and nurtured by peanut butter, Scout leaders, summer camps, and Sunday schools. I?d grieved for the years she wouldn?t be allowed to live, for the proms she?d never attend, and the beers she?d never sneak. We think we are a civilized tribe, we North Americans in the last decade of the second millennium. We?d promised her three score years and ten. We?d allowed her but sixteen.
Shutting out the memories of that painful autopsy, I wiped perspiration from my face and shook my head, whipping my soggy hair back and forth. The mental images were liquefying so that I could no longer separate what I was recalling from the past from what I?d seen in the detail photos that afternoon. Like life. I?ve long suspected that many of my memories of childhood are actually drawn from old pictures, that they are a composite of snapshots, a mosaic of celluloid images reworked into a remembered reality. Kodak cast backward. Maybe it?s better to recall the past that way. We rarely take pictures of sad occasions.
The door opened and a woman entered the steam room. She smiled and nodded, then carefully spread her towel on the bench to my left. Her thighs were the consistency of a sea sponge. I gathered my towel and headed for the shower.
Birdie was waiting when I got home. He watched me from across the entrance hall, his white form reflected softly in the black marble floor. He seemed annoyed. Do cats feel such emotions? Perhaps I was projecting. I checked his bowl and found it low, but not empty. Feeling guilty, I filled it anyway. Birdie had adjusted well to the move. His needs were simple. Me, Friskies Ocean Fish, and sleep. Such wants find no impediment in borders and relocate easily.
I had an hour before I was to meet Gabby so I stretched out on the sofa. The workout and steam had taken their toll, and I felt as if major muscle groups had gone off duty. But exhaustion has its rewards. I was physically, if not mentally, relaxed. As usual at such times I really wanted a drink.
Late afternoon sunlight flooded the room, its effect muted by the bleached muslin sheared across each window. It is what I love most about the apartment. The sunlight melds with the pale pastels to create a bright airiness I find soothing. It is my island of tranquillity in a world of tension.
The apartment is on the ground floor of a U-shaped building, which wraps around an inner courtyard. The unit takes up most of one wing and is free of immediate neighbors. On one side of the living room, French doors open to the courtyard garden. A set opposite gives way to my own small yard. It is an urban rarity-grass and flowers in the heart of Centre-ville. I?ve even planted a small herb garden.
At first I?d wondered if I?d like living by myself. I?d never done it. I?d gone from home to college to marriage with Pete, raising Katy, never the mistress of my own estate. I need not have worried. I love it.
I was drifting on the boundary between sleep and wakefulness when the phone yanked me back. Headachy from a nap interrupted, I spoke into the receiver. I was rewarded by a robotic voice trying to sell me a cemetery plot.
?
The other drawback is being apart from my daughter. I dialed, and she picked up on the first ring.
?Oh, Mom, I?m so glad you called! How are you? I can?t talk now, I?ve got someone on the other line, but can I catch you a little later??
I smiled. Katy. Always breathless and spinning in a thousand directions.
?Sure, hon. It?s nothing important, just wanted to say hi. I?m going to dinner with Gabby tonight. How about tomorrow??
?Great. Give her a big kiss for me. Oh, I think I got an A in French if that?s what?s on your mind.?
?Never doubted it,? I said, laughing. ?Talk to you tomorrow.?
Twenty minutes later I parked in front of Gabby?s building. By some miracle there was a spot just opposite her door. I killed the engine and got out.
Gabby lives on Carr #233; St. Louis, a charming little square tucked between Rue St. Laurent and Rue St. Denis. The park is surrounded by row houses with unpredictable shapes and elaborate wood trim, relics of an age of architectural whimsy. Their owners have painted them with rainbow eccentricity and filled their yards with riotous bouquets of summer flowers, making them look like a scene in a Disney animation.
There is an air of capriciousness to the park, from its central fountain, rising from the pool like a giant tulip, to the small wrought-iron fence decorating its perimeter. Little more than knee-high, its frivolous spikes and curlicues separate the public green of the plaza from the gingerbread houses encircling its perimeter. It seemed the Victorians, so prim in their sexual prudery, could be playful in their building design. Somehow, I find this reassuring, a quiet confirmation that there is balance in life.
I glanced at Gabby?s building. It stands on the north side of the park, the third one in from Rue Henri-Julien. Katy would have called it ?wretched excess,? like the prom dresses we?d scorned in our annual spring quest. It seemed the architect couldn?t stop until he?d incorporated every fanciful detail he knew.
The building is a three-story brownstone, its lower floors bulging into large bay windows, its roof rising to a truncated hexagonal turret. The roof tower is covered with small oval tiles arranged like the scales on a mermaid?s tail. It?s topped by a widow?s walk bordered in wrought iron. The windows are Moorish, their lower edges square, their upper borders ballooning into domed arches. Every door and window is framed by intricately carved woodwork painted a light shade of lavender. Downstairs, to the left of the bay, an iron staircase sweeps from ground level to a second-story porch, the sworls and loops of its banisters echoing those of the park fence. Early June flowers bloomed in window boxes and in oversized pots lining the porch.
She must have been waiting. Before I could cross the street, the lace curtain flicked momentarily, and the front door opened. She waved, then locked the door and double-checked, shaking the handle vigorously. She swooped down the steep iron staircase, her long skirt billowing behind her like a spinnaker on a downwind run. I could hear her as she drew near. Gabby likes things that sparkle or jangle. That night a ring of small silver bells circled her ankle. It jingled with each step. She dressed in what I?d dubbed Nouveau Ashram in grad school. She always would.
?How ya doing??
?Good,? I hedged.
Even as I was saying it, I knew it wasn?t true. But I didn?t want to discuss the murders, or Claudel, or my lost trip to Quebec City, or my broken marriage, or anything else that had been plaguing my peace of mind lately.
?You??
?
She wagged her head from side to side and the dreadlocks flopped.
?So, where should we eat??
I wasn?t really changing the subject since there hadn?t actually been one.
?What do ya feel like??
I thought about it. I usually make such choices by imagining food on a plate in front of me. My mind definitely prefers a visual mode. I guess you could say, when it comes to food, it?s graphics, not menu, driven. Tonight it wanted something red and heavy.
?Italian??
?Okay.? She considered. ?Vivaldi?s on Prince Arthur? We can sit outside.?
?Perfect. And I won?t have to waste this parking place.?
We angled across the square, passing beneath the large broadleafs that arch above its lawn. Old men sat on benches, talking in groups, surveying their fellow citizens. A woman in a shower cap fed pigeons from a bag of bread, admonishing them like rowdy children. A pair of foot patrolmen strolled one of the paths that crisscross the park, their hands clasped behind them in identical V?s. They stopped periodically to exchange pleasantries, ask questions, respond to quips.
We passed the cement gazebo at the west end of the square. I noted the word ?Vespasian,? and wondered, once again, why the name of a Roman emperor was carved above its door.
We left the square, crossed Rue Laval, and passed through a set of cement pillars marking the entrance to
