Joshua Then and Now (19 page)

Skipping from here to there, circling warily, knives certainly drawn, they went into everything. The night of the astonishing dinner party on the lake. Her version of the events that had preceded it. Kevin. Jack. Pauline. The unfortunate timing of his trip to Spain. His fool’s errand. An hour later, inevitably, it ended badly.

With the back of his hand, he was driven to cuff her hard against the cheek, bouncing her off the open front door, sending her sprawling.

Jane sat down in the snow, blood leaking from her nose.

“I’ll get you a towel,” he said wearily.

“Oh no you won’t,” she said, stumbling upright, losing a shoe, as she ran for her approaching taxi.

A week later he learned that she hadn’t gone home, but had continued on to Dickie and Wendy Abbott’s house, drinking out the remainder of the night with them. One shoe missing. Lying with her head back to stanch her bleeding nose.

Where were you?

Joshua’s.

Yossel Kugelman, sole begetter of
Your Kind, My Kind, Mankind
, was no longer on the case. But the new doctor, a cheerful young man Joshua suspected of being an oaf, wasn’t making any progress either.

Pauline, Pauline.

Why hadn’t he caught the signals early? Appreciated that Kevin’s return had tipped the balance. Her delicate balance. So that, suddenly, there she was again, tidying everywhere, cleaning out crammed cupboards, dusting books, and compulsively making lists of chores to be done. Lists and lists of lists. Instead of recognizing the demon and helping her to expel it, he had yielded to exasperation, shuffling out of his study at five, written out, discovering her surly, and charging, “You’re in a bad mood.”

“Am I?”

“How come we don’t have drinks together before dinner any more?”

“Do you want to hear about my day?”

“Sure,” he said warily.

“I spent an hour on the phone with Eaton’s, trying to get them to correct an error in last month’s statement. I was switched from department to department to department and each time I had to repeat the story from the beginning and they’ve still got it wrong.
Then I went to buy Teddy new skates. I had to double-park outside Mr. Tony’s and when I came out I had a ticket. Then I drove all the way out to Ville St. Laurent to get a new blade for the Garburator, but they don’t make that model any more. They wanted to sell me a new one. So I drove back to the Swiss Repair Shop and talked them into soldering and sharpening the old blade. I went to pick up your shirts at Troy and stepped into the street just in time to have a passing car shoot slush and blue salt all over my suede coat which will now have to be cleaned. That, and the parking ticket, will take care of most of the money I saved on the garburator blade. I stopped at Miss Westmount for a coffee. Why not, I deserve it, I thought. A fat greasy man sat down next to me at the counter and told me I had terrific tits. I went to Steinberg’s for the food order and that took another hour. Then I remembered the toaster in the back of the car and I went back to the Swiss Repair Shop and stood in line again and left it to be fixed. I registered Teddy for the spring swimming class at the ‘Y.’ I bought Alex the new Frank Zappa record he asked me to look out for. I went to Howarth’s to buy Susy three pair of school panties. The panties are not the right shade. Alex already has the Zappa record. Teddy doesn’t like the skates, they’re not what the other boys at school are wearing now. Then the order came from Steinberg’s and some ass had put the yogurt in upside down, and it was all over everything, and I have just finished washing all the cans before putting them away. Now it’s five o’clock and you expect me to be sweet and sexy and then you will want your dinner. Well, I haven’t done a thing about it yet.”

“Let’s go out for dinner. The kids can eat pizza.”

“The kids eat enough junk food without my ordering pizza. Susy needs help with her history tonight and Alex is going out with that awful Sally again and he’s bound to come home upset and want to talk to me in the kitchen. I haven’t been able to read a book in more than a month. I feel stupid. My hair’s greasy. You have that pained
look which means ‘There she goes again.’ I’m a drudge. Well, you’ve all made me into a drudge. I’m sorry I had the children, really I am. I wish I were a cashier or a call girl with regular hours and men who brought me roses rather than split trousers to sew or skates to exchange. I don’t want to go out.”

“All right then, I’m going out,” he said.

The Flopper, his eyes adrift, was ensconced at the bar of The King’s Arms.

“Joshua, there are three things that worry me in this world. Terrorism. All those nutty Ay-rabs hijacking planes left and right. And inflation. You know what they are asking for tomatoes today?”

“You said three things.”

“Right. Yeah. And Effie.”

Effie was his wife.

“What’s wrong with Effie?”

“I promised her I’d be home at two o’clock this afternoon. What time is it now?”

“Seven-twenty.”

“Shit. I figured. Buy me a drink.”

Pauline was waiting up for him in bed, reading the morning newspaper at last.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean a word of it.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I didn’t tell you everything.”

He waited.

“I ran into Jane on Greene Avenue and we had a drink together in the Jockey Club. She’s going back to work,” Pauline said, biting back tears.

“Doing what? Poisoning wells? Snipping the balls off passing men and beading them into a necklace? Tell me. I’m fascinated.”

“Crombie and McTeer. The copywriting department. She used to work there and now they’re taking her back.”

“Why should that upset you?”

“You should have seen her. She had just had her hair done. She was wearing a new outfit. She told me she was going back to work because her children were growing up and soon wouldn’t need her any more and she wasn’t going to become a household drudge. She said we were crazy, demented, allowing our husbands to turn us into a combination of mothers, maids, and cooks, draining the life out of us, and then they would look at us one morning and tell us that we had become boring, and that they found other women more exciting. She said she certainly wasn’t going to let that happen to her.”

“God damn it. Son of a bitch. Jane never had time for her children or her husband or cooked a proper meal in her life. I would not find you more interesting if you had some dreary job in an ad agency or did social work. The children need you here. I need you here. I could rent an office somewhere. I work at home because I enjoy being with you.”

“Jane is more interesting than I am. She has more spirit.”

Joshua sat down on the bed and stroked her hair. “You and I come from very different Montreals, so I imagine the name ‘Tony Vitto’ means nothing to you.”

“No.”

“Tony was shot dead in a restaurant in Brooklyn a while back, following the killing of Crazy Joe Gallo. I met him when he was still a young hood and I asked my father, ‘What does he do?’ ‘Well,’ my father said, ‘Colucci, you know, has his problems. Yeah, with his shoes.’ ‘
His shoes?’
‘Yeah, he gets stones in his shoes, see, and Tony gets them out for him. He has a problem downtown, say, and he shouts at Tony, “
Livarsi na patra di la scarpa!
– Take this stone out of my shoe!” And that’s what he does.’ Well, Jane is the stone in your shoe and I wish I could get her out. Stop seeing her.”

“But we’ve known each other since we were Susy’s age. We have fun when we’re together.”

“You do?” he asked, surprised.

“When you aren’t there, or other men, she’s different. Honestly, she can be wickedly amusing. She makes me laugh.”

“I don’t understand women and their relationships, I really don’t. But I don’t want her interfering in our lives.”

After Detective Sergeant Stuart Donald McMaster had got his day off to a far-from-rousing start, and he had bent his work rules, going out for a walk at 10:30 a.m., he had intended to stop at the Royal Vic to look in on Pauline, but as he got closer to the hospital he found himself making clever little detours, anything to delay the inevitable. Pauline was not only abysmally depressed, she was also depressing, and these daily visits to her room were beginning to get at him.

Professing great and enduring love, Joshua was astonished at the resentments he had been able to nourish over eighteen years of happy marriage, a stock of pettiness he was able to feed on during her hour of need. Pauline had made no effort to be civil to Seymour’s wife, which was hurtful to an old friend. She hadn’t worn the dress he had bought her for her last birthday more than once. “It won’t do. My waist is going. Or haven’t you noticed?” They never went on a trip, she protested, unless he needed a break. Her needs never entered into it. Furthermore, in social matters large and small, it was his taste that always prevailed. So, no matter how much wheedling he had to do on the phone, he never failed to surface with tickets for at least one game of the Stanley Cup Finals, but he had never once taken her to Stratford.

True, true.

Pauline, the senator’s daughter, had been raised on the arts, while he had been brought up on the rough justice of Mr. Nat Fleischer’s
Ring
ratings. Look at it this way: While she was learning how to curtsy in the presence of the Governor-General, his father was teaching him how to jab, keeping his chin tucked in at the same time.

But that’s all beside the point now, isn’t it, Joshua? If not for your unnecessary return to Spain – that stupid, self-indulgent trip that was to settle
nothing, absolutely nothing – she wouldn’t be lying in the hospital now and he, come to think of it, might still be alive. You should have stayed home during her hour of need. Instead, you took off for bloody Ibiza, proving yourself an idiot twice
.

A fool’s errand, she had called it, and she had been right.

When he finally arrived at the Royal Vic, late in the afternoon, he discovered Pauline asleep. In repose, her face without strain or reproach, she looked fine, just fine, and he was sorely tempted to undress and curl into bed against her. Instead, he sat in the chair by the window for better than an hour, Pauline breathing deeply, evenly, until, in a sudden panic, he rushed out into the hall to confront her nurse. “You promised me you wouldn’t let her stockpile any of those bloody pills.”

“But I haven’t, Mr. Shapiro.”

“I told you you were to wait by her bedside and make absolutely sure she swallowed them each time.”

“We’re not fools here.”

“Then why is she in such a deep sleep now?”

“Because she had a very restless night. She hardly slept at all. And Miss Hodges gave her something to help her rest about an hour ago.”

“Well,” he said, retreating, “all I ask is that you be careful.”

“We are careful with all our patients, Mr. Shapiro, even those who can’t afford private rooms.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You are being exceedingly rude.”

“I’m sorry,” Joshua said, fleeing down the hall.

But he certainly wasn’t going to leave the hospital until she wakened. He phoned Susy to say he would be home late.

“Where are you, Daddy?”

“At the hospital. Is Teddy there?”

“He’s feeding his fish.”

“Alex?” he asked.

“He’s not home yet. A policeman phoned three times.”

Alex picked up with a nickel bag
, “What did he want?”

“He wouldn’t say. But he left his name. McMaster.”

“Did he leave a number?”

She gave it to him.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

“No. Nothing, Susy. But I’d better call him right away.”

Joshua called the station and got McMaster on the phone. “Why,” he demanded, “did you call my house three times?”

“You sound irritated, Mr. Shapiro.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“We could have towed your car away.”

“I owe you.”

“I was wondering if you’d had a chance to take even a little peekie at my manuscript yet?”

Joshua began to laugh.

“Did I make a funny?”

He couldn’t stop laughing.

“Mr. Shapiro?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he replied.

“Well, have you looked at it yet?”

“It’s a treat I’m saving for my weekend. Goodbye now.”

Later it would come out that no sooner did McMaster hang up than he dug into his desk drawer for a White Owl and bit off the tip. “Hey, Henri, I want to look at some files.”

“What kind?”

“Lists of stolen furniture. But going back some. And, oh yeah, let’s feed Reuben Shapiro’s name into the computer and see what we come up with.”

It was 9 p.m. before a moaning Pauline came awake, her hands agitated, fluttering. Sitting bolt upright, she stared directly at Joshua. “The worms must be crawling in his mouth now,” she said. “The flesh putrefying.”

And, a little sweaty, once more he rehearsed the reasons for having left her when he had so obviously been needed.

Murdoch. The new introduction to his book. But it was no good. He knew now that he should never have returned to Spain in pursuit of … what? Ghosts who were to prove maddeningly elusive. The callow boy he had once been.

T
HE DAY BEFORE, YET ANOTHER REPORTER HAD TRIED
the cottage, this one from
Maclean’s
, wearing tinted aviator glasses, a safari suit, and Chelsea boots.

“Looking for somebody?” Reuben asked, stopping him on the dirt road.

“Shapiro’s place.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m a personal friend of his.”

“Well, yeah, right,” Reuben said, looking him up and down, his grin lascivious, “but you don’t have to tell me, honey. I could see that.”

“Hey now, look here,” the reporter said, indignant, “I didn’t mean that kind of friend.”

“Yeah, well. Sure. Now I only work here. But you see that old bastard up there on the porch aiming that shotgun right at your family jewels? Well, you take one step closer and he’ll spray you with salt and pepper.”

“Can we talk?”

“Over here,” Reuben said, pulling him behind a tree.