The Winter Wives

by Linden MacIntyre

  12.

  A few weeks after my first meeting with Jack, his friend, the senior partner, stopped by my cubicle again.

  –Come by my office when you have a chance.

  I closed the file I’d been reading, which was the Crown’s disclosure in Jack’s case. It wasn’t pretty.

  –Close the door, he said.

  When I was seated, he came around the desk and sat beside me.

  –We’ve never really talked, he said.

  –It’s a busy place, I replied.

  –Yes. But we should make time for lunch. I need to get your perspective on how this place works. How the world works, from the point of view of your generation. You boomers.

  I laughed, and said, That would be great.

  He stood, hands in pockets, and stepped away to stare briefly out a window.

  –These charges against Jack. What’s your thinking?

  –I think it’s a hard case to defend.

  –I agree. Where would you focus?

  –Obviously, entrapment. Overzealous prosecution. We take the position he thought she was as old as she said she was. When her parents found out, they could have got in touch with Jack and said, “Hey Jack, do you know how old she is?” Jack shits his pants. The end.

  –Exactly. But these parents obviously know Jack. They have an agenda. Don’t ask me what it was. Maybe they have history with Jack? Some old grudge? Do they want to shake him down? Anyway, once the cops get involved, and then the Crown, our Jack is no friend of Crown prosecutors, the fat is in the fire for Jack.

  –The grey area is what Jack knew and when…

  –Jack says he thought she was old enough to make her own choices. Her parents know how old she is. Instead of stopping it, they assume he’s a pedophile.

  –Is he a pedophile?

  –What do you think?

  I hesitated, then said,

  –I guess it doesn’t matter what I think. The Crown will make the case that he is a pedophile and a predator. Which is what we’ll have to overcome.

  –So how do you go about defending an accused pedophile?

  –I would emphasize Jack’s frame of mind. What he knew and when. What he intended, which was a normal…

  The partner held up a hand to stop me.

  –You attack the accuser, is what you do.

  I said nothing. I could feel some unseen peril, looming.

  –You go for the accuser’s throat, because, in our adversarial system, the accuser is always a fucking liar. Would you have a problem with that?

  –What makes you think I would?

  –Your body language. I’m watching your reactions.

  I was about to stand and get out of there, and yes, he read my body language.

  –Just stay for a minute. I should tell you Jack called the other day. And we had this exact discussion.

  I wasn’t able to read his expression. There was a long silence.

  –He’s been doing some thinking. And he thinks you might be conflicted about his case. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?

  –Not a clue, I said.

  –Jack claims that you’ve been a victim of sexual abuse. You don’t have to respond.

  –I’m listening.

  –So, what do you think?

  –About what?

  He sighed. Maybe I imagined it, but I think he rolled his eyes.

  –About your objectivity in a case like this. A lot will hang on the credibility of this female, and we’ll have to play hardball.

  –I don’t know what Jack is driving at. But if he has qualms about me…

  I looked him in the eye. He stared back. Neither of us blinked.

  –I guess you aren’t about to answer the elephant-in-the-room question, he said.

  –And that would be?

  He chuckled.

  –You’re good at this.

  –Thank you.

  –So here it is. Have you, at any time, been sexually abused? By anyone?

  –My honest answer? I don’t know. So I don’t know how Jack is sure I was.

  –Excuse my French, but how the fuck could you not know? Come on.

  I stared at him, unblinking. It surprised me how cold I felt. How outside the moment.

  –Frankly, I don’t see the relevance, I said at last.

  –I disagree. There’s like an epidemic of these bullshit sex crimes. Victims are starting to come out of the woodwork everywhere. I need to know where you stand.

  As far as I was concerned, there was nothing left to discuss. I stood.

  He looked away from me, then said,

  –I might have to put someone else on this. I think Jack would be more comfortable.

  –Your call.

  I left.

  * * *

  —

  All the way to Malignant Cove that Friday evening, I rehearsed my questions.

  Mom, what happened just before the accident? Before Dad came along? Before you arrived on the snowmobile?

  Now or never. It was important that I know. Finally.

  But I never asked. That weekend, it was as if she wasn’t there at all. Physically present, physically familiar, but in every other way, she was a stranger. I couldn’t ask a stranger.

  * * *

  —

  Soon after that conversation with Jack’s friend, my boss, I sensed a change in how I was perceived by the more senior lawyers in the firm. I felt no longer up-and-coming. Maybe down-and-going.

  I decided that what I needed was a break, even just a long weekend away. It was early April, and spring was beginning everywhere, it seemed, but here. The wolf months, the old people would call February and March. Once upon a time, it was when the food would be running out, in the forest, in the homes. Wolves, emboldened, skulking around the villages. Now it’s just the skulking wolf-winter, hovering and hungry. Then April, the cruellest month.

  I said to Annie,

  –Allan keeps inviting me to Florida.

  –Nice. Why don’t you go?

  –Would you come with me?

  –Who’d look after your mom?

  Good question, and now that Annie was part of our lives, she was the one to ask it.

  –I think she’d be all right.

  Annie was quiet for a while. And then she said,

  –Byron, I think you’re in denial. Maybe you don’t see it. But your mom shouldn’t be alone. Ever again.

  –Come on.

  –I’m serious.

  –Okay. I don’t really like Florida anyway.

  –No, you should go. Go for Easter. I’ll look after her.

  –Not a chance. I wouldn’t have that, Annie. You go to Florida. Maybe coordinate with Peggy. I hear she goes down to visit Allan.

  –Byron, do us all a favour. Me, your mom, yourself. Just get out of here for a few days. Just go.

  I did.

  * * *

  —

  Florida struck me as an ideal place to kill yourself. There’s something ominous in the searing climate when the sun shines and maybe in the atmospheric pressure when it doesn’t. The humidity. Every bit of fabric faintly mouldy after rain, everywhere the heavy musk of decaying vegetation.

  Allan met me at the airport. He was wearing a sports jacket, which caught me by surprise. I’d been expecting shorts and flip-flops.

  –What’s with the jacket? I asked.

  –What about the jacket?

  –I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a jacket.

  –You haven’t seen me period for what…light years.

  –It looks good on you.

  –I have a business meeting after I drop you off.

  –Isn’t trucking your business?

  –I’m diversifying. There’s a nice little motel I hav
e my eye on. Not far from the beach. Basically, an investment.

  –So, you’re prospering.

  –Couldn’t ask for more.

  He dropped me at his house, in a residential neighbourhood nowhere near the ocean.

  –We’ll get you to the beach later.

  –Don’t worry about it, I said.

  * * *

  —

  The house was perched on top of what seemed to be a large garage. It was spacious, from what I could see from the outside. The yard was large, surrounded by trees that mostly blocked the view of the other houses in the area. I wondered what he needed all the space for. Or a three-car garage.

  Allan seemed much older. There was crinkling around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, and he was developing a belly. He now projected a certain edgy toughness, not the adolescent bravado I remembered. I recognized in it a trace of the performed aggression I encountered in the business people I sometimes had to represent, not to mention other lawyers.

  The more we talked that weekend, the more I sensed that Allan had hardened on the inside too.

  * * *

  —

  –Beach day, he announced on Saturday.

  I protested. I’m not much for beaches, and especially bathing suits.

  –I have this leg, I said.

  Allan insisted. He told me he had to meet some people at the beach and talk some more business and I should come along. The business wouldn’t take long. But when we got there, I didn’t see anybody who seemed to be on the beach for business.

  –Bring a book, he’d said.

  He’d brought an umbrella and I settled under it with the book while he changed into a bathing suit then waded off into the ocean.

  He was an impressive swimmer, like a water mammal, completely at home in the element—long arms drawing him along, head turning in perfect synchronicity as he breathed. I could never swim like that. I grew up beside the sea, but I can barely keep myself afloat. I avoided it, except for work. Loved and feared it. He acted like he owned it.

  The next time I looked up, I saw him standing neck deep in the middle of a little group about fifty yards from shore, deeply engaged in conversation. I only noticed because there were no other bathers near them and one person in the group was wearing a hat. Then the guy in the hat was wading ashore and he dropped the hat in the sand beside a young woman who was sitting not far away from me, fully dressed, browsing through a glossy magazine. Then he returned, bare-headed, to Allan and the others.

  They talked a bit longer, then Allan flopped backwards and backstroked away from them. The others—I counted four—continued talking for another minute, then waded ashore. They were all older fat guys who looked ridiculous in Speedos. When the owner of the hat reached her, the woman with the magazine stood, picked it up, shook the sand off and passed it over, and they all walked off together toward the changing rooms.

  Allan eventually waded out of the surf, then sprawled on the sand beside me.

  –What was that about? I asked at last.

  –What?

  –Those guys you were talking to.

  –A business meeting, he said. I told you I had business here.

  –In the water?

  –Why not?

  –The motel deal?

  –This is something else.

  –So what was with the guy and the hat?

  –We were all supposed to be in bathing suits. Somebody got paranoid, so he had to lose the hat. Down here, nobody in business trusts anybody else. You understand?

  –But a hat?

  –A hat can be a lot of things besides a hat. Right?

  –I don’t get it.

  –Never mind. It’s not important. Aren’t you going in?

  –Not me.

  * * *

  —

  Back at the house, he poured some wine. His place was cool and spacious. Minimally furnished. Expensive-looking art.

  –You’re into art now, I see.

  –What do you think?

  –I’m not much of an expert.

  –That one there, the Emily Carr? It’s an original. You’d be shocked how much I paid for it.

  To my eye it was a moody cluster of woozy trees. Still, I nodded appreciatively.

  –It’s an investment, he said.

  –I’m trying to imagine Peggy in this scene. I suspect she’s a beach person. I know she loves to swim.

  He shrugged.

  –She doesn’t like it much down here. The humidity, I guess.

  –I can relate to that, I said.

  –So, what about all that—me and Peggy?

  –What about it?

  –Come on. You must have thoughts. Feelings.

  –About Peggy? Give me a break.

  –You know she obsesses about you?

  –I doubt that very much.

  –Well, your name keeps coming up in conversations. Byron this and Byron that.

  –Get out. Trust me. She’s all yours.

  He was staring at me hard, consciously projecting disbelief. A lawyer’s trick I’d learned.

  Then he said,

  –I wouldn’t want anything to come between us, Byron. You and me, I mean.

  –Actually, Allan, I’m seeing someone. Nothing serious. I didn’t plan to mention it.

  I had been studying my glass but now looked at him. His eyebrows were arched in disbelief.

  –Anyone I know?

  –Probably.

  He hooted, then stood up, towering over me.

  –Okay, man. You’ve come this far. So spill.

  –Annie.

  –Annie?

  –Annie Winter. Peggy’s…

  –Fuck. Right. Off.

  He slapped his forehead, did a kind of pirouette.

  –You’ve got to tell me…Have you…?

  –Have I what?

  –You know what. Have you done the deed?

  Something else I learned in a courtroom: how to say no while making someone think you said yes.

  –You gotta be kidding me. No way. You must remember how straitlaced she is…

  –You son of a gun. You sneaky bugger.

  He headed for the kitchen, then returned with another bottle in his hand. A German white of some kind. Poured.

  –Well, well, well. We’re kind of half-related now.

  I suppose I expected a longer conversation, but he soon returned to some deep and private place.

  After a considerable silence, I looked up to see him staring at me now as if my presence was somehow inconvenient. I’ve always had a knack for finding information in a face, and he had something on his mind that was even more important than the Winter sisters.

  –I should tell you, it might get a little busy around here tonight, he said at last. There could be some noise.

  –Oh.

  –I’m in the trucking business, right? Shipments often arrive at night and we have to break down the cargo and load it into smaller trucks for delivery. I just got word today. There’s a tandem coming tonight.

  –No problem. Can I help?

  He lit a cigarette. Blew a smoke ring.

  –I don’t think so.

  –So this is your trucking terminal, right here.

  –You could say that.

  –What about the neighbours?

  –It doesn’t happen often. They put up with it.

  And just as he predicted, it did get noisy at about two in the morning. Motors. Voices. Truck doors clunking. I got up and looked out. I cracked the window just a bit. Low voices, people speaking what I thought was Spanish.

  A short guy with a smouldering cigar, wearing the hat I recognized from the beach, walked through the glare from some headlights, intensely talking to the man beside him. The other, taller, guy
was Allan.

  I went back to bed and fell asleep. One gift I have is the ability to sleep in the midst of institutional commotion. A legacy from so many nights in hospitals.

  Of course, I knew what they were doing out there. Laundry on a larger scale.

  Allan slept in the next morning, so I went for a long walk. When I got back, he was making breakfast.

  –I hope the commotion didn’t bother you, he said.

  –Didn’t hear a thing, I said.

  * * *

  —

  Monday, on the way to the airport, I said,

  –I’ve often wondered about Mike.

  –Mike?

  –Mike, the Newfoundlander. In Toronto. The laundry guy?

  He frowned.

  –I don’t talk about Mike.

  –Sure.

  –He crossed the wrong people. I suspect he had an accident. What brought that up?

  –I’m thinking you’re in a dangerous line of work.

  I’d expected him to just drop me, but as we were approaching the departure zone, he suddenly wheeled onto a ramp and raced up into the parking garage. There was an angry car horn, rubber tire squeal, a cut-off taxi close behind us. He parked on a nearly empty level, cut the engine, then lit a cigarette, and checked the rear-view mirrors.

  –I’ll find my way all right, I said.

  –Just sit a sec. I want to talk about something.

  –Okay.

  –I’m planning to move back to Toronto, eventually. Florida is too goddam complicated for my simple tastes.

  –I think that’s a good plan. When?

  –Down the road a bit. There are a few more things I want to do before I settle down. Maybe travel. Try living in another culture while I’m still young. I’m thinking Mexico.

  He jammed his cigarette into the ashtray. Sat back, studied the car roof.

  –I’m going to want a partner I can count on back in Canada.

  –Who’d you have in mind?

  He ignored the question.

  –You’re a bright guy, Byron. You got sense. Okay? You’re an attorney, right? I think we’d make a great team.

  –Yes, I’m a lawyer, Allan. A law-man. Remember?

  –I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that was wrong. I know you too well for that. Anyway…