Gail Bowen: The Last Good Day

“Okay,” Chris said. “Here’s one to try on your brother. What three words can make you sad when you’re happy and happy when you’re sad?”

Taylor scrunched her forehead, gave it her best shot, and abandoned hope. The entire process was accomplished in less than a minute. “I give up,” she said.

“I give up,” Chris repeated thoughtfully. “Nope, those are not the three words I had in mind.”

Taylor rewarded him with a laugh. “So what is the answer?”

Chris dropped to his knees so he could look at my daughter face to face. “The three words are ‘Nothing lasts forever.’ Pretty good, huh?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “I bet even Angus won’t be able to figure that one out.” Suddenly her interest was diverted. She leaned close to Chris so she could see his face more clearly. “You’ve got a cut,” she said. She extended her finger tentatively, touched his eyebrow, then examined her fingertip.

“It’s blood.”

Chris touched his eyebrow and checked his finger. “So it is,” he said.

“What happened?” Taylor asked.

“I walked into a fist,” Chris said.

Scuffles that ended in a bruise or a cut were not outside Taylor’s realm of experience. “Well, you should clean it up and put some Polysporin on it,” she said. “It makes it heal faster.”

“Sounds like good advice,” Chris said. “Thanks.” He turned to me. “Are you an early riser?”

“My dog is. He and I run on the beach at five-thirty.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“I’d like that,” I said. I stepped closer. “Despite that accidental walking into a fist, you seem to be doing better.”

Chris grinned and shrugged. “Nothing lasts forever. Remember?”

The cottage we were staying in was at the tip of the east arm of the horseshoe that was Lawyers’ Bay. Built in the 1950s by Kevin Hynd’s parents, Harriet and Russell, it was a dwelling with a thousand charms, and that night after Angus headed for his room above the boathouse and Leah and Taylor had gone to bed, I entered my bedroom with a sense of homecoming. I slept in the bed Harriet and Russell had shared, surrounded by photos of other summers at the lake and shelves of books containing their personal favourites: Virginia Woolf for her, Louis L’Amour for him. Everything I could wish for, yet that night as I slipped between the sun-fresh sheets, I couldn’t sleep. The windows were open, but no breeze stirred the filmy curtains. Oppressed by heavy air and sharp-edged memories, I tossed, turned, and finally picked up my pillow and headed for the screened porch.

Rectangles of light from the other cottages around the bay pierced the darkness. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one struggling with sleeplessness. The opening notes of Bill Evans’s incandescent “Waltz for Debbie” drifted from Zack Shreve’s cottage. As I listened, I took the measure of my neighbours’ blessings: money, success, health, and for troubled nights, a law partner who played piano with fluid beauty. Yet somehow this wasn’t enough. I carried my pillow to the couch, lay down, closed my eyes, and pondered the universal truth that lay behind Gracie Falconer’s question to her father: Why couldn’t people just see how nice everything was?

I don’t know how long I slept before I was jerked awake by a beam of light and the screech of tires peeling along the gravel road that led past our cottage to the boat launch. My first thought was that some kids had fuelled their Canada Day celebrations with one too many kegs, but the explanation didn’t wash. Lawyers’ Bay was a gated community. Nobody got in but us.

My heart pounded as I waited for a sign that the wayward car had headed home. But I heard nothing. When the splash came, there was no mistaking its significance. The car hit the water with a dull thud, and life moved into fast-forward. I jumped up and headed for the lake. It wasn’t long before Angus caught up with me. Standing on the road in his jockey shorts, my son didn’t look like a hero, but he had a hero’s coolness. “I called 911, Mum, but it’s going to take them a while to get out here. You and I will just have to do what we can.”

The red roof of the car was still visible when Angus and I arrived on the scene.

“That looks like Chris Altieri’s MGB,” Angus said. There was no time to check out his assessment. The vehicle had apparently built up enough momentum to sail through the air before it hit. There was a sharp drop in the level of the lake bottom about ten metres from shore. The car had reached that point, and the dark waters were greedily swallowing their prize.

Before I could stop him, Angus dove off the dock and swam towards the spot where the car had gone under. In a heartbeat, he vanished too. Frozen with fear, I stared at the place where he’d disappeared.

When – finally – he surfaced, I could hear the panic in his voice. “I can’t get to him, Mum.”

“Is it Chris?” I asked.

“I guess so. I don’t know. I need help. I can’t open the door. Maybe if you spell me off…”

I didn’t hesitate. I threw off my robe and dove in. The water had a familiar fishy-weedy smell, and in one of those synaptic leaps that fracture logic, I remembered another lake in another time when my friend Sally Love and I, poised on the cusp of adolescence, would go skinny-dipping, thrilled as cold water surrounded the new contours of our changing bodies.

That night, the only thrill was of terror. The world below was murky, and I could find my way only by touch. When a weed slithered against my leg, my fear was primal. Finally, my hand found metal. Blindly, I sought a handle. Like a beginner learning Braille, I kept moving my fingers hoping to unlock the mystery. All I could feel was impenetrable steel. Finally, lungs on fire, I shot to the surface, and Angus went under again. We alternated dives until, exhausted and frustrated, I faced the truth. When Angus ducked to go back under, I grabbed his shoulder. “No,” I said. “No more. It’s over.”

We swam to shore and clambered up the boat launch to the dubious safety of dry land. Shivering and breathless, we gulped air and stared ahead. In the distance a siren’s shriek pierced the night. Help was on its way. I inched closer to my son.

Above us the uncaring moon moved through the sky, drawing a bright ribbon of light across the smooth expanse of water that covered all that remained of Christopher Altieri. The man of water had gone home.

From the moment I met her, I had been a fan of Angus’s girlfriend, Leah Drache. She was smart, funny, and original – a young woman with a blond bob and shiny brown eyes who charted her own course, but embraced anyone who chose to travel with her. The night of the drowning she was invaluable. The paramedics had convinced the police to let Angus and me go back to our cottage to towel off and get into dry clothes before they questioned us. Leah didn’t hover, but she knew what we needed, and she offered it: hot tea with plenty of sugar, the softest towels, the thickest sweatshirts and socks. She seated everyone in the kitchen, the room farthest away from the room in which Taylor, innocent of the night’s events, dreamed her summer dreams.

The RCMP confirmed my fear that the driver of the MGB was Chris Altieri, but beyond revealing his identity, they were tight-lipped. The officers who took our statements were smart enough to simply let us talk. They were professionals who recognized human limits, and they knew my son and I were on the edge. They also knew where to find us when the need for tough and close questioning arose.

After they left, Angus stood up, wrapped himself more tightly in his towel, and said he was leaving for his room over the boathouse. Leah was a woman who valued her space, and that summer she had opted for a room of her own in the cottage, but she loved my son and her tenderness as she reached for him brought a catch to my throat. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” she said. “I’ll come with you.” I went to my solitary bed envying them.