Puppet

by Joy Fielding

  All square. Finished. Over. Done.

  Except they aren’t. And she knows it.

  She grabs the shampoo from the side of the tub and washes her hair, letting the soap stream into her eyes, giving them the excuse they need to tear. “This is just stupid. You are being so stupid,” she repeats, angry fingers massaging her scalp. “I can’t believe you are obsessing over a man you dumped years ago.” The shampoo slides off her hair and over her shoulders, like a silk scarf, then clings to the tips of her breasts. She feels Ben’s fingers at her nipples and grabs the bar of soap from its dish, impatiently rubs his hands away. “Been there, done that. Remember?”

  Amanda finishes her shower and dries herself with a thin white towel, then searches for a hair-dryer in the cabinet underneath the sink. It’s just her competitive juices that have been aroused, she tells herself, not any latent feelings of love. She simply doesn’t like letting another woman win. That’s all there is to it.

  She locates an ancient dryer buried underneath an unopened bag of cotton balls, at least half a dozen shower caps, and several rolls of white toilet paper. Nothing else of significance. “Thank you, God,” she whispers, aiming the blow-dryer at her head, pushing the ON button as if it were a trigger, and feeling a blast of hot air at the side of her temple. Wet hair immediately whips up and around her face. Just like last night outside Ben’s building, she thinks. “Oh, no. I am not going back there.”

  Instead, she finishes drying her hair, purposefully blocking out everything but the whir of the motor, then gets dressed in her new navy pants and blue sweater. She knows she should finish cleaning up the guest bedroom, that there are still pieces of the shattered puppet stage scattered across the floor, not to mention the puppets themselves, who have been lying facedown on the bed all night and need to be returned to the safety of their closet hiding place, assured that everything is all right. “Later,” she says, heading for the kitchen, making herself a three-egg omelet, and chewing on a Granny Smith apple as she ferrets around inside her purse for the business cards she discovered last night. She spreads them across the kitchen table, examining each one in turn. Walter Turofsky, Milton Turlington, Rodney Tureck, George Turgov. Bogus business cards obviously, the useful props of a man who called himself Turk. So, which one was he really? Or was he none of the above, someone else entirely? And was there any way of finding out? “Think,” she tells herself forcefully. “You’re a smart girl. You can figure this one out.”

  A woman, her round face framed by a soft mop of auburn curls, winks at her playfully from across the room.

  “Rachel Mallins,” Amanda says, leaving the table to flip through the phone book. “Malcolm, Malia, Mallinos … Mallins, A.… Mallins, L.… Mallins, R.”

  The phone is answered on the first ring, almost as if Rachel has been expecting her call. “Hello?”

  “Rachel, this is Amanda Travis.”

  “I was right, wasn’t I?” Rachel asks immediately.

  “I checked the death notices for the past month. There was no listing for John Mallins’s mother.”

  “And the man himself? Were you able to find out when he was born?”

  “His passport lists his date of birth as July fourteenth. You were right about that too.” Silence. “Rachel? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” she says, her voice heavy with the threat of tears. “Anything else?”

  “Apparently the autopsy revealed that the victim was ten to fifteen years older than his passport claimed, and that he’d had a face-lift, maybe a nose job.”

  “So that bastard really did murder my brother.”

  “Rachel, did your brother ever mention anybody named Walter Turofsky?”

  “Walter Turofsky? No, I don’t think so.”

  “How about Milton Turlington?”

  “No.”

  “Rodney Tureck … George Turgov?”

  “No. Who are these men?”

  “Think,” Amanda says. “Turofsky, Turlington, Tureck, Turgov …”

  “Turk,” Rachel says, her voice a whisper. “You think they’re aliases?”

  “Criminals are generally lazy, as well as unimaginative. They tend to stick with what they know.”

  “Where did you find those names?”

  “I found a bunch of bogus business cards hidden in my mother’s house.”

  “Your mother?” Shock resonates through Rachel’s voice. “What’s your mother got to do with this?”

  The shock transfers to Amanda. “My mother?” What is Rachel talking about? “What are you talking about?”

  “You said you found a bunch of bogus business cards in your mother’s house.”

  “My mother? No. I said my client.”

  Silence. “Oh, sorry. My mistake. So what now? Back to the death notices?”

  “What?” Amanda hears the quiver in her voice. Is it really possible she’d said mother? “Why would I recheck the death notices?”

  “Think,” Rachel instructs, as Amanda had instructed earlier. “Last time you were checking for a woman named Mallins. But if anybody’s mother really died, her name would be Turlington or Turgov or whatever those other names were.”

  “Tureck or Turofsky.”

  “Tur-something, anyway.”

  Amanda sighs, not particularly anxious to return to the Reference Library.

  “Want some help?” Rachel asks, understanding the sigh.

  “No,” Amanda tells her quickly. This is something she needs to do alone. Besides, she’s already said too much. Could she really have misspoken, said mother instead of client? It was a good thing that Rachel, like most people, was so willing to ignore the evidence of her own ears.

  “You’ll keep me informed?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks. Oh, and Amanda?” she adds as Amanda is about to disconnect.

  “Yes?”

  “Next time you see your mother, give her a big hug from me, will you?”

  And then she is gone.

  “Shit.” Amanda hangs up the phone. “Shit.” She sits for a few seconds without moving. “Give my mother a big hug,” she repeats wondrously. “That’ll be the day.” In the stillness, she feels her mother’s arms reach out to encircle her.

  I don’t think I’ve ever told you how beautiful you are.

  “Whoa! Enough of this crap.” Once again she grabs the phone book, turning to the blue-bordered government section in the middle, locating the listing for City Hall. There has to be an easier way than plowing through all the death notices again, she thinks, blocking out all unwanted thoughts and images. Surely there must be some central listing. Amanda dials the number and waits, bracing herself for a recorded message advising her of the many choices available to her.

  “City Hall. Davia speaking.”

  “Davia? You mean you’re real?”

  “In the flesh,” the woman responds, as another unwanted image, this one of Ben, instantly materializes before Amanda’s eyes. Amanda promptly replaces this image with one she conjures up of Davia, who she decides is a tall, willowy brunette with a high forehead and large, pendulum-shaped breasts. “How can I direct your call?” Davia asks.

  Amanda hesitates, her mind so full of uninvited guests, it’s almost impossible to remember why she phoned in the first place.

  “Hello? Are you still there?”

  “Do you have some sort of death registrar?” The question pops from Amanda’s mouth, like a pellet from a gun.

  “No, I’m afraid we don’t,” Davia answers, as if this is a question she hears every day.

  “So how would I find out if someone has died in this city in the last month?”

  “Probably the best thing to do is check the death notices in the papers,” Davia says, as Amanda knew she would. “The Reference Library has a wonderful newspaper morgue.”

  Amanda almost laughs at the term. “What if no one put a notice in the papers?”

  “Well, in that case, I guess you could forward a request for the information t
o the province, although they require a period of seventy years since the person died.”

  “Seventy years? No, this person died very recently. Look, I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Isn’t death a public record?”

  “No, actually. It isn’t.”

  “It’s a secret?”

  “No. It’s just not public.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry I can’t help you.”

  “Thank you,” Amanda says instead of good-bye. “Reference Library, here I come.” She thinks of calling Ben as she is pulling on her boots and slipping into her coat, but he’s in court, and besides, what is there to say to him really? Idiot—you missed your chance? “I don’t think so,” she says, shivering even before she opens the front door, lowering her head and shielding her face from the biting wind.

  Except the wind isn’t biting. It isn’t even blowing. And while it is far from balmy, the temperature is substantially warmer than the day before. A good omen, she hopes, walking down the front path, about to turn toward Bloor, when she sees old Mrs. MacGiver staring at her from her front window. “Just ignore her,” she whispers into the upturned collar of her coat. “Keep walking.”

  In spite of her admonitions, Amanda finds herself negotiating the front steps of Mrs. MacGiver’s home, and ringing the bell. What the hell am I doing now? she wonders, looking toward the living room window when no one comes to the door, seeing nothing. Maybe I scared her, Amanda thinks. Maybe the poor old woman saw me walking over here and died of fright. And what then? Would her family, who already think she’s lived too long, bother putting a notice of her death in the newspapers?

  The sound of locks jiggling, and then the door opens. Just a crack. An ancient head peeks through, crowned by a thin halo of white hair that sprouts like weeds from patches of dry, pink scalp.

  “It’s me. Amanda. Gwen Price’s daughter,” Amanda tells the woman. “I’m going out for a few hours, and I just wondered if there was anything you needed I could pick up for you.”

  “I need a pair of red shoes,” the woman replies.

  “What?”

  “There’s a dance at the Royal York this weekend,” Mrs. MacGiver says, her face becoming quite animated as she flings open the door. She’s wearing an old, coffee-stained, yellow housecoat and heavy, gray-and-white gym socks. “It’s my senior prom, you know, and this year they’re holding it at the Royal York. I’ve been so looking forward to it.”

  “Mrs. MacGiver …”

  “My father wasn’t going to let me go at first. He’s very strict. Very strict,” she repeats with a shake of her head, seemingly oblivious to the cold. “He doesn’t like Marshall MacGiver. But my mother thinks he’s a very nice young man, and she talked him into letting me go. She even bought me a new dress.” She looks down at her feet. “But how can I go to the prom without matching shoes?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t go to the shoe store today, Mrs. MacGiver. Maybe tomorrow,” Amanda offers, trying to back away.

  “Then where are you going?” Mrs. MacGiver’s tone is harsh, almost accusatory.

  “To the library.”

  “I don’t need any books.”

  “Yes, I know that. I just thought you might need some orange juice or milk or maybe some tea.”

  The woman smiles, revealing several missing upper teeth. “Tea would be nice.”

  Amanda breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay, then. I’ll bring you some tea.”

  “Yes, tea would be very nice. Red Rose, if they have it.”

  Amanda feels the burn of last night’s tea on the tip of her tongue. “Red Rose it is.”

  “I didn’t know they sold groceries at the library,” Mrs. MacGiver marvels.

  “You should go back inside the house now. You’ll catch cold.”

  “Yes, it is cold,” the old woman says. “Well, thanks for stopping by. You’re a good girl, Puppet.”

  The door shuts in Amanda’s face.

  The Reference Library is a stunning glass and redbrick structure located at 789 Yonge Street, a block north of Bloor. Designed by award-winning architect Raymond Moriyama in the late 1970s, it contains almost 4.5 million items that are readily accessible to over a million visitors annually. Amanda discovered these facts during her last visit two days ago, and she is reminded of them as she pushes through the glass doors into the huge entrance hall that looks and functions like a public square. She strides through the light-filled, five-story atrium, around the clear, decorative pool that occupies most of the center of the floor, which is surrounded, she is pleased to note, by real plants, heading for the staircase to the lower level. Water trickles soothingly along stones and concrete into the pool’s shallow surface, and the smell of coffee wafts from a small snack bar to her left, although a sign at the entrance to the turnstiles advises her that no food or beverages are allowed beyond this point.

  The information desk is straight ahead, but Amanda already knows where to go. She follows the beige carpet past the two circular glass elevators to the winding, purple-carpeted staircase, amazed to see that the more than one hundred computers on the library’s main level are all occupied, and there is already a line of people waiting to access the free Internet service.

  How could she have lived in this city for so many years and not set foot inside this magnificent building? How ironic that she has found out more about the city of her birth in the last few days than in all the twenty years she lived here. Why is it we never appreciate the things we have until we lose them? she wonders, shaking away the unpleasant cliché with a toss of her hair, trying not to see Ben’s face in the face of a young man passing her on the stairs.

  The Toronto Star Newspaper Centre—Centre spelled with an re—is located at the bottom of the stairs. It is a vast, open area, enclosed by glass, and full of light, despite its basement location. An abstract, wire-mesh sculpture of newspapers being swept into the air by an imaginary gust of wind stands in front of the glass doors. Amanda pushes her way inside, her eyes scanning the sitting area to her left, furnished with fourteen gold-and-purple leather chairs in front of a curved wall lined with newspapers from all over the world. The main room, carpeted in oddly subtle gold-and-purple berber and punctuated by huge glass panels etched with copies of historical front pages, is filled with glass lecterns that rest like open books atop steel stands, in front of modern wooden chairs. These lecterns are arranged in clusters of six, three to a side, and are large enough to accommodate an entire newspaper, spread out to its full height and width. Computers run along the glass walls of the main room, behind which is another room for newspapers consigned to microfilm. Amanda doesn’t need to access the microfilm. She discovered the last time she was here that the library keeps actual copies of the Toronto dailies for the previous three months. Of course the last time she was here, she was checking the death notices for anyone named Mallins. This morning she’ll be looking for Turlingtons, Turecks, Turgovs, or Turofskys. Only the names have been changed, she thinks, approaching the plump, middle-aged woman behind the main desk. To protect the innocent or the guilty?

  “Hi. I’m back,” she tells the woman, wondering if she recognizes her from her last visit. “I need a month’s worth of Globes and Stars, dating from last week. Again,” she adds, hoping for some small sign of recognition.

  “We can only give you two weeks at a time,” says the woman, the same thing she said last time.

  “Of course. Sorry. I forgot.”

  The woman, Wendy Kearns by the nameplate on her desk, smiles blankly and leaves her desk to retrieve the requested papers from the storage area at the back, returning moments later with a stack of newspapers whose spines are neatly bound in plastic wrap. She hands them across the desk to Amanda. “Have fun.”

  “Thanks.” Amanda balances the neat stack of papers underneath her chin, carrying them over to the closest vacant spot, and dropping them to the heavy glass as softly as she can manage, which isn’t as softly as the man next to her would like. “Sorry about that,�
�� she whispers, but his nose is already back in his newspaper. Literally. Obviously very nearsighted, Amanda decides, throwing her coat over the back of her chair and sitting down, then taking a few deep breaths before opening the paper on the top of the pile. “Okay, so let’s get started.” Beside her, the nearsighted man makes a great show of clearing his throat. “Sorry,” Amanda apologizes again quickly. “I’ll try to keep it down.”

  She flips to the birth and death notices at the back of the sports section in the Globe, thinking somebody has a strange sense of humor, and scanning through the names. Avison, Laura; Danylkiw, Dimitri; Parnass, Sylvia; Ramone, Ricardo; Torrey, Catherine; Tyrrell, Stanley. Not a Turlington, Turgov, Tureck, or Turofsky in the bunch. “Of course not,” she mumbles under her breath. “Did I really think it was going to be that simple?” She checks the Star, finds the same names and more, the Star clearly the paper of choice for the dearly departed. Amanda goes through each of the papers in turn, finding nothing, then returns to the main desk for another two weeks’ worth of dailies, back and forth, up and down, deciding, what the hell, might as well go for broke, and looking through the library’s complete collection, three months’ worth of dead people passing before her tired eyes. Taggart, Timmons, Toolsie, Trent, Vintner, Young. The closest she comes to what she’s looking for is Margaret Tulle, who died on December 2, after a courageous battle with cancer, at age fifty-one.

  Not the woman she’s looking for.

  “Any success?” Wendy Kearns asks as Amanda drops the last of the newspapers back onto her desk.

  “It was a long shot.” Amanda shrugs. “Do you have a copy of the yellow pages?”

  Wendy Kearns stretches for the phone book on a low shelf beside her desk.

  “Is it okay if I take it in there?” Amanda motions toward the room with the gold-and-purple chairs.

  The woman nods and hands over the heavy tome. Amanda carries it into the adjoining room, settling into a chair against the end wall, beneath two framed newspaper clippings. She opens the phone book, laughs when she sees she’s turned to the page headed Lawyers. “Don’t want any of those nasty people,” she whispers, glancing toward the four other occupants of the room. But they’re either engrossed in their newspapers or napping. Not a bad idea, she thinks, sleep tugging at her tired eyes. “Later,” she says, flipping through Maids, Mufflers, and Naturopaths, to Office & Desk Space. “Uh-oh. Missed it.” She turns back several pages. Nuts and Bolts. “See Bolts and Nuts.” Figures. Nutritionists, Nutrition Consultants, Nursing Homes. “Here we go,” she says, retrieving her cell phone from her purse, punching in the phone number at the top of almost two columns of such numbers, wondering what the hell she’s planning to say.