Crimes Against My Brother (56 page)

Rumour would destroy them all.

What would spur this hatred against her was her own editorial in the newspaper during the time certain women were accusing her of being old-fashioned and insensitive. She had written that God calls on people not to do what is easy but what is right. She also quoted scripture, which is always a dangerous thing to do: “I knew you before you were in the womb. You were consecrated before you were born.”

How could that insignificant amount of matter—that bright blush of someone’s fine makeup—hold such power?

So even she, who was innocent, who tried her best to be fair, was paying the price of living.

I will allow your fiancé to be free, the universe said, but you must condemn your sister’s husband—a sister whose life you saved and who you swore to protect. And if you do save your fiancé, no one will believe you. In fact, they will accuse you of being untruthful. But if you do not do this, the one who you love will go to jail, and may in fact die there. Then there is Ian, a man who betrayed you—you were the doctor on
duty and made sure he was treated the night he came to the hospital A vial of blood—what is that to seep out of him? And if it is his, no one will believe you either.

Or you can take the seed of blood you have collected and you can throw it away—into the dark bay below Bonny Joyce, and in tossing this seed you can live assured of the uncertainty that anyone around you, or you yourself, will ever do the right thing again. Because no one can do the right thing if you do not.

Sara lived with these thoughts, lost weight, but she found no resolution. One afternoon she told Ethel a story. She asked Ethel to come and sit with her and said, “I want to tell you a story.”

“Oh great,” Ethel said. “I love stories.”

“Well,” Sara said, “there were two men, and one committed a crime. But both men had turned their lives around—and both men no longer were the men who at one time were guilty of thinking of this crime, because both men had at one time thought of this crime as being just. Yet one, out of misfortune or a moment’s indiscretion, committed it. Perhaps even by accident. But by his very act of committing it he set many free—even the other man who might have done it. Now both these men were better men now than they had been in years. Both simply wanted to be kind. But if someone turned evidence into the police, that someone would condemn one of these men to a place where being kind would cost him his life. So whoever gave evidence was condemning one of these two men to a life where his direction, his hope for goodness, would become a casualty of what he in rashness had done years before. And is this fair? So if you, Ethel, had the means to find out which of the two men it was—what would you do?”

And Ethel simply said, “Harold is very good to me. He is not a bully anymore—like he was at first. Liam has changed us both. Liam is like our son. Much like our son should be. I can’t have babies you already told me—so Liam is my child now. I want you to know I love Harold, and I want you to know he loves me—and I want you to know we both love Liam, okay?”

Sara kissed her, like she always did.

And now a rumour was spreading across the town that the spinster who doctored children but did not have one of her own was in fact the kiss of death. She left the hospital at night under this suspicion, and was left alone again.

This was exquisite torture—which man might she save by advancing a cut of blood that she could have collected at any time?

Annette by this time in her life looked fifty. It was two months after she’d been laid off. She had put her big house up for sale in a bid to save something. She’d received notices of foreclosure and requests that she call the bank.

She wanted to buy herself and Liam a little trailer on Becker’s Lane. She asked Diane to help her with a loan, but Diane couldn’t afford it. The little trailer was nice, she thought now—though a year ago she would have laughed about being seen in it. It had a small porch and two bedrooms, a little kitchen and a small living room. Yes, yes, yes, that is all one ever needed!

On the night Liam was confirmed, he came home to find Annette in agony. Earlier he had knelt as his sponsors, Harold and Ethel, placed their hands on his head. He had whispered fidelity to the church and to God. Harold had hugged him and there were tears in the man’s eyes as he held Liam out at arm’s length.

“I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry about a thing,” Ethel said.

But Liam left the reception because his mother wasn’t there. He left the old church basement and came home. His blue suit was too small and his ankles showed above his socks.

He had now, after all this time, the gentlest smile his mother had ever seen.

She was slumped near the window in her bedroom. She had been looking out the window for him to come home. He told her he was going to take her to the hospital. She was too weak to say no.

He sat her up in bed, and took the golden necklace that Wally had given her for Christmas two years ago and tossed it onto the floor. Then he took the beads that Ethel had received from Father MacIlvoy and had given to him that very night, and started to place them around her neck.

“They will probably burn my skin.” She smiled.

“No, Mom, they won’t,” he said. His white lips trembled. He tried to remember prayers as he held her. But he could not remember any prayers at all.

“Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” he said, his lips trembling.

She looked at his face and touched it gently.

He helped her dress—he was used to it now. There were red blotches on her face, and her breasts were scarred where she had had her implants. He got her best shoes and helped her put them on.

“I am so sorry I hit you,” she whispered, touching his hair, which was damp with sweat.

“All of us are sorry, the whole world, and those who aren’t don’t know. Little Wally Bickle is not sorry—but he does not know,” Liam said, not looking up while he tied her shoe.

“You have to take me,” she said. “I don’t want no ambulance. Busybodies.”

“I’m going to take you to Dr. Sara,” he said. “She is only four blocks away—she is still in her office tonight.”

“Dr. Sara—she hates me,” Annette whispered, almost spiteful with terror.

He laughed, then wiped tears from his face. “Oh Mommy,” he said, “don’t you know! She is one of the few who doesn’t.”

They went out into the hot night, the trees gloomy and damp. They passed the
FOR SALE
sign. Yes, he remembered her pounding that into the soil just last week, as if she wanted to prove to the world she was going to make a change. And sadly, as if the world would care if she did.

Sara Robb was at the office late for one reason: she had the vial of blood in her pocket, ready to either throw into the water or take to the
police, when the boy appeared with his mother. She put the vial away, for suddenly she had to try to save Annette Brideau’s life.

Annette said, “Oh my dear, dear Sara,” and clutched her hand, the prayer beads resting under her white chin and softly against her cold breasts. “Pray for me now. I am too young to die.”

Sara discovered that Annette had a massive blood clot. She phoned an ambulance immediately. But the clot moved suddenly, stopping Annette’s heart at 10:15 p.m.

Sara continued her heroic measures in the hospital for almost two more hours.

Annette was forty years old, but almost no one heard that she had died that night, an old woman forgotten by everyone.

Liam sat in the waiting room staring at an orchid in a large pot. He remembered going to first communion. The sky had been threatening that day, the wind blowing the big trees; Ethel had him by the hand. A little shaft of light was falling from the cloud. “Angels,” Ethel had told him, as she combed his hair by the church’s big archway. “They are everywhere. Do not believe those who tell you they are not!”

He was sixteen now. So where in the world would he go?

Ethel and Harold told him their house was open to him as long as he wanted.

“I am your father if you want,” Harold said gently. “You come live with us and I will be the best father I can be. It is not too late for that to happen!” And he added, “Liam, if there were more people like you in the world, there would be fewer people like me,” and he’d kissed his forehead.

Sara made out the report on Annette’s death. She thought of how little Annette had been left with, how much she had lost, the prayer beads against her skin as a last resort, the sadness and confusion in her eyes, and her last words: “God forgive me.” She thought of everyone suffering the same way in this world, in one fashion or another, and made her decision: she would turn the vial in.

Markus Paul interviewed Evan.

“The problem is, I was once unconcerned about anything. Then I went into the woods hunting with Ian Preston, thinking only of money, and did not have a peaceful moment until I was standing over Sullivan’s body. Except what did I kill him with?”

“Oh, we know what you killed him with,” Markus said.

“What?”

He showed Evan photos from the top and side of the red tool box, evidence taken by the photographer Wilson all those years gone by.

“There was a wrench sitting there. Sullivan did not slip and fall—he was hit hard with a big wrench.”

“A wrench?”

“Look, you can make out its outline. Do you remember it—a wrench?”

“No, I do not remember a wrench.”

There were seventeen people at Annette’s funeral besides the pallbearers. The priest was young—in his twenties still. He had never heard of Annette. He spoke of the treasure of Catholicism, and the need for people like Annette in the Catholic Church. Strangely, it all seemed true. The day was warm, and the bright spaces between the many, many empty pews looked hopeful in the sunlight. The choir sang “Ave Maria,” and the coffin made of dark oak sat before the altar just as Corky’s had a very few years before.

The death of Annette, although hardly noticed in the town at first, had over the course of that summer a profound effect on many. Some people who knew her became very depressed, and then quite suddenly became angry at themselves and others because they saw her youngster in the town park or going alone to the enclosure to swim, and became
aware of the tragedy they had all been party to. They had participated in creating the very plight she’d found herself in that last night of her life, when little Liam was trying to find her best shoes.

Wally began to be shunned everywhere he went. He came back from bible camp and tried to be humble. But humble did not sit well with him.

Now he too was alone.

He went to Diane to ask her if she was telling secrets about what had happened.

“Omigod, no,” Diane said. “What do you take me for?” And she gave him not a smile this time but an astonished and spiteful look reserved for people she’d been told to dislike.

But then she went on to Cut and Curl. She was going out with a younger man now, a bold and indifferent kind of fellow, sixteen years younger than she was, who seemed to care for nothing.

His name was Rueben Sores.

The dour great mill seemed to swallow Wally whole, the caking machines laying in wait for him to enter through the small back door, the ghost of forgotten office laughter echoing.