the quilt a pastiche of teddy bears.
A small groan led her to the larger bedroom, where Miriam lay face down, her head half-covered with a pillow. “Are you asleep?” Belle asked foolishly, touching her naked, freckled shoulder like a timid lover. There was no response, just a sour reek of gin, that telltale juniper from the innocent woods. Gently, Belle turned her friend onto her back. The curly grey hair lay in damp mats, and Miriam’s skin, creased from pressure, looked sallow as beeswax. When her lids fluttered open for a second, her eyes were dull coins, as if she were in another painless country. Belle spoke her name twice, three times, getting no response.
“Is she here or not? What’s taking you so long?” Steve appeared in the doorway, suddenly alert. “Christ, a suicide attempt? Better let me handle this.”
As he shoved her out of the way, Belle moved to the other side of the bed, her foot connecting with something which clinked against the frame. “Call a doctor, Steve, or we’ll have another corpse on our hands.”
Sniffing pointedly, he examined Miriam’s eyes and listened to her breathing. Then he took her pulse. “She’s just smashed. When she comes to, I’ll have to take her downtown. You can’t avoid an interview by staying drunk.” As he muttered legal technicalities, a small tear dripped from Miriam’s reddened eye.
Belle moved into the bathroom to collect a cold compress, fill a glass with water, tidy the towels, anything to keep moving. How could Steve insist on cruel protocols in the face of such a pitiful spectacle? With a shudder, she picked up the empty medicine bottle, removed her distance glasses and squinted at the label. Voltaren, an anti-inflammatory. So Miriam had arthritis, though unlike Belle, the hypochondriac, she never complained. Nobody overdosed on that, nor on the Tylenol, yet unopened. The medicine cabinet was empty of other prescription drugs.
As she soaked and rung a towel, she could hear Steve bark instructions on the phone in the living room. Returning to Miriam, offering soothing words, mindless but helpful to herself, she laid the cold cloth onto the pale forehead. When she tried to offer a drink, water dribbled from the slack mouth. “It’ll be OK. Relax for now. We’ll get a doctor.”
Any more relaxed and Miriam’s heart would stop. Where was Steve? Did he intend to handcuff the helpless woman and frogmarch her to jail? And what awaited her in the humiliation of custody? Even in the new police building, conditions couldn’t be comfortable. A smelly holding tank of drunks and prostitutes? Drug addicts? A detox facility? And if she were jailed, for how long? What horrors would Miriam endure before the bloated justice system moved her case forward?
At vigil by the bed, feeling more confident since Miriam had begun to snore, for twenty more minutes she waited for Steve. Gone to collect the manacles? Then she heard a door open, voices were exchanged, and in walked a silvery blonde angel with a single thick braid down her back. Evelyn Easton, an emergency room surgeon, a treasured combination of skill and savvy. Steve met Belle’s surprised look with a grin. “Ev’s granddaughter’s a friend of Heather’s. Luckily cops can pull strings.”
Not one for unnecessary words, Evelyn nodded to Belle, whom she’d met professionally, opened a medical bag, and motioned them out with an imperious wave of her hand. At six feet, she was an imposing woman, a natural athlete, whose reflexes, even at fifty, served her well.
In the living room, Steve sat on the overstuffed sofa and took notes while Belle paced around, unable to concentrate. One wall featured a gallery of family pictures, Miriam as a frizzy-topped baby, Rosanne in childish poses, then serious at graduation. Black-and-whites featured a pleasant older couple with a post-war Plymouth coupe, perhaps Miriam’s late parents. In a prominent spot in a silver frame, someone with a familiar moustache smiled. Melibee, larger than life. Belle read the signature: “To my beloved from Mel. Together forever, forever we two.”
Absolutes always disappointed, she thought with a grimace. Weren’t those the words to a banal disco song which reverberated in the brain long after it had mercifully departed the airwaves? Instead, Melibee would be reunited with the dead wife Miriam had mentioned, if there were an afterlife. She turned to the window to watch the snowflakes cover the city grime and grit with a white innocence.
From the frantic moments upon arrival, time had slowed to a crawl. Belle passed from the pictures to the quilts on the walls. Miriam’s award-winning hobby demonstrated patience, skill and a genius for colour. She remembered with fondness the thoughtful gift of a Whig Rose masterpiece that adorned her waterbed in the fleeting summer months when she could abandon the giant down duvet. One quilt presented a variation on the famous log cabin design, rectangles piled on rectangles, another the prickly maze of the pineapple 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,