Poles Apart (38 page)

“Really? You did that?” Lewis asked.

“Well, no. But I could have. I’m sure I could have,” I replied, and then opened the fridge. “Who wants a beer?”

“No thanks,” they answered in unison.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said to myself as I grabbed one and twisted off the cap.

I took a long haul on the bottle before turning to Lewis.

“Any word from Mr. B as to what his next steps might be? You know which extremity of mine he plans to break first?” I asked. “Do I need to enter the witness protection program?”

“I think you’re safe for a little while,” Lewis replied. “We haven’t seen him or heard from him in a few days.”

“We think he might be busy with his accountants, lawyers, and business advisors about this place,” Shawna added. “The numbers are apparently way down and still heading south. The crowds are smaller each night. I’m trying not to take it personally.”

“You think it’s the demonstrators out front?” I asked, tipping my head toward my living room window.

“Bingo. Them and their cameras,” Lewis said. “They’ve now mounted them permanently on private property across the street. We can’t do squat about them. It’s not good.”

“Well, I no longer care,” Shawna said. “I’m out of here in a
couple weeks for good. It’s dissertation time and then I’m hanging up my dancing shoes for the bright lights of academe.”

“Good for you, Shawna,” I said. “I’d take a women’s studies class from you anytime.”

“Are you kidding? As soon as I land a gig in some tiny Midwestern college, I’ll be calling up my buddy – you know, the creator of the best feminist blog on the web – and asking you to guest lecture in my class. I’m not shittin’ you on that. I’m serious!”

“And I’ll be there. Just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”

“Thanks, Ev.”

I looked at Lewis and an idea crash landed in my mind, out of the blue. I suppose it should have come sooner, but I’d been a little cerebrally compromised the last few days.

“Lewis, I need a favour that I think might be in our mutual interest,” I said.

“Lay it on me.”

“I’d like to profile you in an upcoming issue of
Make-Up Artist
magazine. And we’ll need to move quickly on it.”

“What are you on about, Ever-man? What profile?”

“I owe the mag a biographical profile of a leading make-up artist. The guy I was supposed to be covering won’t return my calls, and I’m tired of trying to nail him down. You’re one of the most talented cosmetics czars I’ve ever seen. So let me put you in the magazine. We don’t have to say you work at
XY
. We’ll
just say you’re a much-sought-after freelance artist. We’ll throw in some great shots of Shawna and maybe the twins, you know, before they do what they do, and it’ll be great! It might even get you some new gigs on the side.”

“What about Mr. B?” he asked.

“I don’t think his make-up skills warrant a major magazine profile. I’d rather write a piece on you.”

“I mean I’d rather not have the big man find out about my make-up moonlighting. You know?”

“Come on, Lewis,” said Sheena, I mean Shawna. “Do you really think Mason Bennington is ever going to come into contact with
Make-Up Artist
magazine? I’m not even sure he can read. Come on, do it!”

They both left a few minutes later after we’d set up a time for me to interview Lewis. I was quite pleased with this inspired solution to a problem I’d been ignoring for far too long.

In the morning, I finally got around to checking my email. I should have checked sooner. With my little secret now well and truly out there, my inbox was under siege. I scanned and then ignored almost every email except for the one from Beverley Tanner. It had arrived the day before, while I’d been lounging on the tarmac in
DC
with my ass growing numb.

I had a quick scan of her post. It was wonderful, witty, thoughtful, and smart, and imbued with a sense of hope and optimism. It nicely captured not just what Beverley believed, but who she was. I thought it was perfect.

It was close to noon by the time I arrived. Something wasn’t right. I knew it as soon as I walked into the hospital. I could feel it. It was quiet in the main corridor. Too quiet. Yolanda was not at her post. I walked into Dad’s room and found him sitting fully dressed in the chair next to the window. Mom was in the chair next to him, holding his hand. Dad didn’t look good. Neither of them did.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

Dad slowly tilted his head to look up at me.

“She checked out, son. I’m sorry,” he said.

“Who checked out?”

“Beverley.”

“She checked out? That’s weird,” I replied. “She thought she’d be here for at least a couple more months.”

Mom shook her head and looked down.

“No, son. Listen, I mean the big check out,” Dad explained.

I sat down on the bed. I needed to sit down on the bed.

“You mean she’s gone? She died?”

Dad just nodded.

“When? How? Where?” I asked. “What … what happened?”

“Yolanda found her this morning, in bed. She must have passed in the night, in her sleep,” Mom said. “I’m so sorry, Ev. Everyone is shocked.”

“I opened an email from her just this morning. She wrote a guest post for the blog. How did this happen?”

“Yolanda said it was probably a massive stroke,” Mom said. “She likely never felt a thing.”

“The one she was always joking about,” I replied. “She was always ‘waiting for the big one.’ ”

I got off the bed, left Mom and Dad, and walked down to Beverley’s room. The door was ajar. I pushed it open. They’d already taken her away. Yolanda was making her bed – making
the
bed – and had already started loading Beverley’s clothes into a big cardboard box. She turned when I arrived. We just looked at one another. She pulled a Kleenex from her sleeve and wiped her eyes.

“This is the worst part. You think you’re going to get used to it. But you really don’t. There’s no time just to sit and feel bad. We have to get the room ready for another patient on the waiting list. He arrives tomorrow morning. It’s not right. In a half-hour it’ll be as if she was never even here,” she said, stopping and sitting on the bed.

I sat down beside her. Without even thinking, I put my arm around her. She leaned against me.

“I’m sorry she’s gone,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.”

“Nobody did. The night staff said she seemed okay when they looked in on her. She was in bed a little earlier than usual. But thanks to you, she was in very good spirits. She was telling everyone about you and what you did yesterday. She was very proud of her young Everett.”

Yolanda stopped talking then. She pressed the Kleenex to her mouth. She looked up at me, then reached for another Kleenex from the box on the night stand. She handed it to me.

I gathered myself.

“Have you let her family know? She has a son.”

Yolanda just looked at me for a few seconds.

“No. That’s the real tragedy. She has no family. No next of kin was listed on her admission form. She was all alone. I know she would often write to her son, but we have no forwarding address or any information to confirm he actually exists.”

It didn’t take us long to load Dad’s belongings into his Ford Escort. I was going to miss that car, though Dad wasn’t supposed to drive until his doctors gave him the green light, likely sometime in the coming weeks. We pulled away from the hospital in silence with Mom, in convoy, driving her car behind us. I was not used to being with my father when he was quiet. It hadn’t happened very often.

“Despite a few years of being whisked around by chauffeurs, I’m glad to see Mom still knows how to drive her own car,” I said, glancing in the rear-view mirror and grasping for conversation starters.

He said nothing. We drove in silence for a good five minutes. That’s a long time.

“She was quite a woman, wasn’t she?” Dad said, almost in a whisper.

“Yeah, Dad. She sure was.”

Mom and I spent the afternoon getting Dad settled. His condo
still looked presentable after my initial deforestation initiative the day I’d arrived in Orlando. It seemed so long ago, but could still be calibrated in weeks. Dad seemed happy to be home, but the melancholia that descended earlier that morning wouldn’t be lifting any time soon. When I left in the early evening, Mom was cooking dinner for them both in my father’s underused galley kitchen. Dad let me take his car.

I still couldn’t bring myself to start dealing with the mass of emails, tweets, and blog comments unleashed by the
NOW
media briefing. It could wait. Instead, after chatting with Shelley Hunter for a while on the phone, we agreed that I would write an obituary for Beverley Tanner. The
NOW
communications team would ensure that it was sent to every major newspaper, network, and media conglomerate on the continent. With no family, who else would do it? I spent a lot of time on Beverley’s obit. I wanted it to do her justice. I sent it off to Shelley around eight o’clock Saturday evening and promptly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The next morning, there was still some dwindling coverage from my little revelation two days earlier, though the story had pretty well run its course by then. I was pleased to see that there was plenty of media pickup on the obit I’d written for Beverley Tanner. Most publications ran it verbatim alongside file photos from her glory days in the movement. I was pleased. She deserved it.

I then spent the entire day, Sunday, wading through emails and interview requests, and managing the EofE Twitter feed and incoming comments to the blog. It was an arduous task that left
my mouse finger suffering with exercise exhaustion. But it had to be done.