Deadly Appearances (26 page)

After Angus went back to school I decided to celebrate my resolve. I unwrapped a basket of dried fruit Craig Evanson had sent for Thanksgiving and took it to the granny flat. An incentive. But I didn’t need one. Once I started going through the boxes, the afternoon flew by. There was a huge box of clippings, arranged, of course, by subject, not by year. Getting all the material refiled was too daunting a job for that afternoon, so I opened another box. It was full of gifts, the kinds of things all politicians acquire in the course of a career: a provincial crest made from bits of broken bottles set into a concrete block; a pair of pillowcases with Andy’s and Eve’s faces drawn on with liquid embroidery; a stack of amateur oil paintings of prairie scenes, garish sunsets and grain elevators that bulged and tilted against turquoise skies; a metal lunch box with Andy’s initials. The potash workers at Lanigan had given it to him at the beginning of August so he could “go to work on those bastards in the next election.”

Junk, but hard to deal with if you remembered the day the junk was presented and the look on the face of the presenter and how you laughed about it on the way back to the city.

Of course, some of it wasn’t junk. I was sitting looking at the weaving in a lovely and intricate Métis belt and eating the last of the sugared figs when the boys came racing up the steps to the granny flat. They looked winsome – always a trouble sign.

Peter began. “Since it’s almost dinnertime and since I don’t think you’ve had time to cook …”

Angus finished the preamble. “And since we all love pizza and since we have a two-for-one coupon for that new pizza place, why don’t we …?”

“Order Chinese food?” I suggested.

“Oh, Mum,” said Angus, “you never used to say dumb stuff like that when Mieka was here.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Pizza it is, but I insist on anchovies.”

“On one quarter only?” said Angus.

“Half,” I said.

“A third,” he said, beaming.

“Fair enough” I said. “But this place better give double cheese.”

That night I woke up with a terrible cramping in my stomach. When I turned on the light and sat up to look at the clock, a wave of nausea hit me. I ran to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, shivering and reading an old
Chatelaine
. Finally, I pulled on a robe, went to the kitchen and poured some milk into a saucepan to warm. The dogs were nuzzling me worriedly. In our house, people didn’t come downstairs in the middle of the night and sit huddled over the kitchen table. But the warm milk helped, and after a while the dogs and I went upstairs and I slept until morning.

I keep a little daybook by my bed. That morning I wrote in one word – “sick” – but then I got up, showered and felt better. I called the correctional centre to check on Eve, phoned Patterson, New Jersey, to see why the Mets jacket I’d ordered six weeks ago for Peter’s birthday hadn’t come yet, made a pot of tea, took it to the granny flat and began on the files. At lunch I had some soup with Angus, and by the time Rick called that afternoon, I felt so much better I didn’t even mention my bout the night before. The boys weren’t sick. I decided it had been the anchovies on my third of the pizza that made me ill. Rick sounded up, buoyed still by Thanksgiving and excited about the stuff the Caucus Office had sent.

“Stick with it, Jo. How I envy you that granny flat. Right now, I’d give six bottles of Beefeater to have the kind of quiet you have there. That’s what we need – a place where we can lay out all the material and then just look at it in peace until the answers start to emerge. And they will emerge. Trust me.”

The strength of his assurance got me through the rest of the afternoon. I had dinner with the boys, showered, and by 8:30 was in bed with a new unauthorized biography of the
PM
, good gossipy stuff. I fell asleep still grinning about some of the revelations. No wonder he hadn’t called an election at the end of summer. I woke up in the night with another attack, the same thing but worse – nausea, cramping and this time diarrhea. Again I went downstairs and made myself warm milk. This time I took a couple of yogurt pills, which I had bought at a health-food store, to counter the diarrhea. I fell into bed exhausted, but I slept. The next morning in my daybook I wrote the word “sick,” followed by the symptoms.

It was a significant moment. I had begun to track this illness, whatever it was. Without realizing it, I had moved across that fine line that separates the world of the well with all its dear and familiar preoccupations to the world of the sick where the only real concern is the sickness itself.

That first week I continued to function, to keep up at least the appearance of business as usual. I went to the correctional centre to visit Eve, who seemed to be sliding away; to Craig Evanson’s office to drink tea and talk about Eve’s defence; around town to do family errands; to the granny flat to unpack and sort and file. Saturday morning the kids and I even made it to the Lakeshore Club, but I spent most of my time sitting on the edge of the pool shaking. And, last thing at night, every night, I talked to Rick Spenser, whose voice, warm and full of concern, was increasingly becoming my reason for getting through the days. As long as I could keep up the rounds of ordinary domestic routine, nothing was wrong.

By the second week it was becoming harder to pretend. The evidence of my daybook was there every morning in black and white: the word “sick” followed by a growing list of symptoms – diarrhea and cramps and nausea, but also a cold, clammy feeling and, something new, a taste of metal in my mouth that for the first time in my life made eating a chore to be endured.

That second week I played a game with myself – if it’s not better tomorrow, I’ll call the doctor – but I never did. By the weekend I was frightened and exhausted. I didn’t even bother to take my bathing suit to the club. I sat in the coffee shop and watched the boys playing tennis through the glass. The morning seemed endless, and when finally we did get home, I noticed the boys exchanging worried looks. To escape, I told them I had to work. I went to the granny flat, shut the door and collapsed on the couch for most of the afternoon. Peter brought me a tray at suppertime. He was seventeen years old, but he looked close to tears. He remembered the bad time after Ian died, too. I felt so guilty that I followed him to the house like a whipped dog.

“Okay, you guys, if you want to pamper me, go to it,” I said and I went upstairs, showered and crawled into bed. In the night the cramps and nausea hit me in waves. I got up and went and sat in the bathroom. But the memory of Peter coming to the granny flat with the tray fired something in me. I heard my voice, frightened but defiant. “I am not going to let this happen again. I am not going to give in.” Finally, I went back to bed and slept until morning.

Sunday was cold and sleety. The boys volunteered to stay home from church, and I was too weak to fight them. I stayed in bed most of the day and slept through the night. Monday morning I awoke feeling better – not completely well, but well enough to make some plans.

Hallowe’en was a week away. I decided to treat myself. Andy’s old administrative assistant, Rosemary Vickert, had opened a store a couple of weeks before. She’d sent me an announcement. The store was called Seasons, and it sold everything I could want for celebrating a holiday. I dressed with more than usual care, and noticed with a certain grim pleasure that the Black Watch tartan skirt that had been snug around the waist at Thanksgiving was now not just comfortable but loose.

“Today I declare myself not only well but thin,” I said as I ran my finger around the waistband.

Rosie’s store was in a strip mall, the same strip mall where Ali Sutherland had once had her partnership. I parked as far away as possible from Ali’s office. Today I was well. I had no need of doctors.

Seasons was a wonderful store. Rosie was downtown on an errand but her partner was cheerful and unobtrusive and I found some great stuff, a Hallowe’en wreath with orange ribbons and little black cats for Mieka’s door, a spooky ghost windsock for our front porch and some cards for friends. I was standing by the cash register when I spotted a pumpkin suit in size two or thereabouts. On impulse I decided to buy it for Clay Evanson, Lori and Mark’s little guy. I’d just put the suit on the counter when Rosemary Vickert came in the door. When she saw me, her face lit up, but as quickly as it had come, the joy was gone.

“My God, Jo, what’s the matter with you? You look like hell.”

“I’ve had the flu, but I’m better now.”

“The hell you are,” she said. “How much weight have you lost?” She reached up and felt my forehead. “You feel like you’ve got a chill.”

“I’m better,” I repeated numbly.

“Take a look, lady,” she said and spun me around so that we were both looking in the mirror over a display case by the door. Suspended from the ceiling were dozens of rubber skeletons. Rosie swept them aside so I could see myself.

It was a shock. Rosemary, pink with wellness, was looking over my shoulder into the mirror. But she wasn’t looking at herself. She was looking at a yellow-skinned woman with dry, chapped lips and sunken eyes. She was looking at me.

“What does the doctor say?” asked Rosie, looking over my shoulder at my mirror image.

“I haven’t been,” I said.

“Well, we’re going now,” she said. “Do you want to get taken to a doc in a box or do you want to see if someone at Ali’s old place can look at you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Jo,” she said, “we’re not negotiating whether you are going. We’re negotiating who you are going to see. Whether is off the table. Now who will it be? Somebody at the Medi-centre or someone from Ali’s?”

“Ali’s,” I said numbly, looking at my feet. I knew I’d been defeated.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” the slim woman in the medical coat and the impossibly high heels said, smiling as she came into the examining room. “I can’t see anything. I’ve made an appointment with a gastroenterologist just in case, but my guess is you won’t need it. No harm in having an appointment, though. Those guys have waiting lists that are yay long.” She swung herself up on a stool at the side of the examining table. “Mrs. Kilbourn, I had a quick look at your records. I noticed you had a pretty bad time after your husband died and you know that was only a couple of years ago.”

“Three,” I said numbly. “It’ll be three years in December.”

She looked at me kindly. “You’ve been under an incredible amount of stress, you know. I read the papers, and it seems to me you’ve been right at the centre of Andy Boychuk’s murder – terrible in itself. It must have opened a lot of old wounds for you.”

“You’re saying this is all in my head.”

“I’m saying we can’t rule that out, Mrs. Kilbourn. As you well know, the body often has its own way of coping with stress. Now this is what I think we should do. I’m going to prescribe something to help you over this rough spot – very short term. Sometimes that’s all it takes, you know – a tranquillizer to unknot the knots and let your body get in touch with its own wisdom. Why don’t we try that, and then if things don’t sort themselves out, you can keep the appointment with the gastroenterologist. His name is Dr. Philip Lee. He’s a bit brusque, but he’s good.”

“I know his brother, Mort.”

She looked mischievous. “Well, Mort got all the charm in that family, but they’re both brilliant.” She stood and smoothed her skirt. “I want to see you in a month – even if you’re okay.”

I walked into the waiting room, clutching my prescription for Valium and the slip of paper with the time and date of my appointment with Dr. Philip Lee. Rosemary Vickert looked up expectantly.

“Nothing wrong with me,” I said. “It’s all in my head.” I tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was jagged and forlorn.

Rosie jumped up and put her arms around my shoulder. “C’mon, Jo, let’s go someplace and have a sinful lunch. You can pay – punishment for scaring the …” She gave a sidelong glance at the doctor’s office. “For scaring the fecal matter out of me.”

I took a Valium with lunch, went home and slept through the afternoon. That night I went to Peter’s football game, came home, got into bed with the unauthorized biography of the
PM
and slept through the night.

The next morning in my daybook I wrote a tentative “Better” followed by a string of question marks. I had breakfast with the kids, took the dogs for their run, changed my clothes, grabbed the little pumpkin suit I’d bought for Clay Evanson and drove to Wolf River. I took a deep breath when I pulled onto the overpass. “So far, so good,” I said aloud and then something went wrong in my chest muscles. I couldn’t move the air in and out of my lungs. I took a series of gulping breaths. I managed to keep the car on the overpass and get onto the highway. I pulled over onto the shoulder at almost exactly the same spot where Eve and I had stopped six weeks before.

There was a paper bag from a take-out place on the dashboard. I held it over my mouth and nose and breathed deeply. The bag smelled of stale grease and salt, but after a while, my breathing became regular again. I sat by the side of the road for a few minutes, frightened and angry. Then I said loudly, “I’m not giving in to this, you know,” put the car in gear and finished the drive to Wolf River.

For once, Lori Evanson was not immaculate. I had stopped in at Disciples for a cup of coffee and was told that Lori was home and ill. When she opened the door of the trailer she and Mark and Clay lived in, she certainly looked ill and, without her careful makeup, very young. She invited me in, turned off the soap opera she was watching, made a futile stab at picking up the toys that were everywhere in the sunny living room, then collapsed on the couch.

Clay’s eyes had been drawn by the bright colours of the bag from Seasons, and he grabbed at it.

“Oh, Clay, no.” Lori’s sweet singsong voice sounded weary.

“It’s all right, Lori. It’s a present for him.”

Like a child, she was off the couch and over to where Clay was, helping him open the bag.

When she saw the pumpkin suit, she began at once to pull it over his little T-shirt and jeans.