by Gail Bowen
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 Christy. 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.”
I held up a greasy bag.
“You suppose wrong,” I said. She and Greg attacked the bag like kids, and Mieka ran through the evening’s messages. There were calls from old political friends, most of whom, according to Mieka, wanted to tell me what to say next time. Peter had called collect. He’d been in the middle of nowhere when the show came on, but had found a pub with a TV and made everybody watch his mother. He’d liked the show, and he said the guys in the bar thought I seemed sharp for a woman. My old friend Hilda McCourt called from Saskatoon to tell me I deferred to Keith and Sam Steinitz too much and that solid colours tended to photograph well and make the wearer look slim, but that she thought I had a future in TV. Keith and I had a final glass of wine with the kids, and by eleven-thirty, I was showered and in my nightgown. When I turned down the bedspread, I saw the picture Taylor had left for me. It was called “Jo on TV.” I was smiling and wearing my flowery dress. I looked very thin and very fashionable. When I went to tuck her in, I gave her an extra hug. That night I went to bed happy.
The next day I got a message from Kim Barilko.
CHAPTER
8
The morning of June fourth was glorious: hot, blue-skied, alive with possibilities. After I showered, I took the dogs for a run, got the kids off to school and sat down at the picnic bench with a cup of coffee. The tension of the first TV show was over; the kids were safe; the shoes I’d chosen to wear with my mother-of-the-bride dress were off being dyed. Life was under control. All I had to do was sit back and enjoy it. But I couldn’t.
Half an hour later, wearing sandals, a black-and-white checked sundress and my Wandering Soul bracelet, I pulled up on the street in front of the Lily Pad. I walked up the sidewalk and made my way through the smokers on the front steps. By now they were used to me; I was as unremarkable to them as the wooden frog sunning himself on the lily pad on the front lawn. I went straight to the Sharing Place. My note was there, but there was still no answering message. As I walked to my car, I felt the familiar sting of defeat.
That’s when I saw him. He was standing by my Volvo, slight, young, dressed to intimidate: sleeveless black shirt; skintight blue jeans, black hair pulled into a ponytail under a high-crowned black cowboy hat, black reflector glasses. He lit a cigarette and inhaled it lazily.
“I saw you on TV,” he said. “It was on in the place where I was,” he added quickly, in case he’d revealed something.
I could see myself reflected in his glasses. I seemed distorted. My forehead was huge, and my body seemed to dwindle off, caricaturelike, toward a point on the sidewalk.
“You’re the one looking for Kim,” he said.
My face in the shining black glass was suddenly alert.
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
“She’ll meet you,” he said. “Until last night she didn’t believe it about you knowing someone on TV.”
“Where can I find her?” I said.
“She’ll find you,” he said. “Tonight at the coffee shop in the bus station, ten-thirty.” Then, for just a second, the tough-guy edge in his voice softened. “She’s a good kid,” he said. “She needs a lucky break.”
I called Jill and told her the news. She sounded tired and discouraged.
“Maybe some good will come out of this after all,” she said. “I’m certainly getting nowhere.”
“Darren Wolfe’s hot information wasn’t so hot?” I said.
“Oh, it was hot, all right, at least I think it could be hot, but somebody needs to do a lot of digging, and the network is determined it isn’t going to be us. I told you they were dragging their heels on this, so this morning I decided to fax Toronto all my notes from the interview with Darren. Jo, I was so sure if I just laid things out they’d see what a great story the Little Flower case is.”
“And they didn’t,” I said.
“Twenty minutes ago I got a fax telling me in no uncertain terms that street journalism is not the network’s mandate and that I’m the only regional news director who hasn’t submitted plans for Canada Day coverage. Here I am sitting on one of the best stories of my life, and I have to shut everything down so I can call Eyebrow, Saskatchewan, and see what they’re doing on July first.”
I laughed. “I’ll bet you a hundred thousand dollars they’re having a softball tournament.”
“No bet,” she said. “Listen, Jo, see if you can shake anything loose from Kim tonight, would you? Specifically, about kids disappearing.”
“You mean kids her age?”
“No, little kids.”
I felt a chill. “Jill, what do you think’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I just get glimpses. Be careful, Jo. I’ll tell you what I tell our interns from the school of journalism. Keep your eyes open, don’t believe anything until you’ve heard it from three sources, tell only the people who need to know and always remember where the door is.”
“Right,” I said. I hung up and looked at my watch. It was going to be a long wait till ten-thirty. I went upstairs, made files for a box of clippings and started to organize my office. Busy work. At noon I picked up Taylor, and we drove downtown and offered to buy Mieka lunch at Mr. Tube Steak if she’d come and sit in the park with us. She did.
After lunch, Taylor and I had a swim and a nap and started to get ready for dinner. Keith was flying to Toronto that night, so I’d asked him over for an early barbecue.
Taylor and I made a potato salad and coleslaw. After she’d finished at Judgements, Mieka came by with a double chocolate cheesecake from another caterer. (“She’s good, but I’m going to be better,” she said, smiling, as she put the cake in the refrigerator.) Around five, Greg and Keith came over, and we barbecued chicken. It was a nice family evening. After coffee and dessert, I drove Keith to his place to pick up his bags. We walked upstairs together; when we opened the door, Keith’s apartment was hot and airless.
“Air conditioner must have gone again,” he said. “Do you want me to run inside and grab my bags? We can have a drink at the airport.”
“Let’s just sit out on your balcony,” I said. “I’ve got some news about Kim Barilko, and I’d rather you were the only one who heard.”
Keith took my hand and led me to the balcony. He was silent as I told him. When I finished, he looked at me searchingly. “Jo, are you sure you’re not getting in too deep with all of this? The Hardy Boys stories are fun when you’re a kid, but this sounds serious to me.”
“Nancy Drew,” I said.
Keith raised his eyebrows.
“For girls it was Nancy Drew,” I said, “and I know it’s serious, but, Keith, I can’t just walk away. Kim Barilko isn’t anybody’s ideal fifteen-year-old, but she’s funny and smart, and she deserves a chance not to be hassled by assh
oles.”
“I take it that’s a direct quote,” Keith said.
“Pretty much,” I said.
Suddenly there was a low moaning sound from the balcony below us. “Blaine’s air conditioner must be broken, too,” Keith said.
The air was split with hooting noises, and Keith smiled sadly. “Well, you are a miracle worker, Jo. Those are Blaine’s approbation signs. He agrees with you. Blaine believes that Kim Barilko deserves a chance.”
After I drove Keith to the airport, I came home, had a swim with the kids and got everybody settled for the night. Then I drove downtown. At ten-thirty I pulled into the parking lot opposite the bus station. Across the street at the Shrine Temple, men’s laughter escaped through an open door into the hot night. The bus station was brightly lit. I went into the coffee shop, sat down at the counter and ordered iced tea. There was a Plexiglas wall between the coffee shop and the bus waiting room. I could see people sitting on benches, patient, still. Mostly they were native people or they were old. The past winter a once-famous newsman from the east had said that our city was dying, that soon the only people left in Regina would be old or native. For most of us that prospect seemed a lot more comfortable than living in a city filled with once-famous newsmen. I finished my tea and looked at the big clock over the coffee machines. It was ten forty-five.
The waitress came over and asked if I wanted a refill. She was a pretty young woman, with the dark slanted eyes some northern Cree people have. On her uniform was a button saying, “Smile, God Loves You.”
I ordered another iced tea. She brought it, then picked up a damp cloth and began wiping down the counter.
“Closing time?” I said.
“I wish,” she said.
The outside door opened and two young women came in. You didn’t have to be a sociologist or a cop to know how they earned their living. Low-cut sweaters, high-cut skirts, bare legs, shoes with three-inch heels. The smaller of the women was holding her hand against her cheek. Without a word, the waitress scooped up some ice, dropped it in a cloth and handed it to her.
