by Ingrid Betz
“I’m only a GP, John. Not God—contrary to popular belief.” Alex Wong’s patients complained of never knowing when he was being serious or when he was joking. His hand moved to close the file folder lying open between the two men. “It won’t be forever.”
No. Nothing was forever. Borrowman knew all about the fleeting fragility of life. Thanks to his line of work, he’d had years of acquaintance with the never-ending cycle of birth, growth, and decay common to all living species. Now he was experiencing the third stage in intimate detail in his own body. He turned to set his cup on the corner of the desk, clear of the introductory lecture he was preparing for the fall term, and ran a hand over his perspiring forehead.
Early in his condition, Alex had lectured him on the effect of stress on pain management. St. Denis’s reports had shaken him badly. First the live bear poaching, now news that a Chinese company had bought an abandoned mine. Something big was in the works for Algonquin Park, and it was pointing more and more in one direction. The Cell would have to act. But how?
He’d fired off an urgent email to Asher but so far he’d had no reply. He couldn’t afford to wait, he’d have to put Verena in the picture. He desperately wanted one more kick at the can, one more victory. If someone were indeed establishing a bile-processing operation, stopping them might well be the most important thing he’d ever do in all his years as an activist.
His call this afternoon had caught Verena on her way out the door.
“Can’t talk now.”
“You’re going to work?”
“The three to nine shift. Such a nice day, I thought I’d walk to the studio.”
“I’ll pick you up when you’re done. Cell business.”
“If you’re late, I won’t wait,” she warned. “I’m catching the nine-fifteen bus home.”
Typical, he thought; Verena knew him too well. Still, that streak of independence was one of the traits he most admired in her. Borrowman glanced at his watch and pushed himself up from his chair. Half past eight; the pain was subsiding. Bless the pharmaceutical industry. He felt for his keys, patting his pockets with long thin fingers, two of them nicotine-stained. Too late, he remembered he’d meant to take the Volvo in for servicing today. Something under the hood was making a knocking noise.
He wondered if he could borrow Elaine’s new Toyota. She hadn’t gone out after supper, as far as he knew. “Elaine?”
His loose stride took him to the front of the house, where the living room served as her music studio. The Steinway stood mute, its keyboard closed for the day, and music sheets laid out on top ready for the next day’s pupils. A vase of lilies scented the air, the cushions on the chintz-covered chairs were plumped. Elaine was nothing if not efficient and organized and she kept the house to a higher standard than Margaret had ever done. He didn’t appreciate her nearly enough, he knew that. In the den across the hall, a car burst noisily into flames. Sprawled like an accident victim in front of the television set was his youngest son. “Don’t you have homework?”
Donny waved the remote without glancing up. “It’s done.”
Borrowman doubted that. What grade was Donny going into? Six? “When I was your age…”
“Used the computer, Dad. No comparison to your day.” Donny had answers for everything; mostly ones that were hard to check.
Borrowman glanced into the dining room. Light from the hall reflected dully from the oversized mahogany table. The last time the family had all sat around it together was Easter; with only the boys keen on eating the ham Elaine had baked. She and Asher weren’t speaking at that point and the tension in the room had exacerbated the pain in his abdomen to such an extent that the next morning he’d made his first appointment with Alex Wong.
“Elaine?” he said, knowing already she wasn’t there.
“Upstairs I think, Dad.”
Raymond emerged from the kitchen flapping a sandwich; meatloaf left over from supper it looked like. Fifteen was the age, Borrowman recalled, when boys developed vacuum systems for the continuous intake of nourishment. Raymond’s weedy beanpole build was the image of his own in old photographs. From another life, it seemed. He glanced through the carved oak balustrade to the top of the stairs.
A splinter of light showed under Elaine’s bedroom door and he considered shouting up to her, but the impulse died. Asking her for the Toyota was a bad idea. The way she felt about Verena, he’d never hear the end of it. Besides, strictly speaking, it was against his principles to use Japanese products. He’d lectured Elaine and the boys often enough about the whales and the dolphins slaughtered to feed Japanese commercial appetites. Not that they paid much attention. In his bleaker moments, Borrowman was convinced his daughter had purchased the Toyota expressly to spite him. Spiting him seemed to be her prime motivation these days. He wouldn’t be surprised if she blamed him for Asher leaving.
“I have to go out for a while. In case your sister asks.”
“Sure thing, Dad.” Raymond nodded. The hand holding the sandwich beat time to the music leaking from a device connected to his ears. The Webern horn concerto, it sounded like. He was learning to play the piece in the school orchestra. “See ya, dude,” he called.
He was late. It was after nine, and most of the windows in the low-roofed building that housed the Dancefit Studio were already dark. A couple of middle-aged women waited in the entrance for their lifts home. Borrowman pulled to the side of the street.
True to her word, Verena was heading across the parking lot toward the bus stop, a short sturdy figure clothed in her habitual black and gray. It struck him, as so often before, that she walked like a soldier, with a swinging measured stride. Her hair, caught in a single plait, shone like brass under the streetlight.
Lounging against one of the uprights of the bus shelter was a young man. Borrowman registered a ponytail and Germanic good looks. As he edged the Volvo forward to draw level with Verena, she veered across the lot to meet him at the curb.
Borrowman leaned over to open the passenger door. “Somebody you know?” he said with a nod at the shelter, as she slid in beside him.
Verena’s pupils reflected the dashboard light. “Wolf Dietrich. A physio student at Western,” she said matter-of-factly. “Francine gave him a job for the summer.”
“He seemed to be waiting for you.”
She shrugged. “I said he could save me a seat on the bus.”
“If you’d prefer…”
She made a face. “As if.”
“As long as he doesn’t make a nuisance of himself,” he said and she flashed him the abrupt child’s smile he always waited for.
“Worrywart. I can look after myself.”
“Don’t I know it,” he muttered and let out the clutch. “Buckle up.” Obediently, she fastened her seatbelt. “You’re late. Wouldn’t Elaine let you out?”
He winced. The noise under the hood was back. “They’re doing sewer-work on Oxford. It took longer.”
“They have been since May. You only just noticed?” She laughed. “Cell business, you said. An assignment, I hope. I’ve got the Henry primed and ready to go.”
“I wish you wouldn’t joke about it.”
“Oh, I’m not joking. You nearly hit that van,” she said conversationally as a horn blared. “One of these days you’ll be glad I’m such a good shot.”
“God help me,” he said with feeling. He was driving too fast, he realized as the light at the intersection changed to yellow, and he eased his foot off the accelerator.
“God won’t mind. He kills people all the time. The more the merrier. Haven’t you noticed? He’s this giant gamer in the sky, pressing the keys of the latest Warfare 101 or whatever. The Middle East today. Africa, just enough to keep things from getting boring. Before that it was Eastern Europe.” She sent him a sidelong glance. “Any chance you’re going to send me out west? To join Asher?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you? Under the circumstances.”
She shrugged. “Elaine making life hard for you again, is she?”
Borrowman frowned; Verena knew which buttons to push. “Never mind Elaine.” He switched on the turn signal for Springbank Avenue, aware that he needed to concentrate. “I’ll tell you at the apartment.”
“Over tea.” She settled back in her seat. “I’m parched for a cup. Francine had me take the over-sixties class tonight. That means repeating each instruction at least three times and being extra encouraging.”
Borrowman smiled and felt his mood begin to lighten. Even when Verena aggravated him and he worried about her—which was most of the time—he liked being around her. In spite of her often outrageous comments, she accepted people for what they were and took life as it came. He didn’t know anyone else like her. Verena Vitek had been through the worst, and survived. She asked very little of other people and expected even less from life and she never tied herself in knots, as he did, about what went on in the world. Sometimes he wondered if she cared at all. That was the flip side of the coin. A coping mechanism common in dysfunctional personalities, Alex Wong had explained to him.
Borrowman parked the Volvo on the cracked strip of pavement that took the place of landscaping at the front of her apartment building. Every time he came, he wondered why she insisted on living here.
Backed against a row of tired-looking poplars, the cement block structure housed twelve units on three floors. He doubted the place had much to recommend it when it was new, and now time had added a patina of general neglect. Paint flaked from the window frames. The cracked pane in the front door still hadn’t been replaced, and neither had the burned-out bulb in the entrance hall. Verena rented what was optimistically termed a studio apartment on the top floor. A smell of boiled cabbage met them in the stairwell. He didn’t think that had changed either, in the two years since she’d lived here. The superintendent was a fat woman who cooked the foods she’d grown up with in her native Ukraine. Verena caught Borrowman’s grimace as they headed for the stairs.
“The rent is cheap,” she said.
“I told you. If you’re hard up…”
“And you’re Bill Gates? Forget it.” She tucked her hand under his arm as they climbed to the third floor landing. Her head reached a point halfway up his upper arm; a feeling he couldn’t name clutched at him whenever he looked down at the top of it.
“It’s handy to get downtown,” she said. “Plus I can walk to your house from here. Best of all, the tenants mind their own business.”
They were father and daughter, having an argument as old as time. Borrowman wouldn’t be surprised if the original had occurred the day the first daughter moved out of the family cave to one in the next mountain. Empty beer cans sprawled in the corner and he thought he saw the tip of a disposable syringe sticking out of crumpled paper bag. “You are being careful?”
“Of course.
“Not just here, I mean. That student—that Wolf fellow—does he try…” Borrowman stopped; she could be unpredictable when he pried.
“As if I’d let him!” She gave his arm a squeeze. “Dad.”
“Sorry.”
What passed for music nowadays thumped monotonously from behind the door next to hers. Verena’s foot nudged aside a battered skateboard. “His mother tries. Yells at him when she’s home. But she works two jobs.”
Borrowman thought of Donny, who left behind him a wake as broad as an ocean liner’s no matter how often he was yelled at: trainers, comics books, electronic games. The pain caught him off guard, boring a path through his upper abdomen. He turned aside while Verena unlocked the door of her apartment, praying that nothing showed in his face.
“It’s your pain again, isn’t it?”
Of course she noticed everything. “Just … catching my breath. I wouldn’t have to, if you lived in a building with an elevator.”
She gestured him inside, took his jacket. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He knew he shouldn’t let it get to him, but every time he came, it did. “God, Verena. When are you going to stop living like this?”
She turned from the closet with a coat hanger in her hand. It was a wonder she owned coat hangers. “Like what?”
“Like a transient.” He waved a hand at the L-shaped room with its empty expanse of dingy shag carpeting. “Like somebody waiting for the moving van to arrive. When was I here last?”
“April. After you got back from China.”
Jet-lagged, he recalled, after a flight that had taken longer than it should and with his mind still reeling from the awful things he’d seen and heard in Chengdu and Zhuhai. It was now early August and Verena hadn’t added so much as a potted plant. The same two planks still lay across the same red bricks on the far side of the room. Attached to the upper plank was a clip-on lamp and on the lower stood a battered tin biscuit box. A handful of books plus a solitary framed photograph completed the display. Taped to the wall above, a travel poster depicted a white cliff rearing skyward from an ice-blue arctic sea, while a miniscule red kayak bobbed empty in the waves below. Just to look at it chilled the heart in him.
An aversion to accumulating possessions was another manifestation of the damage done to her in the formative years. He was a university professor, he understood all that. Understanding didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
“What’s so wrong with owning a couple of comfortable chairs? A proper bookcase?” he demanded to know.
Verena’s laugh was artless. “They’re clutter, John. Excess baggage. We’re all transients on the road through life. That’s the point. Tea?”
“Please.” He ought to be grateful she hadn’t said “on the road to death” as she sometimes did just to wind him up.
She disappeared into the kitchen and he heard the electric kettle fill with water. He’d bought her the kettle as a house-warming present when she first moved in; otherwise she’d still be boiling water in a saucepan. What annoyed him most was the suspicion that her attitude was a more moral one than his. He himself lived in a three-story Victorian mansion bulging with all the assorted possessions five people had found it necessary to acquire and to which they continued to add daily. This was aside from the things his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had acquired before them, most of which were now relegated to dusty storage in the basement and the attic. Where was the rightness of that in a world where millions had nothing?
“Here.” Verena returned, carrying a folding chair. “For your knees. I know they aren’t up to sitting on the floor.”
He sat down, trying to overcome his irritation while she sank cross-legged onto the carpet that must have started life with a name like Amber Glow or Desert Sunset, but was now an indeterminate fading mustard. She looked very fit in that grey tunic thing worn over black leggings. Watching her move, he was reminded that she taught aerobics. In the corner of the room, the glass box of an aquarium glowed like an oasis. At least she’d kept that up. Drifting in and out of the vallisneria grass was a Tiger barb, an orange disc boldly striped in black and trailing a sweeping tail fin. Borrowman gestured. “He’s grown.”
“Hasn’t he.” Verena turned her head. Her hair in its thick plait caught the light from the clip-on lamp. “Believe it or not, we had beautiful chairs when I was a child. Biedermeyer. Did I ever tell you?”
“No.”
“Antique and valuable. Heavy carved wood, white with gilt and floral wreaths painted on them. Eight chairs with a matching table and—what do you call it—sideboard? A dining room suite. It was part of my grandmother’s wedding dowry. Naturally we had to leave it behind when we fled. I believe the neighbours chopped it up for firewood. Times were hard in Belgrade.”
Borrowman waited. He liked hearing her speak in her low modulated voice. Eastern Europe clung to her accent; in the way she short
ened her vowels and in the softness of her consonants.
“I remember my mother lying on the bed in the room my father found for us in Germany, crying her eyes out for the Biedermeyer suite. Always the Biedermeyer. I used to hear her at night from my cot.” Verena shrugged. “‘Not me,’ I swore. ‘I will never cry. Because I will never own furniture.’”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. Sixteen at the end when I celebrated my birthday. There were no presents or cake. Perhaps my mother was crying because of that, too. She didn’t say.” She gave Borrowman an arch look. “But lucky for you, I do own chairs. Three of them. They came with the card table in the kitchen. So now, are you going to tell me what Cell business is so urgent?”
A second-hand card table she’d picked up at Goodwill and it hadn’t even come with a full complement of chairs, he thought. Pathetic. Now that he was about to involve Verena, he wondered if he wasn’t making a terrible mistake. Sending her around the country to take part in demonstrations and protest rallies and the odd bit of surveillance was one thing, but this….
“Remember,” she said, reading his thoughts. “I’m all the Cell has got at the moment.”
She’d gone straight to the crux of the matter; she was good at that. He felt cornered. He told her of the phone calls from St. Denis, and the evidence so far.
“Officially this company’s bought the mine to grow mushrooms. At the same time there’s been this big increase in poaching live bears. The animals have to be ending up somewhere. Now St. Denis tells me he’s heard rumours of some unusual cargo being ferried to the mine: bags of dog food, rolls of plastic piping.”
“The food could be going to feed guard dogs. The piping to irrigate the mushrooms.”
“Possibly.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Borrowman shook his head. The expression on his face was one of helpless frustration. He fingered the pocket of his plaid shirt for the cigarettes he was supposed to be giving up. Verena raised an eyebrow and he let his hand drop. In the kitchen the kettle whistled and she sprang to her feet. “Poor John. The tea will give your hands something to do.”
