Tell Anna She's Safe (28 page)

A motorboat carved into the bay, made a big circle, and sped out. The waves from its wake rolled in and rocked the dock. The swaying made her feel sick. She stuck her journal back in her bag and headed back up the path.

*

“LET ME GUESS,” I SAID.
“When she came home Tim accused her of being at Curtis's. He lives up in the Gatineaus too.”

“Yes,” nodded Trish, “that's exactly what happened.” She related the events in a calm voice. Her hands were still, never straying from her lap. She seemed somehow detached from the events she was telling me about. “Tim was convinced Lucy was having an affair with Curtis. She told me he forced her down on the bed, said he wanted her to show him how Curtis had done it. She struggled and the futon came partly off the frame. Her foot got caught in the slats. She wrenched it so badly she blacked out for a moment or two.” She looked at me then and I realized I was wrong. She wasn't detached at all.

She swallowed and continued. “When she came to, he forced her. Told her he was in control now and she had to do whatever he said.”

I closed my eyes.
Oh God
.

Trish's voice came as from a distance. “She managed to get him to take her to the hospital, even though she hated hospitals. On principle. Because of her experience as a toddler. Did she tell you about that?”

I nodded. “You mean being in isolation with the chicken pox. She said her mother never came to visit her.”

Trish was nodding. “But she also hated hospitals because her mother died in one. And she had never made her peace with her mother. Being in the hospital with her sprained ankle brought that whole experience back. Her mother was an alcoholic.”

“I didn't know that.”

“But she died of cancer,” Trish continued. “I think it was cirrhosis that developed into liver cancer. That would have been a dozen years ago.”

“Do you mean Lucy was upset at her mother all through her life because of that one time she was left alone in the hospital?”

Trish gave a sad smile. “She felt unwanted and abandoned all her growing up years. She used to say she was brought up by a house and four walls. Her father was stern and demanding and her mother wasn't
there
. She just did what was expected of her in that generation. It was after the war. As far as I remember, her mother was escaping from Hungary. I guess it was sometime during the revolution. She met Lucy's father on the boat. He was English. They were both coming to Canada. They got married and she got pregnant with Lucy. It wasn't an easy birth. Her mother had to have a caesarian. Lucy used to say it was because she didn't want to leave the safety of the womb.”

I smiled. “I bet she came out kicking and screaming.”

Trish smiled too. “I imagine she did. Her mother couldn't handle someone as….” She paused. “As volatile as Lucy. She was a poet, with a poet's sensibility. It sounds like she may never have wanted to have children. But by the time she realized that, she'd had two.”

*

SHE WAS ON HER BIKE
, on her way to deliver a report to Health Canada in Tunney's Pasture—the “bureaucratic ghetto” she called it—in the city's west end. It was the beginning of August. The worst of July's heat and humidity were gone. She should have been enjoying the bike ride in the cooler air, but the farther she got from home, the stronger the panic grew. Her stomach was going into a knot, her heart was beating faster, her mind racing out of control. The world was a dangerous place. The city, the roads, the cars, the people, they were all dangerous. She wanted to be back home, back to safety.

She forced herself to concentrate on making the pedals go around, to stop at stop signs, stay close to the curb. She had to get the report delivered, had to go into the very kind of building she dreaded.

She turned into Tunney's and took in the maze of low-rise box buildings and the one high-rise that towered over the others. She made herself take deep breaths and find a parking meter to lock her bike to. One step at a time, she told herself. Lock the bike, take your bag out of the carrier, walk to the door of this ugly brown building, open the door, sign the visitor book at the security desk. Focus on what you're doing right now. Don't think about what's to come. It's safe to be walking through this door.

She made herself navigate the maze of corridors and cubbyholes to reach the one that belonged to her client. Made herself block out the glare of the fluorescent lights and the intimidating clicking of high heels on the unyielding floor. The sight of her client, smiling from behind her desk, forced her out of her fearful self. She plastered a confident smile on her face, shook the proffered hand with a firm grip, made a joke as she handed over the work.

Under the professional facade, her twelve-year-old self was trembling, and silently pleading, “Can I go home now?”

*

I TOLD TRISH HOW I
had always assumed Lucy was an only child, that she had never even mentioned Anna to me.

“I think in a lot of ways she did think of herself as an only child,” said Trish. “Or at least the only abandoned child. Her mother may not have been as distant with Anna, simply because she was younger. Or maybe because she wasn't as hard to handle as Lucy.” She smiled. “I'm treading on dangerous ground here—it's just speculation. Lucy rarely ever talked to me about her sister. But having met Anna at the funeral, I can imagine there were a lot of reasons Lucy might have had for secretly resenting her.”

“Like what?”

Trish paused, considering, I suspected, whether she should continue with her speculation. After a moment, she said, “Anna has a poise and control very much the same as Lucy described her mother having. That would have been a minefield for her.”

“Seeing her mother mirrored in her sister.” I was remembering Anna at the funeral. Playing the consummate hostess. I could imagine Lucy's mother being like that. But Anna had been controlled only on the outside. I knew how upset she was about Lucy. And how hurt by her sister's rejection of her all these years.

Trish echoed my thoughts. “I suspect the mirror was only physical and that Anna didn't act as distantly as her mother.”

I nodded. “Little sisters tend to look up to their big sisters. But if that was the case, wouldn't that make them closer?”

Trish smiled a sad smile. “You'd think so. But family relationships are never rational.”

“Nor any relationship,” I laughed.

“As I say, I'm just speculating and I think I'd better stop,” said Trish.

*

SHE WAS IN HER ROOM
again. Face down on her bed. Sent by her father for yelling at her mother. Yelling seemed to be the only way to make her mother notice her. Except it didn't. Her mother seemed to look right through her. As if she didn't know where the sound was coming from. Which made her yell louder. Which brought her father running.

She heard a sound and turned over. A small figure stood in the doorway. Eyes big with distress and concern. Eyes expressing everything she wanted her mother to express. Her sister took a tentative step into the room.

“Go away.” It came out more harshly than she intended. But she couldn't comfort her sister, and her sister certainly couldn't comfort her.

Anna turned and ran. Slamming the door behind her.

She knew Anna hadn't meant to bang it so hard, but it gave her a perverse satisfaction anyway. To get a rise out of someone. Even if it was just her sister, who didn't deserve the way she treated her.

*

I TOOK A SWALLOW OF
my rapidly cooling tea and looked at Trish. “You said before that you and Marnie were friends with Lucy, and with Tim after he got out.” I wasn't sure how far to take this line of questioning—or how far she would let me take it. I didn't want to give away my suspicions about Marnie being the second person Tim had called from my house, or about Tim and Marnie already knowing Lucy was missing on the Sunday. If Trish mentioned that to Marnie….

Trish began fidgeting with her ear, pulling on the lobe. It was the first time I'd seen her hands move. “We had them over to dinner a couple of times. Marnie's from the Sudbury area, and she and Tim found they had a lot in common—he's from somewhere in rural Ontario. They had similar upbringings, both came from poor families and lived mostly off the land. Marnie's a bow hunter and when she found out Tim used to hunt she tried to get him interested in the club she belongs to. She invited him to go with her on several occasions, but he never took her up on it. We were trying to help him to feel part of the community, but he wouldn't respond. I think his fear ultimately blocked him.”

I was tired of that word. It seemed to be an excuse for everything.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

The hand went up to the ear again, pulling on the lobe. “I gave her a treatment just a few days before she went missing.”

The day I had found her the cottage in the paper, she'd mentioned she'd had a massage. “We spoke that day,” I said. “She told me she felt better for it.” I hesitated. “I heard Tim injured her pretty badly.”

Trish nodded. “He punched her in the sternum. She was in pretty rough shape—so much so that I went to her house instead of her coming to me. She was in a lot of pain, and dazed from the painkillers. But upbeat. Things seemed to be looking up. You asked if she seemed more jittery toward the end. In fact, she was calmer than I'd ever known her to be. It was like she had a lot of surface static. Which was understandable given everything that was going on that last week. But underneath I could feel a calm.” She smiled. “I told her it was like hearing a radio station under all the static, and she said, ‘As long as it's
CBC
, not some twangy country station.' That was one thing about Lucy—she never lost her sense of humour, no matter how bad it got.”

I gave a wry smile. “Did you talk to her again after that?” I might be getting to dangerous territory, but it seemed an innocent enough question.

“Yes,” said Trish. “She called me on the Friday evening. Tim was having some kind of breakdown and she wanted me to see him. But they called back later to cancel. That was the last time I heard from her.” She looked at me and her eyes were brimming with tears. “She thanked me for all I'd done for them, and for her, over the years. It was almost as if she
knew
.”

I touched her hand. “You did a lot for her. There wasn't anything else you could have done.”

She blinked away the tears and wiped her nose. “I know.”
But
. She didn't have to say it. “That was the last time I talked to her. I had a workshop that weekend. But Marnie—” She stopped abruptly. And she stood up just as abruptly.

I got to my feet too. Opened my mouth to ask her what she had been about to say. But the look on her face told me our interview was over. I looked at my watch. It was nearly five o'clock; we'd been talking for over an hour. “I've taken up way too much of your time. But thank you. This has helped a lot. You've filled in a lot of the pieces.”

At the door, I remembered Lucy's choking dream. I turned to Trish. “When Tim phoned me that Monday evening, he told me Lucy had a recurring dream. That she dreamt she was being choked. Was that true? Did she have such a dream?”

Trish nodded. “It started after Tim moved in.”

My intake of breath was audible. We looked at each other.

“You know the police's theory is that she was strangled.” I spoke slowly.

Trish nodded again. “It does seem like it might have turned out to have been precognitive, but at the time Lucy thought it was a past-life experience coming to the fore. Me, I took it as symbolic. And even in spite of what's happened, I still do.”

“Symbolic? Of what?”

“Of Tim trying to choke off her will.”

Outside, I headed across the street to my car. The coolness in the air surprised me. Maybe our unusual August heat wave was over. My head was full again, as it had been with Curtis. Everything Trish had said made sense. Except it was all very well to talk about the progress Lucy was making, but in the end she'd been abandoned in a much worse way than she'd ever experienced before. So what was the point of her progress? And the talk of Tim's fears. No doubt he had fears, but there were deeper things going on with Tim, I was sure. Was he the clever con artist the police took him for? Or was there something more serious going on? Something pathological? And what had she been about to say about Marnie?

*

IT WAS TIM'S REGULAR PSYCHOLOGIST
who suggested they get couples counselling. They lasted two sessions with the counsellor. The woman refused to see them again after they described a recent episode of violence. Tim, the counsellor said, had to get control of his rage first. The counsellor strongly advised her to find a refuge, adamant that they couldn't make any progress together until Tim got his anger under control.

In the car she cried out her frustration. How was he supposed to get his anger under control when he couldn't get help? Now even the therapists wouldn't see them. What were they going to do?