The Glass Coffin (16 page)

As she hugged one leg, she was almost seductive. “He told me to think of her as a mother,” she said. “That is such a sick joke. The only thing my mother ever did for me was kill herself.” Bryn tilted her head and a mocking smile curved her lip. “Oh right,” she said. “Annie did give me the gift of life.”

Immediately, Evan cut to a scene that celebrated motherhood so exquisitely that Mary Cassatt could have painted it. Annie and Tracy Lowell were picnicking on a spring green lawn. Both were in white, both wore daisy chains in their hair. They were identical in every way except that Annie was hugely and triumphantly pregnant. They were grown women and there was something consciously girlish about the way in which they drew together whispering and laughing. Finally, Tracy leaned down and put her face against Annie’s belly, and Annie’s hand came up and stroked her sister’s hair. It was a moment of such astonishing intimacy that I felt like an intruder witnessing it. But I wasn’t the intruder. Evan MacLeish was.

Bryn at seventeen was on screen. “I just don’t get this whole mother thing. Somebody gets pregnant – that’s her trip, not mine. If it’s supposed to be about love, then I totally don’t get it. From what I hear, Annie never loved anybody but herself.” Bryn checked her nail enamel. “That’s actually not true. She loved Tracy, and Tracy loved her. At least I think so.”

We were back in Bryn’s past, excavating her life through footage that showed the astonishing closeness of the sisters. There wasn’t a single scene of Annie alone with her daughter. Tracy was always present, and the dynamic between the two women and the child was disturbing. When Annie and Tracy linked arms to form a hammock for the baby, they rocked the child so violently that her small face was contorted with terror. There were other vignettes – all theatrically perfect, all oddly creepy. It took me a moment to pinpoint the source of my unease, then I noticed that as the sisters built a sandcastle on the beach or sang children’s songs or played with a little puppet theatre, they were so obsessed with one another, they forgot that Bryn was there. The Lowell sisters’ pas de deux allowed no room for a third. When the inevitable scene of the car crash shattered the silence of Dan’s living room, my heart ached not just for Bryn but for Tracy and the magnitude of her loss.

On screen, the seventeen-year-old Bryn had half-turned from the camera; against the dark and roiling clouds, her profile was an ivory cameo. “They tell me I didn’t talk for a year after it happened. I don’t remember. They say I never sat still. I just wandered through the house looking. I don’t remember. I don’t remember that time at all.” She brought her face close to the camera’s lens. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Daddy got the footage.”

Indeed he had, and it was harrowing. As he followed Bryn through the rooms of the museum in which she lived, Evan kept the camera at her level. The little girl’s search became our search; we saw the rooms and the people in them as she saw them: distant and unknowable. Claudia, thirteen years younger, her fair hair in a thick braid, kept reaching out to the child, trying to comfort her. Every time her aunt’s fingers touched her, Bryn screamed. A fashionable woman with a wedge of shining silver hair and a curiously unlined face often followed the child, but she made no attempt to either communicate with the little girl or to touch her. Only once did the woman speak, and it was to the camera. “Chesterton says that suicide is a far worse crime than murder, because the murderer kills one person, maybe two or three. The suicide kills everyone.” The woman stared thoughtfully at her jewelled hands. “I wonder if Annie knew or cared what she was doing?”

The only person Bryn seemed interested in was Tracy. The little girl would crawl up on Tracy’s knee and run her hands over the face that was a duplicate of the face that had disappeared forever. Tracy never responded to the child’s touch. She seemed catatonic. Finally, the child exploded, punching her aunt with her small fists. “Where’s the other one?” she demanded. “Dead,” Tracy said. And that was the end of Bryn’s childhood.

By the time she was eleven, Bryn had created inner walls that were high and thick. Seemingly confident that the camera couldn’t reach anything that mattered, she ignored it. But like the worm that inches towards the heart of the rose, Bryn’s adversary moved inexorably towards her core. The scene in which the camera finally penetrated Bryn’s private world was beyond brutish. Evan had caught his daughter at a pivotal moment on the cusp between childhood and adolescence. She was standing naked in front of a full-length mirror. The only light in the shot came from sunshine pouring in through an open window, dappling a body that, in Karl Shapiro’s memorable phrase, was “smooth as uncarved ivory.” The camera lingered as Bryn’s hands tenderly explored the changes in her taut body. Eyes half-closed, dreaming her private dreams, Bryn was slow to pick up on the camera’s presence. When, finally, she did, she crumpled: folding her body in on itself, attempting to cover her nakedness, pleading, “Daddy, don’t. Please. Just don’t. The other kids – their fathers don’t do this to them. Please. Please. Just stop.” But the camera continued to roll until Bryn fell to the floor, naked and weeping.

There was a final scene, Bryn at seventeen talking to the camera. “I wish he’d die,” she said. “He used you on my mother too, you know. And against the wife he had before. He’s a parasite. He can’t live without us. But my mother and the wife he had before got back at him. They killed themselves and that moved them permanently out of the range of your lens. I could do that too.” She tossed her head. “If I took him with me, it might be worth it.”

As soon as the film was over, Dan leapt up and turned on the lights. Seemingly, he didn’t want to leave us alone in the dark with our thoughts. “There are other tapes,” he said, “but this picked up the coping mechanism I wanted Jill to see.”

“The way Bryn addresses the camera directly – as if it were separate from her father,” Jill said. “She’s so … seductive with it. What’s that about?”

“She’s trying to use the only tool she has to bring the camera over to her side against him,” Dan said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Of course, I’ve never had a patient who was abused the way Bryn was abused.”

“How could they let him do that to her?” Jill said. “They were there – Claudia, Tracy, Caroline – I could fucking kill them all.”

Kevin patted Jill’s knee. “Chill,” he said. “Also, atomize. Break the problem down into manageable parts. What’s your first priority?”

“Bryn,” Jill said.

“Good choice,” Dan said. “We’ve left it a little late today. My parents are expecting me for dinner. If you can bring her by at eight tomorrow morning, I can see her before I start my regular day.”

“You work Boxing Day?” I said.

“My busiest day,” Dan said. “For the kids in my practice, Christmas is never a holly-jolly experience.”

“And Bryn and I are adding to your workload,” Jill said. “I appreciate this, Dan. I honestly don’t know where else I’d go.” When she stood, she seemed to lose her balance. Kevin’s hand shot out and grasped her elbow. “Steady as she goes,” he said.

Jill closed her eyes and leaned into him for a moment. “Words to live by,” she said.

“Hey, I almost forgot,” he said. “Christmas isn’t over yet. I have a present.”

“For me?” Jill said.

“Nope,” he said. “For Joanne’s tree.” He handed me a Day-Glo painted sunburst. Inside was a photo of Jerry Garcia. “I noticed you didn’t have a tree-topper,” Kevin said. “Nothing’s going to bring him back, but it’s good to have a reminder that his sweetness will live forever.”

By the time Taylor and her swooshy dress swished exuberantly past the doorman at the Hotel Saskatchewan, Jill had come up with an agenda for the evening. She had abandoned her plan to kill the people who hadn’t protected Bryn in favour of cozying up to them. Dan had convinced her that knowledge was power; the more she knew about her troubled stepdaughter, the more she would be able to help her.

The dining room into which we walked would have warmed Ebenezer’s frozen heart. The hotel was celebrating a true Victorian Christmas: dripping candles, real holly, mistletoe balls, fat geese, turkeys, glazed hams, silver tureens of potatoes, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and, for dessert, trifle and flaming plum pudding. Dickens might not have been able to lull me to sleep, but his iconic feast still had the power to set the Ghosts of Christmases Past rattling.

Tracy and Claudia were waiting at our table. A tiny red teddy bear holding an envelope lengthwise between his paws was on the table at the empty place between them. Both women had taken pains to look festive. Tracy was wearing the sequined white shirt she had worn to the rehearsal dinner, but she’d added an armful of silver bangles and a pair of earrings that looked like links of frozen silver teardrops. Claudia was wearing a tailored jacket and slacks in metallic emerald green; her hair was smoothed into a chic chignon, and for the first time since I’d met her, there was mascara on her pale lashes and a flume of shadow on her lids. When they saw us, they rose expectantly.

“You both look beautiful,” I said. “I love what you’ve done with your eyes, Claudia.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad my mother didn’t hear you say that.”

“She doesn’t approve of makeup?” I said.

“Au contraire,” Claudia said. “From the time I was three years old, Caroline put mascara on me. She said I was so fair that I looked like a lashless chick. She found it painful to look at me.”

Her comment sucked the wind out of my conversational sails, but other people’s sorrows didn’t register with Bryn. “We’ve had a real family Christmas,” she said happily. “Church and stockings and tobogganing and then a really cool holiday party. This is the happiest Christmas I’ve ever had.”

“You had some lovely holidays with us,” Claudia said. “Remember when I took you to that matinee of
Peter Pan
and you liked it so much we went again that night.”

“I don’t remember,” Bryn said.

“How can you not remember?” Tracy said. “I gave you that dress Annie wore when she played Wendy.” Tracy smiled at her memories. “She was just sixteen, but the audience absolutely ate her up. I can still remember how the applause would roll over her every night when she stepped forward during curtain call.”

“You went to see your sister every night?” Jill asked.

“I was in the company,” Tracy said. “One of the Lost Boys. How’s that for typecasting?” She sipped her espresso. “One night, Annie and I decided to switch roles – just for fun. By the end of the first act, we both knew the audience hated me, so we switched back.”

“I always thought changing places with a twin could be a lot of fun,” I said. “Did you two do it often?”

Claudia cut Tracy off before she could answer. “Almost never,” she said. “Now, let’s see if we can find a waiter. It’s time for some Christmas cheer.”

The waiter appeared and immediately fell under Bryn’s spell. We had to repeat our orders three times, and even then, Taylor, who had ordered her Shirley Temple with great precision, ended up with an umbrella-less rye and Coke. When the drinks were finally straightened out, Claudia raised her glass. “To better times,” she said. “Speaking of … Joanne, we have to thank you for recommending Lauren Ayala. She’s one sharp lawyer, not to mention a generous one. Not many lawyers would see a client on Christmas Day.”

“Choosing a lawyer on the basis of how she does sun salutations obviously has something to recommend it,” I said.

Claudia laughed. “Whatever criterion you used was obviously spot on, because Tracy and I are finally getting out of here tomorrow.”

“And Lauren says that’s all right?”

“She says Tracy’s empty prescription bottle is worrying but hardly conclusive, especially since Tracy and I were together during the period when the police say Evan was murdered.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jill said.

“Well, now you do,” Claudia said matter-of-factly.

“That’s right,” Jill said thoughtfully. “Now I do.”

The pause that followed was awkward. Luckily, Taylor, as she frequently does, leapt into the breach. “Do you think we could go to the buffet now? I’m starving.”

Angus shot her a glance. “How could you be starving? Three hours ago you ate an entire lobster, a mound of potato salad, and two helpings of croquembouche?”

Taylor shook her head in wonder. “Beats me,” she said. “I just know that that turkey smells really good.”

“If I were a well-bred host, I’d insist we wait for Felix,” Jill said. She glanced at her watch. “But he’s twenty minutes late, and Jo and I skipped lunch. Let’s eat.”

By the time we had made our way through the buffet line twice, it was clear the evening was not working out as Jill had hoped. Her plan to elicit information about Bryn’s past had been torpedoed by a choir in full Victorian dress who sang lustily and at great length, and Felix was still a no-show.

When he finally did appear, he looked as if he had stumbled into the wrong party. Felix took pride in his appearance, but as he walked into the glittering dining room, he was wearing his ski jacket and he was tieless and unshaven. He was also agitated. He went straight to Jill. “I checked the phone messages at our office,” he said.

“On Christmas Day? Now that’s devotion.” Jill indicated his empty place at the table. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

The moment Felix sat down, Bryn’s waiter was at his side. Felix ordered a double-vodka and swivelled his chair to face Jill. For all the attention he directed our way, the rest of us might as well have been cardboard cut-outs. “There were a number of calls for Evan,” he said. “Urgent calls.”

Jill tensed. “Personal or professional?”

“Professional,” Felix said. “
NBC
is picking up the series. Evan signed an agreement with them. The telephone calls that came after his death were nominally condolences, but everybody wanted to talk to the widow. It’s clear they’re hot for this, Jill. They want to use the material Evan sent them.”

“There is no material,” Jill said. “All we gave them was a proposal. How can they be hot for a program that doesn’t exist?”

“Because,” Felix said tightly, “the program does exist. Apparently Evan gave them a fully edited first show for ‘The Unblinking Eye.’ The network people are over the moon about it.”