by Gail Bowen
From my kitchen window I could see the creek that separated my neighbourhood, Old Lakeview, from Justine Blackwell’s, an area of handsomely curved, pleasingly landscaped streets known, accurately if unimaginatively, as The Crescents. Justine Blackwell’s home was almost at the end of Leopold Crescent. I had walked by her place a hundred times, and I’d never ceased to admire it. It was a heritage house and unique: cobalt-blue Spanish-tile roof, white stucco walls artfully studded with decorative tiles, and windows of styles so varied and delightful that I’d once taken a book on turn-of-the century architecture out of the public library just to look them up. Their names had been as evocative as the windows themselves: Oriel, Lancet, Mullioned, Œil-de-bœuf, Catherine wheel.
The front door of 717 Leopold Crescent was oak, framed at the top by a graceful semicircular window that my reading had taught me was known as fanlight. The effect was, as Eric Fedoruk would have said, elegant.
From the moment Hilda suggested paying a condolence call on Justine’s family, I had felt an adolescent thrill at the prospect of meeting Lucy Blackwell face to face. Her name summoned forth a kaleidoscope of images that were part of the cultural history of every woman my age. In the youthquake of the late sixties, Lucy had been a Mary Quant girl in thigh-high clear plastic boots and leather mini, her eyes doe-like behind the kohl eyeliner and fake eyelashes, her hair ironed into smooth sheets the colour of pulled taffy.
She had been a ripe sixteen when she recorded the first song that brought her recognition. The song was called “Lilacs,” and she had written it herself. Its subject, the painful process of losing a first love to a heartless rival, was an adolescent cliché, but Lucy’s treatment of the angst-ridden convention rocked between low farce and elegy, and her voice was a husky sensation.
In the seventies, shod in sandals hand-tooled in Berkeley by people who’d got their priorities straight and wearing granny gowns of hand-dyed batik, Lucy had woven flowers in her hair and sung songs of misplaced faith and love gone wrong that became anthems for a generation of middle-class kids raised in the warm sunshine of Dr. Spock but yearning for the storm of sexual adventure. We mined the lyrics of each new song for autobiographical details. Was that “singin’ man” who left her on the beach, “cryin’ and dyin’ as the tide washed in,” James Taylor or Dylan? When she sang of “that small white room where I left behind a gift I could never retrieve,” was she remembering the abortion clinic in which, it was whispered, she had gone to have Mick Jagger’s baby cut away? It was heady stuff.
When the decade ended, she settled down somewhere on Saltspring Island with a man none of us had ever heard of and announced she was going to raise a family and write an opera for children. For a time she disappeared, and it seemed Lucy Blackwell was destined to become a candidate for a trivia-quiz answer. Then, in the early eighties, she surfaced again. She was alone and empty-handed: no man, no babies, no opera, but there was savage light in her eyes and a new and feral quality in her voice. Within a year, she’d written the score for a movie and the music for an off-Broadway show; both were hits. She was back, and with her beautiful hair permed into an explosion of Botticelli curls, her body hard-muscled from feel-the-burn exercise, and her voice knife-edged with danger, she was the very model of the eighties woman.
For three decades, Lucy Blackwell had been the first to catch the wave, but the woman who stood before me that Labour Day afternoon seemed to have left trendiness behind. She was barefoot, wearing bluejean cut-offs and a man’s white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal a dynamite tan. Her eyes were extraordinary, so startlingly green-blue that they were almost turquoise, and her shoulder-length hair shone with the lustre of dark honey. Lucy was a Saskatchewan-born forty-five-year-old, but she had the long-limbed agelessness of the prototypical all-American girl.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, extending her hand. She was holding an old-fashioned scrub brush, and when she noticed it, she laughed with embarrassment and lifted it in the air. “Trying to fix what can’t be fixed,” she said distractedly. “I’m Lucy Blackwell. Won’t you come in?”
Hilda and I followed her through the entranceway and down the hall. The parquet floors along which we walked were scuffed and sticky underfoot, and the air was heavy with the rotting-fruit smell of forgotten garbage. “I hope you don’t mind if we visit in the dining room,” Lucy said. “My mother had some curious guests in the last year. The dining room’s the only room in the house that doesn’t look as if 2 Live Crew has been playing a concert in it.”
The room was a damaged beauty. A wall broken by lancet windows looked out onto the yard. The shell-pink silk curtains that bracketed the view were coolly ethereal, but they were stained at child level. A rose Berber carpet that must have cost a king’s ransom was discoloured by the kind of patches that are left by dog urine. Lucy motioned us to sit down at the mahogany dining table. The creamy needlepoint on the backs and seats of the chairs was soiled, but the wood gleamed and there was a scent of lemon oil in the air. A bucket of soapy water rested on a stool near the sideboard.
“I’ve been scouring away in here all day,” Lucy said. “But no matter what I try, nothing seems to help.” She pointed with her brush. “Look at them,” she said, indicating walls covered in silk of a pink so delicate the colour seemed almost illusory. Figures were woven into the fabric: Ruben-esque women, epicurean and lush. The wall-covering must have been a treasure once, but someone had desecrated the women’s bodies. Crude breasts and genitalia were drawn in marker over the delicate lines in the fabric. Lucy had obviously been scrubbing at them; the places where she had worked were marked by ugly spoors of damp colour.
“When we were young, my mother wouldn’t allow us to eat in this room. It was for adults only,” she said. There was an intimate teasing quality in Lucy’s voice that seemed to draw us into her orbit. “But if my parents had a dinner party,” she continued, “my father would call us down to meet the guests. It was so exciting. Of course, my sisters and I would be all shined up for bed. I can still remember how soft the rug felt under my bare feet when we trooped in to be introduced. It was always so shadowy and scary in the hall, but the candles in here would be blazing.”
“ ‘Three little girls in virgin’s white, swimming through darkness, longing for light,” I said.
Lucy shot me a radiant smile. “You remembered.”
“ ‘My Daddy’s Party’ is a pretty memorable song,” I said.
“Thanks. That means a lot. Especially now.” She looked around the room, and when she spoke again, her voice quivered with rage and hurt. “I haven’t been in this room in years. Somehow, I’d hoped on this visit …” She swallowed hard. “Too late now. We’ll never get things back the way they were. Metaphors aren’t much fun in real life.”
“Perhaps you should get professionals in to do this work,” Hilda said gently. “As you’re discovering, a home is a powerful symbol for those who live within it.”
Lucy ran her fingers through her hair. “I guess that’s why my sister Signe thinks trying to put things right in these rooms is good therapy for me. My other sister says it’s a way of making up for my sins of omission.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter what I think. The prodigal daughter doesn’t get a vote.” She laughed sadly. “I’m forgetting my manners. Can I get you a drink? The Waterford crystal my father bought my mother on their honeymoon is pretty much a write-off, but there must be a jam-jar or two around.”
“We’re fine,” Hilda said. “Mrs. Kilbourn and I aren’t planning to stay, but, Lucy, there is something I’d like to talk to you and your sisters about. Will they be able to join us?”
“Signe will. Tina isn’t seeing people right now.”
Lucy left to get her sister, and I walked over and looked out at the scene framed by the window. Zinnias, asters, and marigolds, prides of the late summer garden, shimmered in the gold September haze. A boy pushing a power-mower made lazy passes across the lawn
. Heat hung in the air. Hilda came and stood beside me. The scene was idyllic, but I could feel my friend’s fury.
“Why would anyone set that poor woman the Sisyphean task of cleaning up this disaster and tell her it was her way of making up for what she did or failed to do?” she asked.
“She does seem to be near the breaking point,” I said.
“My sister doesn’t break.”
The voice, as huskily melodic as Lucy’s, came from behind us. I turned, expecting to greet a stranger, but I knew the woman standing in the entrance to the dining room. Eli Kequahtooway had introduced us. She was his therapist.
“Hello, Dr. Rayner,” I said.
She gazed at me, perplexed. “You’ll have to forgive me,” she said, “I don’t remember …”
“There’s no reason to,” I said. “We only met once – at the Cornwall Centre. I’m Joanne Kilbourn, a friend of Eli Kequahtooway’s.”
“Of course,” she said. “I remember thinking Eli must be fond of you to bring you over to me.”
“I hope he is,” I said. “I’m certainly fond of him. Dr. Rayner, this is my friend Hilda McCourt.”
She took Hilda’s hand. “It’s Signe – please. My mother spoke of you often, Miss McCourt, and always with great respect.”
“I’m flattered,” Hilda said evenly. “Your mother was an extraordinary woman.”
Signe Rayner gave Hilda an odd little smile. “There’s no disputing that,” she said drily. She gestured towards the dining-room table. “Shall we continue this conversation sitting down?”
Her offer seemed to be as much for her benefit as ours. She was a large woman, as tall as Lucy but much heavier, so heavy, in fact, that standing for any length of time must have been uncomfortable for her. She was wearing an ivory-and-black African-print gown which had affinities to both the muumuu and the caftan without being either. She had been wearing the garment’s twin, in shades of coffee and taupe, the day Eli introduced her to me in the mall. Signe Rayner had impressed me then as a woman of self-confident authority, but it appeared her ability to dominate situations didn’t extend to her family.
Lucy Blackwell came back into the room just as her sister pulled out a chair at the head of the table. As Signe settled in, Lucy’s smile was wicked. “You’ll notice how Signe chooses the seat of command. She’s a psychiatrist, so watch your step.”
Hilda’s eyes widened. “A psychiatrist,” she said, settling into the chair to Signe’s right. “Your mother presented me with a book last night: a review of geriatric psychiatry. It was a medical text. Did you give it to her?”
Signe Rayner met Hilda’s gaze. “I did. At her request.”
“When did she ask you for it?”
Signe rubbed at a whorl in the mahogany table with her fingertip. “At the beginning of August. We have a family cottage up at Little Bear Lake. We take turns using it, but we always reserve the first weekend in August to be together – just the four of us. I’d been concerned about my mother’s behaviour for months. I’d suggested she see a colleague of mine who specializes in geriatric patients, but my mother refused.” Signe’s brow furrowed. “She was quite vehement. She insisted that a change in the way one chose to live one’s life was not necessarily an indicator of a progressive dementing disorder.”
Hilda leaned forward with interest. “Did she use that term?”
“Oh yes,” Signe said. “When it came to areas that touched her life, my mother believed in acquiring expert knowledge.”
“Oedipus had great knowledge too,” Hilda said gently. “He was even able to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, yet he never truly knew himself. That was the source of his tragedy.”
Lucy twisted a hank of her hair around her finger. “Do you think my mother didn’t know herself?”
Hilda smiled enigmatically, then she turned to Signe Rayner. “Perhaps you have an opinion?”
Signe shrugged. “I was trying to formulate one up at the lake. There are a number of standard tests that are used to determine mental status.”
“And Justine agreed to be tested?” Hilda asked.
Signe Rayner looked rueful. “She wasn’t supposed to notice. I was trying to be unobtrusive.”
“Blending into the wallpaper isn’t exactly your strong suit, Signe.” Lucy Blackwell pushed back her chair and drew up one of her legs so that its heel rested on her other leg. Her legs were beautiful, long and shapely. The pose seemed deliberatively provocative. She was, I realized, one of those people whose every encounter is surrounded by an erotic haze. She gazed at her sister with interest. “To be fair, the time for subtlety did seem to be over. I hadn’t seen Mummy since the summer before, but her life really had become quite bizarre.”
“That’s why Tina and I had been calling you for almost a year asking you to come back,” Signe said.
“I had obligations.”
“We hoped your obligation to your family might take priority.”
“Families,” Lucy said. She shot me a conspiratorial glance; then, in a voice that was thrillingly familiar, she sang, “ ‘You can slam the door and walk away, but you’re still trapped in their photo albums.’ “ She looked at me expectantly.
“ ‘Picture Time,’ ” I said. “From the first album.”
Signe glared at me. “Don’t encourage her,” she said sternly. She turned to Hilda. “Miss McCourt, you said Mother gave you my handbook on geriatric psychiatry. Did she explain why she wanted you to have it?”
“Justine wanted me to decide whether her mental faculties were intact.”
“Isn’t the fact that she dragged you into this proof that her mental faculties weren’t intact?” Lucy’s frustration was evident. “I mean no disrespect, Miss McCourt, but from what Signe tells me, you weren’t that close to my mother. She had friends and family here. Doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that she felt she couldn’t go to the people who knew her best?”
“Not at all,” Hilda said flatly. “It strikes me as eminently sensible. Your mother knew me as a person of probity who had no axe to grind. Now, let’s deal with the situation at hand. When Eric Fedoruk came to see me this afternoon, we talked about the task your mother set me.”
“Eric came to see you?” Lucy leaped to her feet. She seemed close to tears. “He hasn’t even returned our calls.”
Signe Rayner half-rose from her chair. “Lucy, don’t.”
“Why not? What did he tell you about us, Miss McCourt?”
“That’s enough, Lucy.” Signe’s voice was commanding. “We can talk about this later.”
Lucy walked over to Hilda. “Miss McCourt, don’t believe everything you hear.”
At close to five-foot-eleven, Lucy was almost a foot taller than my old friend, but Hilda took charge of the situation. “I’ve learned to make my own assessments of people, Lucy. Now, while I’m truly sorry for your loss, my purpose in coming here this afternoon is not simply to commiserate. Last night, when your mother gave me Signe’s book, she also gave me a note authorizing me to do what I deemed necessary to protect her interests.” Hilda turned to Signe. “I came here today to let all of you know that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
Lucy and Signe exchanged glances, then Signe thanked us, quite formally, for coming, and she and Lucy saw us out.
Silenced by the misery we had felt in Justine Blackwell’s home, Hilda and I walked down the front path. Out of nowhere, another image from “Picture Time” flashed through my mind. “Our last smiles frozen in Kodachrome.” As we turned onto the sidewalk, I found myself thinking that there wasn’t much about painful leave-takings that Lucy Blackwell didn’t understand.
Hilda’s musings had obviously been running parallel to mine. “Two very unhappy women,” she said. “And I don’t believe the genesis of their problems was their mother’s death.”
“No,” I agreed. “Whatever’s troubling the Blackwell sisters goes way back.”
Hilda touched my arm. “And there’s more trouble coming to them,” she said. “Look over there.
”
A van painted in the style of comic-book high realism that Taylor’s art teacher called jailhouse art had pulled up across the road. The vehicle was, by anyone’s reckoning, a mean machine, and as its driver bounded out and started towards us, there was no denying that he was one tough customer. He was of middle height, with a shaved head, a full moustache, and the powerful physique of a bodybuilder.
As he brushed past us, I saw that the parts of his skin not hidden by his Levi’s and white V-necked T-shirt were purpley-blue with tattoos. He vaulted up the front steps of the Blackwell house and knocked on the door.
“Another condolence call,” I said.
“I wonder what the Blackwell sisters will make of this one?” Hilda said. She turned to me. “I assume you can guess at that man’s identity, Joanne.”
“Wayne J. Waters?”
“In the flesh,” Hilda said.
Patient as a choirboy, Wayne J. waited for someone to respond to his knock on the door. When it was apparent that no answer was forthcoming, he pounded his closed fist into the open palm of his other hand and headed back down the walk.
As his van screeched back towards Albert Street, the words painted in red on the back of the vehicle leaped out at me: “Every Saint Has a Past. Every Sinner Has a Future.” It seemed Lucy Blackwell hadn’t cornered the market on folk wisdom.
That night, after Taylor’s school clothes were laid out for the next day her backpack filled with her new school supplies, and she’d been bathed and tucked into bed with her cats, Bruce and Benny, and Hilda had been rung in to tell the next adventure in the ongoing saga of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I drove over to Alex’s apartment on Lorne Street, and we made love.
