by Gail Bowen
From the moment she came in, Stuart was all over Sally – leaving his arm around her shoulders after the initial greeting, bending his face close to hers when she talked, stroking her hair with his hand. Finally, laughing, she shook him off, the way a woman shakes off a drunk at a party. But Stuart Lachlan wasn’t drunk, and he wouldn’t be shaken off. When Sally started in the direction of the bar, he followed her, still trying somehow to get his hands on her. It was as if he was afraid to leave her alone. Nina and I watched the scene in silence.
“Whatever do you make of that display, Ni?” I asked. But she didn’t answer; she just watched the space where they had been with an expression I couldn’t fathom.
And then there was another tableau. Kyle, the gallery guard, had approached Izaak Levin. They were across the room, and I couldn’t hear their conversation, but when Izaak limped toward us, Kyle watched him thoughtfully.
When Izaak Levin joined us, I was amazed at the change in him. I hadn’t seen him since the day of the accident, five weeks ago, but he looked twenty years older. He skin had a greyish cast and he seemed distinctly unwell. Selling his integrity was apparently taking its toll. We had just started talking when an old friend from the political days came over, full of excitement, to introduce me to her new husband. By the time I turned back to Izaak, he and Nina had moved to the side of the room. He was whispering something in her ear and he had his hand on her arm. When finally he walked away, Nina scrubbed at the place where his hand had rested as if she had been touched by something loathsome.
Loathsome or not, when it came time for dinner, Izaak Levin was seated at Sally’s right, and on his right was Nina. I was at their table, and we were an uncomfortable grouping. Stuart was on Sally’s left, and I was beside him. Next to me was Hugh Rankin-Carter, the art critic. On his left was Hilda McCourt. She’d positioned herself beside the only person I’d never met at our table, a woman named Annie Christensen, who had parlayed a smart marriage and a genius for mathematics into a substantial fortune. She was known as a generous supporter of the arts, and it was no accident that, boy-girl seating be damned, Hilda had put her at the table with the star of the evening.
The meal was magnificent, but dinner was not a pleasant affair. Hugh Rankin-Carter was a man with real power in the art world, and Annie Christensen was a philanthropist with deep pockets; the fact that both were seated at our table was apparently too much for Izaak and Stu. A tense rivalry, part professional, part sexual, seemed to spring up between them.
Whatever his faults, Izaak Levin had always been a witty and self-effacing man, but that night he told pointless repetitive stories whose sole purpose seemed to be to lament the brilliant career he’d given up for Sally and to celebrate his influence on her art. Not to be outdone, Stu quoted long passages of analysis from his book.
Sally sat between them looking trapped and miserable. She was patient longer than I would have thought possible, but finally she turned on Stu. At first she kept her voice low.
“Okay, Stu, that’s enough. You’re boring the tits off everybody. Now be still, and listen to me for a minute. You might actually learn something. No matter what that ridiculous book of yours says, I’m not some sort of holy innocent the great god of art drips paint through. I actually know what I’m doing.” Her voice rose with anger. “I told you last night I can’t believe you could have lived with me five years without understanding one single thing about what I do. Damn it, Stu, if I could put what I see into words, why would I paint it?” She shook her head in exasperation, and when she spoke again, her voice was weary. “Look, the best thing to do with that book is junk it. If it doesn’t come out, nobody will be the wiser, but if you actually let that stuff get published, everybody is going to know you’re …”
“Dumb as shit.” Hugh Rankin-Carter smiled as he finished the sentence for her.
Izaak Levin poured himself a glass of wine and laughed. “Not bad, Hughie,” he said.
Sally looked at him with anger. “You’re no better, Izaak. All that whining about how you sacrificed your career for mine. Tell me, when was the last time you earned a dime that wasn’t connected to me?”
In one of those terrible moments that happen at parties, the room was suddenly quiet, and Sally’s words, bell clear, hung in the air.
Izaak’s face sagged. Across the table, I was surprised to see a flicker of pleasure cross Nina Love’s face.
A woman I recognized from Clea’s funeral had been moving from group to group taking pictures. She came over to our table.
“Not now, Anya,” Sally said, but the woman kept snapping away until Sally flared and told her to get lost.
The rolled veal arrived, savoury and tender enough to cut with a fork, but the misery continued at our table. Stuart sat silent, his face a mask carved by humiliation. Izaak Levin drifted into the self-pitying phase of drunkenness, talking incoherently about how Sally could never begin to understand all the things he had done to protect her. Finally, he lurched off to the men’s room. When he came back, his fly was undone and Sally, with a savage look, bent over and zipped him up.
“It’s over, Izaak. No use advertising any more.”
In my two brief encounters with him, Hugh Rankin-Carter had struck me more as gadfly than peacemaker, but the crosscurrents at our table became so menacing that even he tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. After Sally’s outburst, Hugh leaned across to Nina and asked her to tell him about the early fifties when Des Love had scandalized Toronto the Good with his bold and sensual paintings.
Nina was a gifted storyteller but that night she told one story remotely and badly, and when Sally corrected her on a detail, Nina excused herself and left the table. As she moved behind Sally’s chair, a flashbulb went off in her face, and I saw her freeze as if she’d been shot.
Only Hilda McCourt and Annie Christensen seemed immune to the tensions. They ate with gusto and chatted happily about art and theatre. I envied them, and I was relieved when the table was cleared and the only course left was dessert. Stephen Orchard was known for the dramatic presentation of dessert at the parties he catered.
Certainly, no one in the room that night would ever forget the arrival of his coeurs à la crème fraîche. The lights were extinguished, leaving the room illuminated only by the candles blazing in hurricane lamps at the centre of each table. The string quartet struck up “My Funny Valentine,” and a half-dozen red heart-shaped spotlights focused on the entrance to the tea salon. Through the door came a procession of waiters carrying silver trays. As the waiters moved to the tables, the spotlights swept the room. It was a knockout.
Our waiter swooped dramatically in front of Sally, picked up the first dessert and began to serve. There were eight glass plates on the tray; at the centre of each plate was a creamy heart surrounded by strawberry sauce. When we all had one, Hugh Rankin-Carter leaned across to me.
“Tacky but effective,” he said.
It happened just at that moment. The spotlights were turned off, but in the darkness we could see figures running. They moved quickly, blowing out the candles that were the only light in the room. Soon the room was in total darkness, but not before everyone in it had had a good look at the Guerrilla Girls in action.
Afterwards, we learned that most people thought they were part of the entertainment. Whatever the explanation, no one was particularly upset. For a few seconds there was nervous laughter, then people lit the candles at their tables, and it was over.
Except it wasn’t over. The Guerrilla Girls had left a large red envelope on each table, and you could hear the intake of breath around the room as people opened them. Sally ripped open ours, looked quickly at the poster that was inside, then handed it to me. She looked shaken but defiant.
“Jo, we should have pounded them into the ground when we had the chance.”
I looked at the poster. It was black and white, like the others, but this one had an illustration, a blowup of what must have been a police photo of Clea Poole the night she was mur
dered. She was naked, lying face down on the barbed wire bridal bed. Underneath in heavy black letters were the words, “Remembering a martyr to women’s art on Valentine’s Day.”
I shuddered, but I tried to match Sally’s tone. “There’ll be other chances,” I said.
Hugh Rankin-Carter took the poster by two fingers, shook his head in disgust and dropped it in a leather bag that was the twin of the one he’d given Sally the night of the opening.
“Pathetic,” he said. “But if they want recognition, I’ll write a column about them. And I’ll be sure to mention that the one who reached in front of me has apparently taken a philosophical stand against deodorant.” He turned to Sally. “Don’t let them ruin your party, Sal. My grandfather always said, ‘Life is uncertain, eat dessert first.’ Now, be a good girl and eat your coeur before it melts.”
Sally grinned at him and stuck her spoon into the centre of her perfect heart. She swallowed the first bite, then waved her spoon at Hugh.
“Yum,” she said.
She was right. I began eating my dessert and listening to the conversation between Hilda McCourt and Annie Christensen. I don’t know when I knew something was wrong. At some point, I looked over and saw that Sally had pushed her chair back from the table. There was an odd stricken look on her face. Then she reached down as if she were searching for something on the floor. When she sat up, her eyes were wide with fear. She braced herself against the table as if she were afraid of falling.
I started toward her.
“Sal?” I said.
“I need my bag,” she said. “I’m having a reaction to something in the food.”
I dived under the table. It was hard to see in the darkness. Stu was already under there raking the floor with his hands. Sally’s purse wasn’t there.
“Somebody get a doctor,” I said, and I went over to Sally. She was slumped in her chair, and her breathing was laboured. She looked at me in terror.
“I can’t get air in,” she said.
I stroked her cheek. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “They’re getting a doctor.”
The gallery had set up a microphone for people to make thank-you speeches at the end of dinner, and as if on cue, I heard the soft American voice of Hugh Rankin-Carter asking if there was a doctor in the house.
There were seven medical doctors in the room that night: three urologists, the plastic surgeon who had sewn my face up after the accident, a proctologist and two psychiatrists. A few drops of epinephrine would have saved Sally’s life, but there was no epinephrine in that room. Sally’s evening bag with the emergency supply she always carried with her had disappeared, and none of the doctors had come to the party prepared to meet death. I could hear one of them calling for an ambulance; she was very specific in her instructions about the epinephrine, but it didn’t matter, because by the time the ambulance attendants ran into the room, Sally was dead.
She died slowly and in mortal terror. She deserved better.
Izaak Levin was luckier. His death was quick. When the ambulance attendants began loading Sally’s body on their stretcher, Izaak made a little crying sound and fell to the floor. The doctors tried CPR. They struggled over him for what seemed to me to be a painfully long time, but nothing worked.
“Heart,” one of the doctors said laconically as he stood up and turned away from Izaak’s body. “He just wasn’t salvageable.”
Ours was the last table the police let go. The people at our table were interviewed separately and then together, but the police seemed less interested in our relationship with Sally than in the Guerrilla Girls, and we were questioned again and again about the sequence of events that began with the second dousing of the lights and the entrance of the Guerrilla Girls and ended with Sally’s death. Finally, they told us we were free to leave.
It was one-thirty in the morning. Mary Ross McCourt offered to take her aunt home, and Hilda followed her gratefully. It was the first time I had ever seen her appear old and helpless. Annie Christensen and Hugh Rankin-Carter left together. They were staying at the same hotel, and as they left I heard Annie invite Hugh to join her in the bar for a nightcap. No one wanted to be alone.
When the police gave us permission to go, I walked over and put my arms around Nina. She held tight to me, and then she looked at me hard.
“You’re all the daughter I have now,” she said.
People, including me, laugh at the phrase, “I thought my heart would break,” but that night as I looked into Nina’s eyes, I knew it could happen. When she kissed my cheek, I could smell the familiar scent of Joy. Always that perfume had meant I was safe, home free. That night, the magic didn’t seem to work. As I watched Nina take Stuart Lachlan’s arm and lead him gently out of the room, I knew that none of us would ever be safe again.
I couldn’t leave the room without looking around one last time. The police hadn’t let the people from Stephen Orchard’s catering company clear the tables. The candles had, of course, guttered and burned out long ago, but the coeurs à la crème fraîche were still there, and that is my last memory of that night: three hundred creamy hearts dissolving into red.
CHAPTER
11
It was a little after 2:00 a.m. when Peter and I pulled into the driveway on Osler Street. As soon as the police told me I could go, I’d called home. Pete had answered on the first ring. Every light in our house was blazing. It wasn’t a night for shadows or dark corners. Mieka and Greg were waiting for me at the front door; Angus was in his room with the dogs. As soon as he heard my voice, Angus came running down the hall. He threw his arms around me and buried his face in my neck.
“This really sucks,” he said. “This really, really sucks.”
I tried to think of something I could say that would make it better, but there wasn’t anything. I pulled him close, and we walked into the living room together. When I sat down on the couch, Angus curled up against me the way he used to when he was little. We were both shivering. Mieka came in with an afghan and covered us both.
The afghan was the one Sally had pulled around her the night Clea Poole died. A flash of memory. Sally in a rare moment of doubt, seeking reassurance. “Do you think Taylor will ever make one of these for her notorious mother?” And me, reassuring, “Sure, notorious mothers are the best kind.”
Mieka and Greg stayed at the house that night. It was nice of them, but it didn’t make any difference. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Sally as she had been in those last seconds, her lovely face frozen in the primal panic of an animal at the moment of death. Anything was better than that. I went downstairs and sat in the chair by the window in my dark living room. Across the street I could see the familiar shapes of the neighbours’ houses. I looked at them and thought about nothing. When the sky began to lighten and the first cars started to drive along the street, I went into the kitchen and made coffee. I poured myself a cup, but somehow the mug slipped from my hand. It clattered noisily across the floor, leaving a dark spoor in its wake. I picked up a cloth, but when I knelt to clean up the mess, I started to sob. I started, and I couldn’t stop. Barefoot, shivering in my thin cotton nightie, I sat on the kitchen floor and cried until I felt an arm around my shoulders, and my daughter led me upstairs to bed. She stayed with me till I fell asleep.
I didn’t sleep long, but when I woke up I felt better. I showered and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. When I went downstairs, the kids were sitting around the kitchen table and Mieka was making French toast.
“Your favourite,” she said, “so you have to have some.”
“I will, later,” I said. “Honestly. Right now all I want is some coffee.”
I’d just taken a sip when the phone rang. Mieka answered it, then turned to me.
“For you. Shall I ask him to call back?”
I shook my head and took the receiver. It was Hugh Rankin-Carter.
“Joanne, I’ve found out some things I’d rather you heard from me than … well, than from others. Would you like to meet me somewher
e? Or I could come there if it’s better for you.”
“Why don’t you come here?” I said. “My daughter’s just making French toast. If you haven’t already had breakfast, you could eat with us.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a cab,” he said.
He was at our front door in fifteen minutes. As I helped him off with his coat, I noticed that he had shaved and was wearing a fresh shirt. He still looked like hell. I caught a glimpse of my face in the hall mirror. I looked like hell, too.
We went into the kitchen and I introduced the kids to Hugh. The boys said hello and excused themselves. Peter had a class. Angus asked if he could go back to bed. It seemed as good a thing to do as any. When they left, Mieka turned to us.
“Two orders of French toast?” she asked.
“Sounds delightful,” Hugh said.
“Nothing for me,” I said.
“You have to eat,” Hugh said curtly. He smiled at Mieka. “I’ll bet Joanne can be tempted.” He turned to me. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you about keeping your strength up in a crisis?”
“My mother limited herself to telling me I’d ruined her life.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, the search for the mother. That explains Nina. Sally was always baffled at how close you and her mother were.”
“They were very different women,” I said. “I don’t think they were ever very fair in their assessments of each other.”
“From what I’ve seen of Nina Love, Sally was more than fair,” Hugh said. He sipped his coffee. “Joanne, about last night. I’m afraid I have something in the nature of a revelation. After I had my drink with Annie Christensen, I went down to the police station. The boys and girls in blue were amazingly forthcoming. You’d be touched to see how people welcome me when I tell them I’m from a Toronto newspaper. Anyway, the first thing I learned is of forensic interest. Sally died of food-induced anaphylactic reaction. Her coeur à la crème fraîche was covered in powdered almonds.”