Read Online Crossings by Betty Lambert - Free Book Online

had asked for board and she’d assumed this meant bag lunches, so she was trying to figure out the schedule. If she did his bag lunch when she did hers, which would be reasonable and efficient, what chore would I then swap? Jocelyn was scrupulously fair about housework. She hated it, and still does, going Slam Bam Thank You Ma’am through everything. She was wondering if it would be fair to ask me to do two breakfasts to her one for bag lunches every night. I drove her mad with my nit-picking. She did everything she was supposed to, but I would wait eagerly for my turn at the kitchen, the wash, the bathroom, the floors, because now I could do it properly. She doesn’t remember any of this. She says, ‘I don’t remember you being so domestic.’ And, ‘I left under the kitchen sink for you,’ when I come to visit. ‘God, Vicky, you’ve changed a lot. You never used to be so fanatic.’ Our bedroom was schizophrenic. Jocelyn viewed it as not in the public domain and therefore never made her bed or put anything away. It was as though an imaginary line were drawn down the floor: on one side Dionysus rampant; on the other Athena couchant.
    â€˜I’m a clerk down at city hall,’ Mik said.
    â€˜Oh, that’s nice,’ said Jocelyn. ‘I’m a student, but I’m working as a waitress till summer school. I have to go pretty soon.’
    But Mik was going to get the other part of the ‘we’ out of her. He’d gone this far and he wasn’t going to stop now. He knew she couldn’t be the real landlady.
    â€˜Your husband a student?’ But he had looked at her hand.
    â€˜Oh I’m not married. I live with my sister.’
    â€˜Oh. She’s the landlady, your sister.’
    â€˜We’re both the landladies,’ said Jocelyn.
    He waited in the dining room while she found the extra key.
    He couldn’t believe it. He had to say it, even if she didn’t ask.
    â€˜Uh, I’m short right now but I’ll pay you Monday.’
    â€˜Oh sure.’ She hadn’t even thought about asking for money.
    â€˜I mean,’ said Mik later, ‘I don’t think she should be running around loose.’ Shaking his head. ‘Neither one of you should be running around loose.’
    We weren’t very business-like, Jocelyn and I. One of the act­resses had invited an actor to stay for the weekend and he’d remained for four months. At the end, Jocelyn said to me, in a cross voice—being materialistic always makes her cross; she has to get mad to do it—‘I think we should ask John for something.’
    We decided that it wasn’t fair to ask John to pay toward the rent as he was sleeping in the sun porch, which wasn’t heated. But he should pay four dollars a week toward the food, or what­ever it worked out to once he was chipping in. And, ‘Maybe he could do the furnace,’ I said.
    The furnace. My god. All that bit about the wood stove up at the island,
I
could make a fire. Every day I got the furnace going. Well, then, what was I doing, letting Mik show me how to … Oh. Yes. Mik didn’t know that I could make a fire. And I let him
show
me, helpless lady that I was.
    Anyway. Jocelyn and I drew straws and I lost. John was quite pleased to pay four dollars a week, we should have asked before. He’d wondered once or twice. But he never did make up the furnace. They didn’t have call until noon, and I start work early.
    â€˜Well,’ said Mik, ‘I’ll just leave my suitcase upstairs then.’
    He walked back across the bridge in a euphoria of success, burst into the beer parlor at the Helen’s and said, ‘I made it.’ They didn’t believe him at first. Then he did a B & E and went on a five-day bash.
    The West Van trip had ended rather disastrously for me. I’d rushed back that morning to see the Nut Lady. ‘You’ve got to put me away,’ I