by Gail Bowen
When Alex called, I was still mystified, but the words on the page were starting to swim in front of me, and I knew it was time for bed. Alex sounded as tired as I felt.
“Glad you went home?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’m glad I was there, but I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”
“How’s your nephew?”
“Immortal,” he said. “Like all kids his age are. That’s why they can drink and sniff and snort and speed and screw without protection.”
“You sound as if you’ve had enough.”
“That doesn’t mean there’s not more coming. Jo, sometimes I get so goddamn sick of these little pukes. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’m sick of going to their funerals.”
“Is it that bad with your nephew?”
“I hope not. Jo, I’d really rather not talk about this.”
“Okay,” I said. “Come over, and we don’t have to say a word. That’s the advantage real life has over telephones.”
He laughed. “It’s a tempting offer, but I’d better not. Even without words, I’d be lousy company tonight.”
“Then come tomorrow morning,” I said. “I don’t have to teach till ten-thirty, and the kids leave for school at eight.”
“I’ll be there,” he said. “Count on it.”
CHAPTER
6
When I first met Alex Kequahtooway, there was nothing to suggest that he would be a terrific lover. He was knowledgeable and passionate about serious music, but he was guarded in his response to everything else. We went out for three months before we were intimate, and during that time of coming to know one another, he was kind but almost formally correct with me. After we became lovers, the kindness continued, but it was allied with an eroticism that awed and delighted me. Alice Munro differentiates between those who can go only a little way with the act of love and those “who can make a greater surrender, like the mystics.” Alex was one of love’s mystics, and that morning as I lay in bed beside him, breathing in the scent of the narcissi blooming in front of the open window, listening to Dennis Brain play the opening notes of a horn concerto on the radio, I was at peace.
He took my hand, leaned over and kissed me. “Mozart,” he said. “The second-best way to start the day.”
It was a little after 10:00 when I nosed into my parking spot at the university. The test I was about to give was on my desk, and I checked it to make sure it was typo- and jargon-free, then I went down to the Political Science office. I needed exam booklets, and I wanted to make copies of a hand-out for my senior class. As I counted out the exam booklets, I was still humming Mozart.
When Rosalie Norman, the departmental admin assistant, saw me at the copying machine, she hustled me out of the way. “I’ll do that. Every time you faculty use it, something goes wrong, and I’m the one who has to call the company and then try to figure out whose secretary I can sweet-talk into doing your photocopying until the repairman decides to show up.”
On the best of days, Rosalie was not a sunny person, but that morning, even the most casual observer would have seen that she had a right to be cranky. Over the weekend, she had got herself a new and very bad permanent. Her previously smooth salt-and-pepper pageboy was now tightly coiled into what my older daughter, Mieka, called a “Kurly Kate do,” after the girl on the pot-scrubber box.
I tried not to stare. “Rosalie, if you have a spare minute later on, would you mind getting me an extra key for my office?”
Her blackberry eyes shone with suspicion. “What do you need an extra key for?”
“I’m going to be sharing with Professor Mariani until the Journalism offices are straightened around.”
She sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to go over to Physical Plant in person, you know. They don’t just give out those keys to anybody. More sweet-talking. I’ll probably be there half the morning.”
I considered the situation. Rosalie Norman had a choleric disposition, and for the foreseeable future, she was stuck with the permanent from hell. Chances that her day would ever begin as mine just had, with world-class love-making, were slim to nil.
I patted her hand. “I’ll go over to Physical Plant,” I said. “No use wasting your morning sucking up to an office full of sourpusses.”
A smile flickered across her lips so quickly that I was left wondering if I’d just imagined it. “Thanks,” she said, then she leaned over the copier, scooped up my copies and slid them into a file folder. “The next time you need copying done, put it on my desk in the tray marked ‘copying.’ We have a system around here, you know.”
The phone was ringing when I got back to my office. It was Ed Mariani.
“I’ve told our admin assistant you’re moving in,” I said, “and I’m just about to phone Physical Plant for your key.”
He laughed. “And I pride myself on being a Virgo. I really do appreciate your generosity, Joanne. I know it’s not going to be easy having somebody else lumbering around your office. Now, I’m afraid I have another favour to ask.”
“Ask away. You’ve already softened me up with your Clare Boothe Luce allusion.”
“Thanks,” he said. “It’s about Kellee Savage. She wasn’t in my class this morning. Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but I want to get these interviews started, and Kellee’s the logical person to start with. If she shows up for Politics and the Media, would you get her to give me a call at home?”
“Sure,” I said. “And, Ed, don’t worry about the lumbering. I’m looking forward to having you around.” I hung up, called Physical Plant, arranged to pick up an extra office key later in the morning, and set out for class.
After I’d got my Poli Sci 100 students started on their test, I opened my briefcase to take out the senior class’s papers. That’s when I noticed I still had the copy of Sleeping Beauty that Kellee Savage had thrust into my hands on St. Patrick’s Day. As it turned out, there had been more truth than poetry in the image of Kellee Savage as Sleeping Beauty. Her story might have lacked a handsome prince, but she had certainly nabbed the prize that would awaken all her possibilities. When Ed Mariani told her that she had been chosen to live happily ever after, or at least for a semester, in the big city, Kellee was going to be one triumphant young woman.
That afternoon, when I walked into the Politics and the Media seminar and saw that Kellee’s place at the table was still empty, I felt a shiver of annoyance. Kellee had been made the recipient of a shining gift; the least she could do was stop pouting and show up to claim it.
As soon as class got under way, Kellee was banished from my thoughts. It was a spirited hour and a half, not because of the questions I’d prepared for discussion, but because of an item that had dominated the weekend news. Late Friday afternoon, an Ottawa reporter, faced with the choice of revealing the source of some politically damaging documents that had been leaked to her or of going to jail, had revealed her source. Early Sunday morning, the senior bureaucrat the reporter named had jumped off the balcony of a highrise on rue Jacques Cartier. The argument about whether a journalist ever had the right to put self-interest above principle was fervent. Even Jumbo Hryniuk, who usually cast a dim eye on the doings of the non-jock press, grappled vigorously with the ethics of the case. Only one student was not engaged. As the passions swirled about him, Val Massey remained preoccupied and remote. Remembering his father’s casual act of brutality the day before, I was worried.
When the seminar was over, I handed back the essays I’d graded, and as always when papers were returned, I was soon surrounded by a knot of students with questions or complaints. Linda Van Sickle waited till the room had cleared before she came up to me. She was a sweet-faced young woman with honey hair and the glowing good looks that some women are blessed with in the last weeks of pregnancy. In her Birkenstocks, Levi’s, and oversized GAP T-shirt, she was the symbol of hip fertility, a Demeter for the nineties.
I smiled at her. “If you’re here to complain about your grade, you’re out
of luck,” I said. “I think that’s the highest mark I’ve ever given.”
She blushed. “No, I’m very pleased with the mark. I just wanted to ask you about Kellee. I know I should have done something about this sooner, but I did try to call her a couple of times, and I was sure by now I would have run into her.”
“Back up,” I said. “You’ve lost me.”
Linda shook her head in annoyance. “Sorry. I’m not usually this scattered.” She smoothed her shirt over the curve of her stomach. “I’m a little distracted. This morning my doctor told me it’s possible I’m carrying twins.”
“Twins!” I repeated. “That would distract anybody.”
She shrugged. “When we get used to the idea, we’ll be cool with it, but the doctor wants me to have an ultrasound Friday, so I’m going to miss your class, which means it’ll be another week before I can get Kellee’s tape-recorder to her. She left it in the bar Friday night. I picked it up after she left. She was pretty … upset.”
“I know she was in rough shape,” I said. “She phoned me. Linda, I’m aware that Kellee was drinking pretty heavily that night.”
“Then you know why she hasn’t been coming to class or answering her phone.”
“You think she’s ashamed of her behaviour,” I said.
“Yes, and she should be,” Linda said flatly. “I like Kellee, but she wasn’t just blitzed that night at the Owl; she was mean. She was sitting next to me, and I thought if I let her ramble on, she’d give it up after a while, but she never stopped. The worst thing was that the person she was accusing wasn’t there to defend himself.”
“Val Massey,” I said.
“She told you!” Linda’s normally melodic voice was sharp with exasperation. “That really was irresponsible. It’s totally ludicrous, of course. Val could have any woman he wanted on this campus. He’s not only terrific-looking; he’s bright, and he’s sensitive, and he’s kind. There’d be no reason in the world for him to come on to Kellee Savage.”
“That was pretty much my feeling too,” I said. “When Kellee talked to me, I tried not to leap to Val’s defence, but she knew I didn’t believe her.”
Linda looked at me levelly. “No rational person would believe her.”
“That night at the Owl – didn’t anybody realize Kellee needed help?”
“At first we all just thought it was sort of funny. That was the first time any of us ever remembered seeing her in the bar, and there she was, sucking back the Scotch.” Linda wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I don’t know anybody under the age of forty who drinks Scotch, but Kellee said she was drinking it because Professor Gallagher told her that once you acquire a taste for Scotch, you’ll never want anything else. I don’t know whether she acquired the taste that night, but she sure got hammered.”
“Why didn’t somebody take her home?”
“As a matter of fact, I’d just about talked her into letting me drive her back to her place, when Val walked in. That’s when everything went nuts. Kellee ran over to him and started pounding him on the chest and saying these crazy things; then Meaghan Andrechuk discovered Kellee’s tape-recorder whirring away on the seat in the booth where we’d been sitting. Can you believe it? Kellee had been recording the private conversations of people she was in class with the whole evening …”
“Did Kellee ever explain what she was doing?” I asked.
“She didn’t get a chance.” Linda gnawed her lip. “Did you ever read a story called ‘The Lottery’?”
I nodded. “In school. As I remember, it’s pretty chilling.”
“Especially the ending,” Linda agreed, “when everybody in town starts throwing stones at the woman who is the scapegoat. There were no stones Friday night, but there might as well have been. Everybody had had too much to drink, and Kellee didn’t help matters. Instead of apologizing, she started shouting that she was the only one of us who was doing real journalism, and she was going to show us all. She was so loud the manager came over and threatened to throw her out.”
I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the image. “It must have been awful.”
Linda’s gaze was steady. “It got worse. Kellee started arguing with the manager. He was really patient, but she kept pushing it. Finally, he gave up and asked one of the women who worked in the bar to help him get Kellee into a cab. They were trying to put Kellee’s coat on her when Meaghan came back from the bathroom and said there’d been a bulletin on TV: Professor Gallagher was dead. Kellee went white and ran out of the bar. She left this.” Linda opened her knapsack and took out the tape-recorder that I recognized from class as Kellee’s. “You’ll make sure she gets it, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. “And thanks for bringing it in. It’ll give me an excuse to call her. I know Kellee’s behaviour was pretty rotten, but it’s so close to the end of term. I’d hate to see her lose her year.”
“So would I,” Linda said. “But, Professor Kilbourn, when you talk to Kellee, make sure she understands that she has to stop hounding Val. You saw what he was like in class today. That was Kellee’s doing. I’m sorry that she’s disturbed, but that doesn’t give her licence to ruin Val Massey’s life.”
I thought of Val’s face, pale and expressionless, and the words seemed to form themselves. “You’re right,” I said. “She has to be stopped.”
On my way back to the department, I made a quick trip to Physical Plant and picked up the extra key I needed for Ed Mariani. The woman who handed it to me was friendly and obliging, and I wondered, not for the first time, whether Rosalie Norman would take it amiss if I suggested her life would be smoother if she weren’t so prickly.
When I got back to my office, Val Massey was waiting outside. I was relieved to see him there. I unlocked my door and Val followed me inside. I was grateful that he was giving me a chance to confront the Kellee Savage quandary head on.
“I was just about to make coffee,” I said. “Would you like some?”
“No, thanks,” he murmured.
“Well, at least sit down,” I said, gesturing to the chair across from mine.
He didn’t seem to hear me. He walked over to the window and stood there, wordless and remote, until the silence between us grew awkward.
“You have to be department head before they give you a view of anything other than the parking lot,” I said.
Val turned and looked at me uncomprehendingly.
“That was a joke,” I said.
He smiled and moved towards my bulletin board. I’d filled it with campaign buttons from long-ago elections and with pictures of my kids.
“How many children do you have?” he asked.
“Four,” I said. “The two you met when we came out to Regina Beach, a daughter who’s married and running a catering business in Saskatoon, and a son who’s at the vet college.”
“Have any of your children ever got themselves into a real mess?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ve got into a few real messes myself. It seems to come with living a life.”
He looked so miserable that I wanted to put my arms around him, but I knew that the most prudent course was simply to give him an opening. “Val, you don’t need to be oblique with me,” I said. “I know about Kellee Savage.”
At the sound of her name he recoiled as if he’d taken a blow.
“It’s all right,” I said quickly. “I don’t believe what she’s saying about you. In fact, I’ve decided to talk to her about the damage she’s doing, not just to you but to everybody, including herself.”
“Don’t!” he shouted. The word seemed to explode in the quiet room. Val winced with embarrassment. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper. “Don’t talk to her … please. Don’t get involved.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he ran out of the room.
I went after him, but by the time I got to the door, he was already out of sight. The hall was empty. I was furious: furious at myself for handling the situation bad
ly and furious at Kellee Savage for creating it in the first place.
Ten minutes later, when Ed Mariani stuck his head in, I was still upset.
“Ready for an office-mate?” he asked.
“Am I ever,” I said. “Make yourself at home.” I pointed to the bookshelf nearest the window. “There’s the kettle and the Earl Grey, and, as you can see, the cups and saucers are right next to it.”
“Since everything’s so handy, why don’t I make us some tea?” Ed said. He picked up the kettle and padded out of the office. When he came back, he plugged the kettle in and eased into the student chair across the desk from me. He was such a big man, it was a tight fit.
“Do you want to trade?” I asked.
As he raised himself out of his chair, he smiled at me gratefully. “I’ll try not to be here when you are.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Ed put a bag in each cup, poured in boiling water, then settled happily into my chair.
“So was Kellee Savage in class today?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
Ed raised an eyebrow. “I think I’d better just go ahead and tell the students about their placements. They’ve waited long enough.”
“Yes, they have,” I said, and I was surprised at how acerbic I sounded. “Ed, do you understand why Kellee Savage was the one who got the internship with the Globe?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t, and believe me, ever since I saw her name heading up that list, I’ve wondered what Reed saw in her that I didn’t.”
“She works hard,” I said.
He laughed. “No disputing that,” he said. “But there’s no imagination in her work, nothing that takes you into any deeper understanding of what she’s writing about.”
