Conduct in Question

by Mary E. Martin

  At the school picnic, six eighth-grade students contracted the polio virus. Three children were permanently confined to wheelchairs. Another two had to rely upon that hideous monster, the iron lung. Only one had died: Anna. The last time he saw her, she was surrounded by ugly, wheezing machines. Dying at the age of thirteen, Anna could do no wrong.

  Anna and he used to play outside, waiting for Dad to get home from work. He remembered racing up the driveway and flinging himself into his father’s arms. “Do an under-doggie, Daddy! Please!” Laughing, Stanley would lift his son up high and swing him down fast, landing him softly on the grass. As Harry sat in his office, the starchy smell of Dad’s collar and the damp feel of his shirt on his back came back with piercing immediacy.

  Ignoring convention, Dad said and did as he pleased. In the school where he taught downtown, the children were very poor. Sometimes he would invite a child and his parents for dinner at the house. Invariably, these people were pinched, lean, and wary when they arrived. By the end of the evening, they left the house with smiles of gratitude.

  When Anna died, an enormous emptiness filled the house. His parents fell silent, as if the space between them had become an ocean. He worked harder at school than he ever imagined possible. His straight-A report card only drew wan smiles from his parents. Their love and life died with Anna.

  Harry had settled many estate cases in which brother and sister battled to the death. Twenty-page affidavits would be filed in court, each one setting out the deficiencies of the other in blood-thirsty detail. Each one screamed, in tantrums of jealousy, “I am the better child.” Strange words from the mouth of a forty-year-old!

  After Harry’s call, Suzannah was unable to sit still. She tried to tidy the kitchen, but it was no use. Frank had left too much of a mess. She sat on a kitchen stool and gazed out into the garden.

  She remembered every detail. Upstairs, after the party at Marjorie’s, Suzannah had drawn up a chair at her bedside.

  “Suzannah, come closer, pet,” Marjorie had said from her bed. “Is the door shut?” Without waiting for an answer, Marjorie continued in a low and rapid voice, sounding as if she were afraid time would prevent her from finishing. “You are the only one I trust.”

  Suzannah drew nearer and smoothed her cover.

  “You and I are one of a kind. I have a far closer bond with you, my sweet, than the others.” She grasped Suzannah by the wrist. “So you see, you’re stuck with seeing me through to the end.”

  “Please, Auntie, it’s not a matter of being stuck. I’ll do anything I can. What do you want me to do?”

  Marjorie’s eyelids fluttered open. “That living will…” She pointed to the envelope lying on the bedcover. “It’s really just rubbish! No one can be held to it.”

  She turned her face away on the pillow. Suzannah strained to hear her. “Suzannah, I’m so afraid. No…not of being dead, but of dying. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Her questioning eyes flew open and she looked keenly at her niece. “The living will only says I’m not to be kept waiting, propped up by this and that machine. Just let me go.”

  Marjorie was silent for so long that Suzannah’s fear began to grow. Finally, she spoke again. “If I am taken ill here, I want you to help!” Struggling to sit up, she squeezed Suzannah’s hand. “The living will isn’t enough. If the pain from the cancer becomes unbearable—”

  “You have cancer?” Suzannah clasped her hand over her mouth in shock. Through tears, she said, “I’m so sorry, Auntie. I didn’t know.”

  Marjorie waved dismissively. “And even if I can’t speak sense, I know you’ll understand. I want you to do this for me.” Weakly, she motioned to the night table. “The pills are in this drawer. Open it.”

  Suzannah gasped. There were at least twenty bottles of medication lined up, with color-coded labels.

  “You see, darling, I’ve been building my own little collection right here. All you need to do is follow the color chart and give them to me. This is my own way out, but don’t worry: if I am able, I’ll do it myself.”

  Weary with exhaustion, Marjorie slumped back on the pillow. Her voice was so low and muffled, that Suzannah could scarcely hear her.

  “I told you about the terrible dreams, Suzannah.” Tears filled her eyes. “I’m in a long, dark, narrow hallway. I’m in a wheelchair and can’t sit up properly. So much crying and moaning, too.” She shook her head helplessly. “Others are trapped with me. When I look down at my hands, I see the nails are long and yellow.”

  Marjorie’s breathing became shallow and rapid. Her hand fluttered up in the air. In a soft but insistent voice, she continued, “Then suddenly I see the nails are really tubes and needles jabbing into my hands and arms.”

  Eyes closed, Marjorie began to gasp. Suzannah rose to seek help, but her aunt grasped her wrist with surprising strength. When her eyes flew open again, Suzannah saw the horror reflected in them.

  “I wake up. I’m suffocating. I want to run down the hall toward the music in the distance beyond beautiful golden doors.” Marjorie’s eyes glistened. “But I can’t, because I’m caught in the tubes.”

  Suzannah sat transfixed by the terrible vision her aunt painted.

  “Promise me! Promise me you’ll do it for me, if I can’t.” A single tear rolled down her cheek.

  Cold seeped into the pit of Suzannah’s stomach. The thought of administering an overdose to Marjorie was horrific.

  Marjorie’s glare was imperious, demanding an immediate answer. Suzannah glanced about the room frantically. She took the hand of the small, frail, yet powerful woman.

  “But Auntie!” Suzannah felt as though someone else were speaking her words from a great distance. “Why me? Why not Katharine?” Suddenly, she felt like a small child again.“Gerry? Couldn’t he…?” Her voice trailed off as Marjorie’s expression clouded over in disappointment.

  “Katharine!” Marjorie jerked her head away on the pillow. “What does she know of suffering? She’d give the order to the doctor by phone, between meetings, without missing a beat. Besides,” she continued wryly, “she admires me for my strength. She cannot stand weakness.”

  Suzannah flinched at her aunt’s grating words. “And Gerry!” Marjorie continued with a sigh. “What does he know about anything?”

  With a knowing glance at her niece, she said, “There’s no one but you. You know what pain is and how it wears you down.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We have a very special bond, my darling. In time, you will understand. Only you will know when I can’t take anymore and just want to be let go.”

  She took Suzannah’s hand and looked into her eyes. “Katharine is far too efficient and has had Gerry under her thumb ever since they were children. He can’t think for himself, and, besides that…” Marjorie ventured a weak smile. “He has as much sensitivity as sandpaper.”

  Suzannah was startled by her own childish pride. My God, I’m the favored one. And at the same time, the executioner.

  Marjorie glared at her. “Well?”

  Suzannah opened the bedside drawer and ran her finger across the little plastic bottletops of pills. After a moment, she replied, “All right. I’ll help you, Auntie.”

  “Thank you, my darling,” was all Marjorie whispered.

  Downstairs, Frank paced the foyer like a caged beast. Except for Henry’s silent shadowing, Frank easily would have knocked an ornamental vase from a table. At last he saw Suzannah, pale in the faint light, clutching the banister. She descended the staircase.

  “What took you so long?” he demanded.

  Suzannah remained silent until they had left the house and entered the car.

  “What’d dear Auntie want?” Frank was insistent.

  At last Suzannah whimpered, “What am I going to do, Frank? She wants me to give her pills so she can die at home.”

  Frank was attentive immediately. “She’s got pills to do it? Where?”

  “In the drawer of her bedside table. There’s got to be a least twent
y bottles.” Suzannah wiped her sniffly nose. She did not catch the eagerness in Frank’s expression in the lights of the oncoming traffic.

  “What did you tell her, sweetie?”

  The question made Suzannah choke as she gently rocked back and forth. Frank pulled the car to the side of the road. “Listen, babe, you said you’d help her, didn’t you? I mean, you can’t make her suffer.”

  Suzannah did not understand why she trusted Frank. But when life frightened her, she always turned to him. She had no one else. When his voice became soft and concerned, she could not resist him. She let him put his arm around her while she leaned on his shoulder. “Yes, I said I’d help her.”

  “You did right, babe.” He patted her head and swiftly jerked the car back onto the street. He turned on the radio to find some nice soothing music to get her in the mood. “Another victim murdered on the sand dunes at the Scarborough Bluffs. This is the Florist’s fourth…”

  “My God, Frank! They have to catch him.”

  His huge hands clutched the steering wheel. He’d have to settle her down to have any chance tonight. “I know, babe. It’s awful.” He caressed her neck and tried to sound soft and caring. His thick hand nearly choked her. She gasped and shifted away from his grasp.

  “Don’t worry, honey, they’ll catch the bastard real soon,” he said softly.

  CHAPTER 15

  Harry left the office just before five to have drinks with his friend Stephen Barrett at the club. The Alton Club was a small stone structure located at King and Bay, the pulsing center of the financial district. Its heavy wrought-iron gate, adorned with a brass coat of arms, gave discreet protection from the curious eyes of the casual passerby. Only properly identified members and their guests were admitted.

  Harry nursed ambivalence toward the club. It had always been the inner sanctum of the old moneyed crowd, and it remained one of the last bastions of class and unspoken sexism. Despite his egalitarian upbringing, Harry wrote a check every year from his business account for the exorbitant fees, and shaved a tiny amount of tax from the demands of Her Majesty.

  Several years ago, Harry had taken his father for lunch in the dining room of the Alton Club. By then, Dad had become a shrunken man whose shirt collar gaped. His face was mildly contorted by a recent stroke. At the retirement home, he would not let anyone shave him, and consequently, his face was patchy with whiskers.

  Why the Alton Club? Harry knew he could not impress his father. Besides, what man at his age still sought his father’s approval? He could only try to make up for the lost years between them.

  Dad sat in silence with his scotch, seeming to drift off into his other world. Harry reflected, with sadness, that watching senility creep over his father was like seeing lights turned off in a house one by one. Then, surprisingly, a light would snap on again and burn for a moment or an hour, until it flickered into darkness.

  Their lunch was interrupted.

  “Harry?” Harry lowered his menu as Jonathan Conroy approached the table. “Good to see you!” Conroy clapped him on the back. Ever since Harry had bailed him out of a professionally tight spot on a real-estate deal, he had been quite friendly. There could be no other reason. He was small potatoes next to a firm with a “Grand Corridor.”

  Harry rose and introduced his father.

  “You must be very proud of your son, sir.” Jonathan shook the old man’s hand. “Were you a lawyer yourself?”

  Stanley rose with only slight difficulty. “No, sir, I was a teacher.” Harry was pleased: his father spoke with strength and confidence.

  “Oh, that’s grand! Which university?”

  Stanley simply shook his head and smiled.

  “Then at one of the boys’ schools?”

  “No, Mr. Conroy. I taught grade five at Dalton Public School downtown to forty children. I started in the Depression.” Stanley paused and glanced around the paneled dining room of the Alton Club before continuing, “Those days, no one had a thing.”

  Harry knew the rest of the story, but could think of no way to divert his father.

  “I saw little children crying each day in class because they were starving, Mr. Conroy.” Stanley Jenkin’s voice choked with memory. “They smelled. Some had no running water, you see. They had no warm clothes.” Stanley held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I could not understand why they had to suffer so, when a privileged few had so much.”

  The old man had begun to weep openly. Conroy was stricken with embarrassment. Harry patted his father’s shoulder and eased him back into his seat. A waiter filled the water glasses. Conroy recovered. Hastily, he shook Harry’s hand and bowed his way from the table.

  ***

  That had happened several years ago. Today, Harry rang the bell. The Alton Club concierge peered out suspiciously. Once the door opened, the foyer brought Harry back into the last century. Massive portraits of founding members lined the paneled walls.

  Since its inception in 1897, the Alton Club enshrined its world views in the minutes of the board’s special and general meetings. Those weighty leather-bound tomes housed in the elegant library contained much of the club’s illustrious history. At the 1939 annual meeting, it had been duly recorded that those of the Hebrew faith were to be denied membership. In 1953, after citing the Senator McCarthy hearings, they recorded serious debate about requiring new members to disavow any connection with the Communist Party. Interestingly, the issue of blacks becoming members was never even posed.

  Over the ensuing quarter-century, women’s rights groups had made major inroads at the club. Provided a lady had two male sponsors, she could be considered for membership. This year the club proudly proclaimed an open-door policy, although no male truly regarded a woman as a serious member.

  From the foyer, Harry spotted the long, angular frame of his friend Stephen Barrett perched on a stool and silhouetted by the glow from behind the bar. As he handed his overcoat to the hall porter, Harry breathed deeply and prepared to settle in for a relaxing hour or so.

  “So, how’s the defender of the downtrodden?” Harry asked as they shook hands. Although Stephen practised only criminal law, he was the epitome of the sleek Bay Street corporate lawyer.

  A tight-lipped grimace, which served as a smile, flashed across Stephen’s face. “Not badly, thanks. How’s the funeral business?” Harry chuckled. His friend persisted in referring to his estate practice in this fashion.

  Friends since the early days of law school, they knew the easy repartee was always there. Surprisingly, “old school tie” Barrett had thrived in the underworld of criminal law. Stephen found that many of his future clients came from some of the city’s best boarding schools, where he had been a student himself.

  “Listen,” Harry said, tapping his arm, “what can you tell me about money coming in from the Far East?”

  “There’s plenty of it. What else do you need to know?”

  “Is it okay?”

  Stephen laughed. “You mean is it laundered?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, not yet. Canada’s one of the best places in the world for that. There’s hardly any restriction. Why?”

  “I have a new client from Hong Kong buying up some land.”

  “So? That’s hardly unusual. Most of the money is perfectly legitimate.”

  “I suppose.” Harry’s voice trailed off as he tried to pin down what was troubling him. “It bothers me that I’m not getting the whole picture from the client.”

  “Why should you, Harry? There are lots of things you’re better off not knowing. In my practice, you never want to know too much.”

  “What’s the usual procedure for money-laundering?”

  “It’s pretty simple. Dirty money from drugs, prostitution, and porn—you name it—flows into the country from all over the world. It goes into banks, trust companies. And to lawyers and accountants, some of whom are innocent, unsuspecting dupes; others are in on the game. The money is used to buy legitimate businesses or land, so when
they sell, the proceeds come out ‘clean.’ There’s lots of methods to mask the game, but essentially, that’s it.” Stephen laughed. “We think we’re getting tough by enacting reporting requirements of cash over ten thousand dollars. But lawyers are exempt.”

  Harry ordered a beer; Stephen ordered another scotch. They sat in silence for some moments, waiting for the drinks. Harry studied his friend, who had begun tearing his napkin into tiny strips.

  “Something wrong?” Harry asked.

  Drinks were delivered. Stephen stared at him and then shook his head. “You know, some days I think seriously about dumping this and sailing around the world.”

  Harry knew that Stephen could actually afford such an escapade. His tone suggested much more than wistful fantasy.

  “Nobody plays by any kind of rules anymore—certainly not the lawyers. There aren’t enough jails to hold all the criminals.” Stephen shook his head sadly and gulped the drink in front of him. “Besides, the small-time operators aren’t the real problem. It’s the criminals up the line with all the money and power. Nobody ever touches them. For them, money-laundering is normal business.”

  Harry was attentive. Rarely did Stephen depart from his glib, acerbic attitude. Depression was unheard of for his friend.

  “Sounds like you’re getting a bit jaded.” Harry offered, testing the mood. “Maybe you should take some time off.”

  Stephen did not immediately reply. After a long drink, he said, “It’s just a revolving door. I’ve been defending the same dumb beasts for years. I started with real lowlifes, the ones who knock over convenience stores and shoot the cashier just for fun. Now I do all sorts of complicated frauds and murder conspiracies. Believe me, it’s the same moronic thinking at work. Money may buy a veneer of civility, but it’s the same vicious, dumb-fuck beast underneath.”

  “What do you think about these petal murders?” Harry asked.