by Gail Bowen
It didn’t take long to spot Sally. She was standing in what had once been the front door to the gallery talking to a firefighter. She was wearing the Navajo blanket coat she’d worn the night of the opening, and its purple, turquoise, orange and blue were a splash of brilliance in the grey. She came over as soon as she saw me.
“Arson,” she said. “At least that’s what they think. I’m supposed to come up with a list of my enemies. Maybe I should just give them the Saskatoon phone book and a pin.” She sounded as strong and defiant as ever, but when she raked her hand through her hair, I noticed her fingers were trembling. Up close, her face looked drawn despite its tan. There was a smudge of soot under her cheekbone. I reached out and rubbed it with my mitt.
She smiled. “Oh, God, Jo, I feel awful. I need a five-mile run or a stiff drink.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s nine o’clock straight up. I think the sun must be over the yardarm somewhere. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
As we started toward our cars, I heard a shout behind us. It was the young firefighter Sally had been talking to. He ran up and handed something to her.
“I thought maybe this might have some sentimental meaning for you,” he said.
Suddenly the wind picked up, and as the three of us stood looking down at what he had brought, the snow swirled around us. It was a porcelain doll, obviously old. Not much was left of her clothes, and her hair had been burned so that only a scorched frizz shot out around her face. But her face was intact, and her eyes, as fiercely blue as Sally’s own, looked up defiantly out of the sooty porcelain.
Sally slid the doll through the opening between the top buttons of her coat so that it rested against her chest, then she leaned over and kissed the firefighter on the cheek.
“Thanks,” she said, and she started to walk across the lawn toward the street. I looked at the young man standing in the snow, transfixed. Sally was old enough to be his mother, but the look on his face wasn’t the kind of look a man has after his mother kisses him.
“Dream on,” I said under my breath, and then I put my hands in my pockets and ran through the snow to catch up with Sally.
She wanted to go back to her studio on the river bank. I said I’d follow her. The streets were clogged with snow and last minute shoppers, so it was after nine-thirty when I pulled up behind Sally in front of her place on Saskatchewan Crescent.
She called it a studio, but really it was a one-storey bungalow on a fashionable street of pricey older houses. Years before, Sally had torn down walls and opened the house up with windows and a skylight so that her work area would look out on the river.
When we opened the front door, the house was cold and the air smelled of paint and turpentine and being closed up. There was a tarp thrown down in the centre of the room, and it was covered with containers of paint: tins, buckets, plastic ice-cream pails, jam jars. There were canvases stacked against a wall and a trestle table with brushes and boxes of pencils and rags and lengths of wood and steel that looked like rulers but were unmarked. In the corner farthest from the window were a hot plate, a couple of open suitcases and a sleeping bag.
“La vie bohème,” I said.
Sally looked around as if she were seeing the room for the first time. “I guess it is a little depressing,” she said, “but my living here is just temporary. Although,” she said gloomily, “with this fire, I’m probably going to be stuck here till fucking forever. You know, Jo, I don’t even know if womanswork was still mine last night. There was a possession date on the papers I signed, but who pays attention to stuff like that?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll guarantee there’s a surgeon in town who’s paying a lot of attention to stuff like that at this very minute. A burned-out building isn’t much of a Christmas present. Anyway, I think the first order of business is to call your lawyer and your insurance agent.”
The phone was in the corner by the sleeping bag. Sally dropped to her knees and swept aside a pile of clothes that covered her answering machine.
“Jo, look at this. I was working last night and I always just turn off the phone and leave the machine on. I plugged the phone back in when I went to bed but I didn’t check my messages.” Over the red light signalling that there had been a call was a little window with digital numbers recording the number of messages received. The number in the window was sixty-two.
“It must be a mistake,” I said.
Sally hit the play button. “Let’s see,” she said.
A computerized voice announced the date and time of the first message: December 23, 9:05 p.m. Then Stuart Lachlan’s voice, tight and strained, was telling Sally that Christmas dinner would be served at two o’clock, but if she wanted to come and see Taylor’s presents, she was welcome at one-thirty.
“You’re a wild man, Stu,” said Sally, and she pushed herself up off the sleeping bag and walked across the room to the table where she’d thrown her coat. She picked up the porcelain doll and started checking solvents on her worktable. The computer voice announced call number two at 9:30 P.M. With a start, I recognized Izaak Levin’s voice, but there was none of that easy charm I’d heard an hour before. He was telling Sally he had to talk to her immediately. His voice sounded urgent. Five minutes later, when he called back with the same message, he sounded menacing. The fourth call came at 10:03. It was Clea Poole; her voice was husky, heavy with emotion, again apologizing – she tried to laugh at that word – for the scene at Maggie’s. But she immediately began to replay the scene, and she was cut off in mid-sentence when the time for her message ran out. She called again, within seconds, picking up where she had left off. Throughout the night, her litany of betrayal and longing had continued. In all, there were fifty-nine calls from Clea. Sometimes the interval between calls was half an hour; sometimes there were three or four calls in a row. At the end, her voice, dead from pain and exhaustion, was as void of emotion as the mechanical computer voice that announced the time of her calls.
All the while Clea talked, Sally worked on the doll, cleaning its face and body, dabbing at its burned frizz of hair with some kind of cream and then taking a scarf that she had obviously brought back from Santa Fe and cutting it into a sarong and turban. When the machine clicked, signalling there were no more messages, Sally turned toward me and held up the porcelain doll. With her frizz of hair shining from the cream and her Carmen Miranda outfit, she looked sensational.
“What do you think?” Sally asked.
“I think you saved the doll. Saving Clea Poole is going to be harder. Sally, she needs help, and so do you. I think you should take that tape to the police.”
Sally shook her head impatiently. “I can’t do it, Jo.”
“For God’s sake, why not? I wouldn’t be surprised if Clea set the fire herself. She’s clearly over the edge.”
“Who pushed her?” asked Sally. “Damn, I don’t even know what made me sell womanswork. I don’t need the money. It was just some symbolic thing – good-bye to all that. Case closed. Now Clea’s frying her brain about it.”
She reached over and switched on the radio. The Christmas weather forecast was snow and more snow. Sally listened for a moment, then she said quietly, “Jo, you can’t push somebody over the side of a cliff and then be surprised when they fall. I won’t take the tape to the cops. It’s not that I don’t think you’re right about Clea. Burning down a building she loved is just the kind of thing she’d do. She’s big on symbolism. You know she used to have the most beautiful hair. It was a coppery red colour and long. She hadn’t cut it since she was a kid. Anyway, when I married Stu, Clea had a kind of breakdown, and she hacked off her hair and mailed it to us at the house.”
“Oh, Sally, how awful. Poor Clea. I can’t imagine that kind of mourning. It can’t have been much fun for you and Stu, either.”
Sally shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. And there were phone calls then, too. Hundreds of them. Just like these. Stu was going to go to the police, but I told him not to. I took Clea to the d
esert with me for a couple of weeks. When we came back, she was okay again.
“Anyway, the buildings of Saskatoon are safe. Clea’s a one-trick pony, and she’s done her trick. I’m not going to turn her in to the police. But I’m not going to stay here and dry her tears, either. As soon as the holidays are over, I’m going to take my daughter and go someplace hot where nobody knows me.”
I was astounded.
“Take Taylor? Where did that come from? I thought you and Stu had agreed to leave Taylor with him. At least that’s what Nina told me.”
“That was the arrangement before Nina came into the picture. Don’t look at me like that, Jo. Let’s just say I’ve changed my mind. I want to show you something.” She took a framed drawing off the wall by the trestle table and handed it to me.
It was a picture drawn on paper with felt pens. In it a row of hula dancers with spiky eyelashes and corkscrew shoulder-length curls bumped grass skirts against one another. It was indisputably a child’s picture, but even I could see evidence of real skill and something that went beyond skill.
When I looked up, Sally was still focused on the drawing. Her face was soft with love and pride. “Look at that, Jo. It’s exciting all over. There’s something interesting going on everywhere on that paper. You’ll have to take my word for it. It’s an exceptional picture for a child of four. If it weren’t, if all her pictures weren’t so good, I’d tell Nina to take a hike and I’d leave Taylor with Stu.”
Mother love. I didn’t know what to say, and so I said nothing. My silence spurred her into uncharacteristic self-justification.
“It would be immoral to leave her in that house, Jo. I know I can’t expect you to understand, but if Taylor is going to make art, she can’t have someone standing around telling her what it means all the time. You know what Stu used to do? He’d come over here when I was working and give me all these insights about my work and then sit back and wait for praise – like a dog bringing me a dead bird.” Her voice dropped into a deadly imitation of Stuart Lachlan’s. “ ‘You see, don’t you, Sally, that your art invites judgements that are sexually dimorphic: women judge its complex interrelationships; men look to its statement.’ ”
In spite of myself, I laughed. “God, you and Nina, you’re both so good at mimicking. I was always afraid you did imitations of me behind my back.”
Sally smiled. “I’d never mock you, Jo, and Nina thinks you walk on water. Of course, she’d never make fun of her Stuart, either. She’s right. He’s a good person. It’s just – he’s dangerous to be around when you’re working. He’d wall Taylor in with words, Jo, and the art she made would get more airless and miserly till he choked her off altogether.”
“Have you told him?” I asked.
“I thought I’d tell him tomorrow.”
“On Christmas Day! Come on, Sally.”
“Okay, Jo, you win. But soon. I don’t like putting things off. Now come on, get out of here. I’m all right now, and it’s the day before the big event – you must have a million things to do. Here,” she said, and she handed me the porcelain doll, “souvenir of your morning.”
I took the doll, put on my coat and boots and walked to the door. When I opened it, the winter light hit Sally full in the face. She looked tired and somehow forlorn.
Stuart Lachlan didn’t know that his estranged wife planned to take their daughter. If he had, I would have suspected him of staging the paean to family life that my kids and I walked into that Christmas Eve. On the front lawn of the Lachlan house on Spadina Crescent, there were three snow people: a father, a mother and a little snow girl. They all had pink scarves, and the snow lady had a pink hat and purse; the snow girl was holding up a sign: “Merry Christmas from Taylor.”
Taylor herself opened the door to us. She was dressed like a child in a Christmas catalogue, all velvet and lace. Her hair, which was blond and thick, like Sally’s, had been smoothed into a sleek French braid. Taylor’s hair may have been like her mother’s, but her face, fine-boned, dark-eyed and grave, was Stuart Lachlan’s. She thanked us for the gifts we had brought, placed them carefully on a sea chest that was covered with a piece of Christmas needlepoint and disappeared down the hall.
“I’ll bet you a vat of bath oil that she’s forgotten all about us,” said Mieka.
“No, that was your trick,” I said. “All those kids in snow-suits, melting in the front hall when you went upstairs for a pee and forgot about them. Taylor seems to have better long-term memory than you had.”
“A tuna fish sandwich has better long-term memory than Mieka has,” said Peter as he hung up his coat and walked into the living room.
Angus followed him, looking around. “Deadly,” he said, and he was right. Royal Doulton Santas gleamed, expensive and untouchable, behind the glass of a curio case; teak camels, big as rocking horses, strolled behind intricately carved wise men carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby king. On the mantel above the fireplace, real holly filled pink Depression-ware pitchers, and antique wooden blocks spelled out the names of the people in that household for Santa: Taylor, Daddy, Nina, and then, a little apart, Sally.
Mieka and I took off our things and followed the boys into the living room.
“You know,” I said, “every year I promise myself we’re going to have a living room that looks like this for Christmas, and every year I end up hauling out the same old decorations. The only thing I ever seem to change is the poinsettias.”
“I like the way our living room looks,” said Peter, “but if you want something different, one of the guys in my biology lab showed me a battery-operated Santa Claus he got at the Passion Pit. Mum, you should see the stuff that Santa can do, and just with four double-A batteries.”
I was just about to ask for details when I heard Stuart Lachlan’s voice behind me.
“Oh, good, you’ve made yourselves at home.” He was standing in the living-room doorway. Beside him, her hand gripping his, Taylor smiled tentatively. Stu came in and kissed my cheek.
“Sorry we weren’t here to greet you, but we had a little problem in the kitchen. Nina’s taking care of it.”
“Then,” I said, smiling back at him, “it’s taken care of. There’s never been a problem yet that Nina couldn’t vanquish.”
As if on cue, Nina appeared in the doorway, flushed and laughing. “Jo has always been my one-girl fan club.”
“No longer a girl,” I said, “but still a fan. Nina, you look beautiful.” And she did, although it was a risky look. Her hair was smoothed into a French braid, not as long as Taylor’s, but I could see the intent had been to suggest relationship, and Nina’s dress was the same dusky rose as her granddaughter’s. It was a stunning outfit. The dress itself was very plain, high-necked and long-sleeved, but over the dress, she had a white organdy apron, full in the skirt, fitted in the bodice and gently flaring over each shoulder. Stunning, but a bit self-consciously domestic.
As she had been all my life, Nina was quick to read my expression. “I know, Jo, the apron is a tad too lady-of-the-manor, but an hour ago the roof of Taylor’s gingerbread house slid to the floor and smashed, so I just made a replacement.”
Not in that outfit, I thought, but it was such an innocent subterfuge, and Nina looked so happy, I couldn’t help smiling. “It’s a beautiful dress, Ni, and I notice it matches your granddaughter’s. Pink must be the colour of choice on Spadina Crescent this Christmas.”
“It’s Taylor’s favourite,” said her grandmother simply. “Now, Stuart, why don’t you get us drinks.” She touched the little girl’s shoulder. “And Taylor and I will get our special cookies.”
Stuart came back with a tray full of soft drinks for the children and a bottle of Courvoisier for the adults. When Angus saw the soft drinks, he was jubilant.
“Great,” he exclaimed. “None of that crappy eggnog. Everywhere you go people give you that stuff, and it’s so gross.”
When Nina appeared in the doorway with a cut-glass bowl of eggnog, Peter turned to h
is brother. “Way to go, Angus,” he said.
“I can dress him up, but I can’t take him anywhere,” I said, laughing. Taylor came in, carefully balancing a plate of cookies.
“Why?” she asked, and in the set of her mouth I could see the girl who had told a classmate to lay off Sally because his mother had a mustache. “Why can’t you take him anywhere?”
“Because he always acts silly,” I said. “Those cookies are beautiful, Taylor. How did you make the ones with the little stars cut out on top?”
Gravely and in great detail Taylor gave me the recipe, then she told me how she and her grandmother had made the candy-cane cookies, twisting pink and white together, and the gingerbread Santas with the red sugar hats and the beards white with icing. As she explained, her dark eyes never left my face, just as Stuart’s eyes never left your face when he was trying to make you understand something.
“These cookies really take me back,” I said to Nina, “especially the jam-jams with the little stars. You must have spent a hundred hours making those with me when I was little.”
“You always dropped the cookie dough on the floor at least four times,” said Nina. “All those dirty little cookies.”
“But always miraculously perfect when they came out of the oven. How did you do that Nina, smoke and mirrors?”
“No,” she said, laughing, “more domestic than that. I always had an extra batch of dough in the refrigerator. I still do. Sometimes grown-ups have to intervene, you know, for everybody’s good.” She turned her perfect heart-shaped face to me and smiled conspiratorially. “While we’re being nostalgic, come upstairs with me and let me show you what I’m giving Taylor for Christmas.”
When we came to the guest room that Nina was using during her visit, I was surprised to see her take down a key from the molding over the door.
“A bit Gothic novel, I know,” she said, “but I’m a believer in Christmas secrets. Now you close your eyes, too. I want to see your face when you see Taylor’s present.” She led me into the room. “All right, Jo, you can look now.”