Mother Love

by L. R. Wright

  He noted that the petulant little craving had subsided. These were easily dealt with, the physical remnants of his addiction. The psychological ties were much harder to break. He looked dismally at his creamed-and-sugared coffee, aware of the ten superfluous pounds around his waist.

  Then the door opened, the bell chimed, and Harry Stewart swaggered into the café.

  Alberg knew him immediately. A medium-size, black-haired man, egg-shaped, with small darting eyes and small hands, one of which clutched the handle of a worn briefcase. He was wearing jeans that drooped at the waist to accommodate a distended belly. They also bagged at the knees. Alberg felt a flicker of compassion, looking at the knees of the man’s jeans.

  The redhead swept from behind the counter. Alberg stood up and got to Harry before she’d finished whispering in his ear.

  “Harry Stewart?” he said with what he hoped was a disarming smile.

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Alberg. I’m with the RCM Police in Sechelt.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “I don’t want any trouble,” said the redhead, who Alberg figured must be the manager or maybe the owner of the restaurant. Patrons at nearby tables were neglecting their meals to watch and listen.

  “Whaddya mean, trouble?” said Harry Stewart indignantly.

  “No trouble. I just need to talk to him,” said Alberg. “Come on over here, Harry.” He led the feebly protesting man to his table, and they sat down. “Bring him a coffee,” he asked the red-haired woman.

  “He doesn’t drink coffee.”

  “Yeah, tea, Flora, bring me a tea. No, make it iced tea.”

  Alberg hadn’t noticed how small the tables were until he was sharing one with Harry Stewart: their knees were almost touching.

  “Oh, hey, Flora,” Stewart called after her. When she turned, he said, “And the meat loaf, okay?”

  Alberg was suddenly hungry. He told himself that he could eat on the ferry. Except that ferry food ought to be consumed only in emergencies.

  “So what’s this all about?” said Harry, crossing his arms and resting them on his belly.

  Alberg, studying him, saw in his mind Maria Buscombe, lying on the floor of her apartment. He thought again how impossible it was to mistake a dead person for somebody who was merely sleeping, even without a whole lot of spilled blood all over the place.

  “Where were you,” he said, “on Sunday, October second?”

  He saw a certain amount of bravura in Harry Stewart. He thought the guy was uneasy; he suspected that he lived a complicated sort of life. Alberg got this impression partly from the way he dressed. Harry Stewart was a middle-aged man who went around in baggy jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days and a pair of running shoes, one of which had come untied. This was not a guy with an office job. This was not a guy with any kind of a job at all. Yet he was carrying a briefcase, a battered leather thing, with files and notebooks sticking out of the top. He was a jumpy person, too. He had clasped his hands together in his lap because whenever he let go of them they started crawling all over the tabletop.

  “On October what? Second?” said Harry, frowning at his right hand, which was now clutching the salt shaker. “Jesus. I don’t know. That was a while ago, you know. A few days ago.” He shrugged and crossed his arms upon his belly again. “I got so much stuff happening in my life, it’s pretty hard to remember.”

  The waitress put a glass of iced tea in front of him. “Meat loaf’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Regina.” Harry dumped two containers of cream into his tea and watched it swirl.

  “Maybe there’s something in there that would help you remember,” said Alberg, nodding at the briefcase.

  Harry looked at it. “Yeah.” He reached down and hauled the briefcase into his lap. He poked around inside and finally pulled out a pocket diary. He paged through it, frowning. “Oh, yeah, right. I had some business out in Surrey that day,” he said to Alberg, looking relieved. He stuffed the diary back inside his briefcase and put the briefcase back on the floor. “What’s this about, anyhow?” He picked up his iced tea and slurped some up through the straw.

  “On a Sunday?” Alberg said disbelievingly. “What kind of business?”

  Harry looked up into a far corner of the room. “Oh, you know. Business.”

  “No, I don’t know. What kind of business?” said Alberg patiently.

  Flora was approaching to personally deliver Harry’s dinner. She bent to place it before him almost tenderly. She was dressed in an extremely short green skirt and a short-sleeved blouse with green stripes, and she smelled of perfume and sweat. “Enjoy,” she said with a smile and a pat on Harry’s shoulder. She gave Alberg not so much as a glance.

  “The bowling business,” said Harry, looking approvingly at his plate, where a large slice of meat loaf steamed alongside a mound of mashed potatoes and some sliced carrots. “I’m in the bowling lanes business, with a couple of friends.”

  “How well did you know Maria Buscombe?”

  Harry didn’t move for several seconds. He sat with his fork poised over the meat loaf, leaning forward slightly. Then he looked up, and he was panting a little, and his small eyes seemed to have become even smaller, to have shrunk. “Hardly at all.” His voice was pitched noticeably higher.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I dunno.”

  Alberg rested his forearms on the table, leaning into the aroma rising from Harry’s dinner. “Think, Harry. Concentrate.”

  “I dunno. Why? It was years ago. Why?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Yeah. Why? What’s this all about?” He lowered his fork and put it down on the table, next to his plate. “How come you’re asking me about her?”

  “She was your half sister, right?”

  “Right. Yeah. I only met her a couple of times, though.”

  “And then what?”

  Harry hugged himself, shivering. “Jesus. They got the air-conditioning on full bore in here, don’t they.”

  “You met her a couple of times, Harry. And then what?”

  “Why, then she moved away, I think. I think she did, yeah. Although my dad, he’ll be able to tell you more about that.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know, for chrissake. She just up and went. Somewhere.”

  “Why?”

  “Listen, I hardly knew the broad.” He pushed his plate a few inches away from him, toward Alberg. “Jesus.”

  “It must have come as a shock. Finding out you had a sister.”

  “She’s not my sister. Jesus. A love child, that’s what he calls her. Christ.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He sneaked a wary look at Alberg.

  “She’s dead, Harry.” This was obviously news to Harry Stewart. Alberg felt a pang of regret; of disappointment.

  “Did she kill herself?” He blurted it, then lifted his hand and placed it with surprising delicacy over his lips. Alberg couldn’t tell whether he regretted having spoken or was steeling himself for Alberg’s reply.

  Alberg shook his head.

  “Cancer? Heart?” These were among the terrors that lurked in Harry’s nightmares.

  The cop shook his head again. He was staring at Harry so intently, it felt as though he could see right through his skull into his brain—but Harry knew that wasn’t possible. “What, then?” After all, they shared some of the same blood, for God’s sake: it was important that he find out how she died.

  “Homicide.”

  For a second or two Harry couldn’t make sense of this. He’d been expecting to hear the name of a disease.

  Then he got it.

  Later he’d swear to Everett that his damned heart stopped pumping at that moment. Everything, he’d tell Everett, just shut down. He felt his blood drain away, fleeing the surface of him, taking refuge in his nonopera
tional heart. He literally couldn’t feel his face, or his fingers, or his toes. He wanted to stand up and walk out of the café, but he thought he’d crumple to the floor if he tried to move.

  “Somebody beat her to death with a hammer,” said the cop.

  “Oh, my God.” Harry picked up his briefcase and put it in his lap, and hugged it. He was intent upon not letting the cop see inside his brain. It was the most important thing he’d ever had to do. He would concentrate upon not letting the cop see in there, and if he kept his entire attention focused upon this, maybe he could keep Hamilton Gleitman out of his thoughts, and then it wouldn’t matter if the cop saw them or not.

  Chapter 38

  BELINDA HAD NOT gone to the Jolly Shopper as the policeman had asked. She had gone home and was now sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed she shared with Raymond, looking out the wide window into the backyard, which was a rough tangle of untended greenery. The day was warm and summery; but the leaves of the lilac bushes were getting rusty, and the sweet peas were sparse upon yellowing vines. Belinda wondered where she would be exactly one year from today.

  The book lying open on the bed in front of her had been published in 1974. She wished she’d noticed that before checking it out of the library. A lot of progress must have been made in twenty years.

  She had always expected that her mother would return someday. At first, of course, she had expected her all the time. Every time she heard footsteps on the porch, even though she knew they weren’t her mother’s footsteps because her mother’s footsteps were unmistakable, nevertheless, every time the mail was delivered or the paper; every time a neighborhood kid came by wanting bottles or cans for his hockey league; every time a representative of a religious sect knocked on the door to invite them to heaven; every single time, for a while, Belinda had thought, when someone came to the door, It’s Mom. And when the phone rang, too, she had thought it would be her mother, with an explanation.

  The book had a section entitled “Old Wives’ Tales,” which it said were “destructive” and “demoralizing.” Belinda appreciated the controlled anger that permeated these paragraphs. She felt soothed by them, even though she hadn’t heard any old wives’ tales, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway: she was just browsing her way through this book on her way to the last chapter—“Induced Abortion.”

  Her father had never been willing to discuss it. He’d shown Belinda the note, which she had to agree was far from satisfactory. Her mother’s handwriting had been shaky, but that was to be expected, Belinda was glad of it, because it wasn’t a commonplace thing to desert your family, and a person’s hand ought to shake while trying to explain it. She hadn’t explained it, though.

  Belinda drew up her knees and hugged them. Would she have to live the rest of her life without knowing why her mother had left her?

  She pulled the book around to her right side and thumbed through some more pages. Ovulation...implantation...genetics: “What will your baby inherit?... The statistical chance of your baby inheriting any particular trait, good or bad, can be determined with reasonable accuracy.” Belinda wished they would stop referring to “your baby.” The growth inside her wasn’t a baby, for heaven’s sake. Not yet.

  Her mother hadn’t just died. Her mother had been murdered. Belinda knew that she hadn’t actually accepted this. She understood what had happened, but this comprehension hadn’t yet progressed beyond the intellectual to become part of her. She stretched out her legs and put a hand on her heart, curiously. It was amazing, how nonphysical anguish could produce actual physical pain. She had thought she was getting over it when all of a sudden she was pregnant, and this brought it all back. And then, to make matters worse, her damn mother had shown up, finally, and...

  Belinda turned more pages in the pregnancy book. She came to some drawings, black-and-white drawings sketched with a surprising delicacy. She leaned closer. “Day 21.” She couldn’t make out what that drawing was supposed to represent. “Day 24.” “Day 28.”

  Exasperated, Belinda turned to the text: “Fourth Week. The pregnancy is embedded and grows rapidly during this week so that by the twenty-eighth day, or at the end of the fourth week, it is just visible to the naked eye.” Belinda shut the book.

  She remembered a soft spring day when her mother had been gone for perhaps six months. Belinda had been sitting on the front step, waiting for something, she couldn’t recall what, maybe waiting for her father to give her a ride to school or for a girlfriend to come by. Anyway. Waiting. Some daffodils were growing next to the porch. The branches of the maple tree were still bare, but the sun was warm on Belinda’s bare arms. She was wondering how much time had still to pass before she would see her mother again when she heard a car, gradually became aware of its slow approach, and she launched into a daydream that this was her mother’s car; her mother had gone off to make her fortune and was now returning—eagerly, full of joy—to Belinda and her father; she’d be driving a little red car, a Porsche, maybe. And then the real car came into view, and it was red. Belinda’s heart leapt, and she stood, clutching the post that supported the porch railing. The car passed slowly across the screen of Belinda’s vision, from right to left. It was driven by a gray-haired man. He glanced her way, and Belinda’s gaze was so focused, her posture on the front step so tense, that the stranger lifted his hand in greeting as he passed.

  Three and a half months. How many days was that? How many weeks? She opened the book again. The drawing labeled “Day 60” showed a baby sea creature; but Belinda was past day 60. “Day 80,” she was past that, too, a humanlike creature, with ears, and eyes, and fingers, and toes. “By the end of the thirteenth week,” read the text, “the baby is properly formed... The remainder of the pregnancy is designed not only to allow the fetus to grow to a size at which it is capable of independent survival, but also to give all the vital organs in the body sufficient time to mature and develop the highly complex processes which are essential for independent survival.”

  Belinda turned another page: “Fig. 11 The Abdomen at the Twelfth Week of Pregnancy.” She was sitting cross-legged again. She picked up the book and rested it on her ankles and studied the drawing of the tiny creature floating in amniotic fluid. It looked to be a genuinely restful place, the fetus floating free, there, kept safely anchored by the umbilical cord—like a dog on a leash, she thought, or a toddler in a safety harness.

  “Sixteenth Week. By the end of the sixteenth week the limbs are properly formed and all the joints are moving. Vigorous movements continue but are rarely felt by the mother. The fingers and toes are normal, and fingernails and toenails are present. The head is still relatively large for the size of the body, but fairly rapid growth continues to enlarge the body. Primary-sex characteristics continue to develop, and the sex of the infant is now obvious to the untrained observer.”

  “A wonderful, terrifying adventure,” her mother had said when Belinda asked her as a child what it was like to have a baby. It seemed to Belinda, though, that there was a big unnatural separation between birthing a child and being a mother. You wouldn’t think it possible that somebody could desert the baby with whom she had had this “wonderful, terrifying adventure.”

  She flipped to the last chapter and started skimming. “The termination of pregnancy before twelve to fourteen weeks,” she read, “is usually quite simple. After fourteen weeks it may be much more complicated...”

  Belinda closed the book and lay flat on her back, legs stretched out, arms at her sides. She saw the afternoon light pooling on the ceiling and thought that she really ought to go outside and start putting the backyard in order. She closed her eyes, which caused tears to run down her cheeks. Shit, thought Belinda, I am so damn sick of crying.

  “Belinda.”

  Her eyes flew open. Raymond was standing next to the bed.

  “I didn’t hear you,” said Belinda.

  “I walked from town. Had to leave the truck in the shop.” He knelt on the floor next to the bed.


  Raymond looked at Belinda intently, so engrossed in her that she almost felt embarrassed. She knew that he had seen the book lying next to her.

  “Belinda, we can be different, you know.”

  She could tell that he wanted to touch her. She shook her head.

  Chapter 39

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING Alberg was on the phone with the Surrey RCMP detachment, checking Harry Stewart’s alibi. “He says he was doing business with a guy called Ron Philips,” he said to the sergeant on the other end of the line, “and another one called Mason Godfrey.”

  “Say again?” said the sergeant, whose name was Nettie Pringle. She and Alberg had worked together, years ago, in Kamloops.

  “Yeah. Godfrey. First name Mason.” He gave her the men’s addresses.

  “Okay. Got it. But don’t hold your breath.”

  “How long?”

  “For you, Karl—a couple of days. A week, maybe.”

  “Come on, Nettie,” he complained. “This is a homicide, for God’s sake.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got a few of our own.”

  He hung up and made another call, leafing through the local paper as the phone rang and rang. When it was finally picked up he said, “You must be the only person in the world without an answering machine.”

  “I hate the damn things,” said Alan Stewart.

  “You’ve made a will, right?” said Alberg.

  “You get straight to the point, don’t you? Yes, I’ve made a will. A man would be a fool not to.”

  “And is your son, Harry, in it?”

  Alan Stewart chortled wickedly. “I’ve left him an allowance. Enough to get by on. Barely. He’s been stealing from me for years, did I tell you that?”