by Gail Bowen
“Christy Sinclair came into Judgements yesterday,” she said. “I wasn’t going to mention it because I knew it would upset you, but considering everything else that’s happened …” She shrugged her shoulders.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“She wanted to know where Peter was.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Yes, I did,” Mieka said. “She made it sound so urgent, and there were other people there. Bernice, and Greg’s mother, and poor Blaine was waiting outside in the car. It just seemed easier to tell her.”
“Damn,” I said, “I’d hoped Christy was out of your brother’s life – out of all our lives.”
“Maybe she is,” Mieka said wearily. “Christy has always been unpredictable.”
“I wish that’s all she was,” I said. “Her problem’s more serious than that. I think it’s a pathology, and it scares me.”
Mieka was silent. Suddenly the magic had gone from the evening. The light faded, the wind came up, and someone on a bicycle yelled at the dogs. If you believed in omens, the signs accompanying Christy Sinclair’s re-entry into our lives didn’t bode well.
When Peter had begun dating her before Christmas, we had all been ecstatic. He was nineteen years old and painfully shy. There had never been a girlfriend. Christy was exuberant and outgoing – just the ticket, it seemed. She was his biology lab instructor, and when it turned out that she was not twenty-one, as she had told Pete at first, but twenty-five, I took a deep breath and tried not to let it worry me. But as the winter wore on, other things started to.
Christy’s lie about her age had not been an aberration. She lied about everything: where she’d eaten lunch; the names of the people with whom she had spent the weekend; the way her superiors in the biology department assessed her work performance. That winter I had been teaching political science at the university where Christy was working. She must have known the lies she told about her daily life would come to light, but it didn’t seem to alarm her. In an odd way, it seemed to make her more reckless. As the winter wore on, her lies became more transparent, more vulnerable to disclosure. It was a frightening thing to witness.
There was another thing. I had been touched at first by how much Christy liked us, but it began to appear that her need to be part of our family was obsessive. She wanted to be at our house all the time, and when she was there, she wanted to be with me. She was an educated and capable woman, but she followed me around with the dogged determination of a tired child. I tried to understand, to sympathize with whatever privation had brought about this immense need, but the truth was Christy Sinclair got under my skin. When I was with her, I itched to get away; when I got away, I felt guilty because I knew how much being with me mattered to her.
As the winter wore on, it became clear that I wasn’t the only one Christy was making miserable. She was crowding Peter, too. Night after night, I could hear her, pressing him for a permanent commitment. Peter was, in many ways, a very young nineteen-year-old. I was almost certain that Christy was the first woman with whom he’d been intimate. He was an innocent kid. My husband used to say that innocence is just a step away from crippling stupidity. He was warning me, not Peter, but my son’s unquestioning acceptance of people made him vulnerable, too. Peter wasn’t stupid, but it wouldn’t have taken much for Christy to convince him that a sexual relationship needed to be legitimized.
By Easter, Christy seemed to be a permanent part of our lives; she was the problem without a solution. Then one day Peter came home and told me he had taken a job at a vet clinic in Swift Current until the fall semester started. It seemed too good to be true.
“What about Christy?” I asked.
“It’s over,” he said, and he’d looked so miserable that I hadn’t pressed the matter. I never did find out what had happened between them. I didn’t care. It was finished, and I was grateful. These days when Pete called to talk he sounded relaxed and hopeful. Now, just a little over a month after he’d set us free, it seemed as if we might become entangled again.
“Stay away, Christy,” I said to the warm spring night. “Just please stay away.”
When I walked into the house, the phone was ringing. The old ones used to say that if you mentioned the name of an enemy, you conjured him up. Christy Sinclair wasn’t my enemy, but when I heard her low, husky voice on the phone, I felt a superstitious chill. If I hadn’t said her name aloud, perhaps she wouldn’t have materialized.
As always, she rushed in headlong. “Oh, Jo, it’s wonderful to hear your voice again. Guess what? Pete and I are back together.”
I held my breath. There was still the chance that she was lying, still the possibility that this was just another case where Christy had crossed the line between what she wanted and what was true. But when she spoke again, I knew she hadn’t crossed the line.
“Pete says Greg’s family is throwing a big engagement party at their cottage, Friday – a kickoff for the Victoria Day weekend. He suggested that I ride down with you and the kids. He won’t be able to get there from Swift Current till around seven. Jo, are you still there? Is that all right with you?”
I felt numb. It was all beginning again.
“Yes,” I said, “if that’s what Pete wants, it’s fine with me.”
“Great,” she said. “What time should I come over?”
“Around four, I guess. I thought we’d leave as soon as Angus got back from school.”
“Great. Four o’clock tomorrow. I’m counting the minutes.”
I walked down the hall to Mieka’s room and knocked on the door. She was sitting on her bed reading a bride’s magazine, and when she saw me, she laughed and hid the magazine behind her back.
“My name is Ditzi with an i,” she said in the singsong cadence of a TV mall stomper. “Oh, Mum, I can’t believe I’m reading this. But since I am, what do you think of that one?” She pointed to a dress that was all ruffles and lace. “It has a hoop sewn into the skirt.”
“I guess it would be all right if you were marrying Rhett Butler,” I said, sitting down next to her. “Whatever would you do with something like that afterwards?”
Mieka raised an eyebrow. “Frankly, my dear,” she said, “I wouldn’t give a damn.”
It was good to see her laugh, but as I told her about Christy’s phone call, her face fell.
“Poor Peter. What are we going to do, Mum?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Remember what you said about the wrestling? It’s his life. We’ll be nice to Christy and hope for the best.”
But at four o’clock the next day, as I watched Christy Sinclair get out of her car, I knew that being nice and hoping for the best were going to be hard.
Even her red Volkswagen convertible brought back memories. At the end of her relationship with Peter, I had felt my heart sink every time the Volks had pulled into our driveway. But I tried to be positive. Christy looked great. She always did. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she had a lively androgynous charm – slim hips, flat chest, dark curly hair cut boy short. And she always dressed the part. Christy was estranged from her family, but she said they always made sure she had the best of everything. Today, for a trip to the country she looked like she’d stepped out of an L.L. Bean ad: sneakers, white cotton overalls and a blue-and-white striped shirt. As soon as she saw me standing in the doorway, she ran up and threw her arms around me. She smelled good, of cotton and English soap and sunshine.
“I’ve missed this family,” she said, her voice breaking. Then she stood back and looked at me. “And I’ve missed you most of all, Jo.” She smiled.
It was hard not to respond to that smile. Christy’s best feature was her mouth; it was large, mobile, expressive. Theodore Roethke wrote a poem where he talks about a young girl’s sidelong pickerel smile; Christy Sinclair’s smile was like that – whimsical, sly and knowing.
“We had some good times,” I said. It seemed a neutral enough statement.
“Right,” she said, and this time there
was no mistaking the mocking line of her mouth. “Good times, Jo.” She reached over and picked up a suitcase and threw it into the trunk of my car. “And we’re going to have more.”
Her words were defiant, but there was a vulnerability in her voice that hadn’t been there before. She sounded almost desperate, and I was grateful when the kids came barrelling out of the house. In the flurry of bags being stowed in the car and the greetings and last-minute instructions to the girl next door who was going to take care of the dogs, I didn’t have to weigh the words I would say to Christy.
Apparently, though, she’d already thought of what she wanted to say to me. As the solid homes of College Avenue gave way to the strip malls and fast-food restaurants of Park Street, Christy turned to me.
“What’s the date of Mieka’s wedding?” she asked.
“It’s the Saturday of Labour Day weekend.”
“Maybe Peter and I can make it a double wedding,” Christy said, and I felt a chill.
From the back seat Angus’s voice broke with adolescent exasperation. “Pete’s just a kid. He can’t get married.”
Christy shrugged and smiled her knowing smile, but Taylor had heard a word that interested her. “Samantha at my school says that when her sister got married, their poodle wore a wedding suit and carried the rings down the aisle on a little pillow.”
Angus snorted. “Great idea, T. Can you imagine our dogs in a church?”
“They could have dresses,” Taylor said resolutely, “dresses for a wedding.”
Angus was mollifying. “Well, yeah, maybe if they had dresses, it would be okay.” Then he exploded in laughter again.
Between the dogs in their bridesmaids’ dresses and Christy’s suggestion about a double wedding, there didn’t seem to be much left to say. As we pulled onto the Trans-Canada east of the city, we settled into a silence that if it wasn’t companionable was at least endurable.
It had been a wet spring. The fields were green with the new crop, and the sloughs were filled with water. On that gentle afternoon, the drive to the Qu’Appelle Valley was a pretty one, and as we travelled along the ribbon-flat highway, I was soothed into daydreaming. Just before Edenwold, the air outside the car was split with a high-pitched whooping.
Beside me, Christy was excited. “Oh, Jo, look over there in that field – those are tundra swans. You have to pull over to let the kids see.”
To the left was a slough, and it was white with birds. There must have been thousands of them. The air was alive with their mournful cries and the beating of their powerful wings.
I pulled over on the shoulder, and Christy and I and the kids ran over and doubled back along the fence.
Taylor was tagging along behind Christy. “Where are they going?” Taylor shouted, raising her voice so she could be heard above the racket.
“The Arctic Circle,” Christy shouted back, and she turned and took Taylor’s hand. “They spend the winter in Texas and they fly north for the summer. They’re a little off their migration path.”
Taylor stopped in her tracks. “If they’re lost, how will they find their way?”
In the brilliant May sunshine Christy looked young and defenceless. “Instinct,” she said, “and luck. If they’re smart and they’re lucky, they’ll make it.”
I liked her better in that moment than I had in weeks. As she stood by the fence and watched that prairie slough filled with swans, it seemed as if the mask had dropped and the woman who lived behind that complex repertory of roles Christy played had revealed herself. I had said to Mieka that all we could do was wait and hope for the best. Maybe there really was a best. I was reluctant to make the moment end.
“I guess we’d better go,” I said finally. “They’re expecting us for supper.”
As we passed Balgonie, I noticed that it was close to five o’clock, and I reached over and switched on the car radio for the news. Bernice Morin’s murder was the lead story. The announcer’s voice was young, nasal and relentlessly upbeat. “Regina police announced a possible break in the Bernice Morin case. A witness has come forward with the information that at seven-thirty on the night of the murder, he heard a cry in the alley behind Old City Hall. When he looked down the alley, he saw a jogger running south. The jogger is described as five feet seven, slender, wearing grey sweatpants and a hooded grey sweatshirt. Police ask that anyone having –”
Beside me, Christy reached over and savagely turned the radio off.
I was surprised that she wasn’t interested. “You met her,” I said. “Mieka said she was in the store Tuesday afternoon when you came in.”
I noticed a tightening in the muscles of Christy’s neck. She didn’t say anything.
“She was so young,” I said. “She had all her life ahead of her.”
“She was just a hooker,” Christy said coldly.
I was so angry I wanted to shake her, but she cut me off. She turned her back to me and stayed that way, looking out the window of the passenger seat, till we got to the Harrises. I could hear her breathing, tense and unhappy, but she didn’t say a word. As far as I was concerned, that was fine. An hour after she’d come back into our lives, I’d already had enough of Christy Sinclair.
By the time the highway started its slow descent into the Qu’Appelle Valley I’d decided that letting my son get the wind knocked out of him in the wrestling ring was one matter; standing by while he entered into a serious relationship with a cruel and angry young woman was another. As soon as I had a chance, I was going to talk to Peter about Christy.
Once I’d made the decision I felt better; when I saw the rolling hills of the Qu’Appelle I felt better yet. I had been to the valley a thousand times, but it had never lost its power to quicken my pulse. We turned off the highway and drove up the narrow winding roads until we passed a sign that said we were entering Standing Buffalo Indian Reserve. Below, Echo Lake glittered, and on the other side of the water, the hills rose green with spring.
It wasn’t long till we drove out of reserve land, and the ubiquitous signs of cottage country thrust themselves up along the road: “Heart’s Eze,” “The Pines,” “Dunrovin.” Through the trees I could see the bright outlines of the cottages hugging the hills overlooking the lake. At the crest of the highest hill we came to a discreet cedar sign that said, “Eden.”
“This is it,” I said to the kids. “We are about to enter the Garden of Eden. And you guys always say I never take you anywhere.”
Hedges of caragana protected what was behind from public view. We drove through the gate and along a road narrowed by bushes and wildflowers. At the turn, we came to a clearing; below was the summer cottage of the family of the late Alisdair Harris.
Except it wasn’t a cottage; it was a country home, a handsome old dowager of a house of gleaming white clapboard with verandas on both storeys and gingerbread trim. At the side of the house, a pool, its water an improbable turquoise, shimmered in the late afternoon sun. White wrought-iron chairs and tables, already set for dinner, ringed the manicured green of the lawn around the pool.
The air smelled of fresh-cut grass, and in the distance I could hear the song of the valley’s birds. It really was Eden, or as close to Eden as I expected to come on this side of the grave.
“No snakes in this paradise,” I said.
“Good,” said Taylor. “I’m scared of snakes.”
“I’m not,” said Angus. “Anyway, the only kind of snakes around here are garter snakes, and they never hurt anybody. You’ve got nothing to worry about, T.”
But Angus was wrong, and I was wrong, too. In that serene and perfect world, there was a serpent waiting. Before the night was over, it would glide silently across our lives, leaving behind its dark gifts of death and evil, changing us all forever.
CHAPTER
3
When he saw that there was a tennis court behind the house, Angus rolled down his window.
“Look out, Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more,” he said.
Beside him, Ta
ylor laughed appreciatively. I would have bet my last dollar she’d never heard of the Wizard of Oz, but it didn’t matter. Angus was her brother now, and she was determined to be his best audience.
Greg and Mieka had driven out to the lake earlier in the day, and as soon as we pulled up, Mieka came running out of the house to greet us. She hugged me, scooped up Taylor for a kiss, and gave her brother’s shoulders a squeeze. Then she turned to Christy, who was standing apart from us in the driveway.
“You’re sharing a room with me,” she said. “Just let me grab some of my family’s twenty thousand bags and I’ll show you where you can freshen up.”
With Mieka’s welcome, some of the misery seemed to leave Christy’s face, and I could feel my body relax. When Mieka was around, life had a way of working out, and I smiled gratefully at her.
She grinned. “Dinner’s at six-thirty, you guys – my mother-in-law-to-be is a stickler for punctuality.”
We carried our bags into the house, and Christy disappeared upstairs with Mieka. Taylor and I were sharing a room, and Angus was in what Mieka had described as the male wing of the house.
“My new family believes in propriety,” Mieka had said, deadpan. “Men on one side, women on the other; don’t embarrass me with any midnight creeping.”
I closed the door and looked gratefully around our room. It had a spectacular view of the hills and the lake. Everything in it was the palest shade of pink.
“Look,” I said to Taylor, “your favourite colour.”
“Do you think Mieka picked the pink room for me?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Now, why don’t you hit the bathroom and get some of the dust off, and we’ll get ready for supper. I could smell the barbecue when we pulled up.”
I had just finished braiding Taylor’s hair when there was a knock at the bedroom door. I went, expecting Angus, shocked into courtesy by the splendour of his surroundings. But when I opened the door it wasn’t my son who was standing there, it was Christy Sinclair.