Gail Bowen - Burying Ariel

A thought occurred to me. “Rosalie still doesn’t know. None of them do. Robert, is it all right if I go back and tell them what’s happened, before the media get the story?”

“You can tell them. Nobody should find out news like this from some jerk with a microphone.”

“I agree,” I said. “This is going to be tough enough. Ariel had a lot of friends in our department.”

“I’m sure she did.” Robert looked thoughtful. “Joanne, tell people to stick around, would you? We’ll need to talk to everybody who knew Ariel. She may have had a lot of friends, but she obviously had at least one enemy.”

By the time I got back, the main dining room of the Faculty Club was deserted. The regular term was over, and people who taught in the spring session didn’t tend to hang around past lunch. The door to the private dining room was still closed, but I could hear the stereo. During lunch, we had listened to show tunes about love and marriage. Ed Mariani, with whom I co-taught the class Politics and the Media, had made the selections, and they ranged from the sublime to the sappy. Now it was Stanley Holloway singing “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and our ex-premier and newest department member, Howard Dowhanuik, was singing along in his tuneless, rumbling bass.

I looked at my watch. It was ten past one. Four and a half hours earlier Ariel had been alive. Not just living, but triumphantly alive. For much of the winter, she had looked thin and unwell, but when I’d seen her as I headed for my office that morning she had been radiant. She’d been sitting on the academic green surrounded by the students from her Political Science 101 class. It had been a scene for an Impressionist: a high, blue sky, air shimmering with light, new grass splashed by crayon-bright plantings of daffodils and tulips, and in the foreground, a woman wearing a brilliant scarlet jacket, her dark blond hair knotted loosely at the nape of her neck, her profile gravely beautiful as she listened to the earnest voices of a freshman class. When Ariel had called out a greeting, I’d felt a current of connection, not just with her, but with what it had been like to be twenty-seven on a soft spring day, doing work that I knew I was good at and looking forward to a future of illimitable possibilities.

There would be no more of those incandescent moments. Had anyone asked me that morning, I would have sworn that all of Ariel’s colleagues would have felt her loss as keenly as I did. Now I wasn’t sure. Kevin Coyle’s accusation had brought only a pinprick of doubt. Since the advent of his case, Kevin had floated a hundred wacko theories. His claims were easy to dismiss; Detective Robert Hallam’s observation wasn’t. Suddenly, I was in uncharted territory. The only thing I knew for certain was that for two people at Rosalie Norman’s luncheon, the loss would be personal and profound.

Howard Dowhanuik’s son, Charlie, and Ariel had been lovers. To the outside world, it seemed an unlikely pairing. Charlie, with characteristic edge, referred to their relationship as the non-Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. The allusion was cruel but not inaccurate. Ariel had the kind of delicately sculpted porcelain beauty found most often in illustrations to fairy stories. Charlie’s face caused strangers to avert their eyes. He had been born with a port-wine birthmark that covered the right half of his face like a blood mask, and it had made his passage through childhood and adolescence an agony. Charlie’s pain hadn’t been eased by Howard’s total absorption in politics or by the spotlight that shone on the premier’s family in our small province. Through courage and a quick and acerbic wit, Charlie had made a life for himself, but until recently there had been no room in that life for his father. Loving Ariel and being loved by her had made Charlie generous. He had, at her urging, given Howard a second chance, and Howard had been humbly grateful.

The other person to whom I dreaded breaking the news was the young instructor who had been hired with Ariel. Solange Levy was a difficult young woman, sensitive to slight and quick to anger. When she had arrived at our department to teach the previous September, the irony of her given name had been hard to ignore, but as her personal history became known to us, it was apparent that nothing in Solange’s life had given her cause to be sunny. The only child of a mother involved in a series of abusive relationships, Solange learned to take refuge in her studies. She had a gift for mathematics, and by the time she was in high school she’d decided that, in an uncertain world, a discipline that put a premium on reason and elegant proofs could offer her safe haven.

On a snowy December day in 1989, she had been doing her homework and listening to the radio when she heard the news of the massacre at L’Ecole Polytechnique. She was seventeen at the time. The event politicized her and defined her life. She abandoned mathematics and plunged into feminist theory and politics. Ten years later, she was a Ph. D. and a warrior. With her razor intellect, her sleek, muscular body, her Joan of Arc haircut, and her uniform of black T-shirt, black jeans, and ragged Converse high-top runners, Solange seemed more equipped for battle than friendship, but Ariel pierced her armour. The price Ariel’s death would exact from her best friend’s vision of human existence seemed beyond calculation.

When I opened the door to the Window Room, it was clear that Rosalie Norman’s party had reached the sour stage of an event that had gone on too long. The Asti Spumante bottles were empty, the delicate Depression-ware glass plates were cake-smeared, and the pink-throated flowers that had decorated each of our places had begun to wilt. Fully a third of the guests had left, and those who remained were sprawled listlessly in their chairs. Behind her mound of gifts, Rosalie Norman had the fixed smile of the guest of honour at a party that has ceased to be fun. As all eyes turned to me, I remembered my reason for leaving the party. I’d been charged with the task of picking up the bouquet of long-stemmed roses that had been delivered to the Faculty Club bar. The flowers were the final gift. As soon as Rosalie had them in hand, the last photograph would be taken, and we would be free to get back to our real lives.

Livia Brook cut a quick stare my way. “Where are the roses?” In the years since her husband had dumped her, Livia had meditated and soul-journeyed her way into a seemingly shatterproof serenity, but at that moment negative energies seemed to be getting the better of her. She tried to erase her rudeness. “We were beginning to be concerned about you.”

Solange gave me a sly sidelong glance. “My theory was that you’d run off with your friend, Kevin Coyle. Not my type, but who could blame you for giving in to temptation?” She leaned back in her chair and raised a toned arm to indicate the decorations. “Such a romantic occasion. I was afraid this event would be quitaine.” She struggled for the translation. “You know, kitschy – too much – but it was quite lovely. I just wish Ariel had shown up.”

I took a step towards her. “Solange…”

Her face froze. She had cat’s eyes, tawny and green-flecked, and she had a cat’s instinct for danger. She knew the worst before I opened my mouth.

“Something’s happened to her,” she said flatly.

I nodded. “Yes.”

Solange moved out of her chair slowly, like someone in a dream state. “She’s dead?”

“Her body was found in an archive room in the basement of the library.”

“When?” Solange said.

“Not long ago,” I said. “Probably within the hour.”

Solange covered her face with her hands and turned away, but the other guests had moved to the edge of their chairs. Like clever undergraduates, they were twitching with unasked questions.