Helena had befriended another prison guard who had allowed her extra visitations. He had managed to retrieve some of David’s letters and give them to Helena.
Liza passes her fingertips over David’s handwriting as if she were reading braille. She lifts the letter to her face and breathes in the aroma of the paper his hands had touched and the faint scent of his cigarettes. She holds the letter against her face for a long while. Then reads it again.
“Liza, my wild thing,
Our love is all that matters. The rest you’ll understand, for you and I also share the love of all that’s good and just. I will always be with you. If I don’t make it, take comfort in Anna’s friendship. She, like you, is a great lady. Helena thinks the world of you. And she needs a sister. With all my love, David.”
Liza spends her days resting and rereading David’s letters. When she closes her eyes in search of David, he is there among the crowds. Marching in the demonstrations. Carrying signs and listening to Dr. Spock whose book she keeps on her night table and reads and rereads.
When the horrid visions of babies napalmed in Vietnam overwhelm her, she cries out in her sleep: “Babies are not for burning.” Anna and Helena gently shake her shoulder and call her name to draw her out of the nightmares. Sometimes she averts her eyes from her caring friends in her desire of sleep, happy in her dreams with David.
After several days, Liza leaves her bedroom and resumes her usual routine. Soon, she would return to her job. Leisurely dinners offer time for reminiscing and fulfilling her need to learn all she could about David’s work with the protesters and Anna’s and Helena’s involvement.
CHAPTER 27
THE SCULPTURES HAD been completed by the end of the summer, except for Vaillancourt’s piece, now a collection of huge iron cubes scattered over the site. The sculptor had left for San Francisco to design and supervise his new project, the gigantic Vaillancourt Fountain, and the summer months allotted for the construction of the High Park pieces had gone by. His absence had created much controversy. The cost of setting up the colossal foundry, believed to have exceeded two hundred thousand dollars, and doubts about his commitment to complete the piece have been in the forefront of local media. But since he returned in early November, he has been casting more iron cubes with a renewed zeal, and his flaming foundry has been lighting up the hillock night after night as if he were forging a monument of mythical proportions.
The weather has been unusually warm. It is the last day of November, and double-digit temperatures with sunshine have brought crowds to the park. Many people continue to gravitate to the sculpture sites. Liza has not visited the park since she found out about David’s death. Taking Helena on a leisurely walk where every tree, bench, and stone, and especially the sculptures, hold fond memories of David will help both face the reality of his absence. Anna agrees to accompany them. They begin with Bernard Schottlander’s November Pyramid and are surprised to find the smooth brown cubes already scribbled with graffiti. They spot Vaillancourt at his site, preparing moulds for the nightly pouring. He often casts the iron cubes during the evenings, and locals gather for the show of glowing molten iron and muscle power made more spectacular under the cloak of darkness. A tall policeman approaches him and after a brief exchange Vaillancourt’s voice rises and he gestures widely.
Anna turns to Liza. “Isn’t that the officer who came to your door last week? Asked again about the stolen marble?”
Hand above her eyes to shield against the sun, Liza says: “That’s James alright. He’s still searching for that stone block.”
Anna takes a pack of Luckies from her purse and plucks out a cigarette. “Have to say, I almost accused David of taking that stone. Now I feel horrible about it.”
Hands propped on her hips, Helena scans the hill. “It was not David,” she says and leads the way to Irving Burman’s two granite blocks still on the grass. Next to them, the petition which calls for the thief to bring back the marble is still posted.
“How do you know?” Anna says and lights the cigarette. She takes a long drag and lets it out slowly. “I see the volunteers haven’t given up. Still collecting those signatures.”
Liza nods. “Six thousand signatures so far. And the hype’s not letting up.”
Anna points to the petition. “Burman’s still refusing the quarry’s offer to replace it free of charge. No other piece would do. Go figure.”
Liza pulls out the petition form from the pouch, looks it over, and slips it back in. She heaves a sigh. “Burman had a breakdown after that stone vanished.”
Anna grinds the cigarette on the rim of the garbage bin. “Sure did. And couldn’t continue. So there it is, two granite blocks, and nothing else. Taxpayers’ money sitting on that grass like a pile of you-know-what.”
Helena stands frozen, gazing into the distance. “I know my brother,” she whispers.
Down in the valley, Liza glimpses Midsummer Night’s Dream. It would be a while before she musters up the courage to reveal its source of inspiration to anyone. Many years later, she will tell the story to the child she now carries in her womb. She will tell it in words void of the sorrow she now feels, and it will be the story of their summer together — the summer of love. She will talk about Wessel Couzijn who had been lounging at his site nearby, gazing at the starlit sky, hoping for inspiration for his sculpture. And there they were — she and David — making love under the maple moon-shade. “It’s what lovers sometimes do in the park,” he had told Liza. But this was not the right day for that story. For now, Couzijn’s brain child would remain her secret.
Anna taps out another cigarette and turns to Helena. “We’d like to show you something.”
Leading the way to William Koochin’s The Hippy, Liza feels hot air rising in her chest. She takes a deep breath to release tension. Facing eastward, the dark granite figure on a square pedestal keeps watch over the sculpture sites.
Helena stares at the sculpture for a long while. “It’s David.”
CHAPTER 28
AT DUSK, LIZA stands by The Hippy. How appropriate the monument is — the likeness of David. He often stood here — dark shades, hands in pockets — taking in the progress of the installations at Sculpture Hill. Koochin had captured that stance, that casual yet defiant posture: the Love button on David’s lapel, his unruly beard, a one-time suit jacket turned casual, and his somewhat stocky build — to Liza a sure giveaway of his gourmet palate and the skill of a well-trained chef — chiselled to the last detail.
The scene replays in her mind. She can hear Koochin’s voice: “My piece is a tribute to you, David, my friend. And to your ideology. To freedom in every way. Freedom to love, to create, to live in peace!”
“Some talent, my friend. I’m honoured.”
Koochin strokes his bearded chin in satisfaction and says: “I call it The Hippy.”
David pats Koochin’s shoulder. “We’re living in the age of transformation. The name’s fitting. I congratulate you, buddy!”
They step back and, circling the figure, examine it from various angles.
Koochin turns to David. “Should’ve been you, bro. To win this contract. I thought they’d made a mistake.”
“No mistake, Bill. It couldn’t’ve gone to a better sculptor. If I were the judge, I would’ve picked you.”
Koochin studies the figure. “David, man, if you had won, what would you have sculpted?”
David takes the Love button off his lapel and pins it on Liza’s shirt collar. Arm around her shoulder, he draws her close. “The beautiful woman who’s afraid to love me.”
Looking into Liza’s eyes he gently brushes hair away from her forehead. “I would’ve sculpted you, Liza — the eyes of Sculpture Hill.”
Now, enveloped in long tree shadows swaying in the evening breeze, Liza leans into The Hippy. She rests her palm on the cold stone. If only I could see your eyes behind those shades, David . . . if I
could hear your voice. Her thoughts wander back to the time she first heard David’s voice, she first saw him — eating a burger and wiping his hands on his jeans; to the first time she inhaled his scent and wrote her telephone number on his tattooed bicep; to the first time they made love at the hill not far from where she now stands; to the nights of lovemaking in his colossal creaky bed; to the perpetual coldness lodged in her like permafrost, since he vanished from her life. The child in her womb shifts ever so gently.
Liza scans Sculpture Hill. All about her, dim silhouettes like ominous caves gape in the far angles of the park. The soaring tree trunks with bare crowns lean one way and the other. She looks up. The stone face is illuminated. Suddenly she feels love as if she were in David’s arms.
What secrets does the universe hold? What magic? She wonders.
And the next moment the granite is cold and dark and reminiscent of David’s face on that night when he told her about his wife who had been killed in Saigon.
Has she been dreaming? She could not describe this to anyone for fear of being thought a madwoman. It’s something she felt. Later that night, she will express it in her diary, and it will be many years after her death that her daughter, the child she now carries, will read and understand. She will know it in the way Liza feels it now, this flash of at-oneness with the sculpture of David — with David himself — and their unborn child. It will be their family secret — shared with the daughter who will be named Blossom.
PART Two
CHAPTER 29
Spring, 2008
THE LATE DAY sun is unusually warm for early April. After giving my last lecture of the winter semester, I take a leisurely stroll through the University campus, staying off the paved path. The ground is pregnant with moisture and the air smells of spring.
I glance at my timetable in the folder still in my hand: Blossom Grant, Winter, 2008. My schedule, which during the semester has grown exponentially into prep time, grading, professional development, and faculty meetings, filling up evenings and weekends — each task a metronome mark quantifying the tempo of life as it has been for the past ten years — is winding down. After next week’s student exams, I will have a long summer break to use in any way I wish.
As I near Dundas Square, the noise from a heavy metal band assaults my ears. A whiff of frying sesame oil through an open restaurant door draws me to the line-up of students and I join the queue to place my order. Glancing into the broad window next to me, at the reflection of people in the line-up, I am taken aback by the familiar image — the gaunt features with high cheek bones I think of as a gift from my Slavic mother, deep set eyes I know match the turquoise in my dangling earrings, and thick folds of the Irish-red curls hardly subdued by the tinted glass mirage — a willowy figure clad in black in the midst of muted shades. She seems surreal, as if I had not seen her for a while.
The takeout line shuffles along. From the clamorous chatter I soon learn that I am a pesco-vegetarian — a fish eating vegetarian, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
A short subway ride later, I am home on Gothic Avenue, gazing over the ravine to the rooflines of houses silhouetted against the blush of the setting sun. I pick at the tasty seafood morsels and watch a television program about the depletion of oceans due to unethical fishing methods. I turn to the screen and the squiggly sea creatures are struggling in the gigantic fish nets. The narrator’s voice goes on about the practice of bottom trawling, dragging the heavy nets along the ocean floor, which he likens to fishing with a bulldozer — everything else is caught in it.
“This coral is a deep-water variety,” a bearded man who appears on the screen explains as he pulls a chunk from the net. “It’s a slow-growing type, and a single net can snare about a ton and a half every hour.”
I point my remote to turn the television off, when the underwater camera zooms in and the screen is filled with the swaying cauliflower-like heads as the voice announces this coral could be thousands of years old. It would take just as long to recover — or may not recover at all. I close the white lid of the Styrofoam container — another enemy — and dump the food into the waste basket. Too late now, but I resolve the word “pesco” would be replaced with “chick peas,” at least when it refers to me.
The evening ahead suddenly gapes with unplanned time — the reward I give myself at the end of a busy week or the winding down of a semester, slowly losing its appeal. I am queasy. Is it the seafood? No, it’s my work schedule. For the first time in ten years, I chose to take the summer off. I might travel. Or just laze around. Go to the beach, the theatres, art galleries, and museums. Catch up on life. I’ve been saving for this a long while. I should be excited, not panicky. Perhaps I am simply not used to having free time.
That night, instead of another ritual of sleeplessness, drinking Sleepytime tea and having a staring down contest with the picture on the tea-box — papa-bear dozing in his comfy recliner in front of a roaring fire with a tabby on his lap, I actually go to bed. I sleep and sleep and when I untangle myself from my sheets and dare to open my eyes to a glaring white sunshine unlike any other light I can momentarily recall, I squint at the clock on my dresser and it’s ten in the morning.
I am thrilled. I actually jump on my bed and dance and hum, “teddy-bear, teddy-bear, turn around, teddy-bear, teddy-bear, touch the ground.” I do the actions as well. I am as carefree as if I were four years old and not forty.
A twinge of nausea suddenly churns in my stomach. I am trapped as if I were a squiggly sea creature caught in a gigantic fishing net. The room is airless and claustrophobic and I run out and down the steps and into the living room now drenched in sunshine. The queasiness is the aftermath of the dream that has been haunting me for a while now.
Among the hills and valleys of the ocean floor and colonies of coral, a white shadow of a woman shifts, then fades into the background. I hear my name called. Blossom! I slip behind a tall clump of coralline, peering through the transparency of the ocean vastness, then hop, weightless, over a mound, over a gorge. The shadow comes into focus, her limbs moving naturally as if she is a living being. But she has that white stone look, and I know it’s a sculpture of some kind. She looks familiar, as if I have seen her somewhere before. She raises her hands, as if waving to me, but her face is turned away, and I realize she is trying to catch the clumps of coral floating about, unaware of my presence.
The doorbell rings. I gasp for breath as if I had just surfaced from the bottom of the ocean. It’s the paperboy doing collections.
“It’s eleven fifty, Miss Grant,” the paperboy grins and hands me the Sunday Star.
My purse is on the hall stand by the door. I hand him the money and pick up the copy of the Saturday paper from my porch as well. I stand there, staring at the two editions of the Toronto Daily Star, as if I have never seen a newspaper before. Did I sleep from Friday evening to Sunday morning? How could this be? I have never done this before. I am a chronic insomniac, for heaven sake. I sigh loudly and shake my head and try to make some sense of this as if it happened to someone else.
What have I missed? The answering machine is flashing. It shows three new messages.
“Hi Blossom. It’s Chester. We said we’d meet at five? Our usual? Just thought I’d remind you.”
“Hi there. I’m at Marché. The Front Street one. Hope I got the place right.”
“Me again . . .”
I still cannot believe I slept through two nights and a day. I’m about to call him, but feel nauseous as if seasick, and cannot imagine talking to anyone, especially to Chester. What would I say? Nothing logical comes to mind.
Chester and I met a few semesters ago in the cafeteria line. I smile as the scene unfolds in my thoughts.
“Hello Blossom!” Jane waves at me from the front of the line, and motions me to join her. I am tempted. Then I catch myself. Would students see it as butting into the line?
Jane and I go way back
— we have been close friends since childhood. We were roommates at university. Now we share a cubicle and a desk in the faculty office. This is one way the university saves on office space — by having non-tenured and part time faculty share desks. Most of the classes we teach are at different times, so the desk is usually free for one of us. When we are there together, we sit at each end. The good thing is, we chuckle about it. When I was a student I never imagined my professors sharing a desk.
“Come on, Blossom,” Jane beckons. “I’ve been waiting for you.” That’s our code for butting into lines without it being obvious.
The man in front of me turns: “Blossom?” He pauses for a moment, and smirks as if about to say something.
“Do we know each other?” I ask.
“I just had to see . . .”
“Yes?” I give him my most serious glare.
“It’s your name. I had to see the person with such a name.”
By now our eyes are laughing. He is blushing. A guy blushing is very appealing. To me it is. I prop my hands on my hips: “And your name?” I feel juvenile as if in grade school. But I have the upper hand, and it’s fun.
He rubs his unshaven chin, black stubble intentional, I can tell. His eyes are periwinkle blue. Guys shouldn’t have such eyes. They should be reserved for women.
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