“Izaak and Sally went to the States and, to quote Sally, she spent a year seeing the U.S.A. in Izaak’s Chevrolet, fucking and learning about how to make art. By the time she was out of her teens, she was an established artist and Izaak was her agent.”
“He was having sex with her and taking her money.” Zack ran his hand over his head. “In my line of work we call guys like that pimps.”
“Sally didn’t view it that way – at least not consciously – but I’ve seen the self-portrait that affected Taylor so much when she saw it on the Internet. Actually, Izaak showed it to me himself. The painting was in his private collection. It’s the only piece of art Sally ever made that I can’t bear to look at. She painted herself stretched over the hood of Izaak’s convertible – the classic vintage pin-up pose. In the background is one of those no-tell motels that used to be along highways in the sixties. Even at fourteen, Sally was incredibly sensual, but there was so much more to her than that – she was smart and funny and thoughtful. None of that is in the self-portrait.”
“If the painting stinks, why was Taylor so impressed?”
“Because the painting doesn’t stink. Sally used acrylics in those saturated tones you see in old Technicolor movies, and the motel and Izaak’s yellow convertible are so luridly seductive you can almost hear them panting. Sally herself is another story. She’s absolutely lifeless – just a cut-out of a girl lying on the hood of a convertible waiting to be moved from motel to motel to serve a man.”
“Jesus,” Zack said. “And Taylor doesn’t know any of this.”
I shook my head. “No, and I don’t want her to.”
“You might revisit that decision, Jo. The truth has a way of coming out. Look at Delia’s situation. Besides, if Taylor knew the price her mother paid to make that painting, she might realize that the cost is too high.”
“She might,” I said. “Or she might decide that being as good an artist as her mother is worth whatever price she has to pay.”
“Over my dead body,” Zack said.
“Mine too,” I said. “Come on. Let’s have a shower.”
The phone rang just as I was handing Zack his towel. He squinted to see his watch through the steam. “Eight o’clock, straight up. It’ll be Delia.”
I picked up. Delia’s husky adolescent-boy’s voice cracked with urgency. “Jo, I need to talk to Zack.”
“I’ll get him.”
“No. I’m outside your house. Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
I hung up, wrapped a towel around my hair and picked up my robe. “It’s Delia,” I said. “She’s outside, and she sounds tense.”
“So much for starting our day sunny side up,” Zack said.
Zack was right. Delia was not an ideal breakfast companion. She was a person who needed to have every detail under control, and that morning the world was conspiring against her. She’d been forced to drive through snow-clogged streets to deal with a problem whose magnitude and complexity I could only guess at, and for the first time in my memory, she had the wide-eyed gaze of someone whose life has just spun out of control.
No matter the season, Delia limited the colours in her wardrobe to black and white. That morning she was wearing a black ski jacket, a black wool cloche pulled down over her ears, and a black-and-white-striped wool scarf wound many times around her neck. She yanked off her hat, liberating her wiry salt-and-pepper hair. As always, several of Delia’s curls, obeying their own law of kinetic energy, sprang over her forehead. She ignored them, unwound her scarf, and handed it to me.
I hung it over a hook inside the closet. “Nice scarf,” I said.
“Check out the tension in the stitches. I made it while I was trying to quit smoking.” She pulled a pack of Benson and Hedges from her bag. “Not that it worked, of course.”
“You got a scarf out of it,” I said.
Delia cocked an eyebrow. “Zack’s been good for you – loosened you up. Where is he anyway?”
“Getting dressed. Come in and have some coffee while I get breakfast started.”
Delia had the faint lines around her eyes and mouth most of us have after fifty, but her skin was taut and the cold air had made it glow. In her invariable weekend outfit of oversized turtleneck, chinos, and thick socks, she looked, at first glance, like a teenager who had added silver highlights to her hair on a whim.
When Zack came in, he wheeled his chair close to her. “Whatever it is, Dee, we can handle it. Have you eaten?”
Delia shook her head. Zack gestured to the table. “Then sit down and have some breakfast. We can talk afterwards.”
I set a place for Delia, poured coffee and juice, and, when the porridge was ready, Zack spooned it into our bowls. Obedient as a well-schooled child, Delia ate what had been put in front of her. When she was through, she took her bowl to the sink, rinsed it, and returned to her chair. “The police called. The baby – his name, incidentally, is Jacob David Michaels – is fine. In fact he’s more than fine. They’ve weighed him, measured him, and tested him, and he’s healthy and responsive – perfect. There was an envelope addressed to me tucked under the lining of his baby seat. It contained Jacob’s birth certificate: his mother’s name is listed as Abigail Margaret Michaels; the name of the father is blank. There was a sheet with Jacob’s medical history and a booklet with his vaccination record.”
“Very thorough,” Zack said.
Delia gave him a wan smile. “Very,” she said. “There was also a note to me, stating that it was the mother’s wish that I have full custody of Jacob, and that as a lawyer, I would know the procedures necessary to ensure that custody. The note was signed ‘Abby Michaels.’ ”
“You two might find it easier to talk about this alone,” I said. I picked up my coffee. “I haven’t read the paper yet. I’ll be in the family room if you need me.”
Delia shook her head. “No, stay – please. This is going to come out anyway, and when it does, I’ll need all the help I can get.”
I sat back down.
Like all good trial lawyers, Delia knew how to create a gripping narrative, and her first sentence was dynamite.
“The year I clerked at the Supreme Court, I got pregnant.” Her eyes darted between Zack and me. “I’ll spare you the need to ask the burning question. I didn’t get an abortion because by the time it dawned on me that I was pregnant, I was well into the second trimester.” She shrugged. “I know it sounds like something out of a tabloid but there was a lot going on for me that year. I’d never lived outside Saskatchewan, and when I was at the College of Law I was cocooned with the Winners’ Circle. Suddenly I was in Ottawa, passing powerful people in the corridors, and working for Theo Brokaw. Apart from you, Zack, he was the only person I’d ever met who was smarter than me.”
When Zack smirked, Delia’s glance was withering. “That’s nothing to preen about,” she said. “It’s just a fact. Anyway, clerking at the Supreme Court was heady stuff – highly competitive. We were always working late – trying to out-dazzle one another.” She smiled at the memory. “But we were also young and hormonal… ”
“And you met somebody,” Zack said.
Delia tilted her chin defiantly. “I met a lot of ‘some-bodies,’ ” she said.
The look Zack gave his partner was challenging. “That doesn’t sound like you, Dee.”
“Don’t push it, Zack,” Delia said, and her voice was steely. “I mean it. Let it go.”
Zack shrugged. “You’re the client.”
She tried a smile and softened her tone. “Come on. Cast your mind back. You remember the syndrome. You’re always at the office; you’re not getting enough sleep; it occurs to you that you’re missing out on life, so you decide to have a few drinks with the nearest warm body and you end up having sex. Usually it’s just like scratching an itch – a relief with no permanent after-effects.”
Zack’s frown deepened. He wasn’t buying Delia’s story, but he was willing to play along. “But this time there
Delia’s small chest heaved. “Yes, this time there were consequences, although it took me a long time to be aware of them. My menstrual cycle had always been erratic. I was running every morning, so I didn’t put on much weight. And then one day I felt something inside me move. I went to an ob/gyn in Ottawa who told me I was five months’ pregnant. She couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been not to read the symptoms. Anyway, I had the baby in
