Always Kiss the Corpse (12 page)

“That's what the others say, too—Stock's pious We go on, Gary's furious We go on, Lorna's soothing We go on.” He rubbed her hand. “I don't know if I can. Not if I don't know what I'm doing. And from now on, how can I know?”

“How could you ever know? On any of them?”

“True. I've been careless for too long.”

“No.” She knelt up higher, and brought her face close to his. “You are probably the most careful physician I've ever met. And don't you dare contradict me. You know I'm right.” She kissed his cheek.

“I didn't tell you.” Richard stared into the fire. “Vasiliadis came to see me that morning. The day he died. He was fuming.”

“But he'd been fuming all week, you told me he was really fuming the day before. When he confronted the four of you.”

“Not like this. When he talked, ranted, Lorna at least could quiet him down.” Richard leaned toward Terry. “When he came in he was practically frothing. At first he couldn't speak. He'd burst past Dawn, she couldn't stop him. He was wearing a dress with a loose skirt and low heels and his makeup was all askew. For Sandro, very bad signs.”

Terry nodded. Sandro was turning into a strongly feminine woman. This recognition had been, at first, a positive symptom. Where had they gone wrong?

“He sat and tried to calm himself. I wanted to help but he kept waving me away and shaking his head. Finally he said, ‘Want to see what you've done?' I said I could see, and we'd solve the problem, but he interrupted me, he said, ‘I mean really see!' I asked him what he meant.

“He stood, and lifted up his skirt.” Richard stared into his martini, raised the glass and downed it all. “God, Terry.” He got up, filled his tumbler, no ice, no water, and drank half.

“Richard, please.”

Richard spoke evenly, solemnly: “I tried to examine him but he pulled the skirt between his legs and sat and he said, suddenly deathly calm, ‘Dr. Trevelyan, it hurts like hell. You've turned me into a monster.' He started to cry. I gave him water and Demerol. I got him to lie down and told him to wait, and said that I'd be right back. I needed to consult with Stockman, or Gary. But not even Lorna was there.”

“Why didn't you call me?”

“I don't know. I just didn't.”

“What else did you give him?”

“Nothing. When I got back to my office he was gone. I went outside but he wasn't anywhere. I left messages for the others and finally found Stockman, and I told him what happened. We tried to figure out what to do. Gary came in, and then Lorna. We tried to contact Sandro, bring him back, but he didn't go home all day.”

No, thought Terry, he went and found himself some heroin to kill his pain. Or maybe he already had some. And shot it all into himself. Awful.

Richard's gaze held hers. “The four of us agreed we wouldn't tell anyone.”

Yes, they had always been a team, despite their differences. Richard had, all his career, wanted to be part of a true team. “Let's take some time off. Maybe we could go somewhere. A few weeks.”

“Maybe,” said Richard. “Maybe.”

SEVEN

Kyra and Noel dropped Ursula and Brady in Coupeville at Ursula's car. Noel almost gave the plastic bag containing Sandro's photo album back to them to return to the house, but finally held on to it. But the nearer they got to Bellingham, and Kyra drove with her foot heavy on the gas, the larger grew the package lying on the floor at his feet. It felt inappropriate, even wrong, to have taken this private chronicle of transformation.

Noel had known, early in puberty, that his sexuality was somehow different from that of his friends. It took him a little longer to figure out why, when he fantasized, his objects of desire weren't lean blonde Carline or busty Lettie or sweet gentle Sue. They were attractive, he could see that, but not in
that
way. Instead he was drawn to Burt, and Peter. They didn't look particularly strong, robust or stylish, in fact Burt usually had a zit or two going, but it would've been with them he'd have tried to explore his fantasies. If he'd dared.

He hadn't been attracted to his best friend, Jason. He could talk to Jason about practically anything, but not this—not till nearly the end of their last year in high school. A warm spring afternoon, a long walk in Stanley Park, Jason going on about Roberta, after a month of dating he'd worked up the courage to ask her to think about maybe considering the possibility of their having sex together, and she'd just whispered, Yes, as if for the last month nothing else had been on her mind. Jason talked to Noel about sex for half an hour. Noel spoke less and less till finally Jason said, You know, Claire's real hot for you, bet you could make it with her, and Noel blurted, I can't, Jason, I'm gay. Which brought their conversation and the walk to a standstill. You can't be, Jason kept saying.

Over the summer, when Noel would call, Jason was always busy; with Roberta, who else? Noel left for the University of Victoria and Jason went to Simon Fraser, so during the academic year they hardly saw each other. Noel never had a close buddy again, except for William and then Brendan, and Brendan was so much more. When Noel turned nineteen he explained himself to his older brother Seth, who said he'd guessed a long time back, making Noel cringe and tell Seth he wished they'd had this conversation years ago. The next evening Noel told his parents. His mother's face whitened, she said nothing, she stared at him. His father cried. After some minutes they hugged him, told him they would always love him, and went to bed. It took two years before they came to accept their son as a gay man.

But Sandro, dead, wouldn't be telling his mother anything about his own differences. Mrs. Vasiliadis soon would be devastated, doubly—Sandro's death confirmed, and Sandro well on his way to becoming Sandra. At least Noel had remained a son, pretty much unchanged in either appearance or action. But Sandra . . . How would a mother receive a son who had transformed himself into a daughter? He stared at the highway ahead. A large green and white sign proclaimed: Bellingham 6. “Kyra. We've got to talk about this.”

She glanced at him. “About what?”

“Our meeting with Maria Vasiliadis. How much to tell her.”

“Just what she hired us to find out. That everyone agrees it was Sandro in the casket. No it wasn't some other mother's son in the casket, yes it was her son.”

“And if she keeps probing?”

“Why would she?”

“About his face, no beard, all that.”

“We say we have positive identification from people who knew Sandro in the months before he died, and that's it. All we have to do is tell her what she asked us to find out.”

“You don't think she has the right to know about his last months?”

“Maybe you're right. Maybe she does.”

“Good. And you can tell her.”

“No, you should.”

“Why?”

Kyra exited the highway, popped onto city streets. “If you think she should know, then you talk to her. You'll get closer to giving her a sense of what Sandro was going through.”

“What, you think a queer can know why somebody wants to change his sex? Well just whoa up!”

“Huh? What?”

“I don't know a damn thing about transgendering, okay? I've never given a thought to it, okay? And even if I had, that's not me. Okay, Kyra?”

“I just meant, Sandro was a man—”

“And I'm a man, and dammit I'm staying a man. And a man who was in a constant relationship for thirteen years, okay? I knew where I was and where Brendan was, okay? No uncertainty there, okay? Which, if I dare say, cannot be said of both of us.”

“What's that got to do with this case?” Now Kyra wanted to seal her lips and pull back behind them everything she'd said since this conversation started. Three husbands. One divorce, one widowhood, and now a separation. Not memories she wanted to deal with today. Or maybe ever. Unfair of Noel to bring this up. Okay, maybe she wasn't being fair either. “Not a thing to do with this case, right?”

Noel relaxed. A bit. “Right, no insight by virtue of my sexuality. But if you want to think in those terms, okay, you better do the talking. You're a woman, Maria Vasiliadis is a woman, Sandro was turning into a woman. You're the obvious choice.”

“All we have to do is tell her what she asked us to find out.” Kyra pulled into the condo's garage. They called in Chinese food, ate it with beers, and carefully avoided the case. She felt a strain between them but thought better of mentioning it. It'd be all gone in the morning. She hugged him goodnight.

With Noel's door closed, still only 9:45, Kyra called Jerome. She filled him in on their case, the unpleasant job the morning would bring, and her disagreement with Noel about how much to tell the mother.

“Well,” Jerome spoke slowly, “congratulations. You're very good at what you do.”

“We try to be.”

“Actually, I meant you.”

“No no, we each do our part.”

“But now you say Noel doesn't want to play his part.”

Just what she'd been thinking, but Jerome shouldn't say it. She winced with disloyalty to Noel “Depends, I suppose, on what each of us thinks our parts are.”

“Hmm,” said Jerome.

“What's that mean?” It felt a little okay, Jerome taking her side.

“That your sense of what to tell the mother is right. Does she need to know everything?”

“Well mostly I agree. But then—”

“You'll decide. But if it were me, I wouldn't want to know all that. Especially since it no longer makes any difference.”

Kyra wondered how much she'd want to know. Would she be a different person if she hadn't known that Simon, her second husband, killed himself? Did it mean Jerome would want the truth watered down? Or want it at all? “Maybe you should know as much as you can handle. But how do you know how much that is?”

Jerome said, “That poor woman has a life ahead of her. To know all that was in her son's mind, that'd be terrible.”

Kyra nodded—and remembered Jerome couldn't see her. “Yes,” she said. They talked a few minutes more, potluck plans, and she promised a report tomorrow evening.

In her room she sat for a few minutes, still dressed. Such a reasonable man, Jerome. Pragmatic and intelligent. And nice to her, trying to defend her before an absent Noel.
Nice
; there it was again. How much did she need
nice
in her life?

Not the question for tonight. From the shelf in her closet she took the leather case and opened it. She removed two of the six juggling balls: tell nothing to Maria Vasiliadis, tell part to Maria Vasiliadis. Up from her left hand went the first ball, up went the second, she caught the first in her right and up again, the second. A minute, two. Good exercise, but juggling two balls was easy. She caught the two, reached for two more, one up, two up, three, catch one—tell all to Mrs. Vasiliadis—and re-toss, catch two and up again, three and one and two, and kept them going. Higher arcs and she grabbed the fourth ball, up high, hands catching, reaching, tossing, till only rhythm held sway and her mind, fully relaxed, knew she was juggling Maria-all, Maria-part, Noel-no, Jerome-yes, a smooth oval. Three minutes, four, five. Now all that had seemed clear when speaking with Jerome had gone unclear. She caught the balls, one-two-three-four, squeezed them, set them back in their case. Usually juggling satisfied her, clarified her thinking. Tonight, nothing.

≈  ≈  ≈

At 8:03 Thursday morning Andrei Vasiliadis looked up from his newspaper to see Vasily walk toward him, past other booths, to their usual space in the back of the Pancake House. An eerie feeling came over Andrei, watching Vasily—it could've been him, Andrei, thirty years ago coming toward the sixty-one-year-old him now. He wondered if Vasily felt as if he were approaching his older self. Aging with each stride.

They did look alike, big muscular men, black haired—well, Andrei a touch gray-slicked. His nephew even sported the same thick mustache. The family always commented on the look-alikes.

“Hi.” Vasily slipped onto the bench opposite his uncle.

The server approached with coffee and menus, and poured at Andrei's nod. Vasily ordered the full stack of pancakes with blueberry syrup, Andrei the bacon and eggs special. They talked for a while about Vasily's parents, their big trip to Greece next week. Finally Vasily said, “What's up with you?”

“Sandro.” Andrei glanced around. No one could overhear but he lowered his voice anyway. He told his nephew about Maria denying Sandro's body, the lack of facial hair, the sex change theory.

“Sex change? Jeeeesus.”

“None of this must become known. And especially not by Maria.”

Vasily, two years older than his cousin, had never much liked Sandro, from toddlerhood considered him a wimp who tried to act tough. “Yeah, right. Who does know?”

“Find out. Go to Whidbey, look around, see who's saying what and keep them quiet. There's a clinic in Coupeville that does sex business. Here only me, you and Philip know.”

“Think Philip's trustworthy on this?”

Andrei considered the question long enough to let Vasily know he'd settled this for himself. “Yes.”

“You know any names on Whidbey?” The server arrived with their orders. The two men remained silent while she arranged the plates and left.

“There's a nurse worked with Sandro, name's Ursula something. Do your stuff.”

Vasily rolled his shoulders under windbreaker and blue cashmere as if already doing his stuff. He poured syrup on his pancake stack and cut an enormous forkful.

Andrei inhaled eggs, bacon and hash browns, disdaining the orange slice and parsley garnish. “Official cause of death is a heroin overdose, that's bad enough, but if this other business gets about you can pretty much figure what the community'll think. Say.”