Burying Ariel (20 page)

As he approached me from the hall outside his office, his eyes glittered huge and intense through his thick glasses, and his grin, a dentist’s nightmare of ancient silver fillings, was fearsome.

“You look like you’ve been mainlining locusts and honey,” I said.

“A Biblical allusion,” he sneered, “and as such, increasingly irrelevant. Who needs God now that we have the Internet? Come have coffee, and I’ll show you my new toy.”

I followed Kevin into his office. He poured our coffee – mine into the orange and brown striped mug that was apparently now reserved permanently for me. He gestured to the low tables that had once held his prized games of Risk. The board games were gone now, replaced by a high-end computer system with all the bells and whistles.

I sipped my coffee. “Impressive,” I said.

“The coffee or the Complete Home Office?” he asked.

“Both.” I raised my cup to him. “Kevin, I have to hand it to you. When you commit, you commit.”

He caressed his seventeen-inch monitor. “The whole world appears on this screen,” he said solemnly. “Anything I want to learn about, buy, own, peruse, discuss – it’s all here for me.”

“Eden,” I said.

“Another Biblical allusion,” he said, “but this one is acceptable because the metaphor works. My machine can conjure up Eden, but it also brings serpents.” He dropped to the floor, knelt before his computer, and logged on to the Internet. Then he called up the Web page devoted to Ariel and clicked from it to “Red Riding Hood.” “They haven’t taken it off. Worse yet, the Friends of Ariel have undergone a metamorphosis. They are now the Friends of Red Riding Hood, a name change which allows them to focus on fresh atrocities.”

I looked over his shoulder at the monitor. The role of Red Riding Hood #1 had been taken over by another hideously mutilated woman. I tried to keep my voice even. “When it comes to abuse, there are always fresh atrocities.”

He peered up at me. “But aren’t we supposed to be remembering Ariel Warren?”

I thought of the young woman who had been so moved by the shining idealism of a single line in the Hippocratic oath. “They’re just using her,” I said. “I’m going to make Livia put a stop to it.”

Rosalie wasn’t in her customary place in the outer office, but Livia’s door was open, a sure indication that she was inside. She wasn’t alone. As I walked towards the door, I could hear raised voices. When I stopped to listen, I discovered that the topic under discussion was me.

Ann Vogel’s voice was harsh. “Joanne Kilbourn is not one of us. You remember who she sided with in my attitudinal-harassment case.”

“I wasn’t here,” Solange said calmly, “so I
don’t
remember. It wasn’t my battle, and it wasn’t Ariel’s. Until the vigil, I never had any feelings one way or the other about Joanne. She’s certainly easy to dismiss: middle-aged, middle-class, middlebrow … middle-everything. But that night she said exactly the right thing. Perhaps there’s more to her than we thought. I’m beginning to think she might be right about allowing Ariel to become just another morality tale on ‘Red Riding Hood.’ ”

“Which, of course, implies that I’m wrong.” Ann was beyond fury. “What has Joanne Kilbourn ever done for you? Did she get you a job? No. We did. Livia and me. I was the student representative on the committee that hired you. There were male candidates who had much better paper qualifications than either you or Ariel, but we made sure the department hired women this time.”

Solange’s response was icy. “We were qualified.”

“Being qualified is never enough for a woman. You know that. What Livia and I did wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary.”

“Naama, stop.” Livia’s voice was a little light on New Age empathy. In fact, she sounded downright threatening. “You’ve said enough.”

“We’ve all said enough.” Solange sounded weary. “Let’s leave this for another time.”

When Solange emerged from Livia’s office, Ann Vogel was right behind her. She grabbed Solange’s arm and spun her back before either of them had a chance to see me.

“I reinvented myself for you,” Ann said. “I …”

Solange cut her short. “This isn’t high school. No one asked you to become someone else. That choice was yours, and this choice is mine. I’m going to delete the link to ‘Red Riding Hood.’ ”

Livia appeared behind them. Her eyes widened when she saw me. “You should have let us know you were here, Joanne.”

“I just got here,” I said.

Flanked by the two women, her poppy shawl clutched tightly across her breast, Livia Brook looked anxious, a mother separating warring twins she can no longer control. She had reason to look uneasy. Naama’s reinvention of herself was proceeding apace. Since I’d last seen her, she’d added a triple ear-piercing, a smudge of black eyeliner beneath her lower lids, and a wrist full of delicate silver bangles. She was forty years old. Her transformation of herself into an imperfect imitation of an idol thirteen years her junior was both sad and scary. I wasn’t surprised that Solange looked ready to bolt.

“You’re obviously in the middle of something,” I said. “I came to ask about ‘Red Riding Hood,’ but from what Solange just said the issue’s settled, so I’ll let you get back to your discussion.”

Solange broke away from the others. “I’ll come with you, Joanne. There’s something we have to talk about.”

“So you’ve defected,” Ann said bitterly.

“A difference of opinion doesn’t mean a defection,” Solange said. “I’m surprised at you, Ann. Aren’t women allowed to disagree? And anyway, what I need to talk to Joanne about has nothing to do with you. Ariel’s ashes are being buried at a small service, and her parents have asked me to help with the planning.”

Ann Vogel was galvanized. “I’ll get on the e-mail. I can make sure every woman at this university turns out for Ariel. I belong to other groups, too. This can be city-wide.”

“No!” Solange’s response was adamant. “That’s exactly what the Warrens
don’t
want. When they’re ready, they’ll have a public memorial service for Ariel, but they want this ceremony to be private. They have a place on an island at Lac La Ronge.”

“The Political Science department should be represented,” Livia said.

“It will be,” Solange replied. “I’ll be there, and so will Joanne if she chooses to come.” She turned to me. “Will you come?”

“If the Warrens want me there, of course.”

“Joanne’s invited!” Ann Vogel’s words had the biting fury of a child shut out of a birthday party. “Livia and I were both closer to Ariel than Joanne was. Why was she invited instead of us?”

Solange was placating. “You’d have to ask the Warrens. They made up the list, and they had to deal with logistics. The only way to their island is by private plane – the seating is limited.”

Livia bit her lip. “I have a right to be there,” she said. She seemed close to tears.

“You can’t keep us away.” Ann Vogel’s voice was thick with menace. “Ariel was a Red Riding Hood. We have every right to be there. We have every right to avenge her.”

As we walked down the hall towards my office, Solange filled me in on our travel plans. “We’ll meet at the airport at seven Thursday morning and fly to Lac La Ronge. Of course, there’ll be a couple of stops along the way. From Prince Albert, we take a float-plane to the island. Molly said she thought we’d just spend a little time together with Ariel, then bury the ashes and come back to Regina. We’ll be home before dark. Sound okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m giving my mid-term Thursday, but I know Ed Mariani will invigilate it for me.”

“It’s settled then,” Solange said, then she looked away. “Joanne, I wasn’t honest about the number of seats on the plane. There’s room for one more. Molly didn’t want a circus, so she told me to use my discretion about whom, if anyone, we ask to take the extra seat. I honestly can’t think of anyone who won’t make matters worse, but if you know of someone who should be there …”

“I do,” I said. “But I’ll check with Molly Warren before I say anything to him.”

When I phoned Molly from my office telling her I needed to talk with her about something that was best dealt with face to face, she was apologetic.

“I hate to ask, but would it be possible for you to come down to my office?” she said. “I’m booking off Thursday, so we’ve rescheduled patients today and tomorrow. I won’t be able to get away.”

“I can come down there easily,” I said. “Is there any time that’s better than others?”

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “All times are equally bad. And now is as good a time as any.”

Parking was usually next to impossible in the streets around the glass tower that housed Molly Warren’s offices, but that afternoon I was lucky. I found a spot half a block away, plugged the meter with enough quarters to let me languish in the waiting room for an hour and a half if need be, and took the elevator to the eleventh floor. The Delft-blue waiting room was standing room only, but when I announced my presence to Molly Warren’s nurse, Katie, she ushered me directly into Molly’s office. I was grateful. That day I didn’t have the heart to share couch space with the bountifully pregnant and the anxious-eyed.

“Dr. Warren will be right with you,” Katie said. “She’s with a patient, but she should be finished soon.”

Katie was an attractive woman with brown eyes, dimples, a passion for pastels, and a professional manner that managed to be warm without being cloying. She gestured to a chair in front of the desk. “Make yourself comfortable. There’s coffee if you’d like.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve had a busy morning. It’ll be good just to sit.”

Katie didn’t leave. “People think if you work in health care you get used to death. But you don’t. At least I haven’t. I can’t believe Ariel’s gone. She was in the office last week. She was going to take her mother out to lunch, but Dr. Warren had an emergency and she had to cancel.” Katie shook her head. “I hope the two of them managed to find time to talk.”

“They were close?”

Katie hesitated. “They were mother and daughter,” she said finally, as if that in itself were an answer.

“How is Dr. Warren doing?”

“She’s unbelievable. I know she must be torn apart inside, but she hasn’t missed an appointment. If it had been my daughter, I’d be in the basement staring down the business end of a shotgun.”

“I’d probably be thinking about that, too,” I said.

Katie straightened the edge of the file she was holding. “I’d better get back out front. Dr. Warren will be in as soon as she can get away.”

“I’m in no hurry,” I said.

I waited a few minutes; then, restless, I began to explore. Two sides of the room were lined with bookshelves upon which framed degrees, awards, and photographs of Molly Warren at meetings of professional organizations had been interspersed artfully among medical texts and bound journals. I took out a bound journal from the bookshelf. Its table of contents listed articles dealing with the vagaries to which the complex, moon-tied bodies of women are heir: uterine bleeding, chronic pelvic pain, cervical dysplasia, endometriosis, infertility, menopause and peri-menopause, ovarian cysts and cancers, pregnancy (ectopic, hysterical, normal), and birth with its many complications.

I slid the book back into place, and picked up a high-gloss magazine that had been filed next to it. The magazine was really an advertising supplement, trumpeting the wares of a company that manufactured equipment that could produce three-dimensional ultrasounds. I flipped through and found myself looking at a reproduction of a three-month-old foetus, the age Ariel’s child had been. I wondered if its presence in this neatly shelved collection of texts meant that Molly Warren had been revisiting what she knew of the characteristics of the grandchild she would never see.

I was staring at the photo when Molly came in. She looked pale and tired, but she was immaculate: fresh makeup, hair carefully tousled, a champagne silk blouse with matching trousers, and her trademark stiletto heels in creamy leather.

She leaned over my shoulder to stare at the page. “The technology is amazing, isn’t it?”

“Neo-Natronix’s or Mother Nature’s?” I asked.

Molly gave me a wan smile. “Both.”

She made no move to sit down. There was a room filled with people waiting for her to diagnose, absolve, prescribe, or doom. She was allotting me precious time; it was up to me to use it.

“Did you know that Ariel was pregnant?” I asked.

One of Molly Warren’s gold and pearl earrings dropped from her ear and clattered onto the floor. “Damn,” she said, and there were tears in her voice. She bent to pick up the earring, then went over and sat in the chair opposite me, the doctor’s chair. She slid the earring back through the piercing in her lobe. “I’d suspected,” she said. “Ariel and I were supposed to have lunch together last week. I had to cancel on her. Maybe she was planning to tell me then.”

“Molly, I came down today because I wanted to talk to you about the baby’s father.”

Her azure gaze grew cold. “What about him?”

“Solange told me there was room on the plane for another passenger. I think the baby’s father should be there.” I could feel the chill so I hurried on. “I know him,” I said. “He teaches in the Theatre department. He really is a very fine man.”

Molly’s eyes grew wide, and she leaned forward in her chair. “You mean Charlie wasn’t the father?”

“No. Ariel wanted a child, and she asked a man she knew and respected to help her.”

Molly’s hand wandered to her earlobe to check that her earring was in place. It was, in every way, an uncertain world. “Ariel was always a mystery,” she said softly. “I never quite understood what made her tick.”

“Would it be all right if I asked Fraser to come tomorrow?”

“Is that his name? Fraser?”

“Yes,” I said. “Fraser Jackson. One other thing you should know. Fraser is black.”

“I couldn’t care less about that,” Molly said. “Just as long as he isn’t Charlie. I’m glad my daughter found someone else. Charlie was destroying her.” Molly’s face crumpled. “I guess in that archive room he just finished the job.”

CHAPTER
9

I called Fraser Jackson from the public telephone in the lobby of the building in which Molly Warren had her office. Phoning the father of Ariel’s baby was the right thing, but it was hard for me to do. I knew that Howard would see the call as a betrayal of Charlie, of Marnie, and of himself, and as I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall by the elevators, I thought that Howard might not be far off the mark.