Old Scores

by Scott Mackay

  Thirteen

  On the hill behind the cottage, where the cedar and silver birch eked out a meager existence in the small pockets of soil scattered over the scarred Precambrian granite, Gilbert and Regina, finally alone, talked things over. Wild blueberries and strawberries winked at them from under ferns and fireweed. Regina’s plastic yogurt container was half full of wild blueberries.

  Now that Gilbert had sketched it all in for her, she wouldn’t turn his way, kept her back to him, her head protected by a straw hat and mosquito netting. The hill sloped to Lake Kipawa. Lake Kipawa sang its summer song—motorboats going back and forth to the marina. He stared at his wife’s back. She wore a pink shirt, blue jeans, and the hiking boots from L.L. Bean he’d given her last Christmas. No, she wouldn’t turn. The mention of Marseilles had paralyzed her. He hated to see it. It was as if some essential piece had crumpled inside her. She now looked small, vulnerable, ready to blow away in the next strong wind.

  She dropped the container full of blueberries and they scattered down the hill—dark little racers, some tumbling smoothly over bare patches of prehistoric rock, others losing themselves in the grass and lichen. A kingfisher flew by, its crest feathers disproportionately large to its body, a streak of blue, black, and white in the sunny air. Regina sat down—suddenly, precipitiously—as if her legs couldn’t support her anymore.

  She cried. Her shoulders jerked. The black flies landed on her back, but were quickly repelled by Deep Woods Off. A wretched little sob escaped from somewhere underneath all that mosquito netting. Boyd, after all these years, could still hurt her. He grew more determined than ever to find Barcos, even though he wasn’t the primary on the case anymore. Once they found Barcos, they could throw him to the Crown like a Christian to the lions, and Regina wouldn’t have to worry about the old black mark in their lives anymore.

  Gilbert heard the breaking of twigs and the rustling of leaves in the forest up the hill. He glanced over his shoulder. Something was up there. He feared it might be a bear. For one reason or another the Province of Quebec had canceled the bear hunt this spring. He’d been hearing that sound up there for the last fifteen minutes. For the first time in a long time he was actually worried about bears.

  “And now you’re more in the case file than ever,” he said.

  She still couldn’t answer. He took a few steps toward her but stopped. He felt her otherness, the sense that, after all, she was a separate and unique person, not just his wife, not just the mother of his two children, but a singular entity, apart from him, someone he could ultimately never know, and who he could never really help.

  “I tried to spare you this,” she said at last. “I should have left Glen alone. I should have recognized the poison in his eyes the minute I saw him, but it was too late. I should have known he would just end up hurting us again. But I’m like a silly moth who flies too close to the fire. He was so pathetic. I had to help him.”

  Gilbert sat on the ground next to her. He saw a small green snake weave silently through the grass. Over the astringent scent of insect repellant, he caught a whiff of her perfume, Dilys by Laura Ashley.

  “I don’t know if Tim is seriously considering building a case against you or not,” he said. “Tim is more or less doing what Ling tells him to do. And Ling wants to take a close look at you. So that’s what Tim’s doing.”

  But it was as if she hadn’t heard him. “Marseilles… Marseilles,” she said, chanting the name with despondency. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I can’t help thinking of that poor small child, and what I did to it. I can’t believe I let Glen talk me into it. I should have refused. I should have come home all strung out and pregnant…and hope…hope that you would have taken pity on me as well as on that baby. If only I’d had the courage…and the common sense.”

  She couldn’t go on. He put his arm around her. He heard some more rustling in the forest up the hill and glanced over his shoulder. What was that? Whatever it was, it was starting to get on his nerves. A huge oak tree, anomalous to the region, stood on top of the hill. The noise was coming from behind that tree. Was it really a bear? Were they about to be attacked? The thing rustled again. Regina stopped crying and looked over her own shoulder, her blue eyes growing apprehensive behind the mosquito netting.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  He turned around and looked toward the cottage, which sat on a knoll by the lake a quarter-kilometer away, its silver aluminum roof spotlight-bright in the sunshine. Given the distance, a bear would easily outrun them if they made a try for the cottage.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I sure wish they hadn’t canceled the bear hunt this year.”

  “I can hardly come out here now,” admitted Regina.

  He listened some more. He didn’t hear anything.

  “I think it’s gone,” he said.

  Regina’s shoulders eased. He pulled her nearer.

  “It’s okay, Reggie,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Barry,” she said, her voice torn. “I never…I just didn’t want to…I didn’t see the point of ever telling you because I thought it would just end up…hurting us. My mind was such a muddle in those days. Having an abortion was nearly a badge of feminism…and all the things I was reading at the time…Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Marilyn French…as if my life wasn’t dramatic enough already. I thought it would be okay. But it really killed me. It made me turn my back on all that counterculture stuff. All I wanted to do was come home and be a wife and a mother.”

  Gilbert sighed. “I can’t help thinking that I’m…you know…that I’m your second choice. That if things had worked out with Boyd, you and I would be leading entirely different lives right now, and the girls would never have been born.”

  “No,” she said, and said it so firmly Gilbert had to believe her. “I eventually saw the…the shiftiness in his eyes…and it dawned on me that I’d somehow been duped into thinking I was the only one he cared about. He was compelled—absolutely compelled—to look at every woman who walked by. And what’s odd about it, he doesn’t even necessarily like women. I’m convinced he’s a die-hard misogynist. There’s a bad vibe with him as far as women are concerned. In my case, I got the sense, near the end, that it was more a power trip than a love thing. Having sex with him was always…I don’t know…I couldn’t help feeling humiliated in some way. There was always this…this what-a-little-fool-you-are look in his eyes…as if he’d somehow outsmarted me by having sex with me. Sex with Glen was scary at times. I feel so much better when I’m having it with you.”

  “Boyd’s a real sick puppy,” commented Gilbert. “Did he try anything when you saw him…you know, in the spring?”

  “He pawed me a few times, but I pushed him away. I guess that’s when my hair got in the bed.”

  “You always hear about his reputation as a womanizer,” said Gilbert.

  “I wish I’d known about it when I went to France with him.”

  “He really tried to paw you?”

  She sighed, lifted her mosquito net, and wiped her eyes. “We had a bit of a scuffle. He was trying to kiss me. I lost my balance and I fell to the bed. I don’t know why he even bothered. He’s half in love with Stacy Todd.”

  “Really?” he said. “You wouldn’t know it. His murder didn’t phase her at all. When I took her to the office, it was business as usual.”

  “No,” she said. “He had a thing for her. He told me as much. He said a few suggestive things to her while I was there, but I guess she’s gotten in the habit of ignoring him.”

  “What a poor guy,” he said.

  More rustling came from behind the oak tree on top of the hill. They both turned. It sounded big. Two dragonflies sped down the hill as if they were fleeing from the thing. It got louder. It got closer. Gilbert rose to his feet and lifted a rock, preparing to use it as a weapon, now wishing he had his 9mm Beretta from work with him. He felt himself tensing. Bob Birch across the bay said he’d seen several bears at the d
ump this year, more bears than he’d seen in the last thirty-two years.

  “I think it’s a damn bear,” said Gilbert, incredulous. A sudden wild foraging came from behind the oak tree. Regina sprang to her feet. “Oh my God,” she said. “Is it a bear?”

  A moment later, a red squirrel jumped delicately out from behind the oak tree, stood on its hind legs, stared at them, and twitched its fluffy tail playfully. Gilbert frowned and let the rock drop to the ground. Regina’s shoulders sagged in relief.

  He glanced at her.

  “I’d like to know one thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “What ever happened to the red squirrel hunt this year?”

  She grinned. Then laughed. And all her otherness disappeared.

  On Friday, after a week of earnest and successful marital repair on the shores of bright Kipawa, Gilbert was just changing into his bathing suit to join the girls for a swim when the cottage telephone rang.

  “Barry Gilbert here,” he said.

  “Hi, Barry. It’s Dr. MacPherson.”

  “Oh, hi…hi. How are you?”

  “Are you having good weather up there?” asked the doctor.

  “Sunny and hot,” he said. “Perfect swimming weather. And the blackflies aren’t too bad this year, either.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it. Unfortunately I have some rather bad news for you. Nina’s second test came back positive for HIV.”

  Gilbert felt his chest contract. The beer he’d drunk earlier felt unsettled in his stomach. His palms grew moist. A hummingbird swooped into view outside the screened window, hovered at the nectar-style bird feeder, dipped its slender beak into one of the feeding holes, sipped, then darted back to the lowest branch of a nearby white pine. He heard the sound of a chain saw in the distance.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Well…there’s a small possibility the test might have come back as a false positive.”

  “What’s a false positive?”

  “It means she could be negative, but because of the reported one-percent margin of error on the test, it came back positive.”

  “So her chances are one in a hundred then?”

  Nina’s chances had to be better than one in a hundred, he thought.

  “Probably a little greater than that,” said Dr. MacPherson. Far in the distance, Sûreté du Québec game wardens boated toward a choice walleye spot, aiming to apprehend some unlicensed fisherman. “The manufacturers claim these tests are ninety-nine percent accurate…but that’s just a claim. I don’t buy it for a minute. I won’t get too technical. There’s a whole science in the way they predict the reliability of these tests, with numbers and figures involving your basic risk population, superimposed against patients who might show abnormal proteins for other reasons besides HIV.” Already the doctor was losing Gilbert, but he listened as intently as he could, and tried to understand. “Then you have to look at the whole thing in the framework of positive predictive value,” continued Dr. MacPherson. “When you do all that, I’d say Nina’s chances are closer to one in twenty-five.” A breeze rustled the branches of the white pine outside, and the hummingbird flew away. “Not good, but definitely better than one in a hundred.”

  Gilbert felt his heart beating faster. His mouth was now dry and sour from the beer.

  “So what do we do?” he asked, hoping the doctor would pull some miracle solution out of his bag of medical tricks. “Should we pack up and come home for another test?”

  “The lab closes early on Friday,” said Dr MacPherson.

  “What about tomorrow?” asked Gilbert.

  “They’re not open on Saturday. Not during July and August. And a few days aren’t going to make a difference anyway. Bring her in on Monday. I’ll write another requisition, and we’ll have her tested then.”

  After Gilbert hung up, he stood by the wall-mounted phone for several seconds, a cool sweat forming on his brow. His throat felt tight. He wondered if he should spare Nina the news until they got back to Toronto on Sunday night. Why wreck her weekend, and her final two days up at the cottage? No. He should tell her now. He had to tell her the truth no matter how much it might hurt, give her a chance to get used to the idea before she got back to town. Let her have whatever reaction she was going to have, take the next two days getting herself in reasonable shape, then go to the doctor’s office and the lab on Monday.

  He left the cottage and walked down the path to the dock. Regina and the girls were already in the water. A wooden footbridge made of pressure-treated timber led to an island off the east point, part of the property, small but picturesque. A dozen pine, cedar, and birch trees grew on the island, and a few granite boulders, left there by glaciers thousands of years ago, were embedded into the pale-green ground moss. Regina and the girls floated on noodles—bright tubes of highly buoyant synthetic material—just off the south point of the island.

  “Could you guys come out for a sec?” he called. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Why don’t you come in?” called Regina, her smile happy and unsuspecting. Then she caught the worried look on his face, and her smile disappeared. She turned to her daughters. “Come on, girls,” she said. “Let’s get out. Dad has something to tell us.”

  They swam to the island, climbed out of the water, and walked across the footbridge. They came up the path to where he stood beside a lichen-covered boulder. Regina looked at him more closely. Her face sank. He could tell she knew what was coming. From across the bay, Bob Birch started his rudder-steered eighteen-footer and began heading across, perhaps on his way to the marina.

  “I just got a call from Dr. MacPherson,” he said. He turned to Nina, feeling helpless, wanting to do something for his daughter, but knowing it was out of his hands. “I’m afraid the news isn’t good. Your second test came back positive.”

  A strange look came to Nina’s face. She went pale, her pupils lost their focus, and she looked at him as if she didn’t know who he was. Gilbert remembered this from his diabetic brother Howard. Howard would sometimes faint when his glucose levels did something unexpected. Bob Birch motored closer and closer, steering the boat around the far side of the island.

  “She’s going to faint,” warned Gilbert.

  He grabbed on to her and steadied her just as she lost her footing. Her legs went all rubbery, and her eyes rolled back into her head, and he had to grab on to her tighter so she didn’t collapse to the ground. Regina rushed in to help. Bob Birch came out from behind the island and saw them all standing there beside the big boulder. Nina continued to collapse, and they carefully laid her on the ground, her skin getting covered with old brown pine needles.

  Bob waved, even though he looked somewhat perplexed by what was going on.

  Gilbert waved back, the old social forms of the lake taking over no matter what, practiced since the summers of his boyhood, when his father had owned the place, automatic and instinctive, even though his daughter had just been handed a death sentence.

  On Saturday night, their last night there, Gilbert sat out on the island, his back against a boulder, his bare feet stretched over a lip of granite that sloped gently into the lake. He faced east, across the lake. In and amongst the pine-covered islands he heard a loon calling, its voice timeless, tragic, and ethereal. To the north, where the salmon hues of sunset faded in the skies above the Ojibwa reserve, a last few fisherman trolled for lake trout in their small boats before calling it a day.

  He heard the cottage screen-door open, then bang shut on its spring-loaded hinges.

  “Barry?” called Regina.

  He cocked his head over his shoulder.

  “I’m out here,” he called. “On the island.”

  He turned east again, where high among the highest hilltops across the lake he saw the red light of a fire tower winking off and on, ever watchful of the endless cedar, birch, and pine. He heard Regina walk across the footbridge. She climbed onto the island. Her flashlight beam searched hi
m out. She maneuvered around the big boulder and sat down on the granite beside him.

  “Is she asleep?” he asked.

  “Finally,” said Regina. “Jennifer’s in bed with her. They’re sleeping together.”

  “Good. She needs all the comfort she can get. It must be hard when you’re so young.”

  “I gave her a couple of those old Sominex. The ones that have been in the medicine cabinet forever. I don’t know if they’re still good, but she took them with a glass of warm milk, and it seems to be doing the trick.”

  “She’s exhausted,” said Gilbert. “Her nerves are shot. She needs sleep.”

  He put his arm around his wife and drew her closer. They, too, were exhausted. They hadn’t slept much, not more than a couple of hours since receiving the bad news from Dr. MacPherson yesterday.

  He looked out at the lake. The bugs weren’t too bad. The record-breaking heat in June had killed most of them off early. Bats skimmed and dove above the calm lake.

  “Are we okay now?” asked Regina. “You and me?”

  He sighed. “I just wish Boyd had never happened,” he said, “that’s all. I accept it, I live with it, it’s over and done with, but I still wish it had never happened.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “When I was over there…in Aix-en-Provence…and living with him in that little stone place he had…I met a woman…God, there were so many women around, and who knows how many of them he slept with.” The loon called again. “Her name was Renate Dresler, and she was a music student at the Hochschule in Vienna, and she and I…we became good friends. I don’t know whether she slept with Glen, but I imagine she did. She was part of his coterie.” The sky got darker, and the stars grew more brilliant. “Renate was a sweet girl. She was a real support to me. She came to Marseilles with us. She held me after the doctor did what he had to do. Glen buggered off somewhere, to a café by the harbor. Renate was the one who listened to me when I told her Glen was the biggest mistake of my life, and how I would always look back on this time with a lot of bitterness. And you know what she said to me, and what I’ve been wanting to tell you all these years, but have never had the nerve?”