Gail Bowen - Burying Ariel

“You’d like me to say something to keep the focus on Ariel,” I said.

Molly gave me the physician’s assessing look. “If I’m asking too much, tell me.”

“You’re not asking too much,” I said.

She seemed to relax. When her eye rested on Taylor, she crouched down so that she could talk to her more easily. “I didn’t mean to ignore you,” she said. “My name is Molly Warren, and…”

“And Ariel was your girl,” Taylor said softly.

Molly’s intake of breath was sharp, the reflex of a woman feeling the probe on an exposed nerve. “Yes,” she said. “Ariel was my girl.”

This time when I reached out to comfort her, she waved me off. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just want to freshen up. Is there a ladies’ room around here?”

I pointed. “Down that hall and to the left,” I said. “Would you like me to go with you?”

She shook her head. “All I need is a little time alone and I’ll be all right.”

As I watched her elegant figure disappear, I thought that it was the first time I’d heard Dr. Molly Warren give a prognosis so far off the mark. I was relieved when Rae Colby joined me.

Rae was a solid, pleasant woman who moved slowly, laughed often, and fought the good fight with a fervour undiminished by thirty years in the women’s movement. She was fond of bright colours and chunky ethnic jewellery, but that night she was in ankle-length black, her only jewellery a heavy silver labrys pendant.

She gave me a slow, sad smile. “I’ve come to ask your daughter a favour, Jo.”

“Ask,” I said. “Taylor makes up her own mind about most things.”

Rae’s broad face creased with pleasure. “A woman after my own heart,” she said. She turned to Taylor. “Here’s the drill. Everyone at the vigil is supposed to have a candle, and I need you to help me hand them out.”

“I can do that,” Taylor said.

“Good.” Rae turned back to me. “The program is pretty informal,” she said in her low, musical voice. “I thought maybe we could all just walk out there together.” She gestured towards a willowy brunette standing close to the door. “You know Kristy Stevenson.”

“We’re on the University Development Committee together,” I said.

“Then you know how proud she is of the work the library does. We’re all sick about Ariel’s death, but Kristy has a double burden. The archives are her responsibility. I think she feels a need to be part of the memorial tonight. Anyway, in her non-university life, Kristy has a trio called Womanswork.”

“I didn’t know she was a singer,” I said.

“She paid her way through university playing in a punk rock band. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? She’s so elegant.”

“People are full of surprises,” I said.

“Aren’t they just? At any rate, the plan is to have Livia speak, then Womanswork sing, and then I thought you could talk. Did you and Dr. Warren agree about what you were going to say?”

“We thought… just some personal memories,” I said.

Rae’s brown eyes misted. “Better you than me,” she said. “I don’t think I could get through anything personal. Anyway, after you’ve finished, Naama has a story she wants to tell. Then Solange wants a few moments to talk. I hope she’ll be okay. Molly Warren is her doctor, and apparently she gave her some kind of medication to bring her down.”

I looked over at Solange. She was gazing at the crowd in the library quadrangle, wholly absorbed in her private reverie. “She seems calm enough,” I said.

“Calm is good,” Rae said. “There’s a lot of emotion out there. We don’t need to add to it.” She fingered the silver labrys at her neck. “After Solange, I guess Womanswork will do another song, and Livia will announce the candle-lighting. Have I left out anything?”

“It sounds as if everything’s taken care of,” I said.

When Molly Warren returned, her lipstick was fresh and her jaw was set. “Let’s go,” she said, and she started for the door. The women in the doorway parted to let her pass; then they followed her outside.

Rae turned to Taylor. “Time to get moving, kiddo,” she said. “Those candles aren’t going to hand themselves around.”

In one of those cosmic ironies that twist the knife of grief, the night into which we stepped burned with beauty. The sun was low in the sky, and the horizon flamed, turning the water of Wascana Lake into molten gold. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” Rae murmured. The sky might have glowed, but the concrete bulk of the library cast a shadow that plunged the mourners waiting for us into darkness.

Rae picked up a wicker basket of candles and handed it to Taylor. Her hand brushed the top of my daughter’s head in a lazy benediction. “It’s good to have someone from the next generation with us.”

Livia stepped to the microphone. We were long-time colleagues, but that night she surprised me. Even during the agonizing last months of her marriage, Livia had been much in demand by organizations wanting an expert on American politics who wouldn’t sabotage their pleasant lunch with dry history or legalisms. The day after her marriage ended, she had asked me to provide moral support at a lunch meeting she’d agreed to address months earlier. She was hungover and heartsick, but she still managed to sparkle her way through her set piece on the relationship between a leader’s character and his or her political policies. Wretched as she must have felt, Livia had come alive in front of the crowd. But the night of the vigil, as she adjusted the microphone, her hands were trembling so badly she had difficulty completing the manoeuvre. When she began to speak, she surprised me again. I was expecting another helping of New Age bilge, but she spoke from the heart.

Pulling her shawl around her, as if she were cold to the marrow, she began. “I would give everything I own not to be here tonight,” she said simply. “Ariel was my student, my colleague, my friend, my hope.” She looked down at the brilliantly coloured shawl as if seeing it for the first time. “Two weeks ago, she gave me this. ‘A thank-you,’ she said, ‘for everything.’ It was too much…”

I was puzzling over the ambiguity of Livia’s sentence when I realized that, although she was still standing in front of the microphone, she’d fallen silent. Ann Vogel was quick to react. She moved swiftly to the podium, draped her arm protectively around Livia’s shoulders, and led her back to the rest of the party. The whole sequence was over in a matter of seconds, but what I saw in the faces of the two women shook me. Livia was expressionless; her eyes had the five-hundred-mile stare of a shock victim. But Ann Vogel was – no other word for it – smirking. Then as quickly as it had appeared, the tableau was gone. Kristy Stevenson and Womanswork came forward quickly and the program continued.

The trio of women who made up Womanswork had a family resemblance: all three wore their dark hair centre-parted and brushed back to frame gentle faces, wide-set blue eyes, and delicately arched brows. They were in tank tops, black slacks, and platforms, and they moved with assurance. Kristy stepped up to the microphone. “We’ve chosen two songs tonight. Neither of them is ours. I wish they were. I wish I could come out here and tell you that we’d written lyrics that spoke to Ariel’s dreams or, even” – Kristy smiled sadly – “just a tune she hummed in the shower. The truth is I didn’t know her very well; she was at a fundraiser we did for the Dunlop Gallery a couple of weeks ago, and afterwards she came up and told me she had really connected with a song we did by Beowulf’s Daughters. It’s called ‘The Sparrow Knows.’ Here it is.”

The voices of Womanswork were strong, and the opening line was a grabber. “The sparrow knows that the meadhall moments are few.” As the trio sang, I followed Rae and Taylor’s passage through the crowd, warmed by the sense of community that enveloped them. Most women smiled; some reached up to Taylor, thanking her, including her. I had worried about bringing her. Now I was glad I had.