“You’d have thought he’d get farther than Brandon in two weeks,” I said.
“I know. Most people would’ve already been back in the Maritimes. For someone in a hurry who was trying to get away, it shouldn’t have taken more than six or seven days, tops.”
“Maybe he stopped along the way and went on a bender or something.”
“Could be,” she said. “Men like that tend to be drinkers.”
She also filled me in on what she had learned about the day of the murder.
It was dark, around six-thirty in the morning. Cindy was still in bed, and Freddie was up and dressed for work. She was at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper like she did every morning, when the doorbell rang. Freddie assumed it was Jim, the guy who lives in the next block who sometimes catches a ride with her. He hadn’t called the night before like he usually did when he wanted a ride, but who else would it be at this time of the morning? She hadn’t checked through the side window like she would’ve had it been night time instead of morning.
Freddie opened the door and was met with a fist in the face. The animal punched her a second time, knocking her down, and then kicked her three or four times in the stomach.
Meanwhile, Cindy heard the commotion and ran downstairs to see what was going on. Freddie was crawling to the kitchen, maybe to get a knife, and she shouted at Cindy to get back upstairs. Instead, Cindy ran to the phone in the hallway and dialled 911. The ex punched her and pulled the phone from the wall, then stomped on Freddie until she stopped moving.
After that, the details were hazy. All that was certain was that by the time the ambulance and police arrived, Cindy was dead on the floor, Freddie passed out, and the ex long gone.
IT HAD BEEN AGES since I’d been to Virginia’s, and I was impressed with the changes. The place seemed scrubbed, brighter. Had Virginia actually got the joint painted? The burnt-out light bulbs had been replaced, and the maple dance floor refinished. I understood now why Brossard had made such favourable comments about the place.
Simone and I were among the first to arrive. She informed me that not only had Virginia covered the cost of the wake, but that she had helped Freddie with the funeral costs as well.
I knew that Virginia had been diagnosed with cancer a few months earlier. Had illness transformed her from a miserly misanthrope into a generous, forgiving soul?
As Simone and I approached the bar, Virginia came out from behind to shake Simone’s hand and embrace me, something she’d never done before. “I’m so sorry about the store,” Virginia said.
She said the first drink was on her, and instructed us to help ourselves, indicating a spread of shrimp rings, some crackers and cheese—not processed cheese, but Roquefort, Camembert, and aged Ontario cheddar—some seedless grapes, and chocolate-dipped strawberries along with an assortment of brownies, date squares, and lemon squares.
“And please don’t forget the donation table,” she added.
Prominent between the bar and the food was a small table with a donation box and a pile of envelopes with “Adam Lottridge” handwritten on them. The poor boy. Only six years old, and his mother was already gone and his father in jail. I shoved a few dollars into one of the donation envelopes before making my way to the refreshment table.
I wondered who would look after the money collected. Would it be sent to New Brunswick or would it be invested and saved for Adam’s future? I couldn’t imagine us handing it over to his present caregivers. According to Alice’n’Peggy, the boy was being cared for by the ex’s fundamentalist, and no doubt brainwashing, Christian parents.
On the other hand, who else was there to look after the boy? Cindy’s own mother was dead, and Cindy had been estranged from her father—so said Alice’n’Peggy.
Whatever his future upbringing, Adam would need to find his own way.
At the refreshment table, Simone was immediately caught up shaking hands. A couple wanted to tell her how much they appreciated her words at the funeral, someone else wanted to discuss the pressboard condos going up in her neighbourhood, and another wanted to share her memories of Winnipeg in the 1970s. For a politician, there probably were no private moments, not when you were somewhere the public could find you.
Missy was standing beside the tall white-crossed woman who had been in the store the day of the funeral. Both women had their plates piled high with food. Missy proudly introduced me to her grandmother, Hilda. (Mystery woman solved.) Hilda had driven in from Saskatoon specially to celebrate Missy’s thirtieth birthday. “Happy birthday, Missy,” I said.
Hilda told me she had enjoyed browsing through my store despite the small Religions section, and she was sorry to hear the store had closed.
No one else had mentioned the closure of the store, which surprised me. If Virginia knew about it, and now Hilda, obviously the news was out.
“And in case you didn’t know,” said Hilda, “after I talked to you, I decided to forget about a surprise for Missy. I asked her if there was a particular book she’d like to have. And wouldn’t you know, she said she’d been eyeing that Octavia Butler book you showed me. So, I went back to your store the following day and bought it from that lovely assistant of yours.”
More people arrived, including Griselda, Midge, Reverend Rosie, Alice’n’Peggy, Theodora and her parents, Carmen with her son, Paco, and Vinny Betemit and the man he had sat beside at the memorial.
I took my glass of wine and plate of goodies to an unobtrusive corner table from where I could sip my drink and observe the goings-on. After a few minutes, Alice joined me in the shadows. She sat down across from me, blocking much of my view, and although we talked for half an hour or so, I’ve retained nothing of the conversation. Peggy finally came over to collect her, and they moved on to another table. Simone, for her part, remained engaged at the snack table, seemingly endowed with a boundless glad-handing ability.
As the bar filled, the dance-floor lights flashed in synch with the muted music over the bodies that moved about and greeted each other. Chris and Freddie arrived, and Wanda a few minutes later. Freddie and Wanda hadn’t acknowledged each other at the funeral, but when Wanda said something to Freddie, the two embraced warmly, and Virginia came out from behind the bar to join them. The three women clung together for several moments. Once disengaged, Virginia fetched some wine and they clinked glasses.
Then Vinny Betemit and his companion approached Wanda, and the older man leaned in. He began to speak to Wanda, gesticulating, his intensity increasing as she propped herself against the dance-floor railing, now swaying, now hanging on to the railing. The bar lights washed their faces in surreal yellows and reds. When the man put his arms around her, she didn’t resist, but buried her face in his chest.
Who was this stranger?
Alone at my table, I felt as if I were floating in another dimension.
Eventually, Wanda came and sat down with me. We looked at each other without speaking for several moments, me fiddling with my empty glass. She was the one to break the silence.
“Sorry for messing up your Brossard reading,” she said.
She sounded normal, like you could actually have a conversation with her again.
“You didn’t mess anything up,” I said. “Sometimes I get overdramatic.”
“Thank you for coming to the service,” she said. “I imagine it was difficult for you.”
“Not as difficult as it was for you, I’m sure.”
“I wish you had been with me.”
“Really? I was feeling the same way. Despite everything, it felt weird not sitting with you.”
“I know. To tell you the truth, I felt trapped in the MoPo Unit.”
Wanda told me that she had found it impossible to block out the chatter around her, in particular that of Alice’n’Peggy.
“Look at the table with those beautiful pictures of Cindy,
” Peggy had whispered, leaning across Wanda to Alice.
Wanda had been doing her best not to look at the photos of Cindy in happier times: Cindy on her bike; Cindy hiking with Freddie in the mountains; Cindy celebrating her thirtieth birthday on the coast; photos of Cindy with her son Adam when he was a baby up until he was four or five. (None of Cindy with Wanda, of course.) Wanda had told herself to hold onto her grief for later, when she’d be alone. She didn’t want to break down in front of all those people.
“And there were so many of them,” said Wanda. “Way more than Cindy could possibly have known in her short life. I kept saying to myself, ‘How could you have been so goddamn stupid?’ I had abandoned Cindy when she really needed me. As if a fucked-up Hawaiian beach resort was going to change anything.
“That’s what was going through my mind. And then, I found myself wishing you were beside me, the two of us trusting that despite everything, we’d find the strength to get through it all.”
I was moved by her words.
“In any case,” I said, “now that Cindy’s gone, your love affair is over. But so is our relationship, right?”
It sounded brutal, but that was it. It was the first time I had been able to say it. “We’re done, right?”
“Yes,” said Wanda. “But we had a good run at it, don’t you think?” She confessed that she thought she probably wasn’t cut out to be in a long-term relationship. Then she apologized for the months of deception. She even told me she hadn’t meant what she said about Kate the Psycho.
“It wasn’t even true that the sex was hot with her,” she said. “I don’t know why I said that. I was just lashing out, I guess. I wanted to push you away.”
She quoted a line from Emily Dickenson: “The heart wants what it wants, or else it doesn’t care.”
“By the way,” I said. “Who is that man you were just talking to? He looks kind of old, but is he Cousin Vinny’s partner?”
“Yes, I was just coming to tell you. They’re lovers. But that’s not all…. It’s the most extraordinary thing…. When I told you about Angelica, do you remember my mentioning her older brother?”
“You mean the scary one who chased the two of you out of the house?”
“Yes, that one. Well that’s him, Dante Vestini. Angelica’s older brother.”
“You’re kidding…. Are you saying he’s gay?”
“Yes. He says his behaviour that day has haunted him all these years. He says he acted that way because at the time he was in denial about his own sexuality. A classic gay narrative we know all too well. Internalized homophobia, self-hatred directed at others like yourself.”
“So … not a coincidence finding you, I’m guessing.”
“But it is a coincidence, a huge coincidence. It’s still sinking in. Dante and Vinny met last year when Vinny was on holiday in Italy. They fell in love, and Dante followed Vinny back to Canada. They’ve been travelling back and forth ever since. Dante told Vinny about his sister’s tragedy and about me and how I disappeared after the drowning. Vinny, meanwhile, had heard about me from Cindy. Neither of them, though, realized that I was the same Wanda. At the memorial, Dante thought that he may have recognized me, but it wasn’t until tonight that he put two and two together.”
“You mean, even Vinny knew about you and Cindy?”
Even as I said it, I realized I didn’t actually care anymore.
“Oh, Sarie, I really am so sorry…”
“No, no, it doesn’t matter anymore. Forget I said that. Please, go on with your story.”
“There isn’t much else to tell. Except that you remember how Angelica never got to talk to her mother again, and how I came back to Canada and lost contact with her family? I assumed that none of them would ever want to see me again. I don’t think I’ve told you this, but all these years, I’ve harboured the fantasy that one day I would have the courage to contact Angelica’s mother and make amends. She was so kind, so good to me. The added tragedy is that Signora Vestini died the year after Angelica’s death, of heartbreak, says Dante…. Poor man. He still feels responsible for both deaths: Angelica’s as well as his mother’s.”
Wanda caught her breath.
“But now here he is, her brother, out of the blue. He says he’s often thought of looking me up, but didn’t know where to begin. He couldn’t remember my last name or what city I was from.”
“It just goes to show that you never know what life will bring you,” I said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of just putting one foot in front of the other until things get better.”
“Yes. You know, at the memorial, I saw him, and I didn’t recognize him, and it was the strangest thing, but when I looked at him, I was back in Italy. And then I was back on that beach in Spain, back with Angelica at our paradiso segreto, with the puffy clouds on the horizon and the two of us side by side on the yellow blanket, our faces to the sun, with the sky reflecting the blue of Angelica’s eyes…. The memory was so vivid that I was almost overcome with the old impending dread. I thought for a moment I was going to have a seizure, and when the moment passed, it felt like a breakthrough.
“I feel like I’ve gained some insight this past week,” she continued. “I think that when I fell in love with Cindy, it had to do with Angelica. It’s not that I didn’t sincerely love Cindy. I did. But it’s like all these years I’ve been trapped in some kind of time warp, and what was then is still now. I may be fifty-five years old, but Angelica is forever twenty-one, and the loss of her is buried deep inside me, along with the fears we shared, our joys and hopes for the future. I don’t know if that will ever leave me.”
“So, what you’re saying is that the whole thing with Cindy was a continuation of what was to have been with your first true love?”
“In a way, yes.”
“I guess it’s ironic that in a way, Wand, you were my first true love.”
“I am sorry about everything,” she said. “I truly am.”
“It’s okay. You can stop apologizing anytime now. You did open up a whole new world to me. You opened me up. You opened me up to myself. What I do wonder about is if maybe we rushed into things. Maybe we should have taken our time more.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Sarie. Life is short. You have to act when you have the chance.”
“In any case, what’s happened has happened. No going back, right?”
“Hmmm,” she said.
She examined me for a moment. “So,” she said, “now that you’ve made a decision about the store, how do you feel about it?”
“A lot of mixed feelings, of course, but surprisingly, mostly relief. Anyway, they say you learn from failure, not success. They say too much success teaches arrogance.”
Wanda smiled. I had forgotten her beautiful smile.
“Well, let’s hope the future provides you with the opportunity to develop a little arrogance,” she said. “In any case, you won’t have the de Witts and their ilk to put up with anymore.”
Hearing their name, I actually felt a pang of nostalgia.
“Any idea what you’ll do now?” she said.
“Until the bankruptcy’s resolved, the trustee will take most of any money I earn, so I guess I’ll take whatever job I can get for the next few months. Then we’ll see.”
“Just so you know, I’ve paid the rent on the house for the next three months, so you should be okay for a while,” she said. “And I’ve found a cozy little one-bedroom on the South Side for Snuffles and me. I’ll be moving out next week, and then I think I’ll take some time off work. Maybe I’ll even go to Italy for a few weeks. Dante and Vinny are on their way to Rome for a two-month sojourn, so who knows?”
I thanked Wanda, but I suddenly felt very tired. I told her I’d see her later at the house and went to give my condolences to Freddie. Then I looked around for Simone.
As we were saying our goodbyes, the most extraordina
ry thing happened. The music stopped, the lights went up, and Virginia announced that Alice’n’Peggy had something to say. Then Alice began to talk about the bookstore and all it had meant to her, and Peggy did the same and their eyes welled up. Griselda spoke, and Midge, and Theodora, and even Carmen said a few words—all of them thanking me and saying how much the bookstore had meant to the community.
My emotions were trapped in my throat. I didn’t know what to say.
“You don’t need to say anything,” said Peggy. “Just take this.”
She handed me a fat manila envelope.
“Open it when you get home,” said Alice.
When I got home and opened the envelope, it was stuffed with five and ten and twenty-dollar bills, for a total of $2,325, along with a card signed by everyone at the wake, including a few names I didn’t recognize.
“With love and appreciation from the community,” the card read.
Alone at my kitchen table, I burst into tears and cried long and hard about the tangible kindness of the world.
22.
LAST NIGHT, THE HALF-MOON was bright enough to light up my bedroom. I reread the card from the wake to remind myself how lucky I am. Then, I opened the copy of Under Tongue that Nicole Brossard gave me the night of her reading, careful not to break the spine. The book is out of print and I briefly considered surprising Wanda with it, but I’ve selfishly kept it for myself. I rubbed the smooth embossed circle on the book cover and fell asleep.
Simone has been back in town twice since the week of the memorial. She’s going to Montreal next week on municipal business, and she invited me to go with her. Had I accepted, she would have extended her stay a couple of days, for pleasure.
I was tempted. As Wanda said, life is short. But for me, it’s still too soon.
“Don’t worry,” said Simone. “There’s no hurry. The best is always worth waiting for.”
And there was something else: Her term on council is up soon, and she’s received a very attractive job offer in our city that she’s seriously considering. She’s debating whether to run again for council or take the new job.
The Heart Begins Here Page 17