The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (37 page)

“No. But he didn’t have to – all that business about trust. Doesn’t that sound as if there was a betrayal?”

I thought of Julie’s wedding cake and of the sugar doves she’d made so that her new marriage would be blessed with years of happiness. She and Reed had only made it to a month and two days. What could have happened in so brief a time to turn hope to despair?

It was a question I didn’t want to dwell on, and I was relieved when Barry Levitt opened the deck door, stuck out his head, and invited us to join Taylor and him for dinner.

The table was beautifully set: cobalt-blue depression ware and a woven cloth as brightly coloured as the Italian flag.
Barry had pulled the tables close to the window so we could watch the sunset. Taylor was uncharacteristically quiet, and when Ed asked her to light the candles, she performed the task without her usual brio. But she perked up when Barry brought in the paella dish and placed it in front of her.

“Did Jo tell you this is my favourite?” she asked.

“She didn’t have to,” Barry said. “Creative people love seafood. Everybody knows that.”

For the next hour we sipped sangria, sopped up paella with the focaccia, and talked about summer plans as Puccini soared in the background. By the time we’d moved to Act III of
Turandot
, the paella dish was empty, and Ed brought out chocolate gelato and cappuccino.

Taylor was a great fan of gelato, and Ed’s gelato was homemade. After she’d finished her dish, she turned to Barry. “This is really a nice party,” she said. “I’m glad I wore my good clothes.”

Barry raised his glass to her. “Whatever you choose to wear, you’re always welcome at this table.”

“Thank you,” said Taylor.

“I’m afraid that has to be the last word, T,” I said. “School tomorrow, and we’re already past your bedtime.”

As we stood at the doorway, saying our goodbyes, Taylor said, “Can I look at the painting one more time?”

“Sure,” said Barry. “I’ll come with you.”

I turned to Ed. “It really was a lovely evening. Thanks for asking us. I needed some fun tonight.”

“So did I,” he said. “And I needed to talk about Reed. Barry doesn’t want me to dwell on it, but I do. It was such a terrible ending to a good life. What’s even more terrible is the possibility that the way Reed died will eclipse everything he accomplished – especially here at the university. He was so committed to the School of Journalism. Even on the night he died. Look at this.” Ed reached into his inside jacket
pocket, pulled out a single sheet of paper and handed it to me. “This was in the mailbox when I went out to get our paper Friday morning.”

I unfolded the paper. On it, handwritten, were sixteen names. I recognized them as the students who were just completing the term before their placement. Opposite each name, Reed had written in the name of the media organization where the student would intern.

“Can you imagine what he must have been going through that night? But he still made sure the kids were taken care of. He must have dropped the list off after Barry and I had gone to the symphony.” Ed swallowed hard. “Well, life goes on. I’ll set up interviews with the students tomorrow to tell them the news.”

“Would you like to use my office?” I said. “From the way yours looked yesterday morning, I think it’ll be a while before you can even find your desk.”

Ed frowned. “You should think carefully before you make an offer like that, Joanne. You know what Clare Boothe Luce said. ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ ”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’ll get a key made for you tomorrow morning. Consider it settled. But, Ed, there’s one thing I don’t understand …”

I never got to finish my sentence. Taylor was back, toting an armload of art books that Barry was lending her. As she showed her collection to Ed, I glanced again at Reed Gallagher’s placement list. The class Tom Kelsoe and I taught was mandatory for Journalism students in their final year, so I was familiar with the work of the people Reed was assigning as interns. Most of the students on Reed’s list were ranked just about where I would have placed them, but there was one surprise, and it was right at the top. The student Reed Gallagher had chosen for the plum internship with the
Globe and Mail
was Kellee Savage.

The clock in the hall began to chime. It was 9:00. I handed the list back to Ed. The mystery of Kellee Savage would have to wait.

“Okay, Taylor,” I said, “now it really is past your bedtime. Say goodnight, Gracie.”

“Goodnight, Gracie.” Taylor said and roared with laughter the way her mother would roar when she made a joke. It had been quite an evening: paella, Puccini, and a reprise of an old Burns and Allen routine. I’d hardly thought about Jill at all.

Taylor didn’t need a bedtime story. As she was telling me about how her mother swirled her brushstrokes, she fell asleep in mid-sentence. I tucked her in and started downstairs, but when I heard the ricochet of adolescent jokes and insults coming from the kitchen, I stopped and headed back up to my room. Angus and his buddies were in the kitchen, and his friend Camillo had just decided they should make nachos. Dinner with Ed and Barry had boosted my spirits but I knew my limits. I wasn’t ready for a kitchen full of teenagers and the aroma of processed cheese warming in the microwave. I needed peace and I needed time to think, and one of the things I needed to think about was Kellee Savage.

She had been in two of my classes, but I had never seen anything in her work to indicate that someday she would be the one to catch the brass ring. My briefcase was on the window seat. I pulled out the folder of unmarked essays and sorted through till I found Kellee’s. It was an analysis of how a councillor from the core area used the alternative press to get across his message that the city had to start listening to the concerns of the prostitutes who lived and worked in his ward. Like everything else Kellee had done for me, it was meticulously researched, adequately written, and absolutely without a spark. I curled up on the window seat and began leafing through some of the other essays. Jumbo Hryniuk
had written about how J.C. Watts, the brilliant quarterback for the University of Oklahoma and the Ottawa Rough Riders, had parlayed fame on the football field into a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and special status as one of Newt Gingrich’s boys. As always, Jumbo was almost, but not quite, on topic. Linda Van Sickle, the young woman Reed had ranked second, had submitted a case study of a civic government that showed how the city council’s political timidity was growing in direct proportion to the increasingly adversarial nature of local media outlets. It was a brilliant paper, good enough to be published. So, I discovered, was Val Massey’s essay, “The Right to Be Wrong: The Press’s Obligation to Protect Bigots and Bastards.” Reed’s decision simply didn’t make sense. I skimmed through the rest of the essays. Of the sixteen people in our seminar, I would have ranked seven ahead of Kellee Savage.

When Alex called, I was still mystified, but the words on the page were starting to swim in front of me, and I knew it was time for bed. Alex sounded as tired as I felt.

“Glad you went home?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m glad I was there, but I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”

“How’s your nephew?”

“Immortal,” he said. “Like all kids his age are. That’s why they can drink and sniff and snort and speed and screw without protection.”

“You sound as if you’ve had enough.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s not more coming. Jo, sometimes I get so goddamn sick of these little pukes. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’m sick of going to their funerals.”

“Is it that bad with your nephew?”

“I hope not. Jo, I’d really rather not talk about this.”

“Okay,” I said. “Come over, and we don’t have to say a word. That’s the advantage real life has over telephones.”

He laughed. “It’s a tempting offer, but I’d better not. Even without words, I’d be lousy company tonight.”

“Then come tomorrow morning,” I said. “I don’t have to teach till ten-thirty, and the kids leave for school at eight.”

“I’ll be there,” he said. “Count on it.”

CHAPTER

6

When I first met Alex Kequahtooway, there was nothing to suggest that he would be a terrific lover. He was knowledgeable and passionate about serious music, but he was guarded in his response to everything else. We went out for three months before we were intimate, and during that time of coming to know one another, he was kind but almost formally correct with me. After we became lovers, the kindness continued, but it was allied with an eroticism that awed and delighted me. Alice Munro differentiates between those who can go only a little way with the act of love and those “who can make a greater surrender, like the mystics.” Alex was one of love’s mystics, and that morning as I lay in bed beside him, breathing in the scent of the narcissi blooming in front of the open window, listening to Dennis Brain play the opening notes of a horn concerto on the radio, I was at peace.

He took my hand, leaned over and kissed me. “Mozart,” he said. “The second-best way to start the day.”

It was a little after 10:00 when I nosed into my parking spot at the university. The test I was about to give was on my desk, and I checked it to make sure it was typo- and
jargon-free, then I went down to the Political Science office. I needed exam booklets, and I wanted to make copies of a hand-out for my senior class. As I counted out the exam booklets, I was still humming Mozart.

When Rosalie Norman, the departmental admin assistant, saw me at the copying machine, she hustled me out of the way. “I’ll do that. Every time you faculty use it, something goes wrong, and I’m the one who has to call the company and then try to figure out whose secretary I can sweet-talk into doing your photocopying until the repairman decides to show up.”

On the best of days, Rosalie was not a sunny person, but that morning, even the most casual observer would have seen that she had a right to be cranky. Over the weekend, she had got herself a new and very bad permanent. Her previously smooth salt-and-pepper pageboy was now tightly coiled into what my older daughter, Mieka, called a “Kurly Kate do,” after the girl on the pot-scrubber box.

I tried not to stare. “Rosalie, if you have a spare minute later on, would you mind getting me an extra key for my office?”

Her blackberry eyes shone with suspicion. “What do you need an extra key for?”

“I’m going to be sharing with Professor Mariani until the Journalism offices are straightened around.”

She sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to go over to Physical Plant in person, you know. They don’t just give out those keys to anybody. More sweet-talking. I’ll probably be there half the morning.”

I considered the situation. Rosalie Norman had a choleric disposition, and for the foreseeable future, she was stuck with the permanent from hell. Chances that her day would ever begin as mine just had, with world-class love-making, were slim to nil.

I patted her hand. “I’ll go over to Physical Plant,” I said. “No use wasting your morning sucking up to an office full of sourpusses.”

A smile flickered across her lips so quickly that I was left wondering if I’d just imagined it. “Thanks,” she said, then she leaned over the copier, scooped up my copies and slid them into a file folder. “The next time you need copying done, put it on my desk in the tray marked ‘copying.’ We have a system around here, you know.”

The phone was ringing when I got back to my office. It was Ed Mariani.

“I’ve told our admin assistant you’re moving in,” I said, “and I’m just about to phone Physical Plant for your key.”

He laughed. “And I pride myself on being a Virgo. I really do appreciate your generosity, Joanne. I know it’s not going to be easy having somebody else lumbering around your office. Now, I’m afraid I have another favour to ask.”

“Ask away. You’ve already softened me up with your Clare Boothe Luce allusion.”

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s about Kellee Savage. She wasn’t in my class this morning. Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but I want to get these interviews started, and Kellee’s the logical person to start with. If she shows up for Politics and the Media, would you get her to give me a call at home?”

“Sure,” I said. “And, Ed, don’t worry about the lumbering. I’m looking forward to having you around.” I hung up, called Physical Plant, arranged to pick up an extra office key later in the morning, and set out for class.

After I’d got my Poli Sci 100 students started on their test, I opened my briefcase to take out the senior class’s papers. That’s when I noticed I still had the copy of
Sleeping Beauty
that Kellee Savage had thrust into my hands on St. Patrick’s Day. As it turned out, there had been more truth than poetry
in the image of Kellee Savage as Sleeping Beauty. Her story might have lacked a handsome prince, but she had certainly nabbed the prize that would awaken all her possibilities. When Ed Mariani told her that she had been chosen to live happily ever after, or at least for a semester, in the big city, Kellee was going to be one triumphant young woman.

That afternoon, when I walked into the Politics and the Media seminar and saw that Kellee’s place at the table was still empty, I felt a shiver of annoyance. Kellee had been made the recipient of a shining gift; the least she could do was stop pouting and show up to claim it.

As soon as class got under way, Kellee was banished from my thoughts. It was a spirited hour and a half, not because of the questions I’d prepared for discussion, but because of an item that had dominated the weekend news. Late Friday afternoon, an Ottawa reporter, faced with the choice of revealing the source of some politically damaging documents that had been leaked to her or of going to jail, had revealed her source. Early Sunday morning, the senior bureaucrat the reporter named had jumped off the balcony of a highrise on rue Jacques Cartier. The argument about whether a journalist ever had the right to put self-interest above principle was fervent. Even Jumbo Hryniuk, who usually cast a dim eye on the doings of the non-jock press, grappled vigorously with the ethics of the case. Only one student was not engaged. As the passions swirled about him, Val Massey remained preoccupied and remote. Remembering his father’s casual act of brutality the day before, I was worried.