A Darkness of the Heart Read online

  “Have you ever seen A Christmas Carol?” Vale asked.

  “Joanne and I took Taylor to see it the week before we were married,” he said.

  “I remember,” Taylor said. “Dad was a little teary at the end.”

  “I had something in my eye,” Zack said.

  Taylor and Vale exchanged knowing smiles. “Then you’ll remember that at the end of the play Bob Cratchit comes back from church carrying Tiny Tim on his shoulders,” Vale said. “That’s when he delivers the line you probably heard when you got that something in your eye. Bob Cratchit says Tiny Tim told him coming home that he ‘hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.’

  “Anyway, the actor playing Bob Cratchit in our production had a drinking problem. The last night of the run, he was drunk. He stumbled, and I fell off his shoulders. He was tall, and I came down hard on the stage. I knew I was hurt, but I also knew every eye in the house was on me, so I pushed myself to sitting position and said, ‘And Jesus was loving to children because he knew how easily they break.’ I was crying, but my words were clear and the audience started to applaud and ended up giving me a standing ovation.”

  Taylor cocked her head. “How did you know to say that about Jesus and children?”

  Vale shrugged. “I knew that’s what Tiny Tim would say. Even when I was eight, I was the kind of actor who had to inhabit the character I played. Onstage I have to become that person and play each moment the way they would.” As she looked around the table, Vale’s gaze was probing. “I know that sounds weird, but, Zack, your process when you’re in court must be similar to mine.”

  Zack was clearly fascinated. “It is,” he said. “I play every moment the way it needs to be played to get the outcome I want.”

  “Exactly,” Vale said. “And my impromptu Tiny Tim line got me the outcome I wanted. While the audience was still applauding, the actor playing Mrs. Cratchit rushed me into the wings, and they took me to New York Presbyterian. The doctors said the elbow was badly sprained and for a while I’d have to use a sling to keep my arm and elbow from moving. But theatre is a small world, and it wasn’t long before producers heard that I’d reacted quickly to the accident onstage. I started getting auditions for better roles in better productions, and I was on my way.”

  “What happened to the actor who dropped you?” Zack said.

  “He was already on the downward slope when he was hired for that production,” Vale said. “I imagine when word got out that he’d been so drunk he dropped a child actor during a performance, he was pretty well finished.”

  “No second chances,” I said.

  “He didn’t deserve one.” Vale’s tone was flinty. “Gabe says the moment an actor walks onstage or in front of a camera, she enters into a covenant with the audience to deliver her best performance, and that anything less than her best is a breach of trust. Gabe’s standards are high, and meeting them isn’t easy, but everyone working on set or behind the scenes knows that he gets the best results, and that’s good for everyone.” She slapped her palm against her forehead and grinned. “I believe you have already heard more than you care to know about Vale Frazier. Zack, if I could please have another slice of that amazing roast beef, I promise I’ll shut up.”

  * * *

  —

  It was clear from the outset that Vale and Taylor’s enthusiasm for decorating the tree outstripped Zack’s and mine, and we brought our coffee into the family room so we could watch the young women work their magic. Once Vale learned that we had a photo ornament for every year of Taylor’s life, she wanted to hear the story behind each one. Our daughter was delighted to oblige, and Zack and I were even more delighted to fill in the details that Taylor chose to omit.

  When the last bauble was hung and we turned off the lights so the tree could reveal its luminous, sparkling splendour, the four of us were silent, rapt in the wonder of it all, but as it always does, reality crept in. Vale mentioned she had an early call the next morning, and we turned the lights back on and said our goodbyes. I felt a pang when the taxi arrived to take Vale back to her condo on Broad Street. She seemed very young to be going back to an empty apartment in a strange city.

  The taxi hadn’t pulled away before Zack called the Kovacs to check on Nick and Chloe. I went to the kitchen to empty the dishwasher and I’d just finished when Zack came in to report that the news was good. Chloe had gone to bed seemingly without anxiety, and Nick had calmed enough to realize that seeking revenge was not an option. His daughter needed him to be the father he had always been: strong and supportive, and that meant letting the police track down the man who had violated Chloe and bring him to justice.

  CHAPTER

  6

  At seven-thirty Monday morning, I sat down to the rare experience of breakfast alone. Zack was at Falconer Shreve. He’d stopped by the Kovacs, and when he called he was upbeat. Nick decided his daughter needed a day or two off school, and Chloe was excited about the special morning her aide had planned for the two of them: a trip to the library for Story Time and fancy hot chocolate afterwards at Chloe’s favourite downtown restaurant, Crave. Nick was finding it hard to keep his rage in check, but his daughter’s high spirits had buoyed him sufficiently to hug her goodbye and then go to work at the sound stage.

  Taylor was at the sound stage too. Rosamond Burke, the esteemed British actress, had arrived in Regina on Saturday. Casting her as the grandmother in The Happiest Girl had been a coup for Gabe Vickers. Burke was much in demand, and at eighty, she chose projects with care. She made it clear that she planned to be back in London for her birthday on February 1, and the shooting schedule had been arranged to accommodate her. Today would be her first day on the set, and Vale wanted Taylor to watch the legend in action.

  As much as I loved my husband and daughter, I welcomed the solitude. It had been three days since Roy revealed to me that Desmond Love was my biological father, and with family activities, the concerns for April’s Place, and the terrible attack on Chloe, I hadn’t had a lot of time to let the new information about my identity settle in. The morning presented some space just to be. I was a retired professor who would be sixty-one on my next birthday—still a young woman. There were a dozen things I could do, and it was a luxury to have a quiet morning in which to contemplate options. I poured myself a second cup of coffee and took it to the table overlooking the creek where three days earlier, as the pine siskins fed on the fresh nyjer seeds in our feeder, Roy Brodnitz had given me the news that I sensed would somehow change the course of my life.

  When my phone rang and I saw that Roy was my caller, I smiled. Synchronicity was apparently becoming my constant companion. Besides, I was growing fond of Roy’s gentle gallantry.

  “Is this a bad time?” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I was just trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

  He laughed quietly. “So nothing significant,” he said. “Jo, could I come by your house this morning? There’s something I’d like to talk over with you.”

  “Another hidden branch on my family tree?”

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “I can be there in ten minutes. Is that too soon?”

  “Not at all. Come ahead.”

  * * *

  —

  When Roy and I settled in with our tea, he sighed with pleasure. “It feels so right to be here.”

  “It feels right to have you here,” I said. “But I’m surprised. I assumed the production would be all hands on deck now that Rosamond Burke has arrived.”

  “All the necessary hands are on deck,” he said. “But my job is done. On the first day of principal photography, writers become the eunuchs in the harem.”

  I laughed. “That bad, huh?”

  “Power’s never been a big number for me,” Roy said. “Ainsley’s always been ambitious enough for both of us. We’d been dancing in New
York for ten years when she decided it was time we make the transition to choreography.”

  “A wise decision,” I said.

  “It was, and so was Ainsley’s choice to add directing to her portfolio. That move had consequences for me. When Ainsley encountered script problems, we’d talk them through together, and finally I started writing my own plays. We had a string of respectable successes—nothing monumental, but enough to build on—and then Lev-Aaron died, and you know the rest.”

  “I know you went through an incredibly painful time,” I said.

  “I work in narrative,” Roy said. “I take experiences and shape them so they make sense. Without shape, life is chaos. There was no narrative to explain Lev-Aaron’s death. He was a young, healthy man who came through the door one night the way he had hundreds of times, said “Hi,” and died in my arms. Some genetic fault in his heart, the doctors said. For a long time, it seemed that the genetic fault in Lev-Aaron’s heart had ended my life too.”

  “And then you discovered Aurora,” I said.

  “And it changed everything. I’ve never understood the creative process, but for me, the spark has always been a small thing that miraculously leads to a big thing. The Happiest Girl was a very big thing for both Ainsley and me.

  “When it was such a huge hit, Ainsley and I felt this amazing reckless joy, and then Gabe approached us about making the movie. He promised the moon, and he has delivered. Rosamond Burke is solid gold, and Vale is going to be the next big thing…”

  There was uncertainty in his voice. “You must be wondering where I’m going with all this,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said. “You’re apprehensive about when your own next big thing is going to turn up.”

  Roy’s smile was endearingly crooked. “Am I that transparent?”

  “No, but I’m familiar with terror creeping in on the heels of success—it’s a phenomenon in politics too.”

  “Because as soon as you succeed, the ante is raised,” Roy said. “You’ve done something extraordinary, but it could have been a fluke. Maybe you’ll never be that good again.”

  “And that’s where you are now?”

  “That’s exactly where I am now. I’ve been working on a project about the period in the 1950s when the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops became the centre for modernist artists in North America.”

  “In retrospect, it is pretty remarkable,” I said. “Some of the biggest stars of the New York art world meeting at a pretty lake in Northern Saskatchewan to challenge the old orthodoxies and embrace abstract expressionism.”

  “Did you know Des spent three summers there when he was very young?” Roy said.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know about Des.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” Roy took a deep breath. “I’ve written a draft of Emma Lake Summer. My idea was a six-episode TV series about the passions that drive visual artists, willing them to sacrifice everything simply to make art.”

  “I’d watch that,” I said.

  “So would I,” Roy said. “But not to put too fine a point on it, what I’ve written is shit.”

  “I know the feeling only too well,” I said. “I wrote most of my first husband’s speeches and most of Zack’s. But I think you want more than my empathy.”

  “Not much gets by you, does it?” Roy said. He leaned forward. “On Friday, when you told me the story behind Sally’s painting Flying Blue Horses, about Des giving her the magic and you the porcupine quill box, I knew I had what I needed.”

  “The small thing that miraculously leads to the big thing?” I said.

  He nodded. “You, Sally, and Des. I haven’t stopped thinking about the three of you, and how your story relates to the themes of art and sacrifice that I’ve been exploring with Emma Lake. The problem I’ve had with that script is that I couldn’t get to something raw and human with it. You’ve seen the kind of work Ainsley and I can do when we have the right material, and, Joanne, the story of you, Sally, and Des is right, but I won’t go ahead with it unless you agree.”

  “What am I agreeing to?”

  “That’s up to you. So far all I have is a weekend’s worth of notes and a head full of ideas. If you say no, that’s the end of it. I promise you that. But if you say yes, you and I can work on the early development together, and you’ll have a say in everything that comes next. It’s your decision.” Roy paused, his gaze intent upon me. “Take as much time as you need.”

  I stood. “There’s something you need to see,” I said. I led him to the painting in the living room that Taylor had brought me to the night I told her that Des was my father. Roy was silent as he examined Perfect Circles. Finally, he pointed to Nina. “Sally’s mother?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the only painting Sally ever made of her. Sally said Nina was so beautiful, she could almost forgive her.”

  Roy frowned. “Forgive her for taking Des’s life?”

  “That, and forgive her for destroying Sally’s own life,” I said. Suddenly, everything that had happened in the past three days coalesced into a single thought. I was being given the opportunity to recover something I never knew I’d lost: knowledge of Sally as a sister and of Des as a father. I was being offered a second chance. I turned to Roy. “I don’t need time to consider collaborating with you,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Clearly elated, Roy took both my hands in his. “Do you have the feeling that this was meant to happen, Joanne?”

  I laughed. “All of it?” I said. “Starting with you seeing Des’s painting in the window of that gallery in New York?”

  “It’s possible,” Roy said.

  “If everything that’s happened so far was fate bringing us to this point, Jerry Garcia was right about life being a ‘long strange trip.’ ”

  “Jerry Garcia was right about many things,” Roy said. “So where do we start?”

  “You saw that documentary on Sally, didn’t you?”

  “The Poison Apple? Yes, I’ve watched it.”

  “Ben Bendure, the filmmaker who made The Poison Apple, was a friend of Des and Nina’s. Ben and Izaak Levin were both frequent guests at the Loves’ cottage at MacLeod Lake. A couple of years ago, Ben sent Taylor two DVDs he’d made of the material he didn’t use for the documentary. One of them covers Sally’s last summer at the cottage, and the other focuses on her life during the year after Des died. Do you have some time to watch them this morning?”

  “I’m free till lunch.”

  We went into the family room. I found the DVD, but after I slipped it in, I didn’t press Play.

  Roy noticed my hesitation. “Is something wrong?”

  “Just second-guessing myself.” I turned to look at him. “Roy, how do you feel about Sally?”

  Roy drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Honestly, I don’t know—at least not yet. Before I met Lev-Aaron, I was in a relationship with an actor. I was certain it was the real thing, but in the middle of rehearsals for a new play, he told me we were finished. I was devastated. I pleaded with him to tell me what I’d done. He said living with me was interfering with his clarity of thought about the character he was playing, so he had to move out.” Roy’s laugh was short and angry. “That ended my clarity of thought for over a year.”

  “But you did get over the breakup.”

  “I did. I met Lev-Aaron. He was the least judgmental person I’ve ever known, and the most generous. He helped me realize that while people like my ex seemed ruthless, they were simply desperate. Lev-Aaron said they’d put all their eggs in one basket, and they had to do whatever it took to protect that basket.”

  “That’s a very homely image,” I said. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Sally made no secret of the fact that she would leave behind anyone or anything that got in the way of her making the art she had to make.”

  “The art she had to make,” Roy said. “Making art was not a choice for Sally; it was a compulsion. Lev-Aaron said the key to underst
anding people like my ex was identifying the events from their past that made them believe the only thing they could trust was their talent. He said if I found that ‘defining moment’ in my ex’s past, I could see him differently.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “When we watch Ben Bendure’s DVDs, you won’t have trouble identifying the defining moments in Sally’s life,” I said. “The first, of course, was Des’s death, but after that the blows just kept coming.”

  “And she never recovered?” Roy said.

  “She never had a chance to. A surgeon told me once that the worst situation he faces is when he has to operate on a patient who’s had a number of botched surgeries. When it’s clear the first surgery has failed, another surgeon tries to repair the damage, but by then scar tissue has grown over the incisions; if the second surgery fails, there’s new scar tissue to deal with.”

  “And the wound still hasn’t healed.”

  “No, it’s still there buried beneath layer upon layer of scar tissue.”

  “You think that’s what happened to Sally,” Roy said.

  “I do. She was fourteen when Des died. At that age, the body heals rapidly, but if the wound is psychological, it doesn’t heal itself. All the injured person can do is grow protective layers.” I began to choke up. “This is the first time I ever realized that’s what must have happened to Sally. We were close. We talked about everything. If she and I had been together after Des died…” My voice broke.

  Roy spoke in a whisper. “But you weren’t…”

  “No,” I said. “Sally went to New York with Izaak Levin before I had a chance to see her. At some point, she discovered that making art was an antidote to pain, so until the day she died she created amazing art.”

  “I wonder if Sally felt it was a fair trade,” Roy said. “I guess we’ll never know. Meanwhile, you and I have work to do,” He picked up the remote. “Ready?”

  I nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.

  I adjusted the throw pillows behind me and watched as the screen filled with images as familiar to me as the back of my own hand: Muskoka chairs, bright with fresh paint, facing a sun-splashed lake; a raft bobbing on the waves; a dark green rowboat with yellow life jackets folded neatly on the seats, waiting beside the dock.