by Gail Bowen
What happened at the hospital was either Keystone Kops or cosmic justice working itself out. It began when I saw the picket line blocking the entrance. There was a nurses’ strike in our province. Under normal circumstances I would have walked twenty miles before I crossed a picket line, but these were not normal circumstances.
A blonde woman, X-ray thin and carrying a picket sign, stood between me and the front steps of the hospital.
“I don’t want to do this,” I said to her, “but there’s been a death.”
“I’m sorry,” she said and she lowered her sign. It said, “The Only Good Tory Is a Suppository.”
The hospital was quiet. The administration had dismissed as many patients as possible before the strike. “To streamline the operation,” they had said. There was one harried-looking woman sitting in a reception area designed for four.
“Pathology,” I said to her.
“Top floor,” she said without looking at me.
When I got off the elevator, I was struck by how pleasantly domestic the pathology department seemed. There were plants everywhere. To the left of the elevator was a floor-to-ceiling window that filled the area with warm spring sunshine; to the right there was an area that looked like a nursing station. On the counter a huge azalea bloomed unseen by anyone but me. The nursing station was empty.
I walked to the window and looked out. Beneath me was Queensbury Downs, the racetrack, seductive as a sure thing in the May sunshine. Trainers were taking horses through their paces, and I could see the lines of the horses’ powerful muscles as they moved around the track. I felt myself relaxing.
There was a cough behind me. When I turned, I saw a woman standing behind the counter. She was wearing street clothes, not a uniform, and she seemed as harried as the woman downstairs had been.
“Well?” she said, and her voice was flat and uninterested.
“Joanne Kilbourn for Christy Sinclair,” I said.
“Right,” she said. She turned, took a file from a rack on the wall and placed it on the counter between us. The name “Sinclair” was written in bright green felt pen across the top of the folder.
“Everything’s ready for your signature,” she said and opened the file. Behind her a phone rang. She answered it, looked even more harried, then ran down the hall. I picked up the form on the top. I thought I could sign it and have it ready when she came back. Cheerful as pathology was, I didn’t want to stick around.
Underneath the release form was a typewritten report labelled “Autopsy Findings.” I pushed it away from me. Then I looked at the bulletin board behind the nurses’ station. Someone had tacked up a computer printout; the letters were large, mock-Gothic: “We speak for the dead to protect the living.”
Good enough. I pulled the autopsy report toward me and began reading. The first page confirmed what Perry Kequahtooway said it would confirm: Christy Sinclair’s death was a result of a deadly combination of alcohol and tranquilizers. The drug names and the strength of the pills didn’t mean anything to me; obviously whatever Chris had taken had been enough to do the job. As I turned to the next page, I was surprised to see that my hands were shaking.
I found what I was looking for on page three. The typewriter pathology used had a worn ribbon, and the report was dotted with vowels whose imprint was so vague their identity could only be guessed at. Moreover, the report was written in the language of medicine, and I was a layperson. But I had given birth to three children, and there were certain things I knew. I knew, for example, that any woman whose reproductive system had been as badly scarred by repeated non-clinical abortion procedures as Christy Sinclair’s had been was unlikely to sustain a pregnancy. I looked at that hard medical language again. No mention of a fetus, no mention of any physiological changes that would indicate pregnancy. There was no baby. I was flooded with relief and then, almost immediately, I was overcome by a sense of loss.
I replaced the first page, and that’s when I saw it. About a third of the way down the page under the heading “Identifying Marks” was a single entry: “left buttock, tattoo, 3 cm, bear-shaped, not recent.”
I felt my head swim. The harried woman came back. I signed the form and pushed it toward her without a word. I stood up and started to leave. She called after me. “You should make some arrangements to have her taken to a funeral home,” she said. “You can use my phone, if you like.”
She was, I knew, trying to be kind, and I walked into the nursing station.
“Just pick one and dial,” she said pointing to her desk pad. Under the plastic were the business cards of all the funeral homes in town. Easy reference. I picked the one nearest our house and made my call. The woman went through the doors marked “No Admittance.” I picked up the phone again and called long distance information.
Constable Perry Kequahtooway didn’t sound surprised to hear from me, and he didn’t chide me for reading a confidential file. When I told him about the teddy bear tattoos on the buttocks of two girls dead within a week, he whistled softly. “Now I wonder what that means?” he said in his gentle voice.
As I drove along the expressway, I repeated the question to myself. By the time I walked in the front door of my house, I still hadn’t come up with an answer.
Taylor was sitting at the kitchen table eating cake. Her face was dirty except for the places where tears had run down her cheeks. A half-dozen Sesame Street Band-Aids were plastered on her knee. Angus was across from her.
When Taylor saw me, she said, “I wiped out.”
“So I see,” I said.
“I put the Band-Aids on myself.”
“Right,” I said. “Taylor, did you clean the cut out before you put on the Band-Aids?”
“No time,” she said.
“Finish your cake and we’ll make time,” I said.
“I told you,” Angus said wearily.
Cleaning Taylor’s knee and disinfecting it was a trauma for us both. When we were through, we collapsed on the couch in the family room. Taylor snuffled noisily beside me, and I pulled her close. I looked at the sun shimmering on the brilliant blue of the pool and tried to block out the ugliness of the medical profile the coroner’s words had drawn.
Christy Sinclair had had so many abortions she was sterile. There had never been a baby. Beside me Taylor sang a tuneless song and finally drifted off to sleep. Not long afterwards, I followed her.
When I woke up, Mieka was there with Greg.
“Phone call from the uncle,” she said, “wanting to take you out for dinner. I accepted for you. Greg and I will take the kids to McDonald’s and the movies so you can make a night of it.” She looked at me. “I think we all deserve a night off, Mummy.”
I looked at them groggily. “I don’t think so, Miek. I’d be rotten company tonight.”
Greg came and sat by me on the couch. “It’d do you good, Jo. You’ve had a hell of a time the last few days. We all have. Anyway, don’t decide right now. Let’s all have a swim. It’s gorgeous out there. If you don’t feel better after that, I’ll call my uncle and tell him Mieka the Matchmaker will go out for dinner with him, and you can come to McDonald’s with me and the kids.”
By the time I came out of the pool, I’d decided against McDonald’s. The mindless rhythm of swimming had always relaxed me. By seven o’clock, my heart still felt leaden, but I was ready. Mieka had suggested I find something sensational to wear. I didn’t have anything sensational, but I did have a cotton dress that was the colour of cornflowers. Every time I wore it, good things happened.
As I met Keith at the front door, I hoped good things were going to happen again.
“No car?” I said.
“This place is in walking distance,” he said. “Actually, it’s my house. Our housekeeper got some food together and left. The rest of the evening is going to be a clumsy seduction scene. You can bolt out the door whenever you want.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said.
The streets were quiet, and the air was sweet with the
scent of flowering trees: chokecherry, lilac, crabapple.
At the corner of Albert Street there was a cherry tree in full bloom. We stopped under it and looked up into branches heavy with rosy blossoms, thin as silk.
“I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a Chinese watercolour,” Keith said.
Just then a gust of wind came and the cherry blossoms drifted down on us, pink and fragrant.
I reached over and brushed the petals from his shirt. “Is this part of the seduction?” I asked.
He smiled. “Is it working?”
Suddenly I felt awkward. “Keith, it’s been years since I’ve done this. There hasn’t been anybody for me since Ian died.”
He shrugged. “I’m not a teenager. I’m fifty-three years old. I’ve learned how to wait.”
Keith lived in a two-storey apartment house on College Avenue. It was white stucco with a red tile roof, vaguely Spanish and immaculately kept up.
“Second floor,” Keith said and we walked up an oak staircase, opened the front door and went in. It was a comfortable-looking apartment, airy and cool, with chairs and couches that looked as if they were meant to be sat in, gleaming hardwood floors covered here and there with hooked rugs, and a scarred pine table set for two in front of doors that opened onto the balcony.
Keith looked at me. “I’m not a cook,” he said, “but don’t worry. My housekeeper says everything’s ready. I just have to follow her instructions about what to heat up and what to leave alone. Dead simple, she says.”
“My youngest son would call it a no-brainer.”
He grinned. “He’d be right. Would you like a drink first?”
“Gin and tonic would be great,” I said. “It’s been a rotten day.”
Keith brought the drink. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“In that case,” he said, “why don’t you have a look around while I follow my instructions.”
“Need help?” I asked.
“Relax,” he said. “Have a look at the art. It’s my one extravagance. All Saskatchewan, you’ll notice.”
“So I see,” I said. On the coffee table a Joe Fafard ceramic bull, testicles glowing like jewels between his flanks, sat proudly beside clay six-quart baskets filled with brightly glazed vegetables: potatoes, carrots, tomatoes.
“Victor Cicansky,” I said looking at the vegetables. “My dream is to have a kitchen filled with these some day.” On the walls an Ernest Lindner watercolour of a peeling birch hung next to a brilliantly coloured blanket painting by Bob Boyer. Over the mantel was a magically realistic painting of a horse, so black it seemed blue, leaping into the arc of the prairie sky. Underneath was a title plate: “ ‘Poundmaker Pegasus’ by Sally Love (1947–1991).” Sally was Taylor’s mother. I was standing looking at the painting, remembering, when Keith came, slipped his hand under my elbow and said, “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place.”
He led me into a room that looked like a working office. There was a desk that Keith said had belonged to his father covered with files and papers, shelves of books and a wall full of political pictures. I moved closer to the pictures. They were all there, my chamber of villains, the men and women I had spent much of my adult life trying to turn out of office. Blaine Harris was in some of the pictures; Keith was in all of them, smiling with presidents and prime ministers and premiers. All the pictures were inscribed affectionately and fulsomely.
In the lair of the enemy, I thought.
Keith touched my arm. “Was this a mistake?” he asked.
“No, not a mistake,” I said. “Just a reminder. What is your status these days, anyway? I remember hearing that you came back to Saskatchewan because you wanted time away from Ottawa. Is it just a summer holiday or a permanent thing?”
He shrugged. “It depends, I guess.”
“On what?”
“I don’t know. Just stuff. Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s killing the mood. Besides, I’m hungry.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Would it be rude to ask what we’re having?”
“Probably,” he said, “but you’re with a friend, so you get an answer. Cold lake trout, some sort of green salad, cornbread and Chablis.” He dropped a disc into the CD player, and the room was filled with the shimmering sounds of the Goldberg Variations. Keith held out his hand to me. “And Glenn Gould is going to play until we decide we’ve had enough.”
“Which will be never,” I said.
“Which will be never,” he agreed.
We brought the food to the table, and he lifted his glass to me.
“To music,” he said.
I sipped my wine. “Good,” I said. I tasted the fish. “In fact, more than good. Everything’s wonderful. Do you know this is only the second seduction meal of my life? When I was sixteen, the boy across the street invited me for dinner. His parents had left him alone overnight for the first time. I guess the temptation was too much. He made the most romantic evening – vodka and orange juice and candlelight and his mother’s tuna fish casserole and, of course, music. Guess what he played during dinner?”
“ ‘Bolero,’ ” Keith said.
“That was later,” I said. “During dinner he played ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ ”
Keith smiled. “What happened?”
“He told me about George Gershwin’s tragically short life, trying, I guess, to impress me with the need to gather our rosebuds while we could. And I drank my screwdrivers and ate my tuna casserole and cried like a baby, because George Gershwin died so young and because I wasn’t used to vodka.”
“And then?” Keith asked.
“And then he walked me home. It was 1961. People took virginity seriously in those days. He ended up studying math and physics at U. of T. Last I heard he was a high-school teacher.”
“I’m too old for a change of career,” he said.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.
Dinner was wonderful, and I could feel the darkness lifting. Keith Harris was easy to talk to, and it was fun to trade stories about political battles. When we were finished, Keith said, “Do you like Metaxa? I have a bottle I brought back from Greece for a special occasion. Let’s have a little and I’ll put on the wisest piece of music I know.”
He took Gould’s 1955 recording of Goldberg out of the CD player and dropped in another CD. “This is the version of the Goldberg Gould did in 1981,” Keith said.
We took our Metaxa out on the balcony. Across the park, the lights from the legislature shimmered in Wascana Lake. The air was cool and smelled of fresh-cut grass and damp earth. We sat side by side in the stillness and listened as Glenn Gould played Bach. The interpretation was very different, not brilliant and risk-taking, but mature, rich and thoughtful. It was the work of a man who had learned a few things about life and about death. Good music to make love to when you were closer to the end of life than the beginning. I felt the familiar stirrings of sexual desire, and moved closer to Keith.
“Ready?” he said softly.
“I think I am,” I said.
He took my hand and together we walked down the hall to his bedroom. Suddenly, I was unsure. I walked across the room and looked at the framed photographs on Keith’s wall. They were unmistakably pictures of the north: the sun boiling on the horizon while the pines reached dark fingers into the red sky; a wood grouse standing one-legged on a piece of driftwood floating in shimmering water; a close-up of wildflowers growing through dead leaves.
“Beautiful,” I said.
Keith came and stood beside me. “Blue Heron Point,” he said. “I’m the photographer. I’m not exactly Alfred Stieglitz, but with the north as a subject, you don’t have to be. I have a place up there. It’s not much, just a cottage on the lake.”
“A squeaky screen door and sand on the floor and dishes that don’t match?” I said.
Keith smiled. “And a wood stove where you can boil your coffee and fry your eggs too hard and a woodbox filled with old Saturday
Nights. Best of all, it really is away from everything. Not like that palace of Lorraine’s on Echo. But I guess she had enough of the north growing up. Anyway, sand and squeaks and all, I love it.”
“Angus is going to camp at Havre Lake in July,” I said.
“Good, let’s take him up together, and we can stay at the lake.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Yeah. Remember George Gershwin. No use waiting around.”
“Right,” I said. Keith took me in his arms, and I felt as if the broken parts of me were coming together. When he caressed my breasts and kissed the hollow of my neck, the darkness that had been hanging over me lifted.
I kissed him. “Remember that Marvin Gaye song ‘Sexual Healing’?” I said.
Keith’s hands slid over my hips. “I remember.”
“I’m beginning to believe in it,” I said.
When the telephone rang, shrill and insistent, we looked at each other.
“Damn,” said Keith. “Do you want to let it ring?”
“Yes, but I’d be worried all night it was one of my kids.”
Keith picked up the receiver and said hello. He listened for a while then he said, “Just keep him quiet. I’ll be right there.”
Keith turned to me, “My emergency, not yours. Apparently, Blaine was trying to get up and he fell. I’d better go down and have a look. Why don’t you come along?”
“I don’t think I feel like going anywhere,” I said.
“It’s just downstairs,” he said.
“Downstairs here?” I asked.
“Yeah, I thought you knew. This building is sort of a family place. Lorraine owns it and she has the bottom floor. I have this. And since my father had his stroke, he and the nurse who takes care of him have stayed in the apartment at the back. It’s been great, really – he has his privacy but we’re close.”