The Endless Knot

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 eclat 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