Gail Bowen - Burying Ariel

In the margin, Ian had written a single word: “ YES!” By the time he died, my husband would have found the idea that I was the earthly vessel for divine experience as laughable as I would have. Our marriage had been a good one. We had loved and laughed and fought and grown, but somewhere along the line we had revised our definition of love. As I slid The Divine Comedy back into its place on the bookshelf, I found myself wondering how Charlie could endure losing the woman who, from the time he was seven years old, he had believed was his shining path to salvation.

The next morning my clock radio blared to life at its regular wake-up time: 5:30. As he heard the synthesizer fanfare that announced the AccuWeather forecast, Willie leaped to attention at his place beside my bed. It might be taking him two years to grow a brain, but my Bouvier had been quick to master the sequence that led to his morning walk.

Climatologist Tara Lavallee was cheerily contrite as she announced that she had to do a complete 180 on her holiday-weekend forecast. A low-pressure zone had stalled over the southern third of the province, bringing with it…

I reached over and clicked off the radio. The sky outside my bedroom window was leaden, and rain was drumming monotonously on my window. I didn’t need Tara to tell me it was going to be a rotten day.

“Bad news,” I said to Willie.

He put his paws on the mattress, shivered with delight, and eyeballed me. I eyeballed him back.

I blinked first. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go, but it’s going to be a short one.”

I dug out my rain pants, windbreaker, and a pair of ancient Reeboks, and Willie and I hit the street at top speed. By the time we reached the bandshell, Willie had absorbed the fact that no matter how hard he pulled at the leash I would still be on the other end, and the rain had grown lighter. There was no reason not to finish our usual run around the lake. There were distractions: for Willie, the new crop of goslings strutting their stuff across our path; for me, memories of the endless day before. I tried to shake them, give myself over to the moment, as Livia would say, but I wasn’t able to let go. Every step triggered a memory. By the time we lurched through our front door, my mood was as bleak as the day.

I filled Willie’s dish, plugged in the coffee, and stripped off my wet clothes. As I headed for the shower, I glanced at the caller ID on the telephone. Alex Kequahtooway had phoned. I looked at the clock. It would be 8:30 in Ottawa.

In the time it took to dial his cell number, I decided I wouldn’t bring up the subject of Ariel Warren. Unless he had talked to one of his colleagues on the Regina police force, it was unlikely Alex would have heard of her death. He had been excited about giving the course on minorities and the justice system to a class of senior civil servants. It was a chance for him to talk to people who could make a difference, and he didn’t need to be distracted by problems at home.

When I heard his voice, I almost weakened. “I miss you,” I said. “Willie and I just got back from our walk, and I’m standing here naked, wet, and cold. I wish you were here.”

“So do I.”

“How are you at phone sex?” I said. “Under the circumstances, I’m up for anything.”

“So am I,” he said evenly. “Unfortunately, I’m in class right now. We take a break in an hour. If you’ll leave me a number where you can be reached, I’ll get back to you and we can try that new procedure.”

The flush started at my toes and ended at my scalp. “Alex, are all those government people sitting there listening?”

“That’s right.”

“I must be pathological.”

“Not pathological,” he said. “Just healthy. Giving me some energy to rechannel. This is going to be the most inspired class I’ve taught since I got here.”

“Baudelaire said he wrote with his penis.”

“The French have some interesting systems,” he said mildly. “I’ll see what I can do about putting that one into place.”

When I stepped out of the shower, the phone was ringing. I picked it up. “Still naked,” I said, “but now clean, and with that hemp oil you gave me for Valentine’s Day at the ready.”

“I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.” The voice of the woman on the other end of the line was familiar.

“You don’t have the wrong number, Livia. I should apologize. I was expecting someone else.”

“I’m glad you have love in your life,” she said.

Her tone was guileless, but I felt a pang. There was no love in Livia’s life, at least not the kind that involved hemp-oil massages. Late one night when we were walking to the parking lot together, Livia had confided that since her marriage ended she had been celibate and that celibacy brought her peace. I had scrambled unsuccessfully for a sensible response, but driving home I realized that if my husband had dumped me as publicly and as brutally as Kenneth Brook had dumped Livia, I might have considered celibacy, too. He had chosen his wife’s birthday party to do his dirty deed and, after three years, the memory of that evening still made me want to bury my head in the sand.

From the outset, the party had been out of control: the drinks were too strong, and the toasts too frequent; the meal was served so late that people simply rearranged the food on their plates, poured themselves another double, and lurched towards the next indiscretion. When Kenneth Brook tapped his glass, boomed that he wanted our attention, and draped an arm over Livia’s shoulder, the room fell silent. It seemed that, despite their tempestuous relationship, Kenneth was about to pay tribute to his wife. But Kenneth had other fish to fry. As he announced that he had managed to both inspire and impregnate one of his graduate students, he could barely keep the smile off his face. When he added that, as a man of honour, he had no alternative but to marry his child’s mother, I think he honestly expected we would burst into applause, but we weren’t that drunk. Stunned sober, people mumbled their goodbyes and left. Livia wandered off to another room. Kenneth disappeared out the front door, presumably in search of a more receptive audience. Alone with the carnage of the aborted party and none too sober myself, I decided to put the food away. Like many decisions that night, mine wasn’t wise.

When I opened the kitchen door, I saw that Livia had taken refuge there. She was leaning against the counter, singing “Happy Birthday” and trying to light the candles on her store-bought birthday cake. She was very drunk. As she swayed towards the forest of candles, match after match flared, then burned out between her fingers. She hadn’t managed to ignite a single candle, but the blue icing roses on her cake were almost buried beneath a mulch of charred matches.

“Let me help you with that,” I said.

When she turned to face me, I saw that she was crying. Her gaze had the watery despair of a drowning woman. “It’s my party,” she said, then she lit a fresh match and returned to her Sisyphean task.

I didn’t see Livia Brook again till the following September. Classes were over, and she spent spring and summer on the West Coast drifting through the misty regions of New Age thought. When the fall term began, Livia reappeared, tanned, thin, and carrying some sort of ritual bag adorned with bells and filled with gemstones guaranteed to heal the heart, ward off evil, and focus the mind. I had never been a proponent of enchanted bags, but Livia’s seemed to have power. For the first time since I had known her, she was sober, focused, and purposeful.

During her marriage to Kenneth Brook, Livia’s life had centred on her husband. Beyond teaching her classes and picking up her paycheque, she had shown little interest in the day-to-day business of the university, but suddenly she was inviting colleagues for tea and soliciting their opinions about where our department was headed. Invariably, these tete-a-tetes moved from the abstract to the personal. As they poured out their career ambitions and disappointments, Livia’s colleagues were warmed by what Ed Mariani referred to as her “rampant empathy.” There was talk that when Ben Jesse’s tenure was over, a woman as perceptive as Livia would make a fine department head.