Unravelling

by Josephine Boxwell

  Someone taps her on the shoulder, and she turns to find a striking woman in a long tweed coat folding her umbrella. Tall with cool blue eyes, blonde hair neatly tucked into a French twist, and a natural elegance that reminds Vivian of Ruth. The woman stretches out her hand. Vivian shakes it.

  “Bernice Kingsley.”

  “Vivian Thompson.”

  “We’re the new world, Vivian. We don’t want to be late.”

  Bernice whispers in Vivian’s ear. “Can I borrow a pen?” The grey moustached professor marches over to their seats and chastises the two of them for “colluding.” During the next class, a young bushy-browed teacher directs fifty percent of his questions at Bernice; his definition of equal opportunity. Bernice finds ways to exact her revenge. She has a particular talent for making shy, male students blush. “If they can’t handle me, they shouldn’t have chosen law,” she remarks, unrepentant.

  On Thursdays, Aunt Faye dons her long black wool trench coat and walks to the seniors’ centre to play bridge. Vivian throws herself back onto the threadbare raspberry sofa and puts her feet up on the coffee table, polished to a high sheen. A few minutes later, Bernice rolls up in her father’s Aston Martin. Aunt Faye’s is a clean but dull home: old carpet, tired floral wallpaper and mustiness emanating from the curtains. It’s so much brighter when Bernice comes to visit.

  Bernice brings her usual complaints about having to endure another of her parents’ extravagant parties, along with an array of party treats she was able to pilfer unnoticed. Cigars, cognac, glazed shrimp, caviar, meringue, imported cheeses.

  While the pair of them work their way through the fancy scraps, Bernice launches into light-hearted impressions of the men who attend these gatherings. She stands by the open kitchen window puffing cigars or swigging whiskey, pushing out her stomach and talking in a booming voice about those stacked pin-up girls. The way she holds herself is uncanny.

  “Your father gives you a lot of freedom,” Vivian says.

  “He calls me a force to be reckoned with,” Bernice replies as she thrusts one of Aunt Faye’s dull dinner knives into a block of gruyère.

  Bernice jokes sometimes that she will cut off her long blonde hair and practice the law in men’s suits. Vivian doesn’t think much of it until she catches Bernice looking at another woman the way men do, captivating them with her own desire.

  Time moves quickly in that first semester. The workload is heavy and Vivian toils ferociously, determined to outperform her male peers. Still, she finds time to socialize despite the inevitable tedium of her dates. It doesn’t seem to matter how she behaves or what they do. Uniformly uninspiring: guys who call her “baby,” the greasers, the heavy drinkers, the pseudo philosophers, the trophy boys, the wealthy and unambitious, the ambitious and self-centred. She blames her parents’ dysfunctional relationship for her resistance to attachment. She hates the idea of being on somebody’s arm, being led as if she is incapable of finding her own way.

  Yet before she knows it, Bernice is popping over with stolen Christmas party snacks, and the first semester is almost done.

  Vivian meets Todd at a Christmas party. He buys her a dry martini and she expects him to be as dull as the others. But he’s different. For one thing, he isn’t a student. “I work at an office supplies firm,” he says and she wants to stop him there, but it is Christmas, so she lets him continue. He tells her about his business goals, his plans for setting up something of his own, and he explains all of it with a quiet confidence that she admires. He inherited some seed money after his father died in the war. Todd stops himself and apologizes for talking about business. “It’s refreshing,” she tells him, and she means it. He asks her for her opinions.

  He has a handsome smile and knows how to dress sharply. Even better, she feels as though she has his full attention and is certain that she’ll never have to fight for it. She isn’t infatuated. It isn’t love at first sight, and yet, there is something about him. They would be good, as partners.

  Loud knocking on the front door startles Vivian. She pulls back the living room curtain as a cab leaves the curb. Bernice is wobbling on the step. It’s 10 pm but it’s bridge night and Aunt Faye isn’t home.

  “These are for you,” Bernice manages to say as she passes Vivian a near-empty whiskey bottle and an empty box of chocolates. She lurches into the doorway and Vivian helps her inside. Bernice collapses into a chair, head lolling.

  “Daddy’s fixed it for me,” she says, slurring. “Me and Ralph Locke are engaged. I’m dropping out of law school.”

  “Who’s Ralph Locke?”

  “The son of a hotelier. It’s because ... it’s very good for Daddy’s business.”

  “You’re a grown woman. You can make your own decisions.”

  Bernice barks out a laugh and then starts bawling.

  The wedding invitation arrives a couple of weeks later. Vivian declines it and all of Bernice’s social invitations until Bernice stops asking. It isn’t the fraudulence of Bernice’s situation that she finds objectionable; it is her weakness, her unwillingness to fight for herself. In the end, Bernice is no better than Mother. Vivian cannot waste her time associating with people like that.

  CHAPTER 17

  1 9 5 7

  FATHER DIES JUST before Vivian finishes her first year. A heart attack. Vivian can’t help taking the timing of it personally, especially after a lawyer unveils the contents of his will.

  She and Mother attend the funeral near Father’s home in Vancouver. Mother doesn’t acknowledge Ruth despite Ruth’s delicate efforts to introduce herself. Mrs. Langston, Father’s mistress, doesn’t make an appearance, which disappoints Vivian.

  The will provides for all his surviving family members to varying degrees, except Vivian. She gets absolutely nothing. Not even an old teacup. The lawyer is clearly embarrassed. It’s a much greater shock to Vivian than Father’s death, which was no doubt his intention. Aunt Faye barely scrapes by on her own; she can’t afford to house Vivian without a contribution. Then there are the remaining years of tuition fees. In her despair, she considers packing up her things and moving back to the Stapleton family home that he left, fortunately, to Mother. But she thinks about that ugly smirk spreading across his dead face. She will find another way.

  Vivian broods for weeks. Todd mistakes her moodiness for grief and she makes no effort to correct him. She cannot tell him that she blackmailed her own father and that consequently she is penniless. Though Todd is a practical man, he never met Father and he would have difficulty understanding her perspective. She will have to rescue herself. Again.

  Unlike Aunt Faye, Aunt Barbara has no problem asking for help. When Aunt Barbara hears about the arrangement between Aunt Faye and Vivian, she asks Mother to send Vivian to her home in Calgary for the summer break. Uncle Edward’s health has been deteriorating rapidly since his stroke.

  The city is booming; giant cranes hover over the downtown and new suburbs alike. Boxy new malls and movie theatres bristle with crowds and thousands flock to the annual Calgary Stampede. But that is not the city Vivian lives in.

  Her aunt and uncle occupy a nondescript suburban home from which Vivian rarely has a chance to escape. She cooks and cleans while Aunt Barbara escorts her husband to hospital appointments and she listens while Aunt Barbara complains about her life and Uncle Edward sleeps.

  Meticulous like her sisters, Barbara’s sense of propriety leaves little room for humour, but she is more fashionable than the other two. Barbara wears a white sleeveless blouse and black capris, cigarette pinched between two fingers, as she runs Vivian through a day-by-day breakdown of her responsibilities. “Don’t cook the ham the way your mother makes it. I’ll give you my recipe. The AJAX is under the sink. I drive the car. You can take the bus but don’t miss your curfew or you can ride all the way back to Vancouver.”

  Living under Aunt Barbara’s roof comes with one or two benefits. The sheer boredom gives her time to think. Father had many distinguishing characteristics but Vivian r
ealizes that his transgressions were hardly unique. In Calgary alone, she surmises, there must be numerous powerful men engaged in similar activities. Why not capitalize on their weaknesses?

  She researches the names of important executives and selects a few: the CEOs of a large brewery and a chain of car dealerships, the president of a financial services company and a partner at a leading law firm, just for starters.

  Statistically speaking, only a few men that she writes to will have something to hide, and only a fraction of those will rise to the bait. One or two might go straight to the police but every great venture involves risk. With six weeks left of her summer, she starts small with her first four targets.

  The scratchy nib of a borrowed fountain pen (her aunt’s) bends her own handwriting out of shape. The wording in each letter is different, but the message is the same: she claims to know about their affairs. The relevant parties will be informed if they aren’t willing to part with some cash. She keeps the amount modest, just enough to cover her fees and expenses for the remainder of her studies; an amount a rich man could comfortably afford. They are to deposit the cash at the busy downtown bus depot.

  “Your hair looks lovely, Aunt Barbara.”

  Barbara tilts her head with a girlish smile, showing off her soft bob. The yellow glow from the pendant light above the table bounces off the loose curls that frame her slender face. Vivian tackled all of her chores and offered to take care of Uncle Edward to give her aunt time to go to the salon.

  “Could I have a few hours to myself during the week, to see the city?”

  Aunt Barbara frowns but Vivian persists.

  “Maybe on Friday afternoons? Uncle Edward doesn’t have any appointments then.”

  Aunt Barbara reluctantly agrees. “I suppose I have to let you be young.”

  Vivian counts down the days anxiously and wavers between deciding to go through with it and being absolutely sure she won’t. Meanwhile, her request for occasional time off appears to have reminded Aunt Barbara that her position is not permanent.

  “Have you considered studying in Calgary?” Barbara asks with a hint of desperation. “There’s an excellent teaching program at the University of Alberta. And plenty of eligible young bachelors.”

  For a split second, Vivian considers the suggestion. Unlike Aunt Faye, Aunt Barbara offers free room and board in exchange for Vivian’s help. Scholarship opportunities could at least partially cover the fees. But teaching is not law. Law is the study of complex power structures. Law is the foundation of her future. Father thought she should abandon the law.

  “Calgary is a wonderful city, but law is where my passion lies.”

  Aunt Barbara blinks. “Does it matter? Pretty young woman like you, you’ll be married by the time you graduate.”

  “Yes, it does matter,” Vivian says. “I’m going to do more with my life than be somebody’s wife.”

  Aunt Barbara looks at her husband as if expecting him to rise up out of his wheelchair and put his insolent niece in her place. She wags a finger at Vivian. “This attitude of yours comes of not having a real father when you needed one.”

  And where are your adult children now that you need help? Vivian wants to ask. She holds her tongue.

  Vivian hasn’t slept. She can barely think. She forces down some breakfast to keep up appearances despite her roiling stomach. A blob of jam drips onto her off-white blouse and she rushes to the sink. There’s no time to change. Wearing a secretary-style skirt and flats, she should blend in well enough, providing she can get the jam stain out.

  Aunt Barbara watches from the front yard, wrenching weeds encircling her hydrangeas as Vivian stands at the bus stop across the street. “Visit the university while you’re downtown,” Aunt Barbara calls out to her. “There are still a few spaces left in the teaching program.”

  The bus collects her and rolls through the suburbs into the humming city core, depositing her at the bus terminal 25 minutes later. She hurries inside the ugly concrete building and heads straight for the café. It is just as she had hoped; there’s a free table perfect for discreetly scanning the drop location. She orders a coffee and sits quietly, careful to choose a chair facing slightly away from the spot so as to be less conspicuous.

  She taps the table nervously, and then silently scolds herself for being obvious. Trying for a natural pose, she rests one hand on her knee and the other on her coffee cup. The wait is so intense she forces herself to focus on something distant to calm her mind. She mentally recites the Latin verbs she learned at boarding school (an expense Father happily paid for to keep her out of sight). Sum, es, est. Habeo, habes, habet. Amo, amas, amat. To be, to have, to love. Amari. Amavisse. To be loved. To have loved. She thinks about her dead brother and imagines what her parents would have called him. Stanley, perhaps, after Father, or William, after his father.

  If they catch her, she’ll play the grief-stricken young woman who lost her way after the sudden and devastating demise of her father. For a first offence, a kind judge might be lenient. She thinks of Bernice’s impersonations of Judge Braithwaite, Blustering Braithwaite, she called him, a frequent attendee at her parents’ soirees. According to Bernice, he had at least two mistresses. What would a judge like Braithwaite make of Vivian’s attempts to blackmail powerful philanderers? Father has put her in an impossible situation but, if her life is to be derailed, at least it will the result of her own decisions.

  Hands tick around the large platform clock. Women in summer dresses and men with suit jackets flopped over their arms move quickly despite the heat. Buses belch exhaust as they come and go. Cigarette smoke blues the air.

  A young guy in jeans and a leather jacket approaches the bench carrying a briefcase that doesn’t match his style. Vivian holds her breath. He turns and looks straight at her, brown eyes and slicked back hair. She sips her coffee and shifts her gaze towards the platform clock. Video, vides, videt. Cognosco, cognoscis, cognoscit. To see. To know. Casually, she looks back. He has disappeared. His briefcase is beside the bench. The bench.

  It’s a trap. It has to be, to have happened so fast, for someone to have actually produced the money on her first attempt. There are police officers hiding in plain sight, waiting for her to reveal herself. She glances at the faces around her; wrinkled, young, tall, heavy, sideburns, lipstick, harried, smiling and emotionless, none of them paying any attention to her.

  The briefcase won’t sit there forever. A good Samaritan will spot it and hand it in, or the courier will circle back and take the cash for himself.

  She looks down at her empty coffee cup as though an alternative option might pop out from the speckle of brown grounds. She thinks about her dwindling hopes of getting a fraction of the choices her stepbrothers have. Her legs don’t feel quite like her own as she leaves the café. Her heels clip along the platform, but they could be someone else’s feet. She would never do something this absurd.

  A couple of buses roll to a stop and she gives herself time to study the destinations. Edmonton. Red Deer. She glances over at the bench. Nobody has approached the briefcase. Her legs take her there. She is close enough to touch it. She does. She bends down and picks it up. It’s extremely light. Her future is light.

  She walks forward holding the briefcase, one step at a time; gingerly and then with speed. A stranger brushes past her arm. She startles but doesn’t stop. She can’t now. She’s in it, and it is surreal, like a game.

  The door to the ladies’ scares her as it swings shut. Her whole body is on edge. She locks herself in a stall. The briefcase clasps click open. “DON’T CONTACT ME AGAIN,” reads a scrawled message on top. Neat stacks of banknotes courtesy of a financial services executive fill the remaining space. She examines a few; crisp, new. Real and unbelievable. In 30 minutes, it is the car salesman’s turn. Would he also bring the money? Would the lawyer, or the brewery owner? Or would they choose to alert the authorities?

  As Vivian walks anxiously towards the local buses, the 12 pulls up right in front of he
r. The bus that travels past the front of Aunt Barbara’s house.

  The driver examines her return ticket and then looks down at her briefcase. “Busy day at the office?” he asks with a smile. She nods nervously and finds a free window seat. A sweaty man in a thick suit takes the seat beside her and accidentally knocks the case with his foot. She pictures the briefcase popping open and spilling out cash. Questions would be asked, unless the man beside her managed to be discreet enough to seize her future for himself.

  The platform is busy but the two black-suited officers weaving rapidly between the passengers capture Vivian’s attention. They are making their way directly towards her bus.

  Vivian turns away from the window, unable to watch. They can’t come on her bus, not hers. They must be heading somewhere else. She rises out of her seat and settles into it again; it is too late. The driver is talking to someone. Shoes hit the metal steps. A broad-shouldered officer climbs on board and begins making his way down the aisle. He stares right at her. He opens his mouth as if to ask her something. Her heart stops.

  “Wrong bus!” his colleague shouts from the platform. The officer thumps back down the aisle and down the metal steps. Vivian watches through the scratched glass as a teenaged boy is dragged off the neighbouring coach.

  It isn’t until a week later, when Vivian dares to deposit her dirty money to pay her tuition fees, that she is able to relax enough to marvel at her efforts. She still can’t quite believe she got away with it. The executive who paid her off must have been desperate. He probably has a family, young kids. She doesn’t feel guilty. She didn’t make his mistakes; she merely found a way to benefit from them. There’s nothing wrong with that. She has won and she feels heady for days. The thrill is like none she has ever experienced.

  CHAPTER 18