Burying Ariel jk-7

by Gail Bowen

  Ed winced. “I shouldn’t have said anything,”

  “You didn’t start the rumour,” I said. “And if the story’s out there, it’s better to know, so Charlie can deal with it. Damn. I was so sure Howard was overreacting, but I guess he was right. This afternoon, we drove out to CVOX because he figured Charlie needed a lawyer.”

  Ed raised an eyebrow. “A lawyer, not a father…?”

  “Charlie had some problems with his father,” I said.

  “Haven’t we all,” Ed said tightly.

  I turned to him. “All the years we’ve known each other, I’ve never heard you even mention your father.”

  Ed’s usually genial face was a mask. “There was nothing to mention. He didn’t approve of the choices I made in my life. We quarrelled. He died. Case closed.”

  “Cases between children and their parents are never closed,” I said.

  Ed shrugged. “Let’s keep the focus on Charlie,” he said. “What went wrong between him and his father?”

  “Timing,” I said. “Charlie was born the night Howard was elected premier. Our daughter Mieka was born the same week. It was wild. We hadn’t expected to win the election. Almost all our members were rookies, and they had to learn everything from scratch. The day he was sworn in as attorney general, my husband didn’t even know where his office was. Of course, it was a hundred times worse for Howard. He was in charge. Everybody was expected to work fifteen hours a day; then dedication was supposed to kick in. Luckily for us, Mieka was a happy, healthy baby, so she didn’t suffer from having an absentee father…”

  Ed finished the sentence for me. “But Charlie suffered.”

  “He did,” I said. “So did Marnie. When your child is hurting, you’re hurting, and a lot of the time Charlie’s birthmark made his life a misery. Marnie never coddled him, but she was always there, encouraging him, making him laugh, trying to help him understand why people reacted the way they did.”

  “And where was his father in all of this?” Ed’s tone was wintry.

  “Marnie and Howard had a very traditional marriage,” I said. “She stayed home with the kids, and he saved the province. A lot of us made the same trade-off.” I was surprised at the bitterness in my voice.

  Ed’s look was unfathomable. “Another untold story?” he asked.

  “If it is,” I said, “it’s one without villains. We all did the best we could. Sometimes it just didn’t work out.”

  “And it didn’t work out for Charlie?”

  “It didn’t work out for any of them,” I said. “Charlie always excelled at school. He graduated when he was sixteen. By that time, Marnie and Howard had grown so far apart that when Charlie moved out to go to university, Marnie left, too. She started Ph. D. work at the Centre for Medieval Studies in Toronto. Howard was devastated. He moved east to try to win her back. But the lady was not for wooing. She was a devout Catholic, so divorce was out of the question, but she had no interest in reconciliation. She was having the time of her life.”

  “Where’s Marnie now?”

  It was a question I would have given anything to duck. But there was no evading the truth. “In a nursing home,” I said. “Her bike was hit by a car when she was on her way to class. Her injuries were incapacitating. She needs total care.”

  “That won’t change?”

  “No,” I said. “That won’t change.”

  “And Charlie blames his father,” Ed said quietly.

  I nodded. “He felt that if Howard had been a better husband and father, Marnie wouldn’t have left.”

  “And she wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Something like that,” I said. “For the first year after the accident, Charlie wouldn’t even speak to Howard.”

  “But they were working things out…”

  “Because of Ariel. According to Howard, she was the one who convinced Charlie to give him another chance.”

  “Who got another chance?” Taylor was standing in the doorway to the deck. One of her braids had come undone, she had spilled some of her drink on her T-shirt, but as always, she was unfazed.

  “Your uncle Howard,” I said.

  “Ms. Cousin says everyone deserves a second chance,” Taylor said. “That’s why she didn’t send me to the principal’s office the time I broke her laptop.”

  “I never heard about that,” I said.

  “That’s because Ms. Cousin gave me a second chance,” Taylor said.

  Ed leaped up. “Perhaps it’s time for me to get you ladies a refill?”

  When Ed headed for the kitchen, Taylor trailed after him. I wandered to the end of the deck to watch the shifting layers of light that are the prelude to a prairie sunset. As Ed had said, out here it was almost possible to forget.

  The shrill of the cellphone in my bag was an intrusion from another world. Livia Brook’s voice was agitated. “Jo, why aren’t you here? There are things you and I should talk about before the vigil starts. You’ve only got about fifteen minutes.”

  “What vigil?”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get any of my messages. I e-mailed you and I left word on your voice mail at the office and at home. I’ve just got your cellphone number from Rosalie. There’s a vigil for Ariel Warren tonight in front of the library. It’s supposed to start in fifteen minutes.”

  I looked across the parkway. A line of cars was snaking onto University Drive and knots of students were walking across the grass towards the library. The last thing I wanted to do was join them, but Livia sounded close to tears.

  “It’s important that we’re all at this event. For her. Please, Jo.”

  I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  I ended the call and dropped the phone back in my bag. When I walked into the kitchen Taylor was perched on a bar stool pouring a bottle of Canada Dry into a blender filled with fruit juices.

  “We just have to add the crushed ice,” she said.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to have to be a quick drink, Taylor. We have another stop before we go home.” I looked across my daughter’s dark head at Ed Mariani. “I had a call from Livia on my cell. There’s a vigil for Ariel over at the library.”

  “Give me two minutes to change, and I’ll come with you,” Ed said.

  Taylor turned to me. “Who’s Ariel?”

  “A woman I taught with. She and Mieka used to play together when they were little. She died this morning.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone killed her.”

  Taylor put the ginger ale bottle down carefully on the counter. “Why?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Is the vigil to find out?”

  “No,” I said. “Sometimes after a person dies the way Ariel did, people just want to get together to think about the things that make us hurt each other.”

  Taylor nodded. “Evil,” she said.

  “Where did you hear about evil?” I asked.

  “Spiderman,” she said. “Every week, Spiderman has to fight evil. He always wins, but the next week there’s always more evil.” A frown crimped her forehead. “That’s just on cartoons, right?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m afraid that’s the way it is in real life, too.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  The distance between Ed’s house and the library was an easy five-minute walk; that night it was also a miserable one. Taylor, who usually hurtled headlong into the next adventure, walked quietly between Ed and me, holding our hands tightly. We were not alone. The three of us were part of a sorrowful cortege winding its way up University Drive towards the library. Two young women whom I recognized from the class Ariel had been teaching that morning rushed by, arms linked, faces swollen with grief. I squeezed Taylor’s hand, glad to be connected to her and, through her, to Ed.

  In good weather, the library quadrangle was filled with students catching a few rays while they read, gossiped, or just zoned out watching plumes of water arc up fro
m the fountain. That night the gathering crowd was tense, and the air pressed down on us, heavy with uncertainty. A portable podium had been set up in front of the doors leading into the library, but no one was standing behind it.

  As I peered into the crowd, trying to see who was in charge, Ann Vogel, who had been a student in my Populist Politics class the year before, broke away from the group she was with and headed towards us. I felt my stomach knot. Ann was a sharp-featured brunette in her late thirties who had returned to school to find answers to the Big Questions. Judging from what I had seen of her, the answers she was finding were not to her liking. She was a sour and perpetually aggrieved woman who had involved herself deeply in the life of our department at a time when we had already far exceeded our quota of the sour and aggrieved. Midway through Populist Politics, she had changed her name from Ann to Naama. Assuming the name of the goddess who gave birth to Eve and Adam without the help of any male, even the serpent, may have connected Ann to the source of female power, but it hadn’t improved her analytical abilities, and she barely scraped through my class. The other class Ann did poorly in that semester had been Kevin Coyle’s International Law. She’d ferreted out the support of two other women whose grades in Kevin’s class failed to meet their expectations and set attitudinal-harassment charges in motion.

  Had Kevin shown himself to be attuned to the realities of life at a contemporary university, the charges would have sunk without a trace, but he was a crank and an anachronism who still believed academics were put on earth to point out the shortcomings of lesser beings. He had made enough bone-headed public remarks about both sexes to muddy the waters and, bottom-feeder that she was, Ann Vogel had snapped up a veritable feast of comments he had made that could be construed as sexist. Kevin had responded to the charges with his usual pit-bull intransigence, but his defenders had argued that Kevin was a misanthrope, not a misogynist, and the case was about to sputter out from lack of oxygen when a far more serious incident erupted and fanned the flames.

  A fourth-year student named Maryse Bergman accused Kevin Coyle of rape. Her tale was unsettling, in part, because the exposition was a familiar one to many who had dealt with people in positions of power. Maryse said that when she had approached Kevin with a request for a letter of recommendation to graduate school, he had suggested a quid pro quo: a glowing reference in return for sexual favours. Here the narrative took an ugly twist. According to Maryse, when she turned Kevin down, he attempted to rape her.

  The alleged assault took place late on a Friday afternoon, when most of us had started our weekends, but there had been witnesses – not to the attack, but to its aftermath. Maryse, obviously distraught, had run down the hall until she found someone in our department ready to believe and, more significantly, verify her tale. Oddly, Maryse had insisted the police not be called. Later that evening, when Ben Jesse called all of us to alert us to the incident, that behaviour alone had made me suspicious. So had the fact that Maryse travelled in the same circles as Ann Vogel.

  By Monday morning, the whispering campaign was spreading and Kevin was seething. According to him, Maryse Bergman had appeared in his office without an appointment. They had talked in general terms about graduate school, then, inexplicably, she had screamed and run from his office. When I asked if he had done anything that could be construed as a sexual overture, he erupted. “As if I would need her,” he said. “As if I would need any woman. Or any man for that matter. I don’t need anybody. Sex is of no interest to me. I have my work.” I had been convinced. Unfortunately for Kevin, I was in the minority.

  My public explanation for supporting Kevin was that I believed in due process, but like most justifications, mine concealed as much as it revealed. My motivations were far from altruistic. As someone who had taught university for years, I had watched the chill of political correctness freeze spontaneity, creativity, and intellectual daring. A single lapse of caution could ensnare a teacher in a morass of charges that, even if unjust and unproven, could tar her reputation forever. The possibility that one day it would be my turn to be accused was real. This time I had dodged the bullet, but every time I looked at Kevin Coyle, I knew that there, but for the grace of a missing Y chromosome, went I.

  The denouement of the Maryse Bergman case was surprising, at least to me. The week after her accusation against Kevin, she left town. There didn’t appear to be anything sinister about her departure. I saw her in the halls a couple of times, returning books or saying goodbye to friends, then she moved on. The day after she left, a deputation headed by Ann Vogel confronted Ben Jesse accusing him of a cover-up. It was Ben’s final battle. After his death, there was a rush to choose an interim department head and make the new appointments. Maryse was forgotten – forgotten, that is, by everyone except Ann Vogel, who kept the rumours on the boil, and by Kevin Coyle, who had to live under the cloud of unproven accusations.

  The night of the vigil Ann Vogel wasted no time on pleasantries. “You’re supposed to go inside,” she said. “The plan is for everyone who is part of the program to come out of the library together.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would I be part of the program? There are a lot of people who were closer to Ariel than I was.”

  “For once, I agree with you,” Ann Vogel said. “I don’t think you should be included either, but Ariel’s mother wants you. Dr. Warren says that since you knew Ariel as a child and as a colleague, you could bring a special perspective. It’s not a perspective I personally want, but Dr. Warren does, so you’d better get in there.”

  I turned to Ed. “Could you and Taylor watch out for each other till I’m done?”

  Ann Vogel didn’t give him a chance to answer. “You’ll have to find alternative child care, Joanne. This observance is for women only.”

  Taylor regarded Ann with interest. “I noticed that.”

  A glance around the crowd revealed that Taylor was right. Mao Zedong once said that women hold up half the sky, but at Ariel Warren’s vigil it appeared that the sky and everything under it was in female hands. With the exception of Ed, there wasn’t a male in sight.

  Having discharged her venom, Ann started off. I grabbed her arm. My intent was simply to ask her a question, but my gesture was unintentionally rough, and she peeled off my hand with a look of disdain.

  “No need for goon tactics,” she said.

  “My point exactly,” I said. “Who made the decision to exclude men?”

  “Some of us feel we can’t speak freely if men are present.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be about Ariel.”

  “She’s emblematic of a larger issue.”

  “For God’s sake, Ann,” I said, “listen to yourself.”

  “Naama,” she hissed. “My name is Naama.”

  “All right, Naama. Now shut up and pay attention. Ariel Warren is not a symbol. She was a warm, gifted young woman, and a lot of us still can’t believe she’s gone.”

  Ann took a step towards me. She was so close I could feel her breath on my face.

  “Believe it, Joanne. Ariel is dead, and she died for the same reasons a lot of other women die. She lived in a patriarchal society that kills women and children.” She laughed shortly. “Why am I wasting my time trying to raise your consciousness? Stick around. You just might learn something.”

  “I don’t think I will stick around,” I said.

  Ann shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She wagged her finger at me. “Now, I’m going to walk away, and this time I don’t want to be stopped.”

  I turned to Ed. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Taylor looked up at me. “What about Ariel?”

  Ed and I exchanged glances.

  “That’s a good question,” he said.

  “And I was pretty close to giving it a rotten answer,” I said. “Damn it, I always let Ann get under my skin. Let’s tough it out.”

  Ed frowned. “This isn’t a night for muscle-flexing,” he said. “You were right. This is supposed to be
about Ariel.”

  I looked down at my daughter. “Do you want to stay?”

  But she was concerned about Ed. “Would you be okay going home by yourself?”

  “I’d be okay,” he said. “Besides, somebody has to drink those Shirley Temples before they lose their oomph.”

  “ Oomph!” Taylor scrunched her face at the cartoon word, then for the first time since we’d set out for the vigil, she smiled.

  I reached out and touched Ed’s cheek. “We’ll see you later,” I said. “And take it easy on the Shirley Temples. A good man is hard to find.”

  The vigil for Ariel Warren exists in my memory as a series of images, which revealed truths as familiar to the philosopher as they are to the chiaroscurist. The first was that light is fully appreciated only when it is set against an absence of light; the second was that even the most familiar figures can cast lengthy shadows.

  As I watched Ed walk towards the Parkway, I was sick at heart. He was heading west, and while I had balked at the suggestion that Ariel Warren was a symbol, I had seen too many old westerns not to feel a twinge at the image of a decent man disappearing into the sunset. It took an act of will not to follow him.

  Livia Brook met me by the fountain. She was wearing a black T-shirt dress and strappy patent-leather flats. Draped around her shoulders was an extravagantly fringed antique satin shawl covered with oversized poppies that appeared to be hand-painted. It was a festive accessory for a mourner, but no one looking into Livia’s face could doubt her pain. She had removed the barrettes that usually held her hair in place, and against the cascade of chestnut and grey curls, her face was wan.

  “Ariel’s mother wants to talk to you before we start,” she said.

  It was a request I couldn’t ignore. Dr. Molly Warren was not a friend, but I liked and respected her. She had been my gynecologist for the past fifteen years, and as far as I was concerned she was just about perfect. She treated my concerns seriously, answered my questions fully, and shepherded me through a difficult menopause with information and brisk good humour. Even when I was sitting on the edge of the table in the examination room, shivering and apprehensive in my blue paper gown, the click of her impossibly high heels coming down the hall reassured me. I knew she wouldn’t talk down; I knew she wouldn’t scare me needlessly; I knew she’d tell the truth. She had been a rock to me and to many other women I knew. Any of us would have done whatever we could to redress the balance.