The Noon God

by Donna Carrick

  “In the end both the father and the daughter are redeemed. His redemption comes through his suffering in Africa. It forces him to accept the unacceptable. He learns to see his daughter as a person. He gives her his permission to live her life according to her own code.

  “Her redemption is the greater one. It comes through her understanding of her father, which allows her to forgive him. Forgiveness is central to the book. In particular the father is in need of forgiveness.

  “The book ends on December 31, 1999. Ironically, the father has contracted HIV during their time in Africa. He’s dying. He pleads with his daughter to take his empire, to lead it into the new millennium. He argues the world needs someone like her to guide it.

  “Finally she agrees. She has no choice, really, as someone who cares about the world. It’s her destiny.”

  “It sounds like quite a story.”

  “I can’t tell it right.”

  “Still…”

  “Yeah. It’s going to be a best seller. No question.”

  “But you don’t think it made him any enemies?”

  “I can’t see it. There’s nothing offensive to any individual or group in the story. And I’d bet I’m the only one he gave it to.”

  “Any parallels with his own life?”

  “A number of them,” I answered, meeting his eyes.

  Detective Rice nodded and stared out the window thoughtfully.

  “Do you know what time he died?” I asked.

  “We’re guessing between six and nine a.m. on Monday. You spoke with him at midnight on Sunday. He didn’t show up for his nine o’clock lecture.”

  “Where was he found?”

  “In an unused storage room at the back of the faculty building. We don’t know what he was doing back there, but it looks like his body was dragged about ten feet into the room.”

  “Where at the back of the building was the storage room?” I asked.

  “Off the parking lot. The sidewalk comes around to the front entrance, but if you walk across the grass to the right there is a little alcove with a couple of hidden doorways.”

  “The back entrance.” I nodded. “That’s the way he usually went in. It was never locked and his office was at the back, just off that entrance.”

  “You’d been there before?”

  “Yes. My sister and I both went to his office occasionally.”

  “Is it possible he was meeting someone early in the morning?”

  “It is possible. Students, other faculty members – he might have been meeting any number of people. Did you find his desk planner?”

  “Yes. There was nothing noted.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry I can’t help.”

  “What time are you expecting your sister?”

  “She should have left me a message by now letting me know when to pick her up. The train usually gets in late – eight or nine on Fridays. Did you want me to bring her in tomorrow?”

  “Yes. The weekend Detective will take her statement.” He handed me a card. “Detective Phoebe Manor. I’ll tell her to expect you at ten if that’s ok.”

  “We’ll be here. When will his body be released?”

  “Most likely Tuesday of next week. You should be able to make arrangements for the funeral for anytime after Wednesday.”

  “Thank you, Detective.”

  “Thank you for coming in.” Detective Rice led me back down the hall. I sat on the green couch and watched him take Uncle Willard for a talk. I tried to rest my eyes while I waited. Finally Willard came back down the hall. For the first time I saw his age covering him like a cloak, visible in the stoop of his shoulders and the whiteness of his hair and the sad smiling crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He looked so much like my mother I nearly cried.

  ~~

  I was sixteen the year my mother died. The official cause of death was “accidental overdose”, but I knew the truth. I still had the note she’d left for my eyes only, folded in my journal.

  Mom had sent Lucy to Uncle Willie’s for the afternoon and asked him to pick Gail up after school. She made an excuse about having to meet with the teachers at my school. She planned it so I would be the one to find her. I guess she thought I was strong enough to handle it.

  I came home from school at three-thirty to find her lying on the kitchen floor beside the breakfast nook. She used to sit there for hours when I was little watching the birds fly into the feeder in the back yard. I hoped her final hour had been spent that way, in peace.

  Forgive me, Monie, her note said. I had nowhere else to go. I love you. Take care of your sisters.

  Forever your Mommy.

  Pills with alcohol…. The coroner listed it as an accidental overdose. We never knew how much of either she had taken. Daddy never asked. He just accepted Mom’s death as the inevitable outcome of her life. I think he was more angry than sad.

  Abigail’s hair turned from blonde to black the year Mommy died. It seems impossible, but it’s the truth. Her dark eyes flashed at Daddy and me in defiance. I think she believed we had taken Mommy away from her.

  Daddy’s friend Helen moved into the house. The excuse was someone needed to be home for Lucy through the day. Daddy didn’t want to send her to day-care after the trauma we’d experienced. But I knew the real reason Daddy wanted Helen in the house. I heard their muffled noises at night and I saw their looks across the dinner table. The research assistant seemed to have earned a promotion.

  So, I thought, it’s always been Helen. I filed the thought away with my growing teenage anger.

  Like Gail I needed someone to blame for Mommy’s death. It didn’t help matters any that Lucy clung to Helen. She wasn’t our mother. She had no right stepping into Mommy’s house the way you might step into another woman’s dress. My hatred grew until it became too much for me to carry inside.

  One morning my anger got the better of me. Daddy allowed us to wear casual clothes, but they had to be tasteful. That morning I dared to pull on a tube top that barely covered my breasts and a pair of low cut jeans with the top button missing. I didn’t bother to fix my hair, letting it hang long and loose down my back.

  “Desdemona, you’re looking a little under-dressed this morning,” Helen said gently.

  I slammed the cupboard door in response.

  “Desdemona, you’re being rude,” she challenged. “Go upstairs and put some proper clothing on. Your father will not be pleased when he sees you.”

  I chewed my Cheerios in stony silence.

  “Very well.”

  “You’re not my mother!” I shouted. I threw the bowl across the room. My action surprised us both.

  “So noted,” she said calmly. “Now clean up your mess.”

  “I will not! You clean it up. That’s why you’re here, right? To take care of us?”

  “What’s going on?” my father’s voice boomed into the dining room.

  “Desdemona is having a tantrum. She threw her cereal and now she needs to clean it up.”

  “She’s not my mother!” I screamed.

  “Desdemona, get in the car,” my father ordered.

  “But Caesar, she has a mess to clean up.”

  “I said get in the car.”

  I stormed out, but not before I heard him turn on her.

  “Hasn’t she been through enough?”

  “The girl has to show some respect.”

  I didn’t hear any more, but that night I enjoyed a mean satisfaction in the sound of Helen’s sobs coming from behind the bathroom door. The next day, though, she had gone for good and I understood what I had done. It was too bad my moment of personal growth came too late to help Helen. I often wondered what became of her. I wished I could call her, tell her how sorry I was.

  Some bridges are forever burned.

  FOUR

  I had some time to kill before Lucy’s train would arrive so I began a second reading of Millennium Girl. The story opened with the birth of the child. The descriptive passages made it clear she was like her
father in looks and temperament. Her mother played a passive role in her upbringing. From early in the story there was a dark undercurrent as the mother’s addiction to painkillers and alcohol became apparent.

  Meanwhile the father had his own vices. Like many great men he took advantage of the trappings of power. He divided his time between his wife and home and a handful of mistresses who fluttered in and out of his life. Despite his infidelities he was devoted to his daughter.

  By Chapter Three the mother was dead. Unable to face another day in a loveless marriage she ended her life. The official cause of death was listed as ‘accidental overdose’, but the father knew the truth. He knew if he had loved his wife the way she had loved him she would still be alive. Instead he had despised her weakness and pushed her into despair. His feelings of guilt will follow him throughout the balance of his life, shaping his actions as he matures into his later years.

  I put the manuscript down and looked at the clock. Another wave of nausea threatened me and I remembered I hadn’t eaten. Lucy would arrive at 8:00 and would probably be hungry for dinner, so I grabbed a couple of crackers to eat on the way to the station.

  Her train rolled in at 7:59 pm. By that time the sun had dipped low behind the downtown buildings but the heat was still oppressive. I was thankful for the air-conditioning at Union Station.

  I tucked the manuscript into my shoulder bag behind the leather fanny pack that lay there like a guilty reminder. I should have taken the pack straight to the ‘lost and found’ office. It never paid to procrastinate.

  My stomach growled. I spotted Lucy making her way ponderously up the platform. She was carrying too much baggage. She struggled to hold her things. I ran forward to help.

  At two hundred and fifty pounds, my sixteen-year-old sister had enough trouble carrying herself without the extra weight of suitcases. Time and again I reminded her to travel light, but I think she enjoyed the act of packing. Packing meant travel and travel could lead to adventure, something that was sorely lacking in Lucy’s life. This adventure, though, was one she would have rather missed.

  “Monie!” she cried. She dropped her bags and threw her arms around my neck. “What happened to Daddy?”

  “It’ll be OK, Lucy.” I stroked her hair. “Let’s get these things to the car. I’ll fill you in on the way to the restaurant.”

  “I can’t eat!” It was a bluff. Lucy could eat her way through any crisis, big or small. She needed me to believe her appetite was failing, so I played along.

  “I know. I feel the same way. But I haven’t eaten all day. I need something before I faint.”

  “You need to eat,” she agreed. I picked up the bulk of the luggage and together we wove our way through the station and to my car. I piled the cases into the trunk and we made our way to the Danforth. It was out of the way, but Lucy loved Greek food and I didn’t want to have to think.

  On the way I shared the horrible news our father had been shot in the head by an unknown assailant. I told her about my visit to 52 Division and about her appointment with Detective Manor for Saturday morning.

  “But Mona, if you knew he was missing on Wednesday, why didn’t you call me? I would’ve come right home.”

  “I should have called you. But you know Daddy and his lady friends. What if he was just spending some time with a new woman? I would feel terrible for dragging you home and worrying you if he came rolling in like a naughty schoolboy.”

  “But he never disappears like that. Even when he stays out, he always checks his messages.”

  “When he didn’t return my calls on Monday and Wednesday I got worried. I checked the house. His mail hadn’t been picked up and the dishes from our dinner Sunday night were still in the dishwasher. The neighbours hadn’t seen him since the weekend. So I called the police.”

  “You should have called me,” Lucy sniffed.

  “I know.”

  “Where did they find him?”

  “In a storage room at the faculty. It looks like he was killed outside the entrance from the parking lot and dragged to the room where he was left.”

  “Where was his car?”

  “It was in the garage at home,” I said. “He probably walked to the office. That’s what he usually did in the summer.”

  Lucy nodded. I could see her working it out mentally. If Daddy had walked to the office he would have cut across the parking lot and gone into the building through the back entrance, just as if he’d been driving. His beat up Volvo was well known to his colleagues. The police might have found him sooner if it had been left in the lot.

  “Was he robbed?” Trust Lucy to cut to the chase. Because of her weight problem and because her eyes often appeared dull, Daddy thought Lucy was not very bright. It was true her movements were usually slow. Just the same I believed Lucy had inherited both my father’s quick mind and my mother’s sensitivity and intuition. She seemed to have a knack for sliding right to the heart of logical matters.

  I thought if she could get a handle on her self-esteem Lucy would be a sharp young lady. She might be able to overcome her chronic over-eating and she would almost certainly perform better at school.

  “They don’t think it was robbery,” I answered. “His credit cards and cash were still in his wallet.”

  “Did he suffer?” Lucy’s lip began to tremble.

  “No. The Medical Examiner said Daddy didn’t feel anything. There was only one shot, straight through the centre of the forehead. He probably wasn’t even aware of what was happening.”

  “But why, Mona? Why Daddy?” Lucy had a blind spot when it came to Daddy. In her eyes he could do no wrong. It was always that way with Lucy when she loved someone. I think it was because she lost Mom when she was an infant. Since then she’d spent her life transferring her need for love from one surrogate to the next: first to Helen, then to Gail and finally to Daddy.

  And now he was gone.

  There was nothing to be gained by pointing out his obvious flaws to Lucy. He was a proud, arrogant man who must have fostered a number of enemies throughout his illustrious career. Jealousy runs amok in the artistic world. Other fine Canadian writers had been overlooked time and again in favour of Daddy’s grand style and masterful prose. I had escorted him to literary gatherings in cities across North America. It was always the same. As soon as we arrived on the scene the established cloisters would dissipate and all attention would be diverted towards the great J. Caesar Fortune, Man of Words, Lord of Ideas.

  Of course Daddy deserved his measure of success. He had earned it through a great deal of effort and a refusal to settle for “less than”. But that didn’t make the green pill any easier for his contemporaries to swallow.

  And then there were the women. In addition to being professionally superior to his peers, Daddy was also a known womaniser. Since Mommy’s death I had long ago lost count of the number of women in his life. Some were fleeting, tiring of his inattention and disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. Others stayed with him for years, tolerating his lack of availability with good humour. Often we would see more than one of his ladies at a gathering. Rather than becoming awkward the situation was usually cause for gentle laughter.

  Any of them might have harboured a secret resentment over Daddy’s treatment. Any of them might have hated him enough to kill him.

  But to Lucy he was just ‘Daddy’. He was the one who took care of her, made decisions for her, fed her and clothed her. In Lucy’s quiet sphere of reality Daddy stood like an icon.

  Besides, the police seemed to think it was a random attack. They thought a junkie or a drunk had killed him in the early morning hours in the hidden culvert at the back of the faculty building. There was no need to drag the baser aspects of Daddy’s nature into the equation.

  “What will I do?” Lucy moaned.

  “You don’t have to decide that now.”

  “What would Daddy want me to do?”

  “We’ll talk it over next week, after the funeral. If you like you can stay
in Montreal. You’ve got friends there now. Or you can come back home and stay at the house. Or you can stay with me. I have plenty of room.”

  “Will you move into the house?”

  “No. I like where I’m living.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “That’s ok,” I said.

  ~~

  From the time Lucy could walk, she was a follower. For years her pudgy little legs trailed after Abigail. From room to room and all around the neighbourhood, Gail never tired of Lucy’s adoration. The wiry Gail grew into a lean and sullen teen. Only Lucy was able to break through her wall of anger.

  Nowadays we would recognise in Gail the signs of foetal alcohol syndrome. It was apparent in her behaviour from the start. After all, Mommy drank her way through the first few months of her pregnancy and spent the final months in rehab. Based on what the experts say, Gail never really had a chance to develop normally.

  But back then we didn’t know as much about these things. Gail had problems but we saw them as her problems. By the time it became clear how troubled she was, her pattern of behaviour was already established. I see this sometimes among my students.

  When Gail was fourteen she discovered pot. Then came Ecstasy and Cocaine. Daddy never questioned where the money was going. My allowance went on books and clothes. I bought myself a little car that carried me around the city. But Gail spent hers on alcohol and drugs.

  I was living in residence during those years. By the time I spotted the problem Gail was already caught up in an all-too familiar spiral of self-destructive behaviour. History was repeating itself. I was terrified we would lose Gail the way we had Mom.

  I pleaded with Daddy to force Gail into rehab. As a minor she would have no choice. But he was either blind to the extent of her addiction or reluctant to admit it to the world. So Gail did not get help.

  “At least cut off her allowance,” I argued. “Make it tough for her to get the stuff. Maybe if those so-called friends of hers have to pay their own way they’ll move on.”