by Gail Bowen
The day stretched ahead. I could do what a sensible woman would do: shop for groceries, pack, get ready for the long weekend; or I could see if Charlie would talk to me. Ed Mariani had told me once that the first lesson a journalist learns is that everyone wants to tell their story. Something in my bones told me that a man as obsessed as Charlie had been would want to tell his. Luckily, I had a credible excuse for paying him a visit. If I was going to teach Ariel’s class on Tuesday, I’d need her copy of the text. I went back to the main office and flipped through Rosalie’s Rolodex.
Ariel’s address was a surprise: 2778 Manitoba Street was downtown, in a neighbourhood in which, depending on your bent, you could get cured by a Chinese herbalist, saved at a Romanian Catholic Church, or beaten to a pulp if you chose to hang around after dark. The city’s core was an unlikely choice for two young people with good incomes and privileged backgrounds, and as I drove past businesses that promised to cash cheques, no questions asked, and second-hand furniture stores with year-round sidewalk sales, I began to wonder if I had ever known Ariel at all.
The house she and Charlie had shared was a thirties bungalow with a fresh coat of paint the colour of Devonshire cream, dark green louvred shutters, lace curtains, and wicker hanging baskets filled with scarlet double impatiens. Nestled between a pawnshop with barred windows and an adult video store, the perky innocence of number 2778 came as a sweet shock, like discovering Donna Reed in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Charlie and Ariel had made two concessions to the realities of their neighbourhood. The front lawn was protected by a chain-link fence and, as I stepped onto the porch, the dog that began barking in the backyard sounded like it meant business. After five minutes, the dog was still barking, no one had come to the door, and my idea about ambushing Charlie into supplying some answers seemed hare-brained rather than inspired. As I headed back to my car, I tried to step carefully around the water pooling on the walk, but despite my efforts, my feet got wet. By the time I reached the car, my temper was frayed. It was a toss-up whom I was angrier at: myself for thinking I could play Nancy Drew, or Charlie for leaving his dog out in a downpour.
The penny dropped. It had been raining constantly since 5:30 that morning. I hadn’t been close to Charlie for years, but if the Jesuits are right about the boy being the father of the man, I couldn’t imagine the Charlie I knew growing into a man who would leave his dog out in the rain. I retraced my steps and walked by the side of the house and peered over the gate into the backyard. A man in a khaki slicker, whose hood hid his face from view, was trying to feed paper into a smouldering hibachi. The dog, a Rottweiler, was beside him.
“Why don’t you wait for the rain to stop, Charlie?” I said.
But when he turned, the man facing me wasn’t Charlie. With his strong features, wire-rimmed glasses, and slick, swept-back hair, he had the look of a man who was accustomed to dominating the situation: a lawyer or an actor. He didn’t greet me, and his silence seemed like a professional tool.
“I’m looking for Charlie Dowhanuik,” I said.
The man remained silent. His expression wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t welcoming.
“I’m a friend of the family.”
He shrugged. “What’s Charlie’s mother’s name?”
“Marnie,” I said. “Marnie Sullivan Dowhanuik.”
“Where does she live?”
“Good Shepherd Villa, in Toronto.”
He walked towards me, and unlocked the gate. The Rottweiler stayed at his side. As I came through the gate, I held my hand out, palm up, to the dog. He sniffed it eagerly; then he let me scratch his head. The man watched with interest. “You passed the name test and you passed the Fritz test,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. My name is Liam Hill, and I’m sorry for being suspicious, but it’s been that kind of day.”
“Joanne Kilbourn,” I said. “Have you had to deal with a ghoul patrol?”
“The stream has been steady,” he agreed. “I guess it’s human nature, but when you know the people involved, it’s hard to see tragedy as a spectator sport.”
“So you’re a friend of Charlie’s.”
“And of Ariel’s,” he said. “Look, we’re getting soaked. Do you want to continue this inside the house?”
“Sure.” I gestured towards a sheet of yellow legal paper smoking wetly in the hibachi. There was handwriting on it. “That’s not going to work, you know.”
He stiffened. I saw immediately that he had given my words a significance I hadn’t intended. I didn’t want to alienate him. At the moment he was the only link I had. “It’s too wet now,” I said. “Why don’t you try later?”
I could see him relax. “Let’s go inside.”
Fritz loped happily ahead, and I followed. We walked across the deck into the kitchen, an attractive room with hardwood flooring, old fashioned glass-faced cupboards, an ancient slope-shouldered Admiral refrigerator, a huge gas stove, and a picture window that looked onto the garden. Flush against the window was a butcher-block table. On the table, Ariel’s tomato plants languished, dry and yellowing. Unexpectedly, my eyes filled.
Liam Hill didn’t notice. He had his back to me, hanging his slicker over the back of a chair. When he turned, I saw that he was wearing a navy sweatshirt with white lettering.
“St. Michael’s College,” I said. “I went to Vic, but my first serious boyfriend was at St. Mike’s. His name was Bob Birgeneau, and he told me that he knew I was a nice girl, but that other boys wouldn’t know I was a nice girl if I kept wearing slacks to class.” I smiled. “Sorry,” I said. “Too much information.”
“Not too much information,” Liam Hill said. “Just an interesting sociological nugget. Shall we sit down?” He pointed towards a built-in breakfast nook just off the kitchen. Like the refrigerator, it was a period piece, a restaurant-style booth with wine leatherette banquettes facing one another across a Formica-topped, chrome-edged table. “Incidentally, we’re a little more enlightened about dress codes at St. Mike’s now.”
I slid into my place, and Liam Hill slid into his across from me.
“I feel like I should be ordering a cherry Coke and fries.” I said.
He smiled. “Whatever happened to cherry Cokes?” Then he leaned towards me. “I probably should have said this off the top. I’m not going to talk about Charlie.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Actually, I was hoping to talk to Charlie myself. I thought he might need a friend.”
“How well do you know him?” Liam Hill asked.
“Not well at all any more. He and my kids knew each other when they were growing up. My connection is really with his parents, which, of course, now pretty well means Howard.”
“You and Howard Dowhanuik are close.”
“He’s my oldest friend.”
“For Charlie’s friends, that’s not necessarily a recommendation.”
I could feel my temper rise. “There are two sides to every story, Mr. Hill.”
Actually, it’s Father Hill,” he said, “and you’re right. I do only know Charlie’s side of the story.”
“Charlie was never very charitable about his father,” I said.
“Perhaps his father hadn’t earned charity.”
“That’s an odd comment coming from you,” I said. “Has your order started charging for caritas, Father Hill?
He winced. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kilbourn. This hasn’t been anyone’s finest hour.”
“Then don’t prolong it,” I said. “Tell me when Charlie will be back, and I’ll be on my way.”
Father Hill’s face gave away nothing, but the pulse in his neck fluttered as he weighed his decision. Finally, the scales tipped in my favour. “Charlie won’t be back for a while. He went to Toronto to see Marnie.”
I was incredulous. “To see Marnie? Is she better?”
“There’s been no change in her condition. Charlie just wanted to be with his mother. Your friend, Howard, went with him.”
Liam Hill’s words were innoc
ent, but something in his tone got under my skin.
“Howard doesn’t need me to defend him,” I said, “but, for the record, you’re wrong about him. He’s a good man, and he made a real difference in the lives of a lot of people here.”
“And his wife and son paid the price,” Liam Hill said quietly.
“You knew Marnie before the accident?”
He shook his head. “No, she was already at Good Shepherd when I met her. But Charlie told me she was brilliant. He said there was nothing she couldn’t have been, if she hadn’t had to sacrifice everything -”
I cut him off. “Marnie Dowhanuik didn’t sacrifice everything.”
Father Hill shifted his gaze. “We all have our own perception of reality,” he said mildly.
“Don’t humour me,” I said. My voice was loud and angry. When I spoke again I tried to take the volume down a notch. “This isn’t a perception. This is the truth. For many years, Marnie and I were as close as sisters. Father Hill, she wasn’t a victim. She was smart and funny and… she was Marnie – driving stubborn voters to the polls, handing out placards at rallies, cooking turkeys for all those potluck suppers. And her cabbage rolls…” I smiled at the memory. “She could make a pan full of sensational cabbage rolls in the time it took me to find the recipe. I remember once we’d been at a constituency dinner in the basement of Little Flower Church. At the end of the evening, when she and I came out to the parking lot, she was carrying this big roasting pan filled with leftovers. Howard was surrounded by men hanging on his every word. Marnie waded through all those fawning guys and handed him the roaster. ‘Howie,’ she said, ‘I made these cabbage rolls, I delivered them to the church hall, I reheated them, I served them, I washed the plates they were eaten off, I paid the party ten bucks for the ones that were left; the least you can do is carry them back to the damn car.’ ”
Father Hill laughed softly. “Nice story,” he said.
“There’s more to it,” I said. “You can imagine how those men were gaping. After all, Howard was the premier, and Marnie was just the missus, but she had this great smile, and she gave those guys the full wattage. Then she delivered the coup de grace. ‘Another thing,’ she said. ‘That speech you’re all creaming your jeans about – I wrote it.’ ”
Liam Hill raised an eyebrow. “She sounds like quite a woman.”
“She was,” I said. “Maybe Charlie never realized that. Kids’ perceptions of their parents’ lives aren’t always accurate. Father Hill, I wouldn’t accept Charlie’s word as gospel on this. He had his own burdens, and they may have distorted his view. But don’t diminish Marnie. The fact that her bike was hit by a car was a tragedy, but her life wasn’t.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Now, I did have a purpose in coming here. I’m taking over the class Ariel was teaching, and I’m going to need her textbook. It’s called Political Perspectives . It’s a quality paperback with a blue and red cover. Could you check her desk for it?”
“No problem,” he said, but there was something halfhearted about his agreement, and I wasn’t surprised when he returned empty-handed.
“No problem, but also no luck,” he said.
“Thanks for trying,” I said.
I pulled up the zipper on my jacket, then glanced at the tomato plants on the table. “Ariel babied those plants from seeds,” I said. “I hate to see them dying. Would you mind if I found a place outside to put them so they could get some of this rain?”
“I’ll give you a hand,” he said.
We were silent as we carried the tiny peat pots outside. We found a place on the deck where they could get plenty of rain, but where, if the wind came up, they’d be protected. As we set the last one in place, Fritz, who was still inside, began barking.
“Sounds like you have company,” I said. “There’s no need for me to trail mud through the house. I can leave by the gate at the side.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m glad you came, Mrs. Kilbourn. It’s always useful to have another perspective.” He offered me his hand. “It’s good you thought about the tomato plants.”
When the back door closed behind him, I sprinted to the hibachi. The fire had sputtered out. I grabbed the charred piece of legal paper, folded it once, and dropped it in my purse.
As I let myself through the side gate, I saw why Fritz had been barking. Two police cars had pulled up in front of the adult video shop next door. The cruisers were empty, so the officers had apparently already gone inside. I was gawking as I walked to my car and, before I slid into my seat, I took a final glance. In an uncurtained window at the front of the second storey, an old woman was watching me. When our eyes met, she lifted her arm very slowly and waved at me. I waved back.
As soon as I was in the car, I took the piece of charred paper from my bag. The acrid smell of smoke hit my nostrils. The handwriting was sprawling and fanciful, not Ariel’s small, neat script. Only one sentence was visible, but the words cut to the bone. “Nothing will ever separate us again.” Then there was a single initial: “C.”
CHAPTER
5
As soon as I got home, I went to the family room and took down The Divine Comedy again. I was obeying an impulse I would have had difficulty explaining, but when the book fell open at Dante’s description of the Vestibule of Hell, where the Futile run perpetually after a whirling standard, I didn’t hesitate. I slid the burnt fragment of Charlie’s letter between the pages and replaced the book on the shelf. I might not have been the coldest beer in the fridge, but I recognized symbolism when I saw it.
My son’s room was private territory, and I didn’t enter it without cause. That afternoon, I had cause. I needed to tap into my office mail, and Angus’s computer was the only one in the house with a modem. After I turned on his computer, I glanced up at the bulletin board above his desk. He called it his Zonkboard, and from the time he was ten, it had been a montage bristling with evidence of his deep but shifting passions: skateboarding, the Blue Jays, endangered species, water polo, the Referendum, hiking, Buddy Rich, the women of Lilith Fair. That afternoon, wallet-sized photos of members of the graduating class of Sheldon Williams C.I. were thumbtacked between articles about the perfidy of the New Right and the excellence of John Ralston Saul and Drew Barrymore. The Zonk Factoid of the Day was a newspaper clipping: “The Inuit of Greenland believe that a person possesses six or seven souls that take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.” It was, I thought as I turned back to the computer, an oddly comforting possibility.
I typed a message announcing that on the following Tuesday I would begin teaching Ariel Warren’s Political Science 101 and asking anyone who had a copy of the text Political Perspectives to lend it to me until the end of classes. It was only after I hit send that I realized I’d cast my net too wide. Instead of limiting my request to our department, I’d entered the universal address for faculty and staff at the entire university. I discarded the idea of a follow-up message. In spring and summer, there were so many people who never opened e-mail that I would have been clogging the system.
I was rereading my original note when Angus came in. He leaned over and peered at the screen. “I thought you had the summer off.”
“So did I,” I said.
He gave me an awkward pat. “Well, you still have the long weekend, so let’s rock. Taylor’s downstairs saying goodbye to her cats. If we don’t make our move soon, she’s going to fall apart.”
I sighed with exasperation. “I’ve been through this with her a dozen times,” I said. “Sylvie O’Keefe is going to feed Benny and Bruce, and Jess is going to come over to play with them. It’s only three days, Angus.”
He shrugged. “Tell that to T.”
It was raining hard by the time we turned off onto the road to Katepwa. On the highway, we had listened to the drive-home show’s homage to the pleasures of barbecue and summer love. A fiery romance wasn’t on my weekend agenda, but the talk of sizzling meat was a reminder that within the next couple of hours I was going to be su
rrounded by a cottage full of hungry people. The dining room at the Katepwa Hotel served fine food at moderate prices, and it shared a kitchen with the Katepwa Pub, which served equally fine food that was cheap and available for take-out. As I slowed in front of the hotel, the boys and Taylor strained for a look at the lake. The rain was so heavy we could barely make out the beach, and as soon as I opened the car door I could hear the pounding of whitecaps against the shore.
Jackets pulled over our heads, we raced to the pub. Judging from the crowd inside, it was apparent that others caught in the downpour had felt the pull of a clean well-lighted place. The Katepwa Pub was jumping. Taylor drifted towards a group crowded around a big-screen TV that was showing a Jodie Foster movie; the boys headed for the shuffleboard table. The centre of gravity was shifting.
“Everybody back here with me,” I said. “You’re all underage, and we’re here to get food.”
Angus perked up. “What are we getting?”
“The special,” I said. “I don’t want to hang around while they cook dinner for seven people from scratch.”
“I wonder what the special is?” Angus asked.
“Chili,” Eli said. “It’s written on the chalkboard over there.”
“But we had chili dogs after ball last night,” Angus groaned.
“Sometimes the universe unfolds as it should,” I said.
Angus frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I gave him a short jab in the shoulder. “It means there was a cosmic decision that, despite your best efforts, our family was destined to eat chili tonight.”
