The Last Good Day (5 page)

Taylor dug her fingers into my arm. “Please?”

“Okay,” I said. I picked up my purse. “Why don’t you go crazy and hit the Dairy Queen, too?”

That night, Leah and Angus decided they needed some quality time. They rented videos and retreated to the room over the boathouse. That left the cottage free for a sleepover, so Taylor and I invited Gracie and Isobel to stay the night. I’d driven into town with Noah and the girls. He had done his best at the pizza joint, but despite the food and the girls’ exuberance, Noah had been distracted. It occurred to me that he and Delia could use a little quality time too.

It had been a long day, but deep-dish all-dressed pizza and Peanut Buster Parfaits had refuelled the girls. As soon as we got back, they leaped out of the car and raced over to Falconers’ to pick up
CDS
and Gracie’s stash of gift-with-purchase makeup. They were back in a flash, cranking up the music and slathering on the makeup that transformed them from beautiful sunburned children into voguing young women with purple eye shadow and edge. It was a painful portent of things to come, and I lasted less than ten minutes before I withdrew to my bedroom.

Harriet Hynd’s photo albums were arranged chronologically. My fingers lingered over several of them, but I settled on the summer of 1973, the year my first child, Mieka, was born. Harriet had arranged the photographs with an archivist’s precision. Beneath each picture, the particulars of the subject and the occasion were described in her small neat hand. In truth, the pictures didn’t require text. Photos like them could have been found in albums in tens of thousands of Canadian homes. A man with shoulder-length hair and a beard grinned as he fired up a Hibachi; a woman wearing a peasant dress and a silver-and-turquoise necklace held up a birthday cake for the camera. A young boy – clearly Kevin – sat surrounded by birthday booty: a pile of action figures for his superhero collection. Moments in time, as ordinary as they were irrecoverable.

In the living room, Taylor and her friends danced and dreamed to the music of their own time. My camera was slung over the doorknob. I put down Harriet’s album, picked up the faithful Kodak, and headed into the living room. The girls of summer deserved to be immortalized.

The night of Chris Altieri’s wake, the beautiful cars started arriving just after suppertime. The sun slanted in the sky, picking up the metallic sheen of
BMWS
, Porsches, Jaguars, and Mercedeses as they purred through the gates to Lawyers’ Bay. The event was being held at Zack Shreve’s home. It was a shrewd choice for a wake. With its large uncluttered spaces painted in cool monochromatic greys, it militated against an overheating of emotion. The furniture in the house was simple and expensive, the art spare, original, and arresting – abstracts in rust and silver. Both furnishings and art had the patina of unobjectionable good taste that only a fine decorator with a blank cheque can bring to a living space. The only personal touches were the piano – a concert-sized Steinway – and, oddly, a collection of moths mounted in shadow boxes on the wall.

The piano dominated the room and Zack was seated at it, playing, when we arrived. The music was light and unobtrusive, yet it kept everyone in the room aware of the pianist’s presence. Seemingly, Zack’s skill at playing a crowd equalled his skill at the Steinway. When he caught me watching him, Zack winked conspiratorially, and I remembered a lawyer friend’s telling anecdote about an encounter she’d had with him. She was appearing opposite him in court, and when his case began to go badly, he hunched his shoulders and drew back into himself, in her words “defying the jury to kick the cripple.” The tactic paid off. Zack won his case, and the next morning he’d sent my friend a box of the Bernard Callebaut truffles she favoured and a copy of
Richard III
.

No doubt about it, Zachary Shreve was a man who knew how to control events. As he moved effortlessly through the tunes in the Rodgers and Hart songbook, I wondered what outcome he was seeking from this party. As it always was at Lawyers’ Bay, the
mise en scène
was flawless. A brief and intense shower late in the afternoon had cooled the air and left a lingering smell of wet wood. The dinner was planked salmon, and when guests arrived, the barbecues were smoking. In the meantime there were delights: plates of baguettes and thinly sliced black bread to accompany bowls of feta cheese splashed with olive oil and sprinkled with fresh oregano and dried red peppers, marinated artichoke hearts, tangy radishes, crisp and rolled in butter and salt, olives seemingly from every port on the Mediterranean. It was a feast fit for a king, and there was no doubt that Zack Shreve was presiding.

He announced dinner, directed us towards our places at the tables that had been set on the lawn, then moved among us as we talked of the usual things people talk of at barbecues: the triumphs, tragedies, and love lives of ourselves and others, then, as the wine flowed, the meaning of it all.

After we’d finished eating, Zack summoned us back into the house where the caterers poured brandy and people steeled themselves for the painful task of remembering the man who wasn’t there. When we all had a glass in hand, Blake Falconer offered a simple toast; then, as we raised our glasses and murmured Chris’s name, Zack began to play a heart-stoppingly poignant song. It, too, was Rodgers and Hart, and it was about a man who brought the sun but didn’t stick around to enjoy it. The title was “He Was Too Good to Me,” and Zack played with shimmering intimacy. When the last note died, the room was silent. Finally, a blonde with a deep fake-and-bake tan, and the unfocused eyes of a woman who had drunk well if not wisely, cuffed Zack on the arm. “How can you be such a bastard in the courtroom and play piano like that?” she asked.

Zack picked up his snifter, drained it, and smiled. “You know what they say about Miles Davis. He played the way he’d have liked to be.”

The woman splayed her hands on the piano and leaned towards Zack. “We’ve had enough show tunes,” she said. “I have a request.”

“I aim to please,” Zack said smoothly. “What’ll it be?”

“Anything by Paul Anka,” the woman said.

Zack’s smile grew deadly. “So many possibilities,” he said. “Since your name is Kim, ‘Diana’ doesn’t work. ‘Puppy Love’? Hardly. With respect, I believe we’d both agree that you’ve wagged goodbye to your puppy days. I personally have been present at the kickoff of three of your marriages, so the sheen of ‘I Went to Your Wedding’ has grown a little tarnished. How about that old Frank Sinatra showstopper ‘My Way’?”

Kim pouted. “I hate that song.” Leaning over the piano, heedless of the breasts spilling out of her silk halter-top, she was visited by inspiration. “Play ‘Havin’ My Baby.’ ”

Zack bowed to her. “A provocative choice, madam,” he said. “But your wish is my command.” He placed his fingers on the keys and played the opening bars of “Havin’ My Baby.” After a moment of astonished silence, people began to sing along, tentatively at first, then as liquor released inhibitions, lustily. Kim’s choice was cruelly ironic, but it did the job.

“Havin’ My Baby” was as remote from Noel Coward as it was possible to be, but as one who understood “the potency of cheap music,” Coward would have recognized the phenomenon taking place in that room. An old and cheaply sentimental song was melting the ice of grief and releasing real emotion. When the music was done, people began – finally – to talk about what they had lost. Nowhere in their remembrances was there a hint of the spectral sadness I’d seen in the man in the gazebo. Their Christopher Altieri was a man of joy and shuddering energy, warm, thoughtful, funny, brilliant. As I picked up my coffee cup, I found myself wishing that I had known him.

The funeral was at three o’clock Saturday afternoon, but I drove into the city just after breakfast. I was alone. Saturdays were the Point Store’s busiest days. It would have been difficult for Leah and Angus to get away, and there was no particular reason why they should. Fate had spun Angus into the vortex of Chris Altieri’s death, but my son had not been a part of Chris’s life. Taylor had stayed behind, too. Rose was bringing Gracie and Isobel into the city, but Taylor had already been present at too many funerals in her young life, and I was relieved when Leah suggested she could spend the day helping out at the store.

It was good to be alone. I needed to get away from everything and everybody. In the past week, the name of an old
TV
quiz show called
Who Do You Trust?
had nagged at me. I was growing genuinely fond of my neighbours at Lawyers’ Bay. Despite what must have been a devastating shock, they had made every effort to be kind to my family and me. They had been Kevin Hynd’s friends for twenty-five years. He trusted them, and I trusted Kevin. But try as I might, I couldn’t shake off Alex’s warning to tread lightly among these people. Nor could I dismiss the questions I had about Alex himself. Why had he spent so much time at Lawyers’ Bay the previous winter? And what was the nature of his relationship with Lily Falconer?

The grass in front of my house on Regina Avenue was too long, the hanging baskets were parched, and the flower beds needed weeding. That said, when I opened my front door I felt a burden lift. It was good to be back on solid ground. I riffled through the mail my neighbour had piled in the basket on the hall table. There was nothing spectacular: magazines, bills, an invitation to a croquet party, and a postcard from Kevin with a picture of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa and a note: “The Tibetans used to believe this country was connected to heaven by a rope. Today the clouds are low and the mountains seem to scrape the sky. Heaven feels close.” Suspecting that in the days ahead I might need a reminder that heaven was close, I dropped the postcard into my bag.

After I’d soaked the hanging baskets and turned the sprinklers on the flower beds, I called the lawn service I’d hired for the summer. Their phone had been disconnected. I started calling Angus’s friends, found someone with a younger brother who was desperate for money, and hired him sight unseen. Having put my house in order, I went upstairs to troll my closet for a dress suitable for a funeral.

I read once that Pat Nixon never hit the sack without first pressing and repairing every outfit she’d worn during the day. The image of her sewing on a button while Dick scowled and lusted had stuck with me, but I was never impressed enough to emulate her. That morning I wished I had. The only lightweight black dress I owned looked as if I’d slept in it. I hauled out the ironing board, plugged in the steam iron, and began.

Fired by the axiom that when you feel bad you should look good, I had called from the lake and made an appointment to have my hair cut. It had been a rough week and I wanted to get away from everything, to be submerged, if only for two hours, in the warm bath of a female culture where the largest questions were whether my eyebrows should be waxed or if my roots needed touching up.

Five minutes after I walked through the doors of Head to Toe, I knew that the answer to both questions was yes, but help was at hand. Business was brisk that Saturday morning – an entire bridal party, including, by some cosmic joke, not only the bride’s mother, but also the woman who had replaced her as the main squeeze of the bride’s father. My hairstylist, Chantelle, and I agreed the situation had definite French-farce potential. After my roots were covered, I chose the newest of the glossy magazines, settled into my chair, and waited for the pleasures of a drama in which I would play no role whatsoever.

As always, I left Head to Toe grateful that I was part of the female mystery. Chantelle had decided I needed to go shorter and lighter, and the results were pleasing. I’d pored over all the recipes in the glossy magazine and reached the Zen conclusion that henceforth I would read recipes for the pleasure they brought me in the moment rather than for any hope of reaching future perfection. And – icing on my metaphorical cake – the bride’s mother and her replacement had come face to face and ended up trading stories about what a cheap son of a bitch the bride’s father was. Molière would have been licking his chops.

The good times continued. When I went home to change, my neighbour Lynn Chapman was waiting at my front door, offering an apology, an explanation, and an invitation to lunch. Lynn and her family had just come back from a holiday in Quebec. They hadn’t realized my lawn service had gone belly up, but they had now placed themselves on alert, and if I was interested in a tuna-salad sandwich and a glass of iced tea, they would continue to apologize until I forgave them for letting my grass reach a state where it required life-support.

After I’d dressed, my freshly ironed dress revealed upper arms that weren’t bad for a woman of fifty-five. As I drove over to the cathedral for the funeral, I thought it was possible I’d make it to the end of the day.

I was early, but parking was already a problem. The sky was cloudless and the temperature soaring – a perfect day to get out of the city – but half an hour before the funeral Mass, the streets around the cathedral were choked. The first parking spot I found was four blocks away. By the time I climbed the steps to Holy Rosary, my newly blond roots were dark with sweat, and I was grateful to step inside and let the cool wash over me. I found a spot at the end of a pew halfway up the aisle. I knelt, said a prayer, then sat back and looked around.

Regina is a city of 185,000, but lives intersect, and many of the faces in Holy Rosary were familiar to me. When I spotted a colleague from the university, or a friend from politics or the media, we exchanged the small, awkward smiles people exchange on such occasions, then turned back to our programs as if somehow in that brief obituary and description of the order of service, we could discover the reason we were sitting in a shadowy church on a brilliant July afternoon mourning a man who had chosen death over a seemingly gilded life.

As always at funerals, there were surprises, people whose connection with the deceased was not immediately apparent. Given his puzzling links with the residents of Lawyers’ Bay, Alex Kequahtooway’s presence wasn’t exactly a shocker, but as I glanced around the congregation I spotted three of Alex’s colleagues from the Regina force. In the normal run of things, the relationship between the police force and the legal community was not chummy, but Chris Altieri’s specialty had been family law, and it seemed no one was immune to domestic problems.