by Gail Bowen
“You were at that party?”
Gabe nodded. “I even have a cameo in this movie. My appearance comes just about… now!”
The image of Gabe was fleeting. The camera moved in on his face, then the shot went jerky as if Gabe had been trying to wrest the camera from the man holding it. Apparently, Evan broke free because the next shots were of Annie running down the hall, punching the elevator button, and stepping inside. Just before the doors closed, she gave her husband a mocking wave.
Scenes from a marriage.
And then the final scene – this one set in the weird hallucinatory dream world of a traffic accident. Marrow-freezing sounds of sirens and screams; lights as pitiless as the glare on a film set; professionals working silently to extract a body from a twist of metal. Then a man’s voice, rough-edged with fatigue and emotion, “Got her,” as a fuchsia rag is pulled from the wreckage. The camera zooms in hungrily, but Gabe Leventhal shuffles out of the darkness and throws his jacket over the body, denying Annie Lowell’s husband the chance to get his money shot. Then darkness, and the sound of a woman moaning.
Gabe leaned forward. The TV screen filled with images of the final moments of a childbirth. The baby’s head crowns; its shoulders emerge, hands reach down to pull the baby from its mother’s body. Oddly, the camera doesn’t linger on the newborn. The focus is on the child’s mother. When the baby is given to her, she turns away, lifts a slender arm, and pulls the surgical sheet over her head, shutting out the kitten-like cries of the newborn, denying motherhood.
Gabe was staring at the screen like a man who had never seen pictures move.
I was the one who broke the silence. “Evan told me tonight he couldn’t save Annie because she was beyond his reach. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just making excuses, but a mother who rejects her newborn is beyond reach. Poor Annie,” I said. The penny dropped. “Poor Bryn – having irrefutable proof that her mother never wanted her.”
“Bryn was able to spare herself that particular trauma,” Gabe said. “She flatly refuses to watch any of her father’s films. A very sensible decision, in my opinion.”
“I agree,” I said. “She certainly didn’t need to see that scene at the party.” I turned to Gabe. “You were trying to get Evan to stop filming his wife.”
“She was out of control,” he said dully. “Annie never met a drug, a drink, a fast car, or a man she didn’t like. After Bryn was born, it got worse, but the night she died Annie was beyond wild – it was as if she could hear the clock ticking and she wanted to experience everything before it stopped.”
“And you were trying to keep Evan from making a permanent record.”
“There was Bryn to consider – not that either of them ever did. Annie seemed to be taunting Evan that night, trying to provoke him.”
“Why?”
Gabe locked his hands around his cup. “I have no idea. Annie was beautiful and talented and she’d just delivered a dynamite performance in a film everyone knew was going to be a hit. She was on her way… but you know, Joanne, when the phone rang that night and Evan’s answering service said Annie had been in an accident, I wasn’t surprised. Somehow, I had the sense that he wasn’t either.
“I drove him to the accident scene. Annie hadn’t gotten far, but it was the longest drive of my life. As soon as I saw the state of the Porsche, I knew she was dead. There was no way she could have lived. But Evan walked over to one of the cops, introduced himself, and took out his video camera. For all the emotion he showed, he could have been filming a family reunion.”
“The snowman,” I said. “Evan told me tonight that’s what his mother calls him, because he’s doesn’t feel what other people feel.”
Gabe slumped. “Poor bastard,” he said. “Maybe that’s why he’s always been drawn to women with such hot emotional lives.”
“Very Jungian,” I said. “Also very smart for a filmmaker. You get to record the mess other people make of their lives with a clear eye.”
Gabe looked startled. “The ending.” He turned to me. “What did you make of the way Evan juxtaposed Annie’s death and Bryn’s birth?”
“Maybe he was saying that no matter what happens to the individual, life continues.”
“So by reconstructing what we know of reality and time, Evan shows a greater reality?” Gabe’s gaze was piercing: the professor pressing for an answer from a promising student. Unfortunately, the student’s promise was limited.
“I’m out of my depth here,” I said. “I was the only girl in my dorm who didn’t understand Last Year at Marienbad.”
Gabe put down his tea and looked at me curiously. “That’s an interesting connection.”
“Especially since I haven’t thought about that movie in twenty-five years. But just now, when we watched the ending of Black Spikes, I felt the same sense of manipulation – as if the filmmaker deliberately made me lose my bearings.”
“ ‘Always walls, always corridors, always doors – and on the other side, still more walls.’ ” Gabe’s voice was a murmur. Seeing the concern in my eyes, he shook off his reverie and reached out and took my hand. “So what’s been going on in your life since Last Year at Marienbad?”
The grandmother clock in the dining room had just struck eleven when we said goodnight. Neither of us wanted the evening to end. Admitting that my relationship with my former lover, Alex Kequahtooway, was over was proving so painful that I’d pretty well decided there were worse options than going it alone. But Gabe and I had connected with the kind of pizza and Chianti intimacy I hadn’t experienced since college. We had leapt over the mundane to attack the big topics: love, loss, and – the inevitable for anyone in their fifties – death. Gabe read widely and thought deeply. His conversation was shot through with allusions, but when he spoke about death his words were simple. “I don’t fear it, but I hate the idea that everything I’ve ever been will be over. You were smart to have kids.”
“Continuance,” I said.
“An appealing thought,” he said. “Especially for a man without a family.” He put his arm around me and we walked to the door. To an outsider, we would have been nothing extraordinary: two people in late middle age, sagging after a long day. But Gabe and I felt the possibilities, and as we watched his taxi crawl through the ruts towards my house, he turned to me. “So what do you think of our chances?”
“I’d say that so far we’re doing fine,” I said.
“Dashiell Hammett would say that fine is too big a word. We’re just doing better than most people.”
The kiss he gave me was deep and passionate.
“The wedding isn’t till three,” I said. “We could take a walk in the snow.”
“I’ll need your number,” Gabe said. He fumbled in his pockets. “No pen,” he said.
I found pencil and paper in the drawer of the hall table and wrote down my cell and home numbers. Gabe took the paper, slid it into his inside breast pocket, and patted it. “Tomorrow, we get to work on ‘fine,’ ” he said. “Wouldn’t it be ironic if this wedding was the start of a real love affair?” Then he kissed me again.
The day had been jam-packed, but I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. When Jill touched my shoulder and called my name, I had to swim up from the depths.
Her face was close to mine. “Can I borrow your car?” she said. “I tried to get a cab, but the snow’s really coming down, and the dispatcher said she couldn’t promise anything for at least an hour.”
“Of course you can borrow the car,” I said. I squinted at the clock. “Jill, it’s 1:30. Can’t it wait?”
“No,” she said. “It can’t.”
“The keys are over there in my bag,” I said. “Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t. It probably won’t amount to anything, and there’s no need for both of us to lose sleep.”
I watched at the window till Jill pulled out of the driveway. Angus’s magnificent torches had been reduced to scorche
d stumps. Their pagan protection was gone, and as the Volvo disappeared down the deserted street, I felt a stab of anxiety that was as intense as it was irrational. Jill was an adult. If she needed me, all she had to do was pick up the cellphone. I went back upstairs, checked on the kids, reassured Willie that all was well, plumped my pillows, and crawled back between the sheets. After half an hour, I knew it was hopeless. The sandman wasn’t coming back to my house. I rearranged the pillows and picked up the remote control.
On “All in the Family,” Gloria and Mike were getting married. Weddings all around. I had seen the episode at least five times, and the familiarity lulled me. I woke to a staticky screen and the heart-pounding sense of disorientation that comes in the small hours. Remembering the immediate cause of my insomnia, I walked down the hall to the guest room. Jill was sitting on the edge of the bed. She was wearing a pair of panties and Angus’s Mr. Bill sweatshirt.
“Is that part of your trousseau?” I asked.
“No, but at the moment, it’s the perfect choice,” Jill grimaced. “Like Mr. Bill, I am Dismembered, Squashed, and Melted Down.”
“I take it this has something to do with your quixotic midnight ride.”
Jill ran her fingers through her hair. “Quixotic is good,” she said. “Moronic would be even better. After you went to bed, Gabe called and said he’d just found out something I should know before the wedding. He didn’t want to talk about it on the phone, so I went charging off into the night. The roads were a mess and on the way downtown I hit a patch of ice and ended up in a snowbank. Of course, at that hour, Good Samaritans were in even shorter supply than usual, so I had to dig myself out. The Volvo is fine, incidentally, but by the time I got to the hotel I must have looked like something Willie dragged in. The prim little gent behind the reception desk was so horrified, I almost had to body slam him before he’d even ring Gabe’s room for me. Big surprise – there was no answer. Gabe had obviously given up on me and gone to bed.”
“And you have no idea what he wanted to talk about?”
“No, and you know what, Jo? I should have realized it was a fool’s errand. There’s nothing about Evan’s life that I don’t already know. That particular Pandora’s box has been open for a long time. By now, everything has flown out but Hope, and that’s what I’m hanging on to.”
I put my arms around her. “You deserve better than this.”
“Maybe so, but I’m forty-five years old, and I’m tired of waiting.” Jill’s smile was weary. “Is there a fairy tale about a girl who has to sleep with every loser on the planet before she finally gets her happily ever after?”
“Maybe an X-rated one,” I said, smoothing her hair.
“Not much fun being stuck in an X-rated fairy tale when everybody else is falling into these great love stories,” she said. “This is as close as I’m going to come, Jo, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it work.”
CHAPTER
3
It was still dark the next morning when Taylor crawled in beside me, and Willie lumbered up after her.
“I couldn’t sleep,” my daughter said. “I’m too excited.”
“What time is it?”
“Time to get up. Besides Willie wants out.”
“Willie always wants out.” I drew Taylor close, loving the gust of girl warmth as she snuggled in. “But he’s a reasonable dog. He’ll give us a break this morning.” Ever obliging, Willie inched up the bed, closer to the centre of power. “So what’s on our agenda?” I said.
Taylor propped herself up on her elbow. “First we eat breakfast and have a bath so Rapti can do our hair before she goes to work, then we go to the mall to get that garter.”
My daughter scratched Willie’s head absently. “Why does Jill need a blue garter?”
“To bring her luck,” I said. “Brides are always supposed to have something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.”
“Does Jill know she’s supposed to have all that stuff?”
“I’m sure she’s heard rumours,” I said.
“Good,” Taylor said. “Anyway, after we come back from the mall, we eat lunch and put on our dresses so the photographer can take our pictures.” She stretched luxuriously. “My hair is going to be soooo good.”
“Still committed to the ringlets?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be? The flower girl in that bride’s magazine looked so neat.” She cocked her head. “Didn’t you think she looked pretty?”
“Sure,” I ran my hair through Taylor’s straight, dark hair. “I guess I just think you’re beautiful the way you are.”
“Wait till you see me with ringlets,” Taylor said.
On our way down to breakfast, I stuck my head in the guest room, and was relieved to see Jill sleeping. Angus took Willie for his run while I made oatmeal and toast. After we’d eaten, I poured a mug of coffee and took it up to Jill. “Rise and shine,” I said.
“Just ten more minutes,” she mumbled.
“Not for the bride,” I said.
Jill sat up and took the mug gratefully. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said.
“Proud to be your java-enabler,” I said. “Rapti’s coming by in twenty minutes to work her magic.”
Jill got out of bed, walked over to the mirror, and squinted at herself. “I hope she’s bringing some industrial-strength MAC concealer. She’s got serious work ahead.”
Rapti Lustig didn’t reach for the MAC III, but she did make judicious use of the skills she’d acquired during her ten years as a makeup person at NationTV. She gave Jill and me facials that left us dewy-skinned, and smoothed our deep-conditioned hair into styles that were as elegant as they were understated.
There was nothing subtle about my daughter’s ’do. Using the photo clipped from the magazine as her guide, Rapti spray-gelled and dry-rolled Taylor’s hair into a medusa explosion of ringlets that was nothing short of spectacular. Taylor usually displayed a healthy lack of interest in her appearance, but that morning, she couldn’t take her eyes off herself. As soon as the last spritz of hairspray kissed her curls, she leapt out of the chair. “Okay,” she said, grabbing my hand, “let’s hit the mall.”
Despite my concern about Jill’s marriage, Taylor’s buoyancy was infectious, and I had my own private source of pleasure. A permanent relationship with Gabe Leventhal was out of the question. He and I lived in parallel universes, but, at fifty-five, I was old enough to know that carpe diem wasn’t just a phrase from Latin class. A walk in the snow with a man who could make me laugh was nothing to sneeze at, so I left the house carrying the tool prized by those who know the value of seizing the moment: a cellphone.
Taylor loves malls, and that day I did too. The holiday decorations, the lights, the contact buzz that came from jostling shoppers giddy with impossible last-minute quests, and – a bonus – the chance to scope out the trees that were being raffled off for the symphony’s year-end fundraiser. I was a fan of the symphony, and Taylor was a fan of glitz, so we had bought a dozen tickets. The Scotch pine in our living room was, in my daughter’s opinion, okay but boring, and for two weeks she had fantasized about winning a second more spectacular tree. She had savoured some seductive possibilities before she settled on a feathery confection titled Snowfall at Swan Lake. The draw was that afternoon, so between stops in front of mirrors to verify that her curls were still sizzling, Taylor scrutinized her favourite, while I reminded her that the symphony had sold hundreds of tickets and that winners were promised a tree but not necessarily the tree of their choice. She listened politely, then pointed out that if we moved the parson’s bench and the grandmother clock out of the front hall, there would be a ton of room for Snowfall at Swan Lake. As I checked our home voice mail again to see if there was a message from Gabe, I knew Taylor wasn’t the only one betting against the spread.
The man in the specialty shop gift-wrapped Jill’s garter gratis and gave Taylor a sprig of real holly tied with a tartan bow for her hair, so we were heading home i
n high spirits when we ran into Danny Jacobs, Taylor’s arch-enemy from grade three. The attack was swift and lethal. Danny took in Taylor’s curls and snorted. “You know what you look like? One of those Chia Pets. You know – like on TV – Ch-Chi-Ch-Chia.”
Taylor’s eyes widened in horror, then she raced through the mall doors to the parking lot. On the way home, she slumped miserably in the passenger seat, and as soon as we pulled up in front of the house, she ripped the holly out of her hair and bolted. By the time I got inside, she had disappeared, and Angus was standing at the foot of the stairs, shaking his head. “What’s with Taylor? She blazed by me without saying anything. She didn’t even take off her jacket and boots.”
“We ran into Danny Jacobs in the mall,” I said. “He told your sister her new hairstyle made her look like a Chia Pet.”
The corners of Angus’s mouth twitched.
“If you’re going to laugh, go outside,” I said. “Taylor’s already suffered enough.”
When I heard the sound of the shower, I started upstairs. “I’d better see how she’s doing,” I said. “By the way, were there any calls when we were out?”
“A couple for Jill. She seemed kind of upset.”
“Did she say why?”
“Nope. She just said she needed some fresh air. She put Willie on his leash and took off for the park.” Angus lowered his voice. “Do you know what I think? I think she may have changed her mind about getting married.”
My pulse quickened. “What makes you say that?”
“Last night, Bryn told me Jill and her father aren’t in love.”
“Does Bryn think they shouldn’t get married?”
Angus shrugged. “I don’t think she cares. The only thing Bryn’s interested in is moving to New York.”
Remembering how Jill glowed when she talked about having a daughter, my heart sank. Last night Evan had said Jill had to take the father to get the daughter. Now it seemed the daughter had to take Jill to get her New York Moment. Expediency all around. In my opinion, it was a hell of a way to start a new life.
