pattern. The third held an odd blue and black modern piecework. She turned her head to follow the dizzying curves. While Steve continued to write, giving an occasional grunt, she browsed the crowded bookcase, a library of information on the artful craft. Thumbing through, she found a sister to the off-kilter design, then closed the book with an ironic sigh. “The Drunkard’s Path” the design was called.
Finally, Dr. Easton joined them, her soft grey eyes reassuring, as she placed a cellphone into a capacious pocket of her dark blue padded cotton jumpsuit. “I’ve given her a mild stimulant,” she said, “and ordered an ambulance. It’s wiser than transporting her in a squad car. She’s on her feet now, and it’s important to preserve her dignity.”
“But the liquor. It wasn’t like her. A glass of wine’s all I ever saw . . .” Belle said, her voice trailing off as if she were defending a wayward family member.
Easton closed her black bag with a confident snap, then reached for her coat. “People have turned to worse in a crisis. I’ll ride along with her to the San. There’s a top psychiatrist who’ll admit her. She’s not to be questioned in this condition, not under any circumstances, much less in the intimidating atmosphere of a police station. Will that be a problem, Steve?” Her hands-on-hips gunslinger stance signalled her intentions.
Steve backed off, shaking his head. “Your word is good enough for me, Doctor.”
Belle moved forward as she searched Evelyn’s calm, professional face for solace, her lips tightened against trembling. “What can I do?”
The blonde icon touched a talented finger to perfect, unrouged lips. How many times had those hands knitted back souls from the feet of God? “Call her relatives. Pack a bag with light, indoor clothes, anything else she might like. Personal items like sweaters, books and pictures can be comforting. I noticed a folded quilt in the bedroom. Drop everything off at the main desk.” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t expect a Victorian bedlam. We have progressed since Dickens. Certainly, she’ll have a private room in the beginning.”
As Miriam emerged minutes later, arm in arm with the doctor, then enveloped quietly by two young male attendants in heavy parkas, one line came to Belle’s mind: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Vivian Leigh as Blanche DuBois escorted from a marriage she couldn’t comprehend, primitive urges oceans below her effete capacity, the feral look in Kim Stanley’s eyes, scenes snipped from the original to censor the steamy sexuality that threatened Eisenhower’s snug little families with their smug little secrets. But that was the end of the movie. This was only a prologue. And didn’t Karl Malden have a moustache? His pious rejection had given fragile Blanche the cruelest blow.
Four
Belle sat morosely at her desk, the cold calls she’d planned all but forgotten, though she’d left a message for Brian Dumontelle about a LoEllen Park property. With Miriam in limbo, money might ease the tension. Her timetable displayed two open houses and three appointments to show, but the contracts were running out. With practical regret, she’d left the office answering machine to pick up calls all morning while she lingered in a mid-range tri-level on MacFarland Lake, inhaling pleasant aromas from the oven, where she’d dabbed a bit of vanilla. In her notebook, she scribbled another verse to her country song, “Come On Up to Mama’s Table”:
There was Widow Nancy Davis
And the orphan little Grace,
Mr. Joe the blind man
With a tear upon his face.
Mama carved up that ol’ turkey
And she heaped the plates up high.
There was gravy for the taters
And a crispy apple pie.
An inveterate grammarian, Belle paused, her pen hovering at “There was.” Wrong, but very colloquial. And wasn’t Nancy Davis the stage name of Nancy Reagan? Would anyone remember? A plate of Tim’s chocolate chip cookies had gone largely uneaten, despite personal inroads. The few arrivals “loved” the place, coveted the pool, but found excuses not to make an offer. How would she manage without Miriam, a repository of statistics on every puddle and pond in one hundred miles? A temp would never do. Maybe the business had grown too small to be viable. The siren song sounded again to consider selling the valuable downtown property and joining a large company like ReMax. Generous bennies, no overhead, more time to herself. A crack accountant like Miriam could always . . .
Near tears, she turned as always for comfort to the framed portrait of Uncle Harold. Unlit Cuban cigar clamped firmly in his mouth, he held a huge muskie, mugging at the camera. When she’d bailed out of teaching high school in Toronto twenty plus years ago, leaving the Big Smoke to those who could tolerate teenage testosterone and mind-blowing rudeness, the scorn for authors other than Koontz and King, he’d made her a full partner. She touched a trembling finger to a figure in the background, paddling a homemade birchbark canoe. Jesse Schoenberg, his secretary, a long-time girlfriend then in her late sixties, who’d retired after Harold’s death five years ago. Jesse had gone to Israel, funded by Hadassah to organize women’s consciousness-raising groups on the kibbutzim.
Darkness came without another bootstep through the door, and Belle stared into the teeth of a fresh storm. With her eyes sensitive to light halos and glare, night driving was difficult enough without that complication. Iced over, the van door stuck, so she gave it an Eric Lindros hockey block, bruising her hips. Living in the North got harder each year, or was it just her? She had been born in Floridian Toronto, where the panicky mayor had earned national mockery for calling out the army to rescue the city from a paltry twenty-five-centimetre dump. The radio predicted the dreaded “periods of light snow,” aka PLS, five centimetres tonight, no doubt followed by another five, another five, and another five. The regional plow that serviced Edgewater Road would have a great excuse to sit idle, forcing a packdown effect that grew ruts rivalling Kosovo’s best. Ortega y Gassett had said, “Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are.” She felt like a soldier in a four-season battle: nearly winter, winter, still winter and construction.
After taking a spare key which Miriam always left in her drawer, Belle went to the apartment and completed the lonely task of packing a few essentials as Evelyn had advised. On a whim, she stopped at Blockbuster Video to purchase several classics. Then, she parked the van near the front door of the San and dropped off the bag, looking up at the lighted windows as she left, wondering absurdly if Miriam’s face would peer back. Likely she was sedated in an effort to stabilize her before treatment began.
The trip home took an hour. Two vehicles had crashed at Radar Road and the turn to Skead, backing up traffic for a mile. Whirling blue lights of police cars and departing ambulance sirens warned drivers to slow. Whiteouts along the airport hill, a problem unsolved even by the pseudo-scientific erection of hundreds of yards of snow fences, wiped out all shape of the road and obscured the painted lines.
Relieved at arriving at Edgewater Road, Belle paused at the armoury of metal postal boxes, opened her cubicle with a customary fist pound to the lock and groped for a postcard stuck at the back. In the snow-scattered light from the van, she couldn’t read the writing, but the picture resembled a sunny beach. A snowbird neighbour polishing his clubs after the eighteenth hole? She gritted her teeth and stuffed it into her pocket along with delivery flyers useless in the bush. The new perogy pizza sounded intriguing, though.
The floodlights beamed welcome when she skidded down the long, winding driveway. As she opened the house door, unlocked with the dog inside,
