Authors: Gail Bowen
“Does it bother you?”
As she carried the canister of flour to the table, Mieka’s lips were a line.
“You still don’t like Zack,” I said.
“What’s not to like? He’s smart and he’s rich.” She shrugged. “Perfect.”
“Maybe we should wait and talk about this later,” I said.
We both glanced at the girls. Madeleine was raising and lowering her whisk from the bowl so she could watch the egg drip; Lena was still absorbed in the miracles of plastic. They seemed oblivious. Mieka lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to wait till later. You’re not wearing your wedding ring, and that means it’s serious. Mum, the people Zack defends are scum: murderers and bikers and bigots and rapists.”
“Everyone’s entitled to a defence, Mieka.”
“Especially if they’ve got a whack of cash. From what I hear, Zack charges top dollar.” She pointed at my wrist. “That bracelet he gave you for your birthday didn’t come from Wal-Mart.”
“Wal-Mart didn’t have the bracelet I wanted. Nobody around here did. Charm bracelets with real charms are out of style. Zack went to a lot of trouble to find this.” I held out my wrist so Mieka could see the chunky link bracelet more closely. “Those little ladybug charms open up,” I said.
Her interest piqued, Madeleine turned to us. “Can
I
see?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. I undid the tiny clasp on the red and black enamel ladybug. Inside was a picture of Madeleine.
“That’s me,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “And inside the green ladybug there’s a picture of your sister.” I knelt beside Lena and showed her “There you are,” I said. Lena reached out, snapped the bug shut, and went back to her Tupperware.
I stood and slid an arm around my daughter’s shoulders. “There’s a lucky guy in Lena’s future. Tupperware’s cheaper than Tiffany’s.”
Unexpectedly, Mieka’s eyes filled with tears. She fingered the remaining charm, a small gold disc. “What’s this?”
“A Frisbee,” I said. “The first time Zack and I went out together, we went to one of Angus’s Ultimate Flying Disc games.”
Mieka’s flipped the disc over and read the inscription:
“Amor Fati,”
she said.
“It’s Latin,” I said. “It means ‘Love your Fate.’ ”
“Am I supposed to love your fate too?”
“No,” I said, “but you are supposed to live with it.” I handed the measuring cup to Madeleine. “See that line at the top. Start spooning flour in. When it gets to that line, you’ll have enough to begin the pancakes.”
Madeleine got a chance to do a lot of measuring. Just as we’d settled in to eat, Greg and Peter showed up – fishless and hungry. Then Taylor and Isobel drifted in. And so Madeleine cracked eggs and measured; Lena crumpled paper napkins, and Mieka and I stirred, flipped, and dished out.
There were many golden moments that weekend. The Thanksgiving farmers’ market was an extravagant display of beauty and bounty: tables overflowing with root vegetables, so recently ripped from the earth that the dirt still clung to them; jars of jams, pickles, and preserves glowing with the brilliance of jewels; boxes of apples, pears, peaches, and plums fragrant from the gentle summer of British Columbia; heavy breads flecked with seeds and dried fruits; pies with pastry so light that even the wrap covering had flaked it; turkey-shaped cookies iced in garish, child-riveting colours; gourds whose curved phallic shapes conjured thoughts of a God with carnal pleasure on Her mind.
And pumpkins – hundreds of them – in every permutation and combination of size, shape, and colour. Halloween was three weeks away, and Taylor, Isobel, and Gracie Falconer were having a party. They had been scouring the Internet for ideas for a week, and their plans were elaborate. The party was going to be at our house, and the girls were going to turn our backyard into a haunted village of glowing jack-o’-lanterns. We needed a lot of pumpkins and so we cruised the stalls for possibilities: perusing, judging, and, finally, choosing. When we’d filled the trunks of both my car and Mieka’s, we headed back to the cottage.
As I frequently did, I had left my cell at the house, and there was a message on it from Jill Oziowy. She was at the office, and when she picked up, she was curt. “Why do you bother having a cell if you never answer it?” she said.
“And Happy Thanksgiving to you,” I said.
“Sorry. It’s crazy around here.”
“So go home,” I said. “It’s a holiday.”
“Spoken like a woman in a relationship with a millionaire.”
“I don’t think Zack’s a millionaire.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I checked him out. Anyway, I didn’t call to talk about Daddy Warbucks. I just scored a live interview with Kathryn Morrissey. She’s going to be the lead segment on the weekend
Canada Tonight.”
“Does Sam Parker’s side get equal time?”
“No, because this isn’t about the trial. It’s about journalistic ethics.”
“So why not interview a person who knows something about journalistic ethics?”
“Jo, you’re supposed to remain neutral.”
“Neutral as in letting Kathryn Morrissey shred Sam’s reputation two nights before his trial begins?”
“Kathryn will be discussing how journalists pursue truth. Period. It has nothing to do with Sam Parker.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You know Nation
TV
wouldn’t be letting Kathryn Morrissey deliver her Journalism 101 lecture in prime time if Sam Parker wasn’t going on trial.”
Jill’s voice was icy. “The journalist’s obligation to truth is at the core of this trial.”
“What about the journalist’s obligation to be ethical?”
“You are such a fucking moralist, Jo.”
“Finished?”
“No. When I talked to Kathryn today, I told her you’d be doing a nightly piece on the trial for us. I also told her you were in a relationship with Sam’s lawyer. She said that didn’t worry her. She knew you’d be fair.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel guilty?”
“It’s supposed to make you reflect on the story I hired you to tell.”
“Jill, we’ve been friends for thirty years, and I think we’re about thirty seconds away from doing ourselves some serious damage. I’m going to hang up. Have a good Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow night after the interview airs,” Jill said and she hung up. No holiday wishes for me.
Zack worked through lunch. When he came over afterwards to take the little girls and me for a boat ride around the lake, I handed him a sandwich and told him about the Kathryn Morrissey interview.
“Well, that’s shitty news,” he said. Then he wolfed down his tuna salad sandwich.
“Good lunch,” he said. “Thanks. Are the kids ready to go?”
“Are you really not bothered by this?”
“Sure, but I’m not going to let it wreck our day.”
“Can you teach me how to compartmentalize?”
“No problem,” he said. “Can you teach me how to make tuna salad?”
The day was windy, clear, and fresh, and Zack, who usually drove his Chris-Craft across the water at speeds that made my adrenalin pump, took it slow, staying within easy distance of the shoreline as he circled the lake. I was grateful. And there was something else. I had snapped Madeleine and Lena into matching life jackets that signalled their commitment to water safety with a cartoon of a whale and the legend “Buoy, oh boy.” As always, I was wearing my life jacket. Standard procedure, but until that day Zack had habitually left his life jacket on the seat beside him: within reach if someone challenged him, but useless in an emergency. That afternoon, he slipped it on before we set out.
As I settled in behind him with the girls, I patted his shoulder approvingly. “Getting cautious in your old age?”
“Nope, just increasingly aware of the fact that I’ve got a lot to lose.”
The sun was still warm at 5:00 p.m., so we fired up the barbeque, threw blankets on the leaf-littered lawn, and ate our burgers outside. After dinner, Mieka and Greg and Pete and Charlie took the boat out, and Zack and I sat, hand in hand, watching Madeleine and Lena play in the lengthening shadows of the trees. That night, intoxicated by fresh air and the novelty of spending the night together, we turned in early. By the time I’d finished brushing, flossing, and slathering on the Oil of Olay, Zack was in bed. I turned out the light and crawled in beside him.
He put his arm around me. “Happy?” he said.
“I am. How about you?”
“If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
I laughed. “You are such a smoothy. Speaking of which, did you and Charlie ever talk?”
“We did. I took your advice and waited till noon, but I still woke him up. I apologized and told him I had one quick question about the Glenda Parker interview. He assured me that he and Glenda were alone during the taping, and he hadn’t told a soul about the edit.”
“That’s good news,” I said.
“It is,” Zack agreed. “And Charlie welcomed the opportunity to share it. He said it was important for me to know that I could trust him.”
“A story with a happy ending,” I said.
“The story’s not over,” Zack said. “Charlie offered to scramble me some eggs.”
“And you took him up on his offer.”
“Sure. I figured there was something on his mind, and this close to a trial, I don’t leave any stone unturned. Besides, I was hungry.”
“So what did Charlie want to talk about?”
“Fathers. He asked if I was close to my mine. I think if I had been, Charlie and I would have eaten our eggs and said sayonara. But lucky for me, I saw my old man precisely once and that was for less than an hour.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you mention your father.”
“There’s nothing to mention. Until three years ago, I’d never clapped eyes on the man. But the Hampton acquittal got a lot of media coverage, and my father saw me on television. He called the office, identified himself, and said he wanted to see me. I figured what the hell, so I met him for lunch.”
“What was he like?”
I felt Zack’s muscles tense. “He was a maggot. A piece-of-shit lawyer who ordered a number of very stiff drinks, pushed his food around on his plate, suggested I throw some business his way, and asked for a little something to tide him over.”
“Did you give him money?”
“Sure. I wrote him a cheque. Quickest way to get rid of a maggot is to throw it some meat. He couldn’t get to the bank quick enough. I guess he was afraid I’d change my mind. Anyway, he left me his business card and told me to stay in touch.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope. After he left, I finished my wine, went to the can, ripped up his card, and flushed it down the toilet.”
“He never came back for more money?”
“Many times. Norine handles it.”
“By …?”
“Giving him what he wants – in an envelope – sent through the mail. No more up-close-and-personal.”
“Zack, I’m sorry –”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Zack said quickly, cutting me off. “Your turn now. What about your parents?”
“They’re dead. My father was a doctor. My mother was an alcoholic. For most of my life she might as well have been dead.”
“Wow. Both of us, eh?” Zack kissed me and for a moment everything else fell away. When he spoke his voice was gentle. “But we turned out all right, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “We turned out all right.”
I drew closer and we lay side by side watching the play of light and shadows on the ceiling. “So what happened with Charlie?” I said finally.
“As promised, he made me eggs. While he was cooking, he riffed on all the variations of what he called ‘the look’ – the way people react when they’re confronted with what he referred to as ‘people like us.’ ”
“Meaning you and Charlie.”
“Right – the crips and the freaks. There’s nothing wrong with Charlie’s powers of observation. He had all the responses down pat: the people who focus on a point just past your ear; the ones who keep shifting their eyes searching for a safe place to put rest their gaze; the ones who pretend they haven’t noticed; the ones who stare openly. It was disarming.”
“You really like him, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of anger there, but he has what my mother called ‘hurting eyes.’ ”
“Charlie has more than his share of demons,” I said.
“He keeps them in check,” Zack said. “And I respect him for that. It’s not easy coming up with a strategy for dealing with a world that doesn’t know how to react to you.” He drew me close. “And that’s enough about Charlie.”
Zack’s breathing slowed, deepened, and became more rhythmic. He was asleep, but I lay in the dark for a long time, thinking about the man beside me and wondering about the strategies he used to keep his demons at bay.
Working on the premise that a holiday dinner is the responsibility of everybody who will eat it, the next morning we allocated tasks. And so while Mieka and I each stuffed a turkey, Greg, Peter, and Charlie peeled, chopped, sliced, and diced, and Taylor and Isobel set the table. Zack took care of Madeleine and Lena. He seemed an unlikely choice, but during the summer the little girls themselves made the selection. With the unerring instinct children and cats have for gravitating towards the one person in the world who is not particularly partial to them, Madeleine and Lena had designated Zack as their companion of choice.
Zack had been neither delighted nor appalled. He treated the little girls exactly as he treated everyone else: with undivided attention until it was time to move along. That morning, as the rest of us worked in the kitchen, he led Madeleine and Lena to the piano in the living room and thumped out show tunes while they danced.
The rest of the day passed with the usual benevolent blur of a family holiday that’s working well. As we sat down for dinner, I had many reasons to give thanks. Isobel and Taylor had made a centrepiece of an old wooden dough box filled with pomegranates and miniature pumpkins and placed candles in brass hurricane lamps at intervals around the table. My granddaughters, fresh from their nap, were rested and happy. Best of all, everyone was getting along. Charlie was the model guest, and Mieka was making a real effort with Zack. In his self-cast role as paterfamilias, he was going to carve the Thanksgiving bird. Mieka was a professional caterer who had sliced a hundred turkeys, but when Zack approached her for advice, she had given it, and as she placed the bird in front of him she made a little speech about how in Renaissance Italy, trained carvers used to hoist the bird on a fork and spin it in the air, dazzling the guests as slices of breast fell in orderly circles on the plate below. Then, as the pièce de résistance, she presented Zack with a duplicate of her favourite Henkel carving knife as a host gift.