Stone Woman

by Bianca Lakoseljac

  CHAPTER 12

  FOR THE LAST few nights, since Wessel Couzijn poured concrete into the plywood mould and his sculpture took shape, Liza has not been able to put the image of the two entwined whale-like shapes out of her thoughts. He has named the figure Midsummer Night’s Dream. Had he seen her and David making love in the park? The two entwined figures in an embrace evoke that image.

  “Not surprised you inspired old man Couzijn,” David had said. “You’re my muse, Liza. And soon, I’ll have a surprise for you.”

  Watching him asleep next to her, naked under the sheets, red curls strewn over his forehead, drool at the corner of his mouth, Liza smiles at the boyishness of his calm face, at the vulnerability that vanishes in his waking hours, only to peep out like a timid fairy, when he is unaware — when they make love. Careful not wake him, she gently pulls out the corner of her silk nightgown caught under his leg, slips out of bed, and tiptoes to the kitchen. His teasing about her love of silk makes her smile. The long, backless negligee he’d given her with the plunging neckline held by spaghetti straps could easily pass as a gown at a black tie gala.

  “You’re my enchantress swaddled in silk,” he tells her each time he presents her with yet another garment. Her assortment has grown — baby-dolls and nightgowns and a kimono she adores, with birds of paradise and gigantic peonies.

  She plugs in the kettle and drops a chamomile pouch into the tea pot. David’s crumpled sport jacket lies on the sofa, a large Love button pinned on the lapel. She places the jacket on a hanger and hooks it on the mahogany stand. The web of creases remind her of David’s life — full of secret tucks and crevices. She wets her hands and passes her palms over the furrows to smooth them, but they remain firm in the fabric.

  Liza opens the small drawer of the coat stand and pulls out a Love button matching the one on David’s jacket. He picked them up as they walked along Yonge Street toward the subway station, after a bike ride on Centre Island. She presses the button against her chest and the word, “Love,” reflected in the tarnished mirror of the stand becomes distorted — as if some bizarre malice were lurking just below the thin crust of reality. She stuffs the button back in the drawer and shuts it.

  She plucks a white daisy from the bouquet on the stand and slips the stem into the lapel buttonhole just above the Love button. Cary Grant would be pleased. And so will David. Boutonnieres are symbols of love undefined, yet captured in a single bloom.

  After the tea, she treads softly up the steps and nestles beside David. Through the window, the moon shines upon a round peace button on the night table — a white dove, in its beak an olive branch. David must have placed it there.

  Her gaze moves to David’s tattoo — under the metallic moonlight, the graphics on his bicep appear three dimensional. She sees it now — the same symbol — a white dove with an olive branch stands out from the rest of the drawings. She fathoms another symbol below the dove — a skull. Hells Angels’ logo, Death Head. Is that what he is trying to hide? Her vision magnified, she discerns yet another emblem superimposed over the others. Another peace sign — the ubiquitous circle with an inverted V known as the crow’s foot design. It hides semaphoric shapes for letters N and D (nuclear disarmament) and was inspired by Goya’s peasant before the firing squad, with arms stretched outwards and downwards.

  She sits up in bed. So this is the enigmatic tattoo I’ve been trying to decipher since the day I met him. Symbols, logos. One layer of his life upon another.

  She recalls him riding his bicycle on Centre Island, the same boyishness of the David sleeping in her bed evident in the way he shows off his flip tricks to her. He pedals his Raleigh Sports Roadster ahead, pulls on the handlebar, lifts the front wheel off the road, and as he continues riding on the back wheel, he spins the bike three hundred and sixty degrees. She catches his glance — he knows she is watching — and she adores the vulnerable boy in need of attention, more than she ever thought possible. Her need to protect this man with paper-cut lines around his eyes and keen involvement in the antiwar movement, this communist-in-disguise, overpowers the fear she has come to know as premonition. She hardens her resolve against the fear. You don’t believe in superstition, Liza, do you? She hears David’s voice.

  She settles under the sheets again — the lure of his nakedness. He stirs and enfolds her in an embrace.

  Hells Angels. Hells Angels. Hells Angels. Throbs in her head.

  She jumps up and turns on the lamp.

  “You okay, Babe?” David murmurs.

  She shakes his shoulder. “Wake up, David.”

  He sits up and rubs his eyes.

  “Tell me about Hells Angels,” she says.

  “Now? What time is it?”

  “Yes, now.”

  He rubs his forehead and mutters: “I rode with them. For a bit.”

  “Rode? So you don’t any more? Why would you ride with them?”

  He gets out of bed and begins to pace the floor. “A childhood friend, an Angel, helped me escape to Canada.”

  She sits on the edge of the bed, props her chin with her hand, and stares at him.

  “He risked his reputation in the gang. And his safety. All for me.”

  She shrugs. “How?”

  “That’s complicated, Babe. Angels are in support of the War. To them, draft dodgers are traitors.”

  “So you joined the gang?”

  “I rode with them here and there. Paid for beer. Posted bail for a few. Angels are always short of money. This was my way to get on their good side.”

  “Because a friend helped you?”

  “Angels often attack the antiwar rallies. They beat the protesters so badly, they’re feared more than the police. I thought if I pay some of their bills, they’ll leave the protesters alone.” He rubs his beard. “And, yes. Because a friend helped me. As I said, it’s complicated.”

  “They still attack the rallies, don’t they?”

  David shrugs. “Not as badly. And not as often.”

  “You’re still friends with them?”

  “Got to keep them off the protesters’ backs. Got to try, at least. Every once in a while, I bail out a guy. But that’s all.”

  Liza gets out of bed and paces the floor with him. “This is more that I can handle.”

  David embraces her. “Nothing to worry about, Babe. Tomorrow in the daylight, all of this will look different.”

  CHAPTER 13

  LIZA LEANS ON the large cement planter on Yorkville

  Avenue and waits for David to park the Harley in the back lane. He was able to reserve a table at the Riverboat — a difficult task considering Leonard Cohen is performing this evening. Cohen is extending his stay in Toronto after taking part in the Victoria Day’s Love-in at Queen’s Park, which drew thousands.

  She has left her flats in the storage pack of David’s bike. On her finger, she dangles new stilettos by the straps, about to slip her bare feet into them. Looking down Yorkville, she is surprised by the changes that have taken place in the couple of years since she began working for the City.

  As a student, she had frequented the Bohemian Embassy — a coffee shop on the second floor of a run-down warehouse on Saint Nicholas Street, constantly threatened with closure by the fire department — where Margaret Atwood and Milton Acorn read poetry to a packed room, and Joni Mitchell often sang. Since then, Yorkville has taken on a different flavour. Where the sound of jazz and folk once wafted through the coffee houses, now rock bands blare, and hordes of young people, many from the suburbs and surrounding towns, hang out on the streets of the so-called “Toorotten’s hippie cultural centre,” the new Yorkville.

  Narrow one-way streets are packed with cars. The three-block drive along Yorkville Avenue took her and David nearly half an hour, with drivers honking and gawking and passengers yelling to the crowds jamming the sidewalks and spilling onto the streets. The media had not exaggerate
d reports about Yorkville becoming the teenage hangout. Toronto’s draconian liquor licensing laws prohibit most coffee shops and clubs from serving alcohol, which means the teenagers are welcome. Yorkville has become a hangout for high school students simply killing time, standing about to see and be seen. After about ten at night, when the crowds begin pouring into the bars, the teenagers usually mange to get in and drink themselves into a stupor and rowdiness.

  “Move along! Move along!” Two police officers instruct as they shuffle among young people crowding the sidewalks. “No loitering allowed.”

  Liza has managed to fit one foot into her new sandal when an officer approaches. “It’s past your bedtime, young lady, wouldn’t you say?”

  Standing off balance with one bare foot on the sidewalk and the other in a high heel sandal, Liza is caught off guard. “I beg your pardon, officer?”

  “How old are you?” the officer asks.

  “Officer, what’s this about?”

  “Got your birth certificate, young lady?”

  She pulls out her driver’s license and hands it to him. He looks at it for a moment, turns it over, examines it again, and hands it back to her.

  “This better be real,” he says.

  Liza slips the driver’s license back in her wallet. It had been a number of years since she’d been carded, and she would have found the experience humorous if it was not for the paddy wagon parked at Hazelton and Yorkville she and David had passed by, with police eager to arrest anyone under eighteen, or anyone without ID suspected to be an adolescent, hanging out in Yorkville past the ten o’clock curfew.

  She breathes a sigh of relief. She’d almost left her wallet at home — David had suggested it — as the weekend crowds were becoming known for purse snatching by underage youth looking for excitement and easy cash. The officer meshes into the crowd, his head towering over the swarm of teenagers. He can’t be much older than her. Has she imagined that spark in his eyes, that flash of a smile that told her he had other interest in her than making an arrest? And the stern voice is a put-on, she is sure. He turns, and their eyes meet. Her face turns hot as if she’d just had a shot of Drambuie. The sandal she had placed on a planter drops to the sidewalk. Her skirt is too short, so she squats down, picks up the sandal and slips it on, and when she stands up, now with both shoes on, the police officer is still there, eyes glued on her, beaming. She waves goodbye, and turns away.

  And now she remembers where she had seen this cop. At the Love-in, at Queens Park. She can see him now — leaning on the seat of his parked motorcycle a group of hippies had decorated with tulips and daffodils. Gathered around, they’re serenading him with, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” at which he blushes profusely. As soon as the singing stops, he rides off.

  He did not see her. She stood aside and observed. Even if he saw her, he would not recognize her, now. She was practically “masked.” She teeters on her pink stilettos and instinctively pulls on the hem of her mini skirt trying to cover her thighs. David approaches. “You alright, Babe?” He takes her hand and they head for the Riverboat.

  From her purse, Liza pulls out a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses, hoping they’ll conceal some of her unease. But she cannot contain her excitement about Leonard Cohen’s concert. If his performance is anything close to the Love-in, this will be the best night ever.

  * * *

  The lyrics from Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” which Liza heard for the first time this evening, replay in her mind. The song has not been released yet, and Cohen was testing it on his audience. She finds the rhyme hypnotic, addictive, and she makes a mental note to buy the album as soon as it becomes available. But the words are so sad, they are lodged in her chest, and she cannot free herself from them. The song is written as a letter about a love triangle. About loss. It makes her think of love and death — and her and David. About his involvement with the antiwar movement. And the Hells Angels. Especially the Hells Angels. He greeted a few gang members at the Riverboat. He offered to introduce her, but she used a washroom excuse. When she came back, they had left — they were not interested in Cohen’s music — and she was grateful. Now that she knows what David’s tattoo means, she cannot put it out of her thoughts.

  Liza went to a tattoo parlour on Yonge Street and found out that a tattoo could be removed. The only risk is some possible scarring. She did not, however, like the atmosphere at the place — it seems to be run by bikers, and she wonders how hygienic it is. The hepatitis scare in Yorkville has saturated the Toronto media. Although the sharing of hypodermic needles by drug users, primarily the Yorkville crowd, is seen as the main means of spreading the virus, she fears that the needles used at a tattoo parlour could also be contaminated. I must talk to David, she resolves, and drifts off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 14

  ANNA GETS OFF at the Keele Street subway station, crosses Bloor Street and walks to the corner store out of habit. She pulls the Daily Star out of her bag and dumps it in the garbage container. But she cannot get the article about the young woman, found in the back alley just outside of Yorkville, out of her thoughts. The woman was dumped into the large garbage container and left for dead, the article said. A passer-by spotted her and called the police. She was taken to the Women’s Centenary Hospital and, miraculously, she is expected to make a full recovery. But the doctor reports that she had been gang raped so brutally, her internal organs have been permanently damaged and she will never be able to bear children. She has regained consciousness, but the only thing she recalls is being at a party in Yorkville.

  Standing in the entrance of the crammed shop, Anna summons up a mental picture of her fridge contents and well-stocked kitchen cupboards. What does she need to pick up on the way home? She takes a few minutes to collect her thoughts. Her mind drifts back to the article. Who could this unfortunate sixteen-year-old be? She recalls an advertisement by the new private eye agency that just opened up in Yorkville: “Looking for your son or daughter? Have you checked Yorkville? If you can’t find them, we can.” She has seen parents carrying a photo of their daughter or son and asking passers-by and store owners if they have seen them.

  David has joined the Diggers, and has been helping the teenagers find jobs and a place to live. But Anna is not sure that is the answer. Too many kids have been pouring in, and too many bikers have been taking them under their wings and turning them to drugs and prostitution. The gang rapes of young girls have become a horrific scare — they used to be unheard of in Toronto before the teenage “exodus” into Yorkville, and before the bikers moved into the area. Rumour has it, the bikers have made a deal with some of the hippies to supply them with “fresh virgins” from Yorkville — the young women who flock to the city and have no means of supporting themselves. Some of the “old timer” hippies are horrified. They feel that the newcomers are not the “real hippies” and do not respect the qualities the hippies stand for — love and peace and freedom to express themselves, be it through the clothing they wear, or art, or lifestyle. And the fervent opposition to war and violence of any kind.

  Anna feels nauseous just thinking about the unfortunate young woman in the article. She needs to keep her mind occupied. There must be something needing replenishment in her fridge. A carton of milk for her cat. Although most people advise against feeding milk to cats, she sides with the cat. She compares it to smoking and her perpetual attempt to quit. Milk to her cat is what a cigarette is to her — helps to calm her. She mustn’t forget a can of tuna for her other cat. After paying for her items, she is back out crossing Keele Street on the south side of Bloor. Walking up the hill along the sidewalk bounded by the park on one side and Bloor Street on the other, Anna heads towards the bench at the edge of the park. On the way home she often pauses here and takes the time to unwind. To leave the work behind. To regain her balance.

  Sitting on the green wood slats, watching the steady flow of cars along the street below, and sheltered by the tall
oaks bordering the park behind her, she looks up into the sky. Where were you, God, when that girl got raped? Yes, I’m talking to you.

  Anna turns and scans the wooded hillock behind her. She never could venture out into the deep entrails of the park she lives near. Not even in the daytime. The paved paths and the well-tended gardens in the centre near the restaurant is where she takes her walks. But not in the unpaved forested sections. No, never. As if she would lose herself, lose the grip on everyday routine and all the familiar aspects that define her place in the world. That, she could not risk — this sense of security that is linked to her workplace, that office on Bay and College she lives in five days a week, and even on weekends when work needs to be done.

  How the two are linked, her office and the deep forest of this park, this urban sanctuary, and why they are exclusive of each other, irreconcilable, she cannot explain. They just are. A photo from the 1920s with an inscription, Lovers’ Walk, flashes in her thoughts. It’s a sepia snapshot of a dirt path in the forest, somewhere in High Park, donated to the Toronto Reference Library. Did it have special meaning to the anonymous donor? Was it known as lovers’ hideout? She cannot allow herself to go there, mentally or physically. Going there would mean losing herself, losing a grip on the intricate threads that bind all the vital segments of her existence, hold them together as one perfectly oiled machine. Stepping into the forest would be akin to leaving this machine out in the rain to rust, would cause her life to come apart.

  The forest and its wilderness belong to Liza. And David. She’d seen them at the sculpture sites during some of her walks. One time she was heading to her favourite bench under a gingko tree near the maintenance building. They were by the Flower Power and did not see her. She did not greet them — they seemed to be in their own world, and she needed time to herself as well. Have they ventured into the recesses of the dark woods forbidden to her? Perhaps they have. Most likely.