Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  I took in a quick breath, released it. Made sure my shock didn’t show on my face.

  “It was an accident.” She was still looking at me intently. “He was being threatened. He tried to subdue the guy by pinching a nerve in his neck. He didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident.”

  I nodded, still trying to keep my expression neutral. My God, she was involved with a man who had killed someone. With all her fears. How had she even been able to enter the Supreme Court building without having a panic attack? Let alone visit a prison.

  “They screwed up his sentence calculation,” she was saying. “He should have been released by now, but it keeps getting delayed. I’ve been trying for almost two years now to get him out. I even hired a lawyer. It looks like he’s going to be out soon. Finally. It’s been a long haul.” She let out a sigh. “A really long haul.”

  She showed me photos from a prison yard. He was a powerfully built man. He obviously worked out. He would have had time to work out. His features were too boyish for me, but others might have called him attractive. His hair, cut short and receding, was almost as dark as Lucy’s but greying at the temples. His skin was fairer and he looked younger by a few years. In one photograph Lucy sat on his lap. Glowing. In another he stood in a pair of loose-fitting sweat pants. They were knotted low on his hips, displaying an impressive washboard stomach.

  But it was the eyes that held me. I had been expecting the vacant stare of a criminal in a mug shot. But these eyes were warm and smiling, crinkled at the corners. They were a relief, these eyes. His eyes and his infectious grin. They matched Lucy’s in the photograph.

  “He has nice eyes,” I said, to say something.

  “Yes!” said Lucy, as if I had made a particularly astute observation. “He’s a gentle soul.”

  I cringed at the term. I wasn’t into souls. Not then. But if a “gentle soul” was someone with warm smiling eyes and an infectious grin, then I could agree with her. There was a child-like innocence about him. Innocent men did go to prison. Accidents did happen. I decided I should keep an open mind.

  Lucy was warming to me, revealing more. “We have so much in common—music, he meditates, he’s into Buddhism. I’ve looked so long for someone like him. I can’t believe I found him in prison.”

  It was good to laugh with her. To share disbelief at the situation.

  Over our dwindling glasses of wine, she talked in animation about Tim. What it was about the Fajber case, and in their childhoods, that connected them so strongly. How they’d declared themselves common law and got conjugal rights. There had been a recent pregnancy scare. And now he had proposed. He was giving her two years to decide. To match the time she had given him. No one, said Lucy, had ever said they’d wait for her. That meant more to her than anything.

  By the time we had drained the bottle, my brain was reeling from the onslaught of information, but my apprehension had mellowed into tentative acceptance. She seemed to know what she was doing. Lucy wasn’t someone who would get taken in. She was smart and shrewd and self-aware, and she didn’t put up with bullshit. She was, she said, usually the one who broke up her relationships. So she wouldn’t be abandoned. Again.

  That fall had been a time of rare and lovely harmony for Marc and me. I couldn’t help waxing on about it whenever Lucy asked how we were doing. By that time, Tim had been living with her for six months. I had seen them a couple of times in the summer. She had appeared happy. But now, every time we talked, she seemed to be having a bad day. Still, I didn’t realize how my cheerfulness was affecting her until I got snapped at one day on the phone: “Everyone I know is going through something right now. I don’t know how you’ve managed to avoid it.”

  I was used to Lucy’s flashes of temper. They weren’t usually directed at me. Or at least I was good at deflecting the arrows. But this arrow was clearly aimed at me. And one thing I didn’t need was a friend who got mad at me for being happy. And so, for the past five months, I had kept our conversations professional.

  So there was no reason Tim Brennan should not be calling from her house.

  “I’m calling,” he said, “’cuz I’m wondering if you’ve seen Lucy. She was up in the Gatineaus on the weekend. She hasn’t come home yet.”

  “I haven’t seen Lucy,” I heard myself say, “but I think I might have seen her car.”

  *

  SHE TOOK A DEEP BREATH and then she was diving across the cavernous marble hall, a swimmer cutting across the current of a raging river. On the inlaid mosaic in the centre of the floor, she was compelled to stop, as if she had run out of air under water. She swivelled her head up and around. She took in the double set of rotund marble columns at either end of the hall, the twin set of massive staircases, the ceiling several storeys high above her. The vastness of the hall made her dizzy. She looked down before she got sucked into its colourless expanse. She took another swimmer’s breath, and set her course again for the nearest flight of stairs.

  On the landing, halfway up, she paused again for air. A small crowd was already gathered at the top, waiting for the doors to open. She steeled herself to be swallowed into the immensity of the room that must lie behind the imposing wooden doors. The courtroom for the final arbiter of legal disputes and the last judicial resort for all litigants in the nation would be at least a continuation, and more likely an exaltation, of this immense marble entrance hall. It would be suitably styled to follow through on the marble staircases and those colossal wooden doors that exceeded by a ludicrous number of feet the height of the tallest person who would ever enter them. Behind those doors waited a cold, uncaring cathedral to Truth and Justice.

  What was she doing here? How had she even had a moment’s illusion of thinking she could spend a minute in such a room, let alone a day, or a week or more?

  She tried to hang back from the crowd, but others were pushing in from behind. The physical pressure sounded the jangly warning in her veins that panic was about to issue the order to run for home. Today, she was determined her body would obey her. Today, she would be in charge. Today, her fears would do the running—for this one day (at least), for this one cause. If Mrs. Fajber could stand by her son, beating her head against the thick walls of the prison system for twenty years before anyone paid attention, she could sit for an hour or a week in her own version of prison.

  Suddenly, the doors were opening with smooth silent splendour, and just as smoothly and silently, the crowd was forming into a line, offering its bags for a second X-ray inspection.

  Passing through the massive doors, she stopped short. Someone bumped into her from behind and shoved past. She could not move. She stared, awe-struck, at the room around her.

  This was no cold cavernous cathedral. This was an intimate chapel of walnut walls and red carpeting, of warm furnishings of wood and crimson leather. Natural light streamed in through floor-to-ceiling lattice-work windows, three on either side. Light? Windows? How could there be windows in a room situated in the very heart of the Supreme Court building? They must look out onto some kind of inner courtyard. Maybe the architect had anticipated that the wisdom of future judges might need to be illuminated by natural (if filtered) light.

  Something in her throat opened up, something relaxed. The modest size of the room, the warmth of the colours, the friendliness somehow created by the surrounding courtyard, the windows and their light all made it possible to breathe. She would not have to do battle to stay in this room. She could stay, and possibly the dominant feeling that would stay with her would be wonderment—that such an intimate room could be in any way the “supreme” court of the nation.

  An impromptu chair and microphone had been placed facing the judges’ chairs. Witnesses did not usually testify in the Supreme Court. This was an unusual case, in more ways than one. The chair sat empty, waiting for the first witness to be called.

  She found a seat, watched the
judges file in, black-robed, nine in all. After the preliminaries, the lawyer for Colin Fajber stood up and addressed the judges. She opened her notebook and began taking notes as if she were a university student. She wasn’t planning to do anything with the notes. The notes were rather something to do. Writing—where she was, what was happening around her, how she was feeling—sometimes helped forestall a panic attack.

  In the first week she filled nearly an entire notebook. She attended every day she could spare from work. She was there on a blizzarding Monday morning in early March, having given herself so much extra time to navigate through the snow that she was one of the first through the doors. From her seat she had an unimpeded view of Mrs. Fajber sitting at the front of the courtroom with her son’s lawyer. That she had never given up on her son, ever pushing for a retrial, was nothing short of a miracle. The miracle of mothers. Not her own. Her own mother had never done anything remotely like stand by her or try to free her from prison. Her mother had, in fact, played an instrumental role in her incarceration.

  2.

  I DID NOT WANT TO drive back up River Road. I drove with the hope that the car would be gone. Or that it would not have the plate number Tim had given me over the phone. Or that if Lucy was missing, her car would be found somewhere else. That I wasn’t going to be the one to find it. Most of all I wanted to believe that Lucy had gone for an extended walk and was now driving the Suzuki, and herself, safely home.

  But I knew before I arrived on River Road that it was a hopeless wish.

  Lucy, Tim had told me on the phone, had had a recurring dream. I was startled. Lucy had often talked about her dreams, but she’d never mentioned a recurring one.

  “She dreams she’s being choked.”

  He seemed not to hear my sharp intake of breath. He was already embarking on his story. “It was Friday night she had this dream. She screamed so loud she woke our tenant, and she’s two floors above us. It took a long time to calm her down. We were both a little shell-shocked, but she was better by morning. Saturday she was in good spirits. She told me she loved me. She said she was going to see friends in the Gatineaus. I expected her back last night—this morning at the latest. She’s got work she’s gotta do. I been phoning her friends all day. I just saw your name on the calendar for one o’clock yesterday.”

  I started again. He was referring to the Sunday afternoon ice-breaking-up party. I felt a sudden pang of guilt. I had never given Lucy a thought. Which was ironic, given how my invitation to her had precipitated my break-up.

  “She didn’t show up,” I told Tim.

  “Maybe I got it wrong where she was going. Maybe it wasn’t the Gatineaus. I left a message for another friend of hers. There’s some retreat she knows about. I haven’t heard back.”

  “Do you know Lucy’s licence plate number?”

  “No, but I can find out. It should be here somewhere.” I heard the sound of rustling paper.

  “I’ve never been in her papers before,” he said.

  Yes, you have. It was an irrational thought. I dismissed it.

  There was more shuffling. “Here it is.”

  I wrote down the number, even as I was wondering what papers would have Lucy’s licence plate number written on them. I didn’t think mine was recorded anywhere in the house.

  “I’ll call you back in twenty minutes,” I told Tim. We hung up.

  The invitation to my party had been extended during a phone conversation. I had called because I’d forgotten if I’d faxed a fact sheet that Lucy had requested. We were working on another exhibit for the National Gallery. When she answered she sounded terrible—weak and hoarse. She apologized and said she couldn’t talk, she’d call me back.

  The next day I found the fax transmittal sheet and called to tell her, and to see how she was doing. She came on the line, the first part of her “hello” cut off. Could she call me back? She was on the other line with her bank manager, and it had taken her ages to get through.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I solved the problem; I don’t need you.” I let her go back to the other call.

  She returned my call anyway, sounding surprisingly cheerful. “You may not need me,” she said, “but I need you.”

  She needed me to look in the local paper for a cottage rental. I felt a twinge of guilt; it wasn’t the first time she had asked. While I hunted through the Low Down to Hull and Back News, she chattered on. She felt much better for the massage she’d just received. She wanted a cottage for the whole season, and it had to have electricity; she wanted to bring her computer. She sounded refreshingly upbeat. She also spoke in the singular. It sounded like she and Tim were still apart—that maybe they’d broken up for good. I found a notice for a cottage just down the river and gave her the number.

  The invitation to the party came out naturally, when she mentioned she was going to be in the Gatineaus on the weekend. “Well, if you’re in the area, drop in. Any time after three.”

  I was hanging up the phone when a voice startled me from behind. “What are you doing?”

  I swivelled my chair around, knocking into Belle, lying at my feet. I put an apologetic hand on her back as she got up and moved out of the way.

  Marc was standing in the entrance to my office, arms crossed, legs apart. He was still dressed in his work coveralls. His shaggy hair, already streaked light and dark blond, had additional streaks of cream paint in it. There had been no noticeable anger in his voice, but I could see it in his stance, usually so relaxed. And in the chiselled angles of his face, usually softened by his easy smile and boundless enthusiasm. The anger, the dirt on his face, made him look older than thirty. He had obviously been listening.

  His tone brought out my sarcasm before I could censor it. “I’ve been arranging to go for a nice paddle with Lucy on Sunday afternoon while you entertain the other guests.”

  “I will not have a murderer in my house.”

  “I wasn’t aware Lucy had murdered anyone.”

  He levelled his gaze at me and said nothing.

  “She didn’t say anything about bringing him.”

  “But you do not know for sure that she will not.” His francophone accent was more pronounced than usual. And he wasn’t using contractions. Signs of his increasing agitation.

  “So? What if she does?”

  “I told you before, I do not want you to have anything to do with this murderer. I do not want you to bring him here. I do not want him to know where we live.”

  It always got my back up when he dictated to me this way. I crossed my own arms. “Get it right: he’s a manslaughterer, not a murderer. Read: accident. Read: give the man a second chance. Read: open your mind.” Like I’m trying to do.

  Marc was silent.

  I relented. “Marc, I really don’t think she’s going to bring him, but I can call back and check if you like.”

  “Comme tu veux.” His voice was a hard monotone.

  For a moment I looked at him. Then I took a breath. “I do comme je veux but somehow it’s never good enough for you.”

  Marc was staring at me as if he had lost all comprehension of English. I rushed on. “You claim it’s okay that I don’t paddle with you, but there’s this—I don’t know, this underlying reproach or something. It’s always there, in my head. Even when you’re gone for a month at a time, I feel it. I did try you know. It’s not as if I didn’t try.”

  “You misled me.”

  “Misled you? What are you talking about?”

  “I thought you were a different person. I thought we had more in common.”

  “We have lots in common. You knew I wasn’t a paddler.”

  “You led me on. I thought you were into it.”

  “I was. I tried. You know I tried. It’s not my fault.”

  “It’s not good enough. It’s my life,” he added flatly. �
��And you never come with me. Anywhere.”

  I crossed my arms. “So you’re just looking for a paddling partner? Is that it?”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “So stop running off every summer and weekend and be with me. You always expect me to come with you.” We were far into the tape of an old argument by now.

  There was a small humourless smile from Marc. He made a circle in the air with his forefinger: “And around we go.” He hesitated. “Maybe it’s time to admit it.”

  Something clamped around my heart. “Admit what?”

  Marc avoided my eyes. He crossed over to the window and spoke to the river. “That it is over between us.”

  “Over? You want to break up?”

  Marc half turned, made a gesture with his hand. “What is holding us together?”

  My frustration came bursting to the surface again. “I thought it was love holding us together.” God, I was sounding like a clichéd pop song. “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?” What had happened to us? The short winter days seemed to have shortened our tempers and erased all the acceptance and understanding we had worked so hard at in the fall.

  Marc made that futile gesture with his hand again. He didn’t speak.

  I watched the back of his head. The head I knew so well. I memorized the patterns of streaking in his hair. The white paint, the shades of blond. My own head felt numb. As if someone had whacked me on the ear with a two-by-four.

  Marc’s voice came as if at a great distance. “It will be better this way. I will be away anyway. It will not be so….”

  I was shocked. This wasn’t the way people broke up, in one fell swoop. I pulled myself together. Tried for a joking tone. “Not before a party. Maybe after. If we don’t have a good time.”

  Marc kept his back to me. My feet wanted to walk over to him, my arms wanted to turn him back to me. Neither were working. My voice could only come up with a lame response. “Marc, you can’t go. We have a party to host.”