by M. M. Mayle
“Obliterating even a charred skull.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Is that public knowledge? Did the press know the head was never recovered? Does Colin know?
“No to all. The press was informed that the deceased was decapitated. That would have been impossible to conceal—rescue personnel would have seen to that—and allowed to believe the head was recovered at the scene in conjunction with the rescue and recovery operation. As for the public, including those who were at the scene—they seemed altogether willing to believe the head was recovered, and to take for granted that whoever found it had the decency not to ballyhoo the find. Made me wonder if there was an aphorism for that kind of behavior the way it’s said there’s honor among thieves—something along the line of affording dignity to the dead, deserving or not.”
“And Colin?”
“He knows Aurora was decapitated and assumes with everyone else that her head was cremated along with her body.”
“Then who—”
“Who besides me knows for sure? The backwater medical examiner who doubles as a mortician and saw it as a matter of professional expediency to encourage assumptions so he could close the case . . . and now you.”
“Why have you told me?”
“Damned if I know. Because you have an honest face?”
“Thank you for not saying I have a priest’s face.”
“I’m Jewish, what would I want with a priest?”
“Confessor,” she whispers of his transparency and lets it go at that.
But he can’t. He’s still caught in the snare of his own making when she suggests they take a break and he agrees.
“Before we do,” she says, “I need to ask . . . In the immediate aftermath, were you ever afraid you would come across some indication that the baby had been a passenger in the truck and was ejected along with Aurora’s head and perhaps burnt beyond recognition or carried off by a . . . a Sasquatch?”
“I’m sure I was. And afraid wouldn’t describe it. I had to have been terrified, but not on a conscious level. I couldn’t let it touch me or I wouldn’t have been able to function.”
“I see. Yes, of course. I do know how that can be. Now, if you’ll show me the way to the kitchen, I’d like to make myself a cup of tea. I’m guessing you’ll have something stronger.”
FIFTY-SIX
Evening, April 7, 1987
Laurel appraises the kitchen the same way she scrutinized the paintings in the library, with unabashed admiration and praise. She asks questions about major appliances, work surfaces, ventilation systems, lighting—questions he’s unable to answer with any real authority because they’ve never been asked before. His usual dinner companions wouldn’t be caught dead in a kitchen, much less show interest in its operation, so it’s a fresh experience to watch this special guest caress granite work surfaces and stroke the stainless steel cladding of integrated refrigeration units. She peers closely at the six-burner cook tops, the bank of wall ovens and warmers, gives her full approval to the pair of dishwashers flanking the main sink.
He fills an electric teakettle with water from the prep sink and dismisses any lingering suspicion she may just be trying to ingratiate herself. “Are you in the market for a new kitchen?”
“Maybe. Someday, but I really can’t justify the expenditure with no one to cook for but myself.”
“Oh, that’s right, I almost forgot. Your brothers and sister are away at school, and your father now lives in a nursing home.”
“Yes, that’s right, but how did you know?”
“Colin must have said something.”
The look on her face says that was the wrong answer.
“No, it must have been David,” he says. “That’s it. David must have mentioned something along that line when he let me know you’d be joining the team.”
“I see,” she says without looking convinced.
He plugs in the kettle and takes his time assembling the tea things. Then he makes a big production of removing his suit coat and hanging it over the back of a chair at the breakfast table. While he’s loosening his tie and opening his collar, the kettle comes to a boil. He hears in its whistle a warning not to get too comfortable. In any respect.
“Milk or lemon?” he says.
“Neither, thank you, but I do have another request. Would you mind if we stayed here in the kitchen for the rest of the story?”
“Fine with me. I’ll get your tape recorder. Be right back.”
He returns with the recorder, her handbag, and a bottle of single malt from the bar cabinet. They sit at right angles at the breakfast table, he with a half-teacup of Scotch, she with a brimming cup of Earl Grey. He clears his throat; she activates the recorder.
“When we reached the hospital in Portage St. Mary, Colin was more dead than alive. I was shunted off to an anteroom with a pay phone, where coming to terms with the possibility of having to announce his death to family, friends, and the press temporarily took my mind off a couple other huge concerns—finding the baby and finding Aurora’s head.
“When word came that Colin was hanging on by a thread and about to undergo emergency surgery, I reacted badly. Imperiously. I attempted to pull rank. I asked an equally imperious surgeon if he knew who he was about to cut into. He replied that he did and would nevertheless afford Colin the same high level of care given to unknowns. I didn’t hear that comment as faintly humorous or calculated to relieve tension, and I failed to grasp that the situation was as good as it was going to get for some time to come.
“Big city boy that I am, I wanted Colin moved to a name-brand hospital—Cornell Medical Center, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General, anyplace but this outpost on the Canadian border where frontier medicine was presumably practiced by graduates of banana republic med schools. I went right on making unreasonable demands until the hospital chief of staff called me in for an attitude adjustment.”
“I hope he wasn’t too harsh, and I hope you weren’t too hard on yourself afterward. I’m sure doctors expect that kind of behavior in an emergency. And I’m sure we’re all apt to forget about equality and raise insulting doubts when a loved one’s in danger. I’m glad you included the illustration, though, it personalizes the account,” Laurel says.
He switches off the recorder. “I’m glad you brought that up, the personal angle. I meant to ask at the start how much of my viewpoint I should include. And that leads me to the burning question of how forthcoming Colin has been so far.”
She pours herself another cup of tea. “To answer your first question, I want as much personal commentary as you’re willing to provide. This is not to say I’ll use it all, but when I relate the story, I’ll be writing with greater authority. To answer the burning question—Is Colin forthcoming? Yes and no. He’s selectively forthcoming. He’s told me a lot that I assume to be public knowledge, such as how he got his start, his musical influences, his attitude toward the press. Things like that. He speaks freely about his children, but I practically had to force him to say the little he has about his late wife. His references to the accident are necessarily limited, hence this session with you.”
“I’m not surprised. When you interviewed Rayce Vaughn, did you think he was holding back?”
“No, not at all, but I wouldn’t have known if he was. I had no previous knowledge of Colin other than David Sebastian’s word that he was a British rock star. Don’t forget that when I was enlisted—no, when I was conscripted—to write Colin’s life story, my ignorance of the subject was viewed as my strongest qualification. And please don’t forget that this so-called qualification was immediately seized upon as a guarantee of objectivity. That was wrong from the start. So was the assumption I could remain objective, saying I ever was.”
“You don’t see yourself as objective now?”
“Of course not. I’d have to be made of stone to remain resistant to . . . to . . . all of this. And now look what I’m doing, digressing all over the place.”
She rem
inds him where he was in the story and restarts the tape. So much for her personal commentary.
He pours himself a little more Scotch and picks up where he left off. “Colin underwent seven hours of emergency surgery that night. He had a punctured lung, ruptured spleen, and several broken ribs. Both legs sustained fractures they only stabilized at that time. Later it was learned that his sternum was cracked and his heart muscle bruised. There were no head injuries beyond superficial cuts from broken glass, and his spine miraculously escaped injury from the hard landing. Over the next several days, as he gradually stopped circling the drain, they went to work on his legs. I honestly—or maybe deliberately—forget how much additional surgery that required because for a while, it looked like they wouldn’t be able to save his right leg. And during this period, there was growing concern about his state of consciousness. Or lack of, I should say. He never really came around in the conventional sense. Technically he was conscious, his eyes were open and it seemed like he blinked when asked, but he just wasn’t connecting in other ways, usual ways. I was quick to blame the surgeries, the anesthesia, the painkillers. I think the doctors did too. Initially.”
“At what point did you contact his family and friends? Who did you call first?”
“I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait for the outcome of the emergency procedures before I let anyone know what had happened. I wanted to wait until morning British time, but I didn’t dare. Any one of the ambulance personnel might already have spread the word, and who was to say some hospital staffer didn’t have a direct line to a member of the tabloid press. Just as when I had to leave Colin alone while I went for help, I had no choice. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, around nine o’clock local time, I had to make myself pick up the phone and call the UK.
“I got in touch with Chris Thorne first. Chris is Colin’s former bandmate and close friend and he knew what to do without being told. He contacted and swore to secrecy those among Colin’s inner circle who were most apt to be hounded by the press about the accident—two other former bandmates, Rayce Vaughn, people in that category—and delivered the news in person to Rachel, Colin’s mother. Then, in the middle of the night their time, Chris and Rachel spirited Anthony away from Colin’s London house, where he was in the care of a nanny and a housekeeping staff that couldn’t be depended on to shield the kid from media crap. It was only a matter of time until outlets worldwide would be headlining word of the tragedy, and that was no way for a five-year-old to learn that his mother was dead and his father left hanging by a thread.”
“The baby . . . you had to tell Chris. . . .”
“Yeah, I had to tell him Aurora was no longer pregnant at the time of the crash and that I had no fucking idea where to start looking for the infant. Dead or alive. Then, after the call ended, I had to imagine Chris relaying this information to Rachel, who maybe stood to lose a child and a grandchild before the night was out, and I had to think about how they were going to deal with Anthony, a kid already marked for life by his mother’s gross neglect.
“I had about five more minutes to wallow in all this before a nurse showed up wanting to know my relationship to Colin and Aurora Elliot. I declared myself, as I’d already done on arrival, and braced to again be asked obscenely ill-timed questions about financial responsibility. Instead, I was asked to take custodial responsibility for the Shantz infant. Shantz? Who the hell is Shantz, I wondered without really caring because all I could hear in this request was potential for one of those baby mix-ups that come to light now and then. Exactly what I didn’t need to hear while still harboring misgivings about hospital and staff. So I told the nurse to get the fuck out, she had the wrong party, but she held her ground long enough for me to remember something she was well aware of—that Aurora had once been known as Audrey Shantz. Shantz. The baby was right there in the hospital where he’d been born ten days before and was overdue for release, according to the hardass nurse.”
“Good lord! You must have been overjoyed.”
“Yeah, I might have been for a minute or two, then it was back to remembering the kid had a good chance of being an orphan and an even better chance of being screwed by whatever Aurora pumped into him before he was born.”
“Wait a minute. If hospital personnel knew a patient registered as Audrey Shantz was really the infamous Aurora Elliot, why wasn’t Colin informed of the baby’s birth?”
“It wasn’t until Aurora was brought in maimed and dead that anyone put two and two together and remembered that she used to be Audrey Shantz from down the road in Paradise.”
“I see. And do I understand correctly that the nurse told you the baby was overdue for release? Didn’t I understand Colin to say that Simon was premature? Since when are preemies sent home only ten days after birth?”
“At the time, that was my thought as well. Even though I knew diddly-shit about newborns, I did know they’re supposed to be a certain weight before they’re shoved out the door. Especially if they could be going through narcotics withdrawal. But Simon, as he came to be known, weighed close to eight pounds at birth, so that put him outside the realm of premature and made him something of an oddity because a lot of user mothers don’t carry to term. Or have such big babies. That Aurora somehow did was a significant factor in saving his life. As the pediatrician later put it, the robust birth weight gave him a distinct advantage during the initial stages of heroin withdrawal.”
Laurel bites her bottom lip so hard it turns white.
“You didn’t know he was born addicted?”
“I did, but I didn’t let myself think about the ramifications until now.”
“You need another break?”
“No, please go on.” She pours a healthy draught of single malt into her tea, something he would normally view as a waste of both Scotch and tea. “Please explain why you, and presumably Colin, thought the birth was premature . . . and why Colin still thinks it was.”
“We both were relying on Aurora’s say-so. She’d led Colin to believe the baby would arrive at Christmastime. That’s what was marked down in the pocket calendar he referred to the day of the accident. That’s what he chose to believe.”
“Believing otherwise would have led to . . . to what? Raised questions of. . . .”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Very well, but that won’t keep me from thinking it.”
“I operate on the premise that Colin thinks it too, and prefers to stick with the original perception.”
“I see.” Laurel bites her lip again.
“To continue . . . Most babies of heroin users show withdrawal symptoms soon after birth. In the acute stage they experience fever, tremors, irritability, diarrhea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and noise, and sometimes have seizures. All that and I’ve probably left something out. They usually have feeding problems and can be at increased risk for that crib death thing—I forget the acronym.”
“SIDS.”
“Yes, that’s it. The pediatrics people gave me a crash course in infant care to prepare for taking the baby from the hospital, and the nursery staff put together enough basic supplies to get me started. A layette, I think they called it.”
“Wait, wait, wait . . . They expected you to take the baby from the hospital?”
“Well yeah, somebody had to. As one of the staffers explained, the hospital nursery was full to overflowing with the product of long February nights spent in northern climes with nothing else to do but procreate—she actually said that—and they didn’t have enough personnel to indulge the needs of a special-care infant—she actually said that too.”
“That’s discriminatory.”
“That would have been my reaction if I hadn’t been given so much help getting ready for the transition, and if they hadn’t been able to convince me the acute stage had been passed and none of the residual withdrawal problems were life-threatening.”
“An increased risk for SIDS isn’t life-threatening?”
“Not in the sense of r
equiring hospital care.”
“I suppose not, but still. . . .”
“Anyway, I was ready to transfer the baby to an efficiency unit that had been found for me at a nearby motel when I hit a bureaucratic snag because I had no written authority for taking the kid into my custody. This was the day after the accident when they were still carving away on Colin and the all-concealing snow was coming down by the foot. By then I’d updated Chris and Rachel on the situation—given them something to cling to—and released a general statement to national and international press through my New York office. I’d left word with David, and I’d sent for Bemus because I didn’t know what kind of media presence to expect. What I hadn’t thought to do was consult with David about the legal complications cropping up all over the place. Obtaining clear title to the infant was at the top of that list . . . Jesus, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make him sound like a piece of real estate.”
“Understood. So without Colin’s durable power of attorney or another instrument enabling claim of the infant on his behalf, your hands had to have been tied.”
“They were. Although I was empowered to act as Colin’s agent representative in the acquisition and disposal of property, I couldn’t act as guardian for him or the infant without a court order. Once David got wind of this, he was on the scene within twenty-four hours and had it sorted, as Colin would say, within another twenty-four. Something of a miracle because at first he couldn’t find a judge. It was Thanksgiving week as well as deer-hunting season, and the local judges who hadn’t gone hunting were home stuffing turkeys.”
“David mentioned that recently. I’d all but forgotten he spent Thanksgiving of ’eighty-four stranded at an airport in Detroit.”
“Right, and the same snowstorm that stranded David delayed Bemus’s arrival. But it also kept the newshounds at bay. For the first few days, I had only regional press and TV to deal with and they were pretty decent, all things considered.”