“JOSIE, YOU’RE NOT WELL.” Tina was following me through the house while I asked her to tell me where the goddamn computer was. “Maybe you have that post-traumatic stress thingy or something.”
“Thingy?” I stopped and looked at my sister, wrapped in her silk robe, her arms folded across her chest. Andrew had spoken to the security people, assured them that the house had not been invaded by cannibalistic Vikings or anything nearly as threatening, and cleverly gone back to bed. “I’ve solved my husband’s murder and you think I have a thingy?”
“Josie—”
“Show me your fucking computer!” I believe I have never shouted louder. I may have awakened Andrew. I probably woke up Seattle.
Tina threw her hands up and turned into a room off the hall that I had assumed was a washroom. It was a small office. The computer on the desk stared back at me blankly. “Thanks,” I said, sitting at the desk. “Now go back to bed, Tina. Because I’m not. I can’t. And give me your password. I have to look up a lot of things before dawn.”
IT WAS FIVE IN THE MORNING and the sky was as dark as it had been at midnight. My flight left at seven, putting me in Toronto at three-thirty and home on the beach strip in time for dinner. I did not plan on having dinner.
I had spent two hours on Tina’s computer, making my flight reservations and searching the Internet for information on many things and many people. Some details confirmed what I already knew. Some were dead ends. None contradicted what I believed had happened. Everything confirmed it. Now I was standing near Tina and Andrew’s front door, waiting for the lights of the cab I had called to take me to the airport.
Andrew was silent, sipping a coffee. Tina was agitated.
“For god’s sake, Josie,” she said, “tell me why you have to go now. Talk to me, talk to Andrew, we’ll listen. How can you be so sure?”
“Because I am.” It was all I could say, the only way I could respond.
“What are you going to do when you get back?”
“Make some telephone calls. A lot of telephone calls.” This was only half right.
“To whom?”
“To the people who helped kill Gabe. All of them.”
“Damn it, you can’t go making accusations …” We had been having this one-sided conversation since I emerged from her office and began packing my bag, which is when Andrew awoke again and made coffee, wearing a silk robe in a blue and purple paisley pattern. I knew Tina had bought him that robe. She didn’t have to tell me that. No man would choose a robe like that for himself. Now she turned to him. “Talk to her, Andrew,” she said. “Talk some sense into her.”
Andrew studied his coffee cup for a moment, then said, “Josie has always made a lot of sense to me,” which released a low squeal of exasperation from Tina. I was saved from witnessing Tina’s revenge by the sight of slowly approaching headlights.
“My cab’s here,” I said, and hugged first Tina, who refused to uncross her arms from her chest, then Andrew, who squeezed me tightly and advised me to take care of myself.
“Josie.” Tina reassumed the role of a caring older sister. “Promise me you’ll at least rely on Mel what’s-his-name.”
“Holiday. Blue eyes.”
“For god’s sake, don’t go playing games with some of the other people you’ve told me about, the Mafia guy, the woman who shot somebody in her hotel room, that dope dealer …”
I assured Tina I wouldn’t. I planned to count on Mel more than I ever had. More than I ever expected I would.
The cab was in front of the house, the driver getting out of the car.
PEOPLE WASTE TIME AT AIRPORTS, thanks to all the security. I wasted no time at all. I spent an hour on the pay telephones, calling ahead to Walter Freeman, to Harold Hayashida, to Mike Pilato, to Glynnis Dalgetty, to Maude Blair, to Tom Grychuk, and, of course, to Mel.
“I’ll meet you at the airport,” Mel said when I told him I was returning, and I insisted no, I needed to follow up on something else, and I asked him, almost begged him, to see me that evening, because without him nothing could be done.
Mel told me I wasn’t making sense. “Josie, nothing’s happened since you left yesterday. There’s nothing new to talk about, just a lot of investigations going on. At least give me an idea what we’ll be looking for, who we’ll be looking at, who’ll be involved.”
So I told him. “Grychuk.”
“Who?”
“Tom Grychuk. He operates the lift bridge. Over the canal.”
“How does he fit in? He’s not even on our radar.”
“They’re calling my flight. I have to go. Tell me you can see me tonight.”
“I can see you any night,” he said, which was just what I didn’t want to hear at the moment.
“I’ll call,” I began to say around the lump in my throat, then began again. “I’ll call you at seven. On your cell. All right?”
They hadn’t called my flight yet. I just couldn’t bear to keep speaking to him with so much distance separating us.
I FELL ASLEEP SOMEWHERE OVER ALBERTA and woke when the pilot dropped the aircraft heavily in Toronto, landing the plane as though knocking a bookcase to the floor.
I headed for the arrivals area with my carry-on bag, running through all the things to be done when I arrived home and pushing aside a few small niggling doubts. I knew enough to be sure about what happened to Gabe and why, but the few details I lacked kept gnawing at my confidence like mice on a pantry door.
Walking through the sliding doors and into the concourse where the taxis and limos waited, I saw the friends and relatives of passengers watching the doors like spectators at a dull baseball game. The only person who stood out was a tall, gap-toothed man in a blue chauffeur uniform smiling back at me and holding a white cardboard sign with mrs. marshall scrawled across it in black crayon.
“Hello, Alex,” I said. Alex reached for my carry-on bag, which I snatched away from him. “How’s Tina?”
From behind the wheel, Alex informed me that Tina had reserved the limousine and insisted on paying the fare. From the back seat, I informed Alex that it was very nice of Tina and I was going to enjoy her generosity and his careful manoeuvring of the limousine, but I was not going to take part in any damn conversation on the way.
Alex nodded and looked hurt.
It took forty-five minutes to reach the beach strip. It felt like forty-five hours.
When Alex opened the door, I stepped out, thanked him, walked directly to my front door, unlocked it, and collapsed on the living-room sofa. I needed five minutes alone to gather my thoughts and my courage again. When I had done so, I made a few more phone calls.
26.
Mother looked up in surprise when I entered her room. Her expression suggested that she thought something was wrong, perhaps with her memory. Hadn’t I left the day before, saying I would be gone for a week? Had a week passed? Had she missed five days of her dwindling life, lost somewhere in the routine of eating, sleeping, and waiting?
“I’m all right,” I said, hugging her. “I came back early because I have something important to do.”
I brought us tea from the commissary, ignoring glances from staff members. Back in her room, Mother waved at the television set, indicating that I should turn it off, then reached for the blackboard and wrote on it, Talk to me. What is wrong?
I wanted to cry, so I did. Just a little, enough to dampen my eyes and wet my cheeks. I realized for the first time that we had both lost the men we loved, lost them in terrible ways. Not slowly, to disease or decline, but violently and agonizingly. When you lose someone in that manner, you lose something else as well. You lose the sense that the world is a good place, and at times a beautiful place. It’s more than losing your innocence; we all lose our innocence earlier than we know. When someone we love is taken from us in a brutal manner, we lose our sense of home, our notion that we can withdraw to a place where we are loved unconditionally.
When Mother saw me crying, she reached to wipe my cheeks and brought her lips
to them and kissed me. Had she been able to speak, I know she would have repeated words to me that she had spoken when we lived in the house near the steel mills, when my father carried a lunch box to work each morning, and the lunch box contained a sandwich made with more mustard than meat, wrapped in waxed paper, along with a Thermos of hot tea and perhaps a piece of cheese or an apple, and sometimes a note from Mother. Tina found one of the notes when she was ten and I was seven. The note said, Always remember.
“Always remember what?” I asked.
“Always remember that she loves him, you ignorant twerp,” Tina said.
I began apologizing for the pain I knew I had caused Mother, especially in the years before I married Gabe, when I had met men in bars and discos and once while hitchhiking home, and the harsh words I used when she tried to caution me.
She lifted my face when I began telling her how sorry I was for all the ways I had let her down, for all the times I had not been here with her, for all the nasty things I had said to her, and all the sweet things I should have done and failed to do. She held up her finger and shook her head, silencing me. Reaching for the blackboard, she began writing on it, glancing up at me from time to time before handing it to me, her eyes waiting for my reaction.
She had written: Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. It was a Hallmark moment.
“That’s lovely, Mother,” I said.
She beamed with pride, took the blackboard from me, erased the words, and wrote, Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
Like many women of her generation, Mother had qualities that the world refused to acknowledge because it refused to grant her the opportunity to reveal them. I had known this about her, but never expected she was capable of spouting such wisdom. “This is wonderful,” I said. “Any more? I can use a little backbone right now.”
Another smile, another swipe of her arm over the blackboard, and she added, in her lovely cursive writing, You have power over your mind, not over outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
This wasn’t Mother speaking. She was a wonderful, wise woman, but …
“Where are you getting this?” I asked. I believe I raised one eyebrow.
She laughed, silently of course, reached into the wheelchair cushion beside her, and withdrew a paperback edition of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius that had been Gabe’s, and that I had brought to her a few weeks ago.
“That’s quite a leap you made,” I said. “From Elmore Leonard to Aurelius. You almost had me fooled, quoting a Roman who’s been dead two thousand years or so.” I reached to give her another hug. “Thanks for this,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and I think I’ll have good news.”
When I released her, she was looking at me, her mouth shaping an O and her eyes sparkling at the idea that her daughter would finally bring her good news. Then she reached for her pad again and wrote, Mel Holiday?
“Yes,” I said, and she frowned and shook her head no. “I have to,” I said, and leaned to kiss her goodbye, not aware at the time of something that should have been obvious.
Leaving the rest home, I tried to maintain the self-confidence that Mother and Marcus Aurelius had planted in me. I remembered a few lines from a book Gabe had been reading some months ago: If something offends or distresses you, it is not the thing that causes you pain but your emotional reaction to it, and it is in your power to control and use all of your emotions.
I think it was also Marcus Aurelius. Or maybe Dr. Phil.
I LIKE CLEAN BREAKS. From friends, from lovers, from clothes I don’t want to wear anymore, from everything. Even seasons. Leaving Mother that night, I felt a clean break from summer to fall. The air was cooler and dryer, the breeze more insistent, the lake more choppy. The sun was already behind the steel mills, slouching toward Kitsilano. A month ago it would still have been high in the sky and warming. It was the end of August and the beginning of autumn—and the beginning of something else, as well.
“I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOUR CALL.” I knew he had been by the way he answered the telephone before the first ring ended. “Josie, what’s going on?”
“Tell me you love me.” I had been wanting to say this all day.
“Josie, you know how I feel about you …”
“Tell me.”
I could picture him closing his eyes, the way men do when something is going to pain them. “I love you, Josie.”
“Thank you. Now tell me you’ll meet me down near the canal lift bridge in an hour, in the parking lot on the bay side. Near the sandbank at the back of the lot. Closest to the bridge.”
“What’s this about?”
“Just meet me, Mel. Park the car facing the bay. Right up against the sandbank so you can’t see it from the parking lot.”
“Not until you tell me why.”
“Damn it, Mel!” I breathed deeply and began again. “There’s a window in the office where Grychuk works. The lift bridge operator. The guy—”
“I know who he is,” Mel almost snapped.
“Sorry. I promise I’ll explain. Just meet me there. Park your car where I said.”
“Why can’t I pick you up? At your house?”
“Mel, it’s only a couple of hundred yards.”
“I can still meet you there. You can tell me what’s going on.”
“Because we’ll be watched.”
“By whom?”
“That’s what I want to explain to you. In an hour. Okay?”
I counted two breaths.
“Josie, please don’t do anything silly.”
“I promise you, Mel. This is the least silly thing I’ll ever do.”
It always feels good to tell the truth. Or at least not to tell lies. Which is not necessarily the same thing.
I had an hour to kill while the sun went down, and I thought it would never set. See what I mean about time passing at different speeds?
I FILLED THE TIME BY APPLYING MAKEUP and choosing a woollen sweater that Gabe had always liked. I believe he liked it, sweet man that he had been, because other men liked it, or at least liked the way I looked when I wore it. And a loose skirt, in case I had to run quickly. And rubber-soled shoes for the same reason. And gathering as much courage as I could from myself and not from a bottle.
At five minutes to eight, I made a final telephone call. Then, together with my nervous knees, I left the house, crossed Beach Boulevard, and began walking toward the canal bridge. To my left the horizon was the colour of roses, the sky the colour of gravel. The wind was east, off the lake, and gusty.
Ahead of me, the lift bridge control room shone with lights from within, where Tom Grychuk sat. On the bridge itself hung green lights for the traffic. Yellow lights marked the bridge outline, and red lights flashed from the top, for low-flying aircraft, I assumed. I had never thought about the bridge lights before. I was seeing them now because it was easier than thinking about what I expected to happen in the next few minutes.
I stopped and looked out at the lake. I tried to look all the way to the Thousand Islands.
Gabe had visited the Thousand Islands with his first wife. They took a boat tour and stayed for a week in Gananoque. When he told me about the vacation I asked him to repeat the name of the town. He did. He pronounced it “Gan-an-ock-wee,” and I commented that the prettiest place names in all of North America were First Nations names like Gananoque. Allegheny. Mississauga. Manitoba. Musical names. Rhythmic names. He agreed, and named some of his own. Nipissing. Kapuskasing. Saskatoon. Muskoka. We played a game of musical names together, each of us thinking of one in turn, because Gabe wanted to cheer me up. Gabe always understood what I was thinking when I became melancholy, and picturing a young Gabe with his still young and faithful wife on a long-ago summer’s day in a town called Gananoque overlooking a thousand granite islands dotted with pine trees and wildflowers made me melancholy.
<
br /> I stood remembering Gabe and the Thousand Islands because I needed strength. I was about to do something I had never imagined myself capable of doing, and I needed to remind myself why it was necessary. And what could happen to me if something went wrong. I told myself I was doing it for Gabe. But I wasn’t. I was doing it for myself, and if life was to unfold for Mel and for me in the way that I believed it must, I needed to be strong. More than that, I needed to be wise.
I’ve never doubted my inner strength. It was my habit of acting like a hysterical chicken in a hot kitchen that was worrying me. If I had made one error in logic, I was about to look terribly foolish in the next few minutes. I drew some comfort from reminding myself that looking foolish was infinitely preferable than looking dead. Which was also a possibility.
I took a final glance in the direction of the Thousand Islands and resumed walking, turning left before crossing the bridge and following the road that fishermen and boaters took to get to the shoreline of the bay. The road crossed a sandbank before dipping down to the water’s edge, and when I reached the bottom of the low grade I looked to my right to see Mel’s car parked as I had asked. Mel was watching me through the windshield, his face lit by the setting sun, red like molten slag. Behind and above him, I saw a man in the window of the lift bridge control room, silhouetted against the light. I raised my arm. He raised his.
Mel leaned to open the passenger door. I slid in, closed the door behind me and sat back, closing my eyes.
“You all right?”
I opened my eyes to see Mel studying me with that special expression of his, his brow furrowed and his smile wide and warm. He was wearing his blue jacket, with jeans as tight as a second skin. “No,” I said. “I need something from you.”
The smile faded. “What?” he asked.
“A hug, for a beginning. A really warm, solid squeeze.”
I reached toward him and half pulled him close, then leaned away. “Take your gun off. Do you know how uncomfortable it is to hug somebody who’s wearing a shoulder holster?”
“Okay,” he said, withdrawing the Glock from the holster and setting it on the dashboard, then reaching for me. I remained within his arms, feeling his breathing and hearing his heart, long enough for him to tilt my chin up and look at me, perhaps preparing to kiss me.
Beach Strip Page 23