The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (32 page)

I wrote the name beneath Andy’s and circled the initials of their given names, Andrue and Eric.

“You see it, don’t you, Joanne?” Hilda McCourt was saying. “That delicate boy, Eric Spenser Primrose, grew up to be Rick Spenser. Isn’t that a shocker? When I saw him after Andy’s funeral I knew there was something in Rick Spenser’s face that I recognized, but of course, I was upset. I remember you offering the explanation that I was just responding to the familiarity of celebrity. I didn’t care for that explanation, Joanne, and I was right not to. They can get grey or bald or even fat but I always remember my students’ faces. Still” – she laughed – “Eric Primrose being Rick Spenser strained even my powers. The last place one would think to look for a thin boy is in a fat man. Anyway, there’s our mystery solved.”

On the
TV
screen, Rick’s face dissolved and was replaced
by a commercial for camera film. A handsome family was getting ready for Christmas. Words came on the screen: “For the times of your life.”

Hilda’s voice sounded in my ear. “And you can’t blame him for dropping the ‘Primrose.’ The jokes would have plagued him forever, and he suffered so with them. Memories are coming back to me now. Our grade twelve curriculum, for example. We used to do William Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose.’ Do you know it, Joanne?”

I said the lines mechanically in a voice that sounded like Lori Evanson’s.

“You must have had a good teacher,” Hilda McCourt said admiringly. “Well, you can imagine what high-school children did with that poem and an effeminate boy named Primrose.”

On the screen, the president of the United States boarded Air Force One and went somewhere.

“Yes,” I said, “I can imagine.”

“Joanne, this has been a shock for you, hasn’t it? But no harm done. I assure you, Eric behaved very handsomely when I confronted him with it, if ‘confronted’ isn’t too strong a word. He said he was upset that day, but he always finds it difficult to be reminded of those times. That’s understandable,
I think. Adolescence must have been a painful time for him.”

“When did you talk to Rick?”

“Early this afternoon. I called him just before lunch.”

On the television, there were pictures of a benefit production of a Broadway musical. The choreographer had died of aids the week before. “One more reminder,” said the announcer. The prime minister and his family, bundled into handsome fall sportswear, were going to Harrington Lake for the long weekend. Everybody was on the move. I reached over and turned them all off, vanquished them.

“Joanne, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m all right, Hilda – just assimilating,” I said and wondered at my choice of words.

“Good. Eric suggested that I shouldn’t tell you. He said you’d been under a great deal of stress.”

“Yes,” I repeated dully, “a great deal of stress. Hilda, I’m grateful for your help – truly. I have to go. I have things to do.”

I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I hung up the receiver and sat staring at the television set as if I could conjure up his face, make him materialize from the hidden electronic dots.

“You bastard,” I said to the empty screen. Despite the atropine, my heart was pounding. “You murderous son of a bitch.” I stood up and grabbed my robe. There was something I had to see.

At the bottom of the stairs, Peter’s snow boots lay abandoned. I shoved my bare feet into them and grabbed a ski jacket from a coat hook in the entranceway. It was an old one of Mieka’s, ripped under the arms and heavy with buttons and pins from rock groups that, by now, had disbanded and gone their separate ways. I put the ski jacket on over my nightgown and walked out the back door and across the yard to the garage.

The door to the granny flat was still open. It had been open all day. My legs were trembling, but I climbed the stairs. I knew what I wanted.

It was in the vertical files for the current year, in a box marked “August 28.” No other reference was necessary. I slipped it out of its box, checked the label and slid it into the
VCR
. My hands were trembling. I had had the tape for weeks. A woman I knew in the newsroom at
CNRC-TV
had given it to me when she heard about the book I was writing, but until that moment, I hadn’t been able to face looking at it.

I hit the play button and it was August again. There were crowd shots. I recognized a few people, sweating and happy, and with a start, I saw the man from the poultry association brushing barbecue sauce on chicken halves that were just beginning to sputter and smoke.

I hit the fast-forward button. There was the makeshift stage, empty still. There was Dave Micklejohn, bringing Roma on stage. And there was Eve, looking the way she always did in public, strained and anxious, ready to bolt. Then Dave leaned toward her and whispered something, and she smiled.

In that moment, Eve Boychuk’s face was transformed. She was both carefree and lovely. There couldn’t have been more than a handful of such times in her life, and now her face was waxy white as she lay beneath stiff hospital sheets, her wrists blooming blood. “Eric Primrose, you bastard, you’ll pay for this, you’ll pay for doing this to her,” I said, and my breath made little clouds in the cold air of the granny flat.

On the television, the big woman who would hand Andy the black Thermos of water appeared at the top of the portable staircase at the back of the truck, and in the cold, dead room, I stopped breathing. She picked her way carefully through the snakes of wires from the sound system and
finally, safely across the stage, she put the leather speech folder on the podium.

He always did that, handed the speech to someone who’d be onstage before him, so he could bound on boyish, spontaneous. There she was, putting the folder down so carefully, right where we had told her. Inside was the sheet of paper, grey as a dove’s breast, and on it the Blake poem, and at the top of the page, two letters,
A
and E, curled together like the initials of a husband and wife on a Victorian headstone.
A
and
E
, Andy and Eric. But Andy hadn’t seen that – not yet.

My teeth were chattering. In the yard, my dogs were barking, but I was transfixed. Craig Evanson was on the screen, introducing Andy. Another victim, but I didn’t want to see him. I pushed the fast-forward button. There was a blur then Andy was there, suntanned, so slight in his blue jeans and cotton shirt as he walked across the stage to his death. He was laughing. Then he took off his baseball cap and waved it. Graceful, doomed, he was, in that moment, the last of the boys of summer. In the cold moonlight in the yard, my dogs were barking frantically, but I was lost in the eternal summer of Andy’s last picnic.

Then he turned from the podium and the woman in the flowered dress handed him the tray and on the tray were the black Thermos and the glass. I couldn’t watch it. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I saw myself on the
TV
screen kneeling by Andy, twenty pounds heavier, and so strong and capable. I had forgotten I was like that. I pulled the hem of my nightgown around my knees for warmth. Rick Spenser was on the screen, his back to the podium, shakily raising the glass to his lips. Then there was a blur. In the next shot, I was wrapped around his knees, and he was coming down hard.

In the yard the dogs were frenzied, yelping and growling. On the tape, Andy and Rick were lying on a metal truck bed
under the August sun. Then Rick was talking, but not on television. He was in the doorway of the granny flat, his bulk blocking out the moonlight. I could smell fear, but he didn’t sound afraid. He sounded like he knew he was going to win.

“I have always detested ad hockery, Joanne.”

“What?” My voice was barely audible.

“You had an excellent education. You know the meaning of the term ‘ad hoc,’ and this whole affair has reeked of it. Everything cobbled together on the spot. You know, I’m not a monster. It’s never been a question of calibrating the attacks against you. I’ve just had to do the best I could. Improvising, although I’ve always shrunk from improvising.”

He moved closer, and I could see his face in the moonlight. He didn’t look like a maniac, but he was saying terrible things.

“It’s working, though, Joanne, and that, of course, is the test, isn’t it. There are no loose ends. Certainly there’s nothing to connect me with this place tonight. I’ve discovered there’s an advantage to dealing with women. There’s always such a miasma of hysteria around them that you can get away” – he smiled a little sadly – “well, with almost anything. You’re not quite as dramatic as Eve, but still, no one would be surprised if you walked down the stairs and into the garage. I think it would be a very logical way for a despondent woman to die, asleep in her own car with the motor running.

“I talked to Mieka yesterday. I told her I feared you were heading for another breakdown. Do you know what she said? She said, ‘That would just kill her. She’s such a good mother. I think she’d rather die than let us see her like that again.’ Your own daughter, Joanne.” He shrugged and gave me his professional smile, amused at the vagaries of the world. “Look at yourself. You’ve even dressed for the part – a crazy woman in a nightgown, a ripped ski jacket, a man’s
snow boots and bare legs,” he said, bending closer and shaking his head.

“You were wearing a poppy,” I said.

“What?” I had thrown him the wrong line, and he was at a loss. “What did you say?”

Underneath my nightgown I could feel my knees knocking together, but my voice sounded okay. “Half an hour ago on your special report on the news, three million people saw you wearing a poppy on the day after Remembrance Day. A man as fastidious as you … Someone’s sure to put it together. Some smart young cop or some assistant producer you’ve been snotty with. Maybe even some hick out here in the prairies. Most of us know about the magic of videotaping by now.”

I had no plan. I watched his face in the flickering light from the VCR. There seemed to be something tentative in his smile.

Ad hockery. “It’s just a matter of time now, Eric,” I said. He flinched from the name as if it were a blow. I’d scored a hit. “They’re going to catch you, Eric, and then everyone will know. Not just that you’re a murderer – that still has a certain Nietzschean appeal.” I was shaking uncontrollably. “Or even that you’re gay.” My voice quavered. “That still has a certain cachet. But they’ll find those old pictures, you know.” In the silvery light, I could see a fine line of saliva between his lips. It was now or never. “Little Eric Primrose, the fairy boy. They’ll find those old pictures, and they’ll have a field day. Rick Spenser, the erudite friend of people who matter, is really little Eric Primrose. Little Eric, the delicate fairy boy who dreamed of weddings and lace and who connected his initial to his beloved’s with little curlicues and flowers. Just like a girl. O rose thou art sick. Blake will be in the headlines, Eric.”

As I talked, I stood and walked toward him, and he backed
away as if I were exerting some kind of physical force. I had a vague idea that I might back him out the door and knock him over the balcony, like in the movies, but I was too sick and too terrified to focus on any plan.

Ad hockery. I had to keep talking. His chest was heaving, and there was an animal smell in the room. I didn’t know whether it was coming from him or me. He seemed mesmerized. The crueller the cut, the more intent he became.

“Poor Andy, having you in his life. But, you know, he did find real love with Soren Eames. He and Soren were equals. Soren told me once that when Andy touched him for the first time, he knew what it felt like to bloom. To bloom, Eric. It must have been so good for them both.”

He was going to break.

“I don’t blame Andy for falling out of love with you. Not just because you’re fat, but because you’re a fake.”

He braced himself against the desk. His fingertips touched the base of the crystal pitcher he had given me. His hand curled around the handle, then he raised it like a club above his head. Moonlight streamed through the open door and caught the curve of the pitcher. He looked as if he were holding a club of pale fire.

My eyes lost their focus. I blinked, then I blinked again. Standing on the balcony, just behind Rick, was Ali Sutherland.

She was a shade less than six feet tall, and heavy. She seemed like a match for him. She was looking straight at me. It was hard to read her expression in the half light, but she nodded her head slightly, and I took that as a sign of agreement and encouragement. I took a deep breath.

“Are you going to kill me with that? That would bring the total to three, wouldn’t it? Four, if you want to count Eve, who’s as good as dead, lying on her back, counting the cracks in the ceiling. Five, if you want to count her son – that beautiful bright boy who’s a vegetable now, his sister dead.” Then
suddenly I knew. “Because that day, before Eve got behind the wheel of the car, you made sure she knew, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

He nodded, raised the pitcher higher and took a step toward me.

I moved toward him and I put my face so close to his I could smell his breath. And then very low, I said, “Why didn’t you just kill yourself, Eric?”

He spit his answer at me. “Because, bitch, I wasn’t the one who deserved to die.”

Behind Rick’s shoulder Ali Sutherland looked at me levelly, then I saw the slightest nod of her head, almost imperceptible. I thought, she’s going to make her move.

Ali’s voice and her hand came at the same time. “You must be so tired of all this, Rick,” she said, and she reached from behind him and took the crystal pitcher. And then, very calm and unhurried, she led Rick out the door, put the vase in the window box, took Rick’s arm and, murmuring reassurances, led him carefully down the stairs. I stood on the little balcony and watched them cross the yard and go into my house, two large and handsome people, silvery in the moonlight, visitors from another country, going home.