12 Rose Street (20 page)

When the last notes of “I’m a pirate!” faded, I leaned over and asked the director to make certain I got the footage of Zack singing his pirate song.

UpSlideDown closed at 3:30 on Saturdays, and after everyone left, the space was quiet enough for Zack to talk to the camera. When the lighting was being adjusted, Mieka took my arm. “I have to talk to you.”

“We should get out of here,” I said. “Those microphones are sensitive.” We went back to the room where Zack had changed. The dress shirt Zack had been wearing was still draped over the back of a chair. Reflexively, I picked up the shirt and began smoothing its creases.

Mieka watched me. “I’m finished with the tapes,” she said. “Do you want to listen to them?”

“No,” I said.

“Good call,” she said. “They’re disgusting. And if that wasn’t enough, all the entries are dated. It’s easy to discover where Ian was when he was supposed to be with us.”

I could feel my daughter’s anger. “Mieka, don’t do this.”

“Remember the farewell ceremony we had at the end of Grade Eight? After the ceremony there was a bonfire and a barbecue for the Grade Eights and their parents. Ian had to skip it because Howard ‘needed him at the legislature’?”

“I was thinking about it the other day when I saw the picture of the three of us after the ceremony.”

Mieka’s voice was toneless. “Ian didn’t go back to the legislature to see Howard,” she said. “He went back to have sex with Jill. Valerie Smythe was working late, and she heard him tell Jill that he couldn’t get through the night without being inside her.”

I put my arms around my daughter. For a long time we just held each other.

Neither of us said a word. There was nothing left to say.

I was watching Zack finish up his segment when I spotted Howard Dowhanuik outside the door. He was hatless and without an umbrella. Howard had never mastered the art of the inside voice, so I picked up my coat and umbrella, unlocked the door, and joined him.

“You should have come earlier,” I said. “You missed Cap’n Slappy and the pirate party.”

“I knew you were doing the ad here this afternoon, so I thought I’d take a chance. I figured if I came to your house you’d throw me out.”

I touched his arm. “I don’t blame you for what happened. You tried to put a stop to it, which is more than either Ian or Jill did.”

Howard turned towards the street. People were bent against the rain, rushing to get home. I moved my umbrella to cover him. With age the flesh had fallen away from Howard’s face. His profile now was as chiselled as the face on the head of a coin. “Is there anything I can do to straighten this out?” he said. “Jill’s beside herself. She thinks she’s lost everything.”

“Did she send you?”

He nodded.

“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “I want Jill out of our lives. You’re going to have to pick a side, Howard. Either you’re with Jill or you’re with me and my children.”

“I’ve never seen you like this, Jo. You’ve always been so –”

“Stupid?” I said. “Yesterday I discovered that fifteen years of my life were a lie. Until Slater Doyle opened my eyes, I was certain that Ian died believing the most important people in his life were his family. I had a lot of good memories. Now all I have are questions that I don’t want answered. Where was Ian all those times when he missed the kids’ events? Where was he the nights I scraped his dinner into the garbage because Valerie Smythe called to say he was caught in a meeting? Where was he when I couldn’t get through to him to tell him that I was in the ER with one of our kids who needed stitches or a cast or an X-ray?”

Howard had moved away from me. He was getting soaked, but he seemed oblivious to the rain “It never once occurred to me that Ian was unfaithful,” I went on. “He and Jill must have thought I was such a fool – the gullible wife who’s the last to know that her husband has a mistress. You must have thought I was a fool too.”

Howard turned back to me, his face filled with anguish. “No one ever thought you were a fool, Jo. Ian had a great deal of respect for you.”

I was livid. “
Respect!
Jesus Christ, Howard. I wasn’t Ian’s favourite sixth grade teacher, I was his
wife.
He was supposed to love, honour, and cherish me, and goddammit, he was supposed to be faithful.”

“I’m sorry,” Howard said. “I’ve made everything worse.”

I watched as Howard walked off into the rain. His words had been a fresh wound and I was already reeling. Too much had happened. Jill and Ian, the vicious mayoral race. Liz’s
desperate call and then her failure to show up. When Howard turned at the corner and disappeared, I closed my umbrella, raised my face to the sky, and waited until the rain cooled my face and cleansed my thoughts.

Filming the ad took longer than I’d anticipated, and it was 6:00 p.m. by the time Zack and I got back to Halifax Street. I’d called Taylor from UpSlideDown and she’d ordered Japanese food to be delivered at 6:30. Zack made us martinis, and we kicked back to enjoy our drinks and listen to our daughter talk about the portrait she was painting of Margot and her children.

Taylor had brought out a book of paintings by Mary Cassatt, the late nineteenth-/early twentienth-century American artist whose best-known works were of mothers and children. She was particularly taken with a portrait called
The Bath.
As she pointed out Cassatt’s meticulous drawing and the way she used blocks of colour to capture the intimacy between mother and child, Taylor’s excitement was contagious. “I love everything about this painting,” she said. “I read somewhere that Cassatt’s portraits were too accurate to be flattering to her subjects, but I can’t imagine this being more perfect.”

“You’re on safe ground with Margot, Declan, and Lexi,” I said. “They don’t need to be flattered. They’re all very attractive.”

As always we had over-ordered, but as always it didn’t matter. We were all keen on leftovers. When I opened the fridge to put away the remaining sushi and tempura, I saw a florist’s delivery package.

Taylor was standing behind me. “That came when I was ordering the food. I put the flowers in the fridge and forgot all about them. I’m sure they’re still okay.”

The flowers were from Gale’s Florist. When I tore away the wrappings and saw the gerberas, the image of Bev, triumphantly alive, flashed through my mind. Bev said once
that she loved gerberas because they seemed to have a lust for life. Liz could not have chosen a more graceful way to apologize for missing our meeting, and I was smiling as I opened the notecard that came with the flowers.

There was no signature, but Liz’s expensive buff-coloured stationery was embossed with her monogram. The handwriting was shaky, but the three-word message was clear:
Don’t Trust Anybody.

Taylor was watching my face as I read the card. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Taylor, would you mind putting these in water while I call and thank the friend who sent them.”

When I called the Meighen home, a woman answered. When I asked for Liz, she said, “Mrs. Meighen is gone for holiday. This is the housekeeper.”

“Could I speak to Mr. Meighen?”

“Call back, please. Maybe leave message,” she said, then broke the connection.

I tried again. This time the phone rang six times and Liz’s recorded voice asked me to leave a message. I left my name and cell number and asked that either she or Graham call me.

When I went back into the kitchen, Zack was watching Taylor decide precisely where each gerbera should be placed in the drabware vase. He wheeled close to me. “Taylor said you were calling the friend who sent the flowers. I’m taking a wild guess and assuming it was Liz Meighen explaining why she was a no-show this morning.”

“Close but no cigar,” I said. I handed him the note that had come with the flowers. He read it, frowned, glanced at Taylor, and said nothing. I got the message. We weren’t going to discuss the situation in front of our daughter. And so we waited. Taylor had an artist’s eye, and it took a while before she was satisfied with her flower arrangement, but
finally she stood back, cocked her head, and gazed critically at the gerberas. “What do you think?” she said.

“Perfect,” Zack said.

“I agree,” I said. “Not a bloom out of place.”

“Good,” Taylor said. “Now I can still squeeze in a couple of hours in my studio before bed.” She blew kisses our way and headed out.

As soon as the door closed, Zack turned to me. “What’s going on with Liz?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “I don’t buy the housekeeper’s explanation that Liz is on holiday. Less than twelve hours ago, Liz was a no-show at a meeting she had been desperate to arrange. She’s old school when it comes to etiquette, and she orders flowers to apologize for inconveniencing me. So far, so good, but then Liz goes to the florist to drop off a handwritten note warning me that I can’t trust anybody and takes off on a vacation. It doesn’t wash, Zack.”

“I agree,” Zack said. “It doesn’t make sense, but Liz admits she hasn’t been thinking clearly.”

“It’s possible that she asked someone else to take the note to Gale’s,” I said. “But given Liz’s state of mind, I can’t imagine she’d trust anybody else to do the job.” I checked my watch. “Gale’s will be closed by now,” I said. “But after church, I’m going to drop by the shop and ask some questions.”

When I awoke Sunday morning, I piled my pillows against the headboard, took the sculpture of Ernest Lindner from my night table, and placed it on my lap. Looking at Ernie’s face, I remembered the conversations we’d had – about art, his youth in Vienna, the summer home at Emma Lake where he did some of his best work, and always the eternal and unanswerable question of what made men and women happy. They were good memories – almost good enough to blot out the ugliness of Ian and Jill’s betrayal. It would take a lot of time to redress the balance – to overcome the pain and remember the many joys of my life during the period when Ian was my husband. But I had spent the night in bed beside the man I loved and who loved me. As I ran my fingers over the surface of the ceramic Zack had given me for my birthday, I felt my strength returning.

Zack stroked my arm. “You’re really pleased with that, aren’t you?”

“I love it,” I said. “And I love you. Zack, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get us through this.”

“How about pancakes for breakfast?”

“That would be a start,” I said.

When I got back from our very gentle run, the pancake batter was made; the griddle was hot, and Cronus’s Inferno Red urn was on the sideboard. “Is Cronus joining us for breakfast?” I said.

Zack wheeled up beside me. “I was thinking more about dinner,” he said. “Is tonight a good night for us to go to the Sahara Club?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m ready for red meat, and Taylor’s always up for a steak. Angus wanted to come. I’ll check with him. If he’s available, I’ll make a reservation.”

Taylor was crucifer that day at the Cathedral, so we had to be at church early. While Taylor got robed, Zack and I had twenty minutes to wait before the service began. We both welcomed the chance to be together in a space where many turbulent hearts had found peace.

Then the church began to fill; Mieka and our granddaughters joined us and the organist struck the chord of the processional hymn.

Mieka was pale and her eyes were deeply shadowed, but her chin was high and her shoulders were squared. As they always did when they weren’t serving, Madeleine and Lena took paper and markers out of their backpack and made drawings of girls with fancy hair. It was a Sunday service like every other Sunday service, and yet everything had changed. During the Lord’s prayer, Mieka and I both stumbled over the line “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

When the service was over, the girls spotted friends and went to join them and Zack zeroed in on the dean. Mieka and I stayed in our pew and waited for Taylor. “It was good to have you beside me today,” I said.

“Same here,” Mieka said. “I notice we both had a problem with the line about forgiving those who trespass against us.”

“We’ll get there,” I said.

“It’s going to be a while for me,” Mieka said. “Maybe I’ll never get there. Last night after the kids went to bed, I boxed up all the pictures of Ian I’d put up around the house and the photo albums I was always showing the girls and took them to the garage. Jill’s stuff was still in the guest room, so after I’d finished with the photos of Ian, I packed up her things. I felt sick even touching her clothes. When I was through I called Pete and Angus to come over for a beer.”

“You’re brothers are stoic with me,” I said. “How are they really doing?”

“Angus is okay. He was young when Ian died and as we all know, Ian didn’t spend much time with us. Peter’s very angry. Neither of them wanted to hear the clips.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” I said. “What are you going to do with them?”