Web of Angels (9 page)

“Dear neighbours,” Rick began, looking down through his glasses at his notes, then over them at all those assembled for the sake of his wayward daughter, or more, for the sake of her abandoned parents. “Your support for myself, my wife and Cathy is everything I’d expect of Seaton Grove, though I’m sorry that it has to be proven under these circumstances. I hope to God that nobody here ever has to go through what we have in the last week. But with the help of our family and community we will go on.

“We are here to commemorate a life that was all too short. Heather was born sixteen years ago. My first little girl, the apple of my eye. Like any father I hoped for great things from my child. But let’s speak plainly because only plain speaking will prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Heather’s bright future darkened as she became a troubled child and then a teen at risk. That’s the term the psychiatrist used—’at risk.’ If only I had known what the risk was. When my daughter came home pregnant, I thought we’d reached the bottom. The worst had happened …” His voice broke. Neighbours wept, stifling sobs in tissues.

“Because of my wife’s courage, we have another baby in our family,” Rick said. “Life goes on. We can’t bring Heather back. We can only learn from this and draw strength from each other. That’s why I would like to start the Committee for Youth to provide programming and guidance for teens.”
He paused, waiting for this to sink in. Neighbours nodded, whispered, wiped their eyes, a few tentatively clapped. Rick held up a hand, staying their response. “My friends, terrible things happen here in Seaton Grove, too. And if a single family can be saved because of my daughter’s death …” The clapping began again, uncertainly; nobody was sure if it was appropriate. But more joined in, then everyone was clapping, the friends and neighbours who had come from the streets all around making a thunder of their hands to ward off despair.

Callisto’s eyes remained dry as she considered the nature of fathers and what they required of their children: beauty, cleverness, stamina. It was warm in the gym. She folded her program into a fan, thinking over Rick’s words, neither adding to nor subtracting from them. What he had said: he hoped for great things from Heather. What he had not said: he wished great things for her. His black sheep.

“I couldn’t do that.” Dan spoke into her ear, so she could hear above the clapping. “Not under these circumstances.”

“Do what?” She fanned herself.

“Be able to think of anybody but myself and my kids. If one of ours …” He paused, looking at her. He knew the subtlety of words, he was a writer of pleas that drew money out of pockets, and he had said “ours,” his and hers, the left-handed wife. “I wouldn’t be starting any committees, I can tell you that.”

Lost in thought or perhaps in a battle with emotion, Rick gripped the podium, eyes on his notes. After a moment he removed his reading glasses and put them in his breast
pocket, waiting for the applause to die down. In the first row, Cathy’s hands were flat on her knees until she noticed her father looking at her. Then she clapped loudly, slowly, punctiliously. “My other daughter would like to say a few words to you this evening,” he said, moving away from the microphone, but staying near the podium.

All the mothers and the fathers, row upon row in their mourning clothes, sat silently, expectantly, while the living child stood to face them. Darkness behind her and darkness in front, her father a frame as she unfolded a piece of paper and flattened it out, her face pale, her hair shining. “Thank you all for coming tonight. If only my sister …” she began, then blinked hard, her shoulders hunching. Everyone was watching. Waiting. Her father took a step closer, ready to take over. “I can speak,” she said, her voice unexpectedly strong. She was looking at Josh, who’d moved into her seat to be as close to her as he could, his hand raised, thumb up. She continued, ignoring the written speech, ignoring the congregation, talking just to Josh, colour rising in her face as she spoke. “My sister was an amazing artist. She was supposed to go to an art college next year. She was smart, too. A lot of people didn’t realize that but she was smart enough to graduate a year early even though she missed a lot of school. She was working on a project when she died. I saw it in the art room at school. It was a sculpture in plaster. She told me that it was a bird woman because if you can fly, you’ll always be free. She did the wings, but she never got to the face. I think it was going to be hers. I guess she didn’t really believe that she could fly. But if you want to know …” She paused
as her father’s hand landed on her shoulder. He must have squeezed, and she turned her eyes to his.

What he said, nobody else could hear because he put a hand over the microphone. Then he pointed to the paper. Tapped it. Her shoulders slumped.

Looking down at the speech, she began to read tonelessly: “Thank you all for coming tonight. If only my sister could have appreciated how much people cared about her, she might still be with us. But my hope is that the Committee for Youth will prevent other youth from making the same mistakes as my sister. Here is the sign-up sheet.” She lifted it, her eyes still lowered, refusing to look at the congregation, no matter how hard her father squeezed her shoulder. “Please leave your e-mail address. If you don’t have one, my father will arrange for his assistant to call you. Again, thanks for being here. Please stay for coffee and cake after. Now I’d like to call on Albert Smythe who has kindly offered to lead the service.”

Rick stepped down while all eyes were on Mr. Smythe, all except Callisto’s. She was watching her son climb over Cathy’s chair to return to his own, the way he leaned forward as Cathy sat down, huddled between her parents. Her father spoke to her again; her mother in dark glasses was opening her alligator bag, extracting a pill bottle, removing a pill and depositing it in her daughter’s hand. A group of teenagers was filing to the front. They wore black T-shirts with
FREEDOM BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB CHOIR
in gold letters on them. Mr. Smythe picked up a guitar, plugged into the amp behind the podium, and they began to sing “Candle in the Wind” with the special lyrics written for the occasion.

Goodbye Heather Rose

May you ever live in our hearts

Though we never knew you as we should …

When the song finished, Mr. Smythe asked everyone to read aloud the prayer on the program.

The neighbourhood’s voice rose, the voice of the village that had existed for a hundred and fifty years, and the voice of the trees before that, of the ice moving back, scraping the earth to leave a ridge for hunters and traders who walked the trail for ten thousand years, of the railroad, of standard time as the city came and leaped over the ridge. It was the voice of light born and reborn in a gym where earlier in the day the last basketball banged against a backboard and was put away, and flowers set in vases to honour death: “May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow. May those who are frightened cease to be frightened, may the powerless find power and may people think of befriending one another …”

T
hree weeks after the memorial service, Sharon woke up in the dark. For a minute she wasn’t sure where she was. She closed her eyes, opened them again. There was the TV stand with the TV on it. The pile of cushions on a chair. A pot of yellow mums on the dresser, which matched the flowers in the scroll painting with Chinese calligraphy. She turned to look at the clock: 7:08—was that morning or evening? No sound of water running in the shower. She reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. Beside the clock was a Thermos, a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a note.

She smelled pizza, which meant it was Thursday. Today. She hoped it was today and not some other Thursday. She hadn’t lost time, had she? Oh God, she hoped not. She
poured coffee from the Thermos. Hot, black, bitter. Drink the coffee. Bite into a cookie. Let time settle around her. Yesterday she volunteered in Emmie’s kindergarten class. They made spring flowers out of tissue paper. She had therapy today. She was tired, that was all, her mind on dial-up, images loading ever so slowly.

This morning: the soothing print of water lilies on the wall in Brigitte’s office. Sitting in a plush armchair, kitty-corner to the couch, she was facing Brigitte in the recliner with her feet up, furry slippers keeping her feet warm while Sharon talked. She was explaining why the things she remembered just couldn’t be true. If Brigitte ever met her parents, she would never believe it. They were good people; everybody said so. Successful, well-spoken, friendly. One of her brothers was a surgeon, the other a dentist; her sister had gone into law like their father. Sharon was the only one who wasn’t a success, so didn’t that prove it was just her problem?

They had a great legacy: the family name was a variation of Julius, as in Caesar. Her father had told her about the old legends; he’d taught her to dance. When she was little, she’d stood on his feet and he’d danced her around the living room. He listened to Gregorian chants. Her mother collected antique glass and took classes in ballroom dancing. She had taught Sharon to cook, for goodness’ sake, swearing by
The New Kate Aitken Cook Book
. Advice to brides: throw Hubbard squash down the steps to break open the rind. Her mother had given Sharon her own copy and had written on the title page: “From Mummy with love.” Did that sound like someone who’d lock her kid in the basement?

She stopped talking, waiting for Brigitte to realize that she didn’t belong in therapy. She was wasting her time with things dreamed up for some crazy reason. Boredom. Or a need for attention. She needed pills to make it stop, but Brigitte said there were no pills for DID, only for symptoms of trauma like depression or anxiety. If Sharon wished, she would refer her to a psychiatrist. Sharon did not wish. She had taken pills prescribed by her family doctor after Josh was born. When she’d stopped taking them, her appetite and her sex drive had reappeared, and she was able to have two more children. Sharon brushed the basement carpet with her feet, watching the colour change from gold to beige.

Brigitte snapped her recliner forward, the footrest moving into the base. “Where are you now?” she asked.

“I can see her. My mother. It’s like she’s standing in front of me.”

Brigitte leaned forward. Her cheeks were round, her white hair in a bun on the top of her head, her eyes round and bright, a snowy owl’s eyes. “What do you see?”

“How she looked when I was little, around Emmie’s age. Maybe five? My mother was attractive. Kind of a girl-next-door only grown-up. She got breast implants that year.”

Her mother’s hair was in a flip, her makeup perfect. She was wearing a turquoise gown, dressed up for the law firm’s spring dance. She had elbow length white gloves with lots of buttons. Sharon liked to count them: twenty-one tiny pearl buttons. Her mother was so beautiful, standing there in the doorway to the basement, smelling of Chanel No. 5. She
didn’t have carrot hair, but browny-red like wood. Auburn. That was what she called it.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why would the basement door be locked?” Sharon said. “I remember being in my nightgown. There’s a smell of ginger-ale and something …” Her nose wrinkled. “How could that be?”

“What’s the last thing you remember before that?”

“Coming home from school the day before a long weekend, and ringing the doorbell.” A spindly tree in the front yard, buds on the branches. A bungalow in a row of bungalows. Their front door had rippled glass in it. “I’d had an accident. My tights were wet. Then I’m in my nightgown and I don’t understand why I’m coming up the basement steps.”

The door had opened and her mother had been standing in the doorway, dressed for the company dance. She’d said,
I have three other children, but you’re the one who always makes the mess. It’s time you learned to think of other people
. The door had closed. She’d heard her mother bolt the lock. It had been so dark. A darkness you never get in the city.

The dehumidifier clicked as the motor went on. Mould and mildew were forbidden here. So was perfume because Brigitte was allergic to it. There was only a new carpet smell, and behind it the smallest hint of cat pee. When Sharon looked up, she saw sorrow in Brigitte’s eyes. Why? It wasn’t that bad. Really it wasn’t.

“I’d like to ask you something,” Brigitte said. “How did you end up in the basement?”

There was a roar inside and after that nothing until a few minutes ago, when Sharon opened her eyes in her own
bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp. Another image slowly uploaded, walking the kids home from school. Giving her youngest a piggyback ride. (That wasn’t her, but one of the others. A fact that she shunted aside like a mangled boxcar, uncoupling it, moving it to the railroad siding, leaving the main track free and clear for the rest of the freight train.) The point was that somehow the day had passed. Ouch. The coffee scalded the roof of her mouth. She should have waited until it cooled a bit. Emmie’s high voice was floating up the stairs, Josh answering in an angry undertone. Sharon put the mug back on the bedside table, swung her feet over the side of the bed, got herself out the bedroom door.

“Leave Mom alone. I’ll do it.”

“No! I want to show Mommy!”

“She didn’t sleep last night.” Josh had his sister by the arm, halfway up the staircase. “Don’t bug her.”

“What’s going on?” Sharon asked. Her son’s face was worried. He shouldn’t be worrying about her. She was the mom.

“I’m sorry,” he said, following as Emmie bolted past him to the top of the stairs, sticking out her tongue. “I tried to keep her downstairs.” He was barefoot. He always had hot feet.

“Thank you, hon. I’m fine,” Sharon said, patting the shoulder of her sockless boy.

“You sure, Mom?”

“Of course I’m sure.” She watched his face. It was all there in the eyes, the brows, the corners of the mouth. His chin had been the tiniest bit squared with worry, now soothed by her mom voice, the sock-finder, the shirt-ironer. “Go
on,” she said. As he headed back to his room, she turned to her youngest. “Now you.” Water trickled from red hair onto Sharon’s hand. “What’s going on?”