“That is your image, baby,” Henry said. “Your image. And though he only offered you a cleaner’s job, the image you give him still did frighten his arse! You see, Boysie, by your coming out to meet that man in white shirt and collar and tie, you frightened his arse, because you’s like a crab crawling outta your fucking shell. You confront that man in a new shell, and your shell-less image sent such a fear in his arse, that he had to refer you back to the only image he ever had of you, namely, that you is a cleaner-crab. Dots, your wife is a … was a cleaner-crab, until recently. And you just told me that she decide to stop being a cleaner-crab. Estelle, God help her! when she does come outta the hospital, she too will be a cleaner-crab. And it don’t matter if them women is maids, domestics, nurses’ nurssaides, cooks, kitchen-helpers, be-Christ, they is all cleaner-crabs. That is the image.”
Mrs. Macmillan was excited the whole morning. She was to be discharged at two in the afternoon. And she had spent the whole of this Wednesday morning packing her clothes and talking to Estelle, reassuring her that the best thing to do, the best decision she could ever make, was to come to Timmins straightaway. Estelle was now to be discharged on Thursday, instead of Wednesday. Even Mrs. Macmillan’s discharge had been delayed.
Estelle nodded her head, said, “Yes, yes,” as many times as Mrs. Macmillan asked her if she was really coming up on Thursday, and inwardly she felt isolated even although it was still a few hours before two o’clock.
“I feel bad leaving you all by your lonesome in this dump,” Mrs. Macmillan said, noticing the beginnings of grief in Estelle’s expression. “I feel bad, you hear me darling? But if you take my advice, first thing tomorrow morning, you take a cab to the railway station, Union Station, and you ask anybody in a uniform where to take a train going north to North Bay and Timmins. And you get on that train. It ain’t going to take you more than twelve hours or so to leave all this damn hospital smell and this unfriendly city of Toronto behind you. Don’t forget. The train you want is the CN going to North Bay. At North Bay, you will transfer on a next train called the ONR, that is the Ontario Northland Rails. I am taking that same train now. Joe couldn’t come all the way down here in the car because that costs money, and anyways, I am not too weak that I can’t go by train. Furthermore, I have this to give me strength,” she said, turning back her housecoat in the corner of her valise, and showing Estelle the bottle. “You see that? A bottle of gin.” And she laughed. “If it wasn’t against regulations, I would pour half in your water jug. Come, let me pour half of this in that jug for you. It is the same colour. And it is a damn sight better.” She read Estelle’s thoughts correctly. She moved swiftly like a thief, and in no time, half of the bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin was in Estelle’s water jug, exposed to the public eye of nurse and patient and visitor. “Leave it there, darling. Nobody won’t suspect that it is what it isn’t, and not what it is.”
“I’m sorry you going.”
“Estelle, don’t be sorry. Be glad. You must be glad. Because that way, you would want to come up to Timmins much much more. And don’t forget that when you arrive at Timmins, I’ll be there. Take the night train. The one leaving Union Station at midnight. That way, you can sleep most of the journey and wake up fresh and see some of our beautiful north country. I will be at the railway station with the car.” After that, she had to go to the nurses’ office, just off the ward in the hallway, to check certain things: sign a piece of paper admitting that she was leaving, and that she was taking all her clothes and other things she bought and had brought with her, and check on the dosage and the correct name of the medicine the doctor had prescribed.
Estelle remained sitting in bed, watching the gin in the bottle mixed with the water, wondering when she would have the chance to sip some of it, whether she would have the courage to break the hospital regulation.
Mrs. Macmillan came back just in time to be discharged. Estelle waited with her lunch to share that last intercourse of friendship with her; but Mrs. Macmillan scorned the lunch, at the same time being careful not to hurt Estelle’s feelings. “Girl, I am discharged now. And I discharge this damn tasteless hospital food, too. You yourself won’t be eating it much longer. I will have some trout fish waiting for you in Timmins. And some moose steaks.” But she still had time to wait, to sit for a while and talk with
