Deadly Appearances (10 page)

Eve had already climbed out of the limo when the man from the funeral home discreetly tapped at my window. All the way up the stairs he and his colleagues dodged around us with their black umbrellas, trying to keep us dry.

When we opened the doors and stepped into the warmth of the building, everything was still. The premier, in response to one of Eve’s televised pleas, had given everyone who worked in the building the day off. Without the knots of tourists and the click of heels on the marble halls, the building was alien, like a house after a family comes back from a long holiday. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much that building was home for me.

Andy was in the rotunda. There were pots of marigolds and chrysanthemums banked along the far wall, and their smell, acrid and earthy, was reassuringly familiar – a smell to come home to on a wet September day. Except for a commissionaire sitting in the corner reading a newspaper, Andy was alone. His casket was oak, and it gleamed warm and golden like the woodwork around it. The top half was covered with the provincial flag, bright yellow and green with an orange prairie lily blooming at its centre. At the foot of the coffin was a spray of prairie lilies. Three years before, when Ian died, I had counted the panels of the disciples in the altar behind his coffin, and I had been able to shut out reality for a while. But there was nowhere safe to look here. The staircase to the left led up to the opposition offices – our offices. The one to the right was the one Andy and the kids would sit on for pictures when a school group from our constituency came to meet their mla. He used to do a nice thing with them: after the pictures and refreshments, he’d take them outside and show them how they could use a paper and pencil to make rubbings of the fossils embedded in the limestone walls of the legislature. He had been a good man.

A good man, but not a perfect one. He was reluctant to offend, to make enemies. He didn’t want to be the bad guy. Often, too often, when the hard decision was made, one of us was left to enforce it. It was a serious flaw in a human being and a worse one in a politician, but death seems to bring a moratorium on critical thought – at least for a little while. I sat staring at the casket gleaming dully in the soft light. After a while, a terrible sob cut through the silence. I was surprised to realize that the cry was my own.

For me, Andy Boychuk had two funerals. There was the one I went to with the chief mourners, Eve Boychuk and her son, Carey, an event so painfully emotional that it will always exist for me in jagged and surprising flashes of memory. And there is the funeral on videotape I saw rerun many times on television, a coherent ceremony in which all of us seem to move through our parts with a grim composure. On that day, more than most, there was a gap between perception and reality – between the way things seemed to me at the time and the way they were.

Double vision. What the camera shows first is a sullen sky and a street that, except for the police van on the north side, is empty. The white hearse, shiny with rain, and the mourners’ car, also white, arrive at the cathedral. Eve and I walk behind as the men from the funeral home carry the casket up the endless stairs. Two women alone, one in white, one in green. Incongruously, there is indoor-outdoor carpeting on the cathedral steps. It is sodden with rain. The honorary pallbearers are inside and dry; the working pallbearers must climb those endless steps slick with water, and the load they carry is a heavy one. I can hear them talking to one another under their breath.

“Shit, I almost fell.”

“Watch that one.”

“Have you got him?”

Later, I learn that they are not from the funeral home; they are city cops. Eve and I plod after them, the water squishing under our shoes. The camera shows none of this.

When the door to the vestibule is opened, a gust of wind comes out of nowhere and sweeps us inside. Roma Boychuk is there – all in black, of course. She is with an older man, a distant cousin, we learn later. She and her daughter-in-law do not speak. The casket is placed on its carrier, and we stand behind it, waiting. None of this is televised. Instead, the camera picks up the priest and the servers as they process down the middle aisle to meet us. I recognize Father Ulysses Tilley – Mickey to his friends. I’m glad he’s the one. He would never have voted for us in a thousand years, but Andy liked him, and I did, too. Across the coffin, Mickey Tilley smiles at me and begins.

“The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”

The casket is sprinkled with holy water. Mickey Tilley has a good voice, an actor’s voice that projects without strain. “I bless the body of Andrue with holy water that recalls his baptism.” On television, Eve is magnificent, chin high, grey hair coiled regally under the lace mantilla, spine ramrod straight, gloved hands smartly at her sides, every inch the graceful public widow. But up close, I can see the muscles of her athlete’s body tensed for flight. As the white pall is spread over the coffin, Eve begins to tremble.

“Consciousness. Energy,” she says under her breath.

Finally, Mickey Tilley turns and Eve and I follow him and the coffin up the centre aisle of the church. As we walk, there is a soft babbling and a swishing sound behind me. Mark Evanson is pushing Carey Boychuk behind us. A surprise, at least to me. About halfway up the aisle Carey begins to cry. When I turn, I see Mark calmly stopping to give Carey a hug of reassurance. Eve marches, head high.

The Mass of Resurrection drags on – the confession, the prayers. Beside me, Eve drums her strong fingers on the prayer book. Legs crossed, she swings the toe of her black pump against the kneeler. It makes a small pucking sound. Every so often, she takes a deep breath and sighs audibly. Behind us Carey babbles, and Mark Evanson’s low voice whispers reassurances.

There are three readings from the Bible. The camera pulls in for a tight shot of the readers. Dave Micklejohn, solemn and suddenly old, reads from the Book of Joel (“Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions”); a student lector from the Catholic college, her voice breaking, reads the Epistle; and Father Mickey Tilley reads, well and movingly, the Gospel (“No one who is alive and has faith in me shall ever die”).

When Howard Dowhanuik steps to the lectern to deliver the eulogy, he stands, head bowed, for a heart-stoppingly long time. Finally he lifts his head and looks at the congregation. In the half light of the cathedral, his impassive hawk’s face with its hooded eyes looks almost Oriental. Later, when he embraces me, there is, beneath the light, citrusy smell of his expensive cologne, the smell of Scotch. Up close his eyes are red with weeping or liquor or both. But on television none of this is apparent, and his voice, when he speaks, is deep and assured – the voice of a man accustomed to being listened to, a man worth listening to.

Howard’s memories of Andy are warm and personal – stories of law school, of campaigning in forty-below weather, of flying through thunderstorms in tiny private planes and finding six people at the meeting.

Andy is so alive in Howard’s stories that the people seem to forget where they are and the cathedral is filled with laughter. When he is finished, his place is taken by an old man from Sweetgrass Reserve, in Andy’s constituency. The man wears a baseball cap, a plaid shirt and work pants. He looks like Jimmy Durante. He takes off his glasses, coughs, closes his eyes and begins to sing the honour song in Cree. His voice is strong and pure – a young man’s voice. For the first time, Eve seems to connect with what’s going on around her. She leans forward in her pew, and when the man is finished and goes to his seat, Eve turns with frank curiosity to watch him.

After he goes, Eve stares straight ahead, and I can almost feel her breaking. The
TV
camera shows none of this, of course. Her bearing is regal, and when she turns to embrace her son during the kiss of peace, she looks contained and engaged. She is neither. As the bread and wine are brought forward, Eve lapses into lethargy. When the altar and casket are incensed, she smiles a private smile. She takes no part in the communion, and as Mickey Tilley goes through the post-communion prayer (“O Almighty God, may this sacrifice purify the soul of your servant, Andrue”), she drums her fingers and taps her foot. When Father Tilley says, “Grant that once delivered from his sins, Andrue may receive forgiveness and eternal rest,” Eve leans forward, head reverently touching the gloved hands that grip the wooden rail ahead of us. When I lean forward, I can hear her desperately repeating her own prayer. “Consciousness. Energy. Consciousness. Energy.”

Finally it is over. “May the angels lead you into paradise.” Our little party of mourners follows Andy’s casket down the centre aisle of Little Flower Cathedral and into the vestibule. This is where our role in the television version ends. The camera pulls away from us and focuses on the faces of the people in the church.

The cameras missed the best part. At first, everything went smoothly. The pallbearers carried the casket smartly toward the door and waited. Roma Boychuk and her cousin took their place near the casket. Mark Evanson pushed Carey’s wheelchair beside Roma and stood with his sweet Christian smile, waiting for whatever the Lord directed. Eve and I stood off to the right by a rack of pamphlets from Serena and the Knights of Columbus, waiting, I thought, to thank Father Tilley. I turned my head for a second, and Eve was gone.

It was simple enough. She had pushed past her husband’s coffin, her son and her mother-in-law and slipped out the door. Mark and I followed her, but by the time we got out the door, Eve was headed for the street. The rain had stopped pelting down. It was falling in a soft mist – a gentle rain – and Eve was standing in it in the middle of the cathedral stairs, taking her shoes off. Ten minutes before, hair swept into an elegant French braid, face carved with pain, Eve had been the prototype of graceful suffering.

Not any more. She had ripped off her mantilla, and the French braid had come undone. She had tried to stuff the mantilla into her purse, but the bag wouldn’t close and the lacy edges of the mantilla hung over its edges. She stood in her stocking feet, arms outstretched, a fashionable leather pump hooked onto the forefinger of each hand. She yelled something to Mark.

“Mark, I just can’t … Sorry. Take Carey to Wolf River, and I’ll meet you at the cemetery.” She turned and ran down the steps and along Thirteenth Street. I looked to see if there were any media people there to witness her performance. For once, we were lucky. They were still inside packing up, getting quotes, making head counts. But Mark and I weren’t alone.

Three doors open on the cathedral staircase, and the stairs are broad – I would judge about fifty feet across. Mark and I had come out the west door, and we were standing by the railing on the west side of the top step when a woman came out of the east door.

At the picnic she’d worn a dress that was the colour of cornflowers. She wasn’t in blue today. She was in full mourning – expensive black from head to toe. But there was no mistaking the still, perfect profile or the dark auburn hair. She was the woman who had walked with us as we carried Andy’s stretcher to the ambulance, who had tried to comfort Roma and who had run when Roma spat in her face. She stood and looked around uncertainly in the soft, misty rain. Then she was joined by a man. He put his arm protectively around her shoulder, and together they walked down the stairs and disappeared around the corner. Beside me, Mark watched with the frank curiosity of a child.

“Who was that lady?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but she was at the picnic when Andy – when Mr. Boychuk died. Her picture was in all the papers, but I don’t know who she is. I do know the man, though. That was Dave Micklejohn. Your mum and dad know him from politics. Dave Micklejohn was one of Mr. Boychuk’s best friends.”

While Mark and I stood and watched Dave Micklejohn and the mystery lady disappear into the parking lot, the camera crews and the news people came out of the church. I knew most of the local news people, and they waved or smiled or said they were sorry. They were a nice enough bunch, but they were young, and Andy’s funeral was just one of the day’s stories for them. It was time to move to the convention centre to interview delegates from the clc, or to the teacher’s club for a feature about how teachers felt about school beginning on Tuesday. The press thought the show was over. But they were wrong. Act Two was just about to begin.

CHAPTER

7

Because it serves the sprawling inner-city parish of the cathedral, Little Flower Hall is bigger than most. Apart from that, it looks like all church halls. A room as big as a gymnasium and about as warm, lined with stacking chairs and heavy tables with collapsible legs, the kind of tables that can be easily set up for banquets or potlucks. At one end of the hall is a stage; at the other is a large kitchen with a long counter open diner-style to the hall, a cloakroom, and off it the bathrooms. The hall was a place for modest wedding dances and parish fiftieth-wedding anniversaries and occasions like this, except I don’t think there had ever been an occasion like this.

The ladies of St. Basil’s Ukrainian Catholic Church had, they explained, “gone in with” the ladies of Little Flower to put on the funeral lunch. They had planned for five hundred people to come and go. There were three times that many, and the people came but they did not go. They stayed and stayed and stayed. The ladies did their best. Weaving their way through the crowd, they carried black enamel roasting pans filled with cabbage rolls or perogies or turkeys or hams already sliced in the kitchen, and casseroles of scalloped potatoes and chili and macaroni and cheese. But as soon as the women put down the food, it was gone; and at the end, I noticed platters loaded with an unmistakable brand of fried chicken.

I was standing at the end of a line waiting for a cup of tea when Howard Dowhanuik came up behind me.

“I’d give the next two hours of my life for a drink,” he said.

I leaned close and whispered, “I’d give the next two hours of your life for a drink, too.”