Authors: Gail Bowen
“Greg, the trial will be over in a month. Why don’t you leave the girls with me? You and Mieka could go some place warm and rediscover the magic?”
“What if the magic is gone?”
I smiled at him. “Then you’ll have to find something else to get you through the next forty years.”
The Big Comfy Couch
was coming to a close. As she always did, Loonette, the clown, was discovering that in the course of her adventures, she had made a mess.
“Madeleine, here comes our favourite part,” I said.
Madeleine nodded vigorously. “The Ten Second Tidy.”
The four of us watched in silence as Loonette, with the jerky moves of a character in an old-time movie, found a place for everything in the commodious contours of the big comfy couch. When she was done, Loonette and Molly Dolly curled up under their purple silk cover. Harmony had returned to Clown Town.
“Think I could find a couch big enough to swallow Charlie?” Greg said. Then he shook his head in disgust. “Sorry, Jo. I’m becoming a self-pitying asshole.” He walked over, turned off the
TV
, and scooped up his daughters. As they squealed, he played Falstaff. “All right, my scullions, my rampallions, my fustilarians. Time to get dressed, and if I hear a word of complaint, I’ll tickle your catastrophe.”
Greg and I met the canoeists at the dock. I sent Charlie and Pete up to strip the beds; then Mieka and Greg bundled their daughters into their life jackets and took them for a ride in their favourite red canoe.
I was standing on the dock, watching my daughter and her family vanish around the point, when Taylor and Isobel came down and announced they were going to make certain the Inukshuks they had built this summer were winter-worthy. Each of the Inukshuk had a sight hole in the middle. By peering through it, lost travellers could get their bearings and be guided along the route to the next Inukshuk. As a service to those who would be wandering the shore without a global positioning system in the coming winter, Isobel and Taylor planned to verify the accuracy of the sight holes.
I went with them. There was one particular Inukshuk I needed to visit. As we started around the horseshoe, the wind came up, and the girls and I pulled up the hoods of our jackets and jammed our hands in our pockets. All summer the girls had made it clear that Project Inukshuk was theirs, so that morning I stood aside as they went about their work: packing dirt around a rock that rested on unstable ground; adjusting a flat stone that wasn’t placed correctly; checking the view from a sight hole. When they’d finished their work on the Inukshuk at the tip of the west arm, I stayed behind. Without question or comment, the girls went ahead. They knew I wanted to be alone.
The sight hole on this particular Inukshuk pointed towards an old cottonwood tree across the water at the edge of Lake View cemetery. A man I had cared about deeply had been buried there the previous summer. Alex Kequahtooway had been born a few kilometres away on Standing Buffalo Reserve. He had lived with honour, and my life and the lives of my children had been enriched by knowing him. As I watched the graceful branches of the cottonwood move in the wind, and breathed in autumn’s pungent scent of decay and promise, I remembered him and said a prayer that this good man had found peace.
The electric blue PT Cruiser was still in Zack’s driveway when I came back. Sam’s dream team was still hard at it, so I went over to Mieka’s. Greg had already packed and loaded their car, and he and Pete and Charlie had taken the girls down to the Point store for a final ice cream cone. Unencumbered, Mieka and I set about the bittersweet preparation for our last meal together at the lake.
The menu required no forethought and less effort: turkey leftovers and Mieka’s sweet-potato soup, a recipe born of necessity and, in my opinion, fit for the gods. After the soup was simmering and the plates and cutlery were set out for a buffet, I turned to my daughter. “What do you want to do with the rest of the morning?”
Mieka glanced around, spotted a football, and picked it up. “Want to toss around the football?”
“I could stand to burn a few calories,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Outside, Mieka bounced on her toes a few times, then raised her arms towards the sun. “Great day,” she said.
“It is a great day,” I said. “And it’s good to see you smiling.”
“Fake it until you make it,” she said. “And I’m
going
to make it, Mum. Greg’s right. The business has a great future. We have a great future.”
“And it’s the future you want,” I said.
“It’s the future I have,” she said. “It’s just that every so often ‘I have immortal longings in me.’ ”
I squeezed her arm. “You don’t often quote Shakespeare.”
Mieka’s eyes widened. “That is Shakespeare, isn’t it? Lately, I’ve been wishing I’d paid more attention in English class. Ms. Boucher, my Grade 11 teacher, drilled us in those speeches. But I haven’t a clue where that line about immortal longings comes from.”
“
Antony and Cleopatra
. Cleopatra says it just before she commits suicide.”
“Ms. Boucher tried to talk about context, but there were no extra marks, so I dozed.” Mieka’s tone was wistful, but she shrugged off the memory. “Too late now, I guess. Might as well forget about Shakespeare and just throw the ball around.”
And we did. The rest of the family came home and within minutes our mum-and-daughter moment evolved into a game of shirts and skins. Charlie made certain he was on Mieka’s team. For sheer mindless pleasure, few things beat throwing a football around in the cool autumn air, and when the door to Zack’s cottage opened, I called time and beckoned to Zack and his company to join us.
Zack introduced his associates. The man, tall and muscular with the curly hair and sculpted mouth of a Michelangelo angel, was Sean Barton. The woman, a sprite with blonde hair cut boy-short, a snub nose, and clever assessing eyes, was Arden Korchinski. Both were wearing jeans and College of Law sweatshirts.
Charlie took control of the situation. “Why don’t you guys join us.”
Sean was clearly eager, but he was also polite. “Are you sure?” he said. “We don’t want to wreck your game.”
“My game is wrecking me,” I said. “I’ve had enough. Besides, my granddaughters appear to need some supervision. You take over for me. Arden can play on Charlie’s team.” I glanced at Zack. “In or out?”
“In,” he said. “And I’ll play on your old team.”
“You really think it takes you
and
Sean to replace me,” I said.
“No one could replace you,” Zack said.
I kissed the top of his head. “Go get ’em, tiger.”
As he always did, Zack played hard, giving no quarter and expecting none. Arden and Sean were both natural athletes, lithe, quick, and aggressive. Huddled with my granddaughters in an old Hudson’s Bay blanket singing nonsense songs and cheering on whoever happened to have the ball was, in my opinion, the perfect way to end the weekend.
The collision between Sean Barton and Mieka was quick and vicious. She was trying to intercept the pass that he was trying to catch. He leapt in the air, caught the ball, lost his balance, and came down on top of her. Even from halfway across the lawn, I could hear the cartoon sound of the breath being knocked out of her body as she hit the ground with Sean on top of her. It was clearly an accident. By the time I got to my feet, Sean had pushed himself off Mieka and was on his knees with his face close to hers checking to see if she was hurt. Charlie seemed to come out of nowhere. He hurled himself at Sean, wrapping Sean in his arms and legs and screaming at him to get away from Mieka. Sean was at least a head taller than Charlie and fifty pounds heavier, but when he tried to extricate himself from Charlie’s grasp, he couldn’t. Of the players on the field, Pete was the first to see what was happening, and he reacted immediately. He grabbed at Charlie and told him to back off, but Charlie was beyond hearing. Pete hung in there, pulling at Charlie’s arms and speaking to him in the tough, reassuring voice of a football coach dealing with an out-of-control player. “C’mon, buddy, let it go. Let it go. Let it go.” Finally, Charlie did, in fact, let it go. His body – all sinew and rage during the attack – went boneless. He released his grip, stumbled, and then drew himself to his feet. When I saw his face, I was filled with horror.
I had been in the delivery room with Marnie when Charlie was born. He had rocketed into the world two weeks early. It was election night, and Howard was busy consoling the losers and celebrating with the winners. As Marnie’s doctor lifted the newborn into the air, the delivery room fell silent. He was a long, thin baby with a birthmark that made it appear as if half his face and neck had been dipped in blood. Like everyone in the room except Marnie, I struggled against revulsion. Over the years, Marnie had taken him to a dozen doctors, but Charlie’s blood mask stubbornly resisted treatment. We had all grown accustomed to it. The disfigurement – like his wit, his charisma, and his need – had simply been part of the person Charlie was. So that day, as I tried to catch Charlie’s attention, it wasn’t the splash of blood on his skin that shocked me, it was the wildness in his eyes. In that moment, he was a fierce stranger who was capable of anything. The moment passed. He shrugged, apologized to us all, and then extended his hand to Sean.
“Sorry,” he said. “That’ll teach me to skip my meds.”
Sean was gracious. “Hey, with that kind of pit-bull spirit, next time I want you on our team.”
Zack had wheeled over to join us. “Let’s eat,” he said. He turned to Sean and Arden. “I dragged you out here on a holiday weekend, the least we can do is feed you.”
When the others started up to the house, Zack motioned me to stay behind. “Do you think I should tell Sean to get a rabies shot?”
I began folding the blanket the little girls and I had been sitting on. “No. Charlie and my kids have always been very protective of one another,” I said. “Still, that was really stupid.”
“And predictable,” Zack said.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever heard of hypermnesia?”
“No.”
“It’s the opposite of amnesia. People who suffer from it can’t forget anything – no matter how painful.”
“It sounds like one of those curses the Greek gods used to hurl around.”
“It is a curse,” Zack said. “I’ve seen it in about a half-dozen clients, and it makes them do crazy things.”
“And you think that’s what was behind Charlie’s outburst.”
Zack shrugged. “It seems a distinct possibility. When he talks about his relationship with his father, he remembers every slight. And his loyalty to your kids – and to you, incidentally – is primal.”
“Primal can be dangerous,” I said.
“And expensive,” Zack said. “That Jaguar you’re so fond of driving was paid for by fees from a man who caught his wife cheating and opted for what my American colleagues call a Colt .45 divorce.”
At lunch, there were two topics of conversation: the trial and Halloween costumes. Madeleine and Lena were dressing up as crayons: Madeleine was purple and Lena was orange. And so in the midst of the tense, revved-up talk of witness lists and opening statements, there were wistful reminiscences about Halloweens past and about going out as ghosts or pirates or witches. When lunch was cleaned away, Zack, Sean, and Arden went back to his cottage to work and the rest of us started loading the cars.
After the last stuffed toy had found a home in Greg and Mieka’s car, Greg went inside to get the girls.
Alone with my daughter, there were a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I fell back on the host’s question. “All things considered, did you have a good weekend?”
Mieka smiled. “All things considered, it had its moments.” She reached up and, in her invariable nervous gesture, began to pick at her lip. I pulled her hand away.
“I’m thirty-one,” she said. “I should be allowed to disfigure myself.”
Our eyes met. “But you have such a beautiful mouth,” we said in unison, and the tension between us broke.
Her eyes met mine. “You’re not the only one who worries, you know. I worry about you too. Mum, how much do you really know about Zack?”
“Enough to know that I love him,” I said.
“People say things …”
“People used to say things about your father. If you live a public life, people talk. It comes with the territory.”
“But with Dad, you knew that the rumours weren’t true. He had integrity, and you two had this perfect marriage. How can you settle for less?”
“Because what I have with Zack isn’t less. In many ways, it’s more. For one thing, we’re equals – that wasn’t true with your Dad and me.”
Mieka put up her hands. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just remember that no marriage is perfect. I loved your father, and I’m glad we stayed together, but it wasn’t always easy.”
“Thus endeth the lesson,” Mieka said, and her voice was heavy with scorn. She shook her head. “Forget I said that. In fact, let’s forget everything we both just said.”
“Good call,” I said. “Come on, let’s go over and say goodbye to everybody.”
Zack, Sean, and Arden were sitting at the partners’ table, wholly engrossed in their talk.
“Sorry to break your concentration,” I said. “But we’re heading out.”
Zack frowned. “You’re not leaving too?”
“I have to get back to the city,” I said. “Taylor has school tomorrow, and I should review a few things with Rapti.”
Zack ran his hand over his head. “Shit, Jo. I blew it, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t blow it. We had a great weekend.”
“But we should have been together more.” He wheeled his chair towards me. “Is there any way you can hang around for a couple of hours?”
Arden and Sean were closing their laptops. “I think we’re going to take off,” Sean said quietly.
Zack nodded approval. “See you at four – we’ll meet in the boardroom. My office …” He read the concern on my face and cut his sentence short.
“Your office looks like a bomb went off in it,” I said.
Zack looked sheepish. “Set myself up for that one, didn’t I? I’ve been trying to steer clear of the subject all weekend.”