Burying Ariel jk-7

by Gail Bowen

  “Pull her back,” Ann hissed. Without hesitation, Livia stepped forward and obeyed.

  “Why won’t you let me stop her?” Molly asked.

  “They need to experience this,” Livia said.

  “No one needs to experience hysteria,” Molly said witheringly.

  “You don’t understand what we’re feeling,” Livia said.

  Molly whirled around. “I was her mother,” she said, and she had to shout to be heard above the voices calling for vengeance. For a beat, the two women stared at one another, like combatants.

  Finally, Molly shook her head. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t understand what you’re feeling, and I don’t want to.” When her neat figure vanished inside the library, Rae Colby followed her.

  Taylor looked up at me. “Is the vigil over?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The vigil’s over.” I smoothed her hair. “Taylor, I’m sorry, it was a mistake bringing you tonight.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” she said. “For a while, it was really nice.”

  “For a while it was,” I agreed. “But not any more. Let’s go home.”

  The library, the Classroom and Lab buildings, and College West were linked by inside walkways. Taylor and I could get back to the Parkway without going through the crowd. The prospect of escaping the ugliness outside was attractive, and as we walked through the cool silent halls, I was grateful my daughter and I had found an easy way out. Like most easy ways out, however, this one came with a price. Just as we were about to turn into the Lab Building, Kevin Coyle appeared.

  He was flushed with anger, and one of the lenses in his glasses was missing, so he was glaring at me with one hugely magnified eye and one ordinary eye.

  “Your glasses,” I said.

  “The goddamn lens fell out while I was leaning out of my office window watching those women. It landed somewhere in the grass out there. But I saw enough. This is going to be my case all over again. That same hysteria. Wombs. The Greeks were right.”

  “Kevin, take a hike. I’ve had enough.”

  “You’ve had enough. What about me?”

  “Hard as it is to believe,” I said, “this isn’t about you.”

  “You’re wrong there, Joanne. This is about me. That little council of war just decided that it’s about all men. What do you think the nurturers’ next move is going to be? I’m not without allies among the students, and one of them came and warned me there are rumours about Ariel and me.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “Someone heard an exchange between us and misinterpreted.”

  “What was the exchange about?”

  “It was about my case. I told you before that Ariel had found out something. I was pressing her to tell what she knew. She was reluctant. It must have sounded worse than it was.”

  “I imagine it did,” I said wearily.

  “She was on my side, Joanne, and I’m going to go down there and confront those women with the truth before they come up to my office with their tar and feathers.”

  “Just go home, Kevin. No one’s making sense tonight. Everything’s too raw. Let it go.”

  He stepped forward so he could look straight at me. His mismatched eyes were a grotesque sight, but it was a night for the surreal. “If I let it go, it will destroy us all,” Kevin said. “I have to be vigilant for you, for me and” – he touched his upper arm – “for her.” For the first time, I noticed that he was wearing an old-fashioned black broadcloth mourning band around his upper arm. “Ariel Warren was a good woman, Joanne. So are you. Don’t get swept away.”

  He patted Taylor on the head in a gesture that only someone who had never been around children would make. “Do you play Risk?” he asked.

  “My brother does,” she said, “but he says I’m too young.”

  “You’re never too young to learn the world conquest game,” he said. “When you decide you’re ready to learn, have your mother bring you by my office. I always keep a game set up, and partners have been in short supply of late.” He drew himself up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back outside and look for that lens.”

  Taylor and I watched him stomp off into the night, a rumpled, angry man in search of normal vision.

  When we got back to Ed’s place, Taylor asked if she could see if Florence was asleep. After she ran inside to check on the nightingale, Ed frowned at me. “I know that porch light isn’t flattering, but are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but, as the jocks say, there is a question about how much I have left in my tank.”

  “Would a nightcap help?”

  “I’ll take a rain check. Taylor has school tomorrow, and it’s already nine-thirty. Way too late.”

  “How was the vigil?”

  “Sad,” I said, “and scary – very, very scary.”

  “Then we’ll talk about it another time,” he said. “Now, just to prove to you that I can stay on task, here are those keys you came over for.” He handed me the keys and an envelope. “Instructions for everything are in here. All the crankiness and idiosyncrasies of the plumbing explained in full. As Livia would say…”

  “No surprises.”

  “And,” Ed said, “the cappuccino machine is brand new, so it should be problem-free.”

  “A cappuccino machine! Talk about roughing it in the bush. Ed, I hope you know how grateful I am for this.”

  He waved his hand in dismissal. “No gratitude necessary. Just come back with a sunburn, a smile, and some new photos of that granddaughter of yours.”

  As soon as I pulled into our driveway, I could hear the pounding rhythms of Tool. Taylor and I walked through the front door into what seemed, after the sombre events of the evening, to be a parallel universe. The house smelled of cooking, and the captain’s chest in the hall was heaped with hastily shed jackets and baseball equipment. As I reached over to remove a jockstrap that I didn’t recognize from a branch of our jade plant, laughter erupted in the kitchen. Angus and Eli’s baseball team had stopped by after practice. I walked into the living room and turned down the volume.

  The effect was immediate. My son shot into the living room. He was still wearing his ball uniform; he was sweaty, tousled, and very happy. “We kicked ass, Mum. Whupped them totally.”

  I held out my arms to him. “Come here and give a needy old woman a kiss.”

  He scrunched his face. “The day you’re needy…” But he put his arms around me and hugged me hard. “So where have you been, anyway? I thought you were just going over to Mr. Mariani’s to get the keys.”

  “Mission accomplished,” I said, fishing the keys out of my purse and tossing them to him.

  “Cool,” he said. “This whole weekend is going to be cool. Pete coming back, and seeing Mieka and Greg and Maddy. As soon as they get to the lake, I’m taking the baby down to the point.”

  “Uncle of the year,” I said.

  My son winced. “Not really.”

  “Why ‘not really’?”

  “Because babies are universally acknowledged chick magnets.”

  “With smart guys like you in the universe, we chicks don’t stand a chance, do we?”

  “Not a chance. Listen, do you and T want a chili dog? We can scrape the pot and get you a couple of spoonfuls.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “What was all that chili for, anyhow?”

  Taylor ate her chili dog and went straight to bed. As we talked about the evening, she seemed intrigued rather than disturbed, and I was grateful. She was asleep by the time I closed her bedroom door. I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. No queen would need to search for a poisoned apple to get rid of me that night. I looked like hell. I went downstairs, made myself a drink, then walked into the kitchen where Angus and Eli were cleaning up. They had the radio on. Eli turned when he heard my step.

  “Is it true that a girl was killed up at the university today?”

  At seventeen, Eli had the kind of El Greco good looks you see in Calvin Klein ads. He wore his hair in a
single braid in the traditional way of aboriginal men, and his eyes were dark and luminous. His radar for pain was extraordinary, perhaps because he had known so much of it in his short life. Alex Kequahtooway was raising him, and in my opinion he had worked a number of small miracles. Eli was doing well at school, and he was making friends. My son Angus had helped. He was a generous, extroverted kid who had simply enlarged his circle of friends to include Eli. It was good news all the way, except that Eli still seemed obsessed with death in the way that anorexics are often obsessed with cookbooks and food preparation.

  I sat down at the kitchen table. “That’s what I came down to talk about. The woman who was killed taught in our department. Her name was Ariel Warren. Mieka and she were friends when they were little, and she and Charlie Dowhanuik were a couple.”

  Angus shot a glance at Eli. “You know who Charlie Dowhanuik is, don’t you? Your idol, Charlie D.”

  Eli jumped from his chair. “Did Charlie kill her?”

  “Why would you think Charlie killed Ariel?” I asked.

  Eli’s face was miserable. “I listen to his show every day. I tape his ‘Ramblings’ when I’m at school. Charlie D is so cool. He used to talk about his girlfriend all the time.” He looked puzzled. “Except I thought her name was Beatrice. Anyway, he was always talking about how great Beatrice was; then a couple of weeks ago, he just stopped. I thought they broke up.

  Charlie had called his beloved Beatrice. Today’s allusion to The Divine Comedy had been part of a pattern. Unbidden, an image flashed into my mind. Charlie as a little boy on the edge of the crowd; Ariel taking his hand, rescuing him; Dante, at eight, meeting the seven-year-old Beatrice and knowing “bliss made manifest.” Two loves that had lasted a lifetime – or had they? Had something happened to turn Charlie’s bliss to suffering?

  My son’s voice brought me back to reality. “Mum, do you think it would be okay to pack the car tonight, or are you worried about our stuff getting stolen?”

  “Go ahead, pack,” I said. “I want to get away from here as soon as we can tomorrow evening.”

  Angus frowned. “Is everything okay?”

  I patted his shoulder. “Everything’s fine. Make sure you lock the garage door. I couldn’t live with myself if someone stole your Tool CDS.”

  After the boys went off to get their gear, I walked over to the living-room bookcase. It took me a moment to find what I was looking for. I hadn’t read The Divine Comedy since university, but as soon as I touched the book, I felt a rush of emotion. I had met my husband, Ian, in Classics 300. That period of our lives had glowed with transcendent moments and soaring idealism. Dante had been a good fit for us both, but there had been one passage that Ian had read to me so often he made it my own. I say that when she appeared from any direction, then, in the hope of her wondrous salutation, there was no enemy left to me; rather there smote into me a flame of charity, which made me forgive every person who had ever injured me; and if at that moment anybody had put a question to me about anything whatsoever, my answer would have been simply “Love” with a countenance clothed in humility.

  In the margin, Ian had written a single word: “ YES!” By the time he died, my husband would have found the idea that I was the earthly vessel for divine experience as laughable as I would have. Our marriage had been a good one. We had loved and laughed and fought and grown, but somewhere along the line we had revised our definition of love. As I slid The Divine Comedy back into its place on the bookshelf, I found myself wondering how Charlie could endure losing the woman who, from the time he was seven years old, he had believed was his shining path to salvation.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The next morning my clock radio blared to life at its regular wake-up time: 5:30. As he heard the synthesizer fanfare that announced the AccuWeather forecast, Willie leaped to attention at his place beside my bed. It might be taking him two years to grow a brain, but my Bouvier had been quick to master the sequence that led to his morning walk.

  Climatologist Tara Lavallee was cheerily contrite as she announced that she had to do a complete 180 on her holiday-weekend forecast. A low-pressure zone had stalled over the southern third of the province, bringing with it…

  I reached over and clicked off the radio. The sky outside my bedroom window was leaden, and rain was drumming monotonously on my window. I didn’t need Tara to tell me it was going to be a rotten day.

  “Bad news,” I said to Willie.

  He put his paws on the mattress, shivered with delight, and eyeballed me. I eyeballed him back.

  I blinked first. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go, but it’s going to be a short one.”

  I dug out my rain pants, windbreaker, and a pair of ancient Reeboks, and Willie and I hit the street at top speed. By the time we reached the bandshell, Willie had absorbed the fact that no matter how hard he pulled at the leash I would still be on the other end, and the rain had grown lighter. There was no reason not to finish our usual run around the lake. There were distractions: for Willie, the new crop of goslings strutting their stuff across our path; for me, memories of the endless day before. I tried to shake them, give myself over to the moment, as Livia would say, but I wasn’t able to let go. Every step triggered a memory. By the time we lurched through our front door, my mood was as bleak as the day.

  I filled Willie’s dish, plugged in the coffee, and stripped off my wet clothes. As I headed for the shower, I glanced at the caller ID on the telephone. Alex Kequahtooway had phoned. I looked at the clock. It would be 8:30 in Ottawa.

  In the time it took to dial his cell number, I decided I wouldn’t bring up the subject of Ariel Warren. Unless he had talked to one of his colleagues on the Regina police force, it was unlikely Alex would have heard of her death. He had been excited about giving the course on minorities and the justice system to a class of senior civil servants. It was a chance for him to talk to people who could make a difference, and he didn’t need to be distracted by problems at home.

  When I heard his voice, I almost weakened. “I miss you,” I said. “Willie and I just got back from our walk, and I’m standing here naked, wet, and cold. I wish you were here.”

  “So do I.”

  “How are you at phone sex?” I said. “Under the circumstances, I’m up for anything.”

  “So am I,” he said evenly. “Unfortunately, I’m in class right now. We take a break in an hour. If you’ll leave me a number where you can be reached, I’ll get back to you and we can try that new procedure.”

  The flush started at my toes and ended at my scalp. “Alex, are all those government people sitting there listening?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I must be pathological.”

  “Not pathological,” he said. “Just healthy. Giving me some energy to rechannel. This is going to be the most inspired class I’ve taught since I got here.”

  “Baudelaire said he wrote with his penis.”

  “The French have some interesting systems,” he said mildly. “I’ll see what I can do about putting that one into place.”

  When I stepped out of the shower, the phone was ringing. I picked it up. “Still naked,” I said, “but now clean, and with that hemp oil you gave me for Valentine’s Day at the ready.”

  “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.” The voice of the woman on the other end of the line was familiar.

  “You don’t have the wrong number, Livia. I should apologize. I was expecting someone else.”

  “I’m glad you have love in your life,” she said.

  Her tone was guileless, but I felt a pang. There was no love in Livia’s life, at least not the kind that involved hemp-oil massages. Late one night when we were walking to the parking lot together, Livia had confided that since her marriage ended she had been celibate and that celibacy brought her peace. I had scrambled unsuccessfully for a sensible response, but driving home I realized that if my husband had dumped me as publicly and as brutally as Kenneth Brook had dumped Livia, I migh
t have considered celibacy, too. He had chosen his wife’s birthday party to do his dirty deed and, after three years, the memory of that evening still made me want to bury my head in the sand.

  From the outset, the party had been out of control: the drinks were too strong, and the toasts too frequent; the meal was served so late that people simply rearranged the food on their plates, poured themselves another double, and lurched towards the next indiscretion. When Kenneth Brook tapped his glass, boomed that he wanted our attention, and draped an arm over Livia’s shoulder, the room fell silent. It seemed that, despite their tempestuous relationship, Kenneth was about to pay tribute to his wife. But Kenneth had other fish to fry. As he announced that he had managed to both inspire and impregnate one of his graduate students, he could barely keep the smile off his face. When he added that, as a man of honour, he had no alternative but to marry his child’s mother, I think he honestly expected we would burst into applause, but we weren’t that drunk. Stunned sober, people mumbled their goodbyes and left. Livia wandered off to another room. Kenneth disappeared out the front door, presumably in search of a more receptive audience. Alone with the carnage of the aborted party and none too sober myself, I decided to put the food away. Like many decisions that night, mine wasn’t wise.

  When I opened the kitchen door, I saw that Livia had taken refuge there. She was leaning against the counter, singing “Happy Birthday” and trying to light the candles on her store-bought birthday cake. She was very drunk. As she swayed towards the forest of candles, match after match flared, then burned out between her fingers. She hadn’t managed to ignite a single candle, but the blue icing roses on her cake were almost buried beneath a mulch of charred matches.

  “Let me help you with that,” I said.

  When she turned to face me, I saw that she was crying. Her gaze had the watery despair of a drowning woman. “It’s my party,” she said, then she lit a fresh match and returned to her Sisyphean task.

  I didn’t see Livia Brook again till the following September. Classes were over, and she spent spring and summer on the West Coast drifting through the misty regions of New Age thought. When the fall term began, Livia reappeared, tanned, thin, and carrying some sort of ritual bag adorned with bells and filled with gemstones guaranteed to heal the heart, ward off evil, and focus the mind. I had never been a proponent of enchanted bags, but Livia’s seemed to have power. For the first time since I had known her, she was sober, focused, and purposeful.