She glanced sideways at him. Perhaps she had overrated openness. “He was diabetic. His kidneys failed.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “When?”
“A year ago. In two weeks it’ll be a year.”
“Was he a lot older?”
“He was thirty-three.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes.
“What was he like?”
“He was an artist. He had a very good eye.”
“He painted?”
“He used oils mostly. He was starting to work with acrylics — they dry instantly and you’ve got to be fast with them. He knew he was running out of time.”
“You still miss him. A year is very little. A year is no time at all.”
“People expect me to have moved on. They think a year is enough.”
He took her arm and looped it through his as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “People who haven’t gone through it don’t understand. This kind of pain doesn’t go away.”
She stopped and turned to him, her breath suddenly ragged. “It has to go away. I can’t live like this.”
The blue of his eyes had turned navy, the ends of his mouth stiffened. He lifted his hand and stroked her hair. “Time will help. Time will dull the pain. And Sarah. You’re lucky you have Sarah to help you through it.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. Idiotic tears. “I can’t talk to her about it. I think she blames me. I didn’t catch it in time. The diabetes.” She swiped viciously at a tear sliding down her cheek.
The same hand that had stroked her hair now touched her back and tentatively pressed her forward into an embrace. A cautious, unaccustomed movement, as if it had been a long time since he’d held a woman. In the middle of the dark sidewalk, his arms stretched around hers, uncertain and protective at the same time.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
chapter eight
Michael took St. Clair Avenue home. It was a fair distance from his neck of the woods, but traffic was light after eleven and he was exuberant. Rebecca had felt so right in his arms, formidable yet diffident, vulnerable, melancholy, but authoritative. A bundle of contradictions. The knowing way she had examined his six-fingered hand without revulsion, the attention she’d paid to his words, the sad light in her wise brown eyes. And he was embarrassed to say it, but her Jewishness tantalized him. He had known beautiful Jewish women in his time, but none he would have considered for himself. None who had intrigued him enough to cross over the boundaries of culture and religion. Not that he was religious at all. He never went to church, not even on the holidays. He hadn’t asked her about her faith. Yet he felt the chasm between them; he was ready, no eager, to leap across.
She was much younger than he, but she seemed to find him attractive. He was still in good shape, he mused. He was on the wrong side of fifty, but he still had all his hair, and though he had filled out since his younger days, he had kept slim and watched what he ate. Yes, she could find him desirable, her eyes showed him that.
As he drove along St. Clair past Dufferin, his nose began to twitch. The stench was coming. It rose in the air like a spectre, wraith-like at first, blocks from the source. Then, at Keele Street, wham! The full fury of the smell infiltrated the car, his nostrils, his brain, as he passed the stockyards. During the day the long, low wooden buildings, like cattle cars, stretched for what seemed miles along the south side of St. Clair. But at night, the stink of blood and sinew, the shadows between streetlamps, turned them into the desultory trains that rolled through wartime Poland filled with people destined for death. He remembered walking with his father near the estate early in the war, both wary as a train lumbered past, his father whispering about the inevitability of human cargo. They were blessedly ignorant then of the train that would take them away after the war, deep into the Siberian wasteland where Michael would watch both his parents die. He had been pulled back to his youth this week with Halina’s arrival. His past was never far behind him, but he found himself sinking unwillingly into moments he had quite forgotten. The manor house outside Kraków, 1940. His father beaming as Natalka was baptized.
The Nazis had outlawed public baptisms for two years, since their occupation, so just a handful of people had been invited to the secret ceremony. The war was encroaching steadily from the city, and it was prudent to be furtive.
His mother and father standing in as godparents. Halina with her luscious blonde hair and tasteful city suit gazing in worship at Natalka, who fidgeted and whim-pered in her godfather’s arms during the whole ceremony. Janek, the baby’s father, was barely mentioned. He had joined the Polish Home Army shortly after the invasion and no one had heard from him since. The baby was nearly a year old, too big for the christening dress that had been handed down from Aunt Klara’s daughter. So Michael’s mother had one of the peasant women sew a christening dress out of a lacy shawl for her. A silken wisp of Natalka’s hair strayed from under the bonnet as she wriggled and sobbed in the arms that held her.
The priest, dressed in his alb and chasuble, paid no attention to the fuss. A fringe of white hair encircled his scalp He spoke slowly, pronouncing every word but without expression: “Natalka, what do you ask of the Church of God?”
Michael wondered if the priest knew about his father and Halina. If he did, he made no indication. Michael glanced at his mother. Her thick brown hair was pinned at the nape of her neck. She was still beautiful, her features delicate, like his own. Her large grey eyes didn’t stray from the priest; betrayed nothing. Michael couldn’t fathom it. Why didn’t she fight?
Michael’s father answered, “Fidem.” Faith.
What is faith to you, Michael wondered, marvelling at his father’s composure. His nerve.
The priest traced the sign of the cross with his thumb on the baby’s forehead and chest, saying, “Accipe signum Crucis tam in fronte, quam in corde… Receive the sign of the cross upon your forehead and upon your heart. And this sign of the holy Cross which we put upon your forehead, do thou, foul spirit, never dare to violate. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. Evil spirit, get thee gone, for God’s judgment is upon thee.”
If only the devils that were abroad could be gotten rid of so easily, Michael thought.
“Natalka, do you renounce Satan?”
His father answered, “Abrenuntio.” I do renounce him.
“And all his works?”
“Abrenuntio.”
“And all his pomps?”
“Abrenuntio.”
“Natalka, do you believe in God the Father, almighty creator of heaven and earth?”
His father answered, “Credo.” I do believe.
“Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was born into this world and who suffered for us?”
“Credo.”
The priest took Natalka from her godfather’s arms and held her over the baptismal font. The baby gave a mournful cry. Then the priest took the sacred water and poured it three times over her head in the form of a cross.
“Natalka, I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”
With his thumb, the priest anointed the baby’s forehead in the form of a cross.
“Peace be with you. Amen.”
But peace never came. Foul spirits had arrived in German uniforms and brought their own version of hell. A sense of foreboding hung over the quiet celebration in his parents’ house after the service. Halina’s parents bowing and scraping to his, nibbling carefully on the food laid out on the banquet table, though they were hungry. Halina knew who to latch on to. Everyone was suffering, but Michael’s parents, who managed the estate, could demand their share of eggs and milk and potatoes from the peasants to avoid starvation. Halina had always known which side her bread was buttered on. She’d arrived with an eight-month-old baby and immediately gravitated toward the estate manager. But why had it been so important for her to baptize Natalka? She’d never been a religious woman, that was
obvious. And she was putting everyone at risk with the request. If someone had had the inclination to betray them, they could all have been dragged away to be shot. Michael remembered how his father had made a point of paying more attention to the baby than to her mother, but Michael understood (as did everyone else there) that in the heart of the night his father would share Halina’s bed.
Michael found it hard to forgive her. She had saved his life later when he’d been forced to flee and live in the forest. But she had humiliated his mother. She hadn’t done that by herself. His father had a history of other women. Drinking, gambling, and women, a prerogative of the aristocrat, money or no. The only difference between her and the others was that Michael knew Halina. He would have to work harder at forgetting the past. It did no one any good to dredge up old grievances. Life went on.
He drove down Baby Point Road toward home. The street was perfectly quiet at this hour, a few lights on behind curtains. As he pulled into his driveway he noticed a car with vintage fins from the sixties parked in front of his house. If he hadn’t been so distracted, it would have raised alarm bells. He opened the garage door using his remote, then drove in.
The air was brisk at midnight compared to the balmy day. He hoped the sun would shine tomorrow so that his guests could go swimming. He would ply them with wine; that would warm them up in case the weather didn’t cooperate. He was about to fit his key into the lock when steps sounded behind him. He swung around, taken by surprise.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
A tall man moved up his walk toward him in the dark.
“What do you want?” He turned back to the door, frantically trying to push his key in when the man spoke.
“Hello, Mr. Oginski.”
The key moved. The door was unlocked. Now what? If he opened the door the man could force his way inside. Michael would stand his ground.
“What do you want?”
The man was tall but thin, in a black T-shirt with a plaid shirt thrown over. His face was too large for the rest of him, with a pasty complexion, curly dark hair beneath the porch light.
“I know it’s late, Mr. O, but I been waiting. I need to talk to you. I’m Claude Simard.” He said this as if it would mean something to Michael.
When Michael didn’t respond, he said, “I’m the one wrote the letter. I been waiting a long time.”
Michael remembered the letter, but it had been addressed to his office. How had he found out where Michael lived?
“It’s a little late for visitors,” Michael said. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”
The man began to cough. Despite his size, he wasn’t in good shape. His large white face turned red and disfigured as he continued to cough. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and held it over his mouth.
It wasn’t an act. The man was a miner and, as Michael recalled from the letter, unwell. He hesitated, but Simard continued to sputter into his handkerchief. Chiding himself for paranoia, he led the man inside, bringing him to the kitchen where he poured a glass of water. The man gulped it down and finally stopped coughing. Wiped his face with the handkerchief. His hazel eyes shone with effort.
“You all right?”
“Happens all the time,” he said. “Can’t work no more. On disability. That’s why I’m here.”
It occurred to Michael that the coughing fit had been very convenient and now he’d let the man into the house.
Simard stuffed the handkerchief into a back pocket and studied Michael. “You know, I used to be a sturdy guy, muscles in my arms and a bit of a beer belly here.” He patted his flat stomach. “But I have to tell you, Mr. Oginski. I’m dying. It’s my lungs.”
So here it was. Right on his doorstep. Finally. “I’m sorry,” Michael said.
“Sorry ain’t enough. I can’t support my family on Workman’s Comp.” The man’s eyes widened in anger, accused Michael. “I need help.”
“Look, I don’t think you understand. There’s not much I can do, Mr.…”
The man banged his hand down on the kitchen table. “You can start by telling the truth! All them years the company lied to us. They told us the air was safe. We was going down into that mine day in, day out, year after year. And every minute we was breathing in that air, it was killing us. I’m a dead man and the company killed me.”
The man’s eyes burned in his head, and Michael felt ashamed under their glare. “Nobody knew in those days,” he said. “We were learning as we went along.”
“They knew ten years ago!” the man said. “They knew twenty years ago. They just wouldn’t spend the money to put down another shaft. Right from the start all he wanted was to get stinking rich. He put the shaft right through the ore deposit so when we crushed it and brought it up, we breathed in all the dust. No other company did that. You must know. You’re supposed to dig the shaft alongside the deposit so the workers aren’t right in there with the dust and crap. How much would it eat into his profits to put in another shaft? How much is a man’s life worth?”
Michael looked away. There was nothing he could say. The man may have had a point, but he, himself, had had little say in Baron’s business, let alone the design or running of the mine. When he’d first starting working for Janek he’d spent some time up north with prospectors, checking out claims. But for over twenty years, since they had hit it big with uranium, Michael had worked in Toronto in a cushy office far from the mines and the miners. How was he going to get this man out of his house?
Simard tilted his head on an angle. “You don’t remember me, do you? I was one of the juniors at the union table years ago when I could still stomach that kind of stuff. At the King Eddy Hotel. Jeez, my eyes bugged out when I got in there. I’m a real small-town guy. Never seen anything like it. Those chandeliers! Never seen so many mine managers snarling neither. They were real hard-asses. All except you. You were the only one that looked human.”
That was exactly why Michael hadn’t lasted in negotiations with the union. Janek insisted on hard noses when dealing with the United Steelworkers. Don’t budge an inch. They’ll take a mile. Janek usually won. Even when he lost, he won. Like when he had to pay the workers more, the government coughed up the difference because they needed the uranium to sell to the American military. Janek managed to profit even from the Cold War. He liked to say he had a horseshoe up his ass. Crude but accurate.
“But maybe I was wrong about you,” the man said. “You were just as bad as they were. Maybe worse. You knew better, but you didn’t do nothing.”
Michael looked into the man’s large white face, wishing he could say something that would make him go away.
“I’m desperate,” the man said. “You’re my only hope.” He looked around the kitchen, through the entrance to the dining room. “Nice house you got. Lots of nice stuff. Do you know what it’s like, not to know if you can feed your family tomorrow? You’ve got to help me. I’m not leaving till you help me.”
The phone rang shrilly, sudden in the tense air. Michael didn’t know who was calling him at midnight, but he was grateful for the distraction. The man’s hazel eyes stayed on him as he moved gingerly toward the far wall to reach the phone.
“Michael? To jest Michael?” A woman’s hurried voice.
He had to switch gears to answer in Polish. “Tak… Halina?”
“I have something to tell you,” she said in Polish. “Very important. Wait, I hear something. Just a minute.” She left the phone for an instant. “Can’t talk now. I will call later.” She hung up.
“Yes.” Michael continued in English into the drone of the dial tone. “You’re coming over now? I understand. Yes, of course, that’s fine. I’ll be waiting.” He hung up the receiver with a great show of concern.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the man. “You’ll have to go.”
He drew his wallet from his pants pocket and peeled off four twenty-dollar bills. He held them out to the man. “I’ll talk to Baron. Can’t promise you anything.”
> The man stared at the money, then at Michael until he became very uncomfortable.
“You think you can buy me off like that?”
chapter nine
Rebecca was surprised at how easy it had been to slide behind the wheel of the Camaro and drive away as if it were 1969 again. Funny how the car brought it all back: planning out their wedding, her last year of medical school, David setting up a studio in their new apartment. Life was just beginning. The Camaro had been a present from her in-laws. David drove her down to class in it. The car hadn’t changed much, a bit of wear on the driver’s seat. Only everything else had changed.
She glanced at Sarah beside her in the flowered cotton skirt and blouse. She also looked the same, but Rebecca knew better, recognized the painful rearranging of a psyche through some mirror image. Another reason to stay away — avoid herself in Sarah’s eyes.
Rebecca had arrived at her mother-in-law’s house early Saturday afternoon, wearing a bathing suit under her shorts and top. She hadn’t gone swimming for two years and had felt a stab of elation just pulling the suit on, the remnant of memory from carefree days on Georgian Bay. Halina was sleeping off a late night with Janek. Rebecca had asked no questions, didn’t really want to know. So the three of them went on without her. Sarah said she was tired — had worn herself out baking poppy seed cookies to take with them, the perfect guest — and would Rebecca drive them to Michael’s house. The two-seater Jag was not an option. Natalka climbed into the back of the Camaro.
Rebecca drove west along St. Clair, the afternoon sun blazing down on the roof of the car. She turned on the vents and opened her window a bit, waiting for directions from her navigator.
Sarah opened up the orange Perly’s map book on her lap. “You can stay on St. Clair all the way to Jane, then make a left turn. It’s just a few blocks south of there.” She opened her window part way. “Is it too windy?” she asked Natalka, half-turning to the back.
“No, it’s fine.”
Rebecca glanced in her rearview mirror. Natalka had pinned her white hair up in the back, but some loose strands flew around her face. Their eyes met. “It’s fine,” she said to Rebecca’s unasked question.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 32
