Burying Ariel

by Gail Bowen

  Beside Bev’s polished Technicolor sheen, Livia looked wan and schoolmarmish, but NationTV did include Livia’s anecdote about Ben, and they spelled her name right. They spelled Taylor’s name right, too, and I squeezed my daughter’s hand when I saw that she had asked to be identified as Taylor Kilbourn. As she explained her work to the interviewer she was poised and polite; equally important from my perspective, her turtleneck was spotless, her kilt untwisted, and only one of her braids had come undone. In all, it was a virtuoso performance, and the phone began to ring the minute it was over.

  The first call was from Mieka in Saskatoon. “I hope you taped that,” she said. “Maddy was hollering, so I missed the first part, but Taylor looked sensational and her painting is terrific. Mouseland! Any other day, Uncle Howard would have been bursting his buttons.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Any other day.”

  Mieka’s voice was concerned. “Mum, what’s going to happen to Charlie?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I expect he doesn’t, either. When I hear from Howard, I’ll fill you in. Now, Taylor’s at my elbow, longing to hear you tell her how fabulous she was, so I’m going to hand you over. Give everybody a hug for me.”

  As soon as Taylor hung up, the phone rang again. My younger daughter chatted happily for five minutes, then handed the receiver to me. It was my old friend Hilda McCourt, calling to say she was proud of Taylor and worried about Charlie. The third phone call was from Ed Mariani, who was also proud and worried. By the time the fourth call came, my Sloppy Joe was lukewarm and soggy and I’d had enough interruptions.

  “Leave it,” I shouted, but Taylor had already answered. She held out the phone to me.

  “For you,” she said brightly.

  It took me a moment to identify the voice on the other end. Bebe Morrissey was a woman who didn’t waste time on preamble, and obviously she worked on the assumption that once you’d met her, you wouldn’t forget her.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Bebe, can I call you back? We’re just in the middle of dinner.”

  “Don’t put me off,” she said. “This is important. On the news tonight, that little kid with the drawing was your daughter, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “But why is that important?”

  “I’m ninety-five years old, and I need to make sure I’ve got everybody straight in my mind,” she said irritably. “Now, the bottle blonde who gave your kid the flag and the pin was that right-winger, Bev Pilon.”

  I smiled to myself. “Right,” I said.

  “And the other one, the pasty-faced one, was – hang on, I wrote it down – Livia Brook, head of the department of Political Science.”

  “Right again. Look, Bebe, I don’t mean to be rude, but my dinner is stone cold. Why don’t you let me nuke it, eat it, and call you back?”

  “Because I live with a silent killer, high blood pressure, and by the time you call back, I could be dead. Now listen, I’ve made a serious mistake. Remember when I told you I saw Ariel Warren having that fight with her mother?”

  “I remember,” I said; then, in an attempt to speed her along, I provided Bebe with a quick recap of the incident. “After Ariel said that she had to do what she thought was best because she only had one life, her mother said, ‘You have two lives because I gave you mine.’ You and I agreed that it was a pretty ugly thing to say to your own flesh and blood.”

  Bebe cackled triumphantly. “Except – and this is my point – the woman who said that wasn’t Ariel’s flesh and blood. It was the other one, with the pasty face.”

  “Livia?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Bebe said, “Livia Brook, head of the department of Political Science. She was the one who told Ariel that she’d given her her life.”

  The pieces of the puzzle rearranged themselves, falling into place to reveal a truth that was as ugly as it was inescapable. Livia had been the woman Ariel had feared, the woman who, while insisting that all she wanted was Ariel’s happiness, had been unable to accept Ariel’s choice of a life that didn’t include her. Livia was the woman who had done “terrible things.” Unbidden, a memory surged into my consciousness: Ann Vogel in the Political Science office bragging about her role in getting Solange her job. Ann had said, “What Livia and I did wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary,” and Livia had silenced her. At the time, I had believed Livia was trying to put an end to a quarrel; now, it was clear that her motivation was far from altruistic. She had, I realized, been trying to shut Ann down before she said too much.

  For a beat, shock froze me. Then I felt the lash of panic. This wasn’t over. Solange wouldn’t let it be over until she found the woman Ariel had feared. The fact that Solange had been looking for Maryse Bergman suggested that the pieces of the puzzle were coming together for her, too.

  By now, I knew Solange’s home and office numbers by heart. When there was no answer at either place, I grabbed my car keys.

  Angus had just rewound the tape, so that Taylor could see herself again. “I’m going to make a quick trip to the university,” I said. “There’s something I have to check on.”

  “What’s up? You haven’t even finished supper.”

  “Just stick it in the fridge for me, will you, Angus? I’ll get it later.”

  Taylor was wholly absorbed in watching herself, but my son was on his feet. “You look kind of weird. Is everything okay?”

  Eli, always sensitive to problems, shifted position so he could check out the situation as well.

  I took in their worried faces and decided against setting off any alarms. “Just university politics,” I said. “A problem involving a couple of colleagues.”

  Angus grinned. “I’ll bet you a loonie that one of them is Dr. Coyle.”

  “You lose,” I said.

  Ten minutes later, as I pulled off the Parkway, I thought I’d give a bag full of loonies to see Kevin’s old boat of a Buick in its usual spot. My bank account was safe; the parking lot was deserted. I was deflated but not surprised. It was a gentle Friday night in spring. There was no reason for anyone to be at the university. But when I walked towards the main door of College West, I saw that someone was. A solitary bike was chained to the rack. The apprehension that had been shadowing me like the black cloud over the head of Joe Bfstplk in the old “Li’l Abner” cartoons deepened. I wasn’t an expert on bikes, but I knew this one. It was Solange’s Trek WSD.

  I began to run. My footfalls echoed as I padded down the empty corridors and through the silent halls. When I got to the Classroom Building, I decided against taking the elevator. It had been unpredictable all week, and I couldn’t do much for Solange if I was trapped between floors. I raced up the stairs. By the time I got to the third floor, my heart was thumping harder than it had when I’d completed my triumphant skipping exhibition. This time there was no applause.

  I went straight to Solange’s office and began pounding at her door. “It’s Joanne, Solange. Let me in.” There was no response, then, very faintly, a sound halfway between a moan and a cry. I tried the door. It was locked. I put my mouth to the door edge. “It’s going to be all right,” I said. “I’m getting help.” Then I ran to my office to call for an ambulance.

  I couldn’t seem to get the key to catch. Finally, its teeth gripped the lock and the door opened. I rushed to my desk and reached across to pick up the phone. My back was to the door. An arm shot past me from behind. The knife was at my throat before I had time to be afraid. And that was a blessing, because the person holding the knife was shaking so violently it seemed possible she might sever my throat accidentally. It would have been a Sam Peckinpah death: stupid and brutal. Oddly, the sheer craziness of that image calmed me enough to think about my next step. I knew that I had to slow my assailant’s rhythm to match my own. The question was, How? I managed to inhale; the scent of Pears soap, so familiar and so reassuring, gave me the answer. My best hope lay in a pattern of behaviour Livia herself had perfected. Ed Mariani had always called it coercion
by compassion, and at the moment it was the only game in town.

  “This must be a nightmare for you,” I said.

  Livia shivered and I felt the cool brush of silk against my bare arm. From the corner of my eye, I saw that she was wearing the poppy shawl that had been Ariel’s parting gift to her.

  “It is.” Livia’s dreamy New Age nuances made her sound like a woman in a trance. The woman whose byword was “No Surprises” had been surprised once too often. “No one ever comes to the office on a Friday night in the spring,” she said.

  “Everything’s going wrong,” I said. “And all you ever wanted was to do what was best for everybody.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed. “And that meant I had to start with myself. I needed to regenerate, to stop allowing experiences from the past to intrude on new relationships. I had to learn to trust again, and that was hard because …”

  “Because your husband had betrayed you.”

  “Kenneth almost destroyed me,” she said.

  “But Ariel gave you a chance to begin again.”

  “Our relationship was not parasitic, it was symbiotic. I could give Ariel the things she needed, too: a place to regenerate, a mentor who would foster her personal growth. From the first night we talked at Saltspring, I knew she belonged in our department. Having her here was worth every risk.” Suddenly, Livia tensed. “There was never anything sexual, you know.”

  “That never even occurred to me,” I said. “I knew you were just two women being loving and supportive.”

  The hand holding the knife dropped from my throat and rested on my breast. “It could have been perfect,” she said. “For both of us. I would have done anything for her. Why wasn’t it enough?”

  “ ‘Some people,/No matter what you give them/Still want the moon,’ ” I said.

  Livia whirled me around to face her. “I offered her the moon,” she said furiously. “She didn’t want it. She wanted to move away, have a child, grow things, make art, make choices. After she’d taken away all my choices.”

  “Not all of them,” I said. “Livia, you can still decide how this will end.”

  For what seemed like an eternity, we looked into one another’s eyes. It was the most terrible intimacy I had ever known.

  Finally, she said, “I can decide, can’t I?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  My intent, that she spare me and give herself up to the authorities, was so clear in my own mind, it never occurred to me that Livia had seen another answer in my words.

  She took a ring of keys from her pocket and handed it to me. “This one opens Solange’s office,” she said, indicating the key marked with Solange’s office number. “She’s bleeding heavily. You should go to her. I’ll call 911 myself.”

  Relief washed over me. “You won’t regret this,” I said.

  Livia reached out and, with a hand that was as cold as death, she touched my cheek. “Even when I turned against you during Kevin’s case, you never told.”

  “Told what?”

  Her face crumpled with shame. “How I debased myself the night my husband left me.”

  Clear as a Polaroid print, the image of Livia drunkenly attempting to light the candles on her birthday cake flashed before my eyes. “Every life has some terrible moments,” I said. “But there’s always a new moment, another chance to regain our dignity.”

  Livia’s eyes never left my face. “That’s true, isn’t it?” Her lips brushed my cheek. “Sisters forever,” she said, and I felt something inside me shrivel.

  I held Solange’s hand as we waited for the ambulance. She floated in and out of consciousness, moaning, talking a little. Once she whispered, “ ‘God says, “Take what you want. Take it, and pay for it.” ’ Don’t forget the fat priest, Joanne. Livia has to pay …” She closed her eyes then, drifted into the twilight sleep of one whose pain is too great to be borne in any other way. As we heard the sirens that announced the arrival of the police and the ambulance, Solange’s eyelids fluttered. “We killed her with our love,” she murmured, and I shuddered at the truth.

  As the attendants strapped Solange to the stretcher and took her away, the police streamed into the hall. I directed them to Livia’s office, and then returned to my own. For a few moments, I drank in its ordinariness: the pictures of my kids and of Alex and Eli, the familiar spines of my books, the comforting roundness of my Brown Betty.

  The officer who burst through my door didn’t look much older than Angus. “Livia Brook’s not there,” he said, and his voice cracked with frustration. I followed him into the hall.

  Uniformed police were everywhere. Robert Hallam, striding smartly towards me in a blue blazer and grey flannel slacks, was a welcome emissary from the everyday world. “Do you have any idea where she could have gone?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “She said she was going to call 911. I was so anxious to get to Solange, it never occurred to me that Livia would try to escape. There’s nowhere she can go, except …” I touched my cheek, remembering Livia’s wintry kiss, the way she had leaped at my words when I said she could still decide how the nightmare would end.

  I touched Bob Hallam’s arm. “She may have decided to choose her own way out,” I said.

  His face showed nothing. “Do you know her home address? Usually, that’s where they go.”

  “I can’t imagine that would be Livia’s choice,” I said. “After her marriage broke up, she moved into a condo, but I think it was just a place to go at the end of day. This was her home.”

  “You think she’s still here?”

  I held up the ring of keys Livia had handed me. “Let’s check Ariel Warren’s office.”

  I let Robert open the door and walk in ahead of me. The office was shadowy, but I could see that she wasn’t there. I tried to put myself in Livia’s place; where would I go? The answer was not long in coming. I led Robert down to the wide concrete walkway that runs along the outside of our building.

  The evening was soft and filled with birdsong. Livia’s body had landed on the little hill where Ariel had taught her last class. I wondered if she had known, if she had planned it that way. In death, Livia seemed too insignificant to have planned anything: a broken doll, as lifeless as one of Bebe’s Barbies. The poppy shawl lay on the grass beside her. One of her fingers touched its edge, pinning it to the ground. As we watched, a gust of wind came up and lifted the shawl into the air. For the briefest of moments, it swirled, a flash of pure beauty, an emblem of what might have been.

  The Monday after Livia’s suicide, Kevin Coyle became acting head of our department. The decision had been unanimous, but his appointment gave new meaning to the term “hollow victory.” No one wanted to be department head. It was the end of May: holidays had been planned, arrangements had been made to deliver learned papers at conferences in exotic places. Like grade-school kids, we were all sick of school. The last thing any of us wanted to do was hang around the office.

  But Kevin revelled in his new status. He moved his shining new computer and his coffee-maker into the department head’s office and plunged into his duties. There weren’t many. Livia had left our affairs in order, but Kevin managed to keep busy. Every afternoon, he visited Solange in hospital. He told me they talked little but played endless games of cribbage. Somewhere between hands, Solange convinced Kevin to enrol in a Women’s Studies class that was being offered that summer. Eager as a freshman, Kevin went straight to the bookstore and purchased his texts. When I came to pick up my mail, I often spotted him reading one of them, underlining and harrumphing at some fresh oddity about the lives of girls and women.

  Charlie was back on the air. Eli kept me posted. Apparently, Charlie had lost none of his edge, but one day the sadness in his voice had become so overwhelming that Eli called the station and invited Charlie to meet him and his psychiatrist, Dan Kasperski, for coffee. The two men had hit it off so well that, when Charlie asked, Dan accepted him as a patient.

  Alex came home with a fresh tin of he
mp oil that we managed to empty by the end of his first week back. After one particularly gratifying hour of lovemaking, Alex lay back on his pillow and grinned at me. “As Truman Capote once said, ‘Home! And Happy to Be.’ ”

  I rolled over and snuggled in. “Imagine a kid from Standing Buffalo quoting Truman Capote.”

  Alex kissed the top of my head. “You forget,” he said. “I’ve been to the big city.”

  Busy with Alex, plans for the boys’ graduations, Taylor’s endless end-of-term activities, and my own marking, I never seemed to get around to calling Bebe Morrissey. Characteristically, Bebe took matters into her own hands and invited me over.

  Rain was threatening the afternoon I pulled up in front of EXXXOTICA, but the marigolds in Ronnie’s iron pots were cheery, and Kyle, who was installing a cinder-block front walk, was cheery, too. As soon as he recognized me, he threw down his shovel. “Great to see you,” he said. “I’ll take you up to Bebe. There’s a ton of customers in the store. Rainy days and full moons are good for business, at least that’s what Ronnie always says.”

  Business was indeed booming. Ronnie was at the cash register, ringing up a stack of videos. She waved when she saw me. “Come talk to me before you leave,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” I said. Then I followed Kyle up the narrow stairs to Bebe’s room.

  There were fresh circles of rouge on Bebe’s wizened apple cheeks, and her white hair was brushed into an aureole as insubstantial as dandelion fluff. “Well, we got her,” she said by way of greeting. “We got our murderer, that Livia Brook. I’ve made a whole scrapbook on the case. It’s over there on the chest. I thought we could look at it together while we had our snack.”

  As I drank my chocolate milk and perused Bebe’s album, I thought there were worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon. The milk was comforting and, mounted in the scrapbook, the grainy newsprint pictures of people I had known so well already seemed distant, part of a painful but receding history.

  When I closed the book, Bebe’s blue eyes were bright with interest. “So what d’ya make of it?”