The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (34 page)

“I’m taking Angus for his driving lesson.”

I winced. “Talk about good works. Can I reward you by taking you to a movie after we do our show?”

“Sounds great, but I’ll have to take a rain check.”

I felt a sting of disappointment. “More paperwork?”

He looked away. “No, family matters.” His voice was distant. “I’ve got a nephew out on the reserve who seems to be in need of a little guidance.”

“How old?”

“Fifteen.”

“Angus’s age.”

“Yeah, but he’s not Angus.” The edge was back in his voice, and I could feel the wall going up. Alex talked easily about his life on Standing Buffalo when he was young, but never about life there now, and I tried not to pry.

Angus appeared in the doorway. For once, his timing was impeccable, as was his appearance: slicked-back hair, earring in place, faded rock shirt, and jeans so badly torn I wondered how he kept them on. He went over and slapped Alex on the back. “So,” he said, “are you ready to rip?”

It was only six blocks from our house to the Gallaghers’ condo on Lakeview Court, but because we were going straight to Taylor’s lesson after we were through at Julie’s, we drove. When I opened the front door, Taylor slipped off her boots and ran inside to find the aquarium. Before I’d even hung my coat up, she was back in the hall, breathless.

“Oh, Jo, they’re beautiful, especially the striped ones. We’ve got to get some. We could stop at the Golden Mile after my lesson. They’ve got fish in the pet shop – all kinds of them. And we’ll need some of that pink stuff that looks like knobby fingers.”

“Coral,” I said.

“And a castle. These fish have a castle in the corner of their tank, and they swim right through the front door.”

“Do you know who would really love it if we got some fish?” I asked her.

“Who?”

“Benny,” I said.

Her eyes widened with horror. Then a smile played at the corner of her lips. “No fish, right?”

“No fish,” I said.

After I showed Taylor how much food to put in the aquarium, I turned to the rest of my tasks. There wasn’t much to do. The dishes and the checked cloths were off the rental tables, and the extra chairs had been stacked, ready for pick-up. Julie had left the rental company’s business card on the kitchen table with a note asking me to arrange a time when I could be there to let them in. The only hints of the evening before were the pots of shamrock that had been in the white wicker centrepieces. The plants were lined up neatly on a tray where they could catch the light from Julie’s kitchen window. When I touched the soil, it was moist. She had taken care of everything, but those must have been bleak hours for her, alone in her house, dismantling the evening she’d planned with such care while her new husband lay dead in the morgue at Regina General.

The refrigerator didn’t take long to clean. There were no nasty surprises mouldering in old yogurt containers, just perishables that had obviously been intended for the party: two quarts of whipping cream, unopened; two large plastic bags of crisp salad greens; three vegetable platters that looked as if they could still make the cover of Martha Stewart’s
Living
. I boxed up everything for the Indian-Métis Friendship Centre. Julie was moving into contention for their award as Benefactor of the Year.

After I dropped Taylor off at her art lesson, I drove Julie’s food donation to the Friendship Centre, and then headed downtown to check out the sales. Angus had been hinting
about a new winter jacket, and Taylor needed rubber boots.

Cornwall Centre was in its spring mode. Hyacinth, daffodils, and tulips bloomed beside the water fountains, and winter clothes marked 60 per cent off bloomed on the racks in front of stores. At Work Warehouse, I discovered that the jacket Angus had admired loudly and frequently before Christmas had at last reached my price range, and I bought it. Then I went to Eaton’s basement and found a pair of rubber boots in Taylor’s favourite shade of hot pink. As the salesclerk was wrapping them up, I remembered my early-morning resolve to get back in Jill’s good graces by cosying up to Tom Kelsoe. From what I’d seen of Tom, the surest way to his heart was through his ego. I went to City Books.

There was a single copy of
Getting Even
beside the cash register. When I handed it to the woman behind the counter, she groaned. “That’s the last copy. I was going to buy it myself.” She eyed the author picture on the back and sighed. “He is attractive, isn’t he? He was on the radio yesterday morning. I didn’t hear him, but people have been coming to the store in tears because of a story he told about a mother and her two sons – right here in Regina.” She shrugged. “Well, I’ll just have to order more. Cash or credit?”

I hadn’t planned to drive by the rooming house where Reed Gallagher died, but as I headed along my usual route to pick Taylor up at her class on the old campus, I ran into a construction detour. The next street that would take me south was Scarth Street, and there was no way I could drive along Scarth without seeing number 317. It was a house straight out of an Edward Hopper painting: a Gothic spook with a mansard roof, a widow’s walk, and a curved front porch. In summer, the porch was filled with vacant-eyed women in rockers and wiry men with wicked laughs who would taunt passers-by with insults and invitations; in winter, the tenants took to their rooms, and you could see
their shadows, dark and shifting, behind the blinds that separated their blighted existence from the lives of the lucky.

A block past number 317, I yielded to impulse, pulled into a parking spot and started back towards the house. The porch was empty, but the blinds in every window were raised. Eyes that had seen it all were peering out to seek further proof, as if they needed it, that people were no damn good.

The spectacle in the front yard must have offered them proof aplenty. The rain had turned the grassless yard to gumbo, but it hadn’t kept any of us away. The gawkers and misery-seekers were quite a group: media people with cameras; young couples with kids; teenagers with Big Gulps and cigarettes, and middle-aged, respectable people like me who should have known better but who came in response to stirrings as dark as they were ancient. As I walked towards the back of the building and the fire escape Alex had told me Reed used to get to the third floor, I heard snippets of conversation: “hookers with whips …,” “mirrors all around so he could watch himself …,” “wearing a dress and a Dolly Parton wig …”

After these fevered images of Sodom and Gomorrah, the actual fire escape seemed disappointingly mundane. It was a rickety metal affair that zigzagged from the back alley to the third floor, an eyesore that had been added on as a sop to some busybody at City Hall who took fire regulations seriously. Utilitarian as it was, it had done the job. It had taken Reed Gallagher where he wanted to go. I walked over to the foot of it, and for a few minutes I stood there looking up through the dizzying height of steps into the pale March sky. When I started back across the yard, I met an old man with a walker. He was moving with exquisite slowness, but as I passed him, he stopped and grabbed my arm. His voice was raspy whisper. “Did you hear what happened in there?”

“Yes,” I said, “I heard.”

He pulled me so close I could feel his breath on my face. “Men who don women’s clothing are an abomination to God,” he said, then he continued his methodical passage towards the site of the abomination.

After such a chilling insight into how a fellow being saw the heart of God, an afternoon reading the dry legal language of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a relief. When Angus came home at 4:00, I told him that, as a reward for babysitting on a Saturday night, he could choose the dinner menu. He decided on sandwiches from the Italian Star deli, an easy call for me, so after I picked up the mortadella and provolone, I had time for a quick nap before I showered and dressed. I was just fastening the turquoise and silver necklace Alex had given me for Christmas when Taylor came in and sat on my bed. Benny was in her arms, but her eyes were anxious.

I sat down beside her. “Taylor, in all the time since you came to live with us, have I ever not come home?”

“No,” she said. “But what if …?”

“What if what?” I asked.

She shook her head dolefully. “I don’t know,” she murmured.

I drew her close to me. “Taylor, life is full of what-ifs, but if you spend all your time being afraid of them, there’s not much time left over for being happy, and I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” she whispered. “That’s why I’m scared of what if …”

Twenty minutes later as I walked through Wascana Park towards the Nationtv studios, Taylor was still at the forefront of my thoughts. She’d come to the front door to wave to me when I left. She’d been hugging Benny to her, and doing her best. It was a worry, but it was a worry that was going to have to wait. I took a deep breath and started mentally running
through the clauses relating to sexual orientation in the Charter. I was trying to remember the three key points of a bill on homosexual rights that had been defeated in the Ontario legislature when I realized I’d turned onto a path that had a degree of fame in our city.

The old campus of our university is on the northern edge of the park. It’s a serene setting for the handsome pair of buildings that once housed our entire university, but which are now given over to the departments of Music, Drama, and Art. The path I walked along ran behind the buildings. By day, it was a place where students gravitated for a smoke, young mums wheeled strollers, dog-walkers walked dogs, and joggers jogged. But at night, the path changed character. After dark, it was a cruising park for gay men. The students at the university called it “the Fruit Loop.” So, in my private thoughts, did I. More sticks and stones.

When I got to Nationtv, I went, as I always did, to makeup, where Tina, who had taught me that if I wanted a clean lip-line after the age of forty, I had to use lip-liner, and that I would be insane to buy any eye shadow more expensive than Maybelline, was waiting for me. As she swept blush along my cheeks, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Despite my nightly slatherings of Oil of Olay, it was clear that Father Time was undefeated. I shrugged, turned away from the mirror, and asked Tina to tell me about her wedding. The week before, she’d been agonizing about how to tell her future mother-in-law that, since the wedding dinner was catered, she wouldn’t need to bring the jellied salads in the colours of the bridesmaid’s dresses that she had made for all of her other children’s weddings. I was eager to hear if Tina had brought it off.

When Tina was done with me, I went, as I always did, to the green room to wait until Jill came out to talk me through the first question and walk me into the studio. But that night,
Jill didn’t come. Five minutes before airtime, I took matters into my own hands. As I pushed the door into the studio open, a young man I’d never seen ran into me. He glanced at my face, then grabbed my arm and pulled me into the studio.

“They’re waiting,” he said.

“I’ve been here all along,” I said.

He looked right past me. “Whatever,” he said. “Let’s just say there’s been a screwup.”

It wasn’t the last one.

When she’d first set up the weekly panel, Jill had decided to cover the ideological spectrum rather than have representatives from specific political parties. From the outset, Keith Harris, who had once been my lover and was now my friend, spoke for the right, Senator Sam Spiegel articulated the view from the centre, and I was there for the left. Over the years, the images of Keith and Sam on the television monitor had become as familiar as my own. But that night as I glanced towards the screen, I saw a face I’d never seen before in my life. The woman on screen appeared to be in her mid-thirties; she had a head of frosted curls, cerulean eyes, and a dynamite smile.

The young man who’d dragged me into the studio was kneeling in front of me, trying to fasten my lapel mike. I touched his shoulder. “Who’s that?” I asked.

He glanced quickly at the monitor. “Didn’t anybody tell you? That’s Glayne Axtell. She’s the new voice for the right.” He leaped out of camera range.

“What happened to Keith Harris?” I asked.

He looked irritated and moved his fingers to his lips in a silencing gesture. Through my earpiece, I heard the familiar “Stand by,” and we were on the air.

By the time the last caller had been thanked and the moderator in Toronto was inviting people to join us next week, my
back was soaked with sweat. It had been a rough evening. Keith’s mysterious disappearance had been a blow. I had to admit that Glayne Axtell was good. She was far to the right of Keith, but she was witty and crisply professional. The problem wasn’t with her; it was with me. I couldn’t seem to adjust to the new rhythm, and for the first time, I let the callers on our phone-in segment of the program get to me. Usually, I dealt with the crazies by reminding myself that the law “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” governs physics not politics. In politics, most of the time, you got back pretty much what you handed out, and if you were lucky, reason would beget reason.

That night I seemed to be beyond both luck and reason. As the torrent of hate and fear poured through my earpiece, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from lashing back. I kept wondering where Jill was with the cut-off button. But as the red light went black, and we were finally off the air, I had to admit that, as exhausting as it had been, the panel on homophobia had been good television.

Jill came down from the control booth almost immediately. She was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck, and a hounds-tooth jacket, and she didn’t look happy.

I unclipped my mike and went over to her. “I thought you were going to keep the mad dogs at bay tonight. But maybe you were right to let them yelp and foam. It was an exciting show.”

Jill gave me a tight smile. “Do you have time for a drink?”

“Sure,” I said. “Angus is with Taylor. He has plans, but I’ve got time for a quick one. I wanted to ask you about Keith. Did he quit or what?”

“Let’s talk about it later,” Jill said.