Murder in the Family

by Jeff Blackstock

  Now that there was no longer an ocean separating them, Julie brought her relationship with Ingrid, such as it had been, to a close, writing her a letter saying she wished to have no more to do with her. With Dad cut out of her life for the past ten years, Julie had very little contact with our stepmother anyway. At this point, Julie and her new husband had a son, born around the time of Dad and Ingrid’s return from Munich, and Julie made it clear she didn’t want them to be a part of her son’s life. Ingrid wrote her a note in response.

  Dear Julia.

  I’m very sorry to hear how you feel about me. We can not do anything about our pasts, but we can hope and pray for the future.

  My door is always open.

  With love,

  Ingrid

  Doug had more or less banished Ingrid from his life years ago. He’d never forgiven her for the way she’d treated him. It was a different story between him and Dad; Doug received extra attention from our father now that Julie and I were out of Dad’s life.

  About a year after his return from Munich, Dad retired and started working on contract for the department, handling access-to-information letters from the public. His duties gave him access to files kept in the basement of departmental headquarters, the Lester B. Pearson Building, on Ottawa’s Sussex Drive. When we found out about this, Julie, in particular, worried that he’d remove files containing information about our mother. She sent letters and made phone calls to the department expressing her concerns.

  According to the department, there were no such files in its possession. Julie also made access-to-information requests about Carol to various other departments, all to no avail. The government that had sent Carol Blackstock with her husband and family to Argentina, where she was lethally poisoned, now knew nothing about her.

  Officially speaking, she had become a non-person.

  * * *

  —

  IN EARLY DECEMBER 1992, I got a call from Dad asking to see me. I declined, telling him nothing had changed. He offered to discuss the matter of our mother’s death, but I told him there was no point unless he provided some new disclosure about the questions we’d left on the table.

  I called Julie to let her know he had been in touch. She hadn’t spoken to him in years, but we anticipated he’d be phoning her as well.

  She took his call on December 16. Suspecting that he would want to revisit the issue of Carol’s death after thirteen years, she recorded the conversation, just in case he revealed anything we didn’t already know.

  He wondered if he could stop by to see her and her son.

  Julie replied, “This business about Carol has to get resolved before we can have a normal relationship.” He should write down everything he remembered happening, she told him, and they could start from there.

  “It’s not going to do me any good to write the whole thing down…unless I can find out things that I don’t already know,” Dad said.

  After a long silence, he sighed, and said, “One thing you could do is let me see my grandson.”

  “When he becomes an adult, if he wants a relationship with you, that’s fine. In the meantime…I am not prepared to [allow that],” Julie replied.

  Another silence. “You know, I think grandparents have rights…to see their grandchildren.”

  “Under normal circumstances. These aren’t normal circumstances.”

  Silence. “I think you are being cruel,” he said finally.

  “I think I had better go,” Julie said.

  Dad’s assertion of grandparents’ rights was worse than cynical, given the way he’d treated our grandparents.

  Although the conversation ended with the same old impasse, it was a very difficult one for Julie to have. She was still scared of George and what he might do, she told me. But she stood up to him and challenged him with courage and resolve. It was more obvious than ever that he wasn’t going to comply with her repeated requests for his written account of what had happened to our mother. After all, it wasn’t going to “do him any good.”

  * * *

  —

  NOT LONG AFTER Julie’s conversation with Dad, Ingrid decided she’d had enough of him and moved out of their home. She left him a note saying that he’d been telling her she could leave if she didn’t like it in their marriage, so she was taking him up on his offer.

  This time, Ingrid didn’t require my help. She had plenty of family money from Germany, and her interests in Canada were being looked after by Janet, the lawyer I’d found for her earlier. Her financial future was secure. I could hardly avoid getting involved, however, when Janet called me to say she was having trouble collecting her fee; I had to remind Ingrid she should pay her lawyer.

  I also responded to Ingrid’s call for help getting Dad to pay their now-teenage son’s boarding school fees. George was in arrears, and the school was pestering her after failing to get any response from him. His neglect of his son’s needs, all because he didn’t like to part with money, made me furious. I confronted him in the basement of the Pearson Building, where he was working. “Just pay the goddamn fees!” I yelled.

  After selling the Rockcliffe Park property, Dad moved into a very comfortable townhouse in Ottawa. He was on his own—but not for long. “I’ve discovered his new girlfriend’s name is Ruth, and she’s no girl,” Ingrid reported.

  George appeared to have landed on his feet with Ruth. Soon, he would move in with her.

  Ingrid and I had a falling out when I refused to do her bidding and talk Doug and Julie into reconciling with her.

  “I can’t do that,” I explained over the phone. “I may be their older brother, but they’re adults and they make their own decisions. I’m not going to lean on them.”

  When she realized I wasn’t going to budge, Ingrid turned hostile. “There is a big difference between my younger children and my older children,” she pronounced in a royally aggrieved tone.

  * * *

  —

  IN 1992, MARIE and I had a son, Scott. His sister, Jill, was now four, old enough to understand she had grandparents and to ask about them. Dad, as usual, was pressing to see his grandchildren, and we had to decide what to do.

  Julie had chosen to sever contact with him altogether. Marie and I took a different course. We decided not to complicate our kids’ lives by depriving them entirely of a relationship with their paternal grandparents, but we kept the contact to a minimum. After Dad moved in with Ruth, I would take Jill and Scott over to her place once in a while, so he could read them stories while I went shopping.

  As soon as Ingrid became aware of Dad’s visits with our kids, it led to a competition for time with them. Again, the most important things for Marie and me were our children’s needs and their natural desire to see their grandparents. And so, despite some misgivings, I took Jill and Scott over to see Ingrid from time to time as well.

  For similar reasons, we wanted our kids to have a relationship with their extended family on my side—all those Blackstock aunts, uncles, and cousins, who gathered once a year at Bass Island, my father’s summer retreat in Muskoka, three hours north of Toronto. Bass Island was a ten-acre property with three cottages, enough space to accommodate eighteen people—a wonderful place for swimming, sailing, and running around in the woods. The annual family retreat provided an occasion for Jill and Scott to stay in touch with relatives without our having too much to do with Dad.

  * * *

  —

  IN 1996, MARIE AND I went on our first overseas posting—to San José, Costa Rica. We made the trip with our children, our cat, and a pair of guinea pigs. You don’t go on posting with kids and leave their pets behind, unless you want family misery.

  While in Costa Rica, I got a call from Julie saying that Grandma wasn’t expected to live much longer. She had been bedridden in a long-term care facility in Kingston, where Julie had moved her a few years earlier
. She was now ninety-four, and she’d been unconscious for a long time. It was nearly twenty years since Grandpa’s death.

  I flew back to Kingston in time to see Grandma before she died. I remember her taking her last breath, and the stillness afterwards. It was as though some great power had quietly pulled a plug. Our grandmother had been a happy person, despite the gross injustices she’d been forced to endure in silence. I was determined that silence would be broken.

  Doug, Julie, and I attended Grandma’s funeral service along with some friends of Julie’s. We made a very small gathering in the funeral home chapel, but the attendants said they had never heard “Amazing Grace” sung so loudly.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER WE RETURNED to Ottawa from Costa Rica in 1999, Ingrid reached out for my help, and again I found myself unable to refuse. I set her up with a new financial advisor to manage her Canadian investments, sitting in on sessions with the advisor to help Ingrid understand what was happening with her Canadian money. Most of her wealth remained invested in Germany.

  When Ingrid’s mother died, I accompanied Ingrid to the funeral in Germany along with her own three kids. This was at her request. One of my half-sisters told me, “Mum would appreciate it if you came along as part of the Canadian side of the family.”

  “But to her relatives in Germany, I’m not family,” I pointed out to her.

  Still, it seemed the right thing to do. Symbolically, I suppose, I was a stand-in for Dad.

  * * *

  —

  OUR NEXT OVERSEAS posting was to Sydney, Australia. We lived in a house with a beautiful garden and small pool in the Eastern Suburbs. It wasn’t a huge place, or particularly fancy, but in the red-hot Sydney real estate market, it was what we could afford on our foreign service rent subsidy.

  From Doug back home, I began hearing more and more about Dad. He was suffering from dementia. He’d spoken at a lunch organized by Bob Borden, which Doug had also attended, and had made a total botch of his speech, misplacing his notes and forgetting what he was supposed to be saying. Doug was spending increasing amounts of time helping Dad with chores and errands. Some were mundane, like repair work around Ruth’s house, others more difficult.

  Doug decided, with my support, that it was necessary to take away Dad’s driver’s license and beloved Saab after a number of traffic incidents clearly indicated he was a danger to himself and others.

  Bob Borden called me in Sydney. “Why is Doug having your father’s driver’s license revoked?” he asked indignantly. Removal of driving rights is a very sensitive issue for senior citizens.

  “Because he doesn’t want his father to hurt somebody,” I replied.

  “Quit interfering from the other side of the planet,” Bob said.

  Doug would later suffer the consequences of looking after Dad. In the meantime, he’d become a regular visitor at Ruth’s house. When she told Dad that he’d have to move out, Dad asked Doug to intervene on his behalf. “Can you talk to her, Doug?” he said plaintively.

  Doug asked Ruth why she was sending him away.

  “Because he’s driving me crazy,” she replied. “At first it was okay with the sex. But with the way he is now, I can’t take it anymore.” She couldn’t deal with him not remembering things from one minute to the next.

  Doug helped Dad move out of Ruth’s place and into a deluxe seniors’ apartment building in Toronto, rented by Bob Borden on Dad’s behalf. Doug also had to dispose of the Saab. It was quite an ordeal for him, contending by turns with a man who couldn’t remember what had happened five minutes ago and with the more familiar side of his father, who was used to wheedling and pushing Doug to get what he wanted.

  “There are times when Dad is completely lucid,” Doug told me. These would soon become fewer and fewer.

  * * *

  —

  WE WERE ON summer home leave from Australia when I saw Dad for the second-last time. It was at his Muskoka retreat on Bass Island. Like the rest of the family, we were there for a last visit before the island was sold. Marie and I wanted Jill and Scott to have one more weekend with their cousins at the summer place where they’d played together and got to know each other. Even Julie came to see everyone.

  Dad was fond of saying this was where he’d spent the happiest times of his life—probably the only place where he’d experienced something akin to a normal family existence. It was where his grandchildren would splash in the water, water-ski, sail the Laser, and play in the boathouse. He loved the place so much that he had Bob Borden promise to sprinkle his ashes there.

  Dad had bought the island, with Bob’s guidance, when the real estate market was very low. Some twenty years later, the maintenance costs had become prohibitive, but the market was at an all-time high, and Bob sold it on Dad’s behalf at a very handsome profit—almost half the value of his estate. Bob had done very well for Dad.

  On the day we visited, Dad was in pretty bad shape, emaciated and looking much older than his seventy years. His younger children were helping him off the powerboat and onto the dock.

  “One more step, George,” his son-in-law said, lifting him under one arm.

  Dad looked very shaky and disoriented. After stepping onto the dock, he noticed me standing nearby.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “It’s Jeff,” his youngest daughter said.

  “Oh,” Dad said.

  Julie and I had a talk with Bob about Dad’s deteriorating condition. The conversation turned to a painting of a scene with golden retrievers, which Dad had given Bob to thank him for all his help over the years. Bob had raised golden retrievers and had given Ingrid her first golden retriever pup. Bob appreciated the painting—until Dad asked to have it back.

  Julie asked Bob, “How can you stay friends with a guy who treats you like that?”

  I was expecting Bob to reply with something like, “Your Dad is one of my oldest friends. He’s obviously not himself right now, so I’m not going to hold it against him if he takes back the painting.” I would have understood that. What I couldn’t understand was what Bob actually did say: “It’s because of your mother. Carol was such a wonderful person.” He said this with apparently complete sincerity.

  To this day, I don’t know where that statement came from. If Bob had cared so much about Carol, why would he remain friends with Dad at all—especially if he knew, or even suspected, what had happened to her?

  “She died in a horrible way,” I told Bob. “If you ever want to know what happened, I’ll be happy to tell you.”

  Bob expressed no surprise or alarm at this, but he would never take me up on my offer. I was left to presume he already knew the basics of what had happened. Dad had shared his closest confidences with Bob, including tales of his love affairs.

  “Your father was a great guy, but he did screw around a lot,” Bob told me later.

  “Sometime in the not-too-distant future, I’d like to talk with you about our mother’s death,” I replied.

  “Sure, Jeff. I’ll be glad to sit down and talk with you about that summer of ’59.”

  After Dad died, Julie and I tried on different occasions to meet with Bob. But somehow, between illnesses and cancellations, and later the onset of Bob’s own health problems, it kept getting postponed. When Julie did meet with him, he was recovering from a heart attack, and she accepted his assertions that he knew nothing of substance. I was quite sure we wouldn’t have got much new information out of him in any event.

  After dinner that day at Bass Island, a group of us took the twenty-minute walk around the island for the last time. Dad wasn’t up to it and stayed behind at the main cottage. In the meantime, he must have remembered who I was, as well as the status of our relationship.

  “This is my house,” Dad said to me in a pleading yet accusatory tone after I returned to the cottage. To me this meant, “You have no r
ight to be here.”

  “Dad, I’m here so that my kids, your grandchildren, can see their cousins and stay on the island one last time. Somebody needed to drive them. And I’m not leaving them here without me.”

  “But this is my house,” he repeated doggedly.

  “I thought it was meant to be for the whole family. Anyway, I’m not welcome here because of the problems you and I have about my mother’s death, remember? Now, if there’s anything you’d like to tell me about that, this would be a great opportunity.”

  Dad retreated into himself to contemplate what I meant.

  It was the last time he ever spoke to me. But not the last time I heard from him. Soon afterwards, I received a letter beginning, “I know I probably haven’t been a very good father.” It went on to express his regrets about that, followed by his hopes for some kind of reconciliation between us. No mention whatever of Mom.

  I showed the letter to Marie. Her eyes welled up when she read it. It was certainly eloquently written, especially for a man who couldn’t deliver a speech coherently and had forgotten who I was. I couldn’t help but see the hand of Bob Borden, who now had Dad’s power of attorney and was executor of his will.

  I chucked the letter into the wastebasket.

  * * *

  —

  THE LAST TIME Julie and I saw Dad was at the care facility in Toronto where he was living. It was early in 2007, shortly before he died. He was in a wheelchair, crippled, non-verbal, and far past being able to recognize us. Bob said he had “aphasia.” It looked like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and multiple sclerosis all put together. “There’s a scary-looking human being,” Ingrid remarked to me later, after she had paid him a final visit.

  There would be no further words out of Dad’s mouth. Julie and I stayed for a couple of minutes and left. There was nothing for us there.