Deadly Appearances (16 page)

Howard and I were on Circle Drive and out of the city when I realized I hadn’t said any of the tender and wise things I’d planned for nineteen years. I snuffled a bit when we pulled onto the highway, and Howard looked sharply at me.

“Are you okay, Jo?”

“Fine. It’s just everything happened so fast, and I think I’ve been done out of my big scene. Howard … I’m going to miss her so much. I can’t imagine going back to that house without her.” I could feel my throat closing and the tears gathering in my eyes. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. The skyline of the city faded behind us; ahead the highway was a ribbon in the darkness. Howard turned on the radio, and we listened to a half-hour program on the problem of gridlock in downtown Toronto.

When the lights from the town of Davidson loomed on the horizon, I caught my breath. Andy and I had gone to a bonspiel there last winter. It was the first time I had ever curled, and I loved it. Andy, in an awful, too-big curling sweater, had volunteered to skip our rink. Standing at the end of the ice, shouting encouragement, he had grinned ruefully when my rocks sailed past him into the wall or, inexplicably, stopped halfway down the ice. A good friend.

And someone had killed him. But who? His wife? Poison is a woman’s weapon, the mystery novels say. And there was the poem by Blake with its hint of inner corruption. (Eve turning in the door of Disciples the day after the murder and saying, “None of you knew the first thing about Andy Boychuk.”) Most damning, those letters
A
and
E
intertwined like the bride’s and groom’s initials on a wedding invitation.

We passed a gas station. Howard’s profile was thrown into sharp relief, and I thought of his terrible story about Eve Lorscott and her tortured family. I was reeling. There had been, as one of my sons had once said tearfully, “just too much day.” I didn’t want to think any more.

The sky was black and starless between towns. There wasn’t even a farmyard in sight. Howard turned off the radio, and the miles slipped by in silence. Finally, he turned and looked at me.

“Are you up to some news, Jo?”

“No, but don’t let that hold you back.”

He laughed and reached for my hand. “You really are a nice woman. Anyway, no use beating around the bush. I’m going away for a while. When I was in Toronto last week, that old law-school buddy I mentioned asked me to teach a session in criminal law at Osgoode Hall. It’s not a real appointment, just a couple of classes to help out a friend. They hired some hot-shot whiz-kid from Montreal, but at the last minute he got a chance at a
TV
contract interpreting the law as a background man, whatever the hell that is. Anyway, this came up and I took it.”

“But that’s wonderful. It’ll be a good change for you.”

“Yeah, I need to get out of Regina. A big part of it is because Andy’s gone. Without him in the picture, the possibilities just don’t excite me, but there’s more …”

“I thought there must be,” I said. “Is it Marty?” Two years before, Howard’s wife, Marty, had left him and moved to Toronto. He never spoke of it, at least to me, but I’d heard rumours – the kinds of things that always seem to float in the wake of someone else’s misfortune.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s Marty. She’s the good Catholic, but I’m the one with the guilt.”

“Do you still love her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if love has anything to do with it. But somehow it doesn’t seem right to me to pack up thirty years of marriage and say, ‘Well, thanks so much, I’ve got other plans.’ ”

“How does Marty feel?”

“She says she has a job she likes. She says she has friends. She says politicians make lousy husbands. She says it won’t work unless I change. She says a lot of stuff, but it all boils down to the same thing – she thinks it’s over.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m too old to change, but that business about politics is just crap. You and Ian had a good marriage.”

“Ian and I had a good marriage because we both lived Ian’s life.” I was surprised at the anger in my voice, and I was surprised at what I’d said. Until that moment I don’t think I’d acknowledged how much everything had been for Ian.

“So that’s the way it was.” Howard’s voice was gentle. “You know, Jo, it never seemed like that from the outside.”

“It didn’t start out that way.”

“How did it start out? All the years I knew you and Ian, I guess I always just thought of you as a unit – the Kilbourns. Maybe Marty’s right about me. I am obtuse.”

“No more than the rest of us when it comes to understanding what goes on inside other people’s marriages. And Ian and I were a unit, so you were right there. It’s just that we didn’t – I didn’t – plan to be part of a unit. Did you ever read D.H. Lawrence?”

“A thousand years ago.”

“Well, Ian and I were going to be those fiery twin stars Lawrence talks about, separate and dazzling. And then …”

“Ian got into politics,” Howard finished for me.

“And I got pregnant. Scratch one star. We were twenty-eight that first election. Mieka was born on E-day, remember?”

Howard laughed. “Sure. I always tell Mieka she showed great wisdom in waiting for the New Jerusalem to be established before she was born.”

“It didn’t seem like the New Jerusalem to me. Suddenly I was a mother, and I was married to a twenty-eight-year-old who was attorney general of the province and who didn’t have a clue about how to run the
A-G’S
office.”

“Jo, none of us had a clue about anything. All those kids we ran – we figured the young guys could lose their cherries on that first campaign and the next time out, well, maybe we’d get close, and then, well …” He reached over and patted my knee awkwardly. “Do you remember the results coming in that night? Did they bring you a
TV
into the delivery room?”

“Howard!” I groaned.

“Yeah, I guess not. Anyway, when I watched the results that night I just about dirtied my drawers. My God! First of all to win, and then to win and have nothing but kids to form a government.” His voice grew serious. “Ian was always so good, Jo. I can count on one hand the number of times he screwed up when he was a-g. And he was smart enough to keep the constituency stuff humming. Except –” he looked at me quickly “– that was because you were there, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, Jo. I should’ve known that.”

“Howard, it was too long ago to feel guilt about, and I’m too old to enjoy making you feel guilty. It just happened. The political stuff came my way by default. I liked it. I was good at it, and it was something I could do while I was having kids. Another thing – it really mattered. It was important work. But Howard, Marty knew that, too. She really did. No matter what she says now. We’re all revisionists when it comes to our own lives.”

“Tell me, Jo.” Howard’s words were so quiet, I could barely hear him above the hum of the engine and the swish of the miles passing by. “Tell me how Marty was in the old days.”

“Let’s see. I guess the first time I saw her was a couple of weeks after the election. It was my first outing after Mieka was born, so of course I brought her along. Do you remember? Somebody had the bright idea that we should go out into the rural areas to show off the new team. A bunch of us went to hell and gone out into the country …”

“McCallister Valley,” he said. “Remembrance Day. I remember. The year it rained right up until Christmas Eve. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Of course, the opposition made a big thing of it. Charlie Pratt was still leader then and he made one hell of a speech in the House. All about God’s anger manifesting itself because the people had turned their backs on the one true party, and about how Charlie and his gang would have to build an ark to save the province – metaphorically, of course. The old bastard …” He was laughing.

“Anyway,” I said, “you and Marty had been to some formal thing in the city, and she hadn’t changed.”

“And” – Howard’s face softened at the memory – “just before we got to McCallister Valley, our car got stuck in the gumbo, and Marty took off her shoes and stockings, jammed a shoe in each coat pocket and walked barefoot through the mud.”

“Ian and I were waiting in the hall,” I said, picking up the story, “and someone yelled, ‘Here’s the premier.’ I’d never met you, and my heart stopped. The premier and his wife! They threw open the doors to the Elks’ Hall, and there you were and there was Marty with the skirt of her evening gown hiked up to her thighs. She was solid mud from the kneecaps down, but she had such a great smile.”

We were both laughing. Howard wiped his eyes. “You should have heard her on the way home in the car – but not a peep out of her at the dinner. I’ll give her that. She was always the gracious lady in public. Not like …”

“Not like Eve.”

“No, not like Eve.” His voice had a familiar edge of exasperation.

For a while we reminisced about old times, then Howard turned the radio on. We listened to it and gossiped till Howard pulled up in front of the house on Eastlake Avenue. The place was still standing, and I sighed with relief.

“All’s well in Jo’s universe?” Howard asked.

“No,” I said, “but I’ll survive. What flight are you taking tomorrow?”

“The 1:30 – gets you into Toronto in time for the rush hour along the 401 – all the charms of metropolitan life Marty’s always talking about.”

“Need a lift to the airport?” I said.

“Yeah,” Howard said, “that would be nice.”

“Well,” I said.

“Well,” he said, gently mocking.

“Well,” I said, “I’d better get in there before the boys start flicking the porch light on and off at us.”

Howard reached over and covered my hand with his. In the moonlight his face was silvery grey – like an image on black and white television. “I’m really going to miss you. Ian was a lucky man.”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. The smell of his body was familiar and comforting – Scotch and lemony aftershave. “I’m going to miss you, too, Marty’s a lucky woman. Damn it, everybody’s leaving me.” I grabbed my bag and ran up the stairs before he could see I was crying.

The kids had managed fine. The house was clean enough. The tuna casserole I’d left for dinner the first night was in the refrigerator next to the freezer container of chili I’d left for the second night. There were two pizza boxes and a half-dozen Big Gulp containers in the garbage, but the boys were showered and in bed watching
M*A*S*H
reruns and being civil to one another, so I counted my blessings. I sat on Peter’s bed and watched the end of the program with them. When it was over, I filled them in on Mieka’s new house, showered and got into my robe. I was careful to look the other way when I passed Mieka’s room. I went downstairs, put on the kettle for tea, changed my mind, pulled out a lemon and some honey and made myself a hot lemon and rum. Just as I poured the hot water into the mug, the phone rang.

Mieka, I thought, or Howard, knowing I was having a hard time. But it wasn’t either of them. The voice was male and familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“Joanne, do you use smoked or barbecued salmon in that mousse?”

“Whatever’s cheaper.”

“What a sensible woman you are. Sorry to call so late, but I’m having people in for breakfast and I’m not a morning person.” I still couldn’t place that voice. Keep him talking.

“It bakes two hours. You’ll be up all night.”

“I’m setting the alarm so I can lumber out of bed and grab it out of the oven. Although why I’m going to all this trouble for that preening cow of a minister is beyond me.”

That sleepy, intimate voice that curled around words with such affection – “Rick. Rick Spenser. I’m sorry. I just didn’t make the connection with your voice for a minute.”

“Joanne, I’m the one who should apologize. Damn. I hate people who assume you know who they are. Forgive me for being a narcissistic ass. Let me start again. How was your day?”

“We were on safer ground with the mousse. My day was lousy. I just left my beautiful little girl alone with her new housemate who is also her boyfriend. And Howard Dowhanuik, who is, I guess, my best male friend in the world, just told me he’s moving to Toronto to teach a class at Osgoode Hall.”

The voice on the other end of the line was suddenly alert and professional. “Is that for public consumption?”

“I don’t see why not. Classes start this week, and he’s leaving tomorrow. I feel like Little Orphan Annie.”

“Then I’m glad I called. I wouldn’t dream of trying to fill Mieka’s place, but do you think I could try out for temporary status as your best male friend?”

I laughed. “Well, they’re not exactly standing in line here.”

“I warn you, Joanne. I take my obligations as a friend seriously.”

I took Rick at his word, and brought him up to date on everything that had happened since the last time we’d talked. At the end of it all I said, “That business about the sister really threw me. There’s something terrible about discovering people’s secrets. It’s such a violation. If you want out, I’ll understand.”

“No, no, certainly not.” He sounded as if he meant it. “Joanne, if I were there with you, I’d open a vein and become your blood brother, but since I’m in Ottawa, I’ll do what our senators do. I’ll swear an oath holding onto my testicles.”

We both laughed, the balance between us restored. “I think that was the Roman senators, not our guys.”

“Well, whoever held onto whatever … I, Rick Spenser, do solemnly swear to be friends with Joanne Kilbourn.”

“Till death us do part?” I asked, laughing.

“Till death us do part,” he repeated, but he didn’t sound as if he were laughing.

CHAPTER

12

The next three weeks went by in a haze of activity. Angus hated his grade-eight teacher on sight, but we decided dealing with her would be character-building. Peter made the football team, and I started to research Andy’s biography.

We all missed Mieka.

Our routine was the same as ever: a morning run with the dogs, breakfast, school, an early supper, ball, homework, bed. Saturday mornings we went to the Lakeshore Club. I added another fifteen minutes of laps to my time in the pool because I didn’t have Mieka to gossip with in the dressing room any more.