The Noon God (4 page)

“
I’m sad, Willie,” she wailed on the phone one afternoon to my uncle.

He must have told her he was coming over because she said, “No. Don’t come here. He’ll take the children this time. He’ll make sure I never see them. I couldn’t bear it.”

Gently I took the receiver from her.

“
Uncle Willie,” I said, hoping to hear salvation in his voice. I too was afraid Daddy would take us away from Mommy. I wasn’t afraid for myself. I was sixteen and I could travel to see her if I wanted to. But Gail and Lucy were only little. If Daddy found out about the drinking that would be the final straw.

“
Mona, what the hell is going on there? How long has she been drinking again?”

“
Not long, Willie,” I said. “Just a couple of months. After Lucy…”

“
Sounds like post natal depression. She needs help. She needs rehab. They can give her counselling. It worked before.”

“
Please, Willie. She says it won’t happen again. Don’t tell Daddy.” My instincts were on alert. I knew my mother was already on thin ice with Daddy and had been for years. I didn’t know why, but a tension had existed between them for as long as I could remember. I knew the drinking would push him over the edge.

“
Promise me, Mona,” Uncle Willie said, “you’ll call if it happens again. Please. Angie needs help.”

“
I promise,” I said. I had no intention of keeping my word. My mother sobbed on the couch beside me and I wrapped my strong arms around her. She was so tiny and frail. “I love you,” I whispered.

Things were OK for awhile after that. I came straight home from school every day to find my mother clean and sober, scrubbing the kitchen counter or watching soaps on television. She seldom read anymore. My father scoffed at the novels she loved. She didn’t have the attention span to handle more serious books. Still, I was happy just to find her sober. You learn not to ask for the moon.

“
What do you do, Miss Fortune?” Detective Rice asked.

“
I teach.” I was aware of how little meaning was conveyed in the word. A thousand times people had asked me what I was doing with my life. Most of them were disappointed by my answer. They expected the daughter of the great J. Caesar Fortune to be a writer, a doctor or a philosopher. They expected to learn I was a missionary or even a politician. But a high school teacher? It didn’t seem right.

There was no way using that single word I could make them understand what it meant to me. It didn’t conjure up the right images. When I said ‘teach’ people saw me standing in front of a class of thirty or more distracted students, their faces reflecting my own hopelessness. They didn’t see what I saw in those faces. They didn’t see the need hidden behind the thin masks of nonchalance and boredom.

There was no way to describe what I saw there. Sometimes I understood how Jesus felt as he walked among the lepers. There were too many of them. But that didn’t matter. Like Jesus, I had a job to do. I had to try my best to fill that need. It struck me as funny Daddy had the right initials, J.C., but I seemed to be the one with the Christ complex.

Teaching was my calling.

“
What do you teach?”

“
Grade ten English and History.”

“
Ah ha!” he said, drawing what he thought was a connection to my father’s greatness. “English. I guess a love of words must run in the family.”

“
I guess so,” I agreed. It was just easier. Yes, I loved words. I loved my journal and my little poems and I wrote the occasional story. I’d always thought maybe one day I would write a novel. But that had nothing to do with my teaching. I could have taught music or geography or gym and been equally happy with my choice. It was about the kids, not the words. It was about their need for guidance. It was about their need of me.

“
What was his latest novel about?”

“
Millennium Girl. It was an epic. It’s hard to summarise.”

“
Can you try?”

“
I doubt whether it’s relevant. My father never showed his unedited work to anyone. He was a fanatic about it. In the early days he’d been embarrassed by errors he felt were beneath him.”

“
Did you finish reading it?”

“
Yes. It’s about a family and their community in the years leading up to the millennium. The main characters are a man and his daughter. He is an international media mogul. At the dawn of the last century the world leaders were the owners of factories, garment works, steel mills, etc. But my father believed the kings of the world today are the controllers of the media. Many people agree with him.

“
The man and his wife have one daughter whom they love. But from the time she can walk she rebels against her role. Her father believes she is meant for great things. But she wants to live a more simple life. Her father doesn’t understand.

“
The story leads the two of them through terrible tragedies. The wife dies by her own hand and the daughter loses the love of her life. She travels to Africa where her father later joins her and they spend six months together in a medical mission, treating AIDS patients. During that time they bond. He begins to understand her need to be one with the people. And she begins to understand his desire to be an instrument of change for the greater good.

“
In the end both the father and the daughter are redeemed. His redemption comes through his suffering in Africa. It forces him to accept the unacceptable. He learns to see his daughter as a person. He gives her his permission to live her life according to her own code.

“
Her redemption is the greater one. It comes through her understanding of her father, which allows her to forgive him. Forgiveness is central to the book. In particular the father is in need of forgiveness.

“
The book ends on December 31, 1999. Ironically, the father has contracted HIV during their time in Africa. He’s dying. He pleads with his daughter to take his empire, to lead it into the new millennium. He argues the world needs someone like her to guide it.

“
Finally she agrees. She has no choice, really, as someone who cares about the world. It’s her destiny.”

“
It sounds like quite a story.”

“
I can’t tell it right.”

“
Still…”

“
Yeah. It’s going to be a best seller. No question.”

“
But you don’t think it made him any enemies?”

“
I can’t see it. There’s nothing offensive to any individual or group in the story. And I’d bet I’m the only one he gave it to.”

“
Any parallels with his own life?”

“
A number of them,” I answered, meeting his eyes.

Detective Rice nodded and stared out the window thoughtfully.

“
Do you know what time he died?” I asked.

“
We’re guessing between six and nine a.m. on Monday. You spoke with him at midnight on Sunday. He didn’t show up for his nine o’clock lecture.”

“
Where was he found?”

“
In an unused storage room at the back of the faculty building. We don’t know what he was doing back there, but it looks like his body was dragged about ten feet into the room.”

“
Where at the back of the building was the storage room?” I asked.

“
Off the parking lot. The sidewalk comes around to the front entrance, but if you walk across the grass to the right there is a little alcove with a couple of hidden doorways.”

“
The back entrance.” I nodded. “That’s the way he usually went in. It was never locked and his office was at the back, just off that entrance.”

“
You’d been there before?”

“
Yes. My sister and I both went to his office occasionally.”

“
Is it possible he was meeting someone early in the morning?”

“
It is possible. Students, other faculty members – he might have been meeting any number of people. Did you find his desk planner?”

“
Yes. There was nothing noted.”

I shook my head. “Sorry I can’t help.”

“
What time are you expecting your sister?”

“
She should have left me a message by now letting me know when to pick her up. The train usually gets in late – eight or nine on Fridays. Did you want me to bring her in tomorrow?”

“
Yes. The weekend Detective will take her statement.” He handed me a card. “Detective Phoebe Manor. I’ll tell her to expect you at ten if that’s ok.”

“
We’ll be here. When will his body be released?”

“
Most likely Tuesday of next week. You should be able to make arrangements for the funeral for anytime after Wednesday.”

“
Thank you, Detective.”

“
Thank you for coming in.” Detective Rice led me back down the hall. I sat on the green couch and watched him take Uncle Willard for a talk. I tried to rest my eyes while I waited. Finally Willard came back down the hall. For the first time I saw his age covering him like a cloak, visible in the stoop of his shoulders and the whiteness of his hair and the sad smiling crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He looked so much like my mother I nearly cried.

~~

I was sixteen the year my mother died. The official cause of death was “accidental overdose”, but I knew the truth. I still had the note she’d left for my eyes only, folded in my journal.

Mom had sent Lucy to Uncle Willie’s for the afternoon and asked him to pick Gail up after school. She made an excuse about having to meet with the teachers at my school. She planned it so I would be the one to find her. I guess she thought I was strong enough to handle it.

I came home from school at three-thirty to find her lying on the kitchen floor beside the breakfast nook. She used to sit there for hours when I was little watching the birds fly into the feeder in the back yard. I hoped her final hour had been spent that way, in peace.

Forgive me, Monie, her note said. I had nowhere else to go. I love you. Take care of your sisters.

Forever your Mommy.

Pills with alcohol…. The coroner listed it as an accidental overdose. We never knew how much of either she had taken. Daddy never asked. He just accepted Mom’s death as the inevitable outcome of her life. I think he was more angry than sad.

Abigail’s hair turned from blonde to black the year Mommy died. It seems impossible, but it’s the truth. Her dark eyes flashed at Daddy and me in defiance. I think she believed we had taken Mommy away from her.

Daddy’s friend Helen moved into the house. The excuse was someone needed to be home for Lucy through the day. Daddy didn’t want to send her to day-care after the trauma we’d experienced. But I knew the real reason Daddy wanted Helen in the house. I heard their muffled noises at night and I saw their looks across the dinner table. The research assistant seemed to have earned a promotion.

So, I thought, it’s always been Helen. I filed the thought away with my growing teenage anger.

Like Gail I needed someone to blame for Mommy’s death. It didn’t help matters any that Lucy clung to Helen. She wasn’t our mother. She had no right stepping into Mommy’s house the way you might step into another woman’s dress. My hatred grew until it became too much for me to carry inside.

One morning my anger got the better of me. Daddy allowed us to wear casual clothes, but they had to be tasteful. That morning I dared to pull on a tube top that barely covered my breasts and a pair of low cut jeans with the top button missing. I didn’t bother to fix my hair, letting it hang long and loose down my back.

“
Desdemona, you’re looking a little under-dressed this morning,” Helen said gently.

I slammed the cupboard door in response.

“
Desdemona, you’re being rude,” she challenged. “Go upstairs and put some proper clothing on. Your father will not be pleased when he sees you.”

I chewed my Cheerios in stony silence.

“
Very well.”

“
You’re not my mother!” I shouted. I threw the bowl across the room. My action surprised us both.

“
So noted,” she said calmly. “Now clean up your mess.”

“
I will not! You clean it up. That’s why you’re here, right? To take care of us?”

“
What’s going on?” my father’s voice boomed into the dining room.

“
Desdemona is having a tantrum. She threw her cereal and now she needs to clean it up.”

“
She’s not my mother!” I screamed.

“
Desdemona, get in the car,” my father ordered.

“
But Caesar, she has a mess to clean up.”

“
I said get in the car.”

I stormed out, but not before I heard him turn on her.

“
Hasn’t she been through enough?”

“
The girl has to show some respect.”

I didn’t hear any more, but that night I enjoyed a mean satisfaction in the sound of Helen’s sobs coming from behind the bathroom door. The next day, though, she had gone for good and I understood what I had done. It was too bad my moment of personal growth came too late to help Helen. I often wondered what became of her. I wished I could call her, tell her how sorry I was.

Some bridges are forever burned.