by Gail Bowen
At 3:30 on the dot, Jill arrived. We were still standing in the doorway when Craig and Manda Evanson pulled up in the driveway. Craig’s arm was tight around Manda’s shoulders as they came up the walk. Manda was holding a red wicker basket. She held it out to me. Inside was a checked blanket embroidered with the words: SHHHHH. KITTEN SLEEPING.
Craig looked at the pink balloons on the door. “We don’t want to interrupt anything,” he said.
“I told Craig I had to see Taylor’s face when she met her cat,” Manda said. She patted her belly. “At this stage, he has to indulge me, but don’t worry, Jo, we’ll be gone before you know it.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Come in and have some cake.”
Manda grinned. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“In that case,” she said, “make mine a double. I’m in a state of severe cake deficit.”
The first minutes after the kitten entered our house were about as bad as I’d always imagined they would be. Sadie bared her teeth, and Angus banished her to the back yard. Rose took one look at the interloper and ran down to hide in the basement. Angus went after her to soothe her nerves.
Taylor, of course, was transported. Manda and Jill clucked over her, showing her how to hold the cat and what to feed it. At the end of five minutes, Taylor was an experienced handler; the kitten was purring, and she handed it to me. I stroked the cat’s head. The purring stopped, and the cat curled around and swiped viciously at my face. Jill glared at me disapprovingly. “Jo, when you pat a kitten on its head, you awaken its sexual feelings. Cats have very violent sex. You were lucky you didn’t get your face clawed off.”
I gave the kitten back to Taylor. Owning a cat was going to be even worse than I thought.
Hilda waited till there was relative peace, then she went into the kitchen and came back with two bottles of Asti Spumante.
“I thought this would be a nice accompaniment for the cake,” she said.
Gary opened the Asti, Craig poured, and I turned out the lights and lit the candles on the cake. As Craig proposed the toast, Taylor held the glass with her thimbleful of wine gravely.
“To Taylor’s sixth birthday,” Craig said. “May there be many happy returns.”
We drank and then he turned to me. “And to Jo. May there be brighter days ahead.”
I looked at the faces in the circle. The candlelight made them look younger, but also less familiar and, somehow, more menacing. Now was as good a time as any to make my announcement. “Good news,” I said. “The brighter days are already here. If Taylor ever blows out her candles, I’ll tell you what’s happened. Come on, T, make a wish.”
Taylor didn’t move. She was staring at the cake, paralyzed.
I dropped down beside her. “T, what is it?” I asked.
She leaned towards my ear. “I don’t know what to wish for,” she whispered. “I’ve always wished for a cat.”
“Wish that your cat will learn to get along with the dogs,” I said.
She nodded, closed her eyes, wished, and blew.
As soon as we had our cake and wine, I told them about Alex Kequahtooway’s phone call. Gary was standing beside me and he kissed my cheek. “Great news, babe,” he said.
When he moved away, I saw Jill, shaking her head and trying to suppress a smile. Gary Stephens was not one of her favourites. Craig was ebullient. “I knew it was just a matter of time,” he said, and he squeezed Manda’s shoulders so hard, she cried out. The O’Keefe sisters stood together, smiling but silent.
Craig picked up a bottle of Asti and refilled our glasses, and the conversation moved happily towards the inconsequential. Not surprisingly, we talked about names: a good name for Taylor’s kitten; wise choices for Craig and Manda’s baby.
My mind drifted. Ian and I had spent hours deciding on names for our children. Our most intense talks always seemed to come when I was in the bathtub. Ian would wander in, say something salacious about pregnant women, flip down the toilet lid, and read from a book of names he’d bought. Then we would laugh at the horrors and try out possibilities till the bath water got cold.
We had been very happy. I closed my eyes, shutting out the memories. When I opened them, Manda was leaning towards me.
“Who is Walter Winchell?” she asked.
“What?” I said, startled. “I’m sorry, Manda, I was a million miles away. What did you say?”
“I asked you who Walter Winchell was. We were talking about whether it’s good to name a baby after her parents, and Hilda said Walter Winchell named both his children after him: his son was Walter and his daughter was Walda. Everybody laughed, but I don’t know who Walter Winchell is.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “Just don’t name your baby after him.”
Manda yawned and stretched lazily. “Gotcha,” she said. She put her head back against her husband’s chest. “I’ve had enough fun, Craig. Time to go.”
Manda and Craig moved towards the front hall. It wasn’t long before the others followed. I was almost home free, and I felt a rush. In minutes, I would be on the phone talking to Tess Malone. Confronted with Henry’s name, Tess would tell the truth, and I would be one step closer to the young woman in the picture.
As I was down on the hall floor, helping Jess find his boots, it hit me. Tess’s number was unlisted. A phrase Howard Dowhanuik had used the morning after Maureen Gault’s murder flashed through my mind. I’d been surprised that Sylvie and Jane had gone to Tess’s for a drink after the dinner, and Howard had said, “Tess and Sylvie are tight as ticks.”
I looked up at Sylvie. “Have you got Tess Malone’s home number?” I asked.
“What do you want it for?” she said.
Jane smoothed over the rudeness with a smile. “More questions about Tess’s old Ukrainian?”
“His name is Henry,” I said.
Jane knotted her scarf with her capable surgeon’s hands. “I thought you’d be out of the cops-and-robbers business now that you’re in the clear.”
“I am,” I said. “I just wanted to ask Tess if she was free for lunch one day next week.”
Without a word, Sylvie picked up a pad by the phone and wrote down the number.
“Time to leave,” Jane said. “Come on, Sylvie, let’s go.”
Already dressed for the outdoors, Jess stood with his father. Gary Stephens’s hand was resting on his son’s shoulder.
“Say goodbye, Jess,” Jane said, and she pushed Gary’s hand from his son’s shoulder and propelled the little boy towards the door.
“Bye,” Jess said. And he vanished into the night, closing the door behind him.
As he stood staring at the space where his son had been, Gary Stephens’s face was bleak. “Goodbye,” he whispered, and his voice was so soft I could barely hear it.
After everyone had driven off, Hilda went to the kitchen to clean up, and the kids took the kitten down to the basement to start the reconciliation process with Rose. Jill and I were left alone in the front hall.
“I take it the inspector’s news means I’m off duty.”
“It does,” I said. “You can go back to painting your nails and sticking pins in pictures of Nationtv vice-presidents.”
“Speaking of Nationtv,” Jill said, “Keith Harris called from Washington this morning. He sends you his love.”
“Swell,” I said.
“He’d like to talk about human-rights violations among some of our trading partners on Saturday’s show. It’s okay with Sam Spiegel if it’s okay with you.”
“It’s okay with me,” I said. “That’s right up my alley.”
“I’ll bet that’s why Keith suggested it,” Jill said, then she touched my hand. “I’m glad everything worked out, Jo. I was really scared.”
Her gaze was so open and her affection so palpable that I almost told her the truth. Then I remembered how Jill had revered Ian, and I steeled myself. “I’m glad everything worked out, too,” I said.
It was after 9:00
when I finally managed to get into my bedroom, close the door, and dial Tess’s number. Late in the afternoon, Alex Kequahtooway had told the press about the evidence clearing me. I guess he’d decided it was time for the old squirrel dog to shake things up a bit. The telephone had started ringing during dinner, and it hadn’t stopped. I’d never been very good at faking, and all evening I had cringed at the falseness of my voice as I tried to sound euphoric.
There were two phone calls that didn’t require acting. The first was from Peter. He had been a rock, but now the worst was over. As he relaxed into the concerns of a third-year university student – the inequities of exam timetables, gossip about friends, hints about what he wanted for Christmas – he sounded relieved to be back to normal.
Mieka and her husband, Greg, called from Galveston to wish Taylor happy birthday, and their joy in being young and in love and discovering the world together was so tonic, I almost didn’t tell them about the deaths of Kevin Tarpley and Maureen Gault. But we’d always told the kids that families couldn’t function without trust, so after I’d listened to Mieka’s descriptions of the beauty of the old houses along the Gulf of Mexico and Greg’s account of how great a bucket of crayfish tastes when you wash it down with a schooner of Lone Star, I gave them the essentials. They were shocked, but as I answered their questions, I could feel them relax. The crisis was, after all, in the past, and as we rung off, I could hear the happiness returning to their voices.
Finally, the phone grew silent, the kids were in their rooms, and I was alone. I was so tense that my hands were shaking as I dialled Tess’s number. There was no answer. I couldn’t believe it. I had been so certain the answers were within reach. Ten minutes later, I tried again. After that, I tried every ten minutes until, finally, exhausted, I fell into bed.
For the next two days I tried to find Tess. She wasn’t at home, and she wasn’t at Beating Heart. No one knew where she was. The man who answered the phone at Beating Heart told me not to worry. Tess would show up. She wasn’t the kind of woman to leave town without telling anybody. I told him that’s why I was worried. Have a little faith, he said, and I promised him I would try.
Friday, I took Hilda to the Faculty Club for lunch before she drove back to Saskatoon. We ate liver and onions and made plans for Christmas. I loved her, but as I watched her manoeuvre her old Chrysler Imperial out of the university parking lot, I was relieved. Hilda was a hard person to deceive, and I was certain she knew I was concealing something critical from her.
I had three students to see that afternoon. When the last one left, I pulled the picture of the young woman and her baby out of my bag and propped it against my coffee cup. I tried Tess’s home number. There was no answer. I looked at the picture and I knew I was tired of waiting. It was time for action.
The receptionist at Beating Heart had a great smile, eyeglasses with bright green frames, and a sign on her desk that said, I’M MICHELLE, PLEASE BOTHER ME. But she turned her face away when I held the picture up and asked her if she knew the woman who was sitting on Santa’s knee.
“We don’t discuss clients,” she said.
“Was this woman a client?”
Michelle pushed her chair back as if she was afraid I would force her to look at the picture. “I don’t know,” she said woodenly.
I moved closer to her. “This is important,” I said. And then I added, “It’s a matter of life and death.”
It was an unfortunate choice of words. Michelle leapt up from her desk and returned with an older woman who bore a startling resemblance to the actress Colleen Dewhurst and who looked as implacable as Colleen Dewhurst had looked when she played Aunt Marilla in Anne of Green Gables.
“Look,” I said, “I think I got off on the wrong foot here. I’m a friend of Tess Malone’s. I’ve been trying to reach her, but I can’t. I need to find this young woman.”
When the two women exchanged a quick, worried glance, the penny dropped. They thought I was the enemy.
“I’m not trying to get her to change her mind about going through with her pregnancy,” I said. “If you’ll look at the picture, you’ll see she already had her baby. It was at least six years ago. But I have to find her. It really is a matter of life and death.”
For the first time, the older woman smiled. She held out her hand. “I wish you’d said at the outset you were a friend of Tess’s. I think Michelle and I jumped to the wrong conclusion about you.” She spoke with a slight accent, pleasant and lilting.
“My name is Joanne Kilbourn,” I said.
“Irish?” she asked.
“My husband’s family were,” I said.
“Every last member of my family is Irish,” she said. “My name is Maeve O’Byrne. Now let’s look at your picture. What did you say the girl’s name is?”
“I didn’t say. I don’t know.”
Maeve O’Byrne pulled out a pair of reading glasses. As she looked at the photo, I held my breath. It didn’t help. She shook her head and handed the photo back. “I don’t recall her,” she said.
“Don’t you have files?”
When she answered, there was a hint of asperity in the lilt. “Yes, we have files, Mrs. Kilbourn. And like most organizations, we classify them by name. Since you don’t know the girl’s name, we have nothing to go on. At any rate, you say this was over five years ago. If there was a file, it would have been destroyed. We cull inactive files after five years.”
“So I’m out of luck.”
“I’m sorry.”
The phone rang and Michelle answered it. “Just a minute. I’ll see,” she said. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked up at Maeve. “That’s the paper,” she said. “They’re asking if we want to keep our ad in the personals. Tess used to check every day to make sure it was there and there weren’t any typos.”
Maeve sighed wearily. “Sure, tell them to keep it in. What does it say, anyway?”
Michelle asked the person on the other end of the phone, and she repeated the words for Maeve: “ ‘If you’re pregnant and alone, we’re here. Beating Heart can help.’ Then there’s our number.”
“That sounds acceptable,” Maeve said. She turned back to me. “I wish Tess were here. She’s good at taking care of matters like that.”
“I wish she were here, too,” I said. I wrote my home and office numbers on a card. “Please, if you hear from Tess, let me know.”
“I will,” Maeve said.
She was as good as her word. The next Wednesday when I came in from my senior class, the phone in my office was ringing. It was Maeve O’Byrne. “Good news,” she said. “Tess called.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“She didn’t say.”
“When will she be back?”
“She didn’t say that either.” I could hear the impatience in Maeve O’Byrne’s voice. “The point is,” she said, “Tess is all right, and I’m glad she called because I was about to phone the police.”
“Maybe that’s why she called,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Thanks, Maeve. I mean that. I know how busy you are.”
“If I hear anything more, I’ll be in touch,” she said.
“I’d appreciate that,” I said, and I hung up, more discouraged than ever. Every lead seemed to be turning into a dead end.
I spent the rest of the week teaching classes, trying to bring about a détente in the war between our pets, and reading up on incidences in which nations had censured trading partners for human-rights violations. Human rights had turned out to be a popular subject. The switchboards had been jammed on the call-in segment of our show, and we were revisiting the topic on Saturday night.
By the time I drove Taylor to her art class on Saturday I felt as if I was handling life again. I’d marked half a section of essays on the neo-conservatism of the eighties. I’d talked to a colleague who’d just come back from Mexico with documents that made me wonder again about the ethics of two electoral democracies entering into a trade a
greement with a quasi-dictatorship. Most importantly, it seemed my peacemaking efforts with the animals were paying off. The dogs no longer snarled when the kitten came into the room, and he no longer arched his small back and hissed every time he saw them. Taylor still hadn’t given her cat a name, but it seemed he was here to stay.
When I walked into the gallery gift shop and found two inspired Christmas presents within five minutes, I knew I was on a streak. There was a lineup at the cash register, so I left the bronze cat I’d chosen for Taylor and the box of stained-glass tree ornaments I’d picked out for Greg and Mieka on the counter and went back to browsing.
There were several copies of The Boy in the Lens’s Eye, but there was only one copy of Prairiegirl. I picked it up and began leafing through it. I was not an expert on photography, but even I knew the pictures were brilliant. Seductive, by turns naive and knowing, the prepubescent girls posed for the camera. The photographs were stunning, but they were also disquieting.
The oldest of the children in the photographs was no more than thirteen. Exulting in the changes in their young bodies, they had shown themselves to the camera. They were innocent, but what about the person behind the camera? I thought of Sylvie’s cool, unwavering gaze and her blazing talent, and I knew that, for better or worse, I would never see the world as she did.
The picture of the girl lying on the dock was almost the last one in the book, and it stopped my heart. The girl had been swimming; her thin cotton panties were soaked and her hair curled wetly against her shoulders. The wood of the dock beneath her was dark and rough textured; set against it, the soft perfection of her body seemed incandescent. Technically, that contrast must have been what gave the picture its power, but I didn’t care about technique. All I cared about was the girl. The ecstasy she felt that day on the dock was frozen in time, but the girl herself had grown up. She had become a mother, and she had her picture taken again. This time she was sitting on a mall Santa’s knee and holding her baby. I pulled the photograph I’d found in Ian’s pocket from my purse and held it against the photograph in Prairiegirl. Unmistakably, the face was the same.
