Moondance (16 page)

Elizabeth looked at the trees. Green trees. Rosa got mad again. Bicycle! she told Rosa. Rosa frowned.

Mommy and Daddy came. Daddy said that she was going to sleep in a new bed. It smelled funny. She slept and woke up. They gave her toys. Later, they said it was going to hurt a little, and it hurt a lot. Brave girl, one of the adults said as they pricked her, and then gave her Roo to hug. She loved Roo. The adult looked a bit like Mommy, but smelled different. She liked being called brave.

Another time, Mommy and Daddy brought her some balloons. Pink balloons. And Ribbit. Roo and Ribbit became friends. They sang. Mommy smiled, but not her eyes. Daddy was quiet. Daddy was never quiet. She made a face at him to make him smile. He winked at her.

When they were gone, it was dark, except for the blue light.

• • •

TWO DAYS AFTER HER first birthday, Elizabeth was diagnosed with acute child leukemia. She endured chemotherapy, stoic and silent. Over the next few weeks, she aged decades. When her fine white hair fell out, Lara gave her a bright pink bonnet to wear.

Lara had gone back to work in December, when Elizabeth turned six months. At that time, they hired a nanny — a bubbly, 22-year-old Puerto Rican girl, Rosa, who was studying to be a paralegal. By the New Year, they had slipped into a comfortable routine.

Michael sat in the rocking chair in his office at just after two in the morning. He recalled how Elizabeth looked earlier that day, her bonnet perched over her swollen face, looking up at him with shiny, apologetic eyes. In his heart, he knew quiet desperation. A pad of paper lay open in his lap, blank. He scanned the walls around him as if they could give him answers.

Michael’s office occupied the extra bedroom. On three walls were floor-to-ceiling books. His obsession, Lara said. My collection, he’d counter.

Michael had carefully kept all the books inherited from his childhood, his family, his schooling. For almost a year, he had been crafting his visions into a plan of sorts, organizing his thoughts, following his hunches, getting them down. What he had completed was just a first step, of course — more of a concept — but he really thought it showed promise. Far from being exhausted, the dream had grown. More than that, it had changed him. Before Elizabeth fell sick, Michael couldn’t remember when he had felt so at peace, so exhilarated, so
aligned
.

Michael rose from his bed every night to a new dimension to his ideas. Sometimes he sat outside in the silent darkness, his face up, imploring the stars. Over months, he learned how to consciously settle into that place where he could
receive
. When it came, he could feel the concepts rising up inside him — free-floating energy, a palpable
presence. He’d start slowly, his fingers not always able to keep up. When his revelations quickened, it no longer felt as if he was the creator, it was as if the ideas always existed. The ideas came
through
him. At the same time, they were a
part
of him, part of who he was becoming.

Tonight, Michael scanned his books on the three walls around him. His heart asked a question that had no answer, no guarantee. It nurtured a longing which belonged in the realm of his imagination, but which couldn’t be ignored.

What if?

He stood unsteadily on his writing chair to retrieve a large, shallow box. At his computer, he entered his password, and clicked into the directory where he kept his records. He held down the shift key and highlighted all of the files, clicking on the x in the toolbar.

Are you sure you want to delete these files?

He stared at the files, which represented the culmination of the visions that had pursued him, the manifestation of his obsession. His ideas represented a world within his world, a piece of him that no one else knew. They were, perhaps, the best part of himself.

Are you sure you want to delete these files?

Yes
, he clicked, thinking of Elizabeth, allowing the pain to come, and the tears, because he knew it wouldn’t matter unless he felt it
dig deep Michael
and the computer made a soft grinding sound as it chewed,
the sound inching its way under his skin like a jagged needle. A couple more clicks to empty the trashcan. Clean, neat.
Surgical
.

Lara had known for more than a year that Michael experienced insomnia, but she didn’t learn about the extent of his night time activ
ities until months later. That night, she had been up to tend to Elizabeth.
She had stood like a phantom in the office doorway, her long legs silhouetted in the dim hallway. She took a step toward him. He turned the computer screen off.

“What are you doing?” she had asked.
Caught
, he had thought.

“I’m writing down my ideas.”

Until that moment, Michael hadn’t contemplated any goal associated with what he was doing. Getting the visions on paper was the process, the catharsis, the beginning and the end. If the light in the room had been brighter, he knew he would have noticed the crease between Lara’s eyes deepen, analyzing, processing, interpreting. That’s what she did on the job, what she did best.

“It’s not ready for —” he said.

“Mmmmmm.” The crease.

Distrust hung in the air, silent and insidious. He did nothing to stop it.

“I hope you get some sleep,” she said.

“Thanks.”

His wife, his best friend, had gone back to bed. At worst, suspecting that he had a lover online. At best, wondering why he’d want to do such a thing as record his ideas.

Two months later, their world had come undone.

Michael stood in their small back yard, the sky starry and black. He opened the box that he had retrieved and dumped its contents into a mound in front of him.

His head down, he moved a metal canister onto the grass. He picked up a few pages of paper and dropped them, scrunched, into the can, then squirted liquid from a red nozzle that turned the paper opaque and smudged his words. The oily, mineral smell filled his nostrils. He lit a match and threw it in, and the flames were bright and hot. He took a step back and fed the burning canister a few pages at a time. The flames hissed and rose with each page he dropped in, and fell as they were consumed, rising and falling like a dragon’s breath. His visions had devoured him, he realized. At Elizabeth’s expense. At the expense of his relationship with Lara.

What had he been thinking? He had been caught up in his own illusions. Now he was paying for it. He knew he’d sacrifice anything to give Elizabeth a second chance at life. He’s sacrifice his writing, himself — especially himself. He could feel the grief and longing rising in his throat, behind his eyes. The helplessness.

It took just a few minutes to destroy what it had taken him over a year to create.
Would it be enough?
He watched his ideas burn, the visions that had opened him up and demanded a life of their own. He held the last page over the canister, dropped it and stepped back. The flames rose and then they fell, the curtain of darkness that followed resolute and impenetrable. Michael raised his face to the starry sky, tears streaming down his face, his heart open.

Is this enough?

His bright-eyed audience hung suspended over the blackness, silent and unblinking.

chapter 23

ALTHEA LOGGED OFF HER laptop just as there was a knock on her hotel room door. Perfect timing, she thought.

Daniel was six feet tall, with thick brown hair and angular features. This evening, he had given up his European custom-tailored suit for khakis and a golf shirt. That was about as casual as Daniel got. When Althea opened the door, he pushed her backward down the short hallway, against the wall. He kissed her, his right hand finding its way under her cotton T-shirt.

“Let’s take a shower,” she said.

They were staying at the Hilton Paris La Defense, in the center of the Paris business district. Inside, it looked similar to the hotels Althea had stayed in over the last two years, hotels in Chicago, London, Australia and New York. In the last two years, she’d learned a lot and made more money than she ever had in her life, though she didn’t have time to spend it. Since she’d started in management consulting, she’d been traveling eighty per cent of the time. When she was on site, she was often working from eight in the morning until after midnight. Her colleagues were her friends. Her social life consisted of late dinners before going back to work, and after work, Daniel.

Daniel Bellows was a Texan living in Chicago. They met in Bering and Associates’ Chicago office and got involved when they met again in New York. Daniel had been with Bering two years longer than she. He was the senior client contact on this project, which involved creating a strategy for two pharmaceutical companies that had merged. He had a masters in chemistry, and an MBA from Harvard. He was brilliant and on the fast track, with a belief in himself that bordered on arrogance. The two of them worked well together and the sex was fantastic. They had talked about making home base in the same city, although so far, they couldn’t decide what continent.

Since landing in Paris, Althea hadn’t had a chance to call Celia, who still worked with McKinsey, and had transferred to Paris a year after she started. She had few friends left in Toronto. She saw Sophie on the holidays when she wasn’t working and hadn’t seen Michelle since she graduated.

In her spare time, she updated her resumé. She had been with the firm for two years, which was about the time MBA grads began sniffing around for either a promotion or a new opportunity. She knew she wouldn’t leave before April — that was when the bonuses were paid and they were substantial, up to one hundred per cent of salary.

Now she and Daniel lay in bed while he smoked a cigarette, a habit he picked up while in Europe and one she hadn’t been able to get used to. He was talking about a meeting he had with the senior partner in charge of Asia Pacific. There were some challenges — one of their largest clients was threatening to walk. Althea was relaxed, listening, but close to dozing off.

“Starting January, I’ll be doing a two-year tour in Singapore.”

Suddenly she was awake. This was the first time she had heard about Singapore.

“In the New Year, I was going to put some feelers out,” she said. “Singapore might work,”

“Talk to Blair. Did you know he’s the president of Networks now?” Blair Tucker was an American friend of Daniel’s from Harvard who was working in Austria. “You know he’s always liked you. Maybe you could shack up with him.” He elbowed her, smiling. She elbowed him back.

Althea’s specialization was strategic marketing for companies going through mergers. There might be a fit with Blair’s firm, but Althea didn’t like the idea of prolonging their long-distance relationship.

Daniel was talking about Singapore again, seven figures within two
years, just part of life, and why didn’t she go to Vienna? Daniel switched
gears again.

“I was talking to Milena. She wants you to call her, first thing tomorrow.”

• • •

“MILENA? IT’S ALTHEA. DANIEL said to call.”

“Right. There’s some changes happening, Althea, and we’re taking you off the project.”

“Okay, after the meeting today, I’ll —”

“No, you didn’t hear me. You’re off the project. I had Travel book you on a flight home this afternoon. We’ve emailed you your ticket. When you get into the office, please set up a meeting with me. Imme-diately. Okay?”

“Okay.”

When Althea hung up, she turned to Daniel, who didn’t meet her eyes.

• • •

ALTHEA SAT AT THE airport. Her flight had been delayed. She felt the beginning of a tickle in her throat — her glands were sore. She didn’t have a deadline: permission to get sick. Great. Maybe it was better to be in Toronto for a while. See Sophie. Then beg for a transfer to Singapore.

Home. One year into her consulting job, Althea had bought a two bedroom condo at Yonge and Eglinton, an affluent area in mid-town Toronto also known as Young and Eligible. She had spent very little time there.

At one thirty in the morning, Paris time, she wedged her knee in the door and wheeled in her suitcase, dropping her laptop on a hall chair. She hadn’t been home in eight weeks and the space felt sparse and unwelcoming. She collapsed on her bed. The back of her neck was a knot of pain. She was close to sleep.