The plump woman patted the back of her head to judge the state of her French roll (intact), readjusted the bifocals on the bridge of her nose, then dropped her fingers to caress the keys of her Selectrix. Father Day kept leaving brochures for computers on her desk and extolling the virtues of peecees and apples or some such names, but she had dug in her heels. Computers crashed, she had heard. Typewriters did not. She would not be dictated to by some machine with a mind of its own. She was rehearsing the very speech when the two young women slipped into the outer office. The red-haired one was clearly Michael Rossiter’s sister. Something about the eyes, their animation as much as their shape. But who was the other, with the dark angry eyes and the serious brow? Of course, Father Day hadn’t bothered to introduce them. Oh, how she missed Father Saunders, who had retired in the spring. Such a gentleman. But these young priests…!
She had asked twice if Stevie would like a cup of coffee, but had received no response. She had tried penetrating the brain of the visitor with the same laser gaze she sometimes applied to the back of Father Day’s head, but that didn’t work either. Undoubtedly the magazine she had on her lap was just all too absorbing.
But Stevie wasn’t remotely interested in Winnipeg Life. She had plucked it from a pile without thinking, the way she would in a dentist’s or doctor’s office, and had begun turning the pages. But the words and pictures blurred.
She had expected she would join Merritt in Father Day’s office. She had found herself almost craving it—the ritual of kind words delivered by an understanding cleric. Weren’t they supposed to have a handle on the big issues? But the priest had come briskly through the door at the secretary’s summons, his face under the clerical collar raw and red as if windburned, his eyes inscrutable behind round glasses that turned to silver disks as they caught the morning light streaming through the church office window. The phrasing of his condolences was as economical as his movements, and after introductions in which he’d ascertained Stevie’s status as a non-relative, he’d ushered Merritt back through the door to his office, and closed the door. But Stevie had had a moment to see his eyes behind the lenses as his face turned sharply from one to the other. They were small and shrewd and she had felt somehow in that moment she had been unfairly judged. It only made her feel more like a fish out of water. Candle wax, floor polish, the crucifix on the wall behind the secretary’s head complete with writhing corpus. She had turned to sit in one of the chairs, found it unforgivably hard, and sorted through a pile of religious magazines until she found something secular and readable. But it was five months old, with an unpromising cover story about downtown redevelopment—Can Galleries Portáge Save Downtown?—and soon her mind flew to the events of the morning.
When she’d awoken, she’d found her mother perched on the edge of her bed. Which was odd.
“Mom?” She’d rubbed her eyes in the semidarkness.
“Oh, my poor Stevie!”
Then she’d remembered. The fog of sleep dissolved. “Oh!” A tiny cry lodged in her throat. She sat up. Her mother enveloped her in a hug. A memory of damp leather blunted the fragrance of her mother’s Opium. She pushed Leo from her mind.
“I can’t believe this has happened, my poor—”
And so it had gone. Hugging. Weeping. Counselling. This was Kathleen Lord, who had earned her therapy chops in California, no less. Her father had heard the news on CBC. He’d alerted his wife. They decided to let Stevie sleep. (They? Stevie imagined her father had tied her mother to her chair to keep her from barging in.) Her father left for the hospital and Kathleen, honouring her promise, had beetled over to Merritt’s instead. Hugging. Counselling. No weeping. (“She has it bottled up.”) Organizing—funeral, reception. Luckily Father Day phoned, so that was the church figured out. She was going to drive Merritt to St. Giles’ in an hour.
“No, I’ll do it,” Stevie interjected.
“You should rest.”
“Oh, for god’s sake.” Stevie swung her legs over the bed and was immediately smacked with a bout of dizziness.
“I told you.”
Stevie rose tentatively and reached for her robe at the foot of the bed. Pushing her arm through the sleeve kindled the memory of another garment whose sleeve she had recently occupied. Another memory of the previous evening. She contemplated her mother, who was busy smoothing the duvet.
“Mom—”
“Mmm?”
“Have you talked with Aunt Paul lately? Or had a letter?”
“Why are you asking that?” Kathleen stopped in her tidying.
“Can you just the answer the question?”
“I haven’t talked to her since last month. Her birthday. Didn’t I tell you? Pauline and George have decided to sell the house in Ten Hills and get something smaller somewhere else in Baltimore—a condo.”
“I guess I forgot.”
Kathleen’s suspicious regard worked on her like an itch. “Okay,” she sighed. “Michael was apparently in Washington earlier this month.”
“And so you think—?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” Her tone was sharper than she’d intended. “And I guess I won’t find out.”
“If you had told him in the first place—”
“Ma, I am not having this conversation again.”
“You started it.”
“These are the words of a mother and therapist?”
Kathleen shook her head gently. Her eyes softened. “Sweetheart, Michael’s gone and that’s an end to it.”
“Which ‘it’?”
“All the many ‘its.’” Kathleen pulled the duvet over the pillows. “By the way, there was a call from a Les Strickland for you. Doesn’t he have something to do with Leo?”
“His obsessive-compulsive next-door neighbour. Probably wants me to walk Leo’s dog.”
Stevie had bristled a little. Alvy was a sweet dog, and, okay, so she wasn’t working. But Les just presumed. And Leo had led him—somehow—to presume.
And on a day like today. She turned from her unread magazine and glanced out the church office window. Autumn leaves, crisp air. Canine enthusiasm. She relaxed: Walking Alvy might be a tonic.
The woman at the desk, alert to the movements of those waiting for Father Day, lifted her hands from the keyboard and again asked whether Stevie would like a cup of coffee. Stevie declined but she’d given the woman an opening.
“Isn’t it awful? We were so shocked when we heard. Such a nice man.” The persistent emphases hammered at Stevie.
“Are you a relative?” the woman continued.
Stevie stared at her. If I were a relative, wouldn’t I be in there? “No,” she mustered. “Just a friend.”
“Oh, dear. Your poor thing.” Cluck, cluck, cluck. “Were you a good friend?”
Stevie frowned. The intonation was offensive, but the woman couldn’t seem to help speaking in italics.
“We grew up together. His house was just down the street.”
“Oh, I see.” The woman patted her bun, which looked like a small furry animal in repose. “Then you must know what an…” she paused “… interesting photographer he was.”
“Well, actually—”
“My husband and I went to see his show last winter at the—now I can’t remember the name—?”
“Floating Gallery, probably.”
“In every picture, someone was wearing a lampshade on his head—”
“Oh, the Life of the Party series.”
“—and shaking hands, and meeting politicians and well-known locals. There was even one with the bishop. It was very—” She seemed to grope for a word. “—interesting.”
“You’re an art photography fan?” Stevie stifled a yawn. Winnipeg Life had renewed appeal.
“Oh, dear, no. He left me an invitation to the opening. He used to come here a lot before Father Saunders retired.”
“Really? For Mass?”
“No, no. During the week. Usually in the afternoons. Yes, he used to come here quite regularly for a time. Of course—” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “—I don’t know why he came here so often. Father Saunders never said.” She straightened in her chair and intoned, “The relationship between priest and penitent is a privileged one.”
And it never rains in California.
A few memories:
Michael and Merritt, dressed up and tidy, their mother Lillian ushering them into the Rossiters’ big white Lincoln on Sunday mornings. Stevie on her beautiful blue Schwinn Breeze waving from her front lawn, as Lillian cautiously backed onto the Crescent.
An overheard conversation, laced with misgiving, between her parents and some neighbours. Lillian was now attending Mass every morning. “A coping strategy,” her mother had explained. The expression was novel to her ten-year-old ears.
Walking alone through evening mist along the shore at the rambling Rossiter cabin in Lake-of-the-Woods. A noisy weekend party with a dozen college friends of Michael’s, a September farewell to summer as the college year loomed—her first university year, Michael’s third. She, feeling miserably out of place, younger than most, wondering why she was invited, oblivious to another’s footfalls. Out of the veil of white, a face emerges, and like a dream, a kiss. In a moment, the barrier that was their shared childhood is broken.
And Michael, in bed with her one morning, in her first apartment on Macmillan. His back to her. She connecting his freckles with one of her Rapidograph pens. He describing some dialectical metaphysical blather from a philosophy course, his arts elective that year. He summarized his position. She stopped cold. It was something the Pope might have said. “What did you draw?” he’d said, lifting his neck from the pillow and craning as if he could see. “Nothing, just shapes,” she’d replied dully. But it had been a floor plan, for the first floor of her dream house. He forgot to turn around in the mirror later, and Stevie had scrubbed the markings off for him in the shower. A few months later, that morning in bed, that conversation, would come back to her with terrible force.