All Saints (23 page)

It was stress, he would tell himself again, once he had managed to uncurl and get up and put the scissors back in the kitchen drawer, forcing himself en route to look at the box he had tried to open. It hadn't tipped itself over. Nothing was heaving at the flaps, trying to get out. Stress. Yes. Change of career. Divorce. Moving. Those were three of the big ones.

The day he decided he was having a bona fide breakdown was the day he fished Simon's letter out of his inbox and picked up the phone.

 

“There. I think that should do it.”

Simon is standing on a chair in his office, disabling the smoke detector. It's not as hard as he thought it would be, but he's taking his time. Stalling. Now that the two of them are actually here, ready to start, the evening's agenda is embarrassing him.

“Thank God there's no sprinkler in here.” He sounds over-hearty even to his own ears. “I wouldn't have a clue how to turn one of those things off.” Behind him, Pete says nothing. Simon steps down and carries the chair back to his desk.

He wishes Kelly were here. Missing her has subsided into a distant ache, but every now and then it comes back fresh and sharp, like her voice in his ear.
You've got to do something, Simon. You've got to—I don't know. You tell me. You're the closure expert.

They became lovers shortly after he started writing to Alice Vipond. They didn't have time to get past the awkward stage in bed—too eager or too hesitant, apologizing, assuring each other there was nothing to apologize for.

Kelly was his first since Ruth's death. They had talked and e-mailed back and forth for a year before touching each other. There had been a feeling of inevitability, much like what Simon thought people in arranged marriages must feel during their engagement—as if the two of them were riding a wave of expectation and implied blessing. There was no point trying to swim against it, and no need to hurry. “Do you think we should slow down?” Kelly had joked when he finally kissed her for the first time after a long talk on a bench in a graveyard. “At this rate, by Christmas we'll be holding hands.”

She had been interested at first in his correspondence with Alice Vipond, had Googled the old newspaper articles, could hold her own when Alice and her crime came into the conversation. “Hearing from you must be the high point of her week.” He savoured that comment of hers, running it through his mind again and again.

He should never have let Alice know about Kelly's existence. But when she wrote asking for details of his life, she made the request so humbly that he was moved. What could it hurt to give her a few bits and pieces, something to focus on through her long institutionalized day?

So he told her about his routines. Jokes he exchanged with his secretary. Odd requests he got sometimes for wedding ceremonies. A red flag did go up in his mind when he started to write about Kelly. But he kept things light, casting her as a parishioner he was starting to get fond of. Someone he might approach. Once he had retired from All Saints, needless to say.

He should have known that Alice would smell the half-truth. The second he dropped the first letter containing Kelly's name through the slot of the mail box, he thought,
She's got me.
It wasn't a rational fear. He hadn't told Alice anything she could use against him. Even if he had, she was not allowed to keep his letters in her room and had no access to the Internet. Besides, what credibility could she have—a criminally insane mass murderer of children? What could she do to him?

It started with Kelly making rueful jokes—
Other women have guys who are into Internet porn. Me, I'm competing with an old lady in a loony bin.

Then—
Do you think we could talk about something besides Alice Vipond?

Then—
She's between us, Simon. She's in our bed. I can see her. I can see you thinking about her.

Could he have called Kelly tonight? Told her what he was going to do? She had said it was all right to call now and then. Tentatively, wary of hurt, he lets himself imagine picking up the phone. Hearing her voice. She might have joked with Pete, made him smile with one of her quirky sayings. Mitigated between the two of them. Because God knows, they could use some common ground. Besides Alice.

Fuck Alice.

He sits back down in his chair. Picks up his prayer book. Opens it.

Fuck Alice.

Great attitude to have toward the dear departed, he thinks, making himself smile at Pete.

 

Pete has been watching Simon, consciously taking in details, as if he might have to describe him to the police or pick him out of a line-up. Well, there is something clandestine about what the two of them are doing here tonight.

There's no point in wondering what Jean would have to say about it. Not that he misses her. But she was there. Somebody to talk to. Dump on at the end of the day.

He watches Simon step down and carry the chair back behind his desk. The man is graceful, for all his rangy build. Sports in his background? Basketball? Dance, even? Now he's opening a small book. Running his finger down the contents page. Turning to a place near the back.

“I thought we'd use the traditional
Book of Common Prayer
.” Simon hands a second copy across the desk to Pete. “It's the book Alice would have grown up with. She went to church here at All Saints, as I think I mentioned to you. She was a Church School teacher, in fact, back in the 1930s when she would have been in her teens. Quite possibly sat once or twice in your chair. Sorry. That's a bit creepy.”

“It's okay,” Pete says. But he does look down at the chair. Oak. Thin black leather padding on the seat and armrests. Metal studs. He needs to focus on something. That odd stage fright is back. Except now it's more like the dread he feels when he's inside the Brian dream.

“Maybe we should just start.” Simon is sounding a touch impatient. “The service begins on page 591.”

Pete opens his prayer book. Finds the place. Reads,
The Order for the Burial of the Dead.
Stares at the words. Closes the book. Puts it back on the desk.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “This seemed like a good idea when we talked. But right now I can't remember why I said yes to it.”

Simon closes his own prayer book. Waits for a moment. Then says, “Do you remember the kids Alice killed?”

Pete looks at him. “Of course I do. I was almost one of them.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Some of them. Most of them, probably.”
Brian.

Simon pulls a pad of paper toward him. Picks up a pen and clicks it. “Please tell me all the names you can remember.”

“You want their names.”

“Please. It might help. Both of us.”

Oh, what the fuck.
Pete puts himself back inside his grade two classroom. Sees the coloured paper cut-outs—autumn leaves, pumpkins—scotch-taped to the window. The blackboard. Miss Vipond's big desk up at the front. All the little desks in rows. He starts with the first row.

“Okay. There was Sharon Fulton. Andrew Stenkowski. Douglas Little.”

Brian.

Simon finishes writing. “Any more? Take your time.”

“Hendrik Vandeven. Diane—Look, maybe this isn't—”

“Please. I think it's important that we say their names.”

“All right. Where was I?”

Simon looks down at the pad. “You said Diane.”

“Diane. Diane Verway. Gail Darby. Allan Ramsden. Jimmy Suzuki. Linda Miller. Eddie Avolio. Sammy Goldsmith.”

Brian Bellingham.

“That's all. All the names I can remember.”

Simon puts his pen down. “Okay. What if we were to incorporate their names into the service? Would that make this possible for you?”

After a second, Pete nods.

“Is there anything else we should do? Anything that I should do?”

“Yeah. There is. You can tell me what's in this for you.”

“For me? Well, as we discussed on—”

“Yes, I remember our phone conversation. You and Alice wrote letters back and forth. You didn't like the business about there being no religious service for her when she died. You feel obligated to do something. Because she was a human being and you're a priest. Okay. Fair enough. I guess. But you could do that all by yourself. Why bring me into it? Why do you need me here?”

All Simon can think of is the dream that woke him that morning. He was a boy again, in his childhood bed. Slowly, as he came awake, he had to remind himself that his sister was not in her room across the hall and his parents not in their own bed downstairs. Then he had to remember that he grew up and became a priest and married a woman named Ruth. But Ruth died. And now there's another woman. Named Kelly. Except there isn't. Because they aren't together any more.

Pete doesn't wait any longer for Simon's answer. “Look. This is just a guess. You tell me if I've got it wrong. I think Alice did something to you. And whatever it was, you can only talk about it to somebody else that she did something to. That sound right?”

Simon nods.

“Okay. How about I tell you exactly what she did to me. And then you return the favour.”

After a moment, Simon nods again.

Pete props his elbows on the arms of the chair. Leans forward, looking into Simon's eyes.

“First of all, I haven't been inside a church since I was married. And before that, I hadn't been in one since I was a kid. We used to go. Everybody did back then. I went to Sunday School. The whole bit. But we stopped. After.” His last word hangs in the air.

“Your parents lost their faith?” Simon prompts. “As a result of—?”

“What my parents lost was my father's business. Aspinall's Pharmacy. The big chains were starting up then. Maybe one of them would have swallowed Aspinall's anyway. Who knows? But the thing is, nobody whose kid has been murdered wants to have a prescription filled by a neighbour whose kid narrowly missed being murdered. And that's the thing. We were neighbours. The schools were zoned. The kid next door could be in your class. And at the end of the week you might see him again in church. It's not the greatest thing, being the only seven-year-old left for blocks and blocks around. I remember sitting one Sunday morning between my mother and father. Hearing the minister offering prayers for the bereaved parents in the congregation.”

Pete falls silent. All this stuff he hasn't thought about for years.
Do you want to see him, Peter?
His father's voice. Gentle, but insistent.
It's entirely up to you, son
. No it wasn't. He knew what the right answer was, the one his father wanted to hear. The one that wouldn't make him sound like a little fairy.

He straightens up. Clears his throat. “Sorry. Wool-gathering. Where was I? My father. A lot of his regular customers started going to other pharmacies—miles out of their way. So that was it for Aspinall's. Dad went to work behind the counter of a Rexall's. And he survived. Made a pretty good living. We all survived. I guess that's what's so remarkable—the sheer normalcy of the lives we ended up living.”

The smell of flowers. Like a taste he couldn't get out of his mouth. And that light trained on the box Brian lay in. On his face. No matter where you were in the room, you couldn't help being drawn to the still mouth, the shut eyes.
Come and say goodbye.
His father's hand engulfing his. Tugging, gently but insistently. Taking him closer and closer—

“Okay. That's me. Bare-assed. You know exactly what Alice did to me. So now it's your turn. What did she do to you?”

Simon looks down at his hands. “She just about destroyed my faith.”

“In God, you mean.”

“No. That's the funny thing. God remained. Everything else went to hell. I could hardly do my job. My—relationships suffered. I went through the motions. But there was no—”

I couldn't get it up.

He and Kelly would be making love. All at once he would flash on that iconic photograph of Alice Vipond being taken into custody. Instead of trying to cover her face she is staring straight into the camera, as if daring it to blink. Staring straight into his eyes.

Pete says, “What was in those letters she sent you? I mean, you already knew what she'd done. It's not as if she could shock you. Or could she?”

“No. She couldn't shock me. But she could play me like a fish. She could read between the lines. Suss out my weaknesses.” He shakes his head. “It was my own fault. I was supposed to be just a friendly outlet for her. A pen pal. A connection with the world outside the institution. But that wasn't good enough for me. So I started by trying to analyze her. I wanted to find the hurt little girl at her centre—the reason she did what she did. And when that didn't work, I tried to get her to confess to me. Show some contrition. So that I could forgive her.” He snorts. “Well, she got me confessing to her. Probably had a big old laugh doing it, too. And she taught me a very good lesson. One I should have learned back in Theology 101.”

“What was that?”

“If Alice Vipond had a black hole where most of us have some kind of moral sense or conscience or empathy, whatever you want to call it, that was just the way God made her. And the reason why was none of my damned business.”

He stops talking. Pete lets the silence hang between them—a friendlier silence.

“So you were right,” Simon goes on. “This isn't about being a priest. This is about getting my woman back.” He smiles wearily. Some of the strain has gone out of his face. “And that's me, as you say. Bare-assed.”

“What's her name? Your woman friend?”