by Gail Bowen
“So this is life in the fast lane,” I said.
I had been to the correctional centre before. I remembered it as a depressing and forbidding place. It still was. After we were cleared through security, a guard took us to the visitors’ area. Everything about the room was uniform, drab, institutional. Everything, that is, except Darren Wolfe. He was waiting for us on the prisoner side of the Plexiglas divider, and he was one of a kind.
His blond hair was parted in the centre, and it fell almost to his waist. His eyes, eyebrows and the roots of his hair were black. A gold cross hung from his left ear. He wore black leather pants, skin tight, a black leather vest taut against his bare chest and a kind of Edwardian smoking jacket of red and black velvet.
“They let them wear their own clothes till after sentencing,” Jill whispered.
“Just as well,” I said. “I think Darren would be pretty lost without his plumage.”
There was a speaker phone on our side of the Plexiglas, and as soon as we were all seated, Jill leaned forward and introduced me to Darren Wolfe. She said I was the mother of the woman who had found Bernice’s body.
Darren looked at me without much interest. “Yeah?” he said. “That must’ve been a bad start to your daughter’s day.”
Ingratiating, saying what he thought I wanted to hear. I felt a chill.
“It was a tragedy for us all. From what my daughter said, Bernice was an interesting young woman.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “she was that.” He nodded his head, remembering. “She was her own worst enemy. She was just a kid when I met her, but she’d already hustled for a coupla years. That mouth a hers had got her thrown out of her last setup. They couldn’t intimidate her.”
I looked at the preening boy across the table from me, and my mind started to float. Bernice had gotten her prize tattoo the morning after he beat her up. She had endured three hours of agony to get a picture of unicorns etched into her upper back because unicorns were her totem; like her, they were too proud to get intimidated.
“Anyway, I didn’t do her,” Darren Wolfe was saying. He had turned his attention to Jill. Conversation with me was pointless; I couldn’t get him a deal with the network.
He leaned forward so that his forehead was almost touching the glass divider. His mouth was sullen, and his eyes were angry. “They haven’t got anything,” he said. “I knocked her around a few times, but it wasn’t personal. Jesus, everybody fought with that bitch. Anyway, I don’t do girls.” He looked quickly around the room to see who was there. Then he lowered his voice. “Look, the truth is, I haven’t got any bodies.”
“What?” I asked.
He looked at me, exasperated. “I haven’t got any bodies.” He moved closer and dropped his voice. “I’ve never killed anybody.” Having confessed the worst, he was restored. He straightened up, and his mouth curled into arrogance. “So, Jill,” he said, “I’ve got some things to say that you oughta hear.”
For the next twenty minutes Darren Wolfe gave us a conducted tour through the world of the Little Flower murders. I felt as if I’d stepped through the looking glass. The world Darren described, casually violent, retributive, vicious, seemed in every way alien from my own. But it wasn’t. The streets Darren Wolfe drove on in the course of his business day were the same streets I drove on; the street corners his girls worked were the street corners I walked past; the hotels and apartment blocks where they turned tricks were part of my landscape. By the time he finished, I was badly shaken, and he saw that.
One thing Darren Wolfe knew was women. He wanted me on his side, and he knew I wasn’t. When Jill and I stood up to leave, he reached toward me, flattening his fingertips against the Plexiglas the way prisoners do in movies.
“Look,” he said, “I know you think I should be all broken up about Bernice. I can live with that, but before you write me off, you’ve gotta understand one thing. Bernice wasn’t like the kind of girls you know. Girls like Bernice, they ask for it.”
“Girls like Bernice …” As I walked to the car, Darren Wolfe’s dismissal pounded in my head. As I opened the door on the passenger side, I remembered another judgement. Hours before she died, Christy Sinclair had sounded the same chord of death, justice and dismissal: “When girls like Bernice die,” she had said, her voice trembling, “it’s just biological destiny … They’re born with a gene for self-destruction.”
Jill didn’t say anything till we were pulling out of the prison parking lot. “Sorry you came along?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Just in a state of shock. How does a boy like that live with himself?”
“He sees himself as a businessman, Jo. Out there like the other guys, showing a little hustle, operating in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars he sleeps like a baby.”
“I’ll bet his girls don’t,” I said. I was wearing the silver bracelet Christy had given me, and my finger traced the lines of the Celtic letters. “Wandering Soul Pray For Me.”
“How do you break the cycle?” I said. “How can you make it possible for people to have good lives?” Kim Barilko’s face, mascara-streaked, defiant, flashed before my eyes. “Every time I wear this goddamn stuff, somebody makes me cry.” How many times, I thought. How many times had someone made Kim Barilko cry?
I remembered the light in her eyes when she’d talked about all the things Christy Sinclair was going to teach her. Then I remembered the derisive curve of her lip as she talked about how stupid she had been to believe anything good could happen to her.
Fifteen seemed pretty young to be giving up on life. I turned to Jill. “How would you like to be a mentor?” I asked.
“Yours, Jo? Finally admitting you need some guidance? I’d be delighted. You can start by throwing out all those sensible shoes you’re so fond of.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “But actually the person who needs someone to be her teacher, guide and friend is a lot more adventurous in her clothing than I am.”
When I finished telling her about Kim Barilko, Jill didn’t hesitate. “I’d be honoured, Jo. I really would. But not today. Listen, I’ve decided I’m going to really move on this Little Flower case. I’ve tried to get Toronto to give me a budget for this, but they say, with restraints and all, we should be doing upbeat stories with wide audience appeal. ‘Celebratory’ was the word my immediate superior used, I believe. Anyway, give me the weekend to see if any of Darren’s leads pan out. First thing Monday morning I’ll go over to the Lily Pad, and we can get started.”
“Jill, would you mind if I went over there after lunch and talked to her? I hate to think of Kim going through the weekend without some good news.”
“Of course I don’t mind. Maybe she’d like to come to my office Monday. I could show her around and take her for lunch in the cafeteria. Most kids get a kick out of watching the people they’ve seen on TV eat their tuna fish sandwiches.”
“Thanks, Jill.”
“For what? Trying to redress the balance a little? Don’t you think it’s about time?”
I picked Taylor up at school. “Samantha’s birthday party,” she said as she got in the car. “It’s today. Do we have a present?”
“Wrapped and on the dining room table,” I said.
“What is it?”
“An onion tree. Every time Sam takes off an onion, two more will grow in its place.”
Taylor looked into my face. “That’s a joke, right?”
“That’s a joke, right!” I said, and we both laughed.
After lunch I was in the front yard watering the geraniums when Taylor came out. She was carrying the birthday present, and she was wearing a pink party dress, her baseball shirt, baseball socks and runners.
“How would you like a mentor to advise you about your clothes?” I said.
She grinned at me.
I didn’t fall for it. “T., you’re going to have to change,” I said. “Why didn’t you wear what I put out for you?”
“Beca
use I felt happy,” she said.
It was the first time she had said that since her mother died. If I’d had a party dress and baseball socks handy, I would have worn them myself. I reached down and took her hand.
“Good enough,” I said. “Let’s go to Samantha’s party.”
After I dropped Taylor off, I drove downtown to the Lily Pad. Not much had changed. The wooden frog still sunned himself on the lawn, and the kids still smoked on the steps. When I walked past them, they looked at me incuriously through dead eyes. The front door was open and I went in. Someone had tacked up a sign on the Sharing Place: “Global thought for the day: Have a birthday party for the world.” On the TV in the living room, Oprah was talking about relationships; no one was watching. I kept on going. The state-of-the-art kitchen was gleaming and empty. On the counter, what looked like twenty pounds of standing rib roast thawed on a tray.
I was trying to decide what to do next when my friend Helmut came in. I hadn’t liked him the day before and I didn’t like him now. He was wearing a sweatshirt that said, “Let Me Be Part of Your Dream.” When he greeted me, his smile was as dazzling as ever, but there was no mistaking the hostility in his eyes.
I gestured toward the rib roast. “Good groceries,” I said.
He moved between me and the meat. Incredibly, it seemed as if he was trying to keep it a secret.
“Don’t hide it,” I said. “You deserve praise. Not many drop-in centres for runaways serve prime rib.”
“I thought I shared the rule about visitors the last time you were here, Joanne,” he said.
“You know my name,” I said. “Who told you?”
The smile was even more forced. “I don’t think that’s something you need to know.”
“I think it would help us relate,” I said. “Caring people shouldn’t have secrets from one another.”
“Kim told me,” he said.
Not in a million years, I thought. But I smiled at him. “Well, Kim is the person I’ve come to talk to.”
He gestured to the empty kitchen. “As you can see, she’s not here.”
“Do you expect her back soon?”
Helmut shrugged. “The kids who come here are dysfunctional, Joanne. They aren’t big planners. People come. People go. It’s called a transient population.”
“What about your mentor program?” I asked.
I could see the muscles in his neck tighten, but his smile grew even wider. “That’s one of our few failures. We had to abandon it. There were too many jealousies. Adolescent girls tend to be emotionally labile.”
“Pretty sudden decision, wasn’t it?” I said. “I’m sure Kim Barilko wasn’t the only young woman who was looking forward to having a chance at a different kind of life.”
Helmut Keating looked at me stonily. “We have programs here at the Lily Pad,” he said, “as you would have discovered if you’d read the brochures I gave you.”
“How can the programs help Kim when you don’t know where she is?” I asked.
Helmut narrowed his eyes.
“Just asking,” I said. “I don’t think we’re communicating very well here, Helmut. Maybe I’d better let you get that million-dollar roast in the oven. Is there someplace I could leave a message?”
“The Sharing Place,” he said tightly.
I wrote a note to Kim, telling her that a friend of mine who worked in television was interested in meeting her, and I left my name and phone number. I pinned it right under “Have a birthday party for the world.”
That night Keith called and we went to a new East Indian restaurant. We ate samosas and curried shrimp and groped at each other under the table. It was a nice evening, and it seemed to usher in a nice weekend. Saturday morning the kids and I enrolled Taylor in a summer art class at the old campus, then we went downtown and shopped for the endless items on Angus’s camp list. In the afternoon, I sat on the deck and read political journals while Taylor and her friend Samantha splashed around in the pool.
Sunday evening I went to the shower Lorraine was giving for Mieka. It was the first time I’d been inside Lorraine’s Regina apartment. The floor plan was the twin of Keith’s, but the decor was coolly modern – all white. The only touches of colour in the room were the silvery wrapping paper of the gifts piled high on the table beside the window, the pink of the sweetheart roses that bloomed from a crystal bowl beside the chair for the bride-to-be, and the ice-cream pastels of the dresses the guests were wearing.
It was an evening that unfolded itself impressionistically, in a series of flashes that somehow revealed the whole. The rosy pink of the cold lobster in the seafood salad was the same shade exactly as the chilled rosé Lorraine handed around in her delicately fluted glasses. Lorraine’s friends, brilliantly fashionable, talked in throaty voices about new cars and old boyfriends or old cars and new boyfriends; no one seemed to care which. My daughter, who had always despaired of her looks, bloomed into beauty as she breathed in air perfumed by spring roses and listened to her friends’ gently mocking talk of love.
There were other flashes, equally sharp but more unsettling: the faint shudder of distaste that ran through Lorraine Harris’s body when she overheard Jill and me talking about my visit that day to the Lily Pad. Lorraine’s eyes, stern behind her horn-rimmed glasses, as she laughingly warned me against raising unpleasant topics at my daughter’s wedding shower. The two elegant women, friends of Lorraine’s, who heard me mention Helmut Keating’s name and came over to gossip about him and the Lily Pad.
“Of course, I’m on the board,” said the first woman, “so I see a fair bit of Helmut. He’s a bit too free with the jargon, but he works hard and the kids seem to love him. He’s a very caring guy.”
The second woman, who had had several glasses of rosé, roared. “And don’t forget that fabulous streaking job. Now whoever did that is an artist. I think there’s a song there,” she said. “Helmie has great hair and it’s only fair ’cause he’s a very caring guy.”
The first woman smiled and took her friend’s arm. “Time to say good night,” she said. And they did.
And one last vignette. Just before the party broke up, there was a knock at the door; it was Blaine Harris. I could see his nurse, Sean, waiting in the hallway, but Blaine propelled his own wheelchair across the room and handed Mieka a long blue jeweller’s box, tied with a white ribbon. Mieka opened it, held the gold locket that was inside up for everyone to see, then fastened the chain around her neck.
The old man watched intently, then made a saluting gesture to Mieka and wheeled himself through the door into the hall. The whole scene couldn’t have taken much more than a minute, but by the time Blaine Harris left, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
It was a nice moment, and as I walked home, warmed by that memory and by other memories of the glowing party, I decided it was time to stop worrying about the things I couldn’t change and to start cherishing the good things in my life.
During the next week I tried. I read; I went over to the TV station and watched tapes of politicians and press conferences and pundits; I took Taylor to two art galleries to see new exhibits; I shopped and made the final purchases on Angus’s camp list. I even bought a mother-of-the-bride dress in aquamarine silk. Mieka was so relieved she took me out for ice cream and a movie. It was a week in the life of a lucky woman. And every night before I slept I could feel Christy’s bracelet burning warm on my wrist; every morning when I stretched for the day, I could feel the bracelet’s weight heavy on my arm.
I found I made detours. I took not the shortest route between stops but the one that would take me close to the Lily Pad where I could run in and check the Sharing Place. “Have a birthday party for the world” gave way to “Wave to a bird because you cannot fly,” then “Wake up early and dance for the sunrise,” but there was never a message for me from Kim. Three times I went to the bridal store where I had come upon Kim by chance the day after Christy’s funeral. I ached to see her. I ached to right the wrong I had done to C
hristy. I ached to redress the balance.
Monday, June third, I did the first television show. Keith picked me up and we drove to the studio together at five-thirty. We walked through the glass and steel lobby with pictures of the network stars suspended from the ceiling like the banners of medieval knights. A young woman, slender and fashionable in a black jumpsuit and odd socks, one pink, one turquoise, led us along corridors to an underground room where another young woman put makeup on us. She looked at Keith’s solid pale-blue suit approvingly and flicked his face with a powder puff. When it was my turn, she said my makeup was pretty good. She did some deft things with eyeshadow. “Brown is always more natural looking,” she whispered. She touched my earlobes with blush, then stood back and looked at me appraisingly. I had bought a new dress for the show, flowered silk, pretty as a summer garden.
“Next time,” she said kindly, “try to find a solid colour. That’s going to make you look like you’re wearing your bedroom curtains.” She looked at her watch, grinned and said, “Showtime. Knock ’em dead.”
The young woman with the odd socks marched us through a corridor to the studio.
“I like your dress,” Keith said.
“You’d like my bedroom,” I said.
We got microphones, Jill introduced me to Sam Steinitz, who arrived breathless from the airport, and we were away. It seemed to go all right, but I was immensely relieved when it was over. When they took off the microphones, Keith turned to me and grinned. “Well, shall we go over to my place and debrief?”
We stopped at a French deli and bought crusty bread and cold cuts and a salad made of tomatoes, fresh basil and ripe Brie. Then we went to Keith’s, debriefed and sat on the balcony eating dripping sandwiches, drinking wine and analyzing each other’s performances. I decided I liked TV.
Keith drove me home around ten-thirty. Mieka and Greg were sitting at the kitchen table poring over the guest list. They gave me a standing ovation when I came in. I kissed Mieka and she made a face.
“Oh, why do I find myself suddenly thinking of Provence?” she said. “I don’t suppose you brought leftovers.”
