The Girl in a Coma (19 page)

Thirty-three

Mary

Mary took the money from the second Spanish doubloon and bought a Macintosh apple and a biscuit, which she ate as she walked. Fortified, she went into a store on Brock Street and purchased a sturdy leather valise. She walked into a women's clothing store like she owned it and bought a skirt, two blouses, and some undergarments.

In another store, on Rideau Street beside a handsome stone building with a plaque announcing it was the office and residence of John A. Macdonald, a rising young lawyer, she bought a light canvas greatcoat to shield her from wind and rain. She walked into a men's clothing store further along Rideau where the clerk looked at her strangely. Women did not usually shop there. The store smelled of cigars. She asked for a pair of men's pants suitable for riding horses. Brown cotton twill, in her own size. Much to the clerk's embarrassment, she insisted on trying them on.

She stopped in at a men's hat shop back on Brock Street and bought a sailor's watch cap, what the Lower Canadians called a
tuque
. It was made of finely knitted navy blue wool.

On the market square, she picked up some bread and a small crock of honey. At a different stall, she bought three more apples.

She had paid enough for her ticket so that she would be given meals on the
Frontenac
as long as the weather was good. If a storm blew up, nobody could cook. And if it were stormy, most passengers wouldn't be hungry, anyway. She wanted some food to take with her, just in case. She knew she wouldn't get seasick.

Mary walked down to the harbor and sat on a bench by the water. She tore off chunks of bread which she dipped into the honey crock. After she finished eating, she wrapped the leftover bread in newspaper and put it in her valise. She pushed the cork firmly into the top of the honey crock and put it in as well. She left the apples in the valise for later.

While she was staring at the great stone walls of Fort Henry across the river, two women sat down on the bench beside her.

“She's a murderess,” one woman said. “They should have hanged her. I don't care how young she was when she did it.”

“I hope she's drowned or she'll kill us all in our beds.”

“Slit our throats, most likely.”

“Or maybe she'll chop off your heads,” said Mary. She rose to her feet as the two women gasped. “You'd better keep your lamps burning all night,” she called to them over her shoulder. “Or even better, don't sleep at all.”

She waved with a grin as she walked.

The two women waved back but neither one smiled.

It was time to board the steamboat.

The voyage would take two days to Rochester. Then another two days to York, which the government was now calling Toronto after its original Iroquois name,
Tkoranto
. They would stay in York a day and a half, then take another full night to reach Niagara-on-the Lake. Almost a week, altogether.

It was not faster than traveling by coach or horse but it was far more comfortable.

Her friend, Amos Durfee, had grown up in Rochester.

Mary found her small cabin. She cleaned herself and had a good nap. She was asleep when the
Frontenac
pulled out of Kingston and headed into the great expanse of Lake Ontario.

When she woke up, she washed the clothes she had been wearing and put on a new skirt and blouse, with a fresh petticoat. She strolled around the deck. She was amazed at how large the boat was, and yet how small it felt, out there with no land in sight.

As wide as two canoes laid end to end. As long as ten canoes in a row. With huge paddle wheels, each as high as a house. There was a great roaring engine in the middle, belching black smoke. A pair of sturdy masts with filthy gray sails set to the wind. The decks were covered with a layer of soot. The
Frontenac
had been on Lake Ontario for over twenty years. For a fresh-water boat, that was a very long time. She was an old lady now.

Mary Cameron liked life at sea. She strolled around for a while, then went back to her cabin to read a book she borrowed from the ship's salon. She might have been a sailor, she thought, if she had not become a Canadian Rebel.

Allison

When Maddie and Gordon come in, I try to tell them about
the ordinary man
. Maddie assures me the medallion is safe on the silver chain around my neck. She says I must have been dreaming.

Perhaps that's all it was, just an
ordinary
dream.

They want to talk about my smile. I try to focus on the Harvard Yard murders. I mean, an old lady had been strangled and before her, a beautiful young woman. Both died with smiles on their faces. And here we are, treating my little smile like the biggest event in the world.

Well, in my little world, I suppose it is. When the topic changes, I'm disappointed.

They chatter about a time capsule someone discovered under a cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House. It had some folded newspapers in it and old coins including a half-cent, a penny, a dime, and a half-dime and, guess what, it was buried there by Samuel Adams and his good friend, the silversmith Paul Revere. More than two hundred years ago. Another connection! Good glory, everything connects.

But let's keep things in perspective, detective.

That's what David used to say from the time we were small. “Allison, let's keep things in perspective.” Neither of us knew what it meant, exactly. I guess some things are more important than others, even when it doesn't seem that way.

I miss my brother. I wish he could see me smile. My lips haven't moved in eight months. I'd like him to know I'm practically back to my old self.

I am making progress. I'm trying to solve crimes. The intrepid potato detective is eager to work. I'm not a defective detective, I'm the real thing.

And this morning, I'm thinking about murder.

So, think, Allison, think.

What do the victims have in common?

They're both women. Check.

They're both connected to Harvard. Check.

They both died in what they call Harvard Yard. Check.

They were both strangled. Check.

Gently, it seems. They both died smiling. Check.

Is the smile like a baby's burp, an involuntary response to gas or something?

Well, no. Or people wouldn't be commenting about it.

So, they died happily. How could you be happy, being strangled? Drugged, perhaps? But there was nothing reported about drugs.

I have an idea.

I ask Maddie to do some research for me. I know there were only two murders here, at Harvard. But I want her to check for similar murders on other university campuses.

Oh, my glory, here they come, the
colleagues.

And now they're gone!

What they did was insulting. They flashed brilliant lights in my eyes, forcing my eyelids to stay open. They played musical scales in my ear. At top volume. They rubbed down my arms and my legs. Vigorously. To get the blood flowing, they said. They forced air into my lungs in a rhythmic pattern.

“If anything will get her going, this will,” announced the man with an important voice. “Sensory stimulation. We'll do it again ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' and measure the progress.”

No one notices he's speaking Shakespeare. They're scientists. I recognize the words. They're from Mrs. Muratori's favorite passage in
Macbeth
, a horror story I've never actually read.
Out, out, brief candle!
I remember that.
Life is a tale Told by an Idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.
Very depressing, was her friend, Will Shakespeare.

But what I'm thinking about “sensory stimulation” on a daily basis is,
the hell with that.

Actually, it's hard to refuse when you're a potato. Veggies are pretty passive. But I'm not just any potato.

Amidst their chatter, I picked out the voice of the Devil. He just blended in.

When they left, I asked Maddie to explain
sensory stimulation.
She has her doubts. She says it's all about tickling my senses, getting my mind to work. She and I know my mind's working as well as it ever did, maybe better. She'll speak to the man with the important voice.

“Did you hear him quoting Mrs. Muratori?” she asks.

I signal, Yes.

She writes
Macbeth
on the board.

I signal Yes.

Gordon looks bewildered.

Maddie thinks massaging might be a good thing.

“We need to get your body ready for when it connects with your brain.”

She and Gordon work on me together. I can't feel anything they're doing, but I wink and I blink and I smile. I smile.

Before they leave, I again ask Maddie to do the research about campus murders. The next one will be soon, unless we can stop it from happening.

Thirty-four

Mary

The
Frontenac
stopped at Rochester, stayed over in muddy York, and was two hours out of Toronto when a storm cracked open the sky. Mary was sewing in her cabin, working in the evening light that came through her window. She had slit her canvas greatcoat up the back, almost to the waist. She finished stitching across the top of the cut so it wouldn't rip.

Then she stepped out onto the deck. The wind was raging. Her coat flaps beat on her legs. Thunder hammered against the black sky. Bolts of lightning shattered the darkness. Black water spit plumes of white spray high into the air.

Mary loved it.

She made her way to the bow of the boat, which was rising and plunging into the waves with a fury.

A man with long, tangled hair faced away from her into the storm. He was holding onto a rope hanging from a furled sail. Mary grabbed the same rope to keep from being thrown onto the deck.

The man whirled around. Lightning flashed across his face. He was scruffy but surprisingly young.

“Behold,” he screamed. “The end is at hand.”

Beneath his wet beard, his lips were twisted in a horrible grin. He glared into Mary's eyes and vehemently declaimed, “Doom. We are drowned! And the sea shall give up its dead. Their flesh shall be torn from their bones. They shall burn in the fires of Hell. Praise the Lord Almighty, we are doomed, we are saved. Eh, girl! It's an almighty God-given storm.”

Mary yelled back to make herself heard over the wind.

“Which is it?” she demanded. “Are we doomed or are we saved? Do we drown or do we burn?”

“It is the same, all the same,” he screamed into the wind. And then he leaned down and in a very calm voice he spoke into her ear. “It is how God does things, my dear. And it's a lovely beautiful night for raging with the rain in my teeth, the storm in my hair. Ah, but it is good to be a mad man and still be alive.”

“You do realize how silly you sound?”

“Of course, of course. I'm Joshua Friesen at your service. I love to pretend to be mad. Tonight I'm a preacher, tomorrow I might be a clown or a judge.”

“Or locked in a madhouse.”

He turned again to address the storm, and he bellowed: “My damnation slumbereth not. Behold God's wrath and his fury are upon us.”

“Good night,” Mary shouted at him.

She walked back to her cabin to get some sleep before they landed at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The
Frontenac
tied up at the government wharf early in the morning. The storm had disappeared. Mary slept for another couple of hours. A small breakfast was brought to her cabin door. She ate and washed up and then dressed.

The young man who stepped out of Mary's cabin at ten in the morning was dressed in cotton twill riding pants, a white shirt, with his hair tucked up under a navy blue
tuque
. He had on a brown canvas greatcoat with a slit up the back, suitable for riding a horse, and a silver medallion around his neck. It was polished but worn and the amber inset glistened. He carried a sturdy leather valise filled with Mary's dresses and a few other items of female apparel.

The young man walked to the gangplank and descended onto the wharf. Leaning against a post at the bottom was Joshua Friesen.

His hair was still mussed up from the wind and the rain. His beard was still scruffy. But he was wearing clean clothes. That meant he had traveled in a cabin of his own on the steamboat. He didn't sleep in the open, below deck, like most of the passengers.

“Good morning,” he said, tipping his hand to his head as if he were wearing a hat.

“Good morning,” said the person with the navy blue
tuque
.

“May I walk with you?”

After a few minutes, he spoke again. “You're quite the young gentleman, Miss Agnes Apple. Not many men would dare to wear slippers like yours.”

She turned on him.

“How do you know my name?” Mary demanded.

“I followed you back to your cabin last night. I asked the purser. For a shilling, he told me. Probably would have for sixpence, but I was feeling generous. And who are you now?”

Mary glowered at Joshua Friesen. She hated him intensely.

“My name is William Chambers,” she said. Mary had a cousin in the States called William Chambers. Then she said proudly, “I am Mary Cameron. And if you reveal my disguise I will slit your throat.”

“Ah.” Joshua Friesen grinned as they walked past Saint Mark's Church with its high stone tower. “Really?” he said, as they passed red brick houses with well-kept gardens. “Then you will need a knife.”

“Pardon?” said Mary.

“To slit my throat. You will need a knife, William Chambers. Or Agnes Apple. Or Mary Cameron.”

“Oh, for glory's sake, call me Mary. But quietly, please.”

They walked past the stone walls of Fort George and past some shops. Mary tried to match her pace and her stride to Joshua Friesen's. The young man's hair and beard were a mess but he was quite handsome.

Mary had grown up in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Brock Street. Every town had a Brock Street. She knew her way around. She knew where she was going.

“Why are you following me?” she demanded.

“I have nothing better to do.”

“You must be a lawyer,” she said.

He laughed.

“A lawyer without much business,” she continued. “You have an income, free time, and no other interests but me.”

He looked startled. She went on. “You have no wife or you'd be better groomed. And you've left muddy York to set up a law office here. And if you are man enough, one day you might become a judge.”

“And you, Mary Cameron, are an escaped convict, a famous patriot, and a Canadian Rebel.”

Allison

He knows exactly who she is!

Mary and I have different reactions.

She feels a chill because he knows she's a criminal. But I think it's exciting. Mary and Joshua Friesen will fall in love. They will be married and have children. And Nana Friesen will marry one of their descendants. And she'll have my mother. My mother will have David and me. And I'll end up in a Harvard research lab, and endure
sensory stimulation
as my contribution to medical science.

I doubt my
colleagues
are accomplishing much with their flashing lights and blaring noises, but Maddie's massage is working, for sure. Last night I could actually tell they were kneading my muscles, rubbing my skin. Around my arms and shoulders especially. It's not like these were exact feelings. It was more like tingling sensations.

But if you had no more feeling than a block of cheese and then you knew you were being touched—well, imagine! It was like the sounds of mouth-watering apples being crunched underfoot. It was like rainbows and moonlight shimmering inside me.

My body was becoming familiar again.

Tingle by tingle.

Maddie comes in. She ignores Gordon and does my makeup. She talks to me, “Allie, I found other examples of women and girls being strangled with smiles, and there's a university connection. But there's no pattern.”

I signal for more information.

“Three died at York University in Toronto. That was two years ago. And there was one at a college in Illinois a few years before that. But each victim was different from the others. One was sickly, one was impoverished, one was broken by love, and one was emotionally disturbed. And of the two here, one was outrageously beautiful, one was sad. See what I mean? No pattern.”

I sigh. Maybe it was an interior sigh.

They massage me for a while and leave together, my beautiful Maddie and long lanky Gordon.

I lie here and think.

Time passes.

The
colleagues
arrive. It's getting late. Sometimes they work long hours.
The ordinary man
removes my medallion. Right there in front of everyone. He explains he will give it to Maddie. He'd better, or else!

The
colleagues
leave, including him. When Maddie and Gordon return, they don't notice the medallion is gone. I don't say anything. We'll see what the Devil does with it. I'm curious.

I mean, everyone knows he has it, so he has to return it.

M and G just dropped in to say goodnight.

That was nice but I like being alone.

I'm feeling more and more myself.

I can feel my body from the inside.

I'm here, I'm real.

It's not a theory.

You know how butterflies are like mummies wrapped in a cocoon and then they push their way out and fly free? Well, damn it, good glory, I am going to be a butterfly. I'm going to be free

I am. I am.

I am.