Still Waters

by John Moss

  Victoria was maternal, but home was a quality she projected more than a place she inhabited. She gave Miranda confidence that Jill was well cared for and loved.

  “Have you always been with Molly and Jill?”asked Miranda.

  “I was here from day one. I took them in for Mr. Robert Griffin. I used to clean for him. After the baby was born, we searched out this place. Molly thought it was just right, so Mr. Griffin bought it and we moved in. We’ve been here ever since, for fourteen years. Just over there is where Marshall McLuhan used to live.”

  A brief look of defiance crossed her face, which immediately softened to forbearance. “I don’t know if we can afford to stay. Molly paid the bills. But don’t you worry. I’ll look after the girl. Molly counted on me.”

  “You’ll be all right, Victoria. This is your home.”

  “I come from Barbados,” she said. “I speak Barbadian with my friends. Lord, you wouldn’t understand us. No, you wouldn’t. We speak Canadian dialect here.”

  “Do you know who Eleanor Drummond is?”

  “Never heard of her before yesterday, the night when you brought the girl home. Jill asked me about that — did I know Eleanor Drummond? I don’t think there are any relatives or otherwise out there, not at all. There’s not anyone but me and the girl. Miss Molly never got a Christmas card in her life.”

  “Tell me about Molly Bray.”

  “Oh, dear, it’s hard to believe she’s gone.” Victoria lifted her hands to shoulder height and gestured into the depths of the house. “She’s everywhere here. She was so young, too young, you know. There’s no good age for dying, but there are some worse than others. She was too young to be dying on us.” She looked into Miranda’s eyes. “She never took something for nothing, nothing that wasn’t rightfully hers.”

  Victoria smiled almost wistfully. “But, boy, oh, boy, if it was hers, she was fierce.” She wasn’t crying. Her eyes glistened with pride. “Boys,” she declared as if there was an argument. “She could be as cool as a breeze from heaven, and hot as the fires of hell.” She nodded in affirmation to herself, evidently pleased with her summary description, enjoying the familiarity of her own words. She had clearly said them before. “The hellfire was all inside,” she clarified. “She was serene, a lady, out where it counted.”

  “And you never even heard the name Eleanor Drummond before?”

  “No, ma’am, I never. Like I said.”

  “Was Mr. Griffin a part of your life?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Molly hated old Robert Griffin. I never thought there was enough of him to make any difference.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He wasn’t much of a human being, one way or another.”

  “He certainly had an impact on her,” said Miranda. Victoria suddenly became wary.

  “All this,” said Miranda, indicating their surroundings.

  “Don’t you believe it. This was Molly Bray’s doing. From the time she was sixteen she was who she was. This is what she set out to make for herself.”

  “Tell me about Jill.”

  “She’s sleeping now, or as good as asleep.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “She’s family, Miss Quin. Family is family.”

  “And was Molly Bray family?”

  “Well, she was and she wasn’t. She was Jill’s momma, and Jill is my very own child, like the child of my womb. We loved her no matter what, so I guess we were all family.”

  Miranda picked up on the phrase “no matter what.”

  “Was she difficult sometimes?”

  “Jill or Molly? Molly wasn’t difficult, Detective. Distracted maybe. Sometimes Molly Bray was, like, here and not here.”

  “Distracted?”

  “Like she was following another agenda, you might say. You know, in her head. She was a loving mother. She was my very good friend. Nobody should die so young. Nobody should die if they can help it.”

  “I’ll call in to see Jill in the morning,” said Miranda, getting up and moving through the central hallway toward the panelled vestibule by the front door.

  “It’s Saturday tomorrow. She’ll be here. She went to school today. I wanted her to stay home, but she’s headstrong like her mother. She was going, and that was that.”

  Miranda noticed the rug in the vestibule. It was like one of Morgan’s, a Gabbeh, a thick weave from Anatolia done with old-style vegetal dyes. She could hear his voice, expounding. “It’s a Gabbeh,” she said. “The rug’s very beautiful. It fits in perfectly.”

  “Maybe so. I don’t know about Gabbeh. It’s the last thing she did, buying that, the last thing to make this house like it is.”

  Before leaving, Miranda had reached out and given the woman’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “Now don’t you fret, Detective, and I won’t worry too much myself, just enough. Jill and I, we’ll manage fine.”

  Now, the next morning, at the large front door with a full night’s sleep behind her, Miranda felt good about coming back to see the girl. For now Miranda was content with getting to know this strange woman-child who, like herself, was a link between Molly Bray and Eleanor Drummond, and who was virtually, as events were unfolding, Miranda’s ward.

  Jill came to the door and opened it wide. She welcomed Miranda with a flourish, then turned and walked purposefully toward the kitchen. Miranda followed, thinking the outfit Jill was wearing, prescribed to make young girls feel sexy, made her look as if she were playing dress-up — pretending to be women without quite developing the knack.

  “Hello, Victoria,” Miranda said when they reached the kitchen. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Lady Detective. We’re just having breakfast. Pancakes or French toast?”

  “Scrambled eggs,” said Jill. “Let’s have scrambled eggs and brown toast and coffee.”

  “You don’t drink coffee,” said Victoria matter-offactly. “You can pour Miss Quin a cup. We’re having French toast.”

  After breakfast, Miranda and Jill sat out on the front steps. A few people strolled by, walking dogs, exchanging pleasantries as they passed one another without stopping.

  “How are you doing?” Miranda asked.

  “I don’t like my mom being dead.”

  Miranda waited.

  “She left me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’ve got to look after Victoria. Do you know that she’s got three kids in Barbados? They live with her mother, and she sends them money, but they’d rather live here. She’s going to go back some day and be a family again.” The girl looked resigned. There was nothing to count on for certain, not in the end.

  “Jill, we’ll have to talk about your mother’s funeral.”

  “I told you, I don’t want a funeral. There’s no one but us.”

  “We could have her cremated and just have the ashes placed in a vault.”

  “Do they make little vaults just for ashes?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll make the arrangements. Do you want to speak to a minister, or have someone say a few words?”

  “Who? About what? That’s not my mother at the morgue.”

  “Because she’s Eleanor Drummond?”

  “It’s Eleanor Drummond’s remains, and it’s my mother’s remains.” She looked up into Miranda’s eyes ingenuously. “Will they need two caskets?”

  Miranda blanched.

  “My mom’s gone. I want to forget that she’s dead. No funeral, no words over ashes, no fuss. Please, okay?”

  “Forgetting’s not easy, Jill. And maybe not right.”

  “I don’t want to think about dead!” She took a deep breath. “Not a dead body, a corpse, a cadaver, ashes formerly known as …” Miranda put her arm lightly over the girl’s shoulders, but Jill sat upright, untouched. “I just want her to be inside my head. You know what I mean?”

  Miranda understood. She remembered when her father died, trying in bed to summon up good memories only, or to avoid him entirely in the dark. She couldn’t bear images of absolute stil
lness, silence, and decomposition.

  Thinking about murder victims, Miranda tried to maintain the fine line between clinical disinterest and common humanity, a line occasionally erased by a personal detail, an imaginative leap, and then there was loneliness in the dead of night and fear that was both visceral swarming through her mind.

  “That pin you were wearing …” she said to Jill.

  “At the morgue?”

  “You said your mother gave it to you.”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “It was pretty.”

  “Yes. She didn’t like fish, but she liked the design.”

  “How did you know what kind it was?”

  “A Shiro Utsuri? She told me.”

  “Jill, did you know Robert Griffin?”

  “No.”

  “Does the name seem familiar?”

  “I’ve heard it. Like, that’s where they found my mom. At his place.”

  “Did you ever go there?”

  “I didn’t know him. He was an associate of my mother’s.”

  “As Eleanor Drummond?”

  “I guess. I’m not sure. Could you take me to where she died? I would like to see where she died.”

  “I don’t think so, Jill. Why?”

  “It’s just — she was alive, and then she wasn’t alive. I need to see where that happened, where she changed from one thing to another like that. Do you know what metamorphosis means?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Miranda.

  “We read stories about metamorphosis in school, stories from Rome a long time ago. And we studied metamorphosis in science. I just want to see where it happened.”

  “All right. Tell Victoria I’ll get you back in a couple of hours. We’ll have lunch downtown. Tell her I’ll have you back after lunch.”

  When Miranda pulled into the Rosedale garage, she knew Jill had been at Robert Griffin’s before. They were both a little windblown. Jill had insisted they drive with the top down.

  Miranda was self-conscious about the Jaguar. She expected Mrs. de Cuchilleros would be watching them from among the ferns in her receiving-room window. As far as the neighbours were concerned, she was a police detective investigating a possible homicide and she was driving the dead man’s car. She hadn’t returned it the previous night, and somehow that made her feel even more truant.

  As they had approached, Miranda saw Jill avert her eyes, keeping the house out of her line of vision, then stare up at it abruptly when they turned down the ramp and descended into the depths. Parked, Miranda smoothed her hair back while Jill resolutely got out of the car as if she were obeying a command. Together they raised the top back up into position, and Miranda locked the doors. She started toward the inside entrance, then realized Jill was already striding back up the ramp. She followed her onto the front steps where the girl was pushing at the door.

  “It’s locked,” said Miranda.

  “I’ve got the keys.” Inside, Jill’s eyes followed the stairs in the direction of the study where her mother had died, but she walked through the hallway to the side, down the stairs into the den, and stopped at the French doors, waiting for Miranda to catch up, looking out through the portico into the garden. Miranda moved beside her, careful to give her enough distance.

  “Jill, tell me about it. Why did you want to come here?”

  The girl turned to her and stepped back. “To see what it was like.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “No.”

  “Jill, you have.”

  The girl looked angry and hurt. “What do you want from me?”

  “Jill?”

  “I can be anything you want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could be the daughter she wanted. She would see if she came back. I can be his Shiromuji girl if that’s what he wants. I didn’t mean for all this to happen. I can be whatever, whatever.”

  Miranda was stunned by her compliant ferocity. “Did he call you that?” Panic rose in her gut.

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “Did Robert Griffin call you that?”

  No answer.

  “Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jill …” A great wave of despair rolled through Miranda from deep inside to the surface, where it was quelled by an icy chill, and for a moment she felt nothing at all. She stood very still. Then her skin seemed on fire. “I was there, too …” She didn’t know if she had said that aloud. Miranda touched the girl, and neither of them burned. She took the girl in her arms.

  At first they stood stiffly upright, the girl defiant. Then Jill leaned into Miranda, letting her body weight slump against Miranda, and together they sank to the floor, holding each other on the Kurdish runner, swaying gently in a silent embrace, both of them waiting without apprehension for something to happen.

  “Jill,” Miranda said after a long time had passed, “I need you to tell me about it.”

  “You knew him before?” Jill asked in a conspiratorial whisper. “Like before he died?”

  “Yes, I did. I was a girl your age …” She didn’t know how to avoid the euphemism. It was more honest than anything she could think of. “When he came into my life.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “Yes, I think he did very much. He hurt me more than I understood, perhaps more than I understand even now.”

  They were sitting now, facing each other on the Kurdish runner, hunched forward like girlfriends.

  “Did he hurt you, Jill?”

  “He hurt my mother. Did you know she worked for him? She had an office and managed his money. Not the money he had invested — you know about that. It was money he used for buying things and running his life. She looked after him.”

  “Do you know where her office was?”

  “I could find it. It’s over a fancy gallery in Yorkville. I was only there once. That’s when I discovered she called herself Eleanor —”

  “You knew at the morgue! Of course you knew.”

  “Only after I followed her. I just found out.”

  “You followed her?”

  “We had a really bad fight. She caught me smoking with my friend Alexandria. She said I couldn’t see Alexandria for a month, like that was worse than being grounded. The fight was about that, more than about smoking. I mean, she knew I wasn’t really a smoker.”

  “Did she ever smoke?”

  “My mother? Are you kidding? She was death on tobacco. She had what I’d call a counter-addictive personality.”

  “You would?”

  “No way she’d give up control, not to a vice, not to a pleasure.”

  “Where did you come up with ‘counter-addictive’?”

  “We looked it up, Alexandria and me. We researched our parents.”

  “Okay. So you had a fight. And you skipped school and followed her to work.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was researching, like I said. There was a picture in the paper. I wasn’t supposed to see it, so I knew it was important. She threw it out without reading it, so I dug it out of the garbage. There was a picture of her with some guy I’d never heard of.”

  “Robert Griffin?”

  “Yeah. She was in the background, but you could see there was a connection between them. Well, it said she was Eleanor Drummond and she managed the Gryphon Gallery. Surprised much? So I didn’t exactly follow her. I just went there. Anyway, he paid a huge amount of money for a paddle with some writing on it.”

  “Rongorongo, does that sound familiar?”

  “Yeah, maybe. So suddenly I discover she has a whole other life.”

  “To protect you, Jill.”

  “A life without me. Maybe it was. I think it was. I think she needed to keep me away from him.”

  “What happened?”

  The girl glanced over her shoulder toward the corridor into the bathroom and cellars as if she were expecting someone to appear. Then she looked back at Miranda. “He was my father. D
id you know that?”

  “Yes, I think I did. When did you find out?”

  “When I went to my mom’s office … to Eleanor’s Drummond’s.”

  “Are you mad at your mother for being someone else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you won’t let yourself grieve?”

  Jill stared at her intently. She seemed relieved to be sharing her secret world and, at the same time, angry that her secrets were being exposed.

  “How did he hurt you?” she asked Miranda.

  Miranda wanted to keep the focus on Jill.

  “The same way he hurt me?” asked the girl, answering her own question. “The same way he hurt my mother. That’s why I was born, you know. Because he hurt my mother. I wasn’t a love child.”

  “I’m sure your mother loved you very much,” said Miranda, feeling the words hollow in her mouth. It was more complex than love.

  “Which mother? Molly Bray was my mother. Eleanor Drummond was my mother. Victoria is my mother. You want to be my mother?”

  Miranda flinched. “I want to be your friend.”

  “Okay,” said Jill. “That’s reasonable.”

  Miranda almost laughed. Reasonable wasn’t a word sufficient to the relationship, but perhaps it would do for now. “Tell me about going to the gallery. This was just a few days ago, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not listed under your mother’s name. I put a trace on her name and only came up with Griffin’s address here. The gallery was in his name.”

  “I think the building was in my name, and maybe the business was in his.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because that’s what she’d do. Because I went through her files.”

  “You went through her files! Is that how you found out about Griffin being your father?”

  “She wasn’t in her office when I went there. She was in a smaller room at the back of the gallery. She didn’t see me. I went upstairs. As soon as I opened the door, I knew it was Molly Bray’s space, whatever she called herself. You know how everyone has colours? I mean, the decoration wasn’t the same as at home, but I could tell from, you know, the arrangement of things, textures and colours, the feel of the place, that it was hers.

  “So I snooped. I found letters. Nothing compromising, but they showed an unhealthy connection between them. So he was a mystery. I couldn’t figure out who he was. But I knew from the way his name was in my mother’s files that he was my father.”