Leave Me by Dying

by Rosemary Aubert

  There was no arguing with Michele. At the moment, given the situation with Tuppin, I needed Billy Johnson more than he needed me. I longed to make use of the material I was reading in the gruesome books about homicide, but what could I do? To reveal my involvement there would be to risk everything. But the answer to Michele’s question was yes. Yes, I wanted to be rich, rich enough to be able to choose the people whose cases I would work on. I wasn’t really interested in international law. I was interested in life and death.

  But I told Michele I’d meet with him and Billy on the weekend.

  DURING THE NIGHT the weather changed. I was awakened by thunder and lightning shortly after 2 a.m. The wind was howling, and outside something was flapping hard against the side of the house. When I went downstairs to investigate, it was to find that we were in the middle of a blizzard. Snow blinded me as I forced my way out the kitchen door to secure the tarpaulin that had torn loose from my father’s truck parked in the driveway. That stopped the flapping, but thoroughly chilled and wide awake, I despaired of getting back to sleep.

  In the living room sat a stack of newspapers my brother had left. He bought American and Canadian papers because, as he said, reading several of each every day was the only way to watch history happen.

  Idly, I thumbed through the papers. The American ones all had headlines about the Russian space walk, the dismaying escalation of the conflict in Vietnam and the events in Selma. For the first time I found myself wishing I were in Alabama. Just to be in the South. Just to finally get warm.

  I shoved the U.S. papers aside and picked up the Toronto Daily World. On the front page was a warning that the deadline was rapidly approaching for the Beatles ticket contest Arletta had entered. I wished my little sister the best of luck, but I was far more interested in the headline that caught my eye: “What Is Going on at the Morgue?”

  Two photographs accompanied the article. The first was of a stern-looking, middle-aged man whom I took to be the attorney general. The other picture was the Toronto chief coroner, the man whose voice Gleason and I had heard from behind his closed office door. I examined the photo. Rosen was a boyish-faced man about a decade older than I. He had a half smile, almost a smirk. But I liked the look of him, cocky and sure of himself, as if he weren’t afraid of anybody, least of all the stuffed-shirt A-G.

  I began to read. Outside, the wind sent up a wild, keening groan, but I soon forgot about it as I lost myself in the intricacies of the argument waged between the coroner, who was not a lawyer but a medical doctor, and the attorney general, who was one of the most powerful lawyers in the country. “Both men declined to be interviewed,” the article read, “after being found engaged in a loud altercation on the steps of the Windsor Club this afternoon. Ironically, Dr. Rosen was the attorney general’s guest at the exclusive club, a bastion of this city’s elite.”

  The Windsor was Sheldrake Tuppin’s club. Which meant, not surprisingly in those small circles, that the attorney general was Tuppin’s friend. Did that make Tuppin Rosen’s enemy?

  “Chief Coroner Levi M. Rosen was heard to accuse Attorney General Allan Garrey of carelessness in the discharge of his duties. Garrey returned the volley, charging that Rosen has a wasteful attitude toward the public purse and a contemptuous disregard for the law. The continuing disagreement between the two men stems from Rosen’s insistence on conducting full autopsies and, if necessary, coroner’s inquests, in all cases of unattended death regardless of the previous living conditions of the deceased. Garrey insists that to spend taxpayers’ dollars investigating the deaths of ‘riffraff’ is a shameful waste.”

  The article was full of examples of the sort of person whose death interested the maverick coroner: rooming-house inhabitants who failed to wake up in the morning, known drunks found dead in doorways, old people whose relatives had happened to step out just at the hour of their demise. Personally, I could not imagine a body more pathetic or of more concern to him than the one we’d seen. Remembering the three-car cavalcade that I speculated had accompanied the body that night, I recalled that a coroner’s vehicle had been among the cars that had pulled in as Gleason and I watched. Had Rosen himself been in that vehicle? Did he have a personal interest? I wondered how difficult it would be to get to see Rosen. Had Gleason pulled some strings running to the coroner to get us into the morgue? I remembered Gleason’s evasive reply when I’d put that question to him.

  “The two men nearly came to blows,” the article continued, “when Coroner Rosen charged that Mr. Garrey’s policies have resulted in what Rosen called a ‘cover-up’ of deaths in ‘questionable segments’ of the city’s population. When contacted later, neither man would elaborate on the meaning of this comment, but the attorney general stated that unless the coroner retracts, he faces being fired.”

  Could it have been the A-G himself who had ordered the disappearance of the body we so briefly saw? I assumed he had the power to make a report disappear from the files of the morgue. An unsettling thought occurred to me. Had there been any sort of written record of our visit to the morgue? I had as yet only a slender understanding of the structure of the law profession, but I had no doubt that if the A-G wanted to prevent two law students from ever becoming lawyers, he could find a way to do it.

  Pushing this thought aside as one of those extreme ideas that come to one in the middle of the night, I decided to scan the obituaries. These were Thursday’s papers, not too late for Monday’s deaths to appear. Several columns of death notices chronicled the passing of ordinary people from ordinary causes. People whose contact with lawyers had probably extended no further than the boring, mundane transactions Gleason said I could look forward to. Gleason was wrong. I wanted as much from my legal future as he did. Someday, I promised myself, I would be a member of the Windsor. And I would not disgrace myself in public by conduct unbecoming a gentleman. I had a lot to learn, but on that windy night in my mother’s parlor, I didn’t know how much. Limited as my knowledge was in some areas, though, there were things I already well understood, and chief among them was the conviction that having power—or failing that, getting close to others who have power—was the most effective and fastest way of getting things done.

  Despite myself, I was beginning to look forward to Sunday after Mass and my meeting with the most powerful man in our family. I hadn’t yet figured out what Uncle Salvatore might do to assist me in getting the internship I so desperately wanted, but I knew that he could and would help me. All I had to do was ask.

  Chapter 7

  On Saturdays Michele, Arletta and I took turns helping my mother with the grocery shopping. I had performed this task since I was seven years old, and my exalted position as an adult and student of law did not relieve me of my obligation. “You live at home, you help,” was my father’s dictum.

  My parents had come from Italy in 1928, and much had changed among the Italians of Toronto since. The son of an immigrant could go to the country’s finest law school and a daughter go ape over the Beatles. But many of the little fruit markets and food stores along College Street were run by the same Italian families who had been there since before I was born. Most of these people were what my father called termitani. I never asked the exact meaning of the word, but I knew it was used to connote “Sicilian.” These dark southern people were held in barely concealed contempt by the muratori of Friuli, the fair “wall-builders” of northern Italy like my father. My mother, being from farther south, held no such prejudice, but even though she frequented the termitani for small daily needs, she preferred to patronize the Jewish merchants of the Kensington market for the substantial load of groceries she purchased on a weekly basis. “Jews are the same as Italians,” she often said. “They know what’s what. First God, then family, plus eat right and stay loyal to your own. That’s us and that’s Jews, too.”

  This Saturday, the vernal equinox, we’d risen with the sun at six, happy to know that though the frigid weather was winter lingering, the increasing light was a sure sign
of spring. The market was a short drive along College Street in the truck. My mother was uncharacteristically silent as we made our way through the narrow streets southwest of the corner of College and Spadina, found a place to park and wrestled with the cloth bags she had made specifically for this weekly exercise in the provision of necessities. We had a set itinerary with only a few minor seasonal variations. This Saturday, for instance, we headed first for the fish stalls on the south side of Baldwin Street rather than the meat market on the north side.

  “Why are you so quiet today, Ma?” I asked as I helped her heave a piece of dried cod onto the scale that hung outside the stall.

  She shook her head. “You and your brother and sister,” she muttered. “I don’t know . . .” She glanced at the scale, selected a second piece of fish, hoisted it atop the first, then nodded to the stall owner who had just seen her and come out to greet her. He wrapped the fish and she paid him. “Grazie, Hermie,” she said.

  “Prego, Mrs. Portalese,” he answered.

  “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT?” I asked her as we crossed Kensington Avenue to the place that we always called the Jewish bakery. If there were Jewish breads and pastries for sale, I didn’t know which ones they were. We had been shopping there for so long that bagels, challah, light and dark rye, kaisers, onion buns, and crusty white bread all seemed Canadian to me. My mother selected a dozen hot cross buns, three loaves of bread and a gigantic cheese bun. When she handed the ginger-haired girl behind the counter a two-dollar bill, the girl gave her a few coins in change.

  “The bun is for Uncle Salvatore,” she said as we re-crossed Kensington. “His wife is too stuck up to go to the Jewish bakery, but he loves these buns. So you’ll take it to him tomorrow when you go, okay, Gelo?”

  The thought of carrying a cheese bun to Uncle Salvatore’s fine neighborhood would have been too embarrassing to contemplate had I not already done it a hundred times. Once, when I’d been about eleven, I’d tossed the bun in the garbage on the way there. Uncle Salvatore had never mentioned its absence. Neither had my mother. But I always suspected they knew what I’d done, and the guilt was enough to follow me for years. I had dutifully delivered the ridiculous gift without hesitation since.

  In the cheese store across the street from the bakery, the wares were piled so high that my mother couldn’t see the men behind the counter and they couldn’t see her. Or so it seemed. “What’ll it be, sweetie?” came a voice from behind a tower of Gouda.

  “Provolone,” my mother shouted. “Strong. Sliced. Not too thin.”

  “You want Italian or Canadian?” asked the voice behind the cheese.

  “This you have to ask?” My mother’s Jewish inflection was perfect. I heard delighted laughter from the invisible vendor.

  “Time for a rest,” she announced when we’d finished most of our shopping. Over steaming mugs at our favorite coffee shop, we sat in silence for a few minutes as was our habit. But unlike most Saturdays, my mother was clearly worried about something, and once again I tried to get her to talk. After a few futile questions on my part, she finally volunteered what was on her mind by asking a question of her own.

  “That place over there that Michele is always talking about . . . ?”

  “Selma? Selma, Alabama?”

  “No, the other one.”

  I remembered the American newspapers. “Raid on North Vietnam: 130 U.S. Bombers Launch Third Aerial Offensive This Week.” I reached across the small table and took my mother’s work-roughened hands.

  “Ma,” I said softly, “that’s got nothing to do with us. Michele can’t be sent to Vietnam, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  She shook her head. “Mrs. Catelli’s nephew is going over there. He says he wants to fight the Communists.” She hesitated, then she smiled. “After all, everybody should get to watch Hazel.”

  I gave her hand a squeeze. “Michele is against the war in Vietnam. He’s convinced young men are coming up here to get away from it. A Canadian can fight in the U.S. Army if he wants to, but Michele is trying to help people who want to resist the war.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d put her mind at ease, but she seemed to relax. She sat back and sipped her coffee. “When you go to see Uncle Salvatore,” she said, “don’t tell him you have to put a pillowcase over your head for school.”

  I laughed. “No, Ma.”

  “Why did you do that, anyway?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that my mother might be interested in the grim puzzle that I couldn’t seem to get off my mind. I certainly wanted to spare her the disturbing image I now seemed to carry in my head night and day. But I often confided in her, so gently I began to reveal what was on my mind.

  “Ma,” I said, “the other night I had an appointment at the morgue. It was a fairly routine situation. Gleason Adams and I were supposed to observe an autopsy. You know what that is?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were locked with mine and I knew she wanted me to continue. I struggled to speak slowly so that she could fully understand. “When we got there, there was a delay in letting us in, as if they’d forgotten the appointment or didn’t want to honor it.”

  “You should have got family to set it up and not that school,” she said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, once they finally let us in, what we saw was . . . Well, I guess it was frightening. It was a body with a bag over its head. The bag was tied around the neck and—”

  “The person was murdered? Like on Perry Mason?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  She looked alarmed—and confused. “I don’t understand, Gelo. You can’t try out killing yourself to see if it works in a project for law school! I’m not going to let you do that. No wonder your father gets so mad.”

  “The point is, Ma, I don’t think just putting a loosely woven burlap bag over a person’s head would do it. There’s more to this. The woman may have died from the cord that tied the bag.” I thought about her hand, which appeared to have been holding that piece of silky-looking rope.

  “A person can choke themselves by tying something around their own neck?”

  “Strangle,” I answered. “The right word is ‘strangle.’ But I don’t know the answer to your question. I’m trying to find out how a pathologist—that’s a doctor who studies the cause of death—would know whether a person committed suicide or was murdered or perhaps met with an accident.”

  My mother considered this for a moment. “There is always somebody around who kills himself or even herself.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t like talking about stuff like this, son, but the Church says a person who kills theirself goes straight to hell. I don’t understand why, because people who do that aren’t right in the head. Sometimes they’re real sick and they don’t want to tell their family and be a burden. Sometimes they did a wrong thing and they’re afraid of everybody finding out.” She hesitated, drank her coffee, resumed in a low voice. “Shame is a bad thing to live with. And it only happens to people who are good underneath. If not, then why would the person care so much about doing something wrong?”

  “You mean you think that if that woman in the morgue killed herself, it might be because she was ashamed of something she’d done?”

  “Maybe.”

  I could think of only one shame that would be serious enough to cause a woman with no rings on her fingers to commit suicide. “I wish I could have seen the autopsy. Then I would have known whether she was pregnant.”

  My mother shuddered. “I know sometimes a nice girl goes around with people who aren’t nice, but to kill yourself when you’re expecting,” she said with horror, “that would send you straight to hell.”

  THAT AFTERNOON I PLANNED to work on my Tuppin proposal. If Michele’s friend Billy was an American citizen, there were whole new areas of law I needed to look into. Professor Kavin had told me, “Tuppin loves Americans but never admits it.” I didn’t know now what to do with that bit of information, but I pl
anned to use it somehow.

  However, after only an hour in the library, I gave up. Doodling in my notebook, I made a sketch of the two rings. It wasn’t hard. I drew the two bands so that when the rings were right side up, they were mirror images of each other, gold and silver on the opposite sides. I showed how the inscription was engraved on each and then wrote it out separately. “If you love me, leave me by dying.”

  In all my long years of legal-case preparation to come, I followed a simple rule, one that I’d already figured out by the time I began my search for the maker of the rings: Begin with what is closest to you and use it as a step toward the next fact. I started with the Italian jewelers whom our family patronized. We were not rich people, but we had gold. Every Italian does.

  “You’re Angelo Portalese’s boy, aren’t you?” The first jeweler looked me over carefully.

  I pretended to study a display case in which gold chain bracelets were lined up in increasing order of thickness. “Yes,” I answered, waiting for the inevitable next question.

  “Time’s coming soon when you’ll be looking for an engagement ring, eh?” This was accompanied by a knowing smile that sent me hurrying back out into the street. But it also made me think about the redhead at school and the ginger-haired bakery girl and even the pretty clerk at the morgue. I tried to remember whether I’d seen a ring on her hand when she’d lifted the section of counter to offer me assistance.

  Thoughts of engagement rings led me to Durston’s. This establishment, Toronto’s answer to Tiffany, was a far cry from the local shop. Row upon row of gleaming glass cases harbored sparkling gems of the utmost clarity and depth of color: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and lesser stones with names I did not know.