Sticks and Stones Read online

  I was trying to banish all thoughts of murder, threatening phone calls, and anti-feminist attacks. Whenever something popped into my mind, I started humming “I Saw Three Ships,” which I’m sure was the medieval equivalent of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”

  Leo had called to ask if he could bum a ride to Grace’s with us, and I’d agreed without checking with Steve, mainly because I was chary of calling him at work. Leo was situated about halfway between my apartment and Grace’s house in Pleasantview, so I didn’t think that Steve would mind.

  I thought about calling Denise, but that made me think about Mark Paulson’s phone message, to which I hadn’t replied. I figured I could get Denise aside at the party sometime tonight and let her know about McNeely and Paulson’s call. Maybe she could call off Paulson. I didn’t want to have to deal with him, especially after placing Steve in the situation he was in at work. If it looked as though his girlfriend was blabbing things to the press, I had a feeling Keller ­wouldn’t be quite so understanding with him. It was all getting so complicated. “And who was on those ships all three? On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day …”

  At seven-fifteen, just as I was wiping off the blotchy mascara I’d inexpertly tried to apply and was starting again, there was a knock at the door. I blinked through the cream, and stumbled into the living room to open the door. Steve stood there, looking blurry, gorgeous and irritated.

  “Jesus, Randy, don’t you even ask who it is? What about the door chain?”

  “I knew it was you.”

  “I’m going to put a peephole in your door on the weekend.”

  “Just as long as you don’t think it’ll count as my Christmas present.”

  He laughed, kissed me, and told me how wonderful I looked. I was torn between wanting to continue, and wanting to see for the rest of my life. Eyesight won out, and I shuffled off to wipe the eye gunk off. Five minutes later, sporting eyelashes like little spiders, I returned.

  Steve was reading the Christmas cards on my mantel. He turned, and his admiring look was enough to make me feel beautiful for the whole evening.

  We were heading down the hall to the front door, when I remembered to tell him we were picking up Leo.

  “Leo is the fellow who found you locked in the bathroom?”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten you’d met. Maybe I was just ­trying to block that whole episode. You know, I can understand the whole repressed memory stuff now. Some things are just too nasty to keep in your head.”

  “The point is you do keep them. Have you considered seeing someone about that episode?”

  “Not really. Do you think I should?”

  “Trauma is trauma. It might not hurt. What about Jane Campbell?”

  I looked at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. Was he really just thinking of my mental health (and if so, was that necessarily a good thing?) or was he trying to tell me subtly to keep asking questions? He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  “That’s not a bad idea, I guess. Maybe I should talk to someone about it. I was pretty scared, and maybe that’s what is making the phone messages so frightening.”

  “Messages? Have you had another?”

  “No, it’s just that it feels as though the second shoe hasn’t dropped yet. Turn here. It doesn’t matter that I’ve promised your boss to stay out of things; somehow I’m in the middle of it, and I don’t see an end so far.”

  It might have been a productive conversation, and it might have kept me out of future trouble, but I had to break off just then to point out Leo’s house. I hopped out of the car to knock on the basement window, and Leo soon joined us, exuding good cheer and small German cookies in wreath shapes.

  We weren’t the first to arrive at Grace’s, and more soon arrived. At one point, just before nine o’clock, I passed the bedroom where Grace had motioned us to throw our coats. A mound the size of Mount Robson hid any sign of my leather jacket.

  As at any party, there was a crowd in the kitchen. Denise and Julian were leaning against the fridge, discussing post-modernist renditions of the classics and trying to determine if Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was a prime example or just darned good theater.

  Leo was sitting cross-legged on top of the dishwasher, flipping back his silk scarf in order to eat a piece of sashimi with proper panache. Grace was flitting between the sink and the dining room door, ferrying more and more platters of goodies onto the already heaping table. Steve seemed happy in the dining room chatting with Arno, Karen Hanson, Marni Livingstone and two of the younger members of the department I didn’t know all that well. Marni was talking about her adventures climbing in the Rockies the summer before.

  “I can’t even manage one of those climbing walls at the gym,” Chris was complaining.

  “Do you use the Van Vliet Centre?” Arno asked. “I’ve been thinking of starting some work-out programs. Several fellows in my classes swear by the facilities. I have to admit, teaching buff eighteen-year-olds is a humbling experience.”

  “You’re not old enough to be feeling old, Arno.” Marni was flirting mildly.

  Arno shook his head, smiling. “I’m not ancient, but I’m certainly not as young as some of the newer folks being hired. It’s a tad harder to be hired if you’re not the flavor of the month. I’m not complaining, though. It did give me a chance to get my book written.”

  “You wrote a book while sessionaling? I’m impressed,” Steve said. “From what I’ve seen, it’s a grind of marking.”

  “Are you intimating that I am just grinding away, Steve?” I asked in mock horror. “I’ll have you know that I can usually manage a few freelance gigs at the same time as teaching a full load.”

  Marni nodded her agreement with me. “It’s tough, but it can be done. Especially after you’ve taught the course once. Then, at least, you don’t need to be running about creating lecture notes or new handouts. The marking, though, ooh la la.”

  The last thing I wanted to think about in the middle of the party was marking, so I smiled at Steve, who had turned back to talk with Arno and Marni, and drifted down the hall to the living room.

  Grace’s living room was a study in polished surfaces. It reminded me of the set in Annouihl’s The Enchanted where the girl tries to attract the ghost by putting shiny surfaces all about the room. The hardwood floor gleamed around several Persian rugs. Brass and copper bowls and, I think, spittoons held cut flowers on various wooden tables and sideboards. The sitting furniture was big and plush and comfy. I plunked myself down next to Chantal, one of my colleagues from the House, and Loretta Monterey, this year’s writer-in-residence, a poet from one of those artsy islands off BC, and felt myself sinking for longer than I’d anticipated.

  Chantal smiled and leaned back to make room for me in their conversation. I’d met Loretta briefly at her official opening reading in the fall, but hadn’t really spoken to her since. She and Chantal had been discussing the latest Governor General awards. Loretta had been nominated for her new book of poetry, Pebbles from the Sea of Japan, but lost out to a fellow who hadn’t received one before (Loretta already had two for poetry and one for a play she’d written in the eighties). Chantal was arguing that the award should go to the best work of the year, but Loretta seemed serene about the attitude that it was all right to share it around.

  “How does it feel to be nominated?” I asked, figuring that her telling me was probably the only way in this lifetime I'd ever find out.

  “That’s the best part, really. They phone you about ten days before they release the shortlist, and that’s the hardest thing, because they ask you to keep quiet about it until the list comes out. Those are the hardest ten days, though the two weeks that follow are pretty hectic once your publisher’s rep gets hold of you. I must have done seventeen interviews in three days on Pebbles. It paid off though, I guess. My publisher is now calling it a bestseller.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said, as Chantal excused herself and heaved herself out
of the people-eating couch in search of another drink.

  Loretta shrugged. “Maybe by poetry standards, but it still doesn’t mean much. Most houses see publishing poetry as a charitable donation to Canadian culture. I’ve been lucky.”

  Being the member of the intelligentsia that I am, the conversation soon drifted to the weather conditions off the coast of Vancouver Island, and shoe stores in Edmonton where one could purchase size eleven. Loretta was a very nice person, and I made a mental note to buy one of her books.

  After Loretta and I finished our conversation, I headed back toward the kitchen, with the intention of saving Steve should he require it. McNeely gave me a partially thawed nod as I passed. He probably would never quite forgive me for not being culpable, but I could live with that.

  Leo, who had been hovering in the living room archway, cornered me to ask what I’d been talking about with Loretta. He grimaced theatrically when I told him.

  “You have the ear of one of the foremost poets in the land and you talk shoe stores? What are we going to do with you, Miranda?”

  I grinned, but he shook his head at me.

  “I’m serious. You can’t disregard one moment of networking any more. Have you seen what the job situation is out there for sessionals? You have to be constantly on the make. You’re only as good as your last article in this game, and believe me, it’s even tougher if you’re male.”

  “Oh come on, Leo. You make it sound like a Rollerball tournament or something. I am not about to do a song and dance number to get a job. Besides, I have a job. I get just enough courses to teach each year. I don’t intend to get a Ph.D., so I have no chance of being hired full time.”

  “There is such a thing as a full-time sessional position, you know.”

  “Yes, but that’s more for folks with a Ph.D. from the looks of things. People like Denise, and you.”

  “What is the point of having a Ph.D. if you can’t teach senior level courses? They might as well be hiring MAs for those positions,” Leo grumbled.

  “Don’t get so grumpy, dearheart. Chances are you’ll get a job as soon as your dissertation comes back from the bindery.” I pinched his cheek like an old auntie might.

  He winced. “Sure, if all minorities and women candidates decided suddenly that they’d rather apply for jobs with the Peace Corps.”

  “Cheer up, maybe they’ll designate homosexuals as a ­discriminated-against minority, and you too can jump queue!” I dodged his whipping me with his silk scarf and scampered into the kitchen.

  Grace was slicing wedges of pita bread and stacking them on a platter Steve was holding for her. Denise was gone from the kitchen, although Julian was still hanging around, filching olives out of a bowl on the counter. Half the department seemed to be magnetically pulled toward the dining room. Trust arts types to stay where the food is.

  I craned my neck up to nibble on Steve’s ear and took a pita from his platter.

  Grace looked up and saw me. “Randy, there you are! I haven’t had a moment to call my own, or I’d be a better host.”

  “You’re a wonderful host. This is the best party ever.” I leaned over and kissed Grace's cheek for good measure.

  “Is it?” Grace looked around. “The trouble with hosting a party is you never really get a sense of it till the post-mortem. Not that I mind. It makes me clean the house for the ­holidays, and it always feels so much bigger after everyone’s left.”

  “After this crowd, it’s bound to feel palatial,” Steve said.

  “How many people are here, do you think?”

  “I’d say at least seventy,” he said, scanning the dining room.

  “Really?”

  “How do you do that?” asked Grace. “Can you really ­estimate on a visual survey, or do you count a certain amount and extrapolate from that?”

  “Yeah, how do they manage to estimate crowds?” I wondered out loud.

  Steve laughed. “It’s a talent. Actually, I trained myself for the heck of it when I used to attend functions as a St. John’s Ambulance volunteer.”

  “You were a St. John's volunteer? I suppose you’re now going to tell me you lead a Scout pack in your spare time.”

  “No, and there was very little altruism involved in it. I figured it was the most economical way to attend rock concerts when I was a high school student and an impoverished university student.”

  Grace and I laughed.

  “Since there was no mosh pit back then, we treated the occasional sunstroke and spent the rest of the time standing around. I started to guesstimate crowd size, and then we’d bet on it, and check the tally at the gate. I usually won.”

  “So, how many people were at the vigil?” I asked.

  Steve squinted, picturing, no doubt, the crowd from that freezing, fateful night.

  “I would say a good eight hundred or so.”

  “That many?” I asked.

  Grace shook her head.

  “It sure felt like it trying to feed the wet ones.” Grace ­commented.

  “That’s right. Who picked up the tab for that?” I asked.

  “I tried to see if the university would help out, but they refused on the grounds that it wasn’t a university-organized function, so the pizza bill came out of the HYSTERICAL ­budget. It’s put us behind on the mailout, but Vera and Suzanne …”

  “The department secretaries,” I filled in for Steve.

  “… have volunteered their time to help with the mailout, and we got some emergency funds from the Women’s Studies folks, so it should get out early next week.”

  “Can I help? Aside from proctoring my exams, I’ve got nothing pressing till marking.”

  “Sure, we can use all the help we can get.”

  Grace and I made arrangements for Monday, and then she disappeared into the crowded dining room with her full platter of pita dippers.

  Steve led me out of the kitchen and into the back room. The area would probably be a family room in anyone else’s house, but Grace had turned it into an arboretum, with ficus and hibiscus trees and several others I didn’t recognize. Fuzzy purple ivy laced a path across the ceiling, and tiny grapes hung from a latticed wall on one end. Wicker settees and chairs were tucked in among the plants. The effect was immensely peaceful, especially since there were few lights and no partiers.

  Steve and I cozied up on a wicker love seat. I leaned back into the crook of his arm and listened to the subdued roar of the party going on beyond the archway. I asked Steve if he was enjoying himself. He squeezed my shoulder and smiled.

  “Do you mean, can I stand your friends?”

  “Well, technically they’re more colleagues than friends, although I guess I could claim about half a dozen or so.”

  “It’s a good party. Grace is really something.”

  “I think so, too. I’m glad you’re getting a chance to see her on her own turf.”

  “It’s interesting to see them all in a different environment.”

  “You mean outside of academe? Or outside of being ­suspects?”

  “It’s not my case.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Seriously, I can’t be seen to have anything to do with it. I’m here solely as your date.” He kissed me to prove it.

  “Do you really think someone in the department might be involved?”

  He nuzzled my ear, and whispered, “Randy, repeat after me, it is not my case.”

  I struggled up, half-heartedly, out of his embrace. “But someone who hated women wouldn’t be caught dead at one of Grace’s parties.”

  “If they don’t want people to know their true colors, here is exactly where they’d be.”

  “But it’s not your case.”

  Steve laughed. “C’mon, they’re dancing in the basement.”

  “He locks up bad guys, he cooks, he dances. You are the perfect man, Steve Browning.”

  “Hold onto that thought.”

  That wasn’t all I was hoping to hold onto.

  38


  THE NEXT MORNING, WHILE STEVE WAS TAKING a shower, I curled up in bed, thinking about something he’d said the night before. Was there someone in the department who hid his true stripes? Had there been a real misogynist at the party?

  It was so hard to picture someone harboring hatred for half of the human race that I couldn’t conjure up any faces. Of course, there was always Professor Dalgren, but he hadn’t been at the party. He probably hung upside down in a cupboard somewhere after the sun went down. Besides, he was an equal opportunities misanthrope; just pick a category and he could ooze contempt. Women, undergrads, graduate ­students, high school drop-outs, First Nations, the French, the government, theorists, members of the department, members of other departments; I’d heard him wax vitriolic on all of them at one time or another. He probably would have harsh words for Desmond Tutu if given half a chance.

  There had been some mutterings when six new professors had been hired a couple of years ago. The hiring policy had specified an intent to favor the previously marginalized, and four of the six positions had ended up filled by women. Since then, with publications and glowing student evaluations, they’d proved themselves, but I wondered if somewhere there was some untenured white guy with an axe to grind at losing out to a skirt. I thought about comments Leo had been making the night before at the party. How many people really felt that way?

  Maybe I was getting in a rut myself. Did the murderer have to be a man? Maybe there was a woman who hated Gwen and saw her chance? Or maybe a woman was targeting women to highlight the misogyny on campus? Maybe I was going insane.

  The shower stopped, and Steve emerged through a cloud of steam, dripping and grinning at the end of the bed. There’d be no need to turn on the humidifier this morning.

  “My back is now realigned. It’s like sleeping at attention in that bed of yours.”

  I agreed, but pointed out that sleep was not something we’d done a lot of. Steve replied by shaking his wet head on me. I yelped, and informed him I’d set the coffeepot going. I slid past him to see if he’d left any hot water in the building.