by Gail Bowen
When Greg and Mieka’s Audi got to the top of the hill, I waved. Greg turned and waved back but Mieka stared straight ahead, and in a moment the car disappeared and she was gone.
Beside me, Peter said, “I’ll drive the first hour. Angus can bag out in the back seat. He was up half the night with that stupid game he bought himself for Christmas.”
Peter and Mieka had always been close, and I could tell by the set of his jaw how upset he was.
“You’re a good guy, Pete,” I said.
He looked at me wearily. “Mieka’s a good guy, too, Mum. Hang on to that thought.”
At the edge of the park we stopped for gas. There was a rack full of Saskatoon papers by the cash register. Councillor Hank Mewhort was on the front page under a headline that said, “Vigil at the Mendel.” He was holding a candle and, in the darkness, the play of light and shadow on his face made him look like a slightly cracked cherub. I bought a paper.
The story wasn’t encouraging. There had been vigils in front of the gallery every night since Christmas. There were the usual interviews with people talking about pornography and community values, but things seemed to be turning ugly. The night before someone had hung an effigy of Sally from a tree in front of the gallery, and the crowd had pulled the effigy down and burned it.
It was a disturbing image. I closed the paper and looked out the car window. When the pine trees gave way to the white fields and bare trees of the open prairie, my eyelids grew heavy.
The radio was on and a man with a gentle, sad voice was talking about the dangers of genetic engineering in poultry. “So many species endangered,” he said, “a virus could wipe out one of these new super breeds or some genetic problem … important to keep some of the original breeds as a safeguard … so vulnerable … the world’s more dangerous now … could die so easily …”
And then a man was laughing and Stuart Lachlan was saying, “Of course, it would have been better if Sally died,” and I awoke with a start to the sun hot in my face and Stuart Lachlan’s voice on the radio.
“… realized instinctively that didactic art is trivial art and that the burden of dogma will always crush the artist’s spirit.”
“What is this, Pete?” I asked.
“Some arts show. Hey, you must trust my highway driving more these days. You were asleep for almost two hours. That’s Stuart Lachlan talking about some book he’s written about Sally. He just about put me under, too.”
“You would have been on the edge of your chair if Sally were a quarterback.”
He grinned. “Yeah, right, Mum.”
Outside, the sky was grey, heavy with snow. In the car, Stuart Lachlan’s voice droned on, patient, professionally exact.
“What people don’t understand is that as a maker of art, Sally’s always been a loner. She claims to be uncomfortable with movements and schools and labels. She says, ‘When I’m in the studio I’m just a painter,’ yet for all her disclaimers Sally Love has always been on the cutting edge of change in the art world. How do we explain that?” he asked rhetorically.
Out of nowhere, a hawk swooped across the highway and picked up a small animal from the ditch beside the road. It was a heart-stoppingly clean movement.
“Gotcha,” I said.
“The explanation is simple,” Stu said. “As a painter, Sally Love has always been self-conscious in the best sense of the word. She is acutely conscious of the people and places around her, and she has always managed to get herself into situations where she has been able to make significant art.”
“And out of situations where she was unable to make significant art,” the interviewer said flatly.
Stuart laughed, but his voice was tight. “Yes,” he agreed, “and out of situations where she was unable to make significant art.”
The interviewer thanked Stu; the music came up. I poured two cups of coffee from the Thermos and handed one to Peter.
“Peter,” I said, “was I dreaming or did Stu say something about Sally dying?”
He looked at me quickly. “Yeah, it was at the beginning –something about the critic’s art and how it’s always better if the person you’re writing about is dead. What he said was –now this isn’t exact, but it’s close – ‘If they’re dead, they can’t embarrass the writer by destroying all his theories.’ And then, Mum, he said something so shitty. He said, ‘Of course, as far as my critical appraisal of Sally’s work is concerned it would have been better if Sally died.’ I mean, isn’t that a little parasitic?”
“Parasites live off live tissues. It’s saprophytes that eat dead things.” Angus’s voice came loud and disoriented from the back seat.
I turned to look at him. He was thirteen – not an easy age, and there were times when he was not an easy kid.
“I see the reports of your death were greatly exaggerated,” I said.
“What?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“You slept for over two hours. I’m glad to see you’re alive.” I touched Peter on the hand. “We’d better put this conversation on hold for a while. We can talk more about Stuart and Sally when we get home.”
But it was a long time before we did. Things happened.
Sally’s Porsche was still in the driveway when we pulled up at our house late in the afternoon. She came out to help us carry in our luggage, and when it was all inside, she sat down at the kitchen table. She didn’t seem in a hurry to leave.
I went over and gave her a hug. “Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “I’ve got some unfinished family business to take care of. It won’t take long.”
She smiled. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I picked up the kitchen phone and dialled Mieka’s number. Greg answered. When I asked for my daughter, he sounded the same as he always did, laconic but pleasant. At least he wasn’t mad at me.
“Sorry, Jo. Mieka’s in the tub, soaking.”
“Safe from mothers who rail at her about her life,” I said.
“For the time being, I guess she is,” he said gently.
“Greg, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be involving you. It’s between Mieka and me. It’s just I love her so much and I worry. Have her call me, would you?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Damn it, why isn’t anything ever simple?”
He laughed. “Well, you know what Woody Allen says. ‘Life is full of anxiety, trouble and misery, and it’s over too soon.’ I’ll have her call you, Jo.”
I hung up and sat down opposite Sally at the kitchen table. Through the sliding doors to the deck, I could see the backyard. A pair of juncos were fighting at the bird feeder.
“Everything okay now?” Sally asked.
“Mieka’s boyfriend gave me a Woody Allen line. ‘Life is full of anxiety, trouble and misery, and it’s over too soon.’ ”
Sally looked thoughtful. “I’ll drink to that,” she said.
“You know,” I said, “I think I will, too. What’ll we have?”
“Bourbon,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Bourbon’s good when you’re talking about life.” She was wearing a hound’s-tooth skirt and a cashmere sweater the colour of Devon cream. It matched the bag she had talked Hugh Rankin-Carter into parting with the night of the opening. Her hair was looped back in a gold barrette, and the last sunlight of the day fell full on her face. She looked relaxed and at peace.
I came back and set our drinks down on the table. Sally picked up hers.
“So what’s up with Mieka?” she asked.
“She wants to quit school and open a catering business.”
“Is she any good?”
“As a cook? Terrific! And she’s always been a good manager. It’s just that her quitting school scares me.”
“Does it scare her?”
“Not a bit, but still …”
“There is no ‘but still.’ Mieka’s what? Twenty? Let her alone. Nobody likes a control freak. Think where I’d he if I’d let Nina choose a life for me.” She winced. “No,
don’t think where I’d be. But look at me. A daughter any mother would be proud to tell her friends about. Now come on, let go. Let Mieka be Mieka. Let’s drink to that and let’s drink to the new year.”
I smiled and lifted my glass. “To Mieka and to letting go. Happy New Year, Sally. I can tell just by looking at you, it’s going to be wonderful. You look terrific.”
“That’s because, despite Councillor Mewhort and his campfires in front of the Mendel, things are working out. Stu’s relented about Taylor. She’s coming to live with me after her school has its midwinter break in February. I’ve called a friend in Vancouver to start looking around for a place for us – on the ocean and near a good school. Meanwhile Taylor and I are going to spend some time getting to know each other. Nina’s idea. She says we really haven’t spent much time together – which is true – and she says there’s still too much ugliness about the Erotobiography to have Taylor move in with me, which is also true. There were a couple more incidents when you were away.”
“Clea Poole?”
“Among others. A lot of people wrote to me. Half of them wanted me to make the city a better place by leaving, and the other half just wanted me to make them. My studio got broken into twice; someone put sugar in my gas tank, and I got some more Christmas presents.”
“Oh, Sally, no.”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle, and the important thing is I’m getting Taylor.”
I took another sip of my drink. “That really surprises me. I thought Stu would haul you into the tall grass over that one. What did you do? Sell your soul to the devil?”
Sally finished her drink and gave me an odd little smile. “No, to a mouse. I sold my soul to a mouse. Look, Jo, you must have a million things to do. I’d better get out of here. Thanks for the drink and for giving me a week in a real bed.”
“Want to prolong the pleasures of the season and come for dinner tomorrow night? It’s steak au poivre.”
She slid her bag over her shoulder and stood up. “One of my favourites, but I think I’ll pass this time. I’m going to spend the first day of the new year at the studio working. Even the crazies will have plans for tomorrow, so I might actually get something done.”
I walked her to her car. She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a package the size of a book. It was wrapped in brown paper, and for a minute I thought it must be a gift for the use of the house.
She handed it to me. “Jo, put this somewhere safe, would you? I don’t seem to have any safe places any more. Just stick it up high where Angus won’t get curious about it. And don’t you get curious about it, either.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What is it? A bomb?”
“No, nothing like that.” Suddenly she grinned. “It’s my insurance policy. If you lose it, I’m dead.”
When I went in the house, the phone was ringing. It was Mieka, sounding friendly enough. She and Greg were spending New Year’s Eve with friends but they’d be over, as planned, for dinner with us New Year’s Day. She didn’t say she had reconsidered her decision about school. She didn’t say she realized I was right. She didn’t say she was counting her blessings that I was her mother. All the same, she was coming to dinner. It was a start.
I spent the last night of the old year doing laundry and listening to the radio. Peter had picked up the dogs at the kennel, delivered them to our house, then gone off to a black-tie dinner at the Bessborough Hotel, so it was just Angus and me. We had pancakes for supper, then he disappeared into the den and started calling all his friends, comparing holidays, getting caught up on what he’d missed.
About ten, I put the last load into the washing machine and went upstairs to check on Angus. The television was blaring. Dick Clark was standing in front of a room full of people in party clothes and paper hats sweating under the TV lights and trying to look as if they were having the time of their lives. Angus was curled up on the couch, sleeping the sleep of the just. I turned down the television, covered him with an afghan and went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea.
New Year’s Eve at mid-life.
I let out the dogs for a final run and sat down at the kitchen table. It was a magic night. The sky was bright with stars, and the moonlight made the snow glitter. A party night. Even the dogs seemed to be in a giddy mood; they chased each other through the snow like puppies.
I thought of how happy my kids were, or at least how happy they would be if I let them, and I thought about how well the biography I was writing was going. With luck, by next New Year’s Eve it would be in the bookstores and I’d be safe in a tenure-track position in some nice but not too demanding university. And I thought of Sally sitting in the chair across from me that afternoon telling me how she and Stu and Nina had reconciled their differences over Taylor. It seemed as if everyone was, as we used to say in the sixties, in a good space.
“All in all, not a bad year. Maybe the worst is over,” I said as I opened the back door to call the dogs in.
They wouldn’t come. The backyard was deep, and the dogs were at the farthest corner, at the gate that opened on the back alley. They were barking at something. Going crazy. Kids, I thought, out late for New Year’s Eve.
“Sadie, Rose.” I called the dogs’ names in the voice that let them know I meant business. “Come on, get in here.” They wouldn’t come. There were stairs leading from the deck to the garden. I went halfway down and called again. Next door there was a party. A woman screamed, then laughed. I went the rest of the way down the stairs and started walking along the path to the gate. I was wearing runners, not great for walking in deep snow, and my feet were getting wet and cold.
“Damn,” I said, “get in here. I’ve had enough.” My voice sounded thin and vulnerable, but the dogs didn’t take pity on me. They just stood there barking.
The woman at the gate didn’t make any attempt to leave when she saw me. She was rooted in the snow with her video camera pointed at me, recording me as I walked toward her. I could see her face clearly in the light from my neighbour’s garage. I could also see that she was wearing only a light jacket – not enough for December thirty-first in Saskatchewan. Suddenly, I was bone-tired.
“Clea,” I said. “It’s New Year’s Eve. Time to wipe the slate clean and look ahead. Why don’t you go home and get a good night’s sleep. Everything will look better tomorrow.”
“I’m not finished,” she said dully.
“Not finished what?” I asked.
“Filming the history of womanswork,” she said. “It should be recorded. All of it. Where it began. The women who helped.” She waved a finger as if to chastise me. “The woman who didn’t help. The record should be set straight. The gallery was a significant experiment. It deserves a memorial.”
Seeing me talking to Clea apparently made her seem less of a threat to the dogs. They left us and went to the back door and waited. Without them, I wasn’t so brave.
“Clea,” I said, “if you need a cab, I’ll go and call one for you. Otherwise, I’ll just say good night. It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”
She didn’t say a word, just turned and walked down the alley.
I was shivering with cold and fear when I got in the house. I went straight to the kitchen. The package Sally had given me, her insurance policy, was still sitting on the kitchen table. I took it downstairs to the laundry room and hid it up high in a basket the kids had given me a hundred years ago for my sewing. No one, including me, ever went near it. I pulled my warmest sweats out of the dryer, walked down the hall to the bathroom and took a hot shower.
When I went upstairs to the kitchen, the tea in the pot was cold, but the Jack Daniel’s bottle was still on the counter. I dumped the tea, made myself a bourbon and water, went down to the den and sat beside my sleeping son.
Five minutes to midnight in New York City. It was raining in Times Square, but nobody seemed to care. Slickers soaked, hair pasted against their faces by the rain, the tourists mugged for the TV cameras. At the bottom of the screen,
the digital clock moved inexorably toward the new year. I took a deep pull on my drink and moved closer to Angus. The electronic apple in Times Square had started to fall – in the east, there were just seconds till midnight.
“Five, four, three, two, one,” the crowd in New York chanted. Beside me, my son stirred in his sleep. “Happy New Year,” screamed the people in Times Square. And in the room with me, the phone was ringing. I leaned across Angus to pick up the receiver.
“Happy New Year,” I said.
“Not yet,” said the voice on the other end. “There’s still an hour left.”
“Clea, please, leave it alone. Leave me alone.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“All right,” I said, “if you’ve got nothing to say, I’m hanging up. I’m too old for pranks.”
“This isn’t a prank. This is my life.” Her husky voice cracked with emotion. “This is my life. I need to talk to somebody about what to do next.”
“I barely know you.”
“But you know Sally.”
For Clea Poole apparently that was recommendation enough. I closed my eyes and remembered Clea as she had been the night of Sally’s opening: delicate, carefully groomed, buoyant about the work she was showing at the gallery.
“All right, Clea,” I said wearily. “But not tonight.”
“Tomorrow, then. Here at the Mendel. I’m working in the education gallery on an installation. I’m going to work through the night. I don’t want to go back to my house. Holidays aren’t good times when you’re alone.”
“No,” I agreed, “they’re not.”
“I’ll tell the security man to let you in,” she said, and the line went dead.
On television, Dick Clark was saying, “Remember if you’re driving tonight, make that one for the road a coffee.” I turned off the TV, went upstairs and poured myself another Jack Daniel’s. I wasn’t driving anywhere.
The next morning as I walked across the bridge to the gallery I was tired and on edge. Peter had come home very late – not too late for an eighteen-year-old on New Year’s Eve, but too late for a mother who can’t fall asleep till she knows her kids are safe. And I wasn’t looking forward to spending the first morning of the new year with Clea Poole.