A Darkness of the Heart Read online

  “That’s MacLeod Lake in the Kawarthas,” I said. “It’s about a hundred miles north of Toronto. The Loves and my family, the Ellards, owned the only two cottages on an island there for generations. Nina renovated theirs, but ours was the same as it had always been. Squeaky screened doors, bookshelves filled with paperbacks that had long since lost their covers, mismatched sets of dishes, and faded crazy quilts on all the beds. I loved it.”

  Roy smiled. “Sounds idyllic,” he said.

  “It was for me,” I said. “Of course, those memories ceased to be halcyon when the truth about Nina emerged. Ben told me that when he learned about Nina’s role in the events that led up to Des’s death, he wanted to edit her image out of every roll of film he’d shot, but he couldn’t do it.”

  “Do you wish Ben had carried through with his plan?”

  “No. I understood why he couldn’t destroy his images of Nina. But see for yourself. Ben is about to zoom in on one of what Nina always called our ‘al fresco’ lunches.”

  Roy was silent as he took in the scene: the table, set for five, covered with a pale blue linen cloth that touched the grass; the individual bouquets of pansies in goblets set at each place. The pansies were the same shade of violet as Nina’s eyes and of her sundress, cut to reveal just enough of the flawless ivory of her skin to enhance her mystery. “Every detail is perfect,” Roy said finally.

  “Nina never settled for less,” I said. When I saw my face, glowing with love and gratitude as Nina greeted me, my stomach clenched. “Nina always said that Sally didn’t want her, and my mother didn’t want me, so fate had brought the two of us together.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Blessed,” I said.

  When the focus shifted to Des and Sally building a sandcastle, I leaned forward. I had watched this footage a dozen times but never with the knowledge that Des was my father and Sally was my sister. The sandcastle they were building was a complicated affair, with turrets, winding stairways, and secret doors. Both father and daughter were tanned, long-limbed, and blond, and the slope of their shoulders as they bent to do their work was identical. “They’re so much alike,” I said.

  “Not just physically but so connected in what they’re doing,” Roy said. “You notice how Des hands Sally the tools she needs before she asks for them.”

  “There was always that special closeness between them.”

  “And that was a problem for Nina,” Roy said.

  “It was,” I said. “You can see the darkness gathering in this next scene. Ben filmed it at a dinner party Nina and Des were hosting on their deck.”

  For a few minutes Roy watched in silence. Finally, he said, “It’s a 1960s magazine cover: beautiful guests, beautifully attired, enjoying one another’s company on a beautiful evening. And that table—vintage sand pails filled with pink roses, lavender, and delphinium—exquisite.”

  “And Nina is the most exquisite of them all,” I said. “At least until Sally walks through the door.”

  When Sally, deeply tanned, without makeup, her hair tied in a loose ponytail, pulled a chair up to the table and began telling the guests about a Monet exhibit she and Des had seen the week before, the energy in the room changed. As she talked about the violent brushstrokes in Monet’s haystacks, Sally’s long arms cut through the air, unconsciously mimicking Monet’s movements, and every eye was upon her.

  When her hand knocked over a glass of red wine, staining Nina’s pale blue tablecloth, Sally leapt up in mock horror. “Well, I guess I’m banished,” she said, laughing. Des smiled at her fondly. “Nonsense. You’re the best thing at this party. Now sit back down and tell us about Monet’s brushstrokes.” Ben Bendure’s camera caught the easy camaraderie between father and daughter. It also caught the pure loathing in Nina’s eyes as she gazed at the daughter who had ruined her perfect party.

  “That was chilling,” Roy said. “I understand why Sally and Des might not have picked up on Nina’s reaction, but Ben captured that moment on film. Why didn’t he warn them?”

  “I’m sure he just regarded it as a disturbing but isolated event. It’s easy for you and me to see the truth. We know how the story ends, but Ben was living the story, and most of that summer was like every summer we spent on the island—an endless spool of hot sunny days, still moonlit nights, and fun.”

  No matter how many times I watched the next scenes, they still made me smile: Sally and I swimming out to the raft with the indefatigable old yellow hound dog that had followed Des home one day and never left; the two of us waterskiing, showing off for the camera and taking some spectacular falls; Ben trying to conduct an interview with Sally about her art and Sally responding with monosyllabic or totally off-the-wall answers until she and Ben were both convulsed by laughter and he had to give up.

  That interview was the final scene on the DVD that contained the footage of the last summer of Sally’s life at the lake. When it ended, Roy looked at me questioningly. “Are you up for the next one?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “But you need to see the first scene. It encapsulates everything.”

  The next DVD opened with Sally sitting on a couch beside Izaak Levin. Her hairstyle was boho; her makeup, artful; and her outfit, chic. She was smoking a cigarette. At the moment when Ben’s camera moves in for a close-up, Roy’s intake of breath was audible. The Sally of the previous DVD had been sparkling, effervescent; now, she seemed spiritless and her eyes were dead.

  Roy hit Pause. “My God, what happened to her?” he said.

  “Overnight, she became an adult,” I said. “You saw the interview where Sally said that after she moved to New York, she painted, and she and Izaak went to galleries, and they fucked.”

  “Jesus,” Roy said. “She was what, fourteen? Nina could have had Levin jailed.”

  “Nina didn’t care,” I said.

  “Levin should have cared.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  “You talked to him about his relationship with Sally?”

  “I did. It was just a few weeks before that terrible night at the Valentine’s dinner where Sally and Izaak both died. I was angry about everything Sally had been through since her show opened at the Mendel and that anger spilled over into rage at everything that had happened to Sally since Des died. Izaak had been present for it all, so I confronted him. The story he told was appalling, but I believed him.”

  On the screen, fourteen-year-old Sally’s lifeless eyes stared out at me. I turned away. “I can’t look at that,” I said. Roy picked up the remote, and the screen went black.

  “Tell me when you’re ready,” he said softly.

  When I’d gathered my thoughts, I began. “The night of Des’s death, Nina and Sally were taken to Wellesley Hospital in Toronto. They were still there the night of his funeral. Izaak lived not far from the hospital. There was a vicious thunderstorm that night, and Izaak decided to stay home and get drunk. He was well on his way when someone started pounding at his door. It was Sally, soaked to the skin. She hadn’t been discharged from the hospital. She’d just put her coat on over her gown and found an exit. Izaak asked who he should call, and Sally became hysterical. She was terrified that she was going to be forced to go back to the house on Russell Hill Road and live with Nina. She wouldn’t let Izaak call anybody, so he went upstairs to run a hot bath for her.

  “He’d left his bottle of rye on the table, and when he came downstairs, the bottle was almost empty. Luckily, Sally’s stomach rebelled and she threw up most of the liquor. Izaak got her into the tub and sat outside the door until she called him. He handed her a pair of his pyjamas, and she slept in his guest room.

  “The next day he went to the hospital to tell Nina what happened. According to Izaak, Nina was ready for him. She wept, said she was too weak and grief-stricken to care for Sally, and suggested he take Sally back to New York with him.”

  “So Nina just handed her daughter over to the trusted family friend who it turned out was not t
hat trustworthy,” Roy said.

  “I’m sure Nina knew that it was just a matter of time before Sally ended up in Izaak’s bed. She didn’t care,” I said. “She wanted Sally out of her life. And despite Nina’s all-consuming grief at her husband’s death, Izaak told me she did manage to summon a lawyer to her hospital bedside and have him draw up the documents Izaak would need to get Sally into the U.S.”

  “You must have had questions,” Roy said.

  “I did. I was frantic. I couldn’t believe Sally would just leave without even saying goodbye to me, but Nina told me that Sally needed to cut all ties with her old life. She would be attending a special school for the arts in New York City, and she wanted to make a fresh start. She said Sally had asked her not to give me her new address. Not long before she died, Sally told me that during those first months with Izaak, she asked every day if I’d called or written, and after a while she simply stopped asking.”

  Roy winced. “God, Nina really was a piece of work, wasn’t she?”

  “She was that,” I said.

  “Jo, I’m not being prurient, but did you ever learn when Sally’s sexual relationship with Izaak began?”

  “I imagine it wasn’t long after they went to New York. Why do you ask?”

  “I guess because the change in Sally is characteristic of an ugly phenomenon. Vale Frazier is applying to Yale, and as part of her admission package, she wrote an essay about child actors being used by sexual predators. She asked me to read it and give her my opinion of the writing.”

  “And…” I said.

  “It was a powerful piece, but it made me sick. I’ve heard things, of course, but Vale’s essay really opened my eyes. These children live in a world where their bodies are the coin of the realm. They’re lost. Often their parents are under the sway of the very people who prey on their children—producers, directors, agents, mentors, coaches, older actors—and they entrust their children to them completely. After that, these predators are safe to start making advances. The children have nowhere to go. Sometimes parents will even turn a blind eye to what’s happening to their son or daughter because they believe these so-called mentors and benefactors will give their children the breaks or the skills they need to succeed in their careers.”

  “And the children have no way out.”

  “No more than Sally did,” Roy said.

  “So you think when Sally said that going to galleries and fucking Izaak was good preparation for life in the arts, it was just bravado?”

  “When she gave that interview, Sally had thirty years to work through what happened to her,” Roy said, “but in the clip we just saw, she was raw. In her essay, Vale explained she could always spot a child who was being molested because when they weren’t onstage, it was as if they’d been hollowed out. Their eyes were dead. Vale wrote that to succeed at an audition, an actor has to have extra wattage, so managers of children who have lost their ability to sparkle often tell them that when they’re auditioning they should imagine they’re playing the role of a child auditioning for a part she or he wants more than anything in the world.”

  “And they learn to suppress what they’re feeling, so they can sparkle,” I said.

  “But the emptiness is always there,” Roy said. “And often they turn to drugs and alcohol to fill the void, and they bounce between rehab and relapse until one day their life ends in a tabloid headline.”

  “But Sally didn’t let that happen to her,” I said. “Despite everything that was done to her, she survived. She chose a life; she lived it on her terms and she left an incredible legacy. Most of what’s written about Sally is lurid and misogynistic—the sexual swashbuckler who slept with anyone, male or female, who struck her fancy. Even the kindest assessments of her life are condescending.”

  “Forgive Sally her trespasses because she was an artist,” Roy said.

  My smile was thin. “That’s pretty much it,” I said. “But Sally didn’t need to be forgiven—at least not more than the rest of us do. She was strong, determined, brave, funny, and very smart. She never stopped asking questions and seeking answers. After she died, I discovered that she’d been going to the weekday five o’clock mass at St. Thomas More chapel in Saskatoon on and off for months. She and one of the priests there had become close.”

  “That surprises me,” Roy said. “Nothing I’ve read about Sally suggests that she was devout.”

  “Father Ariano said Sally would have called herself ‘interested’ rather than devout. He told me the first time he talked to Sally after mass, she said that as far as she knew, the only good things about the Catholic Church were its art collection and its funerals, but she was prepared to hear more.”

  “And she kept going back?”

  “She did,” I said.

  “Did she find what she was looking for?”

  “I don’t know. I met Gary Ariano when I approached him for help planning Sally’s funeral. He was as angry about her death as I was. We had a drink together in the priests’ lounge, and then he took me downstairs to show me the college chapel. I wasn’t in the mood for a tour, but Father Ariano said he was sure I would find the mural in the chapel worth seeing.”

  “And it was?”

  “It was exactly what I needed. I didn’t think so at first. I was fighting a losing battle with my rage and confusion, and the mural was sweetly pastoral: Christ in a prairie field performing the miracle of the loaves and fishes. When I said something politely dismissive to Father Ariano, he told me to move closer. I did, and I saw that the light in the sky was greenish-yellow—apocalyptic—and the earth beneath the crowds gathered to listen to Christ was cracking open. Arms were thrusting themselves through the broken soil, shaking their fists at God. It was incredible.”

  “An accurate reflection of your worldview after Sally’s death?” Roy said.

  I nodded. “That’s why Gary Ariano took me to see the mural.”

  “He sounds like a remarkable man.”

  “He is, and I will never stop being grateful for him being there in the days before the funeral. Stuart Lachlan, Sally’s ex-husband and Taylor’s father, had broken down completely. The Irish have an expression—‘he looked like a man who spent the night asleep in his own grave’—that’s how Stu looked. Nina said she was too overcome with grief to deal with the arrangements, so she begged me to take charge.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yes, and I couldn’t have done it without Father Ariano.”

  “Have you kept in touch with him?”

  I laughed. “Zack always says I never leave anyone behind. Once someone’s in my life, they’re there forever. Gary Ariano certainly is. I’d like you to meet him, get his perspective on Sally. He’s still at St. Thomas More. And, Roy, Ben Bendure’s connection with Sally lasted until her death. He had a huge amount of material about her that none of us has seen.”

  “Do you think he’d talk to us about it?”

  “I know he would, and Ben lives in Saskatoon too. I’ll call him, and once I know when he can see us, I’ll call Gary.”

  Roy took my hand. “I feel the way I did when I began The Happiest Girl—excited and terrified.”

  “That’s about where I am too.”

  Roy grinned. “There’s no better place to start than ‘excited and terrified.’ Anything I can do to help with the terror?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is,” I said. “Tell me your opinion of Gabe Vickers.”

  My request seemed to startle Roy. “Gabe?” he said. “He’s the best producer I’ve ever worked with, and once he takes a project on, there’s no one more committed to making the vision a reality. He’s every writer and director’s dream.”

  Gauging Roy’s response, I chose my next words carefully. “I’m a little uneasy about him,” I said.

  Roy was thoughtful. “I heard that you were there when Gabe mixed it up with Shawn O’Day the night of Zephyr’s fete. I’m not condoning the violence, but Shawn should never have told Gabe to reverse Ainsley’s decis
ion. It was Ainsley’s call, and it was the right one.”

  “Shawn seemed to have a personal stake in honouring Zephyr,” I said.

  “Everyone on that stage had a personal stake, Joanne. They all love and revere Zephyr, and they didn’t want their tribute to her to be shoddy. Ainsley made the only choice she could.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said. I wondered if Roy knew that Gabe had punched Shawn after he threatened to expose Gabe’s deviant sexual proclivities, but if he did, the subject was off limits. “Vale had dinner with us last night,” I said. “She seems very impressed with Gabe,” I said. “She feels that everyone working on The Happiest Girl knows it’s a privilege to be part of his production.”

  “She’s right,” Roy said. As he waited for me to respond, Roy’s gaze was intent. When I remained silent, his blue-grey eyes narrowed. “But you have another concern.”

  “I do,” I said. “I’d like to know more about the kind of person Gabe Vickers is,” I said. “You and Ainsley have been working with him on the movie for months, and she’s married to him. You must have some insights into what matters to him, not just professionally but personally.”

  “I’ll be honest with you, Joanne. I don’t know much at all about Gabe’s personal life. All I know is that he is a consummate professional, and if you agree, I’d like to pitch Flying Blue Horses to him as a six-part series. If Gabe buys into it, he’ll produce a show that will honour your vision and be both beautiful and true. Millions of people will see your story and for some of them, it will be life-changing. I don’t think we can ask for more than that.”

  I turned so I could watch the creek as I considered Roy’s words. It didn’t take long. I didn’t know Roy well, but I trusted him. “Pitch the idea to Gabe,” I said. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Roy took my hand. “You won’t be sorry,” he said. “Now, let’s get the legal papers drawn up so we both know exactly where we stand.”