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was no good to her, it was strange pink money from England. The car! She jumped down from the counter. Too far, so the balls of her feet hurt, but she didn’t get caught.
    Finding the house in surprising disarray, Clara tidied the living room and the TV room, and the hall, and the back steps—Trevor had made a fort there with blankets and pillows—before making lunch. Mrs. Pell went to her bedroom and shut the door, and they all left her alone. Clara gave Pearce a bottle. He stared into her eyes thoughtfully while he drank, his fingers splayed against her chest.
    When he fell asleep she did three loads of laundry. She remembered to phone and extend the insurance on her mother’s car, thinking she might be liable if Clayton got into another accident. She made cookies and started a list of necessities on the door of the fridge: formula, diapers, chicken soupfrom an envelope. They did not like canned. She wrote down everything the children asked for. It seemed like they were all in cotton wool, or that same smothering membrane which had been bothering Clara herself lately.
    After supper Clara walked them to the park in the darkening evening. The children played on the flat merry-go-round, Trevor standing in the middle and Darlene running it around and around, faster and faster, until she could jump up too and they went spinning on and on through the indigo night air.
    Clara stood a little distance away from their orbit, letting Pearce rest against her chest, feeling the weight and the balance of his body against hers. It wasn’t so hard, being with children.

4. Counting money
    A t ten that night Clara went back through the hospital to Lorraine’s silent room. The window was a dark rectangle in the white wall. She turned off the overhead fluorescent light, left on the small yellow bulb over the sink, and pulled the alcove curtain partway across so it wouldn’t glare in Lorraine’s eyes. Now they could see the lights of the city across the river, the pretty bridges, the night sky. Deep shadowy blue, not black, even so late.
    “I’m worried about the kids,” Lorraine said. Easier to talk in the darkness. “I’m worried about Clayton too, but not as much. He can take care of himself, more or less.”
    Now would be the time to mention Clayton’s departure.
    But Lorraine said, “I’m afraid.”
    All Clara could think of was, “Don’t be.” An unforgivable, asinine thing to say. She did not want to remember her father dying, or the horrors her mother went through. “I’m sorry. Of course you are afraid. I guess I mean, don’t let superstition trap you into pretending to be positive all the time. There is no jinxing, and being blindly optimistic doesn’t help.”
    “What does help then?”
    “I pray, but it does not always—” She could think of no word but suffice, which would sound pompous. “It’s hard to know what to pray for.”
    Lorraine snorted, and flapped her hands onto the sheet. “I know what to pray for! That my, this, thing will go away. That I will have my kids back with me. That everything will go on the way it was the day before we came to Saskatoon, when I was worrying about how to find work and a place to live, not how to live .”
    It was not a tirade, but a considered statement.
    “I had enough worry before. I’m not going to worry now. I’m not going to pray either. I’m going to be patient and wait for this to happen.” She corrected herself. “Wait for this to go away.”
    There were blue marks under her eyes, and her skin was puffy. The steroids, affecting her already. If her fever could be brought down they were assessing her for chemo in the morning, Clara knew, and then would come a bad time. For a moment she was glad she had been with her mother during that long struggle, so she knew a little about it, to be able to help Lorraine.
    “Is there anything you like to read? Magazines? People ? Or something more serious while you’ve got some quiet time?”
    “Some of each,”