by Gail Bowen
This time, there was no mistaking Alex’s anger. “Drop it, Jo. Whether Eli goes to school or not isn’t your concern any more. Friday night you made it pretty clear that you didn’t give a damn about Eli’s problems.”
“I never said that.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“I’m not responsible for what you think you heard.” Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sadness. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”
“Then unless you had a specific reason for calling, maybe we’d better just hang up. Take care of yourself, Jo.”
“You too,” I said, but he didn’t hear me because the line had already gone dead.
Miserable, I walked into the bathroom. I hadn’t learned a thing about Terrence Ducharme, and I had widened the breach between Alex and me. I stepped into the tub, adjusted the shower to its pounding cycle, and tried to wash away the last five minutes of my life.
It didn’t work. As I towelled off, I knew that Alex and I had begun the ugly cycle of wounding each other with every word we spoke. Even the ordinary conversations we’d had in the past suddenly seemed heavy with meaning. I thought of an exchange we’d had the previous spring when we’d been in his office at the police station. Except for a medicine wheel, a CD player, and his collection of classical CDS, Alex’s office was spartan and impersonal, and I’d paid him a half-rueful compliment about his ability to hang on to what mattered and leave the rest behind. His reply had been far from light-hearted. He said that he never left anything behind and that the only way he could function was to keep the externals of his life uncomplicated.
I flattened my hand against the bathroom mirror, cleaned a circle in the shower fog, and stared at my reflection. I didn’t like what I saw: an almost fifty-one-year-old woman who had become extraneous, a complication in the life of the man she loved, or thought she loved.
When I walked into my bedroom to get dressed, Taylor was lying on my bed in her nightie, kicking her feet in the air and talking on the phone in the declamatory tones she reserved for adults.
“She’s the same,” my younger daughter said, “but Jo says that’s okay for now. Jo says as soon as Hilda can have visitors, Angus and me can go see her.” Taylor spotted me, jackknifed her legs in and swung her body around so she was sitting on the side of the bed. “Jo’s finally out of the bathroom,” she announced to the person on the telephone. “Do you want to talk to her? It’s Mr. Harris,” she said, handing me the phone. She gave me a little wave and skipped out of the room.
Keith’s voice was warm and concerned. “I had no idea about Hilda. You should have called me, Jo.”
“There was nothing you could do.”
“I could have been there.”
The simple logic unnerved me; my words tumbled out. “I’m so scared,” I said. “I’m trying to keep a brave front up for the kids, but Hilda looks so frail, Keith, and there are all these tubes. The medical people try to be helpful, but half the time I don’t understand what they’re talking about. They have this chart called the Glasgow Coma Scale; it’s supposed to measure Hilda’s level of functioning. I try to take it all in, but I’m just too tired and too afraid of what’s going to happen.”
“I’ll come down there,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I’m all right. You just got me at a bad moment. If I need anything, I’ve got Jill and the kids.’
“And Alex?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think Alex and I will be seeing each other for a while.” I took a deep breath. “I really am handling this, Keith. Don’t worry about me.”
“Easier said than done,” he said, “but I’ll give it my best shot. Now, are you ready for some good news?”
“The novelty might do me in.”
Keith laughed. “I’ll start small. I saw Madeleine last night.”
“Tell me more,” I said.
“Well, she is intelligent, charming, and very lovely – obviously a testament to the excellence of the Kilbourn–Harris genes.”
“You’re talking to Madeleine’s grandmother,” I said. “None of what you just said is news to me. All the same, it’s nice to hear you say it.”
“Any time,” he said. “I’m always available, Jo.”
When we hung up, it was together.
Keith’s call buoyed me. By the time I got to the university, I thought it was possible that I might get through the day after all. The first omens at school were positive. When I got to the Political Science office, Detective Robert Hallam was inside chatting with Rosalie Norman. Even a fleeting look revealed that Rosalie had broken with tradition in two ways: she had replaced her inevitable twin sweater set with a smart black turtleneck, and for the first time in human memory, she was laughing.
The laughter died when I walked in, but Rosalie did manage to retain a smile. “Detective Hallam’s here to see you,” she said. “Why don’t you have your calls forwarded to me, so that you can chat without being interrupted.” Rosalie presented her offer as if mutual accommodation was an everyday occurrence for us; in fact, I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d proposed that we throw off our shackles and lead the people of the university in a revolution.
Nonetheless, it was a sensible suggestion, and I accepted it. As soon as Detective Hallam and I were settled in my office, I hit call-forwarding on my telephone and turned to my guest. “What’s up?” I asked.
He shrugged. “More questions – what else? Did you see the morning paper?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m glad you made an arrest in the Justine Blackwell case.”
“So are we,” he said mildly, “but I thought this particular arrest might present you and me both with some questions.”
“Such as …?”
“Such as, who attacked Miss McCourt? We’re back to square one there, Mrs. Kilbourn.”
“You thought the incidents were connected?”
“That’s why we put the guard outside her room.”
“And now you’re taking the guard off?”
“No way we can justify tying an officer up now,” Detective Hallam said. “It looks like we’re dealing with a routine break-and-enter that went sour. Miss McCourt was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I don’t believe that, Detective Hallam.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to,” he said. “Terrence Ducharme was nowhere near your house last Saturday night. He was at his anger-management meeting from seven till ten; then he had one of the counsellors from Culhane House over to his place for a sleepover. Except for when Terry went to the can, he wasn’t alone for a minute.”
“So he’s in the clear.”
“Looks like …”
“But Justine Blackwell’s death was connected with Culhane House.”
Robert Hallam frowned. “You sound as if you’re sorry to hear that.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” I said. “Culhane House is just the kind of project that appeals to bleeding-heart liberals like me.”
“Pick your causes carefully, Mrs. Kilbourn. Justine Blackwell made a pet of Terrence Ducharme and lived to regret it.”
“Did she meet him through Wayne J. Waters?”
“No, the judge and our boy, Terry, share some history. He appeared in her court after he had a nasty run-in with an old woman who hired him to paint her garage. Apparently, Terrence wasn’t much of a lad with a paintbrush, so the old lady refused to pay him. Terry retaliated by burning her garage down. He had priors, so Justine gave him the maximum sentence. By the time their paths crossed again, Terrence was a proud graduate of every twelve-step program the correctional system has to offer, and he was Wayne J.’s protégé. Of course, the new and improved Justice Blackwell thought Terrence Ducharme was the greatest thing since suspended sentences. She got him enrolled in educational upgrading, arranged for him to do some casual work, and paid a year’s rent for him at a rooming house on Winnipeg Street.”
“That’s not all she did,” I said.
D
etective Hallam shot me a questioning look.
“There’s a Ducharme buried in Justine Blackwell’s family plot,” I said.
“In the family plot? Why the hell would she do that?” He shrugged. “Why the hell did she do anything? Anyway, I’ll bet there was one thing she had second thoughts about.”
With the timing of the born storyteller, Robert Hallam waited for me to prompt him. I complied. “What was that?”
“Getting Terrence Ducharme that job at the Hotel Saskatchewan. He was working the night she died. Apparently, he did his usual bang-up job. At one point in the evening, he dropped a plate of those fancy little what-chamacallits.”
“Canapés,” I said.
Detective Hallam gave me a mock bow. “Thank you. Justine caught him picking up the canapés and shoving them back on the plate. I guess she went ballistic. Apparently, she was quite fussy.”
“Fastidious was the word Hilda always used.”
“Whatever. Anyway, the judge tore a strip off Terry, and he followed her when she left. He told one of his buddies he was going to make her apologize.”
“Justine’s been dead for over a week. Why didn’t all this surface before?”
“Terry’s buddy ran afoul of the law yesterday and decided the story Terry had told him about the judge was a good bargaining chip.”
“And your whole case rests on his story.”
“Are you telling me how to do my job, Mrs. Kilbourn?”
“No,” I said. “I just want to be sure you got the right person. Detective Hallam, I’m not trying to second-guess you. My only interest in any of this mess is Hilda. I want to be sure she’s safe.”
“None of us are safe, Mrs. Kilbourn. You should know that by now.”
“Detective Hallam, I can’t believe that what happened to Hilda was just bad luck. The night she was attacked, she was working on Justine Blackwell’s financial papers. Doesn’t that point to a connection?”
“Did you see the papers, Mrs. Kilbourn?”
“No, but Hilda told me she was going to work on them. My desk was ransacked, and now the papers are missing.”
His face reddened with the effort to keep his temper in check. “Something you never saw is missing. You’re a smart woman, Mrs. Kilbourn. You know that’s not enough.”
“Then what about the towel?” I asked. “If the person who attacked Hilda wasn’t someone who knew her – even casually – why would they put that towel under her head?”
He flipped his notepad shut. “Just a sicko,” he said. “I’ve seen worse things put in worse places.”
There was a discreet knock, then Rosalie peeked around the door. “Just a friendly reminder,” she said. “Ten minutes to class.” Her radiant smile would have melted a harder heart than mine.
“Thank you,” I said. It was an inadequate response to Rosalie’s once-in-a-lifetime performance, but it was all I could muster. Detective Hallam pushed back his chair. I scooped up my books. “You’ll keep in touch,” I said.
“Count on it,” he said.
As I left, Rosalie was dimpling at Robert Hallam. “I’ve just made some fresh coffee. It’s a new blend. It’ll put a spring in your step, I guarantee.”
Class went well. It was early in the term, but my Political Science 110 class already showed signs of being an exceptional group: interested, talkative, and pleasant. Nevertheless, by the time I’d erased the boards, and reassured the last student, I had a knot of tension in my neck and a rawness in my nerves. I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with Detective Hallam, and I couldn’t shake the image of Hilda lying on our kitchen floor, white-faced on the blood-soaked towel.
As I walked out of the education building, the sun was full in my face. It was the second week in September, but students were lying on the grass, reading, tanning, smoking, and watching the scurrying of the colony of gophers that lived out their existence beneath the academic green. I gazed towards the concrete bulk of the classroom building. In my office on the third floor, there were a half-dozen tasks that could use my attention; all of them could wait. I turned right and followed the sidewalk that took me away from my office and towards the end of the lake that was set aside for birds who were nesting, migrating, or just hanging out. Most of the time, the birds at the sanctuary were familiar species: pelicans, mallards, Canada geese, ducks, pintails, snowgeese, loons, mudhens, grebes. But sometimes, during migration, amazing visitors presented themselves.
Often, when the weather was good, Alex and I met here at lunchtime to eat our sandwiches and split a Thermos of tea. One fall day, we came upon an explosion of gulls. The water was white with them. We sat at the water’s edge and watched, and then we lay on the bank, hand in hand, looking up at the sky and listening.
Remembering that day, I felt a tug. I wanted Alex. All I had to do was dial his number and say … Say what? Say I remembered another September day? Say I wanted him back? Say I didn’t care about the wall that seemed to spring up between us whenever the subject of race came up or about the way people looked at us when we walked into a room together? Say I was ready to try again with Eli, the child of glass, and with the shards that pierced all our lives every time his fragile psyche shattered? As I picked up my books and started back towards my office, I knew I wouldn’t make the call. I was fifty-one years old, and, at the moment, I was shouldering all the burdens I could carry.
There were no messages on my voice mail; my e-mail was clear; my desk was empty. It wasn’t quite noon. I stuck my head into the Political Science office to tell Rosalie I was leaving. She was arranging rusty-gold marigolds in an old-fashioned glass milk bottle. She looked up expectantly.
“I love marigolds,” I said. “They always make me think of the September when my older daughter started school. Every morning she’d take her safety scissors out to the garden and snip a bouquet. She always cut the stems too short. I often wondered what her teacher did with all those stubby little flowers.”
Rosalie laughed softly. “And marigolds last forever,” she said.
“One of their charms,” I said. “Anyway, there’s nothing I need to stick around here for, and I have a friend in the hospital, so I’m off.”
“Just a minute.” Rosalie took a handful of the flowers, folded a piece of waxed paper expertly over the stems and handed the bouquet to me. “For your friend,” she said.
As I walked along the hall towards Hilda’s room, I had my copy of Anne of Green Gables in my bag and Rosalie’s marigolds in my hand, prepared for anything. In the room where the young man was recovering from his motorcycle accident, Garth Brooks was singing “Ain’t Going Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up).” Earlier in the week, I had brought in a radio for Hilda, and there was music in her room too. It was Callas singing “In questa reggia” from Turandot. Garth and Maria seemed like a compelling duet to me, yet the nursing station was empty. When I saw Nathan Wolfe leaning over Hilda’s bed, I panicked, but as he turned to greet me, he was smiling. “Good news,” he said. “She’s coming out of it.”
I looked at Hilda. Much as I longed to, I couldn’t detect any sign of change. “Did she regain consciousness?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But remember me telling you about the Glasgow Coma Scale?”
“Yes, but I was so scared, I couldn’t seem to take anything in.”
“Got time for a quick lesson now?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s go out to the desk.”
I followed Nathan to the nursing station. He picked up a pencil and a pad of paper. “Okay, this is how we monitor changes in the patient’s level of consciousness. We look at three aspects of behaviour; the first is –” he printed the words “Eyes Open.” “If the patient’s eyes open spontaneously, that’s a 4; if they open when you speak to them, that’s a 3; if they open to a pinprick, a 2; not at all is a 1.” As he spoke he wrote the numbers in a column opposite the responses. “The second is Motor Responses. If a patient can move what you ask them to move, that’s a 6; if they re
spond to localized pain, that’s a 5; if they withdraw, that’s a 4; abnormal flexion – that’s this,” he said, demonstrating – “is a 3; extends is a 2; and nothing is a 1. The third thing we look at is Verbal Response. If a patient’s conversation is oriented, they get a 5; if their conversation is confused, they get a 4; if they use inappropriate words, that’s a 3; incomprehensible sounds get a 2; and nothing gets a 1.” He added up the best responses in each category. “Highest possible score is 15; the lowest is 3. A score of 7 or less is generally accepted as coma. Miss McCourt’s been scoring pretty low, but today when I pricked her arm, she opened her eyes and withdrew her arm.”
I looked over Nathan’s shoulder at the column of figures. “So those responses score 2 and 4,” I said. “That’s a 6.”
“And,” said Nathan in the tones of an enthusiastic nursery teacher, “she made some incomprehensible sounds. So 8 in total. She’s moving up.”
I stared at the column of figures. “What can I do to keep her moving up?” I asked.
Nathan smiled. “The problem with these figures is that they make recovery look like a neat and orderly process, and it isn’t. A lot of what happens we can’t explain.”
“Then what should I do.”
He shrugged. “If you’re comfortable with it, just keep on doing what you’ve been doing.”
I handed Nathan the marigolds. “Thanks,” I said. I took Anne of Green Gables out of my bag and waved it. “If you need us, Hilda and I will be in Avonlea.”
I read until Matthew and Marilla decided to let Anne stay, at least provisionally. Every time I turned a page, I glanced over at Hilda, watching for a sign of response. She seemed more restless than she had been, but she did nothing that would have counted on Nathan’s Glasgow Coma Scale. When I finally closed the book, I was discouraged. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said. “Rest well.”
As I opened our front door, I realized how much I was looking forward to an afternoon alone. I took a package of pork chops out of the freezer, set them on a plate on the counter to thaw, then picked up the phone and checked my messages. Eric Fedoruk had called twice; so had Wayne J. Waters. Signe Rayner, announcing that she was spokesperson for her sisters, expressed her deepest concern. All of my callers left numbers where they could be reached and implored me to get back to them. I deleted the messages without writing down a single phone number. Hilda and I were simplifying our lives.
