The Glass Coffin (6 page)

From the outset, Tracy’s behaviour was bizarre. She was wearing an outfit that could only be described as bridal: a simple white silk shift, matching pumps, pearls, and, in case anyone had missed the intent, a white-lace mantilla draped artfully over her dark hair. Claudia took one look at her sister-in-law and growled, “What the hell are you doing? Get back to the hotel and change. I mean it.”

Tracy dimpled innocently. “I thought I’d bring the happy couple luck by wearing something old.”

“You must be insane,” Claudia said.

I tried to lower the emotional thermostat. “It’s a lovely dress,” I said, “but the mantilla might be prettier draped around your shoulders.”

Claudia glared at me. “She could drape it around her ass, and she’d still be wearing the dress Annie wore when she married Evan.”

My heart sank. Tracy
must
be crazy. I shot a quick glance at Jill to see her reaction. Predictably, she had rushed to Bryn, who was standing in front of the pier glass between the long windows in the hall, wholly absorbed in her mirror image.

“I’m sure Tracy would change if you asked her to,” Jill said gently.

“It’s just a dress,” Bryn said tonelessly to her reflection. Her gaze shifted to her aunt. “But, Tracy, I wish you’d let me have those pearls. I like having things that belong to people. Not just material things – secrets too.”

Without hesitation, Tracy undid the clasp of her necklace and handed the pearls to her niece.

Bryn held the necklace against her throat. “Perfect,” she said. Jill moved behind her stepdaughter-to-be and fastened the pearls. As she checked the mirror to make sure that the effect was indeed perfect, Jill’s hands dropped to Bryn’s shoulders. The gesture was one of such unaffected tenderness that Gaia Powell was beaming as she snapped the shot. Mother Love.

I turned away. I’d spent a lifetime watching Jill squander her emotional capital. Now she was turning her life inside out for a girl who didn’t give a rat’s ass for her. Suddenly, I was sick of the whole thing. The hours before the ceremony were now down to single digits. My fantasy that Gabe Leventhal was going to rescue the situation was looking more and more like the plotline for a B movie. In all likelihood, the cold light of day had brought Gabe fresh perspective and he’d decided he didn’t want any part of the wedding or of me and hit the road.

When Gaia called me over to join Jill for the traditional photos of the bride and her matron of honour, my legs were leaden. As I smoothed an indiscernible wrinkle in one of the panels that formed Jill’s sculptured bodice, I tried a smile.

Gaia shook her curls impatiently. “Come on, Joanne, your friend is getting married, not drawn and quartered.”

I took another crack at it, but Gaia’s grimace made it clear I was still short of the mark.
“AA’
s got a great expression,” she said. “ ‘Fake it until you make it.’ How about a nice fake smile, Joanne?”

Jill raised her hand in a halt gesture. “Maybe just give us a moment, Gaia,” she said. “Why don’t you get some pictures of the kids with the dog?”

“You’re paying the bill,” Gaia said, and she wandered off with her camera.

As soon as we were alone, Jill turned to me. “Jo, I need you to help me get through this. I know this isn’t a great romance. I even know that Bryn has certain …,” she averted her eyes, “certain gaps in her emotional makeup. But you’re the one who told me that in every relationship there has to be a gardener and a flower. I’m prepared to be the gardener here. Bryn hasn’t had an easy life. She deserves a chance to be hopeful and young.”

“All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy,” I said.

“Then let me help Bryn,” Jill said. She slid her arms around me, and a flash exploded.

Gaia cheered. “That’s the shot I was going for,” she said. “Only three more Very Special Moments, and we’re out of here.”

We drove to the gallery under a dark and threatening sky. As we passed through the familiar streets, I stared out the window, feeling thoroughly miserable. Jill didn’t seem to be doing much better. Surrounded by the soft folds of her dark green hood, her face appeared pale and tense. “Hey,” I said, “remember ‘Fake it until you make it’?”

“Easier said than done,” Jill said, continuing to stare straight ahead.

Tracy had insisted that Bryn ride with her and Claudia. In Bryn’s absence, Angus reverted to his usual raucous self, and he was amusing his sister by devising a series of inventive and excruciating tortures for Danny Jacobs. It was hard not to be drawn into their fun, but Jill’s smile was remote, like that of someone suffering from an illness. I patted her hand and turned away, relieved the drive to the gallery was a short one.

Felix Schiff was waiting for us under the portico. He was holding an umbrella, and as soon as he spotted our limo, he sprinted towards us. When the limo driver opened the passenger door, Felix positioned the umbrella carefully. “I thought this might keep the snow off your hair,” he said.

“You’re a good soul,” Jill said.

Felix’s expression was wistful. “Maybe once upon a time,” he said. Then he offered Jill his hand. “Time to go,” he said.

Dizzy with the adventure of it all, Taylor raced ahead into the building and Angus plodded after her. I stayed in the limo, wondering and delaying the inevitable. When Felix came back for me, I motioned him inside. He closed the umbrella, slid in, and crouched on one of the jump seats.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“I think there may be,” I said. “Have you heard from Gabe?”

Felix gazed out the window of the limo. “Why would he call me?”

“Because you two go way back. Gabe and I watched the ending of
Black Spikes and Slow Waves
together last night. I saw you in your flaming youth.”

“That particular time in my life is nothing to joke about,” Felix said stiffly.

“Then fill me in,” I said. “Felix, you’re the only person I trust who has a link to Gabe. This just doesn’t make sense. According to Evan, Gabe has bowed out of the wedding because he’s a hypochondriac. He’s supposed to be so fearful that he flew home to New York to be with his doctor, yet last night he was the poster boy for living with gusto: smoking cigars, enjoying his wine, making plans for the future. You saw him. Do you believe he panicked and left town because he had a flutter?”

Felix’s voice was gentle. “Don’t ask a question when the answer can only cause you pain, Joanne.”

“Are you saying that Gabe left town because of me?”

He looked away. “I’m saying that Jill’s wedding is scheduled to begin in twenty minutes, and you might be wise to let this go.”

“I’ll let it go,” I said. “But only for the time being.”

“Fair enough,” Felix said. “The time being is all we have.”

Angus had already taken Taylor to the room where the wedding was being held, but Jill had waited, and we took the elevator to the second floor together. When the doors opened, Evan, like some apparition from a Gothic novel, was facing us.

I could hear Jill’s intake of breath. “So much for the idea that it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” she said.

“Like all superstitions, that one is nonsense,” Evan said. “You look beautiful, Jill.” He nodded to me. “Your dress is lovely too, Joanne.”

Jill and I are both on the tall side of average, but Evan dwarfed us. It wasn’t just his height; he exerted a powerful undertow that seemed to draw those around him into his sphere. In his cutaway, striped trousers, pearl grey waistcoat, and grey-and-black-striped four-in-hand, he had the larger than life quality of a stage actor, but there were two jarring notes. Ms. Manners would have approved of his gloves, but every man I knew would have stuffed the gloves in a pocket until the last minute, and Evan was wearing his. He was also wearing makeup of the heavy-duty concealer type about which Jill and I had joked earlier.

When he caught me eyeing his face, Evan’s response was a preemptive strike. “Bridegroom’s jitters,” he said. “Surely even you can’t see anything Machiavellian in the fact that I nicked myself shaving, Joanne.”

“Of course not,” I said, but I kept looking. His jaw was slightly swollen and even beneath the makeup I could see discolouration.

Jill stepped closer to examine the bruising. “That must be painful,” she said.

Evan raised his hand to cover the area. “It’s nothing,” he said.

“How does the other guy look?” I asked.

Evan’s eyes widened. Clearly, I’d shaken him. “There was no other guy,” he said. “I told you I cut myself shaving.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You did.” I touched Jill’s arm. “We should go in now. It’s almost time.”

Once, during the early years of my marriage, I saw a production of
Richard III
in London. The designer had created a stage world as bloodless as a chess game: the actors were costumed in sculptured robes of white or black and the set was a series of harshly geometric metal backdrops. Until Clarence was beheaded, we were in the stark, greyscale universe of absolutes, but the beheading introduced a new element. The trough that caught Clarence’s head filled quickly with blood, and the bleeding never stopped. As Richard’s brutal march to power continued, the blood poured unabated. By the time the final curtain fell, the stage dripped red.

The memory of that production washed over me as we walked down the aisle towards the place where Jill’s husband-to-be and his best man stood waiting. The wedding guests, shimmering in their bright outfits, fell silent as they took in our austere monochromatic gowns. It was a dramatic moment, made even more dramatic by the setting. Jill and Evan would be exchanging their vows in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that comprised the west wall of the gallery. Jill had hoped for a pretty snowfall or for the soft glow of a late-winter afternoon, but the light that seeped through the glass had the dull sheen of pewter. The only splash of colour in the area came from the cranberry miniskirt of the replacement judge, Rexella Sweeney. Rexella’s words would set the action in motion. Like the characters in that long-ago production of
Richard III
, the members of Jill and Evan’s wedding party seemed to be chess pieces moving inexorably towards an endgame of sacrifice and checkmate.

Rexella, a sixtyish blonde with a whisky rasp, dagger acrylic nails, and legs that wouldn’t quit, was an unlikely catalyst for tragedy. Earlier, when she introduced herself to Jill and me, she sensed Jill’s tension and wheezed, “Relax. This won’t hurt half as much as a Brazilian bikini wax.”

The moment came for Evan and Jill to exchange rings, and I knew that, worldly as Rexella was, she was wrong about the Brazilian bikini wax. When she pronounced that Evan and Jill were now husband and wife, tears stung my eyes. Watching my friend enter into a disastrous marriage was more painful by far than anything a cosmetician at The Sweet Hairafter had ever done to me.

Felix and I walked back down the aisle arm in arm, each of us grateful for the other’s presence. “Keep smiling,” Felix said through gritted teeth, “it’s almost over.”

But there was still the reception. While the caterers set up the tables for the buffet, we gathered in the crush area outside the gallery. Servers with trays of champagne circulated, fostering cheer. Felix handed me a glass. “Flawless performance,” he said. “Did you know that bridesmaids were originally intended as decoys to lure evil spirits away from the bride?”

“Finally, an explanation for all those hideous dresses,” I said.

We exchanged smiles and raised our glasses. The Cuvee Paradis Brut was everything champagne that cost eighty-five dollars a bottle U.S. should be – light, crisp, and astonishingly good, but only a magic elixir could have lifted me above the sticky mud of anxiety and trepidation that had been dragging me down all day. As I looked at my fluted glass, I knew I had two options: keep the champagne coming until I had blotted out the memory of a shambling man with a taste for strong tea and morality or find out what had happened to him. The decision was easy. No other man had ever compared me to Sam Waterston.

I surveyed the room to check on the kids. Taylor was chatting happily with Rapti Lustig’s son, a ten-year-old named Sam who was too kind and too suave to ever compare a young woman to a Chia Pet. Angus and Bryn were silhouetted against the window, holding hands, watching the storm that had begun to rage outside with a force almost as powerful as the hormones of the young. Safe as churches.

There was a pay telephone in the lobby. I took the elevator down, found a quarter in the mad-money pocket of my evening bag, and dialled home.

For the first time that day, there was a new message, but the voice on the other end was not one I wanted to hear. Alex Kequahtooway had been my lover for three years, and to paraphrase the nursery rhyme: when our relationship had been good it was very, very good, but when it went bad, it was horrid.

Alex had always distrusted words, and his telephone message was succinct: he had to talk to me, and I knew his number. I did know his number. I also had no intention of calling it.

Then, as if I needed further proof that when man makes decisions, God laughs, Alex himself walked through the front door of the Mackenzie Gallery. As he stood in the foyer, stamping the snow off his boots, surveying the scene, my mind raced through the kaleidoscope of possibilities that might have brought him out in a blizzard. None of them was good. When his eyes found me, they betrayed nothing, and as he walked towards me, my heart began to pound. “Has something happened to one of the kids?” I asked.

Alex’s obsidian eyes were warm. “No. Your family’s fine, Jo. This is about another matter.” He gestured to a stone bench in the lobby. “Let’s sit down.”

The gallery had a number of benches upon which the weary could share space with a sculptured figure that, reflecting our politically sensitive times, represented the full spectrum of our citizens: male, female, young, old, aboriginal, non-aboriginal, executive, worker. Alex had pointed to my favourite, a pregnant woman in a sundress and sandals, reading a book. He knew that particular bench reminded me of a good time in my own life, but his first words made it clear that chance not memory had determined his choice.