have disappeared. In the kitchen, recipe books are missing from the side, along with some of Bill’s kitchen equipment, his Roberts radio, the blue willow fruit bowl he tried to keep full in case it encouraged the girls to eat better. She moves a pile of paperwork and a couple of bottles of detergent into the gaps, just to make it look less empty.
That is not going to be possible in Bill’s bedroom. There is now just a bare bed. All the accoutrements of Bill’s life—his rug, slippers, bedspread, wooden towel rail, his piles of reference books, 1970s Teasmade, and old magazines all gone, along with the rest of the furniture. Lilastands in the doorway and folds her arms firmly around her middle, gazing at the many layers of absence in the room. This is life at this age, she muses, a million goodbyes, and you never know which are the final ones. You just absorb them, like little shocks, trusting with each one that you’ll be able to keep moving forward.
The only thing Bill has left behind is the portrait of her mother, resting against the fireplace that has never been lit. Lila turns it slowly, gazing at her mother’s face within the ornate frame, and tries not to think about the hole that has lodged inside her where Francesca’s memory used to live. She asks the question she has asked a thousand times since the discovery of the letter:Why did you let yourself be seduced by him, Mum? Did you not even care how much that would destroy?She gazes at Francesca’s smile, at the serene expression that will never give her an answer. And then she turns it back, closes the bedroom door behind her, and heads downstairs.
Celie is picking Violet up from school on her way home, and Lila has supper to prepare.
•••
