Kaleidoscope (5 page)

“Good news all around,” I said.

Taylor looked in the porridge pot and wrinkled her nose. “Is this it?”

“We have the usual options, and I bought some crumpets to take to the lake. They’re in the fridge.”

“Excellent.” Taylor pitched the anthology onto the table, where it landed with a thud. “I copied out my poem, so you can have the book back,” she said. She popped two crumpets in the toaster and began melting butter in the microwave. As she had since she was little, she tucked a tea towel bib-style around her neck before eating. When she’d finished her crumpets, she poured herself another glass of juice.

“Ready for the day?” I asked

She nodded. “I hope it’s better than yesterday.”

“What was the matter with yesterday?”

She shrugged. “Well, the day was okay – actually it was great. I thought I’d hate Ultimate – I’m not exactly a jock, but it was fun pitching the Frisbee around and our team actually won. The other kids invited us to go for pizza with
them, but Declan knew his mum would be alone, so we took a pizza over to their house.”

“That was a nice thought,” I said.

Taylor sighed. “I guess, but it didn’t work out. Mrs. Hunter didn’t eat anything. She just drank. Finally, she decided she wanted a bowl of cereal. There wasn’t any milk in the house so Declan went out to get some, and as soon as he left, his mum brought out this journal she kept when she was fourteen. It was creepy. All about how she’d just met this boy, and she knew they were ‘destined’ to spend the rest of their lives together.”

“And the boy was Leland Hunter.”

Taylor cringed at the memory. “Mrs. Hunter wanted me to read her journal out loud. It was filled with all these intimate things about how she and Leland Hunter were fated to be together forever. Finally, I just couldn’t do it. I gave the journal back to her. She was really drunk, and she started off for bed. Then she turned around and said, ‘Don’t ever let go of your destiny.’ ”

“Did she explain what she meant?”

“No. By that time, she was pretty close to passing out. Declan got home and we helped her up the stairs.”

I felt my gorge rise, but I kept my voice even. “I remember having to do that with my mother. I hated it.”

Taylor shrugged. “Those stairs are steep and they’re slippery. Somebody has to help her.”

I chose my words carefully. “You know how fond your dad and I are of Declan,” I said. “He shouldn’t have to be Louise’s nursemaid.” I touched her hand. “And, Taylor, neither should you. You’re fourteen years old.”

She leapt to her feet. I’d touched a nerve. “And that means that I should be” – her fingers flashed furious air quotes – “ ‘seeing other boys.’ We’ve talked about this a hundred times. You just don’t understand.”

I lowered my voice. “Then help me understand, Taylor. You just told me how disturbing you found Louise deciding at fourteen that Leland Hunter was her ‘destiny.’ ”

Taylor took a deep breath. “Declan and I don’t believe we are each other’s destiny. We just know that right now, being together is the best thing for both of us.”

“You’ve always enjoyed meeting new people.”

“It’s more complicated now. Jo, there are plenty of boys who want to be with me, but I don’t want what they want.”

“Sex.”

She held my gaze. “You don’t know what it’s like now. Boys expect girls to do things to them that I just don’t want to do. And if the girl doesn’t do it, they tweet or text about her and they put things about her on Facebook. And if she
does
do it, it’s even worse!”

“What kind of things?”

“Guess?” Taylor said. “Before Declan and I got together, I saw stuff about me on Facebook. Boys said I was frigid. They called me an icebox and other stuff that was way worse. I don’t know if I’m frigid. I don’t even care. I just know I don’t want to be a skank like my mother.”

“Taylor …”

She clapped her hands over her ears. “I know. I know. I shouldn’t have called her a skank. She had a complicated life. But the articles I read about her say she slept with all these men and all these women. I don’t hate her, Jo. I never knew her. All I know is her art, and it’s incredible. But I’m not like her. I don’t like it when boys paw at me. Declan keeps them away.”

“By …?”

“As long as boys think Declan and I are a couple, they don’t bother me.” Her smile was tentative. “Jo, most mothers would be relieved that their daughter weren’t sexually active.”

“I am relieved. Taylor, Zack and I are proud of the decisions you make.”

Her smile grew broader. “Then get off my case about seeing other boys. And I’m not warping Declan. He sees other girls. Girls who are older than me.”

“Girls who
are
sexually active.”

Taylor jumped up from the table. “Can’t you ever leave anything alone?” she said. “I don’t care what Declan is doing as long as he’s not doing it to me. I know exactly what you’re going to say next and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear your lecture about sex and respect. Declan is respectful of those girls. He takes them out to eat and go to movies and hear bands, and unlike a lot of boys, Declan never tweets or goes on Facebook to talk about what he does with them afterwards. Those girls are happy and Declan’s happy and I’m happy. Can’t you please – for once – just leave my life alone?”

Taylor was the fourth child I’d seen through adolescence. Apparently I had learned nothing. “Okay,” I said. “It’s miserable out there. Want me to get your raincoat?”

She sighed. “I’m fourteen, remember? I know enough to come out of the rain.”

After Taylor left, I went to our room to make the bed. I looked at the tangle of soft cotton sheets with longing. At my retirement luncheon there had been many hoary jokes about the lazy life of retirees. I’d been retired less than twenty-four hours and this would be my second nap. So be it. I took off my jeans and shirt, slipped on my pyjamas, and slid between the sheets.

Tired as I was, I couldn’t help worrying about Taylor. She was handling herself with real maturity, but the presence of Louise Hunter in her life was troubling. My first meeting with Louise had come the previous December. She and Leland had been divorced for several years, and she had
spent much of that time drinking heavily. After a bizarre incident in which Louise gave a stranger the keys to her Mercedes and asked him to drive her home to head off the possibility of yet another DUI charge, Declan called Zack for help. I went with Zack to Louise’s and while he paid off Louise’s volunteer driver, I readied her for bed and tucked her in. The sequence of tasks was painfully familiar to me, and it was not something I wanted Taylor to learn, not now or ever. Nor did I wish it for Declan.

Not long after that night, Louise stopped drinking, and for a few weeks it seemed as though she might be truly on the road to recovery. But on Valentine’s night, Leland asked Margot to marry him and she accepted. In Regina, lovers don’t need a photo on the social page to announce an engagement. Kind friends will carry the news. By noon the next day Louise had been told that Leland was remarrying, and by five she had washed down a handful of pills with vodka. Her suicide attempt was not successful, but Zack told me about the note she’d written. It ended with a poignant quote from Tennyson:
It is the little rift within the lute, / That by and by will make the music mute, / And ever widening, slowly silence all
.

I finally did doze off for a while, and when I awoke, it was time to begin getting ready for convocation. Ed Mariani and I had arranged to go together. As it had been since before I’d begun teaching at the university, convocation was held at the Conexus Arts Centre. The centre offered ample parking, but after a major event, getting out of the lot caused tempers to fray. Ed and Barry lived five blocks from Conexus, so I’d arranged to leave my car at their place and walk to convocation with Ed.

That afternoon, it was not a pleasant walk. The weather had moved from wretched to iffy, but the garment bags that
protected our academic robes against the weather made them unwieldy. Ed was a heavy man, and by the time we arrived at the centre his breathing was laboured. I was relieved when the brightly lit lobby came into view, but there was one more hurdle to clear before we were inside.

A group of protestors had gathered. About half were Aboriginal, half were Caucasian. They were nearly all young men, mostly heavily tattooed and rough looking. The demonstration appeared to have been hastily organized. The signs were crude: hand-lettered on poster board and stapled to scrap lumber. The message was unequivocal: Leland Hunter wasn’t a developer, he was a destroyer, and he should get out of their neighbourhood. Ed and I recognized the group’s leader at the same moment he spotted us. Ed knew Riel Delorme only by reputation, but I remembered him from our academic meetings. We exchanged the awkward nods of those who find themselves in a situation that etiquette books don’t cover, and then he surprised me by coming over.

Riel had changed. As a student, there had been something sweet and gentle about him, but in the five years since I had last seen him he had hardened. His face was deeply lined, his lips compressed, and his obsidian eyes had dark circles around them.

The changes in the man standing in front of me on that windy convocation day were not simply physical. With his shining blue-black hair centre-parted and flowing to his shoulders, powerfully muscled arms, tight blue jeans, and combat boots, Riel Delorme was an urban warrior.

“Good to see you, Professor Kilbourn,” he said.

“Good to see you, too,” I said. “This is my friend Ed Mariani from the School of Journalism. Ed, this is Riel Delorme.”

“Professor Mariani knows who I am. He’s been asking people in my neighbourhood about me.”

Ed was genial. “We could cut out the middleman,” he said. “You could talk to me face to face.”

Riel was noncommittal. “Maybe someday.” He cocked his head towards the protestors. “I’d better get back to work.”

I held out my hand and touched his arm. “Do you ever think about coming back to university?”

“That was another world.”

“It’s still there, Riel,” I said. “I don’t know what shape your academic record’s in, but if you are interested in coming back, give me a call. I’m in the book.”

“I know.” He lowered his eyes. “Every so often I look you up. There’s something I should talk to you about …” He met my gaze. “This isn’t the right time,” he said and then walked away.

Ed’s look was quizzical. “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I checked my watch. “But we’d better get inside.”

The lobby was filled with families – happy, proud, wearing their Sunday best, cameras slung from their necks. It was a nice crowd. Ed and I tunnelled our way through and headed downstairs. He pulled me aside at the bottom of the stairwell. “Do you think Riel Delorme wanted to talk to you about Danny Racette’s death?”

“It’s possible. I might be the only person from Leland’s world Riel feels he can really talk to,” I said. “He might have heard something, but I don’t believe he would have been involved. When Riel was my student, he was an admirer of Che Guevera. He believed Che was right about revolution – that someone had to make it happen – but he was definitely questioning the validity of violence.”

“Riel didn’t look like a pacifist today.”

“No,” I agreed. “He didn’t.”

There is more than a whiff of the medieval about convocation: the solemnity and unhurried pace of the rituals, the arcane symbolism of the ceremony that marks a scholar’s rite of passage, the elaborate design of the faculty academic robes and hoods, the timeless optimism of the participants. Convocation ceremonies are not without their charms, but they are usually long, often hot, and, after the novelty of being part of the platform party wears off, always mind-numbingly boring.

Normally, after the graduating students and platform party have been piped in, the national anthem sung, the invocation offered, the chancellor’s message delivered, and the candidate for the honorary degree presented, my colleagues and I furtively pull out BlackBerrys or smartphones and settle in for the duration. But this time I was entirely alert.

After the dean of the Faculty of Business Administration finished his introduction, Leland stepped forward for the conferring of the degree: a scarlet hood was slipped over his head onto his shoulders, he signed the register, and moved to the podium to deliver the convocation address. At that point, perhaps twenty students stood and turned their chairs so their backs would be to Leland when he spoke.

I had expected Leland to ignore the protestors, but he shifted his position so that he could face their backs. His voice was even. “Never turn your back on the enemy,” he said. “It makes you vulnerable, and it undercuts your ability to react effectively. Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
says that strategy requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. That’s true in war; it’s true in business; it’s true in life. If your back is turned, you can’t assess the situation and that means you can’t take advantage of it. I’m about to start my prepared text, so now would be a good time to turn your chairs around and take the measure of your enemy.”