by Gail Bowen
“And,” Felix intoned gravely, “more squirrels.”
“Right,” Jill sipped her wine. “More squirrels. Somehow our young genius in Toronto got wind of the fact that a cottager out here had taught a squirrel to water-ski. Now clearly the cottager was a baguette short of a picnic, but the wunderkind was enchanted. He ordered me to replace two minutes of our political panel with squirrel footage, and I refused.”
“Squirrel against woman,” Angus said.
“Right,” Jill said. “And no possibility of rapprochement. The squirrel was out on Echo Lake slapping the waves with his little custom-made skiis, and I was here in Regina clinging to my standards.”
“And you lost,” Taylor said.
Jill nodded in agreement. “And our twenty-seven-year-old genius meted out the worst punishment he could think of…”
“He banished you to Toronto!” Angus said.
“Precisely,” Jill said. “With the kind of task evil fairies hand out in fairy tales. He gave me six weeks to create a cheap, ethnically diverse, spiritually neutral show that would get a 7.8 share on Sunday mornings.”
“Absolutely impossible,” Felix said. “It was a matter of principle. Jill quit, and so did I.”
Jill dipped her index finger into the water in her glass and passed it through the flame of the candle in front of her. “Luckily, Felix and I are not risk-averse. And we were both dying to show that little snot-nose what talent and experience could do.”
“Thus, after only a dozen or so false starts, ‘Comforts of the Sun’ came into being.” Felix bowed his head modestly. “A simple premise but brilliantly executed.”
We all laughed, but the truth of the matter was the premise behind “Comforts of the Sun” was simple: Jill and a small film crew followed ordinary people as they revelled in the pleasures of their Sunday morning. The show cast its net broadly: an all-girl skateboarders’ club in Sault Ste. Marie; a rafter-rattling gospel choir in Halifax; the owners of a trendy lesbian eatery called Tomboy who opened their doors on Sunday mornings to the homeless of Winnipeg; a Tai Chi group who, for three generations, had been harmonizing their minds and bodies in a Vancouver park; an octogenarian Anglican minister who, accompanied by his bulldog Balthazar, drove up and down the Sunshine Coast delivering thumping good sermons to anyone who was of a mind to sit still and listen.
As we passed the wild rice, we talked about why the show had struck a chord with so many people. “I’ll bet most people are like me,” I said. “We watch ‘Comforts of the Sun’ because it makes us feel good.”
Felix furrowed his brow. “Feel good is yesterday, Jo. When I was pitching the show in NYC, I talked about urban alienation, fragmentation, and the human need for connection and affirmation.”
Claudia snapped her fingers at an imaginary waiter. “Another order of bullshit for the gent here at table three,” she said, and her laughter was full-bodied and infectious.
Felix was serene. “Manure has its uses,” he said.
“You bet it does,” Jill said. “Thanks to Felix’s judicious spreading, our little family will be in Times Square New Year’s Eve.” She hugged herself. “This show has made so many things possible. It’s an uphill battle not to get cynical in hard news. You’re always trying to get past what people want to reveal so you can shed a little light on what they’re trying to conceal. But ‘Comforts of the Sun’ makes watching the human comedy fun again. Everybody we talk to is pleased as punch to reveal everything.”
Throughout dinner, Bryn and Angus had been so tenderly absorbed in one another that it seemed the rest of us were just a backdrop, but Jill’s words caught Bryn’s attention.
Achingly beautiful, she leaned across the table. “But those people chose to let you in, Jill. It’s different when the camera invades your life.”
Evan shifted in his chair. “A camera doesn’t ‘invade’ your life, Bryn,” he said. “It’s just there.”
“A camera is not ‘just there,’ ” Bryn’s eyes bored into her father. “There’s a person behind it, changing the lens, making sure the shot’s in focus, deciding how far to go.”
Evan speared a morsel of venison. “People who step in front of the camera aren’t victims. They’re willing accomplices. They can always walk away.”
“Not if they trust the person behind the camera,” his daughter said. Her skin had the pale lustre of the white tulips in the centrepiece.
Jill reached across the flowers and took Bryn’s hand. “We have so much to look forward to,” she said. “Sometimes it’s best just to forgive and forget.”
“Great advice, stepmum-to-be.” Tracy’s voice was jagged. “Except where do you draw the line after you pardon scavengers who pick the flesh from other people’s bones?”
Ever the conciliator, Felix jumped in. “Aren’t you being a little unfair, Tracy? We’re not talking about ‘Jerry Springer.’ We’re talking about our show, and we have nothing to be ashamed of. As Jill said, people who step in front of our cameras want to reveal themselves. We give them a legacy – something they can slip into their VCRS to prove their lives have meaning.”
Tracy’s blue eyes glittered with unshed tears. “And that’s why they count on you not to lie, not to distort, not to seduce them into giving up things that are sacred.” She turned miserably to her brother-in-law. “Some of us counted on you for that too, Evan.”
Taylor had stopped eating. She loved venison and she was, as a rule, a trencherwoman, but the sight of the Broken Wand Fairy having a tantrum obviously knocked her off game.
“Counted on me for what?” Evan asked. “Tracy, the scenes you’re part of in Black Spikes and Slow Waves show you at a time when you were more alive than you’ll ever be again. No matter what happens to you, that woman will still exist. What else could you ask?”
“To be treated as a human being,” Tracy snapped.
Evan shrugged. “It’s an old argument: what matters more, art or life? Thomas Mann said that as he watched his young daughter die, he couldn’t stop himself from framing the scene to use in a novel. He gave that child immortality.”
“Is he your role model, Daddy?” Bryn’s voice was bleak, and Jill drew her close.
Claudia mouthed the favourite obscenity of the frustrated, then tapped her wineglass with her knife. “May I make a modest suggestion?” she asked. “Why don’t we all just shut up and eat.”
It was a small window of opportunity, but I squeezed through. “There’s more of everything,” I said. “But leave room for dessert. It’s my daughter Mieka’s recipe.”
Jill brightened. “The lemon pudding cake with raspberries?”
“You’ve got it,” I said. “The Queen of Comfort Foods.”
Gabe drained his glass. “Bring it on,” he said to no one in particular. “We have become a party sorely in need of comfort.”
Taylor picked up her fork. “And joy,” she said. “Don’t forget the joy.”
As we walked from the parking lot to the MacKenzie Art Gallery for the wedding rehearsal, snowflakes fell on a world silvered by a winter palette. It was a Currier amp; Ives evening, but we were an Alex Colville crowd, our alienation as knife-edged as our emotions. We had paired off idiosyncratically. Angus had deep-sixed his Mr. Bill sweatshirt and cut-offs in favour of pressed slacks, a blue button-down, and a solicitousness towards Bryn that would have been appropriate if he were rescuing her from the gulag, but seemed excessive for a wedding rehearsal in Regina. Claudia, her feet squarely planted in sensible Sorels, had taken on the task of her sister-in-law’s keeper and was frog-marching the skittish, barelegged Tracy towards the warmth of the gallery. Surprisingly, Jill was walking not with her fiance but with Felix Schiff. Heads together, their whispered discussion grew so heated that Felix finally strode ahead to catch up with Claudia and Tracy, and Jill dropped back to join the two other odd couples: Taylor and Evan, and Gabe Leventhal and me.
Taylor was pointing out the snow maze that the gallery employees and the kids who studied art at the MacK
enzie had constructed on the east lawn. It was a serious effort with six-foot walls of packed ice-snow and enough branches and forks to give the maze real complexity. Bathed in moonlight, it had an otherworldly glow.
“Straight out of the Ice Planet Hoth,” Gabe said, shaking his head. “You really could get lost in there.”
“You could,” Taylor agreed, “but I know the secret of how not to.”
“A golden thread,” Gabe said.
Taylor wiped her nose on the sleeve of her coat. “That would probably work,” she said. “But I was talking about the right-hand trick. As long as you keep your right hand against the wall, there’s no way you can’t get out.”
“Nice to have at least one guarantee when you’re stepping into an uncertain world,” Jill said.
“Do you consider marriage an uncertain world?” Evan asked.
Jill’s smile was enigmatic. “I don’t know,” she said. “Can you guarantee that if I keep my right hand on the wall, I’ll get out safely?”
Gabe led our small group through the maze. In his ancient coat, toe rubbers, and striped muffler, he seemed an unlikely guide, but when he announced that, grateful as he was for Taylor’s tip, he planned to find the goal by letting go of his conscious self and stretching out his feeling, we cheered. There was a goofiness about his allusion to Star Wars that lightened our spirits and made it seem possible that the Force was with us after all.
We walked single file between walls of ice not much more than three feet apart, along ground that was worn treacherously smooth. Above us stars splattered the sky with an ancient pattern, and as we shuffled along, making mistakes, taking wrong turns, our breath rose in puffs, like incense. Our silence was broken only once, when Evan, who was behind me, asked. “What’s at the end?”
“A surprise,” Taylor said.
“As long as it’s not the Minotaur,” Evan said.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Closer than you think,” I said.
“Really?”
“Stay tuned.”
We turned a final corner and found ourselves in the square that enclosed the goal. Instinctively, we flattened against the walls to improve our view of the snow sculpture at the centre of the tiny enclosure.
Gabe was the first to speak. “Worth the trip,” he said. “But what the hell is it?”
Taylor took his hand in hers. “You can look closer,” she said. “Have you ever heard of Jacques Lipchitz?”
“One of the great sculptors of the twentieth century? I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, young woman.”
Taylor rewarded him with a smile. “Our gallery has a bronze sculpture that Jacques Lipchitz made. It’s called Mother and Child II . During the war, Jacques Lipchitz saw a Russian lady with no legs. She was singing so he made this sculpture of her. You can see it two ways: as a mother with her child or as the head of a bull.”
“Love or war,” Gabe said.
“That’s right,” Taylor said approvingly. “Anyway, the sculpture is sort of the trademark of the MacKenzie Gallery, so that’s why we made a snow one for the end of the maze. Neat, eh?”
Gabriel moved closer to the piece. “Yeah,” he said. “It really is neat.”
“I wish Bryn had come out here with us,” Jill said. “Speaking of… we should get back. They must be wondering where we are.”
“I know the way,” Taylor said. She hiked up her swooshy dress and headed back through the maze. Jill and Gabe were not far behind. I started after them, then I realized Evan wasn’t with us. When I turned I saw that he was still gazing at Mother and Child II. His head was slightly bowed and his hands were crossed in front of him, like a man worshipping or paying his respects at a funeral. His face was unguarded, suffused with a look that I could only describe as longing.
When he saw me watching him, he stiffened. “My mother says this is my natural habitat,” he said.
“A maze?” I said.
“No,” he said. “Snow. She calls me the snowman. She says I have a mind of winter. It’s a line from Wallace Stevens. I assume Jill told you my mother is a scholar of sorts.”
“She didn’t mention it,” I said.
Pain flashed across Evan’s face, but the moment was brief, quickly replaced by an ironic smile. “There’s not much about me that Jill believes is worthy of mention.”
My mind was reeling, but I didn’t want the connection between us to break. “What does your mother mean by saying you have ‘a mind of winter’?”
“That I’m detached from humanity, unable to love.”
“Are you?”
Two words, but they were a body blow. Evan slumped. “You’ve seen my life. Judge for yourself.” He reached out a gloved hand and caressed the icy contours of Mother and Child. “Time to go inside,” he said. “The others will be waiting.”
Numbed by this insight into the battles Evan MacLeish was fighting, I followed him out of the maze. As we trudged between the hard-packed walls, my thoughts drifted from Evan to Caroline MacLeish. Evan had described her as a scholar, and I wondered if, in the course of her studies, she’d come upon Philip Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse” with its astringent opening lines: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad,/They may not mean to, but they do.”
During the rehearsal, Evan was composed. Not surprisingly, his delivery of the familiar words of the marriage ceremony was flawless. The mask had slipped back into place, and I was left trying to imagine what kind of catalyzing trauma could sever a man from his emotions. But if Evan’s mention of his mother raised one question, it answered another. As Jill lifted her face to be kissed, I sensed for the first time why she had been drawn to this painfully detached man. She was a good person who, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, still believed that a human being could be salvaged by love.
And, of course, there was Bryn. As I looked at the wedding party, I realized that with the exception of Gabe Leventhal and me, everyone was shooting anxious glances her way. She didn’t seem in imminent danger. The judge, a silvery-haired, preening gnome of a man who worked his hands together when he spoke, was explaining the ceremony, and Bryn’s face showed nothing. She was a spectacularly self-possessed adolescent, and the possibility crossed my mind that her outburst at dinner had been strategic, a way of stirring the pot.
It seemed that Gabe’s reading of the scene and mine had been the same. When the judge finally wound up his instructions, Gabe put his lips next to my ear. “If she’s that powerful at seventeen, she’ll be causing wars by the time she’s twenty-one,” he whispered.
“Mothers, lock up your sons,” I said. “Mine is certainly no match for her. Until tonight, he’s bounced through life on charm, a good throwing arm, and the philosophy of John Madden.”
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Hard to imagine a life situation not covered by John Madden’s wit and wisdom. I met him once, you know. We were in the green room of a TV show. He let me try on his Super Bowl ring.” Gabe flexed his fingers. “It was massive and it was cheesy, but the memory of seeing it on my hand still gives me goosebumps.”
“If you told Angus that story, he’d build a shrine for you,” I said.
“I’ll hold that information in reserve. Some day I may just need your son’s approval.” Gabe glanced around the gallery. “We seem to be just about finished here. Can I buy you a drink?”
“I’d love one, but I’ll have to take a rain check,” I said. “I left a serious mess at the house.”
Angus was at my elbow. “I’ll clean up,” he said.
“Out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I’ve been thinking it might be nice if I got Bryn something – kind of an early Christmas present. They’ve got some cool stuff downstairs at the gallery shop.”
“Cool… and pricey,” I said.
“That’s where you come in,” he said.
“It always is.” I handed him my credit card. “Be prudent.” I turned to Gabe. “We could have that drink at my house. Since Angus has volunteered for sc
ullery duty, all I have to do is put Taylor to bed.”
The family room was relatively untouched, so I led Gabe in there and took his order: tea – nothing fancy, just plain hot tea with lots of sugar and milk. When I came in with the tray, he held out the videos of Leap of Faith and Black Spikes and Slow Waves and looked at me quizzically. “Homage to our friend Evan?”
I put the tray on the coffee table. “Less homage than homework,” I said. “I was trying to get acquainted with Jill’s beloved.”
“Bad call,” he said. “The movies are brilliant – not many filmmakers can convey human loneliness with that kind of intensity – but there’s no doubt that they’re troubling.”
“Evan MacLeish is a troubling man,” I said. “There are moments when I understand why Jill is drawn to him, but I can’t get past his history. And that scene we walked in on in the kitchen didn’t help.”
Gabe was silent, absorbed in his private thoughts. When finally he spoke, his words seemed a non sequitur. “Would you mind if we watched the ending of Black Spikes?”
“Your turn for an homage?” I said.
Gabe poured the tea. “Nope. Same as you, just doing my homework.”
I put the tape in the VCR and fast-forwarded to the party scene. The screen was filled with dazzling disjointed images: Annie in a fuchsia halter top, caught like a bird in flight against the brilliant frolic of a Joan Miro painting; Annie slithering playfully through a nightmare melee of women with too thin bodies and too tight faces; Annie throwing her arms around a man whose back was to the camera and kissing him passionately, eyes wide open, watching the camera watching her.
Finally, she broke from the embrace, exposing the man she’d been kissing. When I saw his face, the breath caught in my throat. It was Felix Schiff.
“I missed this part this morning,” I said. “Willie was barking to be let out.”
“I imagine Felix wishes everyone had missed it,” Gabe said dryly. “This footage was shot at the Toronto Film Festival the year everyone discovered ecstasy. Most of us just dabbled, but Felix was convinced he’d found the Holy Grail. That night, he was deep into his journey towards chemical enlightenment.”
