The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn

by Gail Bowen

  He laughed, and safe again, I felt my limbs grow heavy and I drifted off to sleep.

  To sleep and to dream. I was walking down a corridor in the hospital, looking for the way out. But the corridors were arranged oddly, like a maze. I knew I was going in circles and I could feel the gathering of panic. Then I came to a big double door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. I pushed the door open. There was a vast room, empty except for an eight-sided desk in the middle. In the centre of the desk was a well, and Izaak Levin was seated there. “I can’t find my way,” I said. “Right or left?” he said. “What?” I said. “Conscious or unconscious,” he said irritably. “Left,” I said. “You’ll be sorry,” he said. But I’d already started through the doors at the left. I knew at once that I was in the old wing of the building, the one that no one used any more. All along the corridors the doors to rooms were open. The patients’ rooms were empty. The medical rooms had things in them that I remembered from my father’s office thirty years before. Finally I came to the sunroom that had been in the Wellesley Hospital when my father was on staff there. The room was filled with the furniture that I recognized at once as coming from the Loves’ old cottage. Nina was there, wearing her black mink coat, but she must have been a nurse because she was pouring medicine into glasses. She didn’t see me. And then Sally was there, not Sally as she was now, but Sally at fourteen in her nightgown. She was pushing a gurney, very purposefully. There was a body on it covered with a green sheet.

  When she saw Nina, she hissed at me urgently, “Jo, you should have turned right. You can still get out, but you’ll have to leave her behind.” I turned to tell Nina where I was going but she was in another room counting money. Then Sally and I ran along the corridors of the abandoned wing till we came to the part of the building that was still used. I could feel my apprehension lighten. “You can look now,” Sally said, pointing to the figure on the gurney. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to. I grabbed the corner of the sheet and pulled it back in one quick gesture. There on the stretcher was Woody Allen. He sat up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Eighty per cent of life consists of just showing up, Jo,” he said.

  I started to laugh, and when I woke up I was laughing and Mieka was there laughing and looking worried at the same time.

  “Well,” she said, “no need to ask you if you’re glad to be back from the jaws of death. It looks like you were having a lot of fun in there.” Then she hugged me. “Mum, we were so scared.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She started to cry. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. “So how’s the catering business coming?”

  She told me. And after a while Peter came and told me about a summer job possibility with a veterinarian down in the southwest of the province. Then Angus came and told me that three guys from the Oilers were going to be in the mall signing autographs on Saturday and if he donated fifty dollars to the Hockey Oldtimers he could have breakfast with them. And then a nurse said a plastic surgeon wanted to check my forehead and anyway I’d had enough visitors for one day. She shooed the kids away. Then after the doctor left, she came back and tucked me in for the night.

  I couldn’t sleep. I lay there listening to hospital sounds. Then the lights were turned down in the hall and I was alone in the half light. At first, when I saw Sally in the doorway, I thought I was dreaming. She put her finger to her lips, then moved quickly toward the head of the bed where she couldn’t be seen by anyone passing by.

  When she leaned over to give me a hug, I could smell the cold fresh air on her. She looked at the cuts on my face critically.

  “How bad are they?” she asked.

  “Not bad at all,” I said, “except for the one on my forehead, and it’s manageable. A plastic surgeon was just in here. He said that I’ll be ‘scarred but not disfigured’ – that’s a direct quote. He also said I’m lucky I have bangs because they’ll cover the scar.”

  Sally shook her head. “Good news all around, eh?”

  “Right. Oh, Sally, it’s so good to see you. But how did you ever get by the nurse?”

  She opened her coat. There was a picture ID pinned to her blouse. “I flashed this at her. Said I was a specialist from St. Paul’s.”

  I laughed. “Where’d you get it?”

  “One of Stu’s loonier ideas a couple of years ago. Everyone with access to the vaults at the Mendel had to have an ID. Anyway, for once something Stu did actually worked out. It came in handy tonight.” Suddenly, she was serious. “I had to see you, Jo. When Mieka called to tell me you were okay, I was so relieved, and then I just started to shake.”

  “That’s about how I felt,” I said. “It’s not much fun to see how easily it can all end.”

  She sat down carefully on the bed beside me. In the shadowy light, her face looked both older and younger. “But you can’t think about that,” she said. “You can’t think about how quickly it can be over, or you’ll be too paralyzed to live. There’s no point in being afraid of dying. It’s going to happen. What we should be scared of is blowing the here and now.”

  “Carpe diem?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  “Seize the day,” I said.

  “Seize the day,” she repeated softly. “That’s it. Because nobody knows how many days we have. I’ve never thought much about any of this stuff before. I’ve always just done what I wanted to do – made art. But Taylor’s changed everything. Jo, she is so talented. She is going to be so good. And she needs a good teacher. She needs me to do for her what Des did for me. Keep her from getting dicked around.”

  She stood up and walked over to the window. I could see her profile as she looked down at the lights of the city. “I’m not going to wait any more. Lately I’ve let everybody but me call the shots – the police, Stu, Nina, even the merry pranksters. But that’s over. I’m getting on with it. I’m going to Vancouver tomorrow morning. My lawyer says since I haven’t been charged with anything, the police here can’t stop me. I’m going to look for a house for Taylor and me.” She turned to face me. “You’re sure it’s okay with you if I leave.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you want me to leave you the keys to my car? Mieka says the Volvo’s done for.”

  “Are you sure you trust me to drive after today?”

  She smiled. “I trust you. And since you’re being so brave, I’ll bring you a present. What’s B.C. got that you want?”

  “Pussy willows – the fat kind. I want an armful.”

  She sighed. “You know, Jo, sometimes you’re just too wholesome for words.” Then she bent down and kissed my forehead. “Did I ever tell you I love you?”

  I felt a lump in my throat. “No, but now that you have, I may get you to put it in writing.” For a moment I couldn’t speak. Then I said, “I love you, too, Sally.”

  She grinned. “Good. Look, Jo, I’ve got to motor. I’ll call you from Vancouver and tell you all about the boys on the beach.” She gave my foot a squeeze and she was gone. Five minutes later I fell asleep. Despite the bruises, stitches and bandages, I was smiling.

  I awakened the next morning to the smell of coffee and the sounds of carts loaded with breakfast trays being rolled along the hall. When I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, I felt lightheaded, but I was determined to make it to the bathroom. There was a mirror above the sink and when I saw my face, I wished I’d stayed in bed. My forehead was hidden by a surgical bandage, both my eyes were black, and there was bruising across my cheekbones.

  “You’ve never been at your best in the morning,” I said to my reflection, then I hobbled to the safety of bed.

  Breakfast was a lukewarm boiled egg, toast and margarine, dry cereal with room-temperature milk and a glass of Quench. Still, I was alive. Being ugly, being fed a meal prepared by the dieticians from hell didn’t change that. I was alive, and as I sat watching the political panel on Good Morning, Canada I was happy.

  Nina was my first visi
tor of the day. She came by just after breakfast, bringing the novel that was at the top of the New York Times best-seller list and a pink azalea, heavy with blooms. When she saw my face, I could see her muscles tense. She didn’t like sickness. It was, I knew, an effort of will for her to come into a hospital. She embraced me affectionately, but I noticed that when she sat down, she pulled the visitor’s chair well away from the bed.

  We talked a little about the accident, and then Nina told me that Sally had flown to Vancouver that morning. She didn’t try to hide her anger.

  “This is why she drives people crazy. All these spur of the moment decisions as if no one exists in the world but Sally Love. She had promised to take Taylor up to the university and show her the studio today.”

  “Was Taylor upset?” I asked.

  Nina hesitated. “Well, no. Sally called her and seemed to explain things to Taylor’s satisfaction, but that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point then, Ni? If Taylor’s happy and Sally’s happy, why does it matter?” I spoke more sharply than I intended to, and Nina looked surprised and wounded.

  “You don’t think I have a right to involve myself?”

  “No, Ni, of course you have a right to be involved. It’s just I don’t think you’re being fair to Sally. She came by here last night, and I think I understand why she felt she needed to go to Vancouver. This hasn’t been the greatest time for her, you know.”

  “But it’s been great for the rest of us?” Nina asked icily.

  My head was starting to ache. “I know it’s been hard for everyone.” I took a deep breath. “Nina, there’s something I need to ask you about. In fact, I was on my way to talk to you when I had the accident.”

  She stiffened. I tried to choose words that weren’t threatening. “Yesterday afternoon I had an errand over on Broadway. I was parked in front of Izaak Levin’s house. I saw you coming out of there, and after you left, I went in and talked to him.”

  At first, it seemed as if she hadn’t heard me. She was wearing a heavy silver bracelet of linked Siamese cats. While I was talking, the catch had sprung open and she seemed, for a while, to be wholly absorbed in the problem of fastening it again. Finally, she looked up.

  “What did he tell you?” she asked.

  “Just things about the past,” I said.

  She seemed to relax. “I wouldn’t believe everything Izaak Levin tells you, Jo. He’s not a very nice man.”

  I could feel a pressure behind my right eye. “Damn it, Nina, if he wasn’t very nice why did you let your thirteen-year-old daughter move in with him?”

  She was alert again. “So that’s it. Do you think it was easy for me? You were there, Jo. You remember how it was. She didn’t want any part of me. Your father said it was because I reminded her of what she had lost in Des. He urged me to let her go.” She reached out and covered my hand with her own. Her hand was cool and smooth, and I thought how often that hand had reached out to reassure me.

  “I had you, Jo,” she said. “And that made all the difference. It was a fair exchange. Your mother didn’t want you, and Sally didn’t want me. I had to come up with a solution that was right for everyone. It wasn’t easy; you know that. You saw how much Sally’s defection hurt me. But it had to happen.”

  I looked at her perfect heart-shaped face. “Ni, how can someone who looks as fragile as you do be so strong?”

  She looked pleased. “Do you know that old Chinese proverb: ‘The sparrow is small, but it contains all the vital organs of the elephant’?” She stood up and started to put her coat on. “I think you’ve had enough for one day. You look a little weary. Next time, let’s leave the past in the past, and talk about all the things convalescent women are supposed to talk about.”

  “Such as?”

  Her smile was impish. “Such as Easter bonnets and where hemlines are going to be in the spring and the best place in town to get a bikini wax.”

  My head was pounding. “That sounds so good, and we’ll do it next time, I promise. But there’s one more thing, and I have to know this. Nina, did you give Izaak some money yesterday – a lot of money in a manila envelope?”

  The cat bracelet slipped from her wrist and clattered noisily onto the floor. For a beat, we both looked at it in horror, as if it were a living thing. Nina bent to pick it up. She fastened it carefully, then she looked at me. I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but her tone was urgent.

  “Jo, you must promise me that what I tell you won’t leave this room. The money was from Stuart. I was just the messenger. He’d die if he knew you’d found out. No one must know about this. If it gets out, it will destroy Stuart, and he and Taylor have suffered so much already.” She had tears in her eyes.

  “My God, Nina, what has Stuart done?”

  “He wrote a book, Jo. That’s all he did, but he’s so anxious about its reception that he struck a kind of bargain with Izaak. Izaak agreed to give favourable attention to the book in print and send copies to his colleagues in the art world along with a flattering letter.”

  Suddenly I was so tired I could barely hold my head up. All I wanted to do was sleep. But I had shaken out the bag of tricks and I had to stay there until all the surprises were accounted for.

  “And what did Stu agree to do for Izaak?” I asked.

  “You know the answer to that already, Jo. You saw it yesterday afternoon. In exchange for friendly consideration, Stuart agreed to extricate Izaak from his latest financial crisis.”

  “This doesn’t make sense, Nina. If the book’s so bad, there’ll be other reviews. Stuart can’t buy off everybody.”

  “The book’s brilliant, Jo, but you know how these things are. Izaak’s always been considered the expert on Sally’s work. People will take their lead from him. A good response is crucial. Stuart’s going to be fifty years old this summer. He sees this book as his chance to make his mark professionally.” She sat on the bed in the same place where her daughter had sat twelve hours earlier. “Jo, please don’t say anything. Stuart’s been wounded enough. If this came out …”

  “He’d be a laughingstock,” I said.

  She winced. “Or worse. Please, Jo.”

  I sighed. “I won’t say anything, Nina. You’ve asked me not to, and that’s all I need.” Suddenly I was exhausted. “But I think you’re right. I think I should sleep now.”

  She plumped up my pillows and smoothed my sheet. Then she blew me a kiss and moved quietly out of the room. This time, when I fell asleep I wasn’t smiling.

  When I woke up, there was a small green wicker basket on the nightstand. Inside was a bagel with cream cheese and lox, a bottle of soda, a century pear and a piece of wicked-looking chocolate cake. There was a white silk bow on the basket and a card. “Judgements,” the card said. Mieka’s name and a phone number were printed in the lower right-hand corner. On the back she had scrawled, “Eat and be well. Love, M.” I ate and felt better.

  Hilda McCourt came by just as the one o’clock news came on the radio. She was wearing a skiing outfit, lime green and cerise, very Scandinavian in design. It looked expensive enough for Aspen. Her bright red hair was tucked under a lime-green ski cap, and her cheeks were rosy from the cold. In that room that smelled of disinfectant and medicine, she was bright with health. She pulled up a chair by my bed, sat down and bent close to look at my face.

  “It could have been a great deal worse,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve had your name put on the prayer roster at the cathedral. We’re thanking God for your deliverance, not praying for your recovery.”

  “I’ve been doing some thanksgiving myself,” I said.

  “I expect you have,” she said. “Well, let’s get on with life. Shall I bring you up to date on the gallery’s celebration for Sally Love?”

  “You’re going to have to do more than bring me up to date on it,” I said. “I didn’t even know it was happening.”

  She looked puzzled. “I stopped by your house last week and left some information with your
younger son.”

  “Angus?” I said. “He’s the black hole of messages.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind next time,” she said. “At any rate, the affair for Sally is going to be on February fourteenth. I couldn’t resist the Eros-love-Valentine connection, and, of course, we had to speed things up because Sally told me she and her daughter are leaving town. It’s going to be a glittering evening, Joanne. Black tie, of course, with a sit-down dinner prepared by a first-rate caterer.”

  “I suppose you already have a caterer,” I said.

  “Yes, all that’s been taken care of. Did you have someone in mind?”

  “Maybe for next time,” I said, smiling.

  “Well, as I said, there’ll be dinner. But here’s the treat, and it was Sally’s idea. She’s agreed to let us auction off the preliminary sketches for the sexual parts in the fresco in Erotobiography. It’s a wonderful tie-in with Valentine’s Day. And an auction will be a feather in the cap for the gallery, not to mention a solid moneymaker. We’ve already had some nibbles from the national media interested in a Valentine story with a twist. Stuart is thrilled with all the attention.”

  “Hilda, how long have you known Stu?”

  She looked surprised. “He was my pupil when he was in high school, and, of course, I knew his parents.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “That’s an odd question,” she said, “but I presume not an idle one, so I’ll be candid. I think Stuart Lachlan is a pleasant but weak man. He’s good company but not the man you’d want with you in a foxhole. Do you want to hear more?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think I do.”

  “I’ll give you a little family history, then. Stuart was an only child. His parents were wealthy, at least by Saskatoon standards, and his mother doted on him. I bristle at those who blame all their difficulties in life on their mothers, but in Stuart’s case it would be justified. Caroline Lachlan protected her son so rigorously that she emasculated him.

  “I remember when he was in grade eleven he received a poor mark on an essay. Caroline came up to the school to castigate me. She told me that Stuart’s understanding of the play was deeper than mine and she was taking his paper up to the chairman of the drama department at the university to have it ‘assessed by a qualified person.’ ”