Paul Is Dead

by C. C. Benison

  Dorian’s eyes drift off the page—not because he is remembering the incident—but because he can sense a set of eyes on him. It’s a not-unfamiliar sensation. As he said mockingly to Mark in Tergesen’s store in August, I’m famous. With some reluctance he looks up and gets a jolt.

  It’s Dix. He drops the script onto the empty seat opposite.

  “Darling, how good to see you.” He rises and hugs her, with air kiss, feels the bony lightness of her under his hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to Calgary. My granddaughter’s getting married next weekend.”

  Peter’s daughter, of course. It doesn’t need to be said. Dix has only one child, living.

  “How nice … but October?”

  “Yes, it is hurried, but it’s not what you think. Something to do with work and travel arrangements to Hong Kong.”

  “Is Peter with you?”

  “No, he and his wife will come on their own, in time for the rehearsal.” Dix replies, to Dorian’s relief. Peter took him aside at a party once in Toronto and warned him away from his mother. “Did I know you were going to be in Toronto?”

  “No, sorry, Dix. I was only in for the weekend, sort of last minute. A wedding, speaking of weddings. An old friend of mine and his partner decided on the spur of the moment to marry at Thanksgiving. So here I am. Or, there I was.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have missed you.”

  “Me, too,” Dorian lies. In the years since he moved to Vancouver, he has returned to Toronto on any number of occasions, for work or play. Only if he’s certain Dix would learn of his presence—cast in a play, for instance—does he get in touch.

  In fact, Dix knows there are times Dorian’s been in Toronto and hasn’t called. She is even better connected than he thinks, and though he may be an accomplished actor, the twitch between his eyebrows, the way he held her gaze too firmly, tells her the “me, too” is a bit of a fib. Why? Who knows? Friendships falter. And polite fictions are the unguent of civilization.

  “Did your summer go well? I haven’t heard from you. That series filmed in Manitoba…?”

  “Morningstar Cove. It went well enough. Hardly the role of a lifetime, but it pays the bills. It’s renewed. I’ll be filming there again next summer.”

  “When will it be on TV?”

  “It already is. Started last month on Global in Canada. ABC Family, if you get it from the States.”

  In fact, Dorian’s invitation to read for Rope is a consequence of the American broadcast of Morningstar Cove. Rope’s director’s daughter is, predictably, besotted by the blond hunk star of the show, but the director’s eyes passed to Dorian who, he thought, had the demeanour for the role of Sir Johnstone Kentley, the father of the play’s young victim. It’s not a lead role, but, what the hell, it’s six weeks in San Francisco. He’s looking forward to seeing Lydia under happier circumstances.

  “I’ll look out for it,” Dix says.

  “I’m not sure Morningstar Cove would be your cup of tea.”

  “What’s your next project then? Is that a script I see? Exciting. Something here in Toronto?”

  “San Francisco. A play.”

  “Oh, how interesting. May I? I won’t lose your place.” Dix bends to retrieve the script before he can say yea or nay. He’d rather the latter.

  “Rope.” Dix reads the title, frowns a little. “I’ve seen this.”

  “The Hitchcock film.”

  “No. Well, yes, I’ve seen the Hitchcock version. I think. But I know I’ve seen it on stage.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, long ago. Late forties.”

  “Which is when the film came out.”

  “This was in London.” Dix hands him back the script. “William—my first husband—and I had flown there for some business thing. It was my very first flight, propellers, you know, refuelling at Gander, quite the adventure in those days—not like this.” Dix flicks a glance through the window at the ranks of jets on the tarmac. “I remember it—May, 1949. But I remember the play because the next morning, I experienced another first—morning sickness. How funny.”

  “Funny how?”

  “I was thinking about Paul—my son, you know—before I saw you.” She studies his face. “You realize that I was carrying—”

  “Mmm.”

  “Anyway, I ran into someone a little earlier whose son was in school with Paul, so it put him into my mind.”

  Dorian cocks his head sympathetically, says nothing.

  “Forty years, next year,” Dix continues, handing him back his script. “Hard to believe. Did I ever tell you I took up private investigation again?”

  “Again? No. I remember something about a detective possibly tracing him to … Barrie, was it?” Dorian knows perfectly well it was Barrie. It plagues him, this tracing. It’s like watching floodwaters advance. “We were eating at Pastis, when you told me. This was years ago.”

  “That investigator seemed to have his limits. I thought I’d try again. This one managed to trace him to Wawa.”

  “Oh, god, Wawa. I think it was the black hole of hitchhiking in those days. Once there, you couldn’t get out. Great lineups along the highway…”

  “Did you—?”

  “No, no.” Dorian realizes he’s been unguarded. What he knew of Wawa’s reputation he knew from Paul. “Getting out of Wawa was part of the lore of the day.”

  “Some former truck driver remembers dropping him there, so there’s no doubt he was moving west. To Vancouver? Where did young people want to go in those days? You’re thinking this is futile. I can read it in your face.”

  Dix is reading Dorian’s face incorrectly. He may have composed his face for empathy, but the mask is ready to slip.

  “I don’t think it’s futile,” he lies humbly, twisting the script in his hands.

  “I’m going to be eighty-two in November, Dorian. I’ve accepted that Paul’s likely not alive. But before I die I would like to know what happened to him.” Some indefinable emotion flickers in her face. Some old Orange Ontario grit, he thinks, and he’s not wrong. She adds, “A good friend of mine’s granddaughter is an editor at Chatelaine. She thinks it would make a good story. I should have thought of such a thing years ago.”

  “Good idea,” Dorian responds with false bravado. Here is danger, here is ruin: Chatelaine’s circulation is vast. Someone will turn the page: “A Mother’s 40-Year Search,” a picture spread, a number to call. Yes, why didn’t she think of this before? Why did he and Lydia never think of this possibility? Because they didn’t know Who. He. Was.

  “Peter doesn’t think it’s a good idea.” Dix’s eyes flick to the nearby TV screen.

  “Well,” Dorian forces a grin, “fuck him.”

  Dix affects shock at the language, smiles, contemplates him a moment like he was a wayward child. “Dorian, dear, do have a good flight. You will tell me when Rope opens in San Francisco, won’t you? I might fly down.”

  “Of course. Be in touch soon.”

  An air kiss and she is gone, wheeling her carry-on down to a gate a little farther on. He watches, as if to make sure she is safe, but really to let himself decompress. He sits, returns to the script.

  And now he doesn’t want the part of the father. Doesn’t want to do the play at all. He thought he could do it the last time. Then, he’d read the script. There was the table read. The blocking rehearsal. All was well. But next came full rehearsal. Act I, scene I, and he is holding the rope in his hand, the rope that will strangle the boy. His hand trembles, his mouth goes dry, and not simply words but sound vanishes from his lips, for that afternoon, that week, that fortnight. He lost the part. “Conversion disorder,” Mark once said, though in reference to a patient repressing her witnessing of her child’s murder: anxiety is “converted” into a physical symptom, blindness in the woman’s case.

&nbs
p; Mark didn’t come with Dorian to Toronto to attend the wedding and not because he was on call at the hospital over the Thanksgiving weekend or suchlike. He wouldn’t have come anyway. Mark and Dorian are parting ways. The thin edge of the wedge thickened with the conversation about buying Eadon Lodge and, Dorian learned soon after he returned to Vancouver at the beginning of September to find Mark skittish and withdrawn, he had met someone else. Presentiment prepares no one for shattering fact: Dorian’s not yet out of the house, they are in the “being civilized” stage, but the unanchoring has plunged him into something like grief. He craves a drink.

  An announcement. Dorian half listens to the beginning. The plane taking them to Vancouver has arrived. Finally. He looks up, sees it taxiing through grey mist outside the window, glances left to see Dix in her departure lounge, one hand on the upright handle of her case, other hand on hip, studying the TV screen. He peers at the one nearest him, and at ones further down the rank. The newscast is the same. He catches some prettily coifed creature droning on about something, but it is the crawler along the bottom of the screen that catches his eye in the few seconds before the next news item: Three dead in Manitoba storm.

  He thinks nothing of it.

  29

  There’s always some busker—musician, magician, whatever—in the pavilion or the plaza, someone to brush past, someone to ignore. Today, it’s a guitarist picking out something flamenco-y, singing—very sweetly—something familiar, the words manifesting as the BART’s long escalator takes her from shadow to light. A love like ours could never die. She is Eurydice emerging into the upper world. She is being fanciful. The guitarist—blue eyes, long blond hair tied in a braid, Obama T-shirt (“HOPE”)—picks her from the crowd, gazes like a lover right at her, right into her eyes. Orpheus, don’t look at me: A little scream in her head. She is being fanciful. He casts her a radiant smile. As long as I have you near me, he continues, and it works: Lydia reaches in her purse and pulls out a five. She is flushed with rare well-being, a strange sensation unconnected, she thinks, to anything about this day, the last day of October. The weather, perhaps? The Bay area has had a string of uncommonly fine days. Good news? Dorian is coming to San Francisco for a role in a play. Happiness on the home front? The Lincoln Way home is hers and Ray’s, the bank is happy. Erin and Misaki arrived last week from Japan, with Ray. His long absence has been hard to bear.

  The Campanile begins to ring. It will ring nine times over downtown Berkeley. Lydia doesn’t need to look at her watch. She is going to be late. She is almost never late—never being late being part of her nature. She feels a tiny stab of anxiety. Some of that lucky feeling begins to fray. Ray’s lovemaking, a train delay at Embarcadero, has made her late, but that’s no excuse. She has a 9:15 meeting with Cuntella to finalize some details for the spring 2009 catalogue and the walk to Countervail Press’s office on Addison takes all fifteen. She reaches for her cellphone, unlocking it from its imprisoning baggie. She will call Manson, her associate editor, to say she’s on her way. She flips open the phone and sees from the display that Ray has left a message. A second stab of anxiety. Ray is a man of routine and discipline, sequestered with his art like a hermit unless jonesing for coffee takes him to the kitchen. He calls in the morning only if there’s an emergency.

  An hour is spent in Cuntella’s office not reviewing the spring catalogue, but with the rest of staff listening to her chalk-on-blackboard voice, looking at designs for a new logo for the press. Lydia spends it numbed by dread. Ray’s message, picked up as she walked down Addison, was voiced in a mix of curiosity and concern: Honey, someone’s called from Canada and wants to talk to you. A Mountie. She wouldn’t tell me what it’s about, but she gave me a number for you to call…

  Lydia recognized the prefix. It was the same as Carol Guttormson’s—642. Back in her own office she awakens her iMac from sleep. The computer faces away from the hallway.

  Lydia’s fingers hover over her keyboard. Why would the RCMP be reaching out all the way to San Francisco? Surely Briony would have got in touch if something … Or Dorian. Dorian certainly, if it were dire.

  When Lydia types “Gimli” into Google and clicks on the news tab, her eyes alight on headlines with “storm” and “deaths” in them, and feels a flutter in the pit of her stomach. But the stories are nearly three weeks old. How can anything in them pertain to her? Again, Briony—surely she would have phoned or emailed if … Or Dorian? Perhaps not Dorian. In Vancouver, stories about Manitoba would be inconsequential. In the United States of America, Gimli and its travails—windstorm, deaths—would pass unnoticed.

  Yes, a windstorm—she clicks on a CBC entry—the great Lake Winnipeg whipped into a late-season tornado, waves surging, trees on shore uprooted, shorelines vanished, a path of destruction—more devastating than the one in 1988. The storm of the century, says a subhead, though the century is only eight years old. A lead photo of downed trees over a road. And news of death. Three deaths—an elderly man caught on the lake in his sailboat, a middle-aged woman (a former mayor) driving blinded by rain into a ditch, and young man in a cottage fire. The names are unrecognizable, but for one.

  Lydia’s heart contracts with pity over the details. Jonathan Black was young and vital, with, as they say, everything to live for, and he died harrowingly. But horror follows. Eadon Lodge and its grounds and its secrets are unchampioned, unguarded, unsafe. But worse: Her eyes fall on a certain picture—one of a slide show of ten of the regional havoc—and her breath leaves her body. It’s Eadon Lodge, she is certain, but there is no lodge, not any more. There’s only a charred absence, a bed of cinder in a Breugal landscape, unrecognizable. It’s the tiny shadow—picture centre—of the eccentric crown of the Monitor-Top fridge, somehow triumphing over the fire’s devastation, that registers the truth. Her eyes swim over the cutline: tree toppled … cottage collapsed … wood stove … tinderbox …

  She can’t bear it. She turns back to the home page. But there is worse still. A subhead for a related story, emblazoned red, captures her attention. Three words and the floor seems to fall away, as if in a nightmare. She could—should—scream, weep, but she is frozen into inaction. And she must look ghostly because Manson slips into the frame of the door at that moment, coffee in hand, armed for a bitchy little debrief on the stupid logo. His smirk falters as the words to the venerable question escape his lips:

  “Are you okay?”

  Lydia sees Manson as if at a distance, a blur in blue and grey. She answers mechanically, “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  Lydia marshals some inner resolve. Her hands, trembling over the keyboard, fall to her lap to form a tight damp ball—a gesture, she realizes, that makes her look like she’s hiding something. She hates bluffing Manson. He’s her work-husband, she tells Ray, who finds this funny, though she no more confides everything to Manson than she does to Ray. She must look ghastly, saucer-eyed, something!, for Manson leans away, when she says, again, with vehemence:

  “I’m fine, Manson, really. Just give me a few moments to deal with something here and I’ll come to your office. I’ve something to ask you about …” Her first impulse, bad impulse, is to say “Paul is Dead,” now at the proof stage, but can’t release the words. “…one of the upcoming projects, okay?”

  “Okay.” Manson’s tone mixes uncertainty and disappointment.

  “And would you mind closing the door?”

  She clocks his startled response and proffers a reassuring smile, which collapses with the click of the latch. Her eyes dart back to her screen.

  “STORM UNCOVERS BONES”

  Jesus.

  It can’t be.

  Her mind begins rationalizing, backtracking, denying. The storm, she read earlier, encompassed a sizable area. Though the epicentre was Gimli, communities to the north and south were affected. Who knew what lay beneath the earth there?

  The link. She has not clicked o
n the link. She must click on the link. She stares at the three words in contrasting blue type.

  She cannot not click on the link.

  She takes a breath, clicks, and the world stops.

  Posted: Oct 18, 2008 5:17 PM CT Last Updated: Oct 18, 2008 7:46 PM CT

  RCMP say emergency crews working north of Gimli Wednesday in the wake of Thanksgiving Day’s windstorm have discovered human bones.

  Gimli RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Tori Sinclair said the bones seem to be old but how long they have been in place has yet to be determined. The bones have been sent to the medical examiner’s office and have been confirmed as human.

  The RCMP officers are now working with the examiner’s office to try and identify the person.

  It doesn’t matter that it’s brief, that it’s little more than a headline amplified. It’s the words north of Gimli that chill her. She can’t delude herself. She knows why Canadian police are contacting her.

  Lydia tried calming herself by scrubbing the phone with Purell before punching in the numbers, thinking she could wait and make the call from home, but she doesn’t want Ray to hear, to see her in this anxious state. How will she explain any of this to him, anyway? She pushes this from her mind. She concentrates on sounding like a law-abiding citizen, surprised to be contacted by the police, but, of course, only too happy to cooperate.

  She is speaking with the very sergeant in the news story, Tori Sinclair, who explains that Lydia’s number was given to her by Carol Guttormson, at Interlake Real Estate, as the previous owner of a property north of Loney Beach.

  “If that’s Eadon Lodge, then, yes, I was owner … briefly,” Lydia says, trying to match the sergeant’s flat and measured tones. “My mother died in the early summer and so I inherited it.”