Leaving the World (69 page)

‘The death of our child?’ I asked.

‘Quite. There are around half a dozen letters from him here for you, sent over the past year or so.’

‘I don’t want to read them.’

‘Then they will remain here until you’re ready . . .’

‘Burn them, throw them out.’

‘Perhaps you will think differently in time.’

‘No, I won’t. It’s exactly how I felt when I asked you to sell the apartment.’

‘Yes, you did ask me to sell the apartment, Ms Howard – just as you also directed me, quite clearly, to hand over the insurance settlement to a charity for bereaved parents. But apropos the apartment . . . when you signed over power of attorney to me, you simultaneously signed a document giving me free rein over what I could do with your estate. So, I’m afraid, I breached your directive – as your apartment in Somerville is being rented to a very nice visiting Professor of French at Tufts. He’s paying two thousand a month – and after tax and running costs, you’ve been netting around twelve hundred a month, all earning interest in an account I set up for you. Not a fortune, but . . .’

I was going to say something whiny like: ‘
I did tell you to sell the damn thing
.’ But I knew it would sound . . . well,
whiny
. Something else struck me: All those months ago, when I was in the darkest wood I could imagine, my need to shed everything was, without question, colored by the fact that I could think of no other solution than to leave the world.

But now . . .
now
 . . . well, it’s somewhat graceless to admit this, but I was rather glad he had held on to the apartment for me.

‘Thank you for thinking clearly for me when I simply couldn’t.’

‘It’s what I’m paid to do. But yes, I did arrange the entire insurance payment to create a fund in Emily’s name with the Samaritans—’

I held up my hand.

‘Some other time, OK?’ I said.

‘Fine. But there is one other thing that has to be discussed. The cemetery called around two months ago, asking if you were going to commission a headstone for Emily’s grave.’

I knew this was coming – as I also knew that Mr Alkan would be sent a ‘reminder’ from the powers that be at this ‘place of rest’ (as they called it in their scuzzy brochures), wondering when I’d fork up the several thousand dollars for the requisite marble slab.

We’re all selling something in this life . . .

‘Can you give me a pad and pen, please?’ I asked.

He pushed both forward. I picked up the pen and wrote:

Then I pushed the pad back towards him.

‘Can you take care of this?’ I asked.

‘Of course. And if you would like to go out and view the site . . . ?’

‘I just . . . can’t. It’s just too soon.’

I felt immense guilt about this – the fact that I still couldn’t bring myself to visit my daughter’s grave. But as much as I tried to talk myself out of this decision, a voice inside my head uttered two words:
Not yet
. There will be a time, somewhere in the future, when, perhaps, I can stand above where she is buried and not fall apart. But that’s not possible right now.

‘No problem,’ Alkan said. ‘I’ll take care of everything.’

After this meeting I went to an internet café and booked myself on a flight to Portland, Oregon, with a two-day stopover in Calgary. I also wrote an email to Geraldine Woods, thanking her for all her decency and kindness towards me. Though part of me felt badly about not going in to see her and my other colleagues while in town, I also sensed it was better this way. I wanted to travel under the radar – to pay off what few bills I owed, ship my books back south to Maine, redirect my mail, call the realtor and ask her to terminate my tenancy of the apartment, close down my bank account: all that endgame-in-a-place stuff.

Upon reaching Calgary at lunchtime the next day all this was achieved in a matter of hours. I even went to Caffé Beano for a valedictory cappuccino – and asked one of the baristas behind the counter if I could borrow the phone to make a local call.

I dialed the number for the Central Public Library. Just in case Ruth Fowler was answering the switchboard late this afternoon I put on a terrible English accent and asked to be put through to Vernon Byrne. He answered on the third ring, announcing his name in that hesitant, I-really-don’t-do-public-conversations manner of his.

‘Vern, it’s me.’

A long silence. I broke it.

‘Are you still angry at me?’

‘I was never angry at you,’ he said.

‘If I were you, I would have been.’

‘Where are you right now?’

‘Calgary – but please, don’t tell anyone else that.’

‘Your secret is good with me. Anyway, you know I talk to nobody around here.’

‘Any chance of a drink tonight?’

‘I’m hearing András Schiff play Beethoven – and the concert’s long since sold out, otherwise I’d say come along. But I have the day off tomorrow. You free?’

‘I’m free.’

The next morning he was outside my apartment building at ten. He was, as always, dressed in that brown car coat and flat corduroy cap (which he probably wore to the beach – if, that is, he ever went to the beach). He greeted me with his usual tentative nod of the head.

‘You have to be anywhere today?’ he asked as I closed the car door behind me.

‘Actually, no. My books are packed up, my suitcase ready. I’ve got a flight out tomorrow morning at eleven. Other than that . . .’

‘How about a drive?’ he asked.

‘Out of town?’

He caught the worry in my voice.

‘That’s what I was thinking – but not south. We don’t have to head down there.’

South meant Townsend and the badlands.
We don’t have to head down there
. Was this Vern’s way of dropping a hint that he was on to me?

‘I was thinking northwest – if that was OK with you?’

‘I think I can do that now.’

We headed off, CBC Radio 2 (as always) playing on the radio. There was an uncomfortable minute or so when we didn’t seem to be able to say anything to each other.

Then: ‘I want to apologize,’ I said.

‘For what?’

‘For calling you a drunk.’

‘Why apologize for an observation that is truthful? I’m a drunk.’

‘It was still a lousy thing to say.’

‘It didn’t bother me.’

‘Well, it bothered me.’

A pause. Then he asked: ‘Have you been following the news about Ivy MacIntyre?’

‘I gave up on news a few months ago.’

‘Then you missed all the big stuff. Seems that Brenda MacIntyre was having a big fling with Coursen, not knowing that it was he who was holding her daughter. She’s gone into hiding since then, public opinion having completely turned against her.’

‘How’s the girl?’

‘The doctors actually managed to save her foot. Otherwise she’s been sent to some rehabilitation place outside of Toronto where they deal with children who have been through severe trauma. I know all this because every day there’s been something on the case in the
Herald
and on the news. The press can’t get enough of it.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘There’s no question that Brenda’s going to be declared an unfit mother and Ivy – when she’s ready – will be found foster parents.’

‘And how did the police and the press deal with the fact that they so demonized George MacIntyre?’

‘A major
mea culpa
from the RCMP, an editorial in the
Herald
apologizing for rushing to judgement, and the province has just announced compensation in the form of a two-million-dollar trust for Ivy MacIntyre.’

‘That’s not going to bring her father back,’ I said. Once again I saw her lying face down in the car, telling me how desperate she was to see her daddy.

‘According to the press she still keeps asking to meet the woman who rescued her. And the press keep upping the reward for the person who will come forward and reveal themselves as her savior. So far around fifty different women have said it was them.’

‘Evidently there are a lot of “Lone Vigilantes” out there.’

‘Seems to be,’ he said quietly. Then, with his eyes never once deviating from the road up ahead, he added: ‘But I know it was you.’

I fought off a half-smile. I failed. Vern’s eyes veered over towards me to catch this. The radio played on. And the matter was not raised again.

We reached that juncture in Calgary geography where the city drops away and the plains reassert dominance of the landscape.

‘Where are we heading exactly?’ I asked.

You’ll see,’ he said.

For the next ninety minutes, as we drove steadily north, I kept my head lowered and avoided looking out the window – because as we gained altitude the badlands were soon encumbered by the jagged, epic silhouettes of the Rockies. Once or twice I caught their stern grandeur out of a corner of my eye – and I had to turn away. It was still too hard to look at such beauty.

Vern knew this, so he kept up a reasonably steady stream of chat, asking about my forthcoming return to the college classroom and quizzing me intensely about every good concert I had heard in Berlin.

‘There were no bad concerts,’ I said. ‘Because it’s Berlin.’

‘I’d like to find a way of getting over there.’

‘You should, Vern. Because sitting in the Philharmonie, listening to that orchestra, would make you happy.’

‘Happy,’ he said, trying out the word as if it was a foreign one he had hardly uttered before and wasn’t quite sure how it sounded. ‘Maybe one day . . .’

‘Yeah, maybe one day.’

We passed a town called Canmore, a suburban sprawl dwarfed by mountains. We entered Banff National Park. My ears popped as the road gained further altitude. We ignored the turnoff to Banff. I chanced another glance out the window and again instantly turned away. The road narrowed. We skipped the exit to Lake Louise and the Icefields Highway towards Jasper. Instead we continued our western progress, soon crossing the border into British Columbia and passing an old railroad town called Field.

It was here that Vern finally signaled a turn off the road: a blink-once-you-miss-it turn. The road suddenly became as narrow as a country lane. It plunged us past a rushing stream and then down a long corridor of densely packed Douglas firs. They towered above us, taking away the sky.

‘Not too much longer now,’ he said.

But it was still another ten minutes before we came to a halt. As the car bumped along the half-paved road, as this forest primeval closed in around us, all I could feel was mounting panic:
I can’t go on, I won’t go on
.

But we kept going on . . . until, suddenly, the road ended. This was it. Nowhere else to drive beyond here. Vern parked the car and got out. When I stayed rooted to my seat he came around to my side of the vehicle and opened the door for me.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘I don’t think I can—’

‘Don’t think,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘Just get out of the car.’

Fear. It’s always there, isn’t it? Endlessly ruining your sleep and holding you hostage and taunting you with the knowledge that, like everyone else who has ever done time on this planet, you are so scared of so much.

But to give in to fear is to . . .

Stay sitting in this car, I guess.

Go on, be brave, shoot crap, take a swing at it – and every other bromide you care to mention. They’re all telling you the same thing:
You have to get out of the damn car
.

So I did just that.

Vern took my arm and guided me a few steps to my immediate right. My head was bowed, my eyes half-shut. I kept focusing on the ground, the paved parking area giving way to a dirt path bordered by deep grass.

We stopped. I thought:
If I about-face now, I’ll be able to make it back to the car and not have to see anything
.

But Vern, reading my thoughts, touched my arm again and said: ‘Look up, Jane. Look up.’

I took a deep steadying breath. I felt a shudder come over me. I held it in check. After a moment I finally did look up.

And what I saw in front of me was . . .

A lake. Absolutely still, serene and, yes, emerald. The lake stretched towards a definable horizon – a vast meadow that, in turn, ran right into a wall of mountains. It was a peerless day in the West. A hard, blue sky, empty of clouds. A sun that, though initially harsh to the eye, bathed everything in a honeyed glow. Its glare forced me to lower my head, but then I raised it up again. The lake was one of topology’s more fortuitous accidents. It occupied center stage in an amphitheater of glacial peaks, many still dense with snow. It was a scenic vista of such scope, such complete purity, that I blinked and felt tears. I had been able to look at the lake. It meant everything. It meant nothing. But I
had
looked up. I had seen the lake. And that was something, I suppose.

‘Thank you,’ I said to Vern, my voice a whisper. He did something unexpected. He took my hand. We said nothing for several minutes. I turned my gaze from the lake to the sky. And somewhere in the messy filing cabinet that is my brain came a remembrance of a particular sleepless night some months past. Up with grief and the sense that I was now living in a fathomless world. Surfing the net, trying to murder the hours until first light – and suddenly deciding to Google the word ‘uncertainty’. And what did I find? Well, among other things, there were several pages on a German mathematical physicist named Werner Heisenberg, the father of the Uncertainty Principle who posited the idea that, in physics, ‘there is no way of knowing where a moving particle is given its detail’ . . . and ‘thereby, by extension, we can never predict where it will go’.

That’s destiny
, I told myself after reading this.
A random dispatch of particles which brings you to places you never imagined finding yourself. After all, uncertainty governs every moment of human existence
.