We So Seldom Look on Love by Barbara Gowdy Page B

had seen nailed to posts in front of cottages. No Solicitors, it said.
    “My father is a solicitor,” Beth said.
    Helen was concentrating on opening the door. “Darn thing’salways stuck,” she muttered as she shoved it open with her shoulder. “I’m home!” she hollered, then sat heavily on a small mauve suitcase next to the door.
    Across the hallway a beautiful woman was dusting the ceiling with a mop. She had dark, curly hair tied up in a red ribbon, and long, slim legs in white short shorts.
    To Beth’s amazement she was Helen’s mother. “You can call me Joyce,” she said, smiling at Beth as though she loved her. “Who’s this lump of potatoes,” she laughed, pointing the mop at Helen.
    Helen stood up. “A boy got run over on Glenmore,” she said.
    Joyce’s eyes widened, and she looked at Beth.
    “I didn’t see it,” Beth told her.
    “We’re dying of thirst,” Helen said. “We want lemonade in my room.”
    While Joyce made lemonade from a can, Helen sat at the kitchen table, resting her head on her folded arms. Joyce’s questions about the accident seemed to bore her. “We don’t need ice,” she said impatiently when Joyce went to open the freezer. She demanded cookies, and Joyce poured some Oreos onto the tray with their coffee mugs of lemonade, then handed the tray to Beth, saying with a little laugh that, sure as shooting, Helen would tip it over.
    “I’m always spilling things,” Helen agreed.
    Beth carried the tray through the kitchen to the hallway. “Why is that there?” she asked, nodding at the suitcase beside the front door.
    “That’s my hospital suitcase,” Helen said. “It’s all packed for an emergency.” She pushed open her bedroom door so that it banged against the wall. The walls were the same mauve as the suitcase, and there was a smell of paint. Everything was put away—no clothes lying around, no games or toys on the floor. The dolls and books, lined up on white bookshelves, looked as if they were for sale. Beth thought contritely of her own dolls,their tangled hair and dirty dresses, half of them naked, some of them missing legs and hands, she could never remember why, she could never figure out how a hand got in with her Scrabble letters.
    She set the tray down on Helen’s desk. Above the desk was a chart that said “Heart Rate,” “Blood Pressure” and “Bowel Movements” down the side. “What’s that?” she asked.
    “My bodily functions chart.” Helen grabbed a handful of cookies. “We’re keeping track every week to see how much things change before they completely stop. We’re conducting an experiment.”
    Beth stared at the neatly stencilled numbers and the gently waving red lines. She had the feeling that she was missing something as stunning and obvious as the fact that her mother was gone for good. For years after her mother left she asked her father, “When is she coming back?” Her father, looking confused, always answered, “Never,” but Beth just couldn’t understand what he meant by that, not until she finally thought to ask, “When is she coming back for the rest of her life?”
    She turned to Helen. “When are you going to die?”
    Helen shrugged. “There’s no exact date,” she said with her mouth full.
    “Aren’t you afraid?”
    “Why should I be? Dying the way I’m going to doesn’t hurt, you know.”
    Beth sat on the bed. There was the hard feel of plastic under the spread and blankets. She recognized it from when she’d had her tonsils out and they’d put plastic under her sheets then. “I hope that boy hasn’t died,” she said, suddenly thinking of him again.
    “He probably has,” Helen said, running a finger along the lowest line in the chart.
    The lines were one above the other, not intersecting. When Beth’s grandmother drew one wavy line, that was water. Bethclosed her eyes. Water go away, she said to herself. Water go away, water go away …
    “What are you doing?” The bed bounced, splashing