At their appointment earlier that week, Dr. Pass had suggested a visit to a neurologist in Mayfair, a specialist in aging and changes in the brain. After making a phone call, he wrote a referral and marked it URGENT. “Most people have to wait months for a visit with Dr. White – I can get you in Thursday morning at eight.”
However, after she’d made some scrambled eggs and toast, Hazel found her mother unwilling to get out of bed. “This is ridiculous,” she told her. “Adults don’t behave like this.”
“I’m taking a stand,” her mother protested.
“Would you accept this kind of behaviour from anyone?”
“I’m not anyone,” Emily snarled. “I am your mother.”
“That’s correct. And, right now, my mother needs to get her skeleton out of bed so I can take her to see the nice doctor and then go to work.”
“What’s her field?” asked Emily. “This nice doctor.”
“Gerontological neurology.”
It took further cajoling, but eventually Hazel was able to get Emily dressed and feed her a couple forkfuls of egg before leaving the house. Emily took forever to lock the front door and then she turned around and saw Hazel had brought her cruiser. “Mother of Jesus,” she snarled. “Are you taking me in that goddamned thing?”
“I’m on duty, Mom. But we can go fast.”
“How fast?”
“I can punch it to one-fifty on a straightaway.”
Emily got in and sat glowering in the passenger seat, and Hazel had to do her seat belt for her. Then they headed towards the 41, passing the turn-off to Port Dundas where the new headquarters was going to go. A banner hanging between two stanchions on the prow of land below the granite cliff read:
FUTURE HOME OF SOBEYS SUPERSTORE,
ROOTS, GALAXY CINEMAS AND MUCH MORE
ON THE MAIN THOROUGHFARE OF WESTMUIR COUNTY
and
THE NEW HEADQUARTERS OF THE
ONTARIO POLICE SERVICE, NORTH–CENTRAL DIVISION.
Deputy Commissioner Charles. S. Willan
GROUNDBREAKING OCTOBER 30, 2007
“An abomination,” said Emily. “Main Street will be dead in two years.”
“Just think: if you could drive straight north from Toronto and have all your needs met without ever having to pull off into some ratty little town, wouldn’t that be wonderful? How much you want to bet there’ll be a McDonald’s here in six months?”
In the rear-view mirror, Hazel saw the outcrop of scrub with two roads joining in front of it. One led to the heart of Port Dundas, the other would soon be applied like a garrotte to the throat of the town.
“When you get to my age, try to stay out of doctors’ offices,” Emily said. “They are employed by government forces to make people shuffle off their mortal coils, thus saving the economy billions a year.”
“It would be nice to put an end to that plot.”
“There’s no plot. When it’s your time you don’t have any say in it.”
“You talk like I’m driving you to your execution.”
“You could be,” Emily said. “Too bad it isn’t covered.”
Hazel had read recently in a not-entirely disreputable women’s magazine that sometimes when people expressed negative feelings they weren’t looking for advice or a counterpoint, they just needed someone to hear them. Someone to listen. And listening was easier than responding to the carping. She would try harder to hear what her mother was saying.
The clinic was in a house at the end of a rural road outside Brigham. Aspens in full colour hung over the roof and there was a basketball hoop at the side of the house. It had a calming effect. By the time Emily was welcomed into the doctor’s office, all the fight had gone out of her. Sooner or later in your life, you have to put yourself in someone else’s hands. Just surrender. Hazel watched her mother being walked away. A small figure following a white coat down a hallway.
The magazines were atrocious. They were a contributing factor to the ongoing fall of civilization. The television suspended from the ceiling played a game show silently. The grand prize was plastic surgery. No one should be surprised by anything people may be capable of, including competing on television for a new face.
Her phone rang. Ray Greene. “Brendan Givens is dead.”
“What?” She went out into the hallway.
“Stabbed to death in a hotel room. Yesterday. In Toronto.”
Toronto? “And who caught that case?”
“Fifty-one Division.”
“God. I feel like we’re on the losing side of a game of keep-away.”
“Did you look into the complaint I left for you?”
“The racket ruckus on Fraser Street? I put Eileen Bail on it. She won’t punch anyone.”
“Then what have you been doing?”
“I haven’t been in Tournament Acres.”
“Doing research.”
“On?”
“These boys lived in our county, Ray. They weren’t even given the courtesy of an unmarked grave, they were … murdered, incinerated, and their remains were scattered in the corn. They have a right to their names.”
He moaned something unintelligible. “You’re as reliable as tides, Hazel. You don’t have a case, but someone says no to you and you see a red cape.”
“You can’t stop me from reading public files.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Silence. “You’ve got Wingate on it, too?”
“Yes.”
“You know, I got a pretty furious phone call –”
“From Michael Wingate? He tore me a new one, too. Don’t change the subject. James has the names of six boys who vanished off the public record after doing a stint at Dublin Home. Six candidates for murder. There’ll be more. All we have to do is attach a name to one victim and we have the foundation of a huge case.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Find a relation. Do a DNA test. And, um, well …”
“Well what?”
“I’ve actually already found a relation. Deacon sent someone to get a hair sample. They can get markers in three days to compare to the results Deacon’s lab got on the bones.”
“Do you have an assignment for me?”
“What do you mean?” A nurse entered the hallway and gestured for Hazel to come through.
“I mean, since you’re still obviously in charge, what do you want me to do? Should I go down the chimney at Fifty-one Division and steal the file on Givens?”
“I might have something for you later.” It made him laugh, but she knew he was mad as hell. Before he could form another objection, she said, “Nothing on Renald?”
“Nada. How do I know he didn’t disappear on your say-so, huh? Maybe you have him out there dressed up as a Mountie.”
“I gotta go, Ray.” She went back into the doctor’s office. Emily emerged from the back with Dr. White in tow. Her mother wore a look of frank triumph.
“Not a thing wrong with me. Tell her.”
“Hello Hazel. Nice to see you again.”
“Nancy.” Her eyes shuttled back and forth between her mother and the doctor. “So we’re to carry on?”
“Come back here for a minute, and we’ll talk about it in private.”
Hazel followed Nancy White, but her mother stayed behind. “You don’t want to be a part of this conversation?”
“I’ve seen all I need to see back there for now. I’ll wait out here with the hopeless cases.”
Dr. White’s office was the standard-issue professional inner sanctum, with diplomas and wood accents and a steel lamp on the desk. “People weren’t meant to live into their nineties,” Dr. White said. “What’s happening to your mother is normal. She forgets, she remembers, she’s herself, she’s not herself. She’s been working with that brain since she was in her mother’s tummy. Things get old.”
“What about the myeloma?” Hazel said with half a smile.
“It could be contributing, but it doesn’t really matter. There’s no sense in pathologizing the aging process – not all of us are lucky enough to have one! But we do live in an era of options and one of those options is drugs. I could, for instance, put your mother on five milligrams of Aricept. Good drug. My father was on it. I think it kept him going, cognitive-wise, maybe an extra year or two.”
“Do you have a drug that can make me forget stuff?”
“I know of one, but it’s around three hundred dollars an ounce.” They both laughed. “We don’t know very much about the brain, I’m afraid. We go at it with the equivalent of boxing gloves on.”
Hazel had begun to feel heavy. “Can we think about it?”
“Of course.”
“What did she say?”
“Your mother? She asked me if I could euthanize her with Jim Beam.” They both laughed again, but Hazel found herself snorting back tears.