The Endless Knot (8 page)

Charlie’s reaction was sardonic. “Nothin’ says lovin’ like a twenty-five-centimetre blade,” he said, and we all laughed.

It was the best of times, but the spectre of the trial was always there, reminding us that the best of times has an inevitable corollary. All weekend, Zack’s ubiquitous BlackBerry brought news of a dark, complicated world where, increasingly, things seemed not to be breaking in Samuel Parker’s favour. As the holiday drew to an end, there was a tangible and immediate worry. The hours before Katherine Morrissey’s
Canada Tonight
interview were ticking down, and Zack and Charlie were on edge. As Jill had told me, because of legal implications, the discussion would focus solely on Katherine’s view of the role of the journalist. But no one was fooled.

As we cleared away the leftovers, scrubbed the pots and pans, and got the kids ready for bed, everyone was preoccupied. We all knew what was coming.
Canada Tonight
was broadcast at 9:00 p.m. When the familiar trumpet blast signalled the opening credits, the little girls were asleep, and Taylor and Isobel, having pored over the guest list for their Halloween party with the discernment and finely tuned sensibilities of Henry James’s protagonists, had repaired to their room at Zack’s to address invitations. The rest of us had congregated in the Hynds’ living room to watch and assess.

Like all good lawyers and actors, Zack had mastered the art of the cool vibe, but as he wheeled his chair into place I could see the tension in the set of his shoulders. I drew a chair up beside him and reached out to massage the back of his neck. He gave me an absent smile and turned back to the television.

Kathryn had invited the
Canada Tonight
crew into her home, and it had been a shrewd decision. The layout of her condominium was the twin of Howard Dowhanuik’s, but where his house had the éclat of a biker bar the morning after a party, Kathryn’s place was charming. I’d been there once just before Kathryn started teaching at the school of journalism. I was one of a group of women academics who welcomed new female members of faculty, and I’d been charged with welcoming Kathryn. It was Labour Day weekend, and she had just moved in, but her home already had a serene beauty.

The walls throughout were lemon, the perfect complement for the vibrant colours Kathryn favoured, and for the treasures she’d acquired as a serious collector of Chinese antiques. She had worked for a time in Beijing, and during her stint there had picked up some striking pieces of furniture: a nineteenth-century wedding cabinet, an exquisite red lacquered trunk, a camphor wood carving of a fish and a dragon, an ancient rice bucket, and her prize, a pair of carved wooden figures that Kathryn explained to me represented the mythical Chinese creature, the baku. The baku were dream-eaters, voraciously devouring nightmares, ensuring the sweet dreams of the sleeper.

That night, the camera lingered on the baku as if attempting to penetrate the enigma of these creatures with the bodies of horses, faces of lions, trunks and tusks of elephants, and feet of tigers. After viewers had glimpsed Kathryn’s treasures, the camera moved in on the lady herself and on the man who had come to probe the depth and breadth and height Kathryn’s soul could reach.

The interviewer, a pudgy man with a bow tie and a cherub’s smile, was clearly delighted to have been invited in. He and Kathryn were sitting in wingback chairs on either side of a gas fireplace whose flames, like Mr. Bowtie’s questions, flickered but never roared or threatened to get out of hand.

Kathryn had never been more appealing. Her silver hair fell smoothly from a centre part to a point just below her cheekbone. She was dressed casually in black slacks, flats, and a simple silk shirt of the same vibrant pink as the lipstick on her elegantly sculpted mouth. Minoo was curled on her lap, and as Kathryn spoke her slender fingers stroked her cat’s lithe body.

From the outset, Kathryn was careful to obey the letter if not the spirit of the injunction forbidding direct reference to the trial. She began by talking about the function of the journalist – not a word about the Sam Parker case, but the trial was the subtext of every syllable she uttered. She disarmed her interviewer immediately by quoting Janet Malcolm, another writer who offered no apology for laying her subjects upon the shining autopsy table and sharpening her surgical blade. “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

The interviewer, who was old enough to know better, smirked agreement. What’s a man to do when an attractive woman draws him into her circle of intimacy by hinting that, unlike his colleagues, he is neither too dull-witted or narcissistic to understand the rules of the game?

Peter, sprawled on the couch, eyes riveted to the screen, snorted as Kathryn articulated her credo, bamboozled Mr. Bowtie, and took control of the interview. “He’s letting her roll right over him,” he said. “I probably get 90 per cent of my news from television, so I’m used to soft lobs, but isn’t this guy going to challenge her on anything?”

“Tough to ask a challenging question when you’re creaming your jeans,” Charlie said laconically.

And it appeared Charlie was right. The interviewer was clearly smitten. When Kathryn asserted that a journalist was justified in using any means necessary to pin down the truth, he nodded sagely. When Kathryn explained that she had never tricked or misled a subject but had simply allowed people to reveal themselves, Mr. Bowtie did not suggest that a journalist might have a moral obligation to keep a young or unbalanced subject from twisting a knife in his own entrails.

And so it went. Concentrating on the screen, Zack’s face hardened. The interviewer referred to Kathryn variously as “incisive, courageous, penetrating, incorruptible, clear-eyed, and fearless,” and that was when he was on the attack. The rest of the time, he goggled like a schoolboy. By the time the camera zoomed in on Kathryn’s final meditation about the painfully uneasy relationship between a journalist and her subject, Mr. Bowtie was flaccid.

As the final credits rolled, over a shot of the enigmatic baku, Charlie uttered an obscenity, then he turned to Zack. “What are you going to do about that?” he asked.

Zack shrugged. “Swallow hard. Be grateful.”

“For what?” Charlie’s voice cracked with anger.

“It’s always good to know your enemy,” Zack said. “Gives you a better chance of beating them.”

CHAPTER

5

I awoke Monday morning to an empty bed. I wasn’t alarmed. Zack was an early riser too, but as Willie and I walked through the still-dark rooms of the cottage and there was no sign of Zack, my nerves were on high alert. I was relieved when I saw his wheelchair pulled up to the partner’s table in the sunroom. His notebook computer was open in front of him and a stack of law books was within easy reach. He was wearing the blue jeans and shirt he’d been wearing the night before; his head was thrown back slightly, his eyes were closed, and he was snoring contentedly.

I went over and put my arms around him. “The bed’s still warm,” I said. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

He was awake immediately. “Damn. What time is it?”

“Five-thirty.”

“I missed a whole night with you.”

“There’ll be other nights. Do you want me to turn on the coffee?”

“Might as well.” He put on his eyeglasses and stared at me ruefully. “I’m sorry, Jo. Charlie came over after you went to bed. He wanted to talk about the case, then I began thinking about my opening, and I realized it sucked, so I made a few phone calls, and one thing led to another. At some point, I must have just bagged out.”

“Sounds like quite a night.”

“Less than ideal,” he said. “Oh, and some people from the office are coming out here for a skull session this morning.”

“So I should make myself scarce.”

He took my hand. “Not at all. I was hoping to get work out of the way so you and I could have some time alone this afternoon.”

“I’m for that,” I said. Willie had been patient, but as Zack and I continued to talk, he gave us a baleful look and trotted to the door. “Willie and I better go out,” I said. “You and I can figure out our day when I get back.”

He kissed my fingers. “I’ll make the porridge.”

“Okay,” I said. “The directions are on the bag, but use milk instead of water. And put in the seeds and berries at the last moment. Got it?”

“Got it. I remember everything that’s important.”

I pivoted. “What colour are my eyes?”

“Same colour as mine – green. And your hair is dark blond and very shiny and your breasts fit perfectly in my hands and your second toe is longer than your big toe.”

“That’s supposed to mean I dominate the men in my life.”

Zack closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “Ah, domination. I’ll sign up for that.”

“Name your time and place,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the job of the dominatrix?”

We took our breakfast into the sunroom, so we could eat looking out at the water. The temperature had dipped during the night and when daybreak arrived, the light was weak and the sky was threatening. It was going to be a grey day.

Zack stirred cream into his porridge and peered out the window. “One good thing about weather like this – it makes it easier to leave the lake.”

“Not for me,” I said. “I love it here.”

“It’s a forty-five-minute drive to the city. If you want to, we can live here year-round.”

I shook my head. “Wrong time for Taylor,” I said. “Her school, her friends, and her activities are in the city. Which reminds me about the boy with the pentangle.”

Zack frowned. “The knight in shining armour. I’d forgotten about him.”

“If you’d met him, you’d remember. Incidentally, he does want to meet you.”

“Okay with me,” Zack said.

“I’ll be interested in your take on Ethan,” I said. “Over the years, a lot of kids have wandered through our house, but Ethan’s a standout.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know. He’s nice-looking. He’s very intense, and he draws his own comic books.”

“Good money in that,” Zack said. “Comic books are the reading material of choice for 80 per cent of my clients.”

“I don’t think they’d go for Ethan’s comics. They’re pretty heavily into moral choice: honour versus lust, self-preservation versus cowardice, integrity versus exigency.”

Zack furrowed his brow. “And this kid is thirteen?”

“Taylor says he reads a lot.”

“That’s a point in his favour. Actually, it sounds like there are lots of points in his favour. Taylor’s smart. She’ll work it out.” He snapped open his notebook computer. “Now if you want to worry about something, check the on-line real estate listings. God, there are a lot of ugly houses in Regina.”

“Want me to call an agent?”

Zack shook his head. “No. I said I was going to find us the perfect house and I will.”

I laughed. “Everything’s a quest with you.”

“Nothing wrong with keeping your eye on the prize.” He yawned. “Unfortunately, this morning, I seem to be having trouble keeping my eyes open.”

“What was on Charlie’s mind?” I asked.

“Same thing that’s on all our minds. The trial. Charlie wants to make sure that justice is done.”

“Did he have any concrete suggestions about how to bring that about?”

“Actually, he did. He read over my opening statement and suggested another approach.”

I was surprised. “You let him read your opening statement?”

Zack shrugged. “It’s not Holy Writ, Jo. It’s just a place where we tell our story and lay out our argument. After I saw Kathryn Morrissey on
TV
, I had second thoughts about how effectively I was telling our story, and according to Charlie, I was right to be concerned.”

“What was the matter?”

“If I was teaching first-year criminal law, nothing. It was a textbook opening. It was also boring as hell. Usually I come in with everything I’ve got, but I was holding back.”

“Because Sam Parker’s such a lightning rod,” I said.

“Right. The number of calls we’ve been getting at the office is unreal, and they cover the spectrum. Everybody is pissed at us. The Family Values people think if Sam had applied the rod, he wouldn’t have ended up with a kid who can’t decide if he wants to play with the boys or the girls. The granola-crunchers are sympathetic to Glenda, but they hate Sam.”

“ ‘Hate’ is a strong word,” I said.

Zack looked amused. “You just don’t want to think ill of your fellow granola-crunchers. But I’ve talked to the cops over the weekend, and they think that bomb came from somebody who wants to blow me up because I’m defending a Jesus-loving millionaire who believes he has the right to own an unregistered gun.”

“How can they tell?”

“Same way I can. I’ve had dozens of threats from folks who believe in an eye for an eye. The spelling is usually bad and the quotations always come from the Good Book.”

“And your bomb threat had a quote from
The Merchant of Venice?”

Zack raised his eyebrows. “How did you know that?”

“Charlie told me.”

“What would we do without him?” Zack said mildly. He looked at his watch. “I’d better get a move on. My eager young associates are going to be here in fifteen minutes.”

“They’re going to be here by 7:30 on a holiday Monday?”

Zack gave me a blank look. “Is that a problem?”

“Not for me,” I said. “What’s in it for them?”

Zack shrugged. “More work,” he said. Then he balanced his empty bowl and spoon on his lap and wheeled off to the kitchen.

I carried in my dishes and went back to our room. If I was going to be neutral about Kathryn Morrissey, I had some research to do. I pulled out my laptop, Googled Kathryn, and steeled myself to read only the most positive articles about her illustrious career.

Zack’s guest room was, like the rest of the cottage, a large and uncluttered space with functional, expensive furniture, art objects that were arresting, original, and executed in rust, plum, and silver – colours that coordinated perfectly with the cool monochromatic greys of the walls. The bed was custom-built, extra large but raised from the floor by the smallest of platforms. The bedding in a palette of warm browns was sleekly inviting. The room was, in short, exactly what a single man would get if he gave a decorator a blank cheque and carte blanche.

The space was so perfectly ordered that it seemed guest-proof, but Taylor and Isobel had unpacked their neon backpacks, slung them over the doorknobs, and fulfilling the manifest destiny of pubescent girls, they had unfurled. On a low square table just inside the door, hair products that promised to tame Isobel’s wild curls fought for pride of place with the gels and sprays Taylor needed to keep her new ’do spiky. Creams, lotions, and splashes distilled from rare flowers of the rain forest crowded a shelf designed to hold a smoky glass sculpture whose sole function was to delight the eye. Scraps of lacy underwear in shades the catalogue described as yellow sunshine, green tea, and English rose pooled on the mochaccino bedspread, and stuffed animals, relics of a more innocent age, nestled among the rust and taupe pillows at the head of the bed.

In the span of a weekend, Taylor and Isobel had created a world that was as richly turbulent as their lives. The girls themselves were in the middle of the bed, side by side on their stomachs, hair tousled from sleep, faces rosy, feet kicking the air, reading.

“I can’t believe you’re awake already,” I said.

Taylor glanced up. “We wanted to finish this book.”

Isobel put her finger in the book to mark their place and turned the cover towards me. “We’ve been reading
Too Much Hope,”
she said.

Taylor scrambled into a cross-legged squat. “We’d already read the chapter about Glenda Parker,” she said, “but after we saw that interview with Kathryn Morrissey last night, we decided to read the rest.”

I cleared myself a place on the corner of the bed and sat down. “So, what do you think?” I asked.

Isobel put the book face down on the bed and frowned. Isobel’s mother, Delia, had argued several cases before the Supreme Court. Delia’s approach to the law was painstaking with every phrase scrupulously considered; every argument turned like a cube to reveal its facets. Her punctiliousness drove Zack nuts. That morning, as her mother would, Isobel considered my question gravely before she answered. “Well except for Charlie Dowhanuik’s father, we only have the kids’ stories about what happened, but so far it seems as if the parents didn’t care about their kids at all.”

“Olivia Quinn tried to tell her mother that her stepfather was making her have sex with him, but her mother wouldn’t listen,” Taylor added. “When Olivia started skipping school and doing drugs and sleeping with all those boys, her mother said she was acting out because she was jealous.”

“And Olivia’s school said she was incorrigible,” Isobel said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “She was only fourteen years old. Not much older than Taylor and me, but everybody blamed
her.”

“All the kids in that book say their parents blamed them for everything that went wrong,” Taylor said.

I turned to Taylor. “Did you read the chapter about your Uncle Howard and Charlie? Howard blames himself.”

“That’s who he
should
blame,” Taylor said. “Every time he needed to get elected, he made Charlie go out and meet people, but when Charlie needed him, he was never around.”

Isobel ran her fingers through her explosion of black curls. “Glenda Parker’s mother was worse. She
was
around, but when Glenda tried to tell her mother what was going on in her body, she told Glenda that unless she prayed to be delivered, she was going to Hell.”

“The worst one of all is Kathryn Morrissey,” Taylor said. “Isobel’s mother says she got people to talk about their problems by promising they’d help other people. Then she just used what they told her to sell books.” Taylor’s pretty mouth hardened into a condemning line. “Soul-fire says the worst sin of all is betrayal.”

Isobel’s face relaxed into mischief. “Oh, Soul-fire. I love Soul-fire. He is so wise and so brave and sooooooo cute.”

Taylor reached back, grabbed a pillow, and the discussion ended, as many discussions did with Taylor and her friends, in an old-fashioned pillow fight.

For a while I dodged pillows and shared in the giggles. Then, cognizant of the recreation director’s axiom that it’s best to kill an activity before it dies on you, I called time. “I’ll be the bad guy,” I said. “Hit the showers. Zack has people coming out from the office, and when they get here you shouldn’t be wandering around in your skivvies.”

Isobel shook her head. “Work. Work. Work. Work. Work.” She said, and her intonation was exactly the same as her mother’s.

When I arrived at the cottage where my oldest daughter and her family were staying, the inside door was open. I peered through the screen and saw that Greg was in the living room reading the paper; the little girls were sitting on a blanket in front of him, sharing a bowl of dry Cheerios and watching
TV
.

I called through the screen, and Greg leapt out of his chair and came to the door. “Caught me,” he said. “Come in, make yourself comfortable, and let me convince you that
TV
is educational.”

“No need,” I said. “I just came by to score some Cheerios.” I walked over and squatted between my granddaughters. “Hey, ladies, are you sharing?”

Eyes still fixed on the screen, Madeleine picked up the bowl and passed it back to me. “Why, thanks,” I said. I took a handful of cereal, kissed her head and Lena’s, and went back to join my son-in-law.

“So where is everybody?” I asked.

“Mieka and Pete and Charlie decided to squeeze in one last canoe ride,” he said. “You just missed them.”

I looked towards the dock. My children and Charlie were dressed alike in blue jeans and dark hoodies. Outlined against the stark background of lake and hazy white sky, their resemblance to one another was striking. They had put one canoe in the water and were sliding in a second. “They’re a person short,” I said to Greg.

He shook his head. “Those three are never a person short, Jo.” He lowered himself onto the ottoman that faced my chair.

“In a few hours there’ll be 250 kilometres between Charlie and you,” I said.

“True, but Charlie will continue to be a presence in our lives. Did you know that Pete’s moving in with him?”

“Nobody told me,” I said.

“Apparently, they’ve been considering it for a while. Mieka said Charlie and Pete were concerned that sharing a house might put a strain on their friendship. I can’t imagine anything coming between the three of them, but I guess it was a valid concern. Anyway, now that he’s got his clinic, Pete’s short of money, and Charlie never misses a chance to burrow in.” There was a bitterness in Greg’s voice that I hadn’t heard before.