Scrubb shows up at her Quebec City doorstep unannounced
So, this takes place right after lady_songsmith’s contribution, TSG AU-verse with the Florida Everglades, the herpetologist-supplied moonshine, and the leopard spotted undergarments Edmund had so thoughtfully packed for Peter. You can read and laugh here in which Peter and Mary do something never spoken of again except occasionally as "it"
This is kinda angsty instead of funny and for Clairel who wanted Jill and Eustace in the post-TSG AU.
Scrubb shows up at her Quebec City doorstep unannounced with a month’s beard, the dust of the Canadian badlands still on his boots, a rucksack bulging with teeth, bones, brushes, picks, cameras, rolls of undeveloped film, and a small duffel stuffed with soiled socks and pants.
Jill had been expecting him for weeks, ever since a frantic, incoherent telegram from Mary, a terse one from Peter, and then a longer letter of explanation from Asim. Mary had apparently gotten drunk enough on moonshine with Peter to forget, temporarily, her ten-year mourning for Richard, with the predictable results. Scrubb had said everything was fine, of course, except it wasn’t, and three days later, he bought a Ford and left the Everglades, heading north.
“Indian, French, Italian, or Chinese?” she asks as he drops his bags at the door. A cloud of dust rises and Jill hopes it does not settle on her still-damp water colours.
She adds, “But I can’t bake anything as I’ve got pottery drying in the oven.”
She is not surprised when he grunts, “Anything but Indian or Chinese.” Those are Mary’s favourite foods.
Scrubb knows his way to the bathroom; there is a space in the cupboard for his kit and a drawer in the bedroom with clothes. She keeps two sizes, one for Scrubb at the beginning of the season when he’s fed and watered, and one set for the end of the season when he’s as desiccated as the bones and rock he digs and meticulously records.
While he shaves and bathes, Jill clears and cleans her counter, measures out a mound of flour, drops in two eggs, and begins to mix and then knead the yellow dough. She decides to roll it out by hand; they are in no hurry.
Scrubb returns, shaven, scrubbed, most of the dirt gone from under his fingernails, and very, very thin. Jill decides to take the basket herself and go down to the garden to see what looks ready. He’s just gotten clean and there’s no reason to dirty him up again.
Scrubb nods. “I’ll take over, Pole.” The long, slow, smooth process of shaping and rolling the dough, folding it, and cutting it, will be good for him.
By the time she returns with a basket of basil, garlic, salad greens, and courgette, Scrubb has moved her Coelophysis bauri illustration for his Ghost Ranch article and her water colours of rose bushes from the kitchen rack and hung long strands of golden, cut pasta to dry.
“It’s beautiful,” he says of the dinosaur illustration. Jill has drawn the little green thing leaping in the air to catch a dragonfly. It reminds her very much of the Owls of Narnia and how they would catch bats in mid-flight. Scrubb sees the similarities too, but the scientific community isn’t ready for dinosaurs who are birds or birds who were once dinosaurs.
He’ll be sharing publication credit on the article with Mary.
Scrubb makes the salad. He never uses enough salt, but she doesn’t correct his seasoning this time.
She gently pushes the sprout out of the fat garlic cloves with the tip of her knife, it tastes bitter otherwise, and slices the dark green courgette into an even julienne. Jill sautés the garlic until it is nutty brown and adds the courgette. When the vegetables are tender, she dumps the cooked pasta and some of the salted water into the sauce (always add pasta to the sauce, she learned in Veneto), and sprinkles the (fragrant and torn, never cut) basil and cheese at the end. The Quebec cheese isn’t a proper parmigiano-reggiano, but it’s hard and piquant, and enhances the sauce nicely.
All the surfaces of her flat where they might eat are covered with pottery, paintings, and illustrations, so they eat on the balcony, elbow to elbow and it’s almost like Nice had been that time when Scrubb was studying in Paris and she was learning to cook in the farmhouses of Provence and the hotels of the Italian Riviera. They enjoy a bottle of French white wine, twirl tender pasta on their forks, and listen to the sounds of the ships on the river.
She had selected this flat for its views. Jill finds her inspiration in the greens and blues of the Quebec summer, though autumn comes early in the Laurentians. In a few weeks she’ll return to yellows, oranges and reds of Jamaica for the winter.
“You know why I’m here?” Scrubb asks just as they start washing up.
“Yes,” she replies. “They were worried.”
They go back out to the balcony to finish the bottle.
“I should spend a month or so in New York,” Scrubb says. “Develop the film, look at the surveying I did in the Badlands, and catalog what I did find. Will you come with me, before you go to Jamaica?”
Jill hates parts of America intensely. It’s not a good place for a woman with dark skin.
“We won’t go further south than New York,” he says. “We could visit the Clarks in Boston, see the kids.”
“You’ll get lost in the Harvard Museum again,” Jill says.
Scrubb laughs, sounding almost normal. “I never got lost. I just lost track of time studying the Kronosaurus queenslandicus.”
He’s looking for her support. Jill thinks she knows why. “Where will Mary be?”
He lowers his eyes. “I’m not sure. You know Mary. She could be anywhere.”
His car would make her migration from Quebec easier. “If I go with you to New York, maybe you could come with me to Jamaica once you finish up at the Museum?”
Scrubb always says no; there aren’t any dinosaur bones or sea monsters in the Caribbean. And Mary is never there, either.
But this time he nods. “I think that would be good for me.”
They toast the plan.
“I don’t hope for it anymore,” Scrubb says and drains his glass. He’s a little tipsy. “I don’t dream it, or wish it. I know nothing would ever come of it. So why do I still feel betrayed?”
By Mary? Or by Peter? Jill doesn’t ask. They’d been betting on it for years with Edmund and Lucy. Someone owes someone money. It had always been a joke. Maybe Scrubb would see the absurdity of it. Eventually.
“Let’s go to bed, Scrubb.”
They’ve learned over the years how to sleep together. Her back to Scrubb’s front isn’t good for either of them, with their bodies pressed together feeling what the heart doesn’t. Scrubb turns away from her to face the wall and Jill sidles up to him and throws her arm over his back and across his chest.
Unexpectedly, he rolls back over, and pulls her into his wiry arms. He tastes of basil, garlic and wine. “Pole, you’re never going to be my consolation prize,” he says eventually.
“I know, Scrubb.”
And so, as always, the condom stays in the drawer. They separate, and line up, back pressed to back, one blanket on top, one of the bottom. Sex, out of pity, to soothe hurt and rejection, or to offer comfort are all terrible substitutes for making love. That’s something they both understand. Jill won’t settle for second place in his life. When Scrubb is ready to put her first, Jill wonders if it might be too late for her. They won't know until they get there.