“Perfect day for banana fish,” he said. “Or for conversation. Joanne, you seem to have a reverse Scheherazade effect on my partners. They come into your presence and they feel the need to talk and talk. Is it a dark plot?”
Staring into the mirror lenses proved surprisingly disconcerting. I focused on the midpoint of Zack’s forehead, above his glasses. “No dark plot,” I said. “Just obeying a human need to say what’s on their minds.”
“Well, let’s be human,” Zack said. He reached up and removed his sunglasses. His green eyes were penetrating. “It appears that we’re all without significant others tonight. Why don’t we go out to eat? The girls might enjoy Magoo’s.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“It’s a restaurant across the lake,” Blake said. “And it’s fun. Nostalgia – jukeboxes, a little dance floor, a deck where you can get burgers with the works, greasy fries, milkshakes.”
“And onion rings,” Zack said, raising his forefinger. “Incomparable onion rings.”
“That settles it for me,” I said, standing. “Onion rings are one of my passions.”
Zack gave my body a slow and intense once-over. “Obviously they do the job.”
I felt myself colour. “So what time’s dinner?”
“I should get some work done tonight,” Blake said. “Let’s eat early.”
Zack put his glasses back on. “Good idea. While you’re working, maybe I can get Joanne to listen to my story.”
We met at the dock at six o’clock. The kids had decided it would be fun to get to the restaurant by boat and Zack was eager to oblige. I’d taken Willie for a quick run, so the girls had already taken their places by the time I arrived. As was often the case when they were together, they were huddled in conversation with Taylor, the youngest and the smallest, in the middle. I would have bet a box of Timbits that the subject of their conversation was the hush-hush project that had absorbed them all afternoon. When they came back to our cottage late in the day, they were dirty, sweaty, happy, and mum about their activities. I had a theory, but I hadn’t mentioned it. Secret-sharing was obviously proving to be a lot of fun.
Blake was sitting beside Zack, so I stepped down into the back with the girls. Zack asked if we were set, and when we gave him the high sign, he turned on the motor and we nosed out into the lake. As we sped across the water, the girls fell silent, and I was able to catch them in a moment of rare repose. Dreaming their private dreams, their faces turned rosy by the slanting sun, they formed a striking triptych of privilege and promise. But young as they were, each of the girls carried a past, and I found myself wondering how heavily their personal histories weighed on their slender shoulders.
Gracie had tipped her head back so that her face was lifted to the sun. With her red-gold hair, her freckles, and her easy optimism, she was completely her father’s child. Yet as someone whose own mother had been disappointed in her, I knew the burden of living with a mother’s rejection, of knowing that your very existence was a source of sadness to the woman who gave you life. Gracie’s blithe spirit would be tested.
Oblivious to my gaze, she leaned forward and threw her arms around her father. Blake twisted awkwardly to return the hug. It was a nice moment, and Taylor caught it. The longing in her eyes surprised me. Taylor had been very young when her own father died, and her memories of him were shadowy. I reached over and squeezed her hand, but the connection wasn’t enough. She gave me a vague smile and turned away.
As she witnessed the moment, Isobel Wainberg’s narrow intelligent face grew wary. Her reaction was no surprise. Isobel was a bundle of imperfectly insulated nerve ends. She had inherited her mother’s cleverness, her odd squeaky voice, and her melancholy. Even her wiry black hair was like her mother’s, shooting out from her head uncontrollably as if the impulses she carried in her brain had caused a short circuit. When she caught my gaze, her smile was hesitant. She knew Taylor had hit a bad patch and she wanted to help, but she didn’t know how.
We could hear the music from Magoo’s before we docked. Gene Chandler’s classic “Duke of Earl” rocked out across the water. Gracie squeezed her eyes shut in delight. “This is going to be so wicked!” Isobel allowed herself a small smile of agreement, but Taylor remained deep in the heart of darkness.
I leaned towards her. “Penny for your thoughts,” I said.
My daughter raised her eyes to mine. “I was thinking about what I’d leave behind,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“I was wondering what I’d leave behind after I died,” Taylor said.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Everything’s great,” Taylor said.
“Can we talk about it later?” I said.
Her face was unreadable. “It was just a question, Jo.” The patient detachment in her voice was familiar. It was her mother Sally’s tone. The boat docked; the girls scrambled out, laughing as they raced towards the music, and I was left to ponder the fact that once again nature had trumped nurture.
It was early on a Tuesday night, but Magoo’s was crowded. It wasn’t hard to figure out the secret of the owners’ success. They had chosen to recreate an ideal of uncomplicated innocence that would make people happy, and they had achieved their goal. Everything was authentic. The big Wurlitzer jukebox that met you when you came into the room was vintage. Its distinctive rounded top, bright columns of colour, and the glass front through which you could watch your musical choices slide into place were guaranteed to bring a smile – just as they had during their heyday in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The servers, too, had the bounce of an era before the age of irony. The walls were covered with cheerfully faked photographs of flesh-and-blood celebrities of the fifties and sixties posing with Mr. Magoo, the crotchety, myopic, W.C. Fields-like cartoon character who gave the restaurant its name.
Zack had reserved a table for us on the deck overlooking the lake, and as soon as we’d placed our orders, the girls hit us up for loonies to play the jukebox and gravitated towards the dance floor. Taylor seemed to have left her existential angst in the boat, so there was nothing to do but relax, listen to Jan and Dean sing “Dead Man’s Curve,” and enjoy the sunset and the Japanese lanterns.
When Blake excused himself to talk to friends he’d spotted across the deck, Zack gave me an opening I couldn’t ignore. “So what have you been up to, Joanne? I know you were out of town, because I knocked at your door.”
“I was in Saskatoon tracking down a former employee of yours,” I said.
Zack raised an eyebrow. “And who would that be?”
“Clare Mackey,” I said.
I watched his face carefully for a reaction. There was none. “You didn’t have to drive to Saskatoon to find out where Clare was,” he said evenly. “I could have told you.”
“Good,” I said. “So where is she?”
“Clare is in feminist heaven. She landed a job with an all-female law firm in Vancouver.”
“What’s the name of the firm?”
Zack shrugged. “I haven’t a clue.”
“Yet you’re still comfortable with the official explanation,” I said.
Zack rested his forearms on the table and leaned towards me. Like everything else he did, the move seemed calculated. His upper body was powerful, and braced against the table he had the controlled energy of an animal about to pounce. “What makes you think the official explanation isn’t the truth?” he said.
“For one thing, no one seems to have heard from Clare. Her friends are getting anxious.”
“Clare’s an adult,” Zack said. “She was offered a good job in an exciting city. She moved along. Do you have any more questions?”
“Not at the moment,” I said.
“Then let’s put that eager young server hovering behind you out of his misery and eat our onion rings.”
“Perfect timing,” I said.
“Perfect world,” Zack said as the server placed the platter between us. “Take a bite.”
Conversation during dinner was minimal. We were all hungry, and Magoo’s food made talk a fool’s option. The menu noted that the burgers were made on-site and sizzled on the kitchen grill; the oversized Kaiser buns were baked by the owner’s mother; the lettuce and tomatoes on the condiment tray had been picked from the garden out back; the fries were hand-cut shoestrings; the milkshakes were so thick they were guaranteed to clog a straw.
We munched to the beat of the Shangri-Las, Sam Cooke, Gene Pitney, and Brenda Lee. Finally, Taylor pushed away her plate.
