The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (21 page)

Andy’s back was to the camera. Coatless, hands outstretched, he was plunging into the crowd at a rally in Victoria Park. We saw the people from his angle: hands reaching out to him, touching him, faces raised to his.

It was a scene all of us who’d been involved in politics had seen a hundred times. But Colin Grant had played with the light to show what seemed to happen when Andy walked through a crowd. The sun was behind Andy, so that while his shape was dark, the faces in the crowd were illuminated by a light that seemed to come from him. In truth, he could do that to a crowd. It was, I thought, a great photo. But in the brochure Soren Eames handed me, someone had scrawled a word in dark lipstick over Andy’s back and head. The word was “Faggot.”

“I think we should begin at the beginning,” I said, my voice shaking. And he did – with the night he and Andy became lovers. He told his story with such restraint, but every so often his voice would be soft with joy at the simple pleasure of saying his lover’s name or remembering a moment of intimacy. His voice was full of wonder when he described the night he and Andy walked at dusk to the prayer centre. “I wasn’t his first lover, but he was mine … Oh, Joanne, that first time he touched me, I thought, ‘This is what it feels like to bloom’ – as if I were unfolding under his hands until the dark centre of what I was came into the
light. I haven’t had a particularly happy life, but that night everything changed for me – for us both. It wasn’t a casual intimacy for either of us, Jo. I want you to know that. Andy would want you to know that. There hadn’t been anyone before for me, and there had just been one other for him – just one, but he ended that when we fell in love.

“Andy was a person of such honour. That first night we wanted each other so much, but he didn’t begin with me until he’d broken off with the other man.” He picked up the brochure. “Joanne, this obscenity doesn’t make sense because no one knew. We were so careful. For both of us, there were so many other people involved. You, for example – Andy knew how much you’d given to his leadership campaign, and if this had come out … Well, you can imagine. Professionally, it would have been the end for me, of course. The good people at Wolf River think my Porsche is kind of flamboyant and daring, but a gay pastor?” He shrugged and smiled sadly. “However, it was Eve we felt we had to protect the most. There hadn’t been anything between them for years, but I think Andy would have endured anything rather than cause her to suffer. He said she had suffered enough. She didn’t know about us – about me. I’m certain of that. But I always had the sense that she knew the truth about Andy, and I think she knew about the first one.”

“Who was he?”

“Andy was a man of honour, you know that, Jo. I never knew the first man’s name. I do know they were together for a long time – for years. Andy was terribly shaken about severing their relationship.”

Soren looked close to breaking. But I had to press him. “Could it have been him, Soren? Could it have been that first man who killed Andy?”

He didn’t answer. He was watching the cold rain falling on the leaves. Finally, he turned to me.

“Jo, what am I going to do about all this?” He tapped the brochure.

“About all this? I don’t think you have much choice. I think you have to go to the police. Soren, everything’s connected.” I pointed to the initials on the envelope. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen that design. It was on a poem someone put in Andy’s speech folder the day he was killed.”

He looked dazed. I knew how he felt. There had, I thought, been too many shocks.

“Soren, are you all right?”

He held the ceramic cabbage up to the light and turned it gently. “Jo, it’s not the first time I’ve seen those letters, either. I’ve been trying to remember exactly where I saw them before. I know it was at Andy’s house in the city. We were looking through some of his old English texts one day, and I saw those initials drawn together that way a couple of times.”

“Did you say anything?”

“I always hated to bring up the subject of Eve.”

“So you assumed the
E
and
A
were Eve and Andy?”

“It seemed logical. Who else would it be? And that’s one reason I don’t want to go to the police. It was always so important to Andy that Eve be protected – I want to do that for him. And, Jo, I don’t want people to know about Andy. I don’t want anything to hurt him.”

His eyes were full of tears. I reached over and touched his hand. “Soren, he wouldn’t want anything to hurt you.”

He looked up and started to say something. Just then the phone rang. It was Ali Sutherland, breathless, between patients, calling to wish me a happy birthday.

“We are counting the days till Thanksgiving,” she said. “Guess what I bought? China with turkeys on it – ten place settings. It’s your birthday present but we get to use it first. You’ll love it, Jo – a little border of fruits and vegetables and everything – god-awful but right up your alley. There goes
my other phone – one of us will meet you at the train – happy birthday!”

When I hung up, Soren was zipping his bomber jacket. “I’ve taken up too much of your time today. I’ll call you in a few days and let you know what I decide about the police.” He touched my cheek with his fingertips. “Thanks for listening. It was good just to say his name.” He smiled. “And, Joanne, many, many happy returns.”

“For you, too,” I said. I walked him to the door and watched him go down the front steps.

“Soren, I’m glad Andy had you.”

He bounded up the stairs like a boy, kissed me on the cheek and gave me a smile of indescribable sweetness.

“Thank you. Jo, you can’t know how much that means to me.” He ran down the walk, jumped into the Porsche and took off. Just as he turned the corner the rain turned to snow, huge wet flakes that fell heavily on everything, and I thought, “I’ll call him tonight and see if he got home all right.” But I never did.

The postman came with a fistful of birthday cards, and a note of thanks from Eve in her curiously schoolgirlish handwriting. There was a Creeds box with a pretty striped silk scarf from Howard Dowhanuik. (A memory – Howard coming to me the Christmas after Marty left. “Jo, what do I get all the women in the office? Booze seems a little crude.” And me: “Well, Howard, you can never go wrong with a scarf.” Indeed.) There was a first-edition James Beard cookbook from my old friend Nina Love, and a handsome book on Frida Kahlo from Nina’s daughter, Sally. I looped the silk scarf around my neck, put the James Beard and the Kahlo books on the kitchen table and sat down and looked through my birthday cards.

Then I went upstairs to shower. I stood under the hot water and thought about Soren Eames and Andy.

How could I not have known? That was the thought that kept floating to the top of my consciousness. I shampooed my hair and soaped myself. How could I not have known? I had known Andy for seventeen years. For ten of the years we’d been close, and for two we had been as close as a man and woman working together can be. But it had never crossed my mind. How did I feel about it? Angry. Not angry at it, but angry at Andy for not telling me. Not trusting me – but why would he? Why should he? I turned the cold water down and the shower beat down on me hot and steamy. Why should he tell? Whose life was it anyway?

I went into my room and pulled on jogging pants and a sweatshirt and my old hightops, went downstairs, put the dogs on their leashes, slipped on a slicker I’d bought Peter to wear to football games and headed for the creek. It was still snowing. In October. “Go for it, prairies,” I said as the snow fell steadily, covering the dead leaves. There was no one in the park, so I unhooked the leashes and let the dogs run. Everywhere their feet touched they left a mark.

“A life in translation.” That’s what a gay friend of mine had called it. His name was Carlyle Wise, and he ran a small art gallery in a heritage house he had restored. He had waited until he was forty to come out, and the only time I heard bitterness in his voice was when he talked about his first forty years. “All that deceit,” he had said. “All that energy wasted translating your life into something other people will accept. You’re always a foreigner.”

The dogs had run down the river bank and were swimming downstream – two sleek golden heads cutting through the grey water.

After he came out, Carlyle Wise had established himself as a kind of informal crisis centre for young men troubled by their homosexuality. Several times a year, one of the hospitals’ psychiatric wards would call him, and he would go
down and collect a boy who had attempted suicide, bring him home, arrange for counselling, cook for him, get him started in classes or a job and give him a home until he was ready to start life on his own.

“As I hit my dotage I am reduced to being the Queen Mother of the gay community,” he would say with a laugh. “But you know, Jo, it’s a relief. As Popeye used to say, ‘I yam what I yam.’ ”

Andy had never made it that far. When he died, he was still leading a life in translation, still protecting the secrets of his private world. Somehow that made his death even harder to bear.

The dogs, worried to see me sitting so long on a park bench, came out of the river shaking the wet off, then nuzzled my raincoat. We walked home together through the wet snow. The house was cold and dark. I turned on lights and the furnace, towelled off the dogs and rummaged through the freezer for something good for lunch. I found a container of clam chowder and a loaf of Mieka’s sourdough bread, put them both in the oven to warm and took another hot shower. I ate my lunch at the kitchen table wearing an old flannel robe and a pair of fuzzy slippers I’d always loved. At forty-six, you take your comfort where you find it.

After lunch I made myself a cup of tea, opened a new scribbler and wrote two questions: Who knew about Andy and the first man? Who knew about Andy and Soren? I listed the possibilities. (1) Eve. If she knew about the first man, it would explain her outburst at Disciples the day after Andy was killed. (2) Howard Dowhanuik. He had been Andy’s teacher and friend and the leader of his party. Would Andy have told him so he could weigh the possibilities of trouble ahead? There was a chance he knew about Soren. Andy was, as Soren said, an honourable man. He might have felt he owed Howard that. (3) Dave Micklejohn. He might know
everything. That would explain his outburst at the Par Three. In the early days Andy had stayed with him when the session was on. He was Andy’s oldest friend and probably the closest. (4) Craig Evanson. He and Andy had been in law school together, then in the legislature together all those years. Would he have heard rumours? But he would have told his wife, and Julie Evanson would never have kept quiet about it when Craig and Andy were contesting the leadership. (5) Mr. X. The first man obviously knew there was a new man. Did he know it was Soren Eames?

I looked at my list – a good beginning. I picked up James Beard, went upstairs, curled up with his recipe for honey squash pie and fell into a sound and dreamless sleep.

When I woke it was three o’clock. I felt better. A man from the florist came with a dozen creamy long-stemmed roses from Rick Spenser. My neighbour, Barbara Bryant, brought over a box wrapped in pink paper. Inside was a flowered flannelette nightie. Every year for fifteen years we had given one another a nightie for our birthdays. The first year mine, I remembered, had been black with a lot of lace; now it was long-sleeved flannelette with a granny collar. Milestones.

The boys came home from school cheerful and full of themselves. They had made dinner reservations at Joe T’s, a favourite restaurant of theirs and mine. Peter quietly suggested that if I wanted a pre-dinner drink, I have it at home. They had saved enough for either dinner and a drink or dinner and dessert, and Joe T’s cheesecake was famous. I had my pre-dinner drink at home.

We went to the restaurant, ate a lot and laughed a lot. When we came home, Dave Micklejohn was waiting on the porch with a wicked-looking chocolate cake, a bottle of California champagne and an apology. The kids made a fire and we sat and watched a ball game, and between innings we
talked about school and ball and politics. Andy’s name, of course, came up, and Dave seemed able to talk about him easily and affectionately. The world was starting to piece itself back together, and I was grateful.

A little before 10:00 p.m. the phone rang. On the other end was Rick Spenser. It was good to hear his voice.

“How was your day?” He sounded in high spirits.

“On balance, my day was just fine. Yours must have been wonderful. You sound manic.”

“I am exuberant. I’m talking to you. How was your day really, Jo?”

“Really, it was good – very happy. Now let’s leave the subject of my birthday.” And so we did. We talked about the kids and James Beard’s passion for butter, and I told him a crazy story I’d read in a tabloid about how, from beyond the grave, James Beard had written a health-food cookbook. Rick loved that story and matched it with one about the prime minister, and that led to his final wonderful piece of news. He would be free to join us in Winnipeg for Thanksgiving.

I was glowing when I hung up. By the time I said goodnight to Dave, let the dogs out one last time, turned out the lights and locked the doors, I felt the fragments of the good old life knitting themselves together again. Maturity, I thought, as I walked up the stairs. Forty-six wasn’t going to be so bad after all. When I walked past Mieka’s room I opened the bedroom door and said, “Coping,” in a declaiming theatrical voice. It was a joke we had when the world fell apart. It was a measure of how good I felt that when I pulled Mieka’s door closed, I was smiling.

I had put the dogs on their leashes for their morning run when the phone rang. It was a little before nine o’clock. At first, I thought it was a crank call – for a few long seconds there was background noise, but no one spoke. Then a terrible, unrecognizable voice said:

“Jo, they say I killed him.”

“What? Who?” The dogs were going crazy at the front door. Always when their leads were on, it was time to go. I shouted above the racket, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Who is this?”