Jacintha

by Davies, Lorraine;

  But this was no time for wallowing in confusion. Emily was his mission now. He would go to Powell and Hawks, only a few blocks away, to the corner where he’d first met her. Maybe she was still working there.

  She wasn’t. The woman there now stood smoking, wearing a silver-sequined bolero over a tank top that revealed her ample breasts. She didn’t speak, smiled weakly. He could see she was high on something.

  “I’m looking for a young woman called Emily who used to be on this corner. Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? She’s about eighteen, small, olive skinned, dark hair in a ponytail.”

  “Don’t know her.”

  “How long have you been at this spot?”

  “A month or so.”

  “And she hasn’t been here?”

  “No. Listen, I can give you what you want,” she said, her words slurred.

  “No, sorry. Thanks for talking to me.”

  She giggled and waved one hand limply, a gesture so pitiful that Richard wished she had cursed him instead.

  Where could he go next? Other corners? There were places all the way from Main to Clark Drive. He’d seen a women’s centre on Cordova. Near Gore? He’d go there first.

  When he entered the centre, a dead silence greeted him. Several women stared at him, frozen as in a child’s game of Statues. A pockmarked woman broke the silence, shouting, “Get out, asshole.”

  “Now, Crystal, there’s no need for that,” said a middle-aged woman, walking toward him. “Can I help you? I’m Joyce. I’m in charge today. Sorry, but men aren’t really welcome here.”

  “I’m looking for a young woman called Emily. I helped her once when she was in trouble and I want to find out how she’s doing. She used to work at the corner of Hawks and Powell.”

  An argument broke out at a table holding an array of soaps and shampoos and cosmetics. “Why the fuck can’t I have two? Sometimes I’m in a pink mood and sometimes I’m in a goddamned red mood.” The woman was waving two tubes of lipstick in the air, one in each hand.

  “Because we have to ration them, so everyone can have one.”

  “What bullshit! Look. There’s dozens in that box.” She put the two lipsticks in a pocket and walked away.

  “Please come back,” the volunteer at the table said.

  “Fuck off, fuckin’ bitch.”

  “Wendy! Don’t talk to Gina like that,” Joyce called after her. “She’s giving up her free time to help us out. And put one of those back.”

  “You fuck off, too,” said Wendy, and left the building.

  “Sorry about that. Most of our clients are grateful, but some have emotional problems, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Richard said. “About Emily.”

  “Women! Does anyone know an Emily who used to work at Powell and Hawks?”

  “Skinny broad?” a woman, very skinny herself, asked.

  “Yes. About eighteen. Five feet tall. Olive skin.”

  “Yeah, I think her mom lives on Haida Gwaii. Haven’t seen Emily for quite a while. She might have gone home. Or she might have left town with her asshole boyfriend. Or maybe some pervert killer has got her.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Joyce said. “Anyone else?”

  Sullen murmurs.

  “Why do you want to know?” the skinny woman asked.

  “I want to see if she’s all right. Help her if I can.”

  A couple of women hooted. “That’d be a change,” one of them said.

  “You could try the police,” Joyce said.

  Richard thanked them and left.

  He was exhausted and couldn’t face going to the police station. He’d go tomorrow. This part of town could drain you after a very short while. God help the people who lived here.

  When he got to Frances’s, Carol was there.

  “Richard, where the hell have you been? We’ve been crazy with worry.”

  “Sechelt. Please, not now. I’m all right. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “No, let’s talk now.”

  “I’ll make some tea,” Frances said. “Unless you prefer Scotch.”

  “No, Christ, I’ve had enough alcohol.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Well, just now, I was in the Downtown Eastside, looking for Emily.”

  “Oh, Richard!” Carol looked so stricken, Richard was frightened.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  She started to cry. “She’s dead, Richard. I was looking for her, too. She’s dead.”

  “No. Oh god. How did it happen?”

  “They found her dead of an overdose in a hotel room a month ago.”

  “Who found her?”

  “The police.”

  “But you didn’t even know her last name, how did you …? I mean, how do you know it was her?” Richard asked.

  “I had a photo of her.”

  “Where the hell did you get it?”

  “From Nick Wallinsky. Don’t ask. I’ll tell you about that another time.”

  “Shit!”

  “She was eighteen,” Carol said.

  Richard wobbled like a marionette whose strings have loosened. He fell onto the couch, still wearing his coat. Richard moaned and said, “I should have looked for her earlier — months ago.” Then he reached out and brushed away a tear rolling down Carol’s cheek and started to cry himself, quietly at first, and then with loud, racking sobs, like the sea on a rocky shore, like a man drowning.

  Carol put her arms around him, held him as they cried together.

  After a while they drew apart, sat close but not touching.

  In spite of the light in the room, Richard felt they were wrapped in a dark cocoon together, in a joint aura of exhaustion and surrender. And he realized, as he sat there in his strange, partial peace, that he had been crying not just about Emily and Jenny and Jacintha, all the lost daughters, but also about his own failures as a man and a father.

  Carol, he thought, was not crying just about the lost ones, either (and maybe not for Jacintha at all), but mainly about her sins, real or imagined, and her wounded heart.

  FORTY-THREE

  RICHARD MOVED BACK in with Carol the next day. He walked for an hour or so every day and cooked and cleaned while Carol was at work.

  They were awkward with each other. In the evenings, after dinner, they sat in different rooms, Carol preparing lessons or reading while Richard watched nature programs and other documentaries on TV. Sometimes Carol joined him, but his silence discouraged her, and she didn’t stay long.

  They’d been sleeping in separate rooms at Richard’s request. “I need more time,” he’d said, and Carol hadn’t protested. The important thing was to have Richard with her. Still, she hungered to just embrace him, just touch him. He hadn’t wanted to be touched since that brief handholding after they’d cried over Emily, and now, even if she merely brushed against him accidentally, he tensed and moved away.

  After two weeks of meagre coexistence, Carol said, “We’ve got to do something to shake ourselves out of this state we’re in.”

  “A good shake? If only it were as simple as that.” His shoulders slumped, as they often did these days, and his face reminded her of a basset hound, and for a moment she wanted to slap him, but she breathed deeply and said, “I mean that a big change of scene might help. And seeing Imogen. How about we go to visit Imogen?”

  Over the next few days they talked about when they’d go, and the things they’d have to do to get ready, and Carol was glad to see how much Richard was enjoying the whole process.

  They put Carol’s new phone on speaker and called Imogen. “Are you going to be staying in London for a while?” Richard asked. “We don’t want to get there and find you’re off to Argentina or somewhere.”

  “Yes, I’ll be here for the foreseeable future.”

  “Good. We’re planning to book a flight for early March. Carol is taking a leave of absence and I’ve resigned.” Carol noticed his voice wa
s a bit too upbeat as he slid quickly over the fact of his resignation.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear you’re not going to be teaching. Is it because of a health problem? Hasn’t your wound healed properly?”

  “No, the wound healed. I’m all right. Just need a break. Need to think about new directions. I’ll tell you more when I get there.”

  “Well, I’ll be very glad to see you. How long can you stay?”

  “At least a couple of months. It’s open ended at the moment. We’ll rent an apartment, probably outside of London, where the prices are lower. Maybe you could keep your eyes open for something.”

  “Yes, of course. And you’re welcome to stay with me for a while.”

  When they hung up, Carol said, “That was cheering, wasn’t it? And now, when we’re not shopping and packing and dreaming of London and Paris — we’ll have to visit Paris — we need to be more … more …”

  “And Venice,” Richard said, and Carol’s heart lurched.

  “Yes, Venice, that would be wonderful,” she said. “Anyway, what I was going to say was we need to be more ordinary.”

  “I forget what that is.”

  “It’s doing things together, going for walks on the weekends and reading our books together in the evenings. Remember how we used to read interesting passages to each other? And we could go out to dinner or a movie. We’ve been just coexisting, wary of each other, too careful, as though we’re made of glass. We’re keeping too much to ourselves, definitely not talking enough.”

  “Sorry, I’ll try to be more sociable.”

  “Oh, Richard. I know you’re trying. It’s not even what we do, so much. It’s having pity on each other, being tender and more aware of each other’s needs, even when we’re in separate rooms. You know what I mean. You can feel those things through walls, I’m convinced of it. We’re ordinary, pitiful human beings. That’s always our state of being. It’s just more obvious in a crisis. The only extraordinary thing we need to do is to remember how pitiful we are, every day, and try to be tender with each other.”

  Richard put on a mock frown, forehead creased, lower lip protruding. “Every day?” he asked.

  “All right. Every other day. Did I just hear you laugh?”

  “More of a gurgle.”

  “Close enough.”

  March 2012

  Dear Carol,

  I recall with pleasure and affection our reconciliation: recounted above. I was so grateful for how tenderly you treated me, how sweetly. We had some good times in England, didn’t we? For a while we were closer than ever, almost like honeymooners.

  I hope you remember it fondly, too.

  Love,

  Richard

  (I received no reply.)

  FORTY-FOUR

  RICHARD HAD THOUGHT about going to visit Frances by himself before they left on their trip, to thank her for how she’d taken care of him, but in the end he felt he couldn’t face any more of her frank assessments and probably probing questions about his “experience.” With Carol along, Frances would be more discreet; at least, he hoped so.

  The first thing they noticed after arriving for dinner was a huge, new painting above the fireplace. The bright red, blue, and gold shapes made Carol gasp. The piece was vibrant and strangely moving.

  “Very few abstract painters move me,” Carol said. “Mark Rothko is one. You’ve used Rothko’s technique of blurred borders between the colours. It makes quite an impact. What’s come over you, Mother? This is amazing. The last things I saw of yours were watercolours, lovely but sedate.”

  “I started using acrylics a while ago, while Richard was here. I find them more muscular, you know. I felt I needed to make larger gestures.”

  “Did you exorcize Dad’s ghost? You said you were always content doing a few watercolours now and then because Dad was the great artist. I never believed in your contentment. And you know he never exactly encouraged me, either.”

  “I’m sorry if I ever made you believe he oppressed me. And I’m sorry he discouraged you, truly, but I think I used him as an excuse for not committing myself to my work. I seemed to need to believe I was of more use to him as his muse, as you so ably pointed out to me.”

  Over dinner they talked about Imogen and England, and afterward they went to Frances’s studio and looked at two more of her remarkable paintings.

  When Carol went to the bathroom before they left, Richard said, “Listen, Frances, I came here tonight expressly to thank you for looking after me so well when I was at my lowest, saving my life, and I haven’t said a word about it all evening. I’m saying it now. Thank you.” He pulled her into an awkward hug.

  “I was happy to do it. You’re my dear son-in-law and you always made Carol happy and I know you will again.” Then her tone of voice became solemn. “You were thrown into a purifying fire, Richard, and you’ll find you are changed in ways you can’t imagine now. Profound ways. I’d bet on it.”

  “Can one bet against a philosopher queen?”

  Frances laughed. “Good, take me down a peg or two.”

  “Please, Frances, as I’ve said before, don’t make what happened into something it isn’t.”

  “And I keep telling you to see it in a larger context, a spiritual one, for want of a better word.” Frances looked into his eyes, held his gaze. “Something has changed, hasn’t it?”

  “Sometimes I feel a change, for a moment or two,” he said, “a kind of shifting of my axis — occasional feelings of joy.”

  “Those moments will lengthen,” Frances said, “and you’ll go from shame to acceptance, maybe even a fragile sort of gratitude.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Frances hasn’t seen the true nature of what I’m going through, Richard thought, how ambiguous, how paradoxical it is. How dangerous it might be.

  As Richard pulled on his gloves, Frances said, “Those are so beautiful. Are they new?”

  They were made of forest-green suede, so beautiful, so organic looking he was sometimes surprised they didn’t smell of fir or pine. “Yes,” he said, “I lost my old ones.”

  “He was never much of a shopper,” Carol said, coming back into the room. “But he picked those out himself. Good taste, don’t you think?”

  Richard shook his head and looked away, walked closer to Frances’s large painting as though to get a better look. In fact, the gloves were from Jacintha. He had been cleaning out his university office, packing up books, when he saw that the clay dog Imogen had made was missing. On the shelf where it had stood was a package wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with a red ribbon. He’d torn it open and found the gloves and a note that read, “Wear these and think of me. Love, Jacintha.”

  He turned back and forced himself to smile at the two women. He embraced Frances and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  “But you’ll be back,” Frances said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  In the car on the way home, Carol said, “If we stay in England for any length of time, how are we going to support ourselves?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge later.”

  “No, really. I’m a little worried.”

  “I could busk.”

  “You can’t sing.”

  “I can dance a little.”

  Carol laughed. “We will get through this, won’t we?”

  “One day at a time.”

  “Oh, I hope it won’t be that … tentative.”

  “Life is tentative,” Richard said.

  “You’ll go back to teaching, I think,” Carol said.

  “Maybe.”

  “I might teach a little, but I don’t want to work full time. I want to paint. Mum has inspired me.”

  “That would be good,” Richard said.

  They were both silent for a minute, and then Carol said, “Last night on the radio I heard a writer say that it’s more creative to love than to be loved.”

  “Isn’t that a non sequitur in this conversation?”

  �
��I don’t think so.”

  “Well, the statement is open to more than one interpretation, and in any case, it’s debatable,” Richard said.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  OBVIOUSLY, IN SPITE of Carol’s pleas, I did publish. I took the chance. For one thing, I thought, since Imogen lives half a world away and now has a married name, it’s unlikely she would be involved in any publicity should my real name be revealed. Also, I thought she could handle the facts of the story, as she’s smart and compassionate and loves me and would respect my honesty and understand my motives. And she would believe me.

  I live in the hope that all of the above is true.

  And I devoutly hope that those who were very young will never be identified because they don’t need to have these “events” trailing after them like hungry dogs. If it were only Carol and I (and Nick), we’d cope. As middle-aged adults, we would be able to survive tossing out a few bones with bits of flesh still clinging to them.

  Some people might say — Carol isn’t one of them — that I shouldn’t have suffered so much, that I mainly just lusted after Jacintha, and anyway, I didn’t know who she was. They might tell me to “man up” and stop moaning.

  Even the almost saintly Jimmy Carter famously said, “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” (Who knew that U.S. presidents would delineate sexual parameters?)

  The first agent I sent this book to declared that Richard did suffer too much and everyone was “so mean to him”; therefore, she couldn’t market it. I told this to a friend, who said, “Wait until she reads Shakespeare!” I cherish that as a most excellent literary put-down.

  I was recently thinking about all this in terms of an imaginary Tempest rewrite. Suppose Prospero had lived on the island alone and one day a young woman washed up on the shore half-drowned and he had lusted after her. More and more. Then, in Act IV, he found out she was his daughter. Shakespeare would surely have had Prospero undergo torments of the soul until he killed himself in Act V. And that for “only” lusting.