The Last Good Day

by Gail Bowen

  “I understand,” I said. “But Robert, is Alex all right?”

  There was a silence. “I can’t discuss it. Goodbye, Joanne.” He cleared his throat. “Our door is always open to you.”

  As I walked to the Point Store, the realization hit me that, in the vernacular of another era, there was more than one way to skin a cat. Robert Hallam wasn’t the only source of information available to me. I passed the store and went straight to Coffee Row. Three of the gents were already holding court and Endzone, flopped on the rug at her master’s feet, was dreaming her old-dog dreams. The gentlemen raised their caps to me, but instead of continuing to my place at the next table, I joined them. The shock was seismic.

  Morris took command. “You’ve sat in the wrong place,” he said, turning up the volume the way he would for someone who didn’t understand the language. He pointed to the picnic table under the tree. “That’s your place over there.”

  “I want to sit with you today,” I said.

  Aubrey, the gnome with the dental-drill whine, leaped to his feet. “This is the men’s table. We smoke. We use strong language. We talk about things you’d have no interest in.”

  Endzone, ripped from sleep by the ruckus, ambled over, sniffed me curiously, and fixed me with a baleful eye.

  “It’s all right,” I said, stroking her jowls, “I’m just visiting.” Mollified, she rested her chin on my knee and awaited developments.

  I turned my attention to the men.

  “I need some information,” I said. “And I think you can help me. Once when I was having coffee here, I overheard you talking about Lily Falconer.”

  Aubrey sat back down and the trio exchanged glances.

  “I’m not asking you to gossip,” I said. “I just want you to tell me about Lily Falconer. That day you mentioned something about a tragedy involving her mother.”

  “Goddamn that daughter of mine,” Morris thundered. “You could have read everything you needed to know if that girl had left my archives alone, but oh no, she thought they were a fire hazard. She gave me a choice – say goodbye to my Player’s Plains or say goodbye to my archives. What the hell kind of choice is that for a daughter to give her father?”

  Lear couldn’t have been more cogent. It was a freighted question, and I waited for Morris to move on. It didn’t take him long.

  Tapping his temple with a forefinger brown as a cured tobacco leaf, Morris grew discursive. “My archives may be gone, but I still have my mind. I can tell you what happened, in my own words. It’ll be – what do they call it, Stan?”

  “Oral history,” Stan said.

  “Which is good,” Morris said. “Except you lack the pictures.”

  “She can still see the damn pictures,” Stan Gardiner said. “The newspaper has its own archives, Morris, and they don’t use theirs to paper-train puppies. Mrs. Kilbourn can walk into the offices of the Valley Gazette and ask them to let her look at everything they’ve got on Gloria Ryder.”

  “Gloria Ryder,” I repeated. “That was Lily’s mother’s name?”

  “Yes,” Stan said. “The date you’ll be wanting is January 1968, and after you’ve gone through the paper’s archives, come talk to me. It’s only right that you get the full story.”

  In the months after I’d decided to rent the cottage at Lawyers’ Bay, I subscribed to the Valley Gazette. It was a weekly that was clear in its purpose: to record the births, marriages, deaths, celebrations, follies, and accomplishments of its citizens and to keep a wary eye on governments, developers, and special-interest groups that might threaten the fine lives of the people of Fort Qu’Appelle and district.

  The building that housed the paper was as solid and neighbourly as the Gazette itself. The brass plate that announced the paper’s name was polished to a fine sheen and the red geraniums in the window bloomed with health. There was a bell on the counter that separated what was obviously the business part of the newspaper from the reception area, and when I rang it a very thin young man, wearing a jacket and tie, bluejeans, and John Lennon glasses came out to greet me. He didn’t look much older than Angus.

  “I’m doing some research,” I said. “I wonder if I could look at your newspaper’s coverage of a case involving a woman named Gloria Ryder. The events happened in January 1968.”

  “No problem,” he said, and apparently it wasn’t. He was back with the file within fifteen seconds.

  “That was snappy,” I said.

  “You’re not the first person to ask for that information today,” he said.

  “May I ask who else was interested?”

  “The media are ever vigilant,” he said, and his smile was impish. “Take as much time as you need. Ring when you’re finished.”

  The reception room was a pleasant place to read: quiet, with sunshine filtering through the brilliant red petals and deep-green foliage of the geraniums. That said, the story in which Gloria Ryder unwillingly played the central role was grim, a tale of obsessive love that ended in the tragedy of a grisly murder-suicide.

  Gloria was married to John Ryder who, like her, was a Dakota from Standing Buffalo. The newspaper described them as good people: hard-working, churchgoing, devoted to their only child, eight-year-old Lily. John was a mechanic and Gloria was a nurse at the Indian hospital in Fort Qu’Appelle. The problem started when a middle-aged white doctor at the hospital became infatuated with Gloria. The year was 1967. Indian women had had the vote for less than five years, and Gloria understood her position in the scheme of things. She needed her job, and she knew that in a case of he said–she said, she would be the loser. Afterward, she explained that she had done everything in her power to rebuff her unwelcome suitor, but that she hadn’t wanted to risk telling either her husband or her employers. The doctor never made any physical advances towards Gloria. He was convinced that his destiny was to take Gloria from the life she knew and, as he put it, raise her up. One bitterly cold night in mid-January, Gloria’s unwillingness to be raised up drove the good doctor to Standing Buffalo, where he shot John Ryder, who was sitting in his living room reading a Maclean’s magazine. Then, apparently moved to pity by the presence of the daughter of the woman he sought to save, he turned the gun not on Gloria but on himself.

  Thirty-seven years later, the soft pages of the Valley Gazette were still heavy with the tragedy of the event and the dark spoor of anger and recriminations that followed in its wake. The text of the stories was heartbreaking, but it was the anguish in the yellowed photographs of two people that stayed with me. The first pictures were of the woman at the centre of the tragedy. Gloria Ryder’s face was stamped with the ancient misery of women whose lives have been devastated by forces beyond their control. It was also – unmistakably – the face of the woman whose likeness had been carved into the figure at the base of the gazebo. The second pictures were of Lily as a child. The photographer had caught her several times on the windswept, frozen playground of the residential school in Lebret. She looked dazed and frail, but she was never alone. A tall boy of perhaps twelve was always with her, his arm raised impotently as he tried to shield Lily from the camera’s invasive eye. The boy was Alex Kequahtooway.

  I took the file containing the stories to the counter and rang the bell. The young man in the John Lennon glasses appeared quickly.

  “Hard to believe something like that could happen in a place like this, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Hard to believe it could happen anywhere,” I said.

  As I drove back to Lawyers’ Bay, ideas swirled through my mind like the shifting shapes in a kaleidoscope. The question of whether Alex was Lily’s lover was still unanswered, but there was no doubt that he had been her protector. When he stood at the window of the Hynd cottage and said, “Maybe we all would have been better off just staying where we were,” his bitterness had not been directed at me. It had welled up from a source I never knew existed.

  It seemed that the connection between Alex and Lily Ryder had never been severed. But if that was true, t
here were more questions. Why had Alex never told me about Lily? If she were simply a girl he had once known, why had he never mentioned her name and her tragedy? Other questions nagged. During the years when I believed Alex and I were as close as a man and a woman could be, what other secrets had he held back? What else hadn’t he told me?

  It was almost eleven when I pulled onto the shoulder of the road beside the Point Store and walked to the entrance. Angus was outside watering flats of annuals that had seen better days and were now being offered at seriously reduced prices.

  “What’s going on?” Angus said. “After you left, Mr. Gardiner came into the store and told me the moment you came I was supposed to tell you he was waiting. Then he went upstairs.” Angus frowned. “I haven’t screwed up, have I?”

  I leaned over and picked a faded bloom from a wilting impatiens. “You’re in the clear,” I said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  I could hear the strains of an accordion playing “White Christmas” as soon as I reached the landing at the top of the stairs. I tapped at the door and Stan greeted me. He was wearing a cardigan and slippers, master of his household. He motioned me inside. The living room was furnished with the essentials: a La-Z-Boy, a coffee table, a VCR, and a TV set on which Lawrence Welk was presenting his Christmas special. Stan turned the sound down but not off, walked into the next room, and returned with a chrome kitchen chair.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, pointing to the La-Z-Boy.

  I sank in, and Stan perched.

  “So you read the articles?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “It was a terrible thing – for everyone.”

  “For her especially,” Stan said.

  “Lily?”

  “I was thinking of the mother.”

  “What happened to her? The paper didn’t say.”

  “She died of grief and guilt,” Stan said tightly.

  Stan was a man who meted out his words sparingly, but I knew he had more to offer. I fixed my gaze on Lawrence Welk. He was thanking his band. A quartet of young women in Victorian Christmas dress appeared on screen. They were fresh-faced and unmistakably related. I grappled for their name and, amazingly, came up with it: the Lennon Sisters. In voices that were sweet and true, they began to sing “Silent Night.”

  “She blamed herself,” Stan said. “To this day I don’t know why, but it was a terrible thing to witness. Are you familiar with the Catholic church down there at Lebret?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then you’ve seen those crosses on the hill behind the church.”

  “The Stations of the Cross.”

  “So you’re Catholic.”

  “Anglican.”

  “But you know what those crosses are for.”

  “They represent things that happened during Christ’s passion and crucifixion. Some people use the Stations of the Cross to help them pray and meditate on their sins.”

  “That’s what Gloria did,” Stan said. “You’ve seen how steep that hill is. Even in good weather it’s a tough climb, and the tragedy happened in January. It was a bitter winter and that hill was sheer ice. Gloria went up that hill every day on her hands and knees. She stopped at every one of those crosses to pray. She blamed herself.”

  The image of suffering was as vivid as an illustration in a saint’s tale.

  “How long did she live afterwards?” I asked.

  “A year to the day. She died on that hill. Of exposure, they said – and I guess you could take that in a lot of ways. When she died, some people said that she’d finally gotten God’s attention and that He gave her what she prayed for.” His gaze was piercing. “Do you believe in that kind of God?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “Of course, I’m United Church.”

  I arrived home to the news that Lily still hadn’t shown up, so the trip to Standing Buffalo was on. Gracie was uncharacteristically quiet on the way to the reserve. Her mood didn’t alter until we came to Betty’s house and saw Betty herself sitting on her porch, snapping beans. At that moment, Gracie became Gracie again, heedless of everything except her goal as she leaped out of the car and ran to Betty. At Rose’s direction, we loaded up the Tupperware containers of food she’d brought for lunch and headed for the house and a living room as fussily pretty as a midway doll. Under Rose’s watchful eye, the girls began to set the table with the good dishes, but when I offered to help, she waved me off.

  “Why don’t you keep Betty company?” Rose said. “She’s a talker, which means she can always use a listener.”

  It was an easy chore. I liked Betty. The family resemblance to Rose was marked but, in every way, they were very different women. Rose was wiry. She kept her grey hair in a tight, no-nonsense, wash-and-wear perm and limited her skin care to sunscreen. Betty was curvaceous. She was pushing seventy, but her long hair was still black and lustrous and her makeup was cover-girl perfect.

  I pulled up a rocker and sat beside her. “So how are you doing?” I said.

  “Fine. Except I’m mad at myself.”

  “Rose said you fell down your porch steps.”

  “And it was my own fault. Last time I was in the city, I went to Payless and bought myself a pair of backless shoes with stiletto heels. I knew it was foolish, but the shoes were on sale and they made my ankles look slim as a girl’s. You know how it is – I just had to have them. Whoever said ‘Pride goeth before a fall’ knew what he was talking about. I was proud, and boy, did I fall.”

  “When do you get your cast off?”

  “Not for five more weeks. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I’m still on the green side of the grass, and I’ve got Rose and I’ve got Gracie. Do you know that girl offered to come over here and stay with me for the summer if I needed her? She would have done it too.”

  “That’s a selfless thing for a girl her age to offer.”

  “That’s the kind of girl she is. She’s never lost sight of who she is or where she belongs. Do you know that from the time she could walk Gracie has danced powwow? She still does. Red hair, freckles and she’s a jingle dancer – a good one, too. She doesn’t just do the steps, she understands their meaning and stays in time with the drumbeat. People on the reserve used to wonder why she bothered to learn. They don’t any more. They respect her. I respect her too.” Betty snapped the last bean and handed me the bowl. “Would you mind taking those inside? Beans shouldn’t be in the heat.”

  I took the beans to Rose; she dumped them into a colander and ran cold water on them. “Ten minutes to lunch,” she said.

  I went back outside. “Ten minutes till we eat,” I said.

  “And I’m going to make the most of them,” Betty said. “Come closer. I want to know what’s going on over at Lawyers’ Bay. Is Lily there or did she take off again?”

  “Lily’s been away,” I said carefully. “She’s supposed to be coming back today.”

  Betty’s lips became a line. “I knew it,” she said. “My sister didn’t tell me because she thought I’d worry, and she was right. I worry about Gracie. I worry about Lily, too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated with her.”

  “She’s had a hard life,” I said.

  “So you heard about the tragedy,” Betty said. “Well, lots of people have hard lives. They get over it. What happened to Lily happened a long time ago, and it’s not as if she had to deal with it alone. Rose and I were there. So were a lot of other people on this reserve.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” I said. “All I have to go on are the newspaper articles, and of course they focused on the deaths. But in the photographs of Lily in the schoolyard, there was always a boy. It was Alex Kequahtooway, wasn’t it?”

  Betty picked up a knitting needle, slipped it inside her cast, and rubbed. “I’ve never been able to leave an itch unscratched,” she said contentedly. “To answer your question, I don’t remember any photo, but it would have to have been Alex. He was just a kid h
imself, eleven or twelve. But he defended Lily against all comers, adults and kids alike. He walked her to school, and he walked her home. He was like a shield between Lily and the world.”

  “Not much of a surprise that he grew up to join the police force,” I said.

  “Not to me,” Betty said. “Once a person gets that badge, people have to pay attention, no matter who’s wearing it.”

  “Alex went through a lot, didn’t he?” I said.

  “Lunch!” Rose’s announcement from inside the kitchen ended the discussion.

  Betty’s crutches were on the floor beside her chair. She stared at them with distaste.

  “I’ll get those for you,” I said. I helped her to her feet and handed her the crutches. She positioned them under her armpits and heaved her body into place. She looked awkward, as if she didn’t remember the next move in the sequence. “Is there anything else I can do?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Unlike my sister, you can remember that I broke my leg, not my brain. I can handle the truth. Keep me posted.” And with that she lurched forward and made her torturous way into the house.

  Despite her protestations that she was fit as a fiddle, Betty seemed weary after lunch. The girls and I cleaned up the kitchen while Rose shepherded her sister into the bedroom and gave her a sponge bath. When she emerged, Betty was dusted with fragrant talc and wearing a peach-and-pink cotton muumuu. Rose settled her sister on the couch and handed her a Barbara Cartland novel. Gracie poured her a glass of cream soda and adjusted the floor fan so Betty could catch the breeze. Given the circumstances, Betty was as comfortable as a human being could be, but Gracie’s face was pinched with concern. She knelt beside Betty. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” she asked.

  “How could I not be all right?” Betty said. “I’ve got you.”

  Reassured, we said our goodbyes, piled into Rose’s Buick, and set out for home. We didn’t get far. As we were poised at the end of Betty’s driveway, prepared to turn onto the road that led to Lawyers’ Bay, Gracie leaned forward and tapped Rose on the shoulder. Her tone was beseeching.