The Find (8 page)

—
♦ —

THE EIGHTH-FLOOR OFFICE OFFERED A VIEW
through Venetian blinds and tinted glass of other office blocks; the street between rose very gently into the distance and bore a steady stream of afternoon traffic, though no sounds from the outside penetrated the room. There was a scent of synthetic fibres and cologne.

‘May I call you by your first name?' Pamela Schott asked, as they took their places across a low glass table. Anna nodded, sipped the coffee the receptionist had poured for her, noticed the shake was with her again and carefully put down her cup.

‘Anna,' Pamela said, removing from the file on the table the faxed copies of the various letters, emails and photographs, ‘what I think would be useful is a full account of what happened in as much detail as you can.'

In the solid, corporate room, she felt that the events of that night weeks ago sounded especially idiotic and unbelievable. Who on earth would behave like this? Why would anyone take it seriously? Yet Pamela, dressed in dark grey relieved by various pieces of delicate, conventional, gold jewellery, sat straight-backed with her feet side by side and her legs parallel. Her face, though, was open and responsive. She waited for each answer, nodded when it came, made occasional notes, frequent interruptions.

‘Were you surprised when he made this suggestion?'

‘Very.'

‘How well did you know Dr Swenson?'

‘We worked together for about four years. I went to his wedding.'

‘I have to ask — were you two
involved
at any time, or was it a possibility?'

‘Well, he was interested, years ago. And when I said no, it caused some trouble. But nothing like this, and as I said, that was many years ago.'

‘Not interested?'

‘No, I didn't think it would be worth the trouble it would create.' A brief smile of acknowledgment, and then twenty minutes later, they emerged from a thicket of dates and times to more general questions:

‘I'd like to know a little more about you, Anna. Are you married? Do you have children?'

‘No.'

‘Do you live with someone?'

‘No.' Anna found herself trying to stare Pamela Schott down and though the other woman did look away eventually, it was not because she'd succeeded.

‘How old are you?' she asked, looking up from her notepad.

‘Thirty-nine. Nearly forty.'

‘How are things otherwise, at work? Your relationships with colleagues, that sort of thing.'

‘Excellent.'

‘Anna,' Pamela Schott said after another long pause. ‘The professional organisations will make their own decisions based on the evidence presented to them, but they are not courts of law and the outcome isn't certain. So there's a choice here for you between a passive or defensive stance and a more proactive one. You were the victim of a sexual assault and I think you can make a complaint about sexual harassment. Universities are very aware of their duties in this respect. But we would have to overcome absence of witnesses, and deal with the fact and that you didn't make your complaint immediately.

‘I feel that you could explain your reluctance to report the matter in a convincing manner. I think you could also consider seeking reparation for the damage done to your well-being and your reputation by the comments reportedly made by Dr Swenson and quoted in this letter from the university.' Pamela Schott leaned back a little in her chair and waited for a response.

‘I'm not sure. I'd much prefer to just— move on. Find a solution. But—'

‘Naturally. But Dr Swenson has taken it further. If you do make any accusations, he'll counter. You need to be prepared for that.'

Anna pushed her hair out of her face. Her hands were damp.

‘There's something—' she began, ‘something which complicates things. I'm in a
difficult situation
,' she heard herself say and then her voice shrivelled up and she had to clear her throat.
Stop
, she told herself, ignored the order, continued: ‘I have some potential health problems. I'm not sure whether this is relevant. I didn't plan to discuss it today. But there is a possibility that there's an organic reason for my lashing out—' Over by the desk, a low tone sounded. ‘I think this is what inhibits me, somehow.' Pamela Schott nodded.

‘People do sometimes lash out. I don't see what you did as beyond the pale, under the circumstances. But can you tell me more? What is this possible medical condition? Or would you prefer to make another appointment?'

The elevator plummeted to the marble-lined lobby and Anna turned her back on the mirror so as not to see her face, contorted with the effort to avoid tears. And in the sudden din of the street, the outside air bitter with exhaust fumes, she struggled to orient herself. Her chest tightened. Blindly, she followed the traffic, took the next right into a slightly quieter street and walked, scarcely aware of where she was or of the intersections crossed.

She strode on, shaking her head at panhandlers and at a middle-aged woman in a beige coat who asked was she all right? And at last found herself in a shady pedestrian street with boxed evergreen shrubs down the middle and a sculpture of a horse at one end. There was a cafÈ opposite a bookstore and she washed her face in their bathroom before taking a seat at one of the tables. She knew, as from a great distance, that she was hungry.

She could scarcely believe what she had said, or how much she had wanted to say it. Who would she tell her secrets to next? Mike Swenson? It was horrifying to realise that part of her wanted to do just that, to explain herself to her enemy, who sat safe and healthy in his office in the university, to beg him to understand what was going on for her.

A young woman with plum-dark lips and a piercing in the side of her nose came to take her order.

Everyone, Vik once told her, lied to their lawyer, even if they don't realise they are doing it. Guilty or innocent, he said, it was just a matter of degree. On the other hand, there was an urge to confess or to be found out: criminals risked their lives to evade justice but later told an unreliable acquaintance the whole story; adulterous partners left the scrawled phone number of their lover where it would be found, failed to wash the scent of sex from their skin before they slipped back into the marital bed. Everyone wanted to be known. More than to know, perhaps.

Until her knuckles had made contact with Mike Swenson's face, she'd worn her silence like a second skin. And because of it, she had not so far been seen as a possibly-doomed-to-be-sick person, but as Dr Anna Silowski. She could, for the most part, control her own thinking about the future. Reticence about her risk had made it easier to cope with since she was the only one who might raise the subject.

But now, as she sat stirring her coffee and half-watching customers emerge from the bookstore opposite, she still could feel the urge to tell, the way it had flooded through her: it was an almost physical thing.

Vik had his own agenda, well-meaning, but an agenda, nonetheless. Mama knew, and she must at all costs be protected. But there was no one else. No one — and then she had found herself telling a professional, a stranger, who had expressed her sympathy and then concluded:

‘I'll think it over, but I really don't feel it is relevant. After all, whatever your medical condition or risk, there was an assault.'

Outside the cafÈ, dusk was falling. Anna pushed aside her plate, paid, took a deep breath and made her way back to the parkade, the beaded lines of lights that led her out of the city.

Her skin seemed to feel every breath of air. She put her foot on the gas, slipped the
Goldberg Variations
into the CD player and let its impartial pulse fill the car.

Darkness, twenty-first-century darkness, rushed by outside her hurtling metal box; her headlamps were reflected, for a moment, in the eyes of a roadside coyote, there — then gone. She turned up the music, drove on, towards home. So, she thought, she must fight. She would not let Mike Swenson elbow her out of her part in the collective attempt to know something of the enormous, intricate story of life on earth: those lost moments found again, sometimes almost whole. She wanted those glimpses — just as she wanted to know the present-day flora and fauna: to identify the blue beardtongue and anemone, hear the horned owl at night and know what it hunted. This was who she was, what she was for, and the find was hers. It was her calling. She could strip away her own assumptions and see what was there; she could entertain hypotheses without becoming too attached. And so, if she had to be— what was it Pamela Schott said?
Proactive
, then she would be.

The town was bathed in yellow streetlight. In the park, presided over by an anatomically incorrect
Apatosaurus
, a few teenagers skateboarded in the floodlit area of the park close to the tennis courts. Night surrounded her again until she arrived outside the house. All the lights were on downstairs. She walked straight through to the kitchen; there on the countertop where she and Janice always left messages was a one-word note:
Hospital
.

—
♦ —

SHE FOLLOWED THE NURSE TO A TINY ROOM
at the end of a long corridor.

Vik rose from a chair by the wall.

‘Anna—' he began, but she did not hear the rest.

Her mother was a tiny shape beneath the covers, her cheeks flattened, her mouth agape, flecks of dried saliva in the corners. She didn't react to touch, or sound; there was no sense that she heard when Anna bent down low to kiss her forehead and say that she was here. There was only the electronic beeping that marked the rhythm of her heart. Her hand was cool and dry.

Vik began in a soft voice to describe the damage wrought by a stroke: both sides paralysed, swallow reflex gone, a risk of heart failure — and even without that the prognosis was poor. It had happened around lunchtime. Why did they not try to contact her? They had, but with no luck. He'd got there as soon as he could. Her jacket, Anna realised, with the phone in its pocket, must still be hanging by the door of the lawyer's office.

‘I came right away. Janice was there. She was fantastic. There was nothing you could have done,' he told her. They spoke very quietly, although, they would have given anything to wake their mother up.

‘They're doing their best,' he said later.

‘You've seen Mama's will? I'm not sure she wants them to do their best.'

‘Thing is, it has no force in law,' Vik said. ‘The fact is—'

‘What do you mean? She's made herself very clear.' He leaned forwards, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. ‘I agree with you, of course,' Vik said, ‘or I think I do. But—' and first his jaw and then his whole face unravelled and hers followed; they clung to each other, pulling tissues from the box.

The room was very warm. The sockets of Mama's eyes deepened and the soft bulges beneath the lids were utterly motionless. Her cheekbones grew more prominent. There was a complete lack of tension in her flesh, just the shallow rise of her chest, and her heart, beating on: Mama, mama, mama.

When Vik went for coffee, Anna took her mother's hand and hummed a lullaby, wanted to feel an answering pressure, a tiny squeeze, to see her eyes flutter, trying even, to open, but nothing happened; things continued as they were and she dozed off, only to be awakened when a buzzer sounded. Staff pushed into the room.

‘I'm sorry,' they told her half an hour later.

Vik did not want to see her body but she did.

Grace lay orderly on her back, her arms to her sides. A shocking absence filled the room, and, Anna thought, how she would have hated that icy blue hospital gown.

But aesthetics apart, this, she later tried to explain to Dr Eriksson, was exactly the kind of sudden death that their mother would have wanted. Grace had been very clear: she didn't care if she lost her memory, or if she said embarrassing things, but so long as she lived, she must be able to see, eat and talk, and if this was not possible she'd prefer to sign out. She would rather be shot than cared for by strangers in an institution, and so on. She'd asked Anna to type all this out, then signed it, and stapled it to her will.

‘May I give you something to help you through?' Dr Eriksson asked, putting her hand on Anna's arm, and it was then that Anna stopped talking and began to howl.

—
♦ —

THE TRAILER DOOR OPENED
right into the kitchen. To the left, bedrooms, to the right, the living area, the oat-coloured drapes permanently drawn, a TV at the far end. This was where Scott and Mac ate, rather than at the camping table in the kitchen where junk mail and empties piled up.

Mac was awake, upright and uptight when Scott came in. It was as if he could smell the two hundred dollars in cash that Lauren had paid Scott that morning, could sense that some of it was already spent and beyond his reach.

‘I can think of easier ways to make two hundred bucks,' Matt had said, leaning his seat back and grinning across at Scott. Matt's dog, Tiger, at least half ridgeback, stood stiff-legged in the back of the truck. They were in the playground parking area with the engine still running.

‘Sure.'

‘I could set you up with an agricultural project. Rentals are rock bottom right now.' They were friends of a sort. They had both dropped out of high school the same year, despite, as the principal put it to Scott in the last phone call, having
the capacity to succeed
. He'd used the same words to Matt.

‘I don't do gardening,' Scott told Matt, though the real reasons were: one, that he knew he'd smoke himself sick, and two, Mac—hardly discreet. They'd been through it all before. Smiling, Matt slipped the banknotes into the pocket inside his jacket, and put the baggie next to the gearshift for Scott to pick up.

‘I'm gonna retire at thirty-five,' he said, fixing Scott with his clear, untroubled gaze. ‘Properties, the whole damn thing.' Matt imagined things, and then made them happen, though often the cost to others was high.

‘Have you got something?' Mac asked as soon as Scott was in the door.

‘Hungry?' Scott countered and set to work: he unpacked the groceries, measured out water and rice, and attacked the accumulated dishes. Mac offered to help, which was all very well but he had the beginning of the shakes so there was no point handing him a knife.

‘Sweep the floor. Maybe empty the ashtrays first?' Scott opened a jar of Thai sauce, studied the serving-suggestion label on the back. He chopped an onion and a green pepper, sliced the chicken breasts, washed the knife. Since he was twelve he'd been cooking, on bad days to start with, and then pretty much all the time. There had been fires, there had been things cooked and then forgotten, there had been things too disgusting to eat; there had been semi-raw meat and a lot of sandwiches but both of them had survived until this point. Now it was convenience food, or meat in a bun with lettuce on the side for health, and just occasionally something new.

The oil hissed as he threw in the onion and meanwhile Mac grunted and puffed, reaching out with the brush, groping for the dustpan. Soon his face was running with sweat; forget it, Scott said, and brought him a mug of water.

‘Drink up, Dad.' Mac looked at the water as if it were poison. ‘Good for you.'

The rice had gone dry. Scott rescued it, added the sauce to the other pan, stirred; remembered vitamin pills, one each, watched Mac swallow his, and then took the two trays over and sat down.

‘Chicken,' he announced. It was not bad at all, he thought, but it could be
more
how it was aiming to be. He watched the news without the sound: Israel. Men in suits. A woman who survived a cougar attack. Someone shot outside a bar.

Mac had set down his fork after a mouthful or two, but Scott ignored the ruined eyes fixed on him, following each mouthful from plate to lips; he ignored the fact that a shave was overdue and a haircut likewise and neither would happen unless he took it in hand.
Does a shave really matter?
To his father not at all. To him, just somewhat. To some members of the community, quite a lot.

Scott, it's not good to let your father out looking like that.

On-screen, a Native girl in a photograph, perhaps four years old. A woman breaking down as she spoke. He got up and carried his plate to the sink.

‘Hey,' said Mac as he returned, and then reached for the glass of water he'd been given earlier, sloshing some over the food on his plate as he brought his face down to meet it, and then drank: one swallow, two, three, and then opened his eyes wide to suggest its life-giving effects. On the TV, a boatful of windblown tourists in lifejackets, Vancouver in the background.

‘What about a top-up?' Mac asked, his chin wet, and Scott told him no. He closed his eyes so as not to see the reaction and because it was so fucking impossible to do a right thing: you give him the money, he likes you for a moment, but drinks, and you're contributing to liver meltdown. You don't give, he hates you, suffers longer, finally goes out and somehow or other gets the drinks, possibly more than he would have anyhow: you personally haven't contributed to liver meltdown, but hell, it's happening anyway. You still see a sick man feel pretty bad and on top of that you're a hypocrite, considering how desperate you are to lighten up and chill out, though of course it doesn't wreck you in such an obvious way.

‘You're supposed to be levelling off.'

Mac looked at him and drank the rest of his glass of water.
Go on then
, Scott could ask:
drink another
. How about you eat half your dinner, drink two more waters and have a shave: ten bucks. He'd done that before now. Compromise. Easy to criticize, but when your father cries like a baby — an ugly, old, broken baby — and tells you how every bit of him hurts, and just one drink would fix it, you tend to think
what
the hell, it's his fucking life,
forget that it is yours too and give it to him, and feel good momentarily just because the conversation's over for now.

Mostly, then, Scott gave in, gave Mac just enough to get the first drink, but this time, he intended to spend the remaining one hundred and fifty bucks on some more memory for the Door to the Universe and he said no. He said it and began to assemble a joint, the gum on the papers sweet against his lips.

‘You cunt,' Mac said, watching every move.

You can't blame him
, was what Andrea Price always said. A woman approaching middle age who tried to look as if she wasn't wearing makeup by wearing only the most natural shades, applied rather thickly, she cornered Scott every time he went to the grocery store lineup and asked how things were, and then argued with him about the way he described it.

I can't
, Scott remembered his mother saying, how she shook her head but smiled at the same time when he'd suggested that the two of them should run away together. Off into the sunset.
You'll understand one day — I can't.
He'd been only nine then. He still didn't understand, but he'd seen how things were and over time he'd become very familiar with the
c
word and even used it himself a fair amount.

Andrea Price always said how they were all praying for both of them at the church and would he like to come along?

Well, thank you. Maybe another time.

‘You can share this,' Scott told Mac when he had finished making the joint. ‘Then I'm going online, okay?'

There was this thing he'd stumbled across, totally amazing: a group of three guys in what looked like bat suits base-jumping off a towering cliff in Norway. They stood on the edge looking down thousands of feet and then leapt, turned a few casual-looking somersaults as they fell through the air; seconds later, reaching terminal velocity, they straightened themselves, flung their arms out wide and hurtled horizontally through the air. The suits, made from some rubbery stuff, had a flap that joined hand to hip. Going at a hundred miles an hour, they steered with tiny movements of their heads. Their fingers all but brushed the cliff; they swooped, turned more somersaults, plummeted, and rose again at will. One of them sank to within metres of the ground, skimmed it, following the course of winding road, and then rose up again. All the time you could hear a strange rushing, flapping sound, like wind in their ears. It looked like Superman, not real, but it was. At the end, you saw them wild-eyed, laughing together:
It's like a dream
, one of them said.
You just look where you want to go and you're there.