by Tanya Huff
She’d call her mother in the morning.
The night had been filled with dreams, or more specifically, dream—the same images occurring over and over. People kept coming into her apartment and she couldn’t get them to leave. The new staircase to the third floor bisected her kitchen and a steady stream of real estate agents moved up it, dragging potential tenants. The back of her closet opened into Maple Leaf Gardens and the post-hockey crowds decided to leave through her bedroom. First she tried the voice of reason. Then she yelled. Then she physically picked up the intruders and threw them out the door. But the door never stayed closed and they wouldn’t, any of them, leave her alone.
She woke up late with a splitting headache and an aching jaw, her mood not significantly better than when she’d gone to sleep. An antacid and an aspirin might have helped, but as she’d run out of both she settled for a mug of coffee so strong her tongue curled in protest.
“And why did I know it would be raining,” she growled, squinting out through the blinds at a gray and uninviting world. The sky looked low enough to touch.
The phone rang.
Vicki turned and scowled across the room at it. She didn’t have to answer to know it was her mother. She could feel mother vibes from where she stood.
“Not this morning, Mom. I’m just not up to it.”
Her head continued ringing long after the bell fell silent.
An hour later, it rang again.
An hour of conscious thought had done nothing to improve Vicki’s mood.
“I said no, Mom!” She slammed her fist down on the kitchen table. The phone rocked but continued to ring. “I don’t want to hear about your problems right now and I sure as shit don’t want to tell you about mine!” Her voice rose. “My personal life has suddenly collapsed. I don’t know what’s going on. Everything is falling apart. I can stand on my own. I can work as part of a team. I’ve proved that, haven’t I? Why isn’t that enough!”
It became a contest in volume and duration and Vicki had no intention of letting the phone win.
“Odds are good Celluci’s about to propose and this vampire I’m sleeping with—Oh, didn’t I tell you about Henry, Mom?—well he wants me as his . . . his . . . I don’t know what Henry wants. Can you deal with that, Mom? ’Cause I sure as shit can’t!”
She could feel herself trembling on the edge of hysteria, but she wouldn’t quit until the phone did.
“Celluci thinks I’m angry about the way dear old Dad walked out on you. Henry thinks he’s right. How about that, Mom? I’m being fucking double-teamed. You never warned me about something like this, did you, Mom? And we never, ever discuss Daddy!”
The last word echoed around a silent apartment and seemed to take a very long time to fade.
With a trembling finger, Vicki slid her glasses back up her nose. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mom. I promise.”
An hour later, the phone rang again.
Vicki turned on the answering machine and went for a walk in the rain.
When she got back, late that evening, there were seven messages waiting. She wiped the tape without listening to any of them.
The phone rang.
Vicki paused, one foot into the shower, sighed, and got back into her robe. Welcome to Monday.
“Coming, Mom.” No point putting it off. She’d have to face the music sooner or later and it might as well be sooner.
Today things didn’t seem so bad. Yesterday was an embarrassing memory of self-indulgence. Tomorrow, well, she’d deal with tomorrow when it arrived.
She dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and scooped up the receiver. “Hi, Mom. Sorry about yesterday.”
“Is this Victoria Nelson?”
Her ears grew hot. It was an elderly woman’s voice, strained and tight and most definitely not her mother. Let’s make a great impression on a potential client there, Vicki. “Uh, yes.”
“This is Mrs. Shaw. Mrs. Elsa Shaw. I work with your mother. We met last September . . . ?”
“I remember.” Vicki winced. Mom must really be pissed if she’s getting coworkers to call. This is going to cost me at least a visit.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“Bad news?” Oh, God, don’t let her have caught the early train to Toronto. That’s all I need right now.
“Your mother hasn’t been feeling well lately, and, well, she came into work this morning, said how she’d been trying to get in touch with you, made the coffee like she always does, came out of Dr. Burke’s office and . . . and, well, died.”
The world stopped.
“Ms. Nelson?”
“What happened?” Vicki heard herself ask the question, marveled at how calm her voice sounded, wondered why she felt so numb.
“Dr. Burke, the head of the Life Sciences Department—well, you know who Dr. Burke is, of course—said it was her heart. A massive coronary, she said. One minute there, the next . . .” Mrs. Shaw blew her nose. “It happened about twenty minutes ago. If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“No. Thank you. Thank you for calling.”
If Mrs. Shaw had further sympathy or information to offer, Vicki didn’t hear it. She set the receiver gently back in its cradle and stared down at the silent phone.
Her mother was dead.
Two
“Dr. Burke? It’s about number seven . . .”
“And?” Receiver tucked under her chin, Dr. Aline Burke scrawled her signature across the bottom of a memo and tossed it into the out basket. Although Marjory Nelson had been dead for only a couple of hours, the paperwork had already begun to get out of hand. With any luck the university would get off its collective butt and get her a temporary secretary before academic trivia completely buried her.
“I think you’ll want to see this for yourself.”
“For heaven’s sake, Catherine, I haven’t got the time for you to be obscure.” She rolled her eyes. Grad students. “Are we losing it?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“Damn.” The surgical glove hit the wastebasket with enough force to rock the container from side to side. “Tissue decomposition again. Just like the others.” The second glove followed and Dr. Burke turned to glare at the body of an elderly man lying on the stainless steel table, thoracic cavity open, skull cap resting against one ear. “Didn’t even last as long as number six.”
“Well, he was old to start with, Doctor. And not in very good physical condition.”
Dr. Burke snorted. “I should say not. I suppose I’m moderately surprised it lasted as long as it did.” She sighed as the young woman standing by the head of the cadaver looked crushed. “That was not a criticism, Catherine. You did your usual excellent job and were certainly in no way responsible for the subject’s deplorable habits when alive. That said, retrieve the rest of the mechanicals, salvage as much of the net as you can, be very sure all of the bacteria are dead, and begin the usual disposal procedures.”
“The medical school . . .”
“Of course the medical school. We’re hardly going to weight it with rocks and drop it into Lake Ontario—although I have to admit that has a certain simplicity that appeals and would involve a lot less additional work for me. Let me know when it’s ready, I should be in my office for the next couple of hours.” Hand on the door, she paused. “What’s that banging noise?”
Catherine looked up, pale blue eyes wide, fingers continuing to delve into the old man’s skull cavity. “Oh, it’s number nine. I don’t think he likes the box.”
“It doesn’t like anything, Catherine. It’s dead.”
The younger woman shrugged apologetically, accepting the correction but unwilling to be convinced. “He keeps banging.”
“Well, when you finish with number seven, decrease the power again. The last thing we need is accelerated tissue damage due to unauthorized motion.”
“Yes, Doctor.” She gently slid the brain out onto a plastic tray. The bank of fluoresce
nt lights directly over the table picked up glints of gold threaded throughout the grayish-green mass. “It’ll be nice to finally work with a subject we’ve been able to do preliminary setup on. I mean, the delay while we attempt to tailor the bacteria can’t be good for them.”
“Probably not,” Dr. Burke agreed caustically and, with a last disapproving look in the direction of number nine’s isolation box, strode out of the lab.
The pounding continued.
“Where to, lady?”
Vicki opened her mouth and then closed it again. She didn’t actually have the faintest idea.
“Uh, Queen’s University. Life Sciences.” Her mother would have been moved. Surely someone could tell her where.
“It’s a big campus, Queen’s is.” The cabbie pulled out of the train station parking lot and turned onto Taylor Kidd Boulevard. “You got a street address?”
She knew the address. Her mother had shown her proudly around the new building just after it opened two years ago. “It’s on Arch Street.”
“Down by the old General Hospital, eh? Well, we’ll find it.” He smiled genially at her in his rearview mirror. “Fifteen years of driving a cab and I haven’t gotten lost yet. Nice day today. Looks like spring finally arrived.”
Vicki squinted out the window beside her. The sun was shining. Had the sun been shining in Toronto? She couldn’t remember.
“Winter’s better for business, mind you. Who wants to walk when the slush is as high as your hubcabs, eh? Still, April’s not so bad as long as we get a lot of rain. Let it rain, that’s what I say. You going to be in Kingston long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Visiting relatives?
“Yes.” My Mother. She’s dead.
Something in that single syllable convinced the cabbie his fare wasn’t in the mood for conversation and that further questions might be better left unasked. Humming tunelessly, he left her to relative silence.
An attempt had been made to blend the formed concrete of the new Life Sciences Complex in with the older, limestone structures of the university, but it hadn’t been entirely successful.
“Progress,” the cabbie ventured, as Vicki opened the back door, his tongue loosened by a sizable tip. “Still, the kids need more than a couple of Bunsen burners and a rack of test tubes to do meaningful research these days, eh? Paper says some grad student took out a patent on a germ.”
Vicki, who’d handed him a twenty because it was the first bill she’d pulled out of her wallet, ignored him.
He shook his head as he watched her stride up the walk, back rigidly straight, overnight bag carried like a weapon, and decided against suggesting that she have a nice day.
“Mrs. Shaw? I’m Vicki Nelson . . .”
The tiny woman behind the desk leapt to her feet and held out both hands. “Oh, yes, of course you are. You poor dear, did you come all the way from Toronto?”
Vicki stepped back but couldn’t avoid having her right hand clutched and wrung. Before she could speak, Mrs. Shaw rushed on.
“Of course you did. I mean you were in Toronto when I called and now you’re here.” She laughed, a little embarrassed, and let go of Vicki’s hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . well, your mother and I were friends, we’d worked together for almost five years and when she . . . I mean, when . . . It was just . . . such a terrible shock.”
Vicki stared down at the tears welling up in the older woman’s eyes and realized to her horror that she didn’t have the faintest idea of what to say. All the words of comfort she’d spoken over the years to help ease a thousand different types of grief, all the training, all the experience—she could find none of it.
“I’m sorry.” Mrs. Shaw dug into her sleeve and pulled out a damp and wrinkled tissue. “It’s just every time I think of it . . . I can’t help . . .”
“Which is why I keep telling you, you should go home.”
Thankfully, Vicki turned to face the speaker, the calm, measured tone having dropped like a balm over her abraded nerves. The woman standing just inside the door to the office was in her mid-forties, short, solidly built, and wearing an almost practical combination of gray flannel pants and white, lace-edged blouse under her open lab coat. Her red-brown hair had been cut fashionably close, and the heavy frames of her glasses sat squarely on a nose well dusted with freckles. Her self-confidence was a tangible presence, even from across the room, and in spite of everything, Vicki felt herself responding.
Mrs. Shaw sniffed and replaced the tissue in her sleeve. “And I keep telling you, Dr. Burke, I’m not going home to spend the day alone, not when I can stay here, be surrounded by people, and actually accomplish something. Vicki felt small fingers close around her arm. ”Dr. Burke, this is Marjory’s daughter, Victoria.”
The department head’s grip was warm and dry and she shook hands with an efficiency of motion that Vicki appreciated.
“We met briefly a few years ago, Ms. Nelson, just after your first citation, I believe. I was sorry to hear about the retinitis. It must have been difficult leaving a job you cared so deeply about. And now . . .” She spread her hands. “My condolences about your mother.”
“Thank you.” There didn’t seem to be much left to say.
“I had the body taken over to the morgue at the General. Your mother’s personal physician, Dr. Friedman, has an office there. As we didn’t know exactly when you’d be arriving or what the arrangements would be, that seemed best for all concerned. I did have Mrs. Shaw call to let you know, but you must have already left.”
The flow of information carried no emotional baggage at all. Vicki found herself drawing strength from the force of personality that supported it. “If I could use one of your phones to call Dr. Friedman?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Burke nodded toward the desk. “She’s already been informed and is waiting for your call. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She paused at the door. “Oh, Ms. Nelson? Do let us know when the service is to be held. We’d . . .” Her gesture included Mrs. Shaw. “. . . like to attend.”
“Service?”
“It is customary under these circumstances to hold a funeral.”
Vicki barely noticed the sarcasm, only really heard the last word. Funeral . . .
“Well, she doesn’t look asleep.” There was no mistaking the waxy, gray pallor, the complete lack of self that only death brings. Vicki had recognized it the first time she’d seen it in a police cadet forensic lab and she recognized it now. The dead were not alive. It sounded like a facetious explanation but, as she stared down at the body her mother had worn, she couldn’t think of a better one.
Dr. Friedman looked mildly disapproving as she drew the sheet back up over Marjory Nelson’s face, but she held her tongue. She could feel the restraints that Vicki had placed around herself but didn’t know the younger woman well enough to get past them. “There’ll be no need for an autopsy,” she said, indicating that the morgue attendant should take the body away. “Your mother has been having heart irregularities for some time and Dr. Burke was practically standing right beside her when it happened. She said it had all the earmarks of a massive coronary.”
“A heart attack?” Vicki watched as the door swung shut behind the pallet and refused to shiver in the cold draft that escaped from the morgue. “She was only fifty-six.”
The doctor shook her head sadly. “It happens.”
“She never told me.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to worry you.”
Perhaps I wasn’t listening. The small viewing room had suddenly become confining. Vicki headed for the exit.
Dr. Friedman, caught unaware, hurried to catch up. “The coroner is satisfied, but if you’re not . . .”
“No autopsy.” She’d been to too many to put her mother—what was left of her mother—through that.
“Your mother had a prepaid funeral arranged with Hutchinson’s Funeral Parlour, up on Johnson Street, just by Portsmouth Avenue. It would be best if you speak to them as soon as possible. Do
you have someone to go with you?”
Vicki’s brows drew down. “I don’t need anyone to go with me,” she snarled.
“According to your mother’s arrangement, Ms. Nelson, Vicki . . . Ms. Nelson”—the funeral director blanched slightly as his client’s expression returned him to last names but managed to continue smoothly—“she wanted to be buried as soon as possible, with no viewing.”
“Fine.”
“As she also wanted to be embalmed . . . perhaps the day after tomorrow? That would give you time for a notice in the local paper.”
“Is the day after tomorrow as soon as possible, then?”
The younger Mr. Hutchinson swallowed. He found it difficult to remain completely calm under such hard-edged examination. “Well, no, we could have everything ready by tomorrow afternoon . . .”
“Do so, then.”
It wasn’t a tone that could be argued with. It wasn’t even a tone that left much room for discussion. “Is two o’clock suitable?”
“Yes.”
“About the casket . . .”
“Mr. Hutchinson, I understood that my mother prearranged everything.”
“Yes, she did . . .”
“Then,” Vicki stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, “we will do exactly as my mother wanted.”
“Ms. Nelson.” He stood as well, and pitched his voice as gently as he could. “Without a notice in the paper, you’ll have to call people.”
Her shoulders hunched slightly and the fingers that reached for the doornob shook. “I know,” she said.
And was gone.
The younger Mr. Hutchinson sank back down into his chair and rubbed at his temples. “Recognizing there’s nothing you can do to help,” he told a potted palm with a sigh, “has got to be the hardest part of this business.”
The old neighborhood had gotten smaller. The vast expanse of backyard behind the comer house at Division and Quebec Streets that she’d grown up envying had somehow shrunk to postage stamp size. The convenience store at Division and Pine had become a flower shop and the market across from it—where at twelve she’d argued her way into her first part-time job—was gone. The drugstore still stood at York Street but, where it had once seemed a respectable distance away, Vicki now felt she could reach out and touch it. Down on Quebec Street, not even the stump remained of the huge maple that had shaded the Thompson house and not even the spring sunlight could erase the shabby, unlived in look of the whole area.