Still Waters

by John Moss

  “Of what?”

  “Of whatever happened while it was mine.”

  “Jill, how did your mother know you were in this cell? I don’t think a package of cigarettes would be enough. You could have been and gone. They could have belonged to somebody else.”

  “Well, she did.”

  “But she didn’t come in right away?”

  “No, I guess not. It was just some place she checked when she was here.”

  “Was she surprised?”

  “To find me? Shocked, but not surprised. By the time she opened the door, she already knew. I could tell.” The girl seemed almost wistful. “Do you think he did that to my mother like he said?”

  “I think he did bad things to many people.”

  “I didn’t really have a father, you know. Not if he raped her.”

  “No, you didn’t, not a real father.”

  “How come you’re looking after my interests?”

  Miranda smiled at the arcane description of their relationship.

  “You didn’t know my mother until after my father was dead. If he hurt you, why would you care?”

  “Because.” Miranda gazed into the girl’s troubled eyes, acknowledging the truth of their common experience. She rose and reached out. “Come on, Jill. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “Okay,” said the girl, allowing Miranda to take her hand and rising from the edge of the bed. They stood side by side and surveyed the chamber, Miranda with an overwhelming feeling of horror, Jill with unreachable memories and surface indifference.

  “Do you think my mother really murdered my father?” she asked as if the thought had just crossed her mind. “Molly Bray, I mean. Not Eleanor Drummond. I didn’t really know her.”

  “I think your mother was involved in Robert Griffin’s death, but I don’t know that she killed him. We’ll have to see.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “They’re both dead.”

  “We have to know what happened.”

  “It won’t make any difference. She’s dead.”

  “We’ll sort everything out.”

  “I told you what happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why not leave her alone?” She said this as if it were a test.

  Miranda moved toward the door. Jill pulled her back.

  “No,” said Jill. There was an indefinable urgency in her voice. “Let’s just stay for a minute.”

  They returned to the bed, and Miranda sat down. Jill walked to the shower curtain and stood with her fingers running along its slippery folds, almost leaning into it for support. She looked back at Miranda, who was slumped over on one elbow, anxious, exhausted, wanting to escape, but also feeling patience, compassion, and the desire to protect this girl from the terrors within.

  “I don’t want it like this,” said Jill. There was an edge of hysteria in her voice. “I shouldn’t have told you. She wanted me to know. I thought she wanted you to know, too. Please, Miranda, you have the power. Why can’t we leave the past in the past? Wouldn’t that be best for all of us — to bury the past?”

  “I understand,” said Miranda. “But even if we could, the law won’t let us. There’s a lot at stake here, Jill. Two deaths under mysterious circumstances. And a huge estate. You’re an heiress, you know. You stand to gain a great deal from all this.”

  Jill glowered at her from across the room. “All this?” She gazed around, almost cowering within the confines of the cell, despite surface bravado.

  “Griffin’s estate —”

  “I don’t want anything!”

  “It’s not your choice, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Jill.”

  “I’m a rich orphan,” Jill said with disdain.

  “Come sit down, Jill. Let’s talk.”

  “No, I’ve got to figure this out by myself, Miranda.” She spoke her name as a challenge, like a barrier between them. Her eyes flicked furtively about, and the bleak walls seemed proof of her guilt for having been raped, evidence of her shame for being her father’s child, a horrific reminder of her burden as the keeper of her mother’s secrets. A shadow of defiance and rage crossed her face, giving way to the pallor of quiet despair.

  “Miss Quin, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. My mom didn’t want anyone to know about this place, about what he did to us, to all of us. You’re the only one who can put it together.”

  Jill stepped backward through the doorway out into the corridor, drawing the huge door closed behind her, all before Miranda could assimilate what was going on. The girl turned the key in the lock and switched off the overheads.

  Miranda was engulfed in a stifling absence of light, too stunned to move. After what might have been only seconds, she saw the small, glowing rectangle in the door disappear, and she gasped in astonishment, like a diver plunging into absolute darkness in the depths of the sea.

  13

  Ochiba Shigura

  Morgan spent Saturday shopping. He called Miranda in the morning, but there was no answer. He dictated a rambling memo, explaining to her voice mail that maybe Eleanor Drummond for some reason had raised the spectre of Griffin’s suicide not to conceal murder but to reveal it. Stumbling, he apologized for his incoherence, then added that he would call her again on Monday.

  After a brunch of scrambled eggs, back bacon, and toast — he kept the bacon in the freezer and usually allowed himself no more than three slices a week, sometimes four — he got dressed and wandered over to Bloor Street and Avenue Road, refusing to admit to himself that he was going to Yorkville.

  But he needed a winter coat.

  Morgan thought he might check out the early stock in a few of the Yorkville shops while he was in the area and get an idea of what he was up against. He hadn’t bought a coat in almost a decade, and he had no idea of the prices. Morgan was pretty much committed to sheepskin, probably in natural suede, possibly like something Pierre Trudeau would have worn, down to his ankles, but more likely not, most likely conservative; and double-breasted, to keep out the vicious cold of a Toronto winter. He liked the way natural suede weathered, getting better-looking as it got older.

  By the time he went into the first shop in Hazelton Lanes, the complex that marked one end of Yorkville like a flagship forging ahead of the fleet, he had decided exactly what he wanted. The price wasn’t outrageous. They didn’t have precisely the right fit, but the main bulk of their stock for the coming season wasn’t on display. He said he would come back later.

  Walking east along Yorkville Avenue itself, he went into a coffee bar where the old Penny Farthing had been, or near where it had been, where Neil Young and Joni Mitchell had once sung for their suppers. Bohemian Yorkville was before his time, but he liked the small-scale quality the area retained, despite haughty pretensions. Some of the galleries were museum-quality, and he had always found them amenable to browsing, even though he seldom bought anything.

  Morgan sat by the window, sipping a cappuccino molto grande, as it was described in commercial Italian on the blackboard, and watched the world go by. The coffee was made with whole milk. He hadn’t asked for skim, which was what Miranda usually did. He had waited to see what they would give him, and had felt guilt-free because it hadn’t been his decision.

  Leaning back, he withdrew the silver lighter from his pocket that he had picked up with loose change from the table in his foyer. He flicked it a couple of times and stared into the orange-blue flame, marvelling at what a simple instrument it was, and how seductively well it was made. It was chrome, actually, or nickel, not silver. For a moment he was charmed by its unfamiliarity, then remembered having found it at the morgue.

  From where he was sitting he could see the play of shadows and light through the windows of a prestige gallery across the side street. In front of the gallery there was a huge rampant bronze, the preternatural abstraction of an animist nightmare. Paradoxically, it cast an aura of excitement over its setting that was strangely appealing.

  Morgan remembered
the time he and Miranda had wandered into the same gallery and he had threatened to buy an exorbitant sculpture by the same artist as the piece outside, which he had described then as “the preternatural abstraction of an animist nightmare” and was impelled to explain what his words were obscuring.

  The artist was from Peterborough. Morgan had noted from a brochure that he was apparently doing well enough to have a perfect studio in the Kawartha Lakes, built with timbers and boards salvaged from ancient buildings and reassembled by Alexander Pope who, as the brochure had affirmed, was an oblique descendant of the poet.

  So fulsome was the description of the builder that Morgan recalled wondering whether the brochure was for the artist, whose name he had forgotten, or for Pope. He had suggested to Miranda that maybe they were the same person. The name of the artist was a sly pseudonym. Buyers might not trust themselves purchasing sculpture by someone called Alexander Pope who, as the brochure had declared somewhat defensively, was a tall man skilled at the reconstruction of stone buildings and the reproduction of antique cabinetry, and who also antiqued paint and painted landscapes.

  Miranda had allowed herself to be amused by Morgan’s meandering discourse on the frangibility of artistic identity only after they had safely left the gallery. In this same coffee house she had let herself laugh and then had slipped into stifled hysterics at the absurdity of Morgan having nearly become a patron of the arts, singular, of one piece of sculpture. He had sat watching her burst with merriment and had marvelled at her display, since she seldom let herself go like that, usually fending off laughter with turns of irony and wit.

  Morgan stared at the grotesque beauty of the sculpture in front of the gallery. Slowly, the realization came into his mind that this was a misshapen rendering of a gryphon, the same figure that appeared on the side of the gristmill in Waldron, which marked it as a possession of Miranda’s assailant.

  He was stunned by the fact that he hadn’t made the connection immediately, but he was mollified a little by knowing that the context was so entirely different. He was on a Saturday outing. He was relaxing, enjoying the day.

  Miranda gasped, and woke up feeling strangled. She sat upright on the side of the bed, waiting with futility for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was a complete and utter absence of light. Her body convulsing with surges of panic, she clutched at her gut, wrapped her arms around her rib cage, and tried to hold enough air in her body to breathe. She lifted her hands to her face and could see nothing. Even when she covered her eyes, it made no difference until she pressed hard into the sockets and saw dazzling red streaks against black.

  She was afraid to move, to stand. She had no idea where up was or down. She would fall, she thought, or step off the edge of the world. Images rushed through of being underwater, of being deep below the surface of a raging sea in the dead of night.

  Miranda took a deep breath and held it, then slowly released air through pursed lips, then took another and did the same. She did this repeatedly, trying to focus on her training for PADI certification, the diver’s course she had taken in the Cayman Islands. She cast herself back to the Caribbean, visualized herself at ten metres, about thirty-three feet, hovering over the sandy bottom, taking her regulator from her mouth, releasing bubbles through pursed lips, recovering her reg, breathing again, filling her mask with water, tilting her head back, blowing out through her nose until the mask was clear. In her mind she took off her scuba gear and laid it on the sand, put it back on, secured the BC vest in place, and made a controlled ascent, absurdly slow, moving to the surface while releasing air in bubbles that rose faster than she did as she watched them expand and transform from spheres into elliptical disks.

  When she broached the surface, having expelled more air than she had thought possible, she blew out one last heroic breath, then filled her lungs, inflated the BC, leaned back, tasting the sweetness, and floated near the boat until a gorgeous blond youth, a sun-bleached instructor who applauded her from the rails, helped her aboard and gave her a big innocent hug, apparently oblivious to the suggestive drape of his Speedo.

  Her breathing was now under control. She groped behind her for reassurance that the bed was still there. Lying back, she shifted around to stretch out, comforted by the embrace of the softness beneath her. It wasn’t like floating; gravity pinned her against the pliable surface of the bed. No, it was like being cradled, or whirled gently against the side of an invisible centrifuge.

  As Morgan would say, oh, my goodness!

  Now that her breathing was normal, she had to go to the bathroom. Not an apt expression, she thought. She wasn’t going anywhere. She needed to pee. She reached down and surprised herself by grasping the side of the bedpan on the first try. She had surveyed the room when she came in. She knew where everything was. As long as she remained calm, the room would stay the same size and everything would be in its appropriate place.

  When she was finished, she lay down on the bed again. Her mind danced like an escaped marionette. She was slipping deeper into fear — not from claustrophobia but from disconnection, from an abhorrence of death. She had no idea how long she could last without water. She knew it wasn’t as long as people thought. It was dry in here, which made it worse. What kind of wine cellar would be bone-dry? The room had humidity controls — wasn’t the point to make it humid? But this wasn’t a wine cellar; it was a prison cell, a dungeon, a vault, a crypt, a tomb, a grave — the words rattled through her mind.

  Miranda held her arm up to look at her watch. She had a digital at home with a light, but her analogue watch was invisible. She held it against her ear. Nothing. She took the watch off and placed it gently on the floor under the side of the bed. Her Glock and her cell phone were in the car, safely in her bag tucked under the seat. She was off-duty, on compassionate leave.

  She pulled the cover over her legs, which were a little damp from her episode with the bedpan. Miranda had no idea how long she had been there. Afraid to sleep because she would lose track of time, she stared up into the darkness, her eyes sore around the edges, smarting from the strain of finding no depth to her vision. She closed them softly, and the room seemed to float away, leaving her suspended in a strange, empty universe, a black hole leaking from inside her own skull.

  My goodness! she thought. What a dilemma!

  That was what Morgan would have said. My goodness! He never swore.

  She remembered asking him once, over dinner after a gruesome day’s work, why he didn’t swear.

  “Why should I?” he had said.

  “Morgan, you know what I mean. I’m not saying you should. It’s just refreshingly unusual.”

  “You use a word like refreshing and I’m liable to start. Makes me sound like a room deodorizer. I do know all the words.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “Darlene and Fred used to swear.

  “A lot?

  “My parents? Like troopers. Maybe I didn’t swear the same as I didn’t smoke, because they did.”

  “I like that you don’t swear.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s an intentional rejection of male privilege and human conceit.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Obscenity is an expression of male privilege.”

  “Go on!”

  She said this in mild derision, but he took it as an invitation. “Men swear because they’re lazy with language and/or because they’re bullies — it’s a power trip over women who flinch at the words, whether they’re present or implied. And, of course, women who don’t flinch are simply proving they can be as ignorant.”

  “Morgan, do you have an opinion?”

  “Damn right I do.”

  That conversation had come back to Miranda virtually intact, perhaps polished a bit, his rhetoric improved in recollection.

  They had both been eating wiener schnitzel. It was a mistake, and neither of them had eaten very much. They were sharing a nice German Riesling that Morgan had picked out. She didn’t recall the names of the wine or th
e restaurant, and yet it seemed she remembered, word for word, the entire contents of their discussion and the endearingly pontifical tones with which Morgan had delivered himself of his views.

  “Profanity,” he told her. “It’s not the same as obscenity. It’s about fear and conceit.”

  “As opposed to privilege and conceit?”

  “Like spitting in a windstorm, whistling in the dark.”

  “Which?”

  “Both. If you spit upwind, it hits you in the face. Downwind and it’s sucked out of your mouth. Either way you’re diminished. You’ve challenged the wind and, paradoxically, you’ve proved its power. A simple ‘god-damn’ and you’ve reaffirmed your sad relationship with an indifferent God.”

  “My goodness!”

  “Whistling in the dark — you asked? A string of profanities is a feeble emulation of Descartes. I swear, therefore I am. Invariably, it’s the believer who swears at God, since profanity only works if on some level you know it’s profane, and it’s only profane if God is real. And if God’s real, then maybe you are, too.”

  “You don’t swear because you’re an atheist!”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a strange man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Morgan.”

  She now heard their words echoing inside her skull, and the chambers of her mind seemed to open in all directions as she fell into deep sleep.

  Morgan wandered south along Avenue Road in the late afternoon, passing through what he regarded as home territory. Sauntering by Annesley Hall and Victoria University, down past St. Michael’s College, he acknowledged that his roots were right here. The University of Toronto was oddly secluded from its urban setting and yet criss-crossed with busy streets that declared its relevance to the city and world at large. This was where he had stepped outside the boundaries of his upbringing. He had been raised in Cabbagetown during its transition from poor place to rich, but he grew up in a different way between Queen’s Park and Bloor Street.

  Walking east along College Street, he spied with satisfaction the familiar planes of glass and granite shimmering in the cool autumn sky, but until he was almost at Bay Street, nearly in front of police headquarters, he had no sense of the parts coming together. The entire complex, which took up the better part of a city block, was a building that literally worked — a marvel of materials and design. The rosy pink granite and gunmetal steel that might have been daunting deconstructed with casual elegance as one entered from the street and walked through a welcoming mélange of space sculptured on a human scale. The imposing structure, redolent with power and authority, was still a secure and accessible place for visitors and people who worked there. Morgan regretted that to truly appreciate the whole one would need to clear away the surrounding buildings. The structure must have been breathtaking on the drawing boards.