Denial

by Beverley McLachlin

  She rises to refresh my cup. As she crosses to the counter, I see the ankle bracelet I hadn’t noticed when she let me in. It sits with eerie elegance above the strap of her left sandal. And it reminds me of why I’m here. The bail judge, no doubt sniffing the spore of mental illness, hadn’t trusted her not to run.

  It took me a while to find this place. No visible house, no number. Just a carved stone marker by an iron gate. Wrong place, I thought, but as I turned my Mercedes to go, the gate swung abruptly inward revealing glints of glass and cedar through the trees at the end of a long lane. Vancouver has its share of these enclaves, where the privileged dwell.

  Vera returns to me, silver teapot in hand. Her linen shift moves against her thin arm as she fills my cup. Behind us, a black-haired maid in a white blouse is polishing the jasper countertop with more vigor than the task requires, lifting her head from time to time to observe us. Vera nods toward the hall and the maid leaves.

  “Amelie worries about me,” says Vera when we are alone. “I am much better now. It took so long to find the right medication and therapy.”

  I bring the tea to my lips. “When did you find it, Mrs. Quentin—the right medication and therapy?”

  “After my mother died.” She studies her cup, then me. “I’m guessing my husband sent you?”

  “Yes, he thinks you need a lawyer. Your trial begins in three weeks.”

  “I’ve had two lawyers. They wouldn’t listen to me. In the end we parted ways.” Her eyes say what she does not—why should you be different?

  I don’t have the answer, so instead I say, “Tell me what happened the night your mother died.”

  She takes a sip of her tea, then begins. Her head is back, her eyes half-closed. “My mother wasn’t well. Cancer of the bladder. It was one of the slow, suffering kind. Yet she insisted on living by herself. She had some help during the day and called when she needed to, but she was essentially alone. I picked up the slack, checking to see how she was, sometimes spending the night with her. Joseph said I worried too much, but he understood. That night, we got a call.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “I’ve been over it so many times in my mind. I can’t remember exactly what Mother said, but she needed me. Joseph and I were here at this table, finishing our dinner when the phone rang. He answered, then handed it to me. Your mother, he said. She was agitated, and said something about Maria, her day helper, having forgotten to put out her medication. She said Joseph had told Maria to leave early—Oh, I don’t remember exactly—”

  “So, you went to her house?”

  “Yes. She sounded upset on the phone, so Joseph and I decided that it would be best if I stayed with her overnight. He offered to drive me. I wasn’t in great shape myself. I was very anxious that day and I’d had a glass of wine, maybe two.”

  “And he did? Drive you over, I mean? No complaints?”

  “No, Joseph was so understanding. He just said let’s go.”

  I think of Joseph, by day shouldering the problems of the world, by night coping with a worried wife and an ailing mother-in-law, and throughout it all remaining calm and caring. Could it have been that simple? If I take this case, I’ll need to know.

  “Mother lived in an old house in Kerrisdale, not far from here. Joseph dropped me off and I went inside and found her in her chair in the den. Her hair was mussed up and her nightgown was all stained from some spill. That was unlike her—she was always fastidious about her personal care. She started muttering, perhaps she was angry with Joseph for letting Maria go early. I didn’t pay much attention; she had been suffering periods of confusion. Anyway, I sorted out her medication—so many pills—Demerol for pain, Zofran for nausea, steroids for swelling, Imovane to make her sleep.” She slides me a sideways glance and shrugs. “I gave her two sleeping pills instead of one. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was a bit worked up myself, and I just wanted to calm her down, make her sleep. I knew they were mild and wouldn’t harm her.”

  A picture is emerging—Vera, nervous and fussing with two glasses of wine in her, administering medication to Olivia, who is confused and angry. Joseph, the only functioning adult, dropping off his wife like everything’s normal. Something doesn’t jibe.

  “Can you tell me more about your frame of mind? How you felt at the time?”

  “I was unwell. I admit that. After my son, Nicholas, was born—more than twenty years ago now—I fell into a depression I couldn’t climb out of. I don’t know why. It didn’t make sense. I had everything I wanted: a beautiful home, a wonderful husband, and a perfect son.

  “My depression morphed into anxiety. I was obsessively worried, but I became adept at putting on a smiling face to the world. It was my family who suffered. Poor Nicholas, stuck with a mother who tracked his every move and called him ten times a day. And Joseph—let’s just say Joseph was a saint, a lesser man would have left me. All I wanted was to hold them close, but I was pushing them away. When Mother fell ill, I shifted my attention to her. I was in a constant state about her health, her medications, whether she was eating… I would drive over five or six times a day, just to check. And then I would rant to Joseph about the burden of it all. I realize now how difficult it was for everyone.”

  “You said you were anxious the evening you got your mother’s call. Was there a particular reason for that?” I ask.

  She hesitates. “I’d gone over the day before and Nicholas was there. He seemed upset—oh, he was calm and polite—but the house was tight with tension. I said something about how he should be at class—he goes to law school—and he just shook his head and stalked out. You shouldn’t have said that. Nicholas did the right thing, Mother said. What thing? I asked, but she refused to tell me what was going on, just sat there clenching the arms of her chair. Okay, keep your secrets, I said, and I left. I tried to put the incident aside, but it troubled me.”

  Secrets, I note. I’ll need to get to the bottom of what went on between Nicholas and his grandmother if this goes further. But now is not the time or place.

  “Were you on medication at the time? For your anxiety?”

  “Oh, yes, like Mother, marinating in my customized pharmaceutical brine. Pills and pills and pills. Happy pills, relax pills. Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac. Not that they did much good.”

  “That night, you say you were more distressed than usual, had a glass of wine, maybe two back at home?”

  “Just to calm me down, Ms. Truitt,” she says sharply, then she sighs. “But it didn’t help. I remember yelling at my mother—You’ll drive me mad. She said something about my not knowing, not caring, and I hugged her and said I was sorry.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, suddenly, she softened. She told me she knew things were hard for me. Don’t worry about me, she said. And don’t worry about Nicholas. He’s a good boy. We understand each other. And then we just sat there together, at peace. We’d moved her bed to the den because the stairs had become too much for her, so when she started to doze off, I tucked her in and held her hand till she fell asleep. Then I made myself a cup of chamomile tea and went upstairs to my old room. I’d stayed over so many times that I’d started keeping things there, pyjamas and so on. I took my own medication and went to bed.”

  Vera picks up her cup, puts it down without sipping. We’ve come to the hard part.

  “Can you tell me what happened next?” I ask gently.

  She focuses on the tea before her and takes a breath. “I woke up around eight in the morning and went downstairs to make coffee. As I was finishing, I called good morning. She didn’t answer, so I went into the den. Everything looked normal. I bent over. Her eyes were closed. My first reaction was that the extra pill had prolonged her sleep. Then I touched her cheek. It was cold—so cold. I knew—I knew she was dead.”

  Vera covers her mouth. A dry sobbing sound comes from deep in her chest.

  “I remember screaming, touching her face again, shaking her. I don’t know how long I stood over her body c
rying, but when I finally got hold of myself, I telephoned Joseph. My god, he said, I’ll be right over. Call 911. So I dialed 911, told the operator that I had wakened to find my mother dead.” She wipes her tears with a silk handkerchief. I catch sight of the letter Q. Monogrammed. “I was overcome, saddened and shocked, but part of me was relieved that it was all over, to be truthful. It’s no secret that my mother wanted to end her life. She was in a lot of pain. She saw no point in going on. She had talked about medically assisted dying, but since she wasn’t facing imminent death, the conditions weren’t met.”

  I make a mental note and get back to the story. “You were telling me what happened that morning.”

  “Yes. I thought they’d just send the medics, but for some reason the police came, too. Joseph arrived just as the police did, perhaps a moment before. He helped calm me down and we talked to the police. After I’d given my first statement, a medic came in and asked the police to examine the body.” She halts. “They came back and told me it looked like she had been given a lethal injection of morphine.”

  “Tell me about the morphine,” I say.

  “A bottle of morphine and the needles had been left under the upstairs bathroom sink by the nurse after my mother’s surgery. Mother hated the idea of doping herself to oblivion. She told me to get rid of them. I kept telling myself I should throw them out.”

  “But you never did.”

  “No, I didn’t. She assumed I had—she never went upstairs anymore—and so many other things were crowding in that after a while I forgot about it.”

  What, specifically, was crowding in on her oppressed mind, I want to ask, but decide to let her push on.

  “It was only when the police told me there were needle marks and asked whether I knew about any drugs in the house that I remembered the morphine kit upstairs in the bathroom cabinet. But when I took them upstairs and opened the cabinet door, there was nothing there—” She breaks off in a shudder. “The shock of Mother dying was enough. But the shock of realizing someone had murdered her—it was devastating. That was when I became hysterical.”

  I was on a sexual assault trial when word hit the courthouse that Joseph Quentin’s mother-in-law, Olivia Stanton, had died of an overdose of morphine while her daughter was in the house. Everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion: Quentin’s wife had murdered her mother. Poor Quentin, such a fine man, such a good lawyer. How’s he going to fix this? The papers were filled with the news the next day.

  “And no one else was at the house that night?”

  Vera tucks a strand of shiny brown hair behind her ear and leans forward. “Someone must have been there. Someone who killed her.”

  “But you didn’t hear anything?”

  She shakes her head. “I was sleeping. Some nights I sleep; some nights I don’t. That night was one of the nights I would not be able to sleep—I could feel it—so I decided to take a sleeping pill myself. I just fell into a kind of stupor, I guess. Oh, looking back, I blame myself. I shouldn’t have given Mother two pills, rendering her defenceless. I shouldn’t have taken a pill myself. If I had stayed awake, I would have heard whoever came and saved her.”

  “Did your mother have a security system at the house?”

  “Yes, she did. And I put the alarm on before I went to bed. Not the internal motion detector, though. I left that on bypass because Mother sometimes got up at night. But it would have detected any movement outside the house. The police kept asking me—How could anyone get in if the door alarm was on? I had no answer. There are no signs of a break-in, they kept saying, and your husband says he had to unlock the door and turn the alarm off when he arrived. I still have no answer for that.”

  My mind reconstructs the scene as the police must have seen it that morning two years ago. A woman found dead unexpectedly. Her daughter’s statement that she gave the deceased a double dose of sleeping medication and took one herself. A paramedic showing them needle marks in the crook of the deceased’s left arm. The daughter’s admission to the morphine upstairs, which had mysteriously disappeared. No signs of forced entry or intrusion. The conclusion is obvious. Much, I decide, will hinge on whether the Crown can show that no one but Vera and her mother were in the house the night of the murder.

  “You say your mother wanted to die. Could she have asked someone to help her end her life? A friend maybe? Another relative?”

  “I doubt it. As I say, she talked a lot about wanting to end it all, a few times she even asked me to give her an overdose of morphine. I couldn’t. Even in that I failed her.” Vera draws herself up. “I know how it looks. Everyone thinks I’m guilty. But I am not.”

  The stillness in her face, the steadiness of her voice, the quiet silence that follows make me think she’s telling the truth. But then, as Jeff would remind me, I’ve been fooled before. More than once. They say it in different ways, these people accused of murder—sometimes convincingly, sometimes not. But the essence is always the same: I know the facts look bad, but I didn’t do it. In the end, it’s usually self-delusion, an inability to accept what they have done, the brain playing tricks—denial. It’s no surprise that Vera Quentin may have fallen victim to the phenomenon. It’s hard to live knowing you killed the person who brought you into the world.

  “You’ve pled not guilty?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes the police overlook something, but the case against you is strong. The current evidence suggests you were the only person in the house that night.”

  Vera’s face closes, her dark eyes narrow. “You are no better than the other lawyers. You refuse to believe me.”

  I place my palm on the table. “I just need to be sure you understand your situation. Your legal situation.” I pause. “You’ve refused to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter.”

  “To plead guilty to manslaughter, I must admit I killed my mother. I cannot plead guilty to something I did not do. I did not kill my mother.”

  “I understand your conviction,” I press. “But if you plead guilty to manslaughter, you might do a year or two in prison—versus ten years if you’re found guilty of second-degree murder. Knowing everything you know, do you still intend to maintain your plea of not guilty?”

  “I cannot do otherwise.”

  I sit back. I knew her stance before I came here. It’s what drove Barney and Slaight away, but it still surprises me. In my experience, usually self-perseveration wins out in the end. “Then that is your right. No one can force you to admit to something you did not do.”

  She is silent for a moment as she takes in my words. “Knowing all you know, that my case is weak and the jury will probably find me guilty, will you stand by my side and help me through this ordeal?”

  I look into my teacup, consider the bleakness of her case. Jeff’s warnings. My reputation. If I take this one, it means another tick in the loser column. I realize Vera is murmuring something. I crane to catch the words.

  “What did you say?”

  “ ‘Everything I touch with tenderness, alas, pricks like a bramble,’ ” she repeats. “It’s a haiku by Master Kobayashi Issa. Except he would not have called it a haiku. He called the twenty thousand works he composed breath poems.”

  I study the woman before me. Is she talking about her mother? Her husband? Perhaps her son? She exudes perfection and calm, but that wasn’t always so. Is this really a simple case of an unstable woman breaking under the stress of caring for her mother? Despite the evidence stacked against her, there’s something about this family that doesn’t add up.

  Most cases I can take or leave—what happened has happened, and my job is to see the aftermath is tied up according to the rules. But occasionally, I’m confronted with a mystery. I recognize the danger signs—I don’t want this case, but its tentacles are burrowing into my brain.

  “Let me think about it,” I say, standing.

  “The haiku?”

  “Actually, I was referring to whether to take your case.
”

  But as she shows me out, I find myself thinking of the things I have allowed myself to touch with tenderness—not many—and how the prick has stung. I dispel the faces in my mind. Too late for me. But maybe there’s hope for Vera.

  “I’ll let you know,” I say at the door. But in my heart, I have decided.

  CHAPTER 4

  MY DAY FOR CHARITY, I think, as I follow Alicia Leung, my junior associate at Truitt & Co., through the battered door of the Women’s Legal Clinic in Vancouver’s downtown east end.

  When I returned to the office after visiting Vera and told Jeff that I’d decided to take her case, he went into a rant. In the end, he gave up. “Be it on your head,” he said, waving his long arms in the air. “But don’t count on me to help.”

  “Fair enough,” I replied, although how I will get through this case without him at my side I do not know.

  Right now, I should be vetting Sergeant Mitchell’s transcript for Danny Mah’s case tomorrow, but instead, I’m spending an evening giving away precious legal advice for nothing—pro bono as the law society elegantly puts it. For free doesn’t quite have the right ring. I see it as sticking a finger in the dyke we call the legal process in a vain attempt to prevent the tide of delayed and unheard cases from spilling over and inundating us. But we each must do our part on pain of disbarment or disgrace, the law society mandates. So here I am. Thursday night, 7:00 p.m., entering a room of women in need.

  I’m in my comfort zone. I did my time on the streets of East Van in my youth, waiting for the authorities to find me and deliver me to my next foster home. I know the covert alleys where drugs are traded, the alcoves of once-proud buildings where sex workers shelter from the rain. Even after the magnanimous Brock and Martha Mayne took me in, I kept returning to these haunts, drawn like a random chip to a dark magnet. It was Mike who finally cured my craving.