Burying Ariel

by Gail Bowen

  In the good days, students, mostly male but some female, would spend hours in Kevin’s office, playing Risk, talking politics, eating toasted sandwiches and drinking Kevin’s execrable coffee. It had been a long time since students had ventured through that door, but Kevin had left everything at the ready – waiting for the Restoration.

  “You’re like Miss Havisham,” I said.

  “You think I don’t know whom you’re talking about,” he grunted, “but I do. Miss Havisham was that loony old broad in Great Expectations who got jilted at the altar and kept everything just as it had been on the day of her wedding. You’ll note I’m not wearing a wedding gown and there’s no mouldering wedding cake in sight. You’ll also note that I’m not insane. On the contrary, I’m a sane man in an insane world. May I offer you a cup of coffee?”

  “Did you make it within the last two days?”

  “Within the hour,” he said. “I’m turning over a new leaf.”

  “Then I’ll take a chance. Kevin, I need some help.”

  He brought me the coffee in an orange and brown striped mug whose earth tones were as faded as the earth-friendly activism of the seventies. The coffee was surprisingly good, and I told him so.

  “I’ve learned the secret,” he said mysteriously.

  “Kevin, I’d love to sit here and talk coffee with you, but I need some information. As the one department member who’s here day and night, do you have any idea who cleared out Ariel’s office?”

  He couldn’t suppress the triumph in his eyes. “She and I did.”

  “When?”

  “A week ago Tuesday. It was around eight-thirty at night. I was here, working on my appeal, and I heard noises coming from down the hall. I went over to investigate. I was listening at the door when I heard a crash. I didn’t wait to be invited in. Ariel was on the floor. She’d been standing on her chair getting down the books from the top shelf of her bookcase when she slipped. She was all right, just shaken up a bit. She told me she’d been packing up her things, which was a fairly obvious statement since there were boxes all over the place. I asked if she needed some help getting the boxes downstairs to her car. She said she did.” He lowered his voice. “I have a private dolly on loan from the library.”

  “That’s obliging of them,” I said.

  “It would be if they knew I had it,” he agreed. “At any rate, it took us two trips to get everything into her truck, but we made it. Of course, I was curious about what she was up to, so when we loaded the last box on, I asked her, in a jocular way, whether it was moving day. She said no, she was just simplifying because she didn’t know what lay ahead.”

  “Did she seem frightened?”

  “Not frightened, just tense and resolute. Before she got in her car, she kissed me.” Remembering, Kevin touched his cheek. “Then she said, ‘People were wrong about you. That’s the next battle, and I’m not looking forward to it.’ ” Kevin’s face darkened. “Until that moment, it was a wonderful evening, but I pushed it too far. That’s a flaw of mine. Have you noticed?” He glared at me, waiting for a response.

  I let him glare. Finally, hating silence, he continued. “That’s when Ariel and I had the exchange that Ann Vogel and her friends are getting such mileage from.”

  “What exactly was the exchange?”

  “It was obvious Ariel had learned something, so I pressed her to tell what she knew. She said she couldn’t until she’d talked to someone else first. Of course, I was certain the person she had to speak to was a member of the odious group of women. So I said, ‘Stay away from those harpies or you’ll be sorry.’ All I meant was that she’d lose the ground she’d gained, but I must have shouted because apparently I was overheard. Unfortunately, no one overheard her response.”

  “Which was …?”

  “Which was, ‘I already am sorry.’ ”

  “Did you tell the police this?”

  “Of course. They wrote it down very carefully. I’m sure the report has already been consigned to the shredder. Isn’t that how the authorities process all statements from middle-class white men over fifty?”

  “Can it, Kevin. Let’s keep the focus on Ariel. Did she tell you anything more about why she was clearing out her office?”

  “Just that she was separating what she needed from what she didn’t need.”

  “That was it?”

  “That was it.”

  I finished my coffee and stood up. “I’m glad you were there,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m a human being, Joanne. That brings certain obligations.”

  As I walked down the corridor to my office, I had to admit I was spooked. Why had Ariel cleaned out her office four weeks before her class was over, and what had she meant by “the next battle”? Something else was troubling. Despite his promise to call me, I hadn’t heard from Howard Dowhanuik. That mystery, at least, appeared to have a solution within my reach, but when I got back to my office and dialled Howard’s apartment, there was no answer. I checked my machine at home. There were two messages: the first was from Marie Cousin thanking me in advance for being a parent-helper the next week when Taylor’s class visited the Legislature; the second was from Howard telling me he was worried about Charlie, and he’d be in touch.

  The day stretched ahead. I could do what a sensible woman would do: shop for groceries, pack, get ready for the long weekend; or I could see if Charlie would talk to me. Ed Mariani had told me once that the first lesson a journalist learns is that everyone wants to tell their story. Something in my bones told me that a man as obsessed as Charlie had been would want to tell his. Luckily, I had a credible excuse for paying him a visit. If I was going to teach Ariel’s class on Tuesday, I’d need her copy of the text. I went back to the main office and flipped through Rosalie’s Rolodex.

  Ariel’s address was a surprise: 2778 Manitoba Street was downtown, in a neighbourhood in which, depending on your bent, you could get cured by a Chinese herbalist, saved at a Romanian Catholic Church, or beaten to a pulp if you chose to hang around after dark. The city’s core was an unlikely choice for two young people with good incomes and privileged backgrounds, and as I drove past businesses that promised to cash cheques, no questions asked, and second-hand furniture stores with year-round sidewalk sales, I began to wonder if I had ever known Ariel at all.

  The house she and Charlie had shared was a thirties bungalow with a fresh coat of paint the colour of Devonshire cream, dark green louvred shutters, lace curtains, and wicker hanging baskets filled with scarlet double impatiens. Nestled between a pawnshop with barred windows and an adult video store, the perky innocence of number 2778 came as a sweet shock, like discovering Donna Reed in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

  Charlie and Ariel had made two concessions to the realities of their neighbourhood. The front lawn was protected by a chain-link fence and, as I stepped onto the porch, the dog that began barking in the backyard sounded like it meant business. After five minutes, the dog was still barking, no one had come to the door, and my idea about ambushing Charlie into supplying some answers seemed hare-brained rather than inspired. As I headed back to my car, I tried to step carefully around the water pooling on the walk, but despite my efforts, my feet got wet. By the time I reached the car, my temper was frayed. It was a toss-up whom I was angrier at: myself for thinking I could play Nancy Drew, or Charlie for leaving his dog out in a downpour.

  The penny dropped. It had been raining constantly since 5:30 that morning. I hadn’t been close to Charlie for years, but if the Jesuits are right about the boy being the father of the man, I couldn’t imagine the Charlie I knew growing into a man who would leave his dog out in the rain. I retraced my steps and walked by the side of the house and peered over the gate into the backyard. A man in a khaki slicker, whose hood hid his face from view, was trying to feed paper into a smouldering hibachi. The dog, a Rottweiler, was beside him.

  “Why don’t you wait for the rain to stop, Charlie?” I said.

  But when he turned, the man facin
g me wasn’t Charlie. With his strong features, wire-rimmed glasses, and slick, swept-back hair, he had the look of a man who was accustomed to dominating the situation: a lawyer or an actor. He didn’t greet me, and his silence seemed like a professional tool.

  “I’m looking for Charlie Dowhanuik,” I said.

  The man remained silent. His expression wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t welcoming.

  “I’m a friend of the family.”

  He shrugged. “What’s Charlie’s mother’s name?”

  “Marnie,” I said. “Marnie Sullivan Dowhanuik.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Good Shepherd Villa, in Toronto.”

  He walked towards me, and unlocked the gate. The Rottweiler stayed at his side. As I came through the gate, I held my hand out, palm up, to the dog. He sniffed it eagerly; then he let me scratch his head. The man watched with interest. “You passed the name test and you passed the Fritz test,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. My name is Liam Hill, and I’m sorry for being suspicious, but it’s been that kind of day.”

  “Joanne Kilbourn,” I said. “Have you had to deal with a ghoul patrol?”

  “The stream has been steady,” he agreed. “I guess it’s human nature, but when you know the people involved, it’s hard to see tragedy as a spectator sport.”

  “So you’re a friend of Charlie’s.”

  “And of Ariel’s,” he said. “Look, we’re getting soaked. Do you want to continue this inside the house?”

  “Sure.” I gestured towards a sheet of yellow legal paper smoking wetly in the hibachi. There was handwriting on it. “That’s not going to work, you know.”

  He stiffened. I saw immediately that he had given my words a significance I hadn’t intended. I didn’t want to alienate him. At the moment he was the only link I had. “It’s too wet now,” I said. “Why don’t you try later?”

  I could see him relax. “Let’s go inside.”

  Fritz loped happily ahead, and I followed. We walked across the deck into the kitchen, an attractive room with hardwood flooring, old fashioned glass-faced cupboards, an ancient slope-shouldered Admiral refrigerator, a huge gas stove, and a picture window that looked onto the garden. Flush against the window was a butcher-block table. On the table, Ariel’s tomato plants languished, dry and yellowing. Unexpectedly, my eyes filled.

  Liam Hill didn’t notice. He had his back to me, hanging his slicker over the back of a chair. When he turned, I saw that he was wearing a navy sweatshirt with white lettering.

  “St. Michael’s College,” I said. “I went to Vic, but my first serious boyfriend was at St. Mike’s. His name was Bob Birgeneau, and he told me that he knew I was a nice girl, but that other boys wouldn’t know I was a nice girl if I kept wearing slacks to class.” I smiled. “Sorry,” I said. “Too much information.”

  “Not too much information,” Liam Hill said. “Just an interesting sociological nugget. Shall we sit down?” He pointed towards a built-in breakfast nook just off the kitchen. Like the refrigerator, it was a period piece, a restaurant-style booth with wine leatherette banquettes facing one another across a Formica-topped, chrome-edged table. “Incidentally, we’re a little more enlightened about dress codes at St. Mike’s now.”

  I slid into my place, and Liam Hill slid into his across from me.

  “I feel like I should be ordering a cherry Coke and fries.” I said.

  He smiled. “Whatever happened to cherry Cokes?” Then he leaned towards me. “I probably should have said this off the top. I’m not going to talk about Charlie.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Actually, I was hoping to talk to Charlie myself. I thought he might need a friend.”

  “How well do you know him?” Liam Hill asked.

  “Not well at all any more. He and my kids knew each other when they were growing up. My connection is really with his parents, which, of course, now pretty well means Howard.”

  “You and Howard Dowhanuik are close.”

  “He’s my oldest friend.”

  “For Charlie’s friends, that’s not necessarily a recommendation.”

  I could feel my temper rise. “There are two sides to every story, Mr. Hill.”

  Actually, it’s Father Hill,” he said, “and you’re right. I do only know Charlie’s side of the story.”

  “Charlie was never very charitable about his father,” I said.

  “Perhaps his father hadn’t earned charity.”

  “That’s an odd comment coming from you,” I said. “Has your order started charging for caritas, Father Hill?

  He winced. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kilbourn. This hasn’t been anyone’s finest hour.”

  “Then don’t prolong it,” I said. “Tell me when Charlie will be back, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Father Hill’s face gave away nothing, but the pulse in his neck fluttered as he weighed his decision. Finally, the scales tipped in my favour. “Charlie won’t be back for a while. He went to Toronto to see Marnie.”

  I was incredulous. “To see Marnie? Is she better?”

  “There’s been no change in her condition. Charlie just wanted to be with his mother. Your friend, Howard, went with him.”

  Liam Hill’s words were innocent, but something in his tone got under my skin.

  “Howard doesn’t need me to defend him,” I said, “but, for the record, you’re wrong about him. He’s a good man, and he made a real difference in the lives of a lot of people here.”

  “And his wife and son paid the price,” Liam Hill said quietly.

  “You knew Marnie before the accident?”

  He shook his head. “No, she was already at Good Shepherd when I met her. But Charlie told me she was brilliant. He said there was nothing she couldn’t have been, if she hadn’t had to sacrifice everything –”

  I cut him off. “Marnie Dowhanuik didn’t sacrifice everything.”

  Father Hill shifted his gaze. “We all have our own perception of reality,” he said mildly.

  “Don’t humour me,” I said. My voice was loud and angry. When I spoke again I tried to take the volume down a notch. “This isn’t a perception. This is the truth. For many years, Marnie and I were as close as sisters. Father Hill, she wasn’t a victim. She was smart and funny and … she was Marnie – driving stubborn voters to the polls, handing out placards at rallies, cooking turkeys for all those potluck suppers. And her cabbage rolls …” I smiled at the memory. “She could make a pan full of sensational cabbage rolls in the time it took me to find the recipe. I remember once we’d been at a constituency dinner in the basement of Little Flower Church. At the end of the evening, when she and I came out to the parking lot, she was carrying this big roasting pan filled with leftovers. Howard was surrounded by men hanging on his every word. Marnie waded through all those fawning guys and handed him the roaster. ‘Howie,’ she said, ‘I made these cabbage rolls, I delivered them to the church hall, I reheated them, I served them, I washed the plates they were eaten off, I paid the party ten bucks for the ones that were left; the least you can do is carry them back to the damn car.’ ”

  Father Hill laughed softly. “Nice story,” he said.

  “There’s more to it,” I said. “You can imagine how those men were gaping. After all, Howard was the premier, and Marnie was just the missus, but she had this great smile, and she gave those guys the full wattage. Then she delivered the coup de grâce. ‘Another thing,’ she said. ‘That speech you’re all creaming your jeans about – I wrote it.’ ”

  Liam Hill raised an eyebrow. “She sounds like quite a woman.”

  “She was,” I said. “Maybe Charlie never realized that. Kids’ perceptions of their parents’ lives aren’t always accurate. Father Hill, I wouldn’t accept Charlie’s word as gospel on this. He had his own burdens, and they may have distorted his view. But don’t diminish Marnie. The fact that her bike was hit by a car was a tragedy, but her life wasn’t.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Now, I did have a purpose in coming here
. I’m taking over the class Ariel was teaching, and I’m going to need her textbook. It’s called Political Perspectives. It’s a quality paperback with a blue and red cover. Could you check her desk for it?”

  “No problem,” he said, but there was something halfhearted about his agreement, and I wasn’t surprised when he returned empty-handed.

  “No problem, but also no luck,” he said.

  “Thanks for trying,” I said.

  I pulled up the zipper on my jacket, then glanced at the tomato plants on the table. “Ariel babied those plants from seeds,” I said. “I hate to see them dying. Would you mind if I found a place outside to put them so they could get some of this rain?”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” he said.

  We were silent as we carried the tiny peat pots outside. We found a place on the deck where they could get plenty of rain, but where, if the wind came up, they’d be protected. As we set the last one in place, Fritz, who was still inside, began barking.

  “Sounds like you have company,” I said. “There’s no need for me to trail mud through the house. I can leave by the gate at the side.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m glad you came, Mrs. Kilbourn. It’s always useful to have another perspective.” He offered me his hand. “It’s good you thought about the tomato plants.”

  When the back door closed behind him, I sprinted to the hibachi. The fire had sputtered out. I grabbed the charred piece of legal paper, folded it once, and dropped it in my purse.

  As I let myself through the side gate, I saw why Fritz had been barking. Two police cars had pulled up in front of the adult video shop next door. The cruisers were empty, so the officers had apparently already gone inside. I was gawking as I walked to my car and, before I slid into my seat, I took a final glance. In an uncurtained window at the front of the second storey, an old woman was watching me. When our eyes met, she lifted her arm very slowly and waved at me. I waved back.