Burying Ariel Page 6

  The voices of Womanswork were strong, and the opening line was a grabber. “The sparrow knows that the meadhall moments are few.” As the trio sang, I followed Rae and Taylor’s passage through the crowd, warmed by the sense of community that enveloped them. Most women smiled; some reached up to Taylor, thanking her, including her. I had worried about bringing her. Now I was glad I had.

  Ann Vogel’s tap on my shoulder was the proverbial rude awakening. “You’re next,” she said. My mind went into free fall. The only anchor I had was the song to which Ariel Warren had felt a connection, but as I listened to the words, I knew Womanswork was giving me what I needed. When I stepped forward, the sentences formed themselves.

  “I don’t know which words in ‘The Sparrow Knows’ Ariel was drawn to,” I said. “Maybe all of them. But I know the line that resonated for me. ‘Darkness is our womb and destination,/Light, a heartbeat glory, gone too soon.’ My memories of Ariel begin and end with sunlight. The first time I saw her she was six years old. My daughter Mieka invited her to her birthday party. Mieka’s birthday is October 31 – Halloween – and Ariel came dressed as a sunflower. The yellow petals that circled her face were so bright.” I turned to Molly Warren. She smiled, acknowledging the memory. I drew a breath and carried on. “The last time I saw Ariel was this morning. She had taken her class out to that little hill by the Classroom Building.”

  “I was there!” The voice that came out of the crowd was very young.

  “You were lucky,” I said. “If you were in that class, you were being taught by someone who knew that all learning is an attempt to pass on the heartbeat glory of light. Tonight it may seem as if the darkness is overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean the light isn’t there. Ariel heard the call of lightness all her life. Let your memories of her turn back the darkness.”

  Molly stood up and embraced me as I stepped back from the microphone. “That was just right,” she said. “I hope to God it was enough.”

  As organizer of the vigil, Ann Vogel had appointed herself spokesperson for the students. I had feared she would lob some feminist firebombs, but all she managed was a wet, self-indulgent fizzle about how blighted her own academic future would be without Ariel Warren. Her narcissism was as sickening as Kevin Coyle’s, but I was relieved that she hadn’t ventured past her obsession with herself. She could have done harm. She didn’t, and I was grateful.

  As Ann returned to her place beside Livia Brook, I thought we were home free. Solange had given Molly Warren her word that she would behave well, and she was a principled human being. She was in agony, but she would honour her commitment.

  As she came to the microphone, she seemed to be in another time and another space. When she began to speak, I wasn’t surprised that she returned to what was obviously the best moment of her life. “Last New Year’s Ariel and I went to Mount Assiniboine. The air was sharp with the smell of fresh snow and pines. We were very happy: we knew summer would bring wildflowers, and we promised each other we would come back to see them, and that in autumn we’d return to see the larches turn to gold and, in winter, to see the valley fill again with snow.” She fell silent. Then she held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I just wanted you to know that Ariel had many plans. I wanted you to know that she died fully alive.”

  It was a stunning oxymoron. When Solange turned from the microphone and walked back towards us, a sob broke the silence. Rae Colby came out of the crowd, handed Taylor back to me, then Womanswork stepped forward to begin their final song. There were tears in Kristy’s voice, but her back was straight, and as she linked hands with the other women of the trio, I could feel their strength.

  “This is by the Wyrd Sisters.” Kristy said.

  The song was “Warrior,” the story of a girl who, haunted by her failure to respond to a woman’s screams, ultimately transforms herself into a warrior who knows she must fight until “not another woman dies.” From the moment Solange had told me about her epiphany on the night of the massacre at L’École Polytechnique, I had associated that song with her. As the trio’s voices floated high and pure on the still night air, I watched for her reaction. There was none; she had become a woman carved in stone.

  When the song ended, Kristy leaned into the microphone. “Never forget Ariel,” she whispered, then she lit the candle in her hand and raised it into the darkness. “Never forget any of our fallen sisters. Never forget.”

  I bent to put a match to Taylor’s candle and my own, and when I stood and faced the quadrangle again, the darkness was flickering with scores of tiny flames. Lighted from below, the faces of the mourners seemed alien and frightening. I drew Taylor closer.

  Ann Vogel pushed past me towards the microphone. “Never forget,” she shouted. The words were Kristy Stevenson’s, but Ann turned the gentle elegy into an injunction, harsh with hate. “Never forget,” she said, brandishing her lit candle like a club.

  As her words echoed over the courtyard, they detonated the rage that lay beneath the grief. The responses exploded in the sweet spring air. “Never forget. Never forget. Never forget!”

  “No!” Molly Warren’s anguish was apparent. She started towards the microphone, but when she put her hand on Ann’s arm, Ann turned and locked eyes with Livia.

  “Pull her back,” Ann hissed. Without hesitation, Livia stepped forward and obeyed.

  “Why won’t you let me stop her?” Molly asked.

  “They need to experience this,” Livia said.

  “No one needs to experience hysteria,” Molly said witheringly.

  “You don’t understand what we’re feeling,” Livia said.

  Molly whirled around. “I was her mother,” she said, and she had to shout to be heard above the voices calling for vengeance. For a beat, the two women stared at one another, like combatants.

  Finally, Molly shook her head. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t understand what you’re feeling, and I don’t want to.” When her neat figure vanished inside the library, Rae Colby followed her.

  Taylor looked up at me. “Is the vigil over?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The vigil’s over.” I smoothed her hair. “Taylor, I’m sorry, it was a mistake bringing you tonight.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” she said. “For a while, it was really nice.”

  “For a while it was,” I agreed. “But not any more. Let’s go home.”

  The library, the Classroom and Lab buildings, and College West were linked by inside walkways. Taylor and I could get back to the Parkway without going through the crowd. The prospect of escaping the ugliness outside was attractive, and as we walked through the cool silent halls, I was grateful my daughter and I had found an easy way out. Like most easy ways out, however, this one came with a price. Just as we were about to turn into the Lab Building, Kevin Coyle appeared.

  He was flushed with anger, and one of the lenses in his glasses was missing, so he was glaring at me with one hugely magnified eye and one ordinary eye.

  “Your glasses,” I said.

  “The goddamn lens fell out while I was leaning out of my office window watching those women. It landed somewhere in the grass out there. But I saw enough. This is going to be my case all over again. That same hysteria. Wombs. The Greeks were right.”

  “Kevin, take a hike. I’ve had enough.”

  “You’ve had enough. What about me?”

  “Hard as it is to believe,” I said, “this isn’t about you.”

  “You’re wrong there, Joanne. This is about me. That little council of war just decided that it’s about all men. What do you think the nurturers’ next move is going to be? I’m not without allies among the students, and one of them came and warned me there are rumours about Ariel and me.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “Someone heard an exchange between us and misinterpreted.”

  “What was the exchange about?”

  “It was about my case. I told you before that Ariel had found out something. I was pressing her to
tell what she knew. She was reluctant. It must have sounded worse than it was.”

  “I imagine it did,” I said wearily.

  “She was on my side, Joanne, and I’m going to go down there and confront those women with the truth before they come up to my office with their tar and feathers.”

  “Just go home, Kevin. No one’s making sense tonight. Everything’s too raw. Let it go.”

  He stepped forward so he could look straight at me. His mismatched eyes were a grotesque sight, but it was a night for the surreal. “If I let it go, it will destroy us all,” Kevin said. “I have to be vigilant for you, for me and” – he touched his upper arm – “for her.” For the first time, I noticed that he was wearing an old-fashioned black broadcloth mourning band around his upper arm. “Ariel Warren was a good woman, Joanne. So are you. Don’t get swept away.”

  He patted Taylor on the head in a gesture that only someone who had never been around children would make. “Do you play Risk?” he asked.

  “My brother does,” she said, “but he says I’m too young.”

  “You’re never too young to learn the world conquest game,” he said. “When you decide you’re ready to learn, have your mother bring you by my office. I always keep a game set up, and partners have been in short supply of late.” He drew himself up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back outside and look for that lens.”

  Taylor and I watched him stomp off into the night, a rumpled, angry man in search of normal vision.

  When we got back to Ed’s place, Taylor asked if she could see if Florence was asleep. After she ran inside to check on the nightingale, Ed frowned at me. “I know that porch light isn’t flattering, but are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but, as the jocks say, there is a question about how much I have left in my tank.”

  “Would a nightcap help?”

  “I’ll take a rain check. Taylor has school tomorrow, and it’s already nine-thirty. Way too late.”

  “How was the vigil?”

  “Sad,” I said, “and scary – very, very scary.”

  “Then we’ll talk about it another time,” he said. “Now, just to prove to you that I can stay on task, here are those keys you came over for.” He handed me the keys and an envelope. “Instructions for everything are in here. All the crankiness and idiosyncrasies of the plumbing explained in full. As Livia would say …”

  “No surprises.”

  “And,” Ed said, “the cappuccino machine is brand new, so it should be problem-free.”

  “A cappuccino machine! Talk about roughing it in the bush. Ed, I hope you know how grateful I am for this.”

  He waved his hand in dismissal. “No gratitude necessary. Just come back with a sunburn, a smile, and some new photos of that granddaughter of yours.”

  As soon as I pulled into our driveway, I could hear the pounding rhythms of Tool. Taylor and I walked through the front door into what seemed, after the sombre events of the evening, to be a parallel universe. The house smelled of cooking, and the captain’s chest in the hall was heaped with hastily shed jackets and baseball equipment. As I reached over to remove a jockstrap that I didn’t recognize from a branch of our jade plant, laughter erupted in the kitchen. Angus and Eli’s baseball team had stopped by after practice. I walked into the living room and turned down the volume.

  The effect was immediate. My son shot into the living room. He was still wearing his ball uniform; he was sweaty, tousled, and very happy. “We kicked ass, Mum. Whupped them totally.”

  I held out my arms to him. “Come here and give a needy old woman a kiss.”

  He scrunched his face. “The day you’re needy …” But he put his arms around me and hugged me hard. “So where have you been, anyway? I thought you were just going over to Mr. Mariani’s to get the keys.”

  “Mission accomplished,” I said, fishing the keys out of my purse and tossing them to him.

  “Cool,” he said. “This whole weekend is going to be cool. Pete coming back, and seeing Mieka and Greg and Maddy. As soon as they get to the lake, I’m taking the baby down to the point.”

  “Uncle of the year,” I said.

  My son winced. “Not really.”

  “Why ‘not really’?”

  “Because babies are universally acknowledged chick magnets.”

  “With smart guys like you in the universe, we chicks don’t stand a chance, do we?”

  “Not a chance. Listen, do you and T want a chili dog? We can scrape the pot and get you a couple of spoonfuls.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “What was all that chili for, anyhow?”

  Taylor ate her chili dog and went straight to bed. As we talked about the evening, she seemed intrigued rather than disturbed, and I was grateful. She was asleep by the time I closed her bedroom door. I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. No queen would need to search for a poisoned apple to get rid of me that night. I looked like hell. I went downstairs, made myself a drink, then walked into the kitchen where Angus and Eli were cleaning up. They had the radio on. Eli turned when he heard my step.

  “Is it true that a girl was killed up at the university today?”

  At seventeen, Eli had the kind of El Greco good looks you see in Calvin Klein ads. He wore his hair in a single braid in the traditional way of aboriginal men, and his eyes were dark and luminous. His radar for pain was extraordinary, perhaps because he had known so much of it in his short life. Alex Kequahtooway was raising him, and in my opinion he had worked a number of small miracles. Eli was doing well at school, and he was making friends. My son Angus had helped. He was a generous, extroverted kid who had simply enlarged his circle of friends to include Eli. It was good news all the way, except that Eli still seemed obsessed with death in the way that anorexics are often obsessed with cookbooks and food preparation.

  I sat down at the kitchen table. “That’s what I came down to talk about. The woman who was killed taught in our department. Her name was Ariel Warren. Mieka and she were friends when they were little, and she and Charlie Dowhanuik were a couple.”

  Angus shot a glance at Eli. “You know who Charlie Dowhanuik is, don’t you? Your idol, Charlie D.”

  Eli jumped from his chair. “Did Charlie kill her?”

  “Why would you think Charlie killed Ariel?” I asked.

  Eli’s face was miserable. “I listen to his show every day. I tape his ‘Ramblings’ when I’m at school. Charlie D is so cool. He used to talk about his girlfriend all the time.” He looked puzzled. “Except I thought her name was Beatrice. Anyway, he was always talking about how great Beatrice was; then a couple of weeks ago, he just stopped. I thought they broke up.

  Charlie had called his beloved Beatrice. Today’s allusion to The Divine Comedy had been part of a pattern. Unbidden, an image flashed into my mind. Charlie as a little boy on the edge of the crowd; Ariel taking his hand, rescuing him; Dante, at eight, meeting the seven-year-old Beatrice and knowing “bliss made manifest.” Two loves that had lasted a lifetime – or had they? Had something happened to turn Charlie’s bliss to suffering?

  My son’s voice brought me back to reality. “Mum, do you think it would be okay to pack the car tonight, or are you worried about our stuff getting stolen?”

  “Go ahead, pack,” I said. “I want to get away from here as soon as we can tomorrow evening.”

  Angus frowned. “Is everything okay?”

  I patted his shoulder. “Everything’s fine. Make sure you lock the garage door. I couldn’t live with myself if someone stole your Tool CDS.”

  After the boys went off to get their gear, I walked over to the living-room bookcase. It took me a moment to find what I was looking for. I hadn’t read The Divine Comedy since university, but as soon as I touched the book, I felt a rush of emotion. I had met my husband, Ian, in Classics 300. That period of our lives had glowed with transcendent moments and soaring idealism. Dante had been a good fit for us both, but there had been one passage that Ian had read to me so often he made it my own.


  I say that when she appeared from any direction, then, in the hope of her wondrous salutation, there was no enemy left to me; rather there smote into me a flame of charity, which made me forgive every person who had ever injured me; and if at that moment anybody had put a question to me about anything whatsoever, my answer would have been simply “Love” with a countenance clothed in humility.

  In the margin, Ian had written a single word: “YES!” By the time he died, my husband would have found the idea that I was the earthly vessel for divine experience as laughable as I would have. Our marriage had been a good one. We had loved and laughed and fought and grown, but somewhere along the line we had revised our definition of love. As I slid The Divine Comedy back into its place on the bookshelf, I found myself wondering how Charlie could endure losing the woman who, from the time he was seven years old, he had believed was his shining path to salvation.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The next morning my clock radio blared to life at its regular wake-up time: 5:30. As he heard the synthesizer fanfare that announced the AccuWeather forecast, Willie leaped to attention at his place beside my bed. It might be taking him two years to grow a brain, but my Bouvier had been quick to master the sequence that led to his morning walk.

  Climatologist Tara Lavallee was cheerily contrite as she announced that she had to do a complete 180 on her holiday-weekend forecast. A low-pressure zone had stalled over the southern third of the province, bringing with it …

  I reached over and clicked off the radio. The sky outside my bedroom window was leaden, and rain was drumming monotonously on my window. I didn’t need Tara to tell me it was going to be a rotten day.

  “Bad news,” I said to Willie.

  He put his paws on the mattress, shivered with delight, and eyeballed me. I eyeballed him back.

  I blinked first. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go, but it’s going to be a short one.”

  I dug out my rain pants, windbreaker, and a pair of ancient Reeboks, and Willie and I hit the street at top speed. By the time we reached the bandshell, Willie had absorbed the fact that no matter how hard he pulled at the leash I would still be on the other end, and the rain had grown lighter. There was no reason not to finish our usual run around the lake. There were distractions: for Willie, the new crop of goslings strutting their stuff across our path; for me, memories of the endless day before. I tried to shake them, give myself over to the moment, as Livia would say, but I wasn’t able to let go. Every step triggered a memory. By the time we lurched through our front door, my mood was as bleak as the day.