The Nesting Dolls

by Gail Bowen

  “I sent my letter towards the end of November,” Delia said. “Myra would have handled it, too.”

  “Presumably,” I said.

  “And given Theo’s state, she would have been the one to decide whether or not to get in touch with Abby.”

  I nodded.

  “And we’ll never know whether they did.” Delia’s eyes dropped. “There’s so much we’ll never know.”

  She went to Zack. “You look as if you’ve had enough,” she said. “I know I have.” She bent and kissed his forehead. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  I walked her to the door. She put on her boots and jacket and draped around her neck the scarf that she’d knit when she was trying to quit smoking. The scarf trailed to her knee on one side. “I feel so guilty about this, Joanne.”

  “Zack’s flu was probably incubating before he went to Port Hope.”

  She tried a smile. “But you won’t deny that the trip made a bad situation worse. I seem to have developed a reverse Midas touch. I’m losing confidence in my decisions, and that’s always fatal.”

  “And futile to dwell on,” I said. “There’s no going back. Given the circumstances at the time, we do the best we can.”

  “I still believe that giving Abby up was best for her. She had a good life. I don’t know why everything fell apart.” Delia’s eyes filled with tears. “The first time I saw my daughter’s face was in that parking lot. The men who found her had left the door open. I got in. It was so cold. The key was in the ignition, so I turned on the heat. After she was born, I told them I didn’t want to see her, and when I got in the car with her, I knew it was my last chance. It was like looking in a mirror. I held her hand and talked to her. I knew she was dead, but I kept on talking. I promised her I would make things right.” Delia wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I usually can, you know.”

  Pale, tense, her slight body seemingly dragged to one side by the weight of her scarf, Delia was a forlorn figure. “I’ve always known how to cut my losses and move along, but I can’t forget her,” she said. “Suddenly, I can’t forget anything.”

  I didn’t relay any of Delia’s conversation to Zack that night, but I slept fitfully, haunted by Delia’s account of sitting with her dead daughter, concerned about my husband’s laboured breathing and the appearance of his pressure wound, and wondering whether I’d made a grave error by offering to pick Nadine up at the airport. In the small hours I went down to my office, turned on my laptop, and checked out the appearance of pressure wounds that were non-threatening and those that were dangerous. I couldn’t tell the difference.

  The next morning, for one of the few times in my life, I had to drag myself out of bed. It was an effort to complete my morning run with the dogs. When I got back to the house, all I wanted to do was sleep, but real life had its demands, and its unsettling surprises.

  Nadine called when I was making the porridge. The fact that she was calling on her cell while she waited in line at Pearson International in Toronto might have accounted for her curtness, but the chill in her voice was undeniable.

  “I’ve just been speaking to my lawyer in Regina,” she said. “He’s going to pick me up at the airport. Thank you for your offer, but Mr. Colby feels it would be ill-advised for you and me to spend time together.”

  I tried to defuse the situation. “I understand,” I said. “Mr. Shreve feels exactly the same way.”

  “Well, Mr. Shreve is certainly the master of the game,” Nadine said, and she hung up.

  Henry Chan came by just as the porridge was ready. “That looks good,” he said.

  “Would you like some?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got appointments starting in half an hour. I just thought I’d check on my poker partner. How’s he doing?”

  “No worse, but no better. He still has a fever. That pressure sore we were concerned about still looks angry. And he’s dealing with a case that’s really gnawing at him.”

  Henry shrugged off his coat and went to the sink to wash his hands. “I can’t believe that a firm the size of Falconer Shreve doesn’t have somebody who could at least assist Zack with his case.”

  “It’s not that. The case involves one of the partners, and they want it kept confidential.”

  “I’ll talk to Zack about priorities if you want.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” I said. “If he wasn’t in charge of this case, he’d be fretting about it.”

  “If that’s what you’ve both decided… ”

  “We didn’t both decide,” I said. “Zack did.”

  Henry looked at me closely. “And you’re unhappy.”

  “I did a little Internet reading last night.”

  Henry’s chuckle was dry. “That would make anybody unhappy,” he said.

  “The article I read was about the danger of pressure sores. The writers focused on Christopher Reeve’s case. He had the best possible medical care, but he had a pressure sore that became infected; the infection became systemic; he had a heart attack, went into a coma, and died. There was nothing anyone could do. He was fifty-two years old.”

  “I won’t lie to you,” Henry said. “Pressure sores are always a concern.”

  “And I’m not competent to judge whether what I’m looking at on my husband’s back is just an abrasion or something serious. I’m out of my depth here, Henry, and I’m scared.”

  “We could put Zack in the hospital till this clears up.”

  “That has to be the last resort,” I said. “Zack hates hospitals. He spent so much time in them when he was a kid. He loves our home. I know he’ll get well faster here.”

  “How would you feel about getting a private nurse to come in to check once a day – keep an eye on the wound and give you a hand getting Zack in and out of the shower?”

  “I would feel immensely relieved,” I said.

  “I’ll get Gina to call Nightingale Nursing. They’re expensive but they’re good.”

  “I don’t care how much it costs,” I said. “I just want to be sure that nothing slips by me.” Willie leaned heavily against my leg. “Henry, can you make sure the nurse is comfortable with dogs? Pantera is very protective of Zack.”

  Henry finished drying his hands on a paper towel. “I’ve noticed,” he said.

  After Henry left, I brought Zack’s breakfast in and sat down with him while he made a heroic effort to eat what he clearly didn’t feel like eating.

  Finally, I took away the tray. “Can I get you something else?” I said.

  “Do you know what I’d really like?”

  “Name it. Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon? Steak tartare? Crepes Suzette?”

  Zack made a face. “All of the above, but not today. Today, what I’d like is for you to get into bed with me. I’m tired. You’re tired. Let’s get some sleep.”

  I took off my jeans and shirt and slipped in beside my husband. He was very hot, but I was cold. I curled into him. “Is this okay?” I said.

  “God, yes,” he said. “You are so soft and so cool… ”

  I moved closer. “Zack, how would you feel about -”

  He began to snore.

  I lay there feeling his heat, listening to the familiar and reassuring buzz of his breathing. At one point he moved and groaned. The pressure wound was sensitive, and if his position wasn’t right, it was painful.

  I adjusted the pillows behind his back and then put my arms around him. “You are the love of my life,” I said. “Don’t leave me.” I waited for a response, and when none was forthcoming, I too fell asleep.

  Two hours later, I awoke. Zack was staring down at me. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to suppress a cough?”

  “Why did you suppress it?”

  “You were so peaceful. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  I stretched my arms. “Well, thanks. Because I slept like the proverbial log, and I feel about a hundred times better than I did before Henry came. How about you?”

  “I woke up after a while and wat
ched you sleep – almost as good as the real thing. Till this bug goes away, let’s do this every day.”

  “Fine with me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  My husband drew me closer. “Neither am I, Ms. Shreve,” he said. “Count on it.”

  I made Zack tea, showered, ate a crumpet dripping with butter over the sink, and finally felt ready to start the day. There was a note from Taylor on the kitchen table. She was in her studio working if we needed her. I glimpsed out the window, saw the light, and smiled. I checked my messages. Most of them were from people concerned about Zack’s health, but Myra Brokaw’s concern was not for my husband’s well-being but her husband’s legacy. She asked me to call her as soon as I’d “reviewed” her films of Theo, so we could discuss our next step.

  It wasn’t exactly Paul on the road to Damascus, but it was insight enough for me. Somewhere amidst the sturm und drang of the past days, it seemed we had all forgotten that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. Myra had the answers to questions that were plaguing us. Myra had invited me over. I would accept her invitation and ask the questions.

  When I got back to our bedroom, Zack was lying on his side thumbing his BlackBerry.

  “Anything spectacular going on?” I asked.

  “Lots,” he said. “I guess the most pressing item is that Darryl Colby wants to see me.”

  “He’ll have to come here,” I said.

  “I hate the idea of that creep coming into our home.”

  “It’s Christmas. We’ll be hospitable. I’ll make cocoa and sugar cookies, and you can play ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch’ on the piano and ask him to sing along.”

  Zack shuddered. “Jesus, there’s an image that’ll ruin my morning. But I do have to meet with Darryl. I don’t like him skulking around in the shadows.”

  “Can you put it off till tomorrow? Give yourself a day to get better.”

  “No. I have to move on this.”

  “Tell Darryl it’ll be a ten-minute meeting,” I said. I sat on the bed. “I’ve decided to move on something too,” I said. “Myra called. I think she’s hoping against hope that her home movies will have sealed the deal with NationTV. I’m going to pay her a visit.”

  “You going to let her down easily?” As Zack shifted his body, the expression on his face was pained. I reached over and adjusted the pillows behind his back. “Better?”

  He nodded.

  “To answer your question, yes, I’m going to let Myra down easily. I’m also going to ask her if she read Delia’s letter, if she got in touch with Abby, and if Abby got in touch with her. Then I’m going to ask her how much Theo understands about the situation and suggest that she and Theo support the Wainbergs’ attempt to get custody of Jacob.”

  Zack rolled his eyes. “What have you been smoking? Even I wouldn’t try to pull that one off.”

  “I’m tired of letting this dominate our lives,” I said.

  “So am I,” he said. “But storming the Brokaws’ bastion seems out of character for you.”

  “Blame osmosis,” I said. “When we were in bed together, all that body heat you were generating moved into me and made me a warrior.”

  He gave me a weak smile. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  “That’s my plan. And one more thing. Henry’s going to send over a nurse to give us a hand for about an hour a day. I could use help getting you in and out of the shower. You’re a sexy guy, but you’re not a little guy. More seriously, I worry that I’m looking at that pressure sore through the eyes of hope. We can’t afford to have me misread the signs.”

  “No,” Zack said. “We can’t. When’s the nurse starting?”

  “Today, I hope.” I stroked his cheek. “I thought you’d fight me tooth and nail on this.”

  “Nope. When you crawled into bed with me this morning, you said that I was the love of your life and you didn’t want me to leave. That goes both ways, Ms. Shreve.”

  “If you heard me, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because your words unmanned me,” he said. “Let’s do whatever it takes.”

  I walked through the snow to Taylor’s studio. When I knocked, she invited me in – a sign that her work was going well. She was wearing ripped jeans, an old sweatshirt, and a pair of paint-spattered heavy wool socks. Her face shone with joy – a sign that she’d broken through the wall separating her from the art she wanted to make.

  She held out her hand. “Come look,” she said, and stepped aside so I could see her canvas. It was a self-portrait of her making art. She was standing at an angle to her easel. As she gazed critically at the work in progress, her head was tilted to one side and her expression was rapt. She wasn’t smiling, but there was a stillness in her features that suggested that she was content with what she saw. Everything about the portrait, from the curve of her body to the way she held her brush, reminded me of Sally, but it wasn’t just the subject matter that moved me; in some way I couldn’t articulate, I knew that this piece represented a leap in Taylor’s development as an artist. I gazed at it silently for a while.

  Taylor’s eyes searched my face. “Well?”

  “It’s the best work you’ve done.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Her voice was unsure. The painting on the canvas was bold and assured, the creation of a mature artist, but Taylor was still fourteen years old, and she needed my approval.

  I put my arm around her shoulder. “I was just overwhelmed – with how far you’ve come in your work. And everything about the painting reminds me of your mother – the hair is different, of course, but the expression on your face, even the way you hold your body, is the same. She had a certain stance when she was assessing her work. There’s no way you could know that.” I pointed towards the canvas. “But there it is.”

  Taylor’s body tensed and when she spoke her voice was small and furious. “Jo, I am not my mother.”

  “You’ve always liked talking about her. You told me once it was a way of not losing her.”

  Taylor turned and went back to her canvas. The silence in the studio hung between us, heavy as the odour of paint in the air. When, finally, she spoke, Taylor didn’t face me. “You don’t know what it’s like. When I Google my mother, every article and blog talks about how dazzling and brave she was as a painter, and how she wasn’t afraid to live her life fully. No matter how good I am, people are going to measure me against her, and I’m just this boring kid. Declan says maybe I should change my last name to Shreve, then everyone will just say that for a lawyer’s daughter, I’m a pretty good visual artist.”

  “Declan’s a good friend.”

  Taylor dabbed her brush in a pot of paint and stared at her canvas. “He’s more than that,” she said.

  “In what way?” I tried to sound cool and objective. I didn’t make it.

  Taylor turned away from her canvas with such fury that the paint on her brush flew off and spattered on my hand. “I was going to say that he’s the only person who understands what I’m going through. It isn’t always about sex, Jo. I’m not a skank like my mother.”

  “Taylor, your mother wasn’t a skank. She was a complex human being who was just beginning to discover her own worth when she died.”

  I had delivered the eulogy at Sally’s funeral. The chapel was full, but I was the only one present whose relationship with Sally went beyond the romantic or the professional. The eulogy I wrote had been carefully crafted to say all the right things without acknowledging the terrible truths at the heart of Sally’s life. Ten years later as I stood watching her daughter’s body trembling, I knew that I had finally found the words I should have used on that grey February day. Sally’s life wasn’t complete. That was the tragedy. She had just begun to discover her worth when her life ended.

  I walked over to Taylor’s painting and looked at it carefully. “You’ve only just begun. You don’t have to measure yourself against anyone. You’re that good.” When I put my arm around my daughter, the pai
nt that had spattered from her brush onto my hand dripped onto her shirt. “Sorry,” I said. “I wrecked your shirt.”

  The shirt was already covered in paint. “It’s okay,” she said. “I have ten other shirts just like this one.”

  We both laughed, and then we moved so we could look more closely at the self-portrait. There was violence in the lines and the colours suggested turbulence in the relationship between artist and medium. “You’re not where you want to be yet, are you?” I said.

  She sighed heavily. “No. Not even close.”

  “But closer,” I said. “Taylor, this really is the strongest work you’ve ever done. And you have something your mother never had. Time. You have time to get where you need to go. Find out who you are, and I have a feeling the rest will come.”

  CHAPTER 12

  It was close to eleven when I parked in the space reserved for tenants and guests of the condo on Scarth Street. Louise Hunter’s Mercedes was already there, and when I got off the elevator, I could hear her practising. I revelled in the moment, letting the Bach wash over me and watching the mirrored reflection of the twinkling white lights wound around a ficus by a window in the corridor. The morning had been a trying one. Despite what I’d told Zack about my bold plan of attack, I knew I was more roar than tiger. As I approached the door that held the wreath that was the twin of mine, I remembered Zack’s observation that the French word for grenade was pomegranate. I pressed the bell, wondering how the grenade I was about to throw would change the lives of the people waiting for me inside.

  Myra was dressed handsomely in a grey sweater and skirt, grey tights, and Capezio flats that matched the fuchsia in her patterned silk scarf. She tilted her head at the sound of the music.

  “That must be lovely to listen to,” I said.

  “It is when the pianist is sober,” Myra said. “Sadly, that has become increasingly rare of late.”

  I listened for a moment. “She sounds in fine form now.”