by Gail Bowen
Tess moved towards her, “Jane, you yourself said …”
“I know what I said. I said I wanted a woman to emcee Howard’s dinner, but if Jo backs out, you and I are the women, and I don’t want you and you don’t want me. That leaves Gary and Craig, and Craig is a lousy public speaker.”
Craig made a little bow in Jane’s direction. “Thank you, Jane.”
Oblivious, Jane sailed on. “Don’t be touchy, Craig. You’re capable of keeping your pants zipped, which is more than I can say for my brother-in-law.”
Right on cue, Jane O’Keefe’s brother-in-law burst through the door of Nationtv.
In the women’s magazines of the fifties there were love stories with heroes whose physical characteristics were as formulaic as those of a knight in medieval romance. With their rangy bodies and rugged features, they leapt off the pages into our female hearts. Gary Stephens had those kind of good looks, and once upon a time he had been a hero, at least to me. When I knew him first, Gary was a reformer out to transform the political landscape. Then, he changed.
It seemed to happen overnight. One day he just stopped fighting the good fight and became a jerk and a womanizer. The political world is fuelled by gossip, and for a while there was hot speculation about Gary, but the explanation most of us finally accepted was supplied by his sister-in-law. Jane O’Keefe said that, in her opinion, Gary simply lost his death struggle with the id. Whatever had happened, Gary Stephens wasn’t a hero anymore, at least not in my books.
“Apologies for being late,” he said. “I was …”
Jane smiled at him. “We understand, Gary. Everyone knows it takes a man longer after he hits forty.”
Gary shrugged. “For the record, I was with a client.” He turned towards me. “I heard about Kevin Tarpley on the radio coming over here. I’m sorry, babe. All those painful memories, and Ian was the best.”
“I always thought so,” I said, and I could hear the ice in my voice.
Jane O’Keefe looked at her watch. “We should get inside. Considering that not one of us was on time today, I don’t think we should risk re-rescheduling.” She touched my arm. “It was good to see you again, Jo. Hang in there.”
Gary leaned forward, gave me a practised one-armed hug and kissed my cheek. The others said goodbye and headed towards the elevators. As the doors closed behind them, I reached up and brushed the place that Gary Stephens’s lips had touched.
“Why would he kiss me?” I said to Jill.
She shrugged. “ ‘Man sees the deed, but God sees the intention.’ ”
“That’s a comforting thought,” I said.
“Thomas Aquinas was a comforting kind of guy,” Jill said. “You’d know these things too, if you’d had the benefit of a Catholic education.”
When we stepped through the big glass doors into the night, Jill breathed deeply. The air smelled of wet leaves and wood smoke.
“Hallowe’en,” she said, hugging herself against the cold. “Good times.”
She grinned at me, and the years melted away. She was the shining-eyed redhead I’d met twenty years before when she showed up unannounced at Ian’s office the day she graduated from the School of Journalism. She had handed him her brand new diploma and said, “My name is Jill Osiowy, and I want to make a difference.” Ian always said he hadn’t known whether to hire her or have her committed.
“I’m glad Ian didn’t have you committed,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “You’d better get back inside. It’s freezing out here. Call me if you hear anything more about Kevin Tarpley.”
When I pulled up in front of my house on Regina Avenue, Taylor and Jess Stephens were on the front porch supervising as my friend, Hilda McCourt, lit the candle in our pumpkin. Jess was Gary’s son, and he and Taylor had been friends since the first day of Grade 1 when they discovered they could both roll their eyes back in their heads so the pupils seemed to disappear.
Jess was dressed as a magician, Taylor was in her butterfly costume, and Hilda was wearing black tights, a black turtleneck, silver rings on every finger and, around her neck, a silver chain with a jewelled crescent moon pendant. Her brilliant red hair was frizzed out in a halo around her handsome face. Hilda was past eighty and counting, but she could still turn heads, and she knew it.
When she saw me coming up the walk, she called out. “Wait, I’ll turn on the porch light for you. We had it off so the lighting of the pumpkin would be more dramatic.”
“Don’t spoil the effect,” I said. “I don’t need a light.”
Jess waved at me.
“My mum’s sick, and my dad’s doing something. Taylor said I could come Hallowe’ening with you. Can I?”
“Sure,” I said. “Go call your mum.”
He grinned. I could see the space where his front teeth were missing. “I already did,” he said. “My dad’s gonna pick me up when we’re through.”
“Good enough,” I said.
Taylor was looking at the face of the jack-o’-lantern, mesmerized. “Blissed out” her brother, Angus, would have said. I knelt down beside her. “T, I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got hung up with something at the station.”
“I saw the news,” Hilda said quietly.
I looked up at her. “Did the kids?”
Hilda shook her head. “No, Angus was in his room trying to decide what to wear to his dance, and tonight Taylor’s concerns appear to stop at her wingtips.” She leaned towards me. “How are you bearing up?”
“I think trailing along behind these guys with twenty pounds of candy in a pillowcase might be just what I need.”
“In that case,” said Hilda, “we’ll continue with the ceremony here. I was just going to tell the magician and the butterfly the story of Jack-O’-Lantern.”
I stood in the doorway and listened as Hilda told the kids the story of a man named Jack who was so mischievous that the devil wouldn’t let him into hell because he was afraid Jack would trick him.
Hilda’s voice was sombre as she finished. “And so, when Jack learned he’d have to roam the earth forever, he stole a burning coal from the underworld and placed it inside a turnip to light his way.”
Jess looked puzzled. “Why didn’t Jack use a pumpkin?” he asked.
“Because this was long ago, in Ireland, and they didn’t have pumpkins,” Hilda said.
Taylor shook her head. “Poor Jack. Carving that turnip must have taken him about twenty hours.”
I touched Taylor’s shoulder. “I’m going to go upstairs and check on your brother. You and Jess go in and have one last pee, and then we’ll hit the streets. Okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, “that’ll be okay.” She dropped to her knees and leaned forward so that her eyes were looking into the bright triangular eyes of the jack-o’-lantern. “How did Jack keep the coal lit?” she asked.
I went inside, glad it was Hilda who had to come up with an answer.
Angus was standing in the middle of his room. There were clothes thrown everywhere, but he wasn’t wearing anything except a pair of boxer shorts with pigs on them.
When he saw me, he exploded. “The guys are coming by in twenty minutes and I haven’t figured out a costume. Everything I try makes me look totally stupid.”
“I guess this isn’t the time for me to suggest that you should have started planning your costume sooner,” I said.
He looked exasperated. “Mum, just give me a little help here … Please.”
At fifteen, Angus had Ian’s dark good looks. He had grown about a foot in the last six months. I looked at him and remembered.
“I have an idea,” I said.
I went down into the basement and pulled out a trunk in which, against all the advice in the books for widows, I had kept some of Ian’s things. I’d filled the trunk a month to the day after Ian died, but until that Hallowe’en night I hadn’t had the heart to open it.
Under a pile of sweaters, I found what I was looking for: an old herringbo
ne cape with a matching Sherlock Holmes hat and a walking stick. I took them back upstairs and handed them to my son.
“Do you remember this outfit?” I asked. “Daddy wore it every Hallowe’en.”
Angus had put on a pair of jeans and a turtleneck. He threw the cape around his shoulders and pulled the cap over his dark hair. He looked so much like Ian I could feel my throat close.
“Well?” I said.
He looked at himself in the full-length mirror on his cupboard door.
“Pretty good,” he said. Then his reflection in the mirror grinned at me. “Actually, Mum, the cape really rocks hard. Thanks.” He started for the door.
“Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you going to clean up this mess?”
“Later,” he said. “Chill out, Mum. It’s a night to party.”
When he left, the smell of the cape lingered, potent as memory. I swallowed hard and went downstairs to get my daughter and her friend.
It was a great night for Hallowe’ening. There was a three-quarter moon, and, for Taylor and Jess, every street held a surprise: doors opened by snaggle-toothed vampires and mummies swathed in white; stepladders with glowing pumpkins on every step; and on the corner of McCallum and Albert, a witch cackling in front of the cauldron that had smoked with dry ice every Hallowe’en since Angus was a baby.
When we turned onto Regina Avenue, Gary Stephens was pulling up in front of our house.
“Perfect timing,” I said, as he got out of the car.
“Right,” he said absently.
And then Jess ran to him, holding out his pillowcase. “Dad, look at all the stuff I got.”
As he knelt beside his son, Gary’s face was transformed. His charm with women might have been as false as the proverbial harlot’s oath, but Gary Stephens’s love for his son was the real thing. It wasn’t hard to get warmth in my voice when I said goodnight.
Taylor went straight to the dining room and dumped all her candy on the table, checking for razor blades the way her Grade 1 teacher had instructed her to. She pulled up a chair and began to arrange the candy in categories: things she liked and things she didn’t like. Then she tried new categories: chocolate bars, gum, candy kisses, gross stuff. Finally, she lay her head down on her arms.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s it. Time for this butterfly to fold her wings.”
I took her upstairs, scrubbed off her butterfly makeup, and tucked her in. When I came back, Hilda was sitting in a rocker beside the fireplace. A fire was blazing in the grate, and on the low table in front of Hilda, there was a tray with two glasses, a bottle of Jameson’s, and a round loaf of fruit bread.
“I thought you’d welcome a little sustenance,” Hilda said, as she poured the Irish whisky.
“Where did the bread come from?” I asked.
“Taylor and I made it this afternoon. It’s called barm brack; it’s traditional in Ireland at Hallowe’en.”
I cut myself a slice and bit into it. It tasted of spice and candied peel and fruit. “Good,” I said.
“The children didn’t think so,” Hilda said drily. “They were polite, but they didn’t exactly wolf it down.”
“All the more for us,” I said and took another bite. My teeth hit something papery and hard. I raised my hand to my mouth and took the paper out.
Hilda laughed, “I should have warned you. The barm brack is full of little charms. Of course, you’ve already discovered that.”
I looked at the waxed paper triangle in my hand.
“Open it,” Hilda said. “The charm you get is supposed to foretell your future. Angus got the gold coin.”
“Good,” I said, “my old age is taken care of.” I opened the paper in my hand. Inside was a baby doll, no larger than my thumbnail.
“I must have someone else’s fortune,” I said. “I’m forty-nine years old, Hilda. I think my child-bearing days are over.”
“The barm brack is never wrong,” Hilda said placidly. “The baby in your future could belong to someone else, you know.”
I thought of my older daughter and her husband. A grandchild. It was a nice thought. I lifted my glass of Jameson’s to Hilda. “To Irish traditions,” I said. “And to Irish stories. You know I’d forgotten that story about poor Jack O’Lantern with his turnip. My mother-in-law told it to me years ago.”
Hilda looked thoughtful. “Your husband was Irish, wasn’t he?”
“His family was. Ian was born here.” I sipped my whisky. “And, as you saw on the news tonight, he died here.”
“I remember the case, of course,” she said. “It was before you and I met. It struck me as being a particularly brutal and senseless death.”
“That about sums it up,” I said. “At first, I thought the brutality was the hardest part to deal with. Isn’t there a prayer where you ask God to grant you a good death?”
Hilda nodded.
“Well, Ian’s death was not good. It was vicious and terrifying. He was beaten to death by a stranger. It was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. He was on the Trans-Canada, coming back from a funeral in Swift Current. There was a blizzard. A car had broken down by the side of the highway. When Ian stopped to help, Kevin Tarpley, that man who was killed today, asked Ian to take him and his girlfriend to a party. At the trial, Kevin Tarpley said that when Ian refused, he smashed Ian’s head in with a crowbar.”
The shadow shapes on the ceiling shifted. In the stillness I could hear the ticking of the hall clock, regular as a heartbeat.
“I had nightmares for months about what he must have gone through in those last minutes. But in the long run, it wasn’t the brutality that drove me crazy; it was the lack of logic. It turned out that Kevin Tarpley’s car hadn’t broken down at all. When the police found it, it was fine. Kevin told them he got scared when the needle on the heat gauge went into the red zone.” I leaned across the table. “Hilda, my husband died because a boy panicked. Isn’t that crazy? But everything about Ian’s death was senseless. Did you know he went to that funeral in Swift Current because he lost a coin toss?”
Hilda shook her head. “That particular cruelty didn’t make the papers.”
“We were at a Boxing Day party the Caucus Office had for families who’d stayed in town for the holidays. I guess everyone had had a couple of drinks when Howard remembered that somebody had to go to Charlie Heinbecker’s funeral the next day. Charlie was …”
“Minister of Agriculture in Howard’s first government. I remember him well,” Hilda said. “He was a fine man.”
“He was,” I agreed, “but it’s a long drive to Swift Current, and that time of year the roads can be treacherous. Nobody wanted to volunteer. Anyway, somebody decided all the M.L.A.s who knew Charlie should toss a coin. They did, and Ian lost. The next morning he drove off, and I never saw him again. Hilda, it could just as easily have been Howard or Jane or Gary or any of them on that road.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No,” I said, “it wasn’t.”
The light from the fireplace struck the silver moon on Hilda’s necklace and turned it to fire. When she spoke again, her voice was as old as time:
“… this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.”
Suddenly, I was so tired I could barely move.
“Hilda, how can we live if the only answer is that there are no answers?”
She leaned across the table. Her eyes were as impenetrable as agate. “That’s not what the poem says, Joanne. It says there always are answers. They may sicken us and they may terrify us, but that doesn’t make them any less true, and it doesn’t make them any less powerful.”
She picked up a knife and sliced into the barm brack. “Now, let’s have some bread and a little more whisky before the fire dies.”
After Hilda went up to bed, I walked through the darkened house, checking, making sure we were safe. As I locke
d the front door, I glanced through the glass and saw our jack-o’-lantern on the porch, its candle guttering in the October darkness.
I opened the door and, hugging myself against the cold, I blew out the candle, picked up the pumpkin, and brought it back into the kitchen. When I moved Angus’s schoolbooks along the counter to make a place for the jack-o’-lantern, I uncovered a small stack of mail. There wasn’t much: a new Owl magazine for Taylor, a bill from Columbia House addressed to Angus, a pretty postcard inviting me to the opening of a visiting show of Impressionist landscapes at the Mackenzie Gallery, and an envelope, standard size, nine by twelve. My students had had essays due the day before, and my first thought was that the envelope held an essay from one of them, trying to limit the penalty for a late paper. But when I glanced at the envelope, I noticed that the letters of my name and address were oddly formed, as if the writer couldn’t decide between printing and writing. I opened the envelope. There was a letter in the same curiously unformed hand.
Dear Mrs. Kilbourn,
I must be the last one you thought youd here from but this is important. WE MUST ALL APPEAR BEFORE THE JUDGEMENT SEAT OF CHRIST, THAT EVERY ONE MAY RECEIVE THE THINGS DONE IN HIS BODY, ACCORDING TO THAT HE HATH DONE, WHETHER IT BE GOOD OR BAD. (2 CORINTHIANS, 5) But the Rev. Paschal Temple says I must try to atone on this side of the grave for the wrongs I did. I’m sorry for what happened to your husband, but things are not what they seem. You may hate me, but pay attention to what I wrote on the picture because it is not My Truth. It is God’s Truth.
Kevin Tarpley
Attached to the letter with a paperclip was a newspaper clipping. It was the publicity photo for Howard Dowhanuik’s dinner. I was in the middle, looking slightly dazed as I always seem to in photos. On my left was Craig Evanson, and beside him was Tess Malone. On my right were Jane O’Keefe and Gary Stephens. Jane was holding the whimsical ceramic statue of Howard that the party was going to present to him the night of the roast. Kevin Tarpley had cut off the original caption of the photo and taped on a piece of scribbler paper. There was a quotation printed in block letters on the paper: “PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN RULERS, PSALM 146.”
