by Gail Bowen
Saturday morning, Corporal Perry Kequahtooway came to visit. There had been a break in the weather. It was still overcast, but the rain had stopped. As soon as she got up, Taylor put on her bathing suit and went out to the backyard to run through the pools of standing water with the dogs. I took a towel, dried off the picnic bench and took my coffee outside to watch. When the dogs got tired, they flopped down near the sand pile; Taylor knelt beside them and began building a castle.
Perry Kequahtooway seemed to appear out of nowhere. Suddenly he was there at my elbow. “I rang the doorbell, but I guess you couldn’t hear out back.”
“I wasn’t listening,” I said.
He looked concerned. “I wanted to see how you were doing. After the advice I gave you when Christy Sinclair died, I feel responsible.”
“Welcome to the club,” I said.
He frowned. “Anyway, this is just a personal visit.”
For the first time I noticed that he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt that said, “Standing Buffalo Powwow, August 9, 10, 11, 1990.”
“Can I get you some coffee?” I asked.
“That would be nice,” he said.
When I came back, he and Taylor were carrying a bucket of wet gravel from the back alley.
“Is it okay to take that from city property?” I asked.
“It’s a very small bucket,” he said, “and I think this land used to belong to a relative of mine. You can accept it as a gift from my family to yours.” He dumped the gravel carefully at the edge of Taylor’s sand pile. “There’s more need for it to be here anyway. Your daughter tells me that no matter how carefully she builds her castle, it keeps falling down. It needs a firmer foundation.”
“I think I learned a song about that at Sunday school,” I said.
He smiled. “Me, too.”
Taylor, happy, smoothed the wet gravel into a base for her castle. Perry Kequahtooway and I sipped our coffee.
“I guess you’re having a pretty rough time,” he said.
“You guess right.”
“Blaming yourself?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I am. But you know I was only trying to help. I just wanted to help her have a better life.”
He was silent. The sun glinted on his dark braids as he looked into the coffee cup between his hands.
“I imagine you’ve heard that one before,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “I have. It was at the same place where I learned the song about building my house on a firm foundation.”
He reached across the table and touched my hand. “That doesn’t make it wrong, you know, Mrs. Kilbourn. People have to keep trying. People have to keep trying to do right.”
After he left, I tried to hold on to his words. The problem was that everyone seemed to know what was right but me. The family certainly knew. They were with Inspector Zaba. “Leave it alone,” they said, and I did my best. I put the Wandering Soul bracelet in a lacquered box where I kept jewellery I didn’t wear much any more, and I ignored the pang I felt when I shut the lid. I tried, in the words of the advice columns, to get on with my life. I read and I watched baseball with Angus. I talked to Greg’s and Mieka’s Saskatoon friends about a surprise party they wanted to hold at our house on the Canada Day weekend. I did all the right things, but I still felt as if someone had kicked me in the stomach.
The Monday morning before the long weekend Jill called and asked me to meet her in the NationTV cafeteria. After I got the kids off to school, I drove over. It was another rainy day. This rain was soft and misting. The Inuit people are said to have twenty-three words for kinds of snow; I thought by the time this spring was over, the people of our city would need at least that many words for kinds of rain. The cafeteria was empty when I arrived. I took my tea over to the window and sat looking at the patio that ran along the building. A man and a woman came out of the building and huddled under the eaves. The man was carrying a yellow slicker, and he draped it around both their shoulders. Lovers, I thought, risking the rain for a moment alone. Then they both pulled out cigarette packs and lit up.
When Jill came, I pointed to the couple. “Driven into each other’s arms by the network’s no-smoking regulation.”
Jill glanced at them, then collapsed into the chair opposite me. “It’s been seven years since you and I quit, and I still miss it. Actually, one more phone call from the powers that be, and I may start again.”
“If you have a problem and you start smoking again, you have two problems,” I said. “That’s what they taught us in quit-smoking class, remember?”
Jill narrowed her eyes. “You know, Jo, you can be really obnoxious when you put a little effort into it.” She shrugged. “Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was tonight’s show. How would you feel about discussing street kids?”
“I thought that was a forbidden subject.”
“No, the Little Flower case is a forbidden subject, but I don’t see why you can’t talk in general terms about these kids.”
“As a kind of flesh-and-blood reminder of the rotting infrastructure of our cities?” I said. “That’s a quote from the Montreal Gazette.”
She looked at me approvingly. “Yeah, that’s the angle. I’m going to check with Keith and Senator Sam, but if you’re game, it sounds like good television to me.”
We walked out of the cafeteria together and down to Jill’s office. In the hall outside the news division there was a large portrait. Jill stopped in front of it, pulled a black marking pen out of her purse and drew horns on the man in the picture.
“Childish, but it helps,” Jill said.
I looked more closely at the man. He looked affluent and assured. He also looked familiar.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Jill looked surprised. “That’s my boss. Your boss, too, come to think of it. That’s Con O’Malley, the boss of everybody. The head of NationTV.”
Jill went into her office. I stayed behind looking at Con O’Malley. He was the man in the photographs I’d seen on Lorraine Harris’s desk that morning at the lake, the one reaching out to touch the flame-coloured hibiscus in Lorraine Harris’s hair.
It was a small world.
That night, for the first time, our political panel generated as much light as heat. I accused Keith’s party of Darwinian social policies; he accused me of believing that you can solve any problem by throwing money at it. Senator Sam Steinitz sat back with a cherubic smile, calculating the number of voters Keith and I were alienating with our intransigence.
When the red light went out, Jill was beaming. “Good show, guys,” she said. “I mean that. This is what we should be doing all the time.”
Afterwards, Keith walked me home through the park. “You were good tonight,” he said. “Sometimes you’re a little tentative, but not this time. You really tore a strip off me a couple of times.”
“You seemed to handle it all right,” I said.
“I’ve been clawed at by experts, Jo. I still have the wounds.”
I slipped my arm around his waist. “Show me,” I said.
“Here?” he said.
“Your place might be a little less public.”
We went to Keith’s. He took the phone off the hook and put on Glenn Gould’s final version of the Goldberg Variations. That night when we walked down the hall to Keith’s room, I didn’t have any doubts. I wanted to have sex with Keith Harris. We undressed quickly and without embarrassment, and when we came together on the bed, our lovemaking was everything lovemaking should be, exciting and tender and fun. Keith was a skilled and considerate partner, and afterwards, as I lay in the dark, I felt relaxed and very happy.
“Jill and I were talking about smoking today,” I said. “Right now, I wish I had a cigarette. The one after sex was always the best one.”
Keith pushed himself up on his elbow. “I’ll run out and get you a pack.”
I kissed him. “I don’t need cigarettes, I just need a distraction,” I said.
<
br /> “I don’t have to be asked twice,” he said.
And he didn’t.
After I’d dressed, I went to the bureau to brush my hair. Keith was sitting on the bed putting on his shoes; I could see his reflection in the mirror.
“When I was at Nation TV this morning, I saw a picture of Con O’Malley,” I said. “I didn’t realize he and Lorraine were friends.”
“They’ve been friends for years,” Keith said, bending to tie a shoelace. “I think probably it’s more than that. Lorraine spends a lot of time in Toronto. But she’s so cagey about her life, I don’t know. To be honest, I was never that interested.”
“Do you think she would have asked him to hire me?” I said. “You’ll have to admit I’m not exactly a national name like you and Sam.”
“You will be,” Keith said. “But to answer your question about Lorraine, I’d be very surprised to learn she’d recommended you to Con.”
“I guess I’d be surprised, too,” I said. “Lorraine never struck me as being the kind of woman who would help another woman along.”
Keith came over and stood beside me. “I don’t think it’s that,” he said. “It’s just that …” His reflection in the mirror smiled sheepishly. “Jo, let’s just let this one drop.”
“Lorraine doesn’t like me, does she?” I said, and I was amazed I hadn’t had the insight before.
Keith looked steadily at my reflection.
“Don’t worry about hurting my feelings,” I said. “I really do want to know. She’s going to be Mieka’s mother-in-law at the end of the summer. If there’s something I’m doing wrong, I should know.”
Keith put his hand on my shoulder and turned me so I was facing him.
“It’s nothing you’re doing. Lorraine just has trouble with women like you.”
“Women like me? I don’t understand.”
“Jo, your father was a doctor. You lived in a big house, you went to a private school, then to university, and after university you married a lawyer. You didn’t have to work for things the way Lorraine did. She thinks you’ve had a pretty easy passage.”
I was astounded. “Keith, Lorraine has so much.”
“She didn’t always have it,” Keith said, “and I think that still makes all the difference to her.”
When I got home, there was a note from Mieka. Jill had called. Kim Barilko’s mother, Angie, was in town to arrange for the burial. I had told Jill I wanted to talk to her. In Mieka’s careful backhand was the name of the hotel where Angie Barilko was staying. It was a downtown motor hotel that I knew by reputation called the Golden Sheaf. Most often newspaper stories about it began with the phrase, “The victim was found …”
I called Angie Barilko’s room. When she answered, her voice was as flat as Kim’s. Yes, it was tragic about Kim. Yes, Kim had had so much ahead of her. Yes, I could come over if I wanted to. We agreed to meet in an hour in the Golden Sheaf’s coffee shop.
It was in the basement, and it smelled heavily of cigarette smoke and stale beer. The booths were all filled and I sat at the counter. Reflexively, I picked up the menu. The heavy wine leather cover was encased in plastic, and the plastic was sticky.
Angie Barilko had told me she’d be wearing pink; it was an unnecessary identification. I would have known her anywhere. She was Kim twenty years down the line: body bird thin, hair so dead from peroxide and back combing it looked synthetic. She was wearing a hot pink sleeveless blouse, black spandex pants that stopped at mid-calf and three-inch heels. I called her name and she came over and sat on the stool beside me. She lit a cigarette and blew a careful smoke ring in my direction.
“So you knew my girl,” she said.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t, but I wanted to. I thought maybe you could tell me about her.”
“You came to the wrong place,” she said. “Me and her kind of drifted apart. She was a good kid and all, I don’t mean that. It’s just nobody ever handed me anything. I’ve had to work pretty hard just to keep myself going. Rent, food, these …” She held up her cigarette pack. “Christ, they really gouge you for these now.”
Her first cigarette was burning in the ashtray, but she still opened the pack. “Empty,” she said sadly. “Listen, I think I musta left my wallet in the room. Would you happen to have a couple of bucks on you?”
I gave her ten. She came back with cigarettes, but she didn’t sit down. Unexpectedly, she smiled.
“Look,” she said, “let’s be up front. I haven’t got a lot to say. Kim mostly stayed at her grandmother’s back home.”
“Where was home?” I asked.
She was suddenly alert. “You don’t want to know that,” she said. Then she smiled slyly. “Look, I don’t want you going away mad, feeling like I didn’t keep up my end of the bargain. Here’s a picture of her.”
She pulled out her wallet. Her subterfuge revealed, she opened her eyes in mock surprise. “Shit, it was here all along. Anyway, here she is.”
In the picture, Kim was perhaps three: blonde, ponytailed, sweet. She was sitting on a man’s knee and holding a beer up to his lips.
“She was a cutie, eh?” Angie said. And then to herself, not me, she said, “I wish I could remember the name of that guy.” She shrugged. “Water under the bridge. Anyways, I’m taking her back to Calgary to bury. We got nobody here any more.”
I went home feeling overwhelmed with sadness, but with a sense that perhaps something was ended. The week after Angie Barilko took her daughter home it seemed possible to believe that the brutal blows that had begun the morning Mieka discovered Bernice Morin’s body had stopped. Lorraine and I had some nice moments together planning and shopping. She was an extraordinarily competent woman, and as I watched her tick off the tasks in Greg’s and Mieka’s wedding plans book, I was filled with admiration. I told her a couple of stories about my childhood that put it in a less enviable light, and I could feel her warm to me. Mieka took to calling us “the mothers,” and the night Lorraine and I addressed the wedding invitations, Mieka snapped a whole roll of film of us. “For the grandchildren,” she said, and Lorraine and I looked at one another and smiled.
Life seemed to be looking up for Peter, too. One night he called, sounding even less forthcoming than usual, but after a few false starts, he told me he had met a young woman. A horse trainer.
“Marriage made in heaven,” Mieka said, rolling her eyes when I told her. “They can currycomb each other.”
Taylor began her sketching classes. I bought her a Sunday New York Times that had a review of a retrospective of her mother’s work, and she carried it everywhere with her for three days, then she asked for some oils so she could get started making real art.
Angus became agile with his crutches. One night when the rain stopped long enough for the league to schedule a ball game for his team, he sat in the bleachers and cheered. Then when the game was over, he ran the bases on his walking cast, laughing like a maniac all the way.
On the last morning in June I drove him down to the hospital and the orthopedic surgeon removed the cast. Unconsciously, I had established a one-to-one relationship between the healing of Angus’s leg and the healing of our lives. As the cast came away and that pale, barely mended leg came into view, the symbolism was pretty breathtaking.
When we got back from the hospital, Jill Osiowy was standing at the front door. She was wearing shorts and an outsized T-shirt with the logo of Frank magazine on the front. Angus had brought his cast home from the hospital. It was an eerie trophy; it looked like an amputation, but Jill was enthusiastic as she examined it. Then Taylor grabbed Jill’s hand and took her into the backyard to show off her bean patch. I followed along, and when Jill had finished enthusing about the beans, I said, “My turn now. I haven’t got anything to show off, but I’ve got beer.”
“You win,” Jill said. “Anyway, I came because I have something for you.” She handed me a letter. “Fan mail,” she said. “I’ll get the beer. Read your letter.”
It had been opened
and stamped with the network’s name and the date of receipt. The notepaper was commercial, from a motel called the Northern Lights, Box 720, Havre Lake, Saskatchewan. The writing was carefully rounded, and the writer had used a liner. It looked like the work of a conscientious grade seven student, but it wasn’t.
Dear Mrs. Kilbourn,
I’ve written this letter twenty times and torn it up. My husband says what’s passed is passed, and usually he is right, but sometimes it seems Fate takes a hand. I wouldn’t usually watch a show about Politics. Politics is not for me, (no offence), but I was interested in your topic June 3 when you talked about Street Kids. I recognized you right away. You are the woman who was like a mother to Theresa Desjarlais. When I saw in the paper that Theresa had passed away I thought of you but I had forgotten your name till I saw you that night. It is you. The picture Theresa brought me of the two of you at Christmas was framed. It is on top of our TV, so there’s no mistake.
I know you must be very busy, but Theresa was my friend and I want to know if she was happy before she passed away.
This matters to me.
Sincerely
Mrs. Tom Mirasty (Beth)
Jill came back with the beer.
“I’ve read it, of course. Some of the mail we get isn’t worth handing along.”
I looked at her. “Did you notice the address? Havre Lake. I’m going to be driving right past there this weekend when I take Angus to camp.”
Jill sipped her beer. “I thought you’d decided that discretion was the better part of valour. I notice you’re not wearing the bracelet any more.”
“Maybe it’s time I put it back on,” I said.
For a long time neither of us said anything. We sat and watched Taylor in her sand pile, building her elaborate city. In the days since Perry Kequahtooway visited, the castle had become a wondrous thing. When there wasn’t room for one more cupola or turret, Taylor had sculpted a wall, high and protective. What was inside was worth protecting. On the grounds of her castle Taylor had created a beautiful world of looking-glass lakes and pebble staircases and tiny forests made out of cedar cuttings. When I was a child, I had dreamed of living in a place like that: a castle with a population of one where nothing could ever hurt me and no one could ever make me do things I didn’t want to do. But I wasn’t a child any more.