The Brutal Heart (30 page)

I scanned the street. I was still alone, but Francesca’s silhouette against the brick wall of the abandoned warehouse was a beacon, a reminder that at the moment there was someone even more frightened than me, so I kept on going.

I heard the familiar baritone before I realized Sean was beside me. “Hey, here you are,” he said. “Mieka called me at the office. She was worried about your being down here alone at night. She was right. Anything could happen to a woman alone on this street.” He reached over and took the backpack from me. “In a neighbourhood like this, a woman needs her arms free in case of a sudden threat.”

“I promised to deliver the bears myself,” I said. “May I have them back?”

“Why would you want them?” he said. “They’re disgusting.”

I tried to grab the backpack, but Sean was too fast for me. He threw it to the sidewalk. Reflexively, I bent to grab it. As my hand closed around the straps, he brought his foot down on my fingers. “Garbage,” he said pleasantly. “Not worth dying for.”

After that, everything happened very quickly. Francesca sprang out of the shadows, picked up her bears from the sidewalk, and cradled them against her breast. Then she began yelling. The words were the same words she’d shouted in the courthouse lobby, but this time their target was clear. Francesca’s eyes scanned Sean’s face. “I know who you are,” she yelled. “I know who you are, and I saw what you did. You are evil,” she said. “Evil. Evil. Evil. I saw what you did. You killed her. You killed Cristal.”

Sean raised his arm, and the blade of the knife he was holding flashed in the harsh security lights. He tried to plunge it into Francesca’s chest, but the bears protected her. When he raised the knife again, she ran. He watched her disappear down the block, then he laughed to himself. “Nobody will believe a word she says.” He turned to me. “You, on the other hand, are a credible witness. But you’re in a dangerous neighbourhood, Joanne. Anything can happen here. That’s what I told Mieka.” He moved closer. “A woman like Francesca is unpredictable. She forgets her meds, she sees a good Samaritan like you as a threat, and she attacks.” As he created the scene in his mind, Sean’s voice became dreamy, mesmerizing. He put the point of the knife against my chest. I could feel the steel through the thin material of my shirt.

“I’ll tell them I was too late,” he said. “That Francesca had already killed you by the time I arrived.”

I took a step back, but Sean stayed with me and so did the knife. “Zack knows about your relationship with Cristal,” I said. “Someone recognized your picture in the paper this morning and told him.”

“No,” he said, and there was real anguish in his voice.

“If I tell Zack you helped me, he’ll defend you,” I said. “You know how good he is. He’ll make a jury understand how it was for you.”

Sean’s eyes met mine. “You lying bitch,” he said. I felt the knife cut my skin and I watched as it sliced a half-moon over the top of my breast to my armpit. A dark pool of blood spread over my white blouse and then I collapsed on the sidewalk. My cell began ringing – Zack’s ring tone: the Beach Boys singing “God Only Knows.”

When Angus was born, I hemorrhaged. Ian had left the delivery room to make calls announcing that we had a new son and that mother and child were doing well, then suddenly I wasn’t doing well. A nurse placed Angus on a metal table against the wall. He screamed in protest, but no one attended to him. Everyone was clustered around me. A great warmth was spreading beneath me, and I heard my doctor’s voice, sharp with tension, saying, “Christ, we’re losing her.” And then nothing until I woke up in intensive care.

After I fell to the ground outside Acme Store-All, I felt that same warmth spreading over me. This time I knew what was happening. I was being bathed in my own blood. I wondered how long I had left, if I would ever see Zack or my granddaughters or any of my children again. Then suddenly there were people in uniforms around me – police and
EMT
technicians. A young voice flatly declarative said, “The knife went deep. We’re losing her.”

There was darkness and then – finally – there was light. It was the sickly light of the intensive care unit and I could see the faces of James, the dean of our cathedral, and Zack. I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t form words, and I drifted away again. When I awoke again, Zack was alone. This time when I moved my lips, I was able to articulate a single word: “Hello.”

“Hello,” Zack said. Reaching through the tubes and wires that measured my vital signs wasn’t easy for a man in a wheelchair, but there wasn’t much my husband couldn’t do. As he touched my hair, he gave me a triumphant grin. “Made it,” he said. “You’re going to be all right, Ms. Shreve.” His fingers stroked my cheek. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“Yes,” I said. “A toothbrush.” Then, for the only time in our life together, I saw my husband weep.

My recovery was slow and frustrating. Someone once told me that the greatest division of life is the one that exists between the world of the well and the world of the sick. After a lifetime of buoyant good health, I was suddenly on the other side of the chasm. Even after I was released from hospital, I lived in a grey world of doctors’ appointments, surgeries, and trips to the rehabilitation centre. Most days it seemed I took one step forward and two steps back. My body had always done what I wanted it to do. It was a gift I had taken for granted, revelling in its strength and its seemingly endless ability to bring me pleasure. Now, it was broken, and I was furious.

Every morning I resolved to remain positive, but whenever I watched Ginny and her daughters running with my dogs, or found myself exhausted after swimming three laps in the pool, or was unable to embrace my husband, I raged.

My family had always seen me as strong and capable. Now Zack hovered, and my granddaughters were tentative about proposing games or adventures. Taylor checked on me constantly. “Just making sure you’re still there,” she said once, then fled, horrified at the fear she had revealed. Whenever Peter and Dacia stopped by, I would see them laughing as they walked arm and arm up the street, but they would tamp down their joy as they approached our front door. I was, after all, an invalid. Even Angus became considerate – phoning every night – just to check in.

The fact that three of the people I most loved felt guilty for what had happened made matters even worse. Zack was angry at himself for not calling Ed back, Ed was angry at himself for not pressing the issue, and Mieka believed herself directly responsible for Sean’s attack on me. The old playfulness between my daughter and me disappeared. She became obsessively solicitous, anticipating my every wish or impulse. She dropped by several times a day with something she thought I might like to eat or read or listen to. It was all too much.

The morning before Taylor’s Farewell, I exploded. It was hot, I was in pain from my surgery, and the bandages on the wound made movement awkward. I was alone in the kitchen making a frittata for lunch when I dropped the bowl of eggs I was beating. The Pyrex bowl skittered across the floor unbroken, but the eggs spilled everywhere. The prospect of getting down on my hands and knees to clean them up with my useless right arm was too much. “Motherfuck!” I said. “I am so useless. I can’t even make a frittata.” The explosion brought Zack into the kitchen. I glared at him. “What am I supposed to do with this mess?”

Zack picked up the Pyrex bowl, put it on the counter, looked at the eggs on the floor then at me. “Why don’t you call the dogs?” he said.

So I did, and at that moment, my real recovery began.

We ordered a feast from the Bamboo Gardens. It was an in-service day at Taylor’s school, so she and Gracie Falconer joined us for lunch. We all ate far too much and laughed hard. Even the dogs seemed to relax. That afternoon, we took the granddaughters to the playground, threw pennies into the waterfall at the park, and made wishes.

The question of what I would wear to the Farewell had been vexing me. The only dress that fit over my surgical bandage was sleeveless, and the effect was not pleasant. When we got back from the park, Ginny met us at the front door. She’d been rummaging through her closet for an outfit to wear to a job interview and she’d found a lacy shawl that she thought might be the ticket. It was. The shawl not only covered the bandage but made my very simple shift look almost elegant. Clearly, my luck was changing.

The gymnasium at Lakeview School was overheated and overcrowded, the parents were overdressed, and the kids were overstimulated. The girls giggled; the boys were loud. As Taylor had predicted, all the girls except her were wearing sparkly T-shirts, short ruffly skirts, and sandals with plastic flowers. To a man, the boys wore cargo shorts and open-necked shirts. Everybody had a fresh haircut. Taylor’s classmates looked exactly as boys and girls should look leaving Grade Eight, shiny and full of promise.

The formal program was mercifully brief. Following Taylor’s orders, Zack and I had voted against a PowerPoint presentation of baby pictures, but we had been outnumbered. Since we didn’t have any baby pictures of Taylor, we chose a photo I’d taken the day she came to live with us. She was lying on her stomach on the kitchen floor, drawing an Amazon butterfly, and the electric-blue flash she had sketched with her marker seemed to fly off the page. She was four years old. There was no lame poetry, but the principal’s brief speech managed to embrace every cliché about graduation that had ever been uttered. The meal, served in the Resource Room by the Grade Sevens, featured ham, perogies, and cabbage rolls. For dessert there were butter tarts, peanut-butter marshmallow squares, and Nanaimo bars.

No surprises except one. After we’d eaten, the principal announced that Taylor Love would offer the toast to the parents. We all picked up our plastic glasses of ginger ale and Taylor rose to her feet. As she stood gazing over the room, she looked so much like Sally that my eyes stung.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she began, “but Ms. Jacobs said that all I have to do is speak from the heart. So that’s what I’m going to do, and I hope that what I say is what everyone else in the class would like to say to their parents. Before I start, I want to point out my mum and dad. They’re sitting over there: my dad’s the one in the wheelchair and my mum’s the one with her arm in a sling.” Someone laughed nervously. Taylor looked in the laugher’s direction. “That’s all right. You can laugh. We do.” This time the laughter was general. Zack and I exchanged glances and Taylor continued. “Anyway, I just want to say thanks to Mum and Dad for being there whenever I need you and whenever I think I don’t but I really do. Thanks for helping me with my homework and teaching me to swim and caring about my art. Thanks for driving me places and waiting for me when I’m not ready. Thanks for always making my friends feel they’re welcome in our home. Thanks for always making me feel I’m welcome in our home. I love you very much.” She raised her glass. “To my mum and dad. To all the mums and dads.”

Zack raised his glass and cleared his throat. “That’s the first time she’s ever called me Dad,” he whispered.

“First time she’s ever called me Mum,” I said.

“Guess we finally made the grade,” Zack said. We touched glasses.

“To Mum and Dad,” I said.

“To Mum and Dad,” Zack replied.

After that night, there were many good moments. Remembering a scene from an old movie he’d liked, Zack came home one night with a bottle of nail polish and an invitation to join him in the bedroom. There, for the first time but not the last, he painted my toenails. Mieka drove me to Bushwakkers for a Wakker Burger and a brew and by the end of the evening we were back to our old easy ways with each other. Angus called a lot either to talk law with Zack, explain law to me, or keep me
au courant
on life without Leah. She was letting her hair grow, and she was still seeing Mr. Empathy, but Angus was hopeful. The first asparagus appeared in the market and the first strawberries, and when I thought of the bounty the garden of earthly delights would produce before the frost, I felt a piercing joy. Peter and Dacia got a new puppy – another rescue dog. They named him Hugo. Dacia taught Maddy how to juggle.

Sean Barton’s trial opened on a bracing October day. Zack watched as I got dressed for court. “Are you determined to do this?”

“I have to see it through,” I said.

He moved his chair closer. “Why?”

I reached over and touched the vertical line on his cheek. Since the night Sean attacked me, it had grown deeper. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I just need to understand.”

“Jo, there’s nothing to understand. The reasons a supposedly normal person does
A
rather than
B
are a mystery. Trying to figure Sean out is pointless. He’s a sociopath. Something in his wiring is twisted.”

“Maybe I need to understand that.”

Zack’s smile was weary. “Well, if it matters to you, it matters to me. I’m going with you.”

I tied Taylor’s Paul Klee scarf and checked the result in the mirror. “I was counting on that,” I said.

I hadn’t seen Sean Barton since the night of the attack. As I entered the courthouse and walked under the mosaic of the God of Laws holding aloft the balance of right and wrong, my pulse raced. Zack was beside me, and there were officers of the law and of the court everywhere, but I knew that the forces that drove Sean Barton had nothing to do with the law or even with knowing that right and wrong were opposing ends of a continuum. Sean was
sui generis
, and no system of laws could protect his fellow beings against his hungry amorality.

He had elected to act as his own counsel. He had been disbarred, so as he walked into the courtroom and took his place at the counsel’s table, he wasn’t wearing the traditional barrister’s robes. His street clothes had been carefully chosen – a double-breasted charcoal suit, a slate shirt, and a tightly knotted striped silk tie in shades of eggplant and mauve – penitential but not confessional. His blond hair was freshly barbered, and as he walked past me, he flashed me his disarming crooked smile. Zack’s hand tightened on my arm.