The Nesting Dolls (7 page)

Zack had been concerned that Debbie might stick at the possibility of granting temporary custody of Jacob to the Wainbergs, but it was she who introduced the possibility. “Why not?” she said. “Abby Michaels made her intentions clear in the note she left in her son’s car seat, and it’s not as if Child Services is overrun by desirable foster homes.”

Zack handed the Inspector his camera. The photos from the concert were on display. “Take a look at these,” he said. “I’ve put them on a flash card for you in case you have to justify your decision later.”

Debbie Haczkewicz’s gaze moved from the images on Zack’s camera to Delia. “The physical similarity between you and Abby Michaels is persuasive,” she said. “But let’s cover all the bases. If you and Zack agree, I’d like to take a
DNA
swab.”

“Fine with me,” Delia said.

Debbie nodded. “Good. Given the fact that you’ve been cooperative and relatively forthcoming, there shouldn’t be a problem getting a court order granting you temporary custody.” Zack handed her the flash card and she dropped it in her briefcase. “The fact that it’s Sunday and the weather is godawful may slow us down, but I’ll do my best.”

Zack and I saw the inspector out. She reached for the doorknob, and then turned back to Zack. “Leo sends his regards. He loves Japan, he loves teaching English, and he loves his new girlfriend.”

Zack grinned. “A happily-ever-after ending,” he said.

“For Leo, yes, but not for me,” Debbie said. “Sapporo is a long way from Regina. I want my son to be happy, but I want him to be happy closer to home.”

When Zack and I came back into the kitchen, Delia was snaking her scarf around her neck. She stopped when she saw Zack. “So what are our chances?”

“Pretty good,” Zack said. “Deb seems convinced that granting you and Noah temporary custody is the right course of action, and when she makes up her mind, she’s a bulldog.”

Delia gave the scarf a final toss. “Okay, I’ll go back to the house and wait for the call.”

“Are you still planning to take the girls to the concert this afternoon?” I asked.

Delia raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think the school will cancel because of the weather?”

“Not a chance,” I said. “Lutherans are a hardy bunch.”

As she calculated her options, Delia was thoughtful. “Noah and I will drive the girls,” she said finally. “We need to be there – especially now.” With that, she headed for home, leaving behind the lingering scent of her signature Chanel No. 5 and many, many questions.

I asked Zack the big one first. “Is all of this really a surprise to you?”

“Believe it or not, it is,” he said. “And ever since Delia dropped the bomb, I’ve been trying to figure why she didn’t tell me at the time. As you’ve pointed out more than once, Delia and I are joined at the hip.”

Zack began clearing the table, handing me the dishes to rinse and stack in the dishwasher.

“And you never suspected anything?” I said.

“No, and Delia was back that Christmas. She stayed with Noah. I remember thinking Ottawa must agree with her.
When we were in school, she was always kind of grubby, but that Christmas she looked great – new haircut, nice clothes, and her skin had cleared up.”

“Delia has beautiful skin.”

“She didn’t when we were in school. She ate crap – well, we all ate crap – anyway, she was always kind of spotty, but that Christmas she was a knockout.”

“Hmm.”

“Why the ‘hmm’?”

“That kind of physical change often means a woman’s in a serious relationship.”

“You don’t believe Delia was sleeping around, do you?” Zack said.

“No,” I said. “Neither do you and neither does Debbie Haczkewicz, but Delia made a decision about how she handles this part of her past, and she must have reasons.”

Zack handed me a bowl. “Delia always has reasons. I just wonder why she didn’t tell any of us. She must have felt isolated. Supreme Court clerkships begin in early September and end in September of the next year. Abby was born on September 29. Being pregnant, giving birth, and establishing a stellar legal reputation – that’s a lot to handle on your own.”

“Delia pulled it off,” I said. “She deserves credit.”

“She does. And to be honest, I don’t know how much help any of the guys in the Winners’ Circle would have been if Delia had told us she was pregnant. All we knew about pregnancies was to avoid them at all costs. Blake was the only one who was geographically close to Delia. He was in Toronto, but Kevin was in Calgary, Chris was in Vancouver, and I was here, slaving away for Fred L. Harney.”

I wiped the countertop. “I always meant to ask you about that. How come you didn’t article with one of the five-star firms? You graduated at the top of your class. You must have had offers.”

“You bet I did.” Zack poured the soap into the dishwasher and turned the dial. “Paraplegics are highly desirable. A lot of big firms like to have a cripple they can wheel out to show how enlightened they are. But I didn’t have a year to waste being poster boy for the so-called differently abled. I knew how to research points of law, and I knew how to prepare memoranda of law, what I didn’t know was how to actually
practise
law. When Fred Harney called, I knew I’d just discovered my yellow brick road.

“Fred was heavily into the sauce when I articled for him. But even drunk he was one hell of a lawyer. I learned more sitting with him in court than I learned in three years in law school. That year he was blacking out a lot, and my job was to go to court with him and remember what happened.”

“People didn’t notice he was drunk?”

Zack shook his head. “Nah. Fred was a pro. Never slurred; never stumbled; never lost his train of thought. Flawless performance. Couldn’t ask for better representation, except for those huge gaps in his memory. That’s where I came in. When court adjourned, we’d go back to the office, and when he sobered up, I’d tell him what the Crown said and what he’d said. And here’s the wild part. Fred would critique the performances – both the Crown prosecutor’s and his own. It might not have been a five-star law firm, but I was getting a master class in the law. Sometimes, when I’m facing a jury, I can still hear him. ‘Don’t stint on the smouldering rage,’ he’d say. ‘Convince the jury that only the utmost effort of will is keeping you from erupting at the vast injustice that has brought your client to this sorry pass.’ ”

Zack raised his hand, palm out. “Enough tripping down memory lane,” he said. “Time for us to get to work. You have papers to grade, and I am not prepared for court tomorrow morning.”

Willie and Pantera led the way to the office Zack and I share and took their places beside us as we settled in. I picked up an essay; Zack opened his laptop, found what he was looking for, and sighed. “This is worse than I thought. Ms. Shreve, if you’ve ever had a hankering to see your husband step on his joint, be in Courtroom B tomorrow morning.”

I circled a misspelling of Afghanistan on the student’s title page and kept on marking. “Smoulder with rage,” I said. “If the jury’s waiting for you to erupt, maybe they won’t notice that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was the kind of morning I like best. We turned on the gas fireplace and moved methodically through the piles of work in front of us. When Debbie Haczkewicz called, Zack gave me the high sign. A judge had agreed to hear Delia and Noah’s petition at noon. The news was good, but as Zack headed off to change, the glance we exchanged was tinged with regret. Once again, external events were intruding on our small and pleasant world.

After Zack left to meet with the Wainbergs, I put a pan of bacon in the oven, and the dogs and I hiked across the yard to let Taylor know that toasted BLTs were on the way.

Taylor’s studio was a space for a serious artist and she spent hours there. On gloomy days, when I saw its lights and knew that Taylor was making the art that she loved and that she was safe, I realized that while nominally the studio had been a gift for Taylor, it had also been a gift for me.

I never entered her studio without knocking. Often she would invite me in and we’d talk about what she was doing, but if she was working on a piece she wasn’t ready to show, she’d grab her jacket, jam her feet into her boots, and slip out the door. On those days, when her mind was still focused on the images she’d left in her studio, our walk back to the house would be silent. That blustery morning, the dogs swam through the snow, barking and chasing one another,
exuberant with the sheer joy of being off leash, but Taylor was preoccupied.

While she was cleaning up before lunch, I made our sandwiches and placed a plastic zip-lock bag beside her plate. Every Christmas, when my oldest children were young, I bought them each an ornament to hold a photograph of themselves as they were that year. The tradition I’d started with Mieka, Angus, and Peter I continued with Taylor and the granddaughters, and every December Taylor took great pleasure in arranging these miniatures of her changing self. That day, she shook out the contents of the bag listlessly and picked up the ornament that held the most current picture – her first from high school. “I’ve been monitoring a couple of forums about Sally Love on the Internet,” she said.

My nerves tightened. “There’s that retrospective of her work coming up,” I said. “I imagine the interest is pretty intense.”

Taylor’s gaze was steady. “Do you know what Sally was doing when she was my age?”

It was as if by telling Zack that morning about Izaak Levin and Sally’s relationship I’d opened Pandora’s box. “I know some of it,” I said carefully.

Taylor dangled the ornament by the thin red ribbon that would loop it to the tree branch. “She was in New York City,” my daughter said. “Experiencing life.”

“You’re experiencing life,” I said.

Taylor’s laugh was short and derisive. “Not the way she was. One of the people on the forum said Sally was … sexually active. She was my age, and she was sexually active.” Taylor’s dark eyes were accusing. “Did you know that?”

“I knew.”

“But you never told me.”

“No.”

“Were you afraid that if I knew what my mother … what Sally did … I’d do it too?”

I pulled a chair close to her and picked up last year’s ornament. Fittingly, it was an antique frame. In her photo, Taylor’s glossy hair was still long and her smile was without shadow and a mile wide – a reminder that in a girl’s rich and turbulent life, a year can be an eternity.

“Taylor, we’ve talked about this. Sex has consequences.”

“To the way I feel about myself,” she said.

“And to the way the boy feels about himself.”

The mixture of resignation and defiance in her voice was pure Sally. “Being with me isn’t going to make any boy feel worse about himself,” Taylor said. She slammed the ornament on the table. “And for your information, this isn’t about boys. This is about my work. There’s nothing there.” Taylor drew a breath. “On the forum, the man who’s devoted his life to Sally Love says that artists have to live large to paint. He says that even when she was fourteen, Sally knew that she had to experience life to be a great artist.”

“And this man equates experiencing life with having sex?”

“Sally did,” Taylor said coldly. “If you’d seen that self-portrait she did when she was my age, you’d understand.”

“I have seen it, Taylor. I saw it in the living room of the man who owned it.”

Taylor’s eyes were brimming. “Then you know how amazing it is.”

“I do,” I said. “I also know that by the time your mother was fourteen, she’d suffered more than any child should ever suffer.”

“Because her father died and her mother didn’t have a good relationship with her,” Taylor said. “But she had Izaak Levin. You told me that when there was no one else, he took care of Sally. He gave her the chance to travel and the freedom to paint what she saw.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But there was more. Taylor, Izaak used your mother. He used her beauty, and he used her talent.”

“Whatever he did, it worked.” Taylor’s voice quivered, but her message was unequivocal. “When she was my age, Sally was making great art, and that’s worth everything.”

I picked up the ornament Taylor had slammed on the table. It was impossible to take a bad picture of Taylor, and this one wasn’t unflattering, but it was revealing. In it, for the first time since she’d come to me, there was uncertainty in her eyes and her smile was guarded. I stared at the photograph for a second too long, and Taylor noticed. “Do you think I look geeky?”

“You don’t look geeky,” I said. “You look as if you have a lot on your mind, which, clearly, you do. Taylor, I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to make the kind of art that you and Sally make, but I do know that the life experience you bring to your work doesn’t have to be harsh. Angela Cheng says that when she plays certain pieces, she thinks about the way the light shines on her child’s hair.”

“Angela Cheng is a pianist, not a painter.”

“But she’s found a way to live that feeds her art. If you’re lucky and if you make the right choices, that can happen to you.”

Taylor leapt out of her chair and bounded onto my knee. The leap was as unexpected as it was sweet. “Everything’s changing,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “But you’re going to be fine. Taylor, you
are
fine.”

Taylor was as tall as I was. Sitting on my knee was no longer easy for her, but we held on, united by our awareness that while there were battles ahead, we had been granted a reprieve. As we watched the snow fall, it seemed we breathed in unison.

Zack’s inability to do any but the most rudimentary jigsaw puzzle was a running joke between him and our
granddaughters. That afternoon when Mieka and the girls arrived to help get our family dinner ready, both girls had puzzles jammed in their backpacks. Taylor was at the choral concert; Mieka and I had cooking to do; so, by process of elimination, Zack was on puzzle duty.

After the girls threw off their coats and boots, they descended on him. “The one I brought is so easy,” Lena cooed. “It’s a caterpillar, and even the littlest kids in junior kindergarten are bored with it.” “Mine’s a piano,” Madeleine said. “The box says it’s for ages five to eight, but you
play
the piano, Granddad, and there’s a picture, so you should be able to do it. If you get stuck, I’ll help you.”