The Last Good Day

by Gail Bowen

  As she witnessed the moment, Isobel Wainberg’s narrow intelligent face grew wary. Her reaction was no surprise. Isobel was a bundle of imperfectly insulated nerve ends. She had inherited her mother’s cleverness, her odd squeaky voice, and her melancholy. Even her wiry black hair was like her mother’s, shooting out from her head uncontrollably as if the impulses she carried in her brain had caused a short circuit. When she caught my gaze, her smile was hesitant. She knew Taylor had hit a bad patch and she wanted to help, but she didn’t know how.

  We could hear the music from Magoo’s before we docked. Gene Chandler’s classic “Duke of Earl” rocked out across the water. Gracie squeezed her eyes shut in delight. “This is going to be so wicked!” Isobel allowed herself a small smile of agreement, but Taylor remained deep in the heart of darkness.

  I leaned towards her. “Penny for your thoughts,” I said.

  My daughter raised her eyes to mine. “I was thinking about what I’d leave behind,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was wondering what I’d leave behind after I died,” Taylor said.

  I tried to keep my voice steady. “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Everything’s great,” Taylor said.

  “Can we talk about it later?” I said.

  Her face was unreadable. “It was just a question, Jo.” The patient detachment in her voice was familiar. It was her mother Sally’s tone. The boat docked; the girls scrambled out, laughing as they raced towards the music, and I was left to ponder the fact that once again nature had trumped nurture.

  It was early on a Tuesday night, but Magoo’s was crowded. It wasn’t hard to figure out the secret of the owners’ success. They had chosen to recreate an ideal of uncomplicated innocence that would make people happy, and they had achieved their goal. Everything was authentic. The big Wurlitzer jukebox that met you when you came into the room was vintage. Its distinctive rounded top, bright columns of colour, and the glass front through which you could watch your musical choices slide into place were guaranteed to bring a smile – just as they had during their heyday in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The servers, too, had the bounce of an era before the age of irony. The walls were covered with cheerfully faked photographs of flesh-and-blood celebrities of the fifties and sixties posing with Mr. Magoo, the crotchety, myopic, W.C. Fields–like cartoon character who gave the restaurant its name.

  Zack had reserved a table for us on the deck overlooking the lake, and as soon as we’d placed our orders, the girls hit us up for loonies to play the jukebox and gravitated towards the dance floor. Taylor seemed to have left her existential angst in the boat, so there was nothing to do but relax, listen to Jan and Dean sing “Dead Man’s Curve,” and enjoy the sunset and the Japanese lanterns.

  When Blake excused himself to talk to friends he’d spotted across the deck, Zack gave me an opening I couldn’t ignore. “So what have you been up to, Joanne? I know you were out of town, because I knocked at your door.”

  “I was in Saskatoon tracking down a former employee of yours,” I said.

  Zack raised an eyebrow. “And who would that be?”

  “Clare Mackey,” I said.

  I watched his face carefully for a reaction. There was none. “You didn’t have to drive to Saskatoon to find out where Clare was,” he said evenly. “I could have told you.”

  “Good,” I said. “So where is she?”

  “Clare is in feminist heaven. She landed a job with an all-female law firm in Vancouver.”

  “What’s the name of the firm?”

  Zack shrugged. “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Yet you’re still comfortable with the official explanation,” I said.

  Zack rested his forearms on the table and leaned towards me. Like everything else he did, the move seemed calculated. His upper body was powerful, and braced against the table he had the controlled energy of an animal about to pounce. “What makes you think the official explanation isn’t the truth?” he said.

  “For one thing, no one seems to have heard from Clare. Her friends are getting anxious.”

  “Clare’s an adult,” Zack said. “She was offered a good job in an exciting city. She moved along. Do you have any more questions?”

  “Not at the moment,” I said.

  “Then let’s put that eager young server hovering behind you out of his misery and eat our onion rings.”

  “Perfect timing,” I said.

  “Perfect world,” Zack said as the server placed the platter between us. “Take a bite.”

  Conversation during dinner was minimal. We were all hungry, and Magoo’s food made talk a fool’s option. The menu noted that the burgers were made on-site and sizzled on the kitchen grill; the oversized Kaiser buns were baked by the owner’s mother; the lettuce and tomatoes on the condiment tray had been picked from the garden out back; the fries were hand-cut shoestrings; the milkshakes were so thick they were guaranteed to clog a straw.

  We munched to the beat of the Shangri-Las, Sam Cooke, Gene Pitney, and Brenda Lee. Finally, Taylor pushed away her plate.

  “Finished?” I said.

  “I have to pee,” she mouthed.

  I waited a moment, assessed the situation, and followed her.

  She’d been quiet during dinner, but Taylor had always been serious about food. That said, she was not a morbid child, and the fact that she’d talked about a legacy worried me. She was already in the stall when I got there.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “I just had to pee,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll wait. We can go back together.”

  “As if I was two years old,” she said.

  “Taylor, one of these days you’ll be a woman, and that means you’ll be going to the powder room with other women for the rest of your life. Consider tonight your rite of passage.”

  Taylor was grinning when she came out of the stall. “Powder room.” She rolled the words around in her mouth. “Who calls it that?”

  In a photo above her, the cartoon Mr. Magoo peered nearsightedly at the spectacular cleavage of a life-sized Marilyn Monroe. “Women who need a place to talk privately about how their evening’s going,” I said.

  “Cool,” Taylor said. Her eyes held mine. “About that ‘leaving behind’ thing. Maddy’s book about the Inuksuit said that once people all over the world built things like Inuksuit and left them behind to help the people who came after. I was just wondering what I was going to leave.”

  “I imagine you’ll be like your mother and leave behind a lot of amazing art.”

  “But what if I’m like my father?” Taylor said. “He didn’t leave anything behind.”

  “That’s not true, Taylor,” I said. “We all leave something.”

  “But what did my father leave?”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her towards the mirror. “He left you.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  After we left the ladies’ room, Taylor went back to the dance floor to rock around the clock with Bill Haley, and I returned to our table on the deck and a fait accompli. Zack was alone, his fingers tapping out the beat on the Formica tabletop and his eyes fixed on the progress of a red canoe moving towards shore.

  When I sat down, he gave me a satyr’s smile. “Change in plans,” he said. “Blake caught a ride to Lawyers’ Bay with those people he was talking to before dinner. He’s decided to drive back to the city tonight.”

  “So he can look for Lily?” I said.

  “I imagine Blake can make an educated guess about his wife’s whereabouts.”

  “Can you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Anybody can make a guess, but Lily’s wandering ways are Blake’s concern. I never assume another man’s burdens.”

  “Unless he pays you a retainer,” I said.

  “Good one,” Zack said, raising his metal milkshake container to me. “But back to the situation at hand. I didn’t see any reason
to end the evening. The girls and I are having a good time, and you looked as if you could use a little fun.”

  “You’re very perceptive,” I said.

  “When it matters to me, I am. And since you matter to me, I’ll do what I can to lighten your spirits. Would you care to dance?”

  Taken aback by what sounded suspiciously like a pass, I hesitated a beat too long before answering. Zack picked up on my uncertainty.

  “I can dance, you know.”

  I stood and extended my hand. “In that case, let’s dance.”

  Zack took it. “A woman who leads,” he said. “I like that.”

  The spectators around the dance floor were closer to Taylor’s age than to mine, and they were agape. True to his promise, Zack really could dance. He manoeuvred his chair with skill and finesse, and he led me through the Twist, the Stroll, the Jerk, the Monkey, and the Swim before, sweaty and breathless, I raised my hand.

  “I have to sit the next one out,” I said. “It’s either that or coronary care.”

  Zack was sweaty and breathless too. “Thank God,” he said. “I was afraid you’d never give up.”

  “I didn’t know it was a contest,” I said.

  “Everything’s a contest, but I also wanted you to have a good time. You seemed preoccupied.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just parent stuff. In the boat coming over, Taylor said something that bothered me.”

  “Fill me in,” Zack said. “I’m a good listener.”

  “Is this going to be a billable hour?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Nope. This hour’s free. This is where I suck you in. Get you to like me.”

  “I already like you,” I said.

  “So the pressure’s off. Let’s talk about Taylor.”

  “There’s not much to say. On the ride over, Taylor seemed a little down. I offered her a penny for her thoughts and she told me she was wondering what she’d leave behind after she died. That’s why I followed her into the bathroom. But she assured me her concern about a legacy was no big deal – it was just a question she was mulling over.”

  In the candlelight, Zack’s eyes were lustrous. “You don’t believe her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Taylor has a complicated history. She was the daughter of a friend of mine – the artist Sally Love.”

  “Wow,” Zack said. “I own a Sally Love. It’s my favourite piece. It’s also the most valuable thing I own.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “The price for Sally’s work hit the stratosphere after she died, and it’s stayed there. Taylor’s a very rich young girl.”

  “But tonight she’s a girl who’s wondering whether she’ll leave a mark on the world. A very human concern.”

  “Is it a concern of yours?”

  “Not any more,” Zack said.

  A flotilla of ducks was moving towards shore. Twilight had calmed the winds and quieted the lake. As the ducks swam, each one left behind it a tracing, feather-delicate. Within seconds, the tracing was absorbed by the water.

  Zack pointed to the ducks. “That’s what we leave behind,” he said. “Nothing. Once you accept that, everything else is easy.”

  “Then why does Chris’s death matter so much to you?”

  “Because he was special,” Zack said. “A good man in a bad world.”

  “He didn’t think he was good,” I said. “The night he died he told me that he had done something unforgivable.”

  As a trial lawyer, Zack had years of experience keeping his public face unreadable, but a tic in his eye betrayed him. “Did our friend elaborate on his unforgivable act?”

  I weighed the options: a pleasant evening or a painful discussion. Given the past twenty-four hours, there was no choice. I turned to Zack. “Chris told me a woman he’d been involved with had had an abortion. He couldn’t get over it. More to the point, he didn’t believe he deserved to get over it because there’d been something else – some previous sin. Does any of this ring a bell?”

  I could almost hear Zack’s brain click through the calibrations: I had information he needed; he had information that would interest me but that he didn’t want to divulge.

  “I didn’t know about the baby,” Zack said carefully. His words had the ring of truth, and I believed him. That said, I hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck. I knew his response had been selective.

  “But you knew something was wrong,” I said. “The night Chris died you tried to make me doubt what he’d told me. You told me that sometimes people confess to big things because they’re burdened with guilt about little things.”

  Zack didn’t answer. Seemingly, he was still trying to assimilate what I had just told him. “An abortion,” he muttered as if to himself. “That’s all it was.”

  “Chris didn’t see it as a small thing,” I said.

  Zack sighed. “No, he wouldn’t. But Jesus, to kill yourself over something like that.”

  The glass-shattering falsetto climax of Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” pierced the air. It seemed to bring Zack back to the moment, and he smiled. “That was the favourite song of a client of mine. He said it was so sad it could make a dog cry.”

  “Sensitive client,” I said. “What were the charges?”

  “He was alleged to have dropped a barbell on the windpipe of his sleeping grandmother.”

  I shuddered. “Guilty?”

  “Absolutely,” Zack said. “But he still had a good ear for a ballad of doom.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Ready to call it a night?”

  “I am,” I said. Then, like a long-married couple, Zachary Shreve and I collected the girls from the dance floor, rejected their pleas for just one more song, and shepherded them down to the dock for the trip across the lake.

  It was a moon-drenched night, so serenely beautiful that it drew the giddiness out of the girls and made them reflective. Except for the purr of the motor and the squawk of the occasional gull, our passage was silent. Continuing in our oddly parental roles, Zack and I walked Gracie and Isobel home. Gracie’s cottage was nearest to the dock, so we dropped her off first. Rose Lavallee met us at the Falconers’ door. Her grey hair was neatly pincurled and she had covered it with a gorgeous scarf patterned with the logo of a famous New York designer and tied at the top of her head to make bunny ears. The house smelled good, of spice and warmth.

  “I made those spice cookies you like,” Rose said to Gracie.

  Gracie planted a kiss on Rose’s leathery cheek. “You always do that when she goes away.”

  “It’s to take the sting out,” Rose said. She gazed at the four of us still waiting outside. “Not a good night for company. But I can bag you up some cookies.”

  “We can get some tomorrow,” Taylor said.

  “They’re better fresh.” Rose disappeared into the kitchen. In a flash she was back with four brown lunch bags. She handed one to each of us.

  “This is a treat,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Rose said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to close this door. The bugs are getting in.”

  It was a night for threshold encounters. Delia Wainberg met us at her door. She was wearing orange velour pyjamas that looked roomy and comfortable. Her black hair was a nimbus and, for the first time since I’d met her, she seemed happy and relaxed. On the day Chris’s ashes had been scattered, Lily Falconer had speculated that, with Chris out of the way, Delia and Noah might have a chance. Whether or not this was true, it was clear to me that the Wainbergs had been making love.

  The same thought seemed to occur to Zack. After Isobel said her thank yous and goodbyes and the door closed behind her, he turned his wheelchair to go back down the walk. “It would be nice to have someone to come home to,” he said, and his voice was full of yearning.

  When Taylor and I got back to the cottage, there was a note on the table from Angus and Leah. They’d gone to a cottage down the shore for a wiener roast and a planning session for the Ultimate Flying Disc Tournament s
tarting the next night, so Taylor and I were on our own. We got into our nighties, but when I went to tuck Taylor in, I didn’t leave after prayers and a hug.

  “Can we talk for a while?” I said.

  Taylor surprised me by moving over in bed and making room for me the way she had when she was little. I slid in beside her.

  “Let’s turn out the lights,” Taylor said. “It’s nicer to talk in the dark.”

  I flicked the switch on the lamp on her bedside table and we waited for a few seconds until our eyes grew accustomed to the shadows.

  “We haven’t done this for a long time,” I said.

  “It still feels the same,” Taylor said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It still feels good.”

  “I love it here at the lake,” Taylor said.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “You and Isobel and Gracie seem to be having a lot of fun.”

  “We are,” Taylor said. “But we talk, too. Gracie says she thinks her parents are going to get a divorce.”

  “How does Gracie feel about that?”

  “She says it’s for the best. She says her mother’s unhappy – that’s why she keeps running away.” Taylor paused and took a hiccuping breath. “Was that why my mother went away?”

  Over the years, Taylor and I had trod lightly around the subject of her mother. We had talked often about her art. Sally had given me one of her paintings as a gift, and friends in Regina had others. Taylor’s hunger to connect with her mother through spending time close to the art Sally made had always moved me. I had once come upon her tracing the lines of one of her mother’s paintings with her small fingers. “My mother touched this,” she had said simply.

  In truth, Taylor had probably spent more time gazing at her mother’s art than Sally had ever spent gazing at her daughter. Sally Love had walked out of her daughter’s life not long after Taylor was born. In the years before she decided to claim her now four-year-old child, Sally made some spectacular art and slept with enough men and women to populate a small town. Taylor had never asked me why her mother left, an omission for which I was grateful because I didn’t have an answer. That night it seemed my luck had run out.