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Murder at the Mendel

Page 13

by Gail Bowen


  He handed me my coffee. “Sally did the first one herself –that one over the mantelpiece, the one where she’s sitting on the hood of the old Chevy. It was a kind of joke. When she first came to study with me, I called her an academy of one. Someone told her that when artists are admitted to the American Academy in New York, they have to give the academy a self-portrait. Sally painted that picture for my birthday. She was fourteen. The others just came over the years. Sally is such an exceptional subject; people who make art are drawn to her.”

  I put down my cup and walked over to look more closely at Sally’s self-portrait. It would have been easy to dismiss that picture because, at first glance, it seemed so stereotypical: a fifties magazine ad for a soft drink or suntan lotion. A pretty girl wearing a halter top and shorts hugged one knee and extended the other leg along the hood of a yellow convertible – a glamorous pose, sex with a ponytail. But Sally had used colour to create light in an odd and disturbing way. The car glowed magically surreal – it was a car to take you anywhere, and the hot pink stucco of the motel behind the girl panted with lurid life. Sally herself was a cutout, a conventional calendar girl without life or dimension, an object in someone else’s world of highways and clandestine sex.

  I turned and looked at Izaak Levin. “And what did you make of that picture when she gave it to you?”

  He looked at me quizzically. “Do you mean as a piece of art?”

  “No,” I said, reaching over and pouring a little brandy into my coffee cup, “as a young girl’s self-assessment. What would you think was going on in the mind and heart of a fourteen-year-old who saw herself like that?” The image of the woman that child had become floated up and lodged in my mind (“Maybe for once life will work out”), and I was surprised at the rage in my voice. “You understand, I’m not asking you this as an art critic, I’m asking you as a human being.”

  He was silent.

  “I’m waiting,” I said.

  His glass still had a couple of ounces of brandy in it, and he drank them down and shuddered. “How much,” he said finally, “do you know about Sally and me?”

  “Everything, I guess.”

  “Joanne, no one knows everything.” His voice was so soft I had to lean forward to hear it. A private voice.

  “Sally told me you were lovers,” I said, “and that it started when she was thirteen.”

  “And you’re appalled.”

  “Yes. I’m appalled. Thirteen! My God, Izaak. You were what? Forty? Her father had just died. Didn’t certain patterns suggest themselves to you?”

  I thought he was a weakling who would be devastated by someone else knowing the truth about what he had done. He wasn’t. He looked at me steadily.

  “The circumstances were unusual. Joanne, don’t judge us yet. How much do you remember about the time after Des Love died?”

  “The time immediately after? Everything. I don’t think you remember, but I was there that night. Sally and I were going to a birthday dance across the lake. Nina was going to take us across as soon as you got back with the boat. Anyway, I went back to our cottage to change my shoes, and that made me late getting to the Loves’. But I was there just after you found them. I’ll remember every second of that night till the day I die.”

  He pulled a cigarette from a fresh pack of Camels and placed it between his lips. He didn’t light it.

  “I remembered a girl being there,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you. So you’ve carried your own burden of memory all these years.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I have, and what made it worse was I lost Sally, too. After that night I didn’t see her again for years. They wouldn’t let me see her in the hospital. And then –well, she was supposed to be away at school.”

  “But she wasn’t,” Izaak finished for me. He lit his cigarette and splashed more brandy in his glass. He was, I realized, well on his way to being drunk. “And now, Joanne,” he said, “I’m going to try to mute your hostility. Are you mutable?”

  “Try me,” I said.

  He laughed thinly. “Well, as they say, it was a dark and stormy night – the night after Des’s funeral, to be precise. Owing to circumstances, the funeral had been particularly grisly, and I was sitting in my living room trying to get drunk. I lived not far from the Wellesley Hospital, which, of course, was where they had taken Des’s family. There was a knock at the door, and when I opened it, Sally was there. She was in terrible shape. She hadn’t been discharged. She had just put on her coat and walked out.

  “ ‘I won’t go back to that house,’ she said, ‘and I won’t go back to her.’ She was soaked to the skin, and I went upstairs to run a hot bath and get her some dry clothes. When I came down, the bottle of whisky on the coffee table – a bottle which, incidentally, I had just nicely started – was just about empty. Fortunately, Sally’s stomach rebelled. I got her upstairs to the bathroom in time, but while she was retching into the toilet bowl, somehow her jaw locked open – I suppose like a hinge that’s pushed back too far.

  “At any rate, there I was with a drunken thirteen-year-old, no relation to me, in a hospital gown and in need of help. I started to call a cab so I could get her to an emergency ward somewhere, but the idea of going back to the hospital made her wild. She started clawing at the phone and at me and making the most godawful sounds. So I slapped her – the movie cure for hysteria.” He dragged gratefully on the Camel. “Luckily, the slap unlocked the jaw. I undressed her, put her in the tub and went out in the hall and sat on the floor outside the bathroom door listening until she came out, and I knew she was safe.” He smiled to himself. “Or as safe as any of us ever are.”

  I was stunned. “Sally made it sound like such a lark – an adventure,” I said weakly.

  He picked up the ceramic figure of Sally with the cat and ran his forefinger along the curve of Sally’s body. “She was a very wounded girl. That first year was a time of convalescence for her.”

  “With you as doctor. Where was Nina in all of this?”

  He shrugged. “Where is she ever? Taking care of Nina.” He looked hard at me. “I can see I have just made your hostility less mutable. So be it. To answer your question, Nina was enthusiastically in favour of dumping Sally on my doorstep. Sally and I went to Nina’s hospital room together to ask. It took Nina an excruciating one-tenth of a millisecond to accede to our request.”

  He pronounced his words with exaggerated care. I knew the alcohol was beginning to blunt his responses, but I couldn’t let the slur against Nina go unanswered.

  “Be fair, Izaak. Nina had just endured a situation that went beyond nightmare.”

  “Our nightmares arise out of our deepest fears and longings,” he said gently. “And no matter what, Sally was her daughter.”

  “And you,” I said, fighting tears, “were the man Nina chose to act as a father for her child. In loco parentis – isn’t that the phrase? Damn it, Izaak, you can’t shift the blame for what you did to Nina. You were the one who took advantage.

  You were the one who violated the trust.” I picked up my coat and started to leave.

  He followed me to the front hall. For the first time that day I noticed that he was limping, and at some not very admirable level, I was glad. I was glad he had hurt himself. The phone rang and he went to answer it. I couldn’t hear much of what he said. I heard the phrases, “That won’t be necessary, the need is past,” and then he lowered his voice and I couldn’t make out the words, but I could hear that he was speaking. The drawer to the table in the entrance hall was open a little. I pulled it out and picked up the manila envelope. I could still hear Izaak Levin’s voice in the kitchen, low, indistinct. I shook the envelope the way children do on Christmas morning with their packages and then decided the hell with it. I ripped the flap back a little. Not far, just enough to see that inside was a roll of bills that would choke a horse.

  I put the envelope back and carefully shut the drawer. When I got in the car, I was surprised to see I was shaking –coffee or guilt, I d
idn’t know which. I sat there for a minute, taking deep breaths, calming down. Finally, I put the key in the ignition. But before I pulled out into the street, I took one last look at Izaak Levin’s house. He was standing in the doorway, elegant, worldly as ever in his tweed jacket and horn-rimmed glasses. In one hand he had the brandy bottle, but he used the other to give me a mocking salute.

  CHAPTER

  9

  As I stopped for the light at Broadway, I was trying to work it all out. What had Nina been doing at Izaak Levin’s? They had known one another for years, but their relationship was hardly cordial. And where had the money come from? Nina had told me that Izaak had chronic money problems, but the roll of bills I had seen in that envelope went well beyond what you kept around in case the paperboy came to collect. Sally had been there earlier, but if she had taken the money over as part of a business transaction, why was it in cash? And why did Izaak still have the envelope in his hand, unopened, half an hour after she left? Questions. I looked at my watch. There was time before Angus came home from school to stop by Nina’s and get some answers.

  The light changed and I pulled into the intersection. Across the street I could see Angus’s mecca: 7 Eleven, Home of the Big Gulp. As I pulled onto Broadway, I felt rather than saw a car coming toward me. By the time I turned to look at it, I only had time to know three things for certain: the car coming at me was big, it was green, and it wasn’t going to stop.

  The next thing I knew I was lying on my back in a room that smelled of medicine, and a black man with a gentle voice was asking me if I knew my name. When I told him, he nodded approvingly. “And what did you have for breakfast today, Jo?” I knew that, too. “And the day of the week?” Right again. He looked pleased. Obviously, I was a promising student. I also knew the names of the prime minister and of the premier of my province. Head of the class.

  “Well, you’re salvageable,” he said with a smile. “We’re going to patch you up a bit now,” and then I felt a pinprick in my arm, and I drifted off. I remember an elevator and a room where Debussy was playing, and there was a bright light over my head and the same gentle voice that had asked me to name the prime minister was saying something about garlic. And then a woman was saying, “Joanne, Joanne, time to wake up. Come on, Joanne, take a deep breath. Get the oxygen in.” Then I was in a bed and Mieka’s Greg was standing over me.

  Panicked, I fought my way back to consciousness. “Is Mieka okay? And the boys?”

  He held my hand. “Everybody’s okay, including you. You were in a car accident.”

  “Nobody was …?” I asked.

  “Nobody was hurt but you and the Volvo. You’re going to be fine.”

  I felt a rush of relief and gratitude. “Greg, thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  “Jo, I didn’t do anything.”

  I smiled at him. “You’re here. I’m here.” And then an inspiration. “Hey, Greg, remember what Woody Allen says? ‘Eighty per cent of success is showing up.’ ”

  He laughed, and safe again, I felt my limbs grow heavy and I drifted off to sleep.

  To sleep and to dream. I was walking down a corridor in the hospital, looking for the way out. But the corridors were arranged oddly, like a maze. I knew I was going in circles and I could feel the gathering of panic. Then I came to a big double door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. I pushed the door open. There was a vast room, empty except for an eight-sided desk in the middle. In the centre of the desk was a well, and Izaak Levin was seated there. “I can’t find my way,” I said. “Right or left?” he said. “What?” I said. “Conscious or unconscious,” he said irritably. “Left,” I said. “You’ll be sorry,” he said. But I’d already started through the doors at the left. I knew at once that I was in the old wing of the building, the one that no one used any more. All along the corridors the doors to rooms were open. The patients’ rooms were empty. The medical rooms had things in them that I remembered from my father’s office thirty years before. Finally I came to the sunroom that had been in the Wellesley Hospital when my father was on staff there. The room was filled with the furniture that I recognized at once as coming from the Loves’ old cottage. Nina was there, wearing her black mink coat, but she must have been a nurse because she was pouring medicine into glasses. She didn’t see me. And then Sally was there, not Sally as she was now, but Sally at fourteen in her nightgown. She was pushing a gurney, very purposefully. There was a body on it covered with a green sheet.

  When she saw Nina, she hissed at me urgently, “Jo, you should have turned right. You can still get out, but you’ll have to leave her behind.” I turned to tell Nina where I was going but she was in another room counting money. Then Sally and I ran along the corridors of the abandoned wing till we came to the part of the building that was still used. I could feel my apprehension lighten. “You can look now,” Sally said, pointing to the figure on the gurney. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to. I grabbed the corner of the sheet and pulled it back in one quick gesture. There on the stretcher was Woody Allen. He sat up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Eighty per cent of life consists of just showing up, Jo,” he said.

  I started to laugh, and when I woke up I was laughing and Mieka was there laughing and looking worried at the same time.

  “Well,” she said, “no need to ask you if you’re glad to be back from the jaws of death. It looks like you were having a lot of fun in there.” Then she hugged me. “Mum, we were so scared.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She started to cry. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. “So how’s the catering business coming?”

  She told me. And after a while Peter came and told me about a summer job possibility with a veterinarian down in the southwest of the province. Then Angus came and told me that three guys from the Oilers were going to be in the mall signing autographs on Saturday and if he donated fifty dollars to the Hockey Oldtimers he could have breakfast with them. And then a nurse said a plastic surgeon wanted to check my forehead and anyway I’d had enough visitors for one day. She shooed the kids away. Then after the doctor left, she came back and tucked me in for the night.

  I couldn’t sleep. I lay there listening to hospital sounds. Then the lights were turned down in the hall and I was alone in the half light. At first, when I saw Sally in the doorway, I thought I was dreaming. She put her finger to her lips, then moved quickly toward the head of the bed where she couldn’t be seen by anyone passing by.

  When she leaned over to give me a hug, I could smell the cold fresh air on her. She looked at the cuts on my face critically.

  “How bad are they?” she asked.

  “Not bad at all,” I said, “except for the one on my forehead, and it’s manageable. A plastic surgeon was just in here. He said that I’ll be ‘scarred but not disfigured’ – that’s a direct quote. He also said I’m lucky I have bangs because they’ll cover the scar.”

  Sally shook her head. “Good news all around, eh?”

  “Right. Oh, Sally, it’s so good to see you. But how did you ever get by the nurse?”

  She opened her coat. There was a picture ID pinned to her blouse. “I flashed this at her. Said I was a specialist from St. Paul’s.”

  I laughed. “Where’d you get it?”

  “One of Stu’s loonier ideas a couple of years ago. Everyone with access to the vaults at the Mendel had to have an ID. Anyway, for once something Stu did actually worked out. It came in handy tonight.” Suddenly, she was serious. “I had to see you, Jo. When Mieka called to tell me you were okay, I was so relieved, and then I just started to shake.”

  “That’s about how I felt,” I said. “It’s not much fun to see how easily it can all end.”

  She sat down carefully on the bed beside me. In the shadowy light, her face looked both older and younger. “But you can’t think about that,” she said. “You can’t think about how quickly it can be over, or you’ll be too paralyzed to live. There’s no point in being afraid of dying. I
t’s going to happen. What we should be scared of is blowing the here and now.”

  “Carpe diem?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  “Seize the day,” I said.

  “Seize the day,” she repeated softly. “That’s it. Because nobody knows how many days we have. I’ve never thought much about any of this stuff before. I’ve always just done what I wanted to do – made art. But Taylor’s changed everything.

  Jo, she is so talented. She is going to be so good. And she needs a good teacher. She needs me to do for her what Des did for me. Keep her from getting dicked around.”

  She stood up and walked over to the window. I could see her profile as she looked down at the lights of the city. “I’m not going to wait any more. Lately I’ve let everybody but me call the shots – the police, Stu, Nina, even the merry pranksters. But that’s over. I’m getting on with it. I’m going to Vancouver tomorrow morning. My lawyer says since I haven’t been charged with anything, the police here can’t stop me. I’m going to look for a house for Taylor and me.” She turned to face me. “You’re sure it’s okay with you if I leave.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you want me to leave you the keys to my car? Mieka says the Volvo’s done for.”

  “Are you sure you trust me to drive after today?”

  She smiled. “I trust you. And since you’re being so brave, I’ll bring you a present. What’s B.C. got that you want?”

  “Pussy willows – the fat kind. I want an armful.”

  She sighed. “You know, Jo, sometimes you’re just too wholesome for words.” Then she bent down and kissed my forehead. “Did I ever tell you I love you?”

  I felt a lump in my throat. “No, but now that you have, I may get you to put it in writing.” For a moment I couldn’t speak. Then I said, “I love you, too, Sally.”

  She grinned. “Good. Look, Jo, I’ve got to motor. I’ll call you from Vancouver and tell you all about the boys on the beach.” She gave my foot a squeeze and she was gone. Five minutes later I fell asleep. Despite the bruises, stitches and bandages, I was smiling.

 

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