CHAPTER 20

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THE SITTING ROOM. Old people sitting. She is old now, isn’t she? Is she? Afternoon sun. Heads nod. He is here. Lingering. He waits while the nurse presents her with little yellow pills and the two of them watch her gulp them down with a cup of water. “Well done,” the nurse cheers. Vivian ignores her.

The nurse scuttles off with her clipboard and he passes Vivian a box of chocolates. Individually gold-wrapped. “Rhonda at the gas station told me these are your favourites. She said she only stocks them for you.”

“Where’s Rhonda?”

Vivian looks around, craning her neck around the high-backed armchair.

“She isn’t here. She’s working.”

Vivian nods. Rhonda is always working. Vivian pops a chocolate from its foil and savours the sweetness. She reaches for another.

“The nurse said you can’t have too many of those.” Vivian slips the wrapper off and swallows it whole. “I won’t say anything if you don’t,” he says.

She grabs a third and the nurse reappears to remove the chocolates, promising to return them later. Vivian glares at the retreating figure, then beckons him closer, whispering: “They won’t give them back, you know. They’ll eat them. It’s terrible here. Can you get me out? I need to go home.”

“I might be able to,” he says, “if you can help me.”

She’s listening. The young man leans even closer. “Do you remember my dad, Frank?”

She nods.

The man continues. “I didn’t know him very well. I was hoping you could tell me about him.”

Vivian riffles through the chocolate wrappers just in case she missed one. Nothing. She stares back at him.

“What do you remember about Frank?” he asks.

“Troublemaker.”

“Frank was?”

She nods.

“What about you? Did you get into trouble together?”

She nods again, a sly smile.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Frank helped me. I helped Frank.”

He gives her an odd look. Then he points at her face. “You’re bleeding,” he says, “your nose.”

She touches her nose and examines the red drops on her fingertips. He hands her a tissue. She doesn’t speak to him after that. There is only redness in her mind. Nothing else. Nothing to talk about.

Busy floral patterns on the carpet, tablecloth and curtains. The cold, white landscape has been locked out by the sealed windows; the inside air is hot and dry. Glazed eyes sit around little tables in a room directed by a woman in a white smock. This is a madhouse. They’ve locked her in a madhouse.

Vivian lurches to her feet. “Take me home!” she demands of the white smock. “I’m not supposed to be here!”

White Smock snaps right back at her. “Eat your dinner, Vivian.”

Vivian stands defiantly but the white smock is distracted by four old ladies who never speak. One of them reaches for the teapot and pours the pale brown water all over her meat as though it were gravy.

White Smock spins around and seizes the teapot. “Mia, I told you not to give this table tea!”

Apologizing, a young girl rushes over and Vivian is forgotten in the fuss. That is what she will become if she stays here, barking mad and ignored. She needs to break free but she can’t simply run off into the winter. There must be another way and she will find it, but she must sit down for a moment first. She’s suddenly leaden with fatigue.

“You’re not Frank.”

“No, I’m Frank’s son, Dean.”

Frank doesn’t have a son. She would know if Frank had a son. Wouldn’t she? She’s well aware how Frank can slip into other skins, other stories. She’s always been able to use that to her advantage. Frank fakes it so well it’s as though he believes his own lies.

“I brought you some more chocolates,” the young man says, passing her a box.

“When have you ever given me chocolates?”

“I brought you some last week.”

“I don’t even know you.”

She clumsily unwraps the foil from one and crams it in her mouth.

“Was Curtis Reid guilty of anything?”

The chocolate sticks in her throat. “Why do you care about Curtis Reid?”

“It’s been a challenge to get to the bottom of something that happened over 25 years ago. It would be a lot easier with your help.”

She pushes the chocolates back in his direction. She doesn’t like them anymore. They look the same as the ones she likes but taste different.

“This is what I’ve got so far. Feel free to let me know if I’m on the right track.”

She stares at him incredulously. Idiot.

“Mary Jones spoke up against your proposed mill development in the ’70s. She suspected the military had contaminated the land they occupied during the war but you managed to get your project pushed through anyway. Then, in the ’90s, somebody blew the mill up. Now, assuming Mary was right, we have a motive. The contamination was starting to affect people’s health and somebody noticed. What was it, Vivian? Skyrocketing cancer rates?”

The man who is not Frank snaps his fingers in front of her face. “Vivian? Are you listening?” She wants to break them almost as much as he wants to break her.

“I tried contacting the doctor who was working in Stapleton in the ’90s, but he passed away a few years back. What’s interesting, though, is that he left town just a couple of months before the explosion. Somehow landed himself a very cushy gig at a private clinic in Vancouver. Did you help him get that job?”

That isn’t the point, Frank. Removing the doctor isn’t enough. Others will begin to ask, and eventually they’ll start digging into all the irregularities around the mill development. Fingers pointing at her and the other councillors. They can’t have that. Something more permanent has to be done.

“Frank ...”

“I’m not Frank.”

“Talk to Frank.”

“Frank’s dead.”

Vivian shakes her head. She saw him yesterday, wearing a pale green t-shirt with a hole in it just below his armpit. He wants the council to buy a large slab of his jade. He’s calling himself an artist now. She grins. The sun feels so warm on her cheeks, seeping into her wrinkles. She lets her eyes close.

“You can help me solve this puzzle. You can help all those families get to the truth of what happened.”

She glares at him. “I don’t do puzzles.”

“Do you remember what you did?”

Father likes puzzles. He likes games because he always wins. Little black and white figures on little black and white squares. Some are more important than others, aren’t they? Bishops are worth protecting, but not the peasants. They aren’t called peasants though, are they? The little ones with cone-shaped bodies and perfectly round heads. What are they called? They don’t have any power. That’s the point. They can’t do anything useful except stand in the line of fire.

Vivian waves her hands around a bit, speaking without sound because she can’t put the words together to ask Frank what those pieces are called and she can’t remember at this point what they were discussing. Something to do with her father.

“Just answer me, Vivian. Yes or no. Was the mill deliberately destroyed to hide the fact that people were getting sick?”

She stares at him. She recognizes him. “You’re Frank’s son.”

“Yes,” he says, sighing.

“All this ...”—she waves her hands again—”won’t bring him back.”

He is speechless. Good. He’s exhausting. She wants him to go away. The room is occupied by nodding grey heads. There is no one here who can help her. It’s time she went home. Todd will be wondering where she is. “Can you take me home?” she asks. He doesn’t seem to hear her. Her words have become lodged in her head and they won’t come out.

“Frank must have been involved in lining pockets or whatever you were doing back in the ’70s to make the mill project happen. That’s why he helped you destroy it. And there must have been others. Who else was in on it? Other councillors? Your husband?”

She is staring at the chess board and Father is waiting for her to make a move. Mother’s suggestion during one of his visits. Father teaches her the rules but he won’t let her win. If she doesn’t make a move, she realizes, he can’t win. She will take her turn, though. Losing is better than not being in the game. She eyes the smallest pieces with their perfectly round heads and squat bodies. Peasants lack ambition. They aren’t the ones who make the world turn, who make decisions that change lives. But they’re always willing to string up their leaders and watch them swing.

“Do you remember Audrey Reid?” he asks.

A peasant. Can be bought, but like others of her kind, her effectiveness is limited.

“Audrey Reid, Curtis’s mother,” he repeats. “Mary thought her perspective could be significant, so I tracked her down.”

A greedy woman. She took the money but didn’t honour their deal.

“She was involved in all this, wasn’t she? Did she know what she was doing?”

“They always know,” Vivian says, mumbling. Frank lets out a little smile.

“Audrey wouldn’t talk to me, but I had a long chat with her ex-husband. Jim told me that after the explosion a man came to their farm and gave Audrey a pile of cash to go visit her grandkids. The man said the money was for some information. Audrey’s job was to find out what Elena Reid knew about the mill explosion. He said it was for the family’s own protection. Jim told her not to take the money, but she did. You wanted to know how much of a risk this kid really was and you thought she might confide in a family member.”

Vivian closes her eyes and turns away, shaking her head. Audrey Reid. Useless woman. Vivian’s concern wasn’t merely about what Elena knew. She was a girl with a very active imagination and nobody paid much attention to her natural attempts to extricate her dad from blame. Vivian wanted to know exactly how she had gained insights that were, for the most part, very close to the truth, and how many more people might now be in possession of pertinent information, whether they realized it or not.

The young man’s hand touches her face, gently turning her head towards his. She opens her eyes and looks at him.

“The more I learn about you, the more I think this is all an act. It’s your way of avoiding responsibility for what you’ve done.”

“Who are you?” she asks. “You’re not Frank.”

The young man sits up slightly and pulls his chair in even closer, as if he and Vivian are the best of friends. A nurse walks by and smiles at them. Vivian is too confused by it all to call out and demand to be rescued from this stranger.

“Jim said Audrey felt so bad about what she’d done that she went to the police maybe a dozen times with Elena’s theories. But you’re a smart woman. You probably realized Audrey would never be a real threat. The cops only saw a bag lady stinking of booze.”

Bad apples. It was very convenient that Curtis came from a long line of them. He was the perfect scapegoat.

“Was it Frank, the man who bribed Audrey?”

She nods slightly at the man who she thinks is Frank but isn’t but could be. He knows, anyway, he knows. He grins, a big fierce grin, and it makes her instantly furious.

“Leave me alone!” she screams. Two nurses come rushing over and escort her out of the common living area. She hears them apologize to him. They don’t see him for what he is. No more visitors, she mutters. No more.

The sky is dark. Someone closes the curtains. Vivian touches the books lined neatly against one wall and then slowly settles into a chair. She lifts her knitting out of her bag and examines it under the orange lamplight.

Mary shuffles in, pushing her walker over the wood-like vinyl. She grabs Vivian’s knitting. “How is this going to keep refugees warm?” she asks, peering through the holes.

Vivian shrugs. “I told Carol ...”

Mary tuts and lowers herself into the chair beside her. The stitches come apart easily as Mary unravels the rows. “What a mess,” she mutters. “Most of this needs to be redone.”

“I tried,” Vivian says weakly.

“Quiet!” an old man grunts from across the table. “This is the reading room.” Vivian looks around. Mary has gone.