by Lou Allin
After picking up the meal, she drove the few blocks to Rainbow Country Nursing Home, its former bachelor apartments converted for an aging population. Class-conscious perfectionists found it worn at the edges, but unlike the institutional high rises that catered to townfolk warehousing Oma and Opa, the compact facility had only sixty seniors and matchless personal care. Along with most developed countries, Canada faced a geriatric crisis in the next few decades. With perfect timing, she’d whisked him back from his retirement home in Florida when his cognitive abilities failed a few years ago. He was cruising into his late eighties with the gusto that had served his long-lived ancestors. Cherie greeted her at the nurses’ station. Belle knew every staff member, from the kitchen team to the laundry workers and handymen. “Six pieces of toast for him today. Extra marmalade. What an eating machine.”
“Every meal my mother ever served him was the ‘best ever.’ ” She presented a box of Laura Secord miniatures to the smiling nurse. Their daily acts of kindness to her father were beyond price.
With a quick stop in the kitchen for bib, serviettes and cutlery, balancing her boxes down the long hall, railings on each side, Belle entered her father’s private room, his door decorated with craftwork using gold-painted pasta pieces. She nearly tripped as a plump bichon frisé wove through her legs on his way out. Puffball, the activity director’s dog, an irresistible food hound who knew the best places to panhandle.
The new paint and easy-care linoleum provided some cheer, along with the Blue Jays curtains she’d bought. He sat fixated on the blaring television, hands clasped on the lap table of his gerry chair. Up until his breakdown, he’d been a great walker. Three miles with their dachshund Lucky every glorious Florida morning. At Rainbow Country, he’d fallen a few times, the dizziness of age, not Alzheimer’s, a future dread. Since seniors ran a risk of broken bones, his chair had become his jailer.
She put down the boxes and turned the TV to normal. “Hello, old man,” she said with a grin. “Your usual plus apple pie.”
“No cherry like your mother’s?”
The man knew what he liked and liked what he knew. “The Berlin air lift was fogged in. Next week for sure.”
His broad mouth wreathed a smile. Clean-shaven, baby-pink cheeks, but perhaps not always by noon, though the staff worked like carthorses. As in all health-care areas, the sad truth was that a person needed an advocate who visited regularly. “A la mode?”
“A la everything. Your French is très bon!” The first word he’d learned in his new home was “sables” from the box of shortbread. They’d shopped for snacks each week when he could still walk, and he picked out apples, bananas and Mars bars, seven of each.
“Your mother was half-French. Remember what my family said when I told them we were getting married?”
She nodded, attaching his bib and opening the boxes. “Everything was hunky-dory because she was Anglican.” Toronto, Belle’s birthplace, had never been a French enclave. On the other hand, Francophones made the largest ethnic group in Sudbury, the generic “English” in second place, followed by Italians, Germans, Ukrainians, Scandinavians, native peoples and a sprinkling of latecomers from the Middle East, Far East and Africa. No melting pot, but a multicultural mosaic.
The news was broadcasting an update on the murders. A pizza delivery man had been brought in for questioning. As earnest civic faces filled the screen with promises to make the city safe for women, she nibbled at her tender sandwich, taking an occasional swig of chocolate milk. Her father ate at a rapid rate, and she gave him verbal prods to stop and drink water. That choking incident had left him an inch short of joining her mother’s ashes in the closet.
“Hey, what’s going on here? Another woman dead? I left my sanctuary in Port Charlotte for this and blizzards, too?” His voice rose, but the twinkle in his cornflower blue eyes spelled humour.
With an assurance that any crime perked up his brain cells, she said, “She was my client in a house sale. I found her . . . body.”
He gave his leonine head a shake, the thick white hair parted neatly. “Houses. Harold’s business. But didn’t you also . . .” Then he stopped, unsure of his memory. Sometimes D-Day was fresher to him than the morning’s menu.
“It’s possible that the same person killed all three women.”
“A serial killer? Surely not in Canada.”
“We’re catching up fast. Bernardo and Homolka, now the pig farmer in B.C.” As many as seventy prostitutes who had vanished from the Vancouver netherworld over the last twenty years had found ugly graves. Bereaved families were outraged that reports of their missing loved ones had gone into File Zed, merely because they had been street people and not debutantes. She got up to mash the pie and ice cream into mush.
Her father followed her motions and began tapping his watch, his woolly eyebrows contracting, as if he could will the hands to move faster. “Where’s that dessert?”
She put the box on the lap table. “It’s very sad. A lovely woman. She looked like Marie Dressler in the Sennett comedies.” From the time she’d been able to toddle around Toronto, she and her father had spent two evenings a week in a private screening room at Odeon Pictures. As a booker, it was his job to slot each film according to the local preference. The boondocks of Owen Sound didn’t have the same tastes as Rosedale.
“What a puss on that one. Last in the Canadian Three-Peat for the Oscar. 1931.” He smacked his lips as he savaged the pie.
She sorted her mental files. So many rainy days in her youth she’d sat on the sofa and paged through Daniel Blum’s pictorial histories of films. “Marie won for Min and Bill with Wallace Beery.”
“Mary Pickford was first in 1929 for Coquette. Canada’s sweetheart. Played a teenager at thirty-seven. She was born where the Hospital for Sick Kids stands. Then Norma Shearer, a Westmount beauty. Your mother always said she had a cast in her eye, whatever that meant.”
Belle rocked and rolled into their repartee, striking a vamp pose. “Divorcee. Very risqué, since she was trying to hide her pregnancy.”
Of the three women, Belle had a special fondness for gruff old Marie with the bulldog face and a body like a bag of fighting Dinky toys. One of the greatest directors of women, George Cukor capitalized on the beauty-and-beast theme in Dinner at Eight. Blonde bombshell Jean Harlow was talking about reading “a nutty kind of a book,” adding with wide eyes and raised, pencil-thin brows, “The guy said that machines are going to take the place of every profession.” Doing a stage-trouper double take, Marie scanned Harlow’s silvery cling-wrapped body, platinum hair, and shook her jowls, “Oh, my dear, that’s something you’ll never have to worry about.”
“Got a problem.” Her father patted his pockets and looked around in annoyance. “Maybe you can find my gol-durn wallet.”
She smiled, thought a minute as she scanned the room, then bent and reached into the elastic of his sweat pants for a suspicious bulge over the ankle. “Here you are. We’ve got to get that pocket sewn up.”
He opened it, no credit cards, no identification or money, only a picture of her with her mother. Poignant proof of time, the identity thief. “Miracle Worker!”
She mock-punched his arm. “Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft.”
As she turned to leave, an old ebony man with a walker shuffled into the room. His short hair was curly white, and his dapper moustache reminded her of Cab Calloway. He wore suit pants, a white shirt, tie and a vest. “George,” he said, “come on down and join our rummy game.” He introduced himself as Henry Morgan, a retired miner.
Belle knew that her father didn’t like to leave his room, but this might be a chance for a short stroll and healthy socialization. “We’ll walk, and Henry can get a wheelchair for your return. Okay? Bet you win the pot. Think of the chocolate bars.” She knew he’d never cooperate with anyone else.
Always eager to please her, his greatest asset, George agreed, and she took the tray off his chair, made certain of his slippers, and hoisted him, one arm
around his shoulders, once so strong and muscular. The effort was costing him, his breathing heavy, but he rattled on. “Told Henry here that my grandfather went down and fought to free his people in the Civil War.”
Henry nodded as if he had heard the story 1002 times, and Belle sent apologies through her eyes. She’d seen the tombstone in Prospect Cemetery in Toronto and had always wondered what prompted Reuben Palmer to join the 22nd New York Cavalry. Wounded in the heel, spawning a family joke about his direction, eventually he predeceased his wife, leaving her with a U.S. service pension.
Driving home from work later, she realized that she’d managed to forget about Bea for a moment. What about this delivery man? No leads all this time, and then suddenly . . . She supposed that the police worked methodically, careful not to rush to judgement and jeopardize the case, bringing charges only when a conviction was likely. The law was like a tapestry, messy behind, but when everything worked, sheer artistry on the other side. Certainly Micro and Dave deserved to have this tragedy put to rest as fast as possible. She pulled out to pass a double slurry truck and winced as a piece of gravel bounced off her windshield. Auto-glass companies did big business in the Nickel Capital.
Turning into her drive at last at the Parliament of Owls sign with her totems, the furious brown Horny and the mild white Corny with their marble eyes, she noticed the long grass on the septic bed. Once more into the lawnmower breach, fall or no fall. As she exited the car too quickly, she felt a slight twinge of back pain. Since wrenching it last year, she’d been more judicious about overextending herself.
On her answering machine, she found a dinner invitation from Hélène and put the box of Kraft Dinner back into her former Millennium supply closet, now used for hydro outages. In full recovery mode, her friend sounded cheerful and animated. Ed didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, but the old bear was as solid as her rockwall.
She changed into jeans and a light blue denim shirt, collected Freya and hiked down the road for long-overdue exercise. The fall wildflowers were staging a brave show. Pale lilac asters nodded acquaintance, and downy fluffs of fireweed lifted into the wind, triggering Freya’s prey drive. Two kinds of goldenrod captured Belle’s eye, one with a simple plume and one elm-branched. Over thirty varieties, according to her Peterson guide. She was tempted to pick a few pearly everlastings to make a dried bunch, but stopped as the season’s final tent caterpillar, Born-too-Late, inched across the road. “Gotcha!” She mashed it without remorse, as did most people. The birches, aspens and poplars had barely recovered from the last infestation.
At their gate, she saw Rusty barking and running in the yard as a small boy tossed a tennis ball for the eager dog. Primed for a game, Freya streaked in to snatch the throw from Rusty’s chubby efforts. The boy stepped back, raising his hands, assessing the eighty-pound shepherd. Then he knelt and let Freya lick his face while he scratched her ears. His café au lait face, with fine features and long lashes, was serious, but his eye contact with the dog was as sweet as the ice wine Belle reserved for special guests.
“Hi,” Belle said, giving Rusty a pat so that she didn’t feel left out. “Are you Mich—”
“Micro,” he said as he rose, head proud and spine straight, a defensive cast to his jaw. She could swear he stood on tiptoe in his red basketball shoes. He wore baggy jeans with carpenter’s loops and a Sudbury Wolves sweatshirt. The jeans sagged so much that in another inch his bum top would appear. Kids and clothes. Pass the Xanax. Make that a double.
She introduced herself and was pleased that he shook her hand firmly. Climbing to the porch, she noticed an upscale Santa Cruz mountain bike with sleek lines and a hi-tech alloy frame leaning against the steps. Inside the foyer, she slipped off her shoes, precise Canadian behaviour that would make a good clue in a murder case. Was that all she could think about? But seeing Micro, with his mother’s wide green eyes, made the poignant connection. She remembered the picture of his father with the same diminutive build.
Belle helped Hélène set the table. “He’s cute. Polite, too,” she said, pointing outside. “How’s he taking his mom’s loss?”
Hélène made a gesture of disbelief with her hands. “I’ve never seen him cry. It’s as if he’s acting in a play, like it’s not real. First his father and sister. Now this. Too much for one boy.”
“Is he staying with you?”
“Dave and I thought it was a good idea, so he dropped off Micro yesterday. Dave will be travelling in the Maritimes for the next few weeks. Commitments he couldn’t cancel. The boy needs a woman’s touch, he said.” Her lip trembled, but she firmed her mouth and turned to reach for a pot bubbling on the stove. “Staying around that place with a housekeeper might give him nightmares. He brought his school books, clothes and some computer games.”
“Getting along okay, then . . . all things considered?”
“Too soon to say, but he’ll probably get pretty bored. No young people down this end of the road. There’s a computer in the spare room where he bunks. He likes some kind of Internet role-playing game.” She smiled softly. “It’s different raising a child these days. I keep telling him to pull up those pants. Honestly.”
“I’ve got a few computer games he could play, and on my hikes, he’s welcome. If you need a break, give me a call.”
As the boy came in, Hélène asked him to wash his hands, and with a muttered “Sheesh,” he ambled down the hall. His aunt lowered her voice. “He resented Dave from the get-go, though the poor man tried his best. The computer he bought Micro cost the earth, not to mention the bike. Six years alone with Bea had made him the man of the house.”
“Sounds normal. Dave and Bea were married for only . . .”
“Less than a year. But by now you’d think . . .” She broke off her conversation to remind a returning Micro to pour himself a milk.
They sat down to Hélène’s redoubtable pot roast, simmered in Chianti. Bowls of garlic mashed potatoes, then a succulent mixture of roasted root vegetables from the garden, including a sweet parsnip, arrived from the grill outside. Belle noticed that Micro helped himself to large portions of everything but meat, even the rutabaga, a preposterous but nourishing turnip which had likely been the mainstay of her forebears in 1845 Bowmanville.
After assuring herself that everyone had mounded plates, Hélène said grace. Then she cleared her throat. “Micro’s a . . . what is it, dear?”
He forked up the potatoes. “A vegan, Aunt Hélène.”
Another side to this intriguing boy. Belle asked, “Lacto, ovo, what kind?”
“I’m breaking myself in, but fish, eggs and milk products are okay.” His intelligent eyes fixed on her. “Kids need calcium. But as for meat, have you read Fast Food Nation? Do you realize that . . .”
As her throat constricted, he named perils of undercooked or suspect flesh, including CJD, cancer in chickens and e-coli. Finally Ed tapped the boy’s plate with his knife and grunted. “You’re putting me off my meal, sonnie, and that’s a no-no in this house. At my age, I don’t have many pleasures as reliable as my wife’s fine cooking.”
Hélène frowned at the mixed message, but Belle found herself warming to the boy as talk turned to the Jays’ resigning of a twenty-two-game winner, the only bright spot in a .500 season. “They won the Series? Unreal,” Micro said. “Gotta be before I was born. Bet my Dad saw it, though.” No question who Dad was.
An awkward silence seemed to hang in the air until Hélène added, “Micro designs websites for his friends, but he can’t do that from here. Our computer is Stone Age.”
Belle flashed him an inviting smile. “If you’re going to be around this weekend, would you like to earn some bucks? I could use a hand mowing the lawn.”
He cocked his head. “Min wage?”
“I vote NDP. Much more generous to labour. Ten an hour sound good?” She extended a hand to seal the bargain.
The following afternoon, though she had met Bea only once, as a courtesy, Belle felt compelled to attend the v
iewing. Civilities weren’t bad for business either. No telling whom she’d meet. A pale grey pantsuit with a cobalt open-necked shirt and low-cut black boots seemed formal enough. With a rare nod to jewellery, she added a silver bracelet and matching leaf pin.
One of the flagship Sudbury parlours, burying miners and their kin for over a hundred years, Johnson and Poniard was often dubbed Johnson’s Boneyard. It had been taken over by the Halverson chain, but the new owners had kept the original name. Tradition was important in a town with a short history.
The yellow-brick complex sat in an older section of town off Regent Street, where many marginal businesses such as small-appliance and shoe-repair shops clung to life. Other stores with newspapered windows testified to the dominance of suburban malls. The brilliant late chrysanthemums in the flower beds around the parking lot weathered the light frosts but reminded Belle that fall would soon freeze the ground and prevent bulb planting. Micro’s help would arrive none too soon.
She’d chosen four o’clock, with the idea of disappearing for home soon after. As she left the van, she saw a tall woman with dark red curly hair leaning against a late-model Oldsmobile, a large white poodle in the front seat, its handsome head peering through the open window. She wore a faux-fur ocelot coat with a bright silk scarf. Her shoulders shook in great sobs, and her purse fell to the asphalt. “Are you all right?” Belle asked, stooping to hand her the bag.
The woman dabbed a tissue at her eyes, smearing the running mascara. She had a heart-shaped face, olive complexion and a long noble nose, which Belle appreciated. With genetic planning and cosmetic surgery, soon everyone would look like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. “I will be, I guess. Once I get through this. I hate viewings and funerals. Call me in denial, but I’d rather remember people alive.”
“I know what you mean. These rituals aren’t for the loved one, are they?”