Gail Bowen - Burying Ariel

Ann Vogel’s tap on my shoulder was the proverbial rude awakening. “You’re next,” she said. My mind went into free fall. The only anchor I had was the song to which Ariel Warren had felt a connection, but as I listened to the words, I knew Womanswork was giving me what I needed. When I stepped forward, the sentences formed themselves.

“I don’t know which words in ‘The Sparrow Knows’ Ariel was drawn to,” I said. “Maybe all of them. But I know the line that resonated for me. ‘Darkness is our womb and destination,/Light, a heartbeat glory, gone too soon.’ My memories of Ariel begin and end with sunlight. The first time I saw her she was six years old. My daughter Mieka invited her to her birthday party. Mieka’s birthday is October 31 – Halloween – and Ariel came dressed as a sunflower. The yellow petals that circled her face were so bright.” I turned to Molly Warren. She smiled, acknowledging the memory. I drew a breath and carried on. “The last time I saw Ariel was this morning. She had taken her class out to that little hill by the Classroom Building.”

“I was there!” The voice that came out of the crowd was very young.

“You were lucky,” I said. “If you were in that class, you were being taught by someone who knew that all learning is an attempt to pass on the heartbeat glory of light. Tonight it may seem as if the darkness is overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean the light isn’t there. Ariel heard the call of lightness all her life. Let your memories of her turn back the darkness.”

Molly stood up and embraced me as I stepped back from the microphone. “That was just right,” she said. “I hope to God it was enough.”

As organizer of the vigil, Ann Vogel had appointed herself spokesperson for the students. I had feared she would lob some feminist firebombs, but all she managed was a wet, self-indulgent fizzle about how blighted her own academic future would be without Ariel Warren. Her narcissism was as sickening as Kevin Coyle’s, but I was relieved that she hadn’t ventured past her obsession with herself. She could have done harm. She didn’t, and I was grateful.

As Ann returned to her place beside Livia Brook, I thought we were home free. Solange had given Molly Warren her word that she would behave well, and she was a principled human being. She was in agony, but she would honour her commitment.

As she came to the microphone, she seemed to be in another time and another space. When she began to speak, I wasn’t surprised that she returned to what was obviously the best moment of her life. “Last New Year’s Ariel and I went to Mount Assiniboine. The air was sharp with the smell of fresh snow and pines. We were very happy: we knew summer would bring wildflowers, and we promised each other we would come back to see them, and that in autumn we’d return to see the larches turn to gold and, in winter, to see the valley fill again with snow.” She fell silent. Then she held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I just wanted you to know that Ariel had many plans. I wanted you to know that she died fully alive.”

It was a stunning oxymoron. When Solange turned from the microphone and walked back towards us, a sob broke the silence. Rae Colby came out of the crowd, handed Taylor back to me, then Womanswork stepped forward to begin their final song. There were tears in Kristy’s voice, but her back was straight, and as she linked hands with the other women of the trio, I could feel their strength.

“This is by the Wyrd Sisters.” Kristy said.

The song was “Warrior,” the story of a girl who, haunted by her failure to respond to a woman’s screams, ultimately transforms herself into a warrior who knows she must fight until “not another woman dies.” From the moment Solange had told me about her epiphany on the night of the massacre at L’Ecole Polytechnique, I had associated that song with her. As the trio’s voices floated high and pure on the still night air, I watched for her reaction. There was none; she had become a woman carved in stone.

When the song ended, Kristy leaned into the microphone. “Never forget Ariel,” she whispered, then she lit the candle in her hand and raised it into the darkness. “Never forget any of our fallen sisters. Never forget.”

I bent to put a match to Taylor’s candle and my own, and when I stood and faced the quadrangle again, the darkness was flickering with scores of tiny flames. Lighted from below, the faces of the mourners seemed alien and frightening. I drew Taylor closer.

Ann Vogel pushed past me towards the microphone. “Never forget,” she shouted. The words were Kristy Stevenson’s, but Ann turned the gentle elegy into an injunction, harsh with hate. “Never forget,” she said, brandishing her lit candle like a club.

As her words echoed over the courtyard, they detonated the rage that lay beneath the grief. The responses exploded in the sweet spring air. “Never forget. Never forget. Never forget!”

“No!” Molly Warren’s anguish was apparent. She started towards the microphone, but when she put her hand on Ann’s arm, Ann turned and locked eyes with Livia.

“Pull her back,” Ann hissed. Without hesitation, Livia stepped forward and obeyed.

“Why won’t you let me stop her?” Molly asked.

“They need to experience this,” Livia said.

“No one needs to experience hysteria,” Molly said witheringly.

“You don’t understand what we’re feeling,” Livia said.

Molly whirled around. “I was her mother,” she said, and she had to shout to be heard above the voices calling for vengeance. For a beat, the two women stared at one another, like combatants.

Finally, Molly shook her head. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t understand what you’re feeling, and I don’t want to.” When her neat figure vanished inside the library, Rae Colby followed her.

Taylor looked up at me. “Is the vigil over?”

“Yes,” I said. “The vigil’s over.” I smoothed her hair. “Taylor, I’m sorry, it was a mistake bringing you tonight.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” she said. “For a while, it was really nice.”

“For a while it was,” I agreed. “But not any more. Let’s go home.”

The library, the Classroom and Lab buildings, and College West were linked by inside walkways. Taylor and I could get back to the Parkway without going through the crowd. The prospect of escaping the ugliness outside was attractive, and as we walked through the cool silent halls, I was grateful my daughter and I had found an easy way out. Like most easy ways out, however, this one came with a price. Just as we were about to turn into the Lab Building, Kevin Coyle appeared.

He was flushed with anger, and one of the lenses in his glasses was missing, so he was glaring at me with one hugely magnified eye and one ordinary eye.

“Your glasses,” I said.

“The goddamn lens fell out while I was leaning out of my office window watching those women. It landed somewhere in the grass out there. But I saw enough. This is going to be my case all over again. That same hysteria. Wombs. The Greeks were right.”

“Kevin, take a hike. I’ve had enough.”

“You’ve had enough. What about me?”

“Hard as it is to believe,” I said, “this isn’t about you.”

“You’re wrong there, Joanne. This is about me. That little council of war just decided that it’s about all men. What do you think the nurturers’ next move is going to be? I’m not without allies among the students, and one of them came and warned me there are rumours about Ariel and me.”

“What kind of rumours?”

“Someone heard an exchange between us and misinterpreted.”

“What was the exchange about?”

“It was about my case. I told you before that Ariel had found out something. I was pressing her to tell what she knew. She was reluctant. It must have sounded worse than it was.”