know what Mr. Turbot has told me. I’d like to hear your perspective.”
“Why? What’s it to you?” Her soft demeanour had begun to crack around the edges.
Sometimes honesty is the best policy, and from a legal standpoint, I knew I would eventually have to disclose the nature of my relationship with Carl. “Mr. Turbot has retained me, Tricia.”
“Retained you?”
“Yes. I’m still a member of the bar. I’m still a lawyer. Mr. Turbot has hired me to represent him should issues arise out of your allegations of unprofessional conduct.”
“Why would he hire a lawyer? I don’t understand this. What’s the matter with him?” Trish’s voice was beginning to rise.
“Tricia,” I said as soothingly as possible, “according to Mr. Turbot, you have threatened to report a sexual relationship to the principal. He’s having a difficult time trying to figure out why you’re trying to destroy his career and his professional reputation.”
“After what he’s done to me, he can’t figure out why I’m angry? What a prick. I can’t believe I’ve loved him as long as I have.”
I tried to let that pass for the moment. “What do you mean ‘after all he’s done to you,’ What exactly did Mr. Turbot do? I need to know if I’m going to be able to help either one of you.”
Tricia looked at me with anger flaring in her eyes. “He broke up with me.”
Five
Thank God it was Tuesday. With a day like the one I had just had, it wasn’t that I was looking forward to three more, only that there were just three days before the weekend. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get a whole lot of relaxation time.
I couldn’t bring myself to face Carl again that afternoon. As soon as the bell rang at the end of the day, I made my best effort to get out of the school fast. That itself is no small feat. When I was young and in school, when the bell rang at the end of the day, those of us cool enough to have jobs at gas stations or Beaver Lumber could afford our own cars to take us home or to the homes of the many friends that could be acquired through the joy of car ownership. It didn’t matter if the car was a beat up, 1966 Ford Fairlane; wheels were wheels. Those without cars started walking, at least as far as the nearest bus stop.
Not so today. Not even a Chrysler dealership can produce the volume of mini-vans that appear in front of a school in the immediate aftermath of last period dismissal. Oh, sure, there are a few station wagons, SUVs and sedans, and even the occasional compact, but hell hath no highway like the mini-van strewn driveway of the public school at eight thirty a.m. and three p.m., Monday to Friday.
By three forty-five, I was home. There were a few lifestyle changes I was not willing to make with my change of profession. One of those was my home. In my first three years as a lawyer, I had socked away most of my salary and lived comfortably off the avails of my in-laws’ wealth. My ex-wife Sandi and I had a large, comfortable-bordering-on-luxurious condominium apartment in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood. Though now divorced and employed in the public service, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the proximity to the beach. Of course, on my income, I’d had to drop from a three bedroom to a small, ‘one plus den,’ but I could see ocean from the living room and could have my foot in the water in less than a block. Also, Starbucks was about eight hundred feet from the lobby.
The rest of my conversation with Tricia Bellamy had left my head swimming. Tricia had detailed for me her relationship with Carl as it had transpired over the past year. Shortly after the start of second semester, according to Trish, she and Carl had begun to spend time together after school when she was experiencing academic difficulty with Biology Eleven’s categorization of basically everything organic into fila, strata and other arcane scientific terms. It was during this time that she alleged a romantic relationship had begun.
The night before a mid-term exam, Tricia and a small group of students had stayed late after school to go over material they knew would cause them difficulty on the exam. As time ticked by in the impromptu tutorials, the number of students decreased gradually until Trish found herself alone with Carl. At his suggestion, they ordered a pizza and continued to discuss the practical portion of the laboratory exam for the next day.
Tricia said she had always thought Carl was attractive; she also felt that Carl had always treated her differently, that he had some special interest in her. When they had finished their pizza and had exhausted every possible area of study for the test, Carl had finally suggested it was time to call it quits. It was after seven. When Trish realized how long they had spent together, and how much of his own time Carl had spent helping her, she says she was overwhelmed by a sense of being really important to Carl.
“We stopped by the door to the lab,” she had told me, “and I turned to say thank you. Just to really say, you know, thank you for taking all of this time to help me. He was so close and so kind, and I had always liked him, and the next thing I knew I was kissing him. It was just that simple and that fast.”
There had been no secret courting, no sending of notes, no surreptitious meetings, no long history of flirting. According to Tricia Bellamy, it just happened. And more importantly, it hadn’t stopped. Both Tricia and Carl had been shocked at first. Neither had been planning or expecting it to happen. But once it had, she said it was like a floodgate of feelings had opened, and it seemed that things had become very intense very quickly.
The relationship hadn’t become sexual right away. That was why Tricia had never felt she was being exploited or that the relationship was in any way wrong. She was seventeen years old and involved in a relationship with a teacher fifteen years her senior, but she also knew that he loved her. In fact, it had been nearly two months before she and Carl had “made love,” as she had put it. They had been together ever since, until last week, when Carl had told Trish he could no longer see her and felt it was best if they kept their distance from one another outside of the classroom.
Of course, none of this jibed with the version of events Carl had given me earlier in the day. In fact, in his story, there were no events to corroborate: Tricia was his student, plain and simple. Her threat to report him to the principal was so far out of left field that Carl was literally in a state of shock. Furthermore, he had convinced me, and I believed him, or at least I had until I had met up with Tricia.
First impressions are often impetuous, but Tricia too had seemed truly genuine, a love-struck girl whose heart had just been broken by what she had thought was a long-term, loving relationship. She admitted she had threatened Carl in anger and that her preference was to continue their relationship. In fact, she was desperately seeking to reconcile with him. I had certainly met my share of sociopathic defendants who could concoct stories with imaginative detail, but it was difficult to believe that this girl could be dreaming up this entire history of her romance with Carl.
Which left me at this point, drinking red wine, staring out my living room window watching the sun disappear before even the five o’clock news could begin, wondering whose story had the most credibility and what the hell I could do about it.
After an hour of thinking and two glasses of wine, I was no closer to determining whose version of events I believed. I was also feeling a bit light-headed; at nearly six feet tall, I may look big, but without food, two glasses of wine most definitely can make me woozy. I decided to clarify my thoughts by heading up to Chianti, my favourite little Italian eatery, a few blocks away on Fourth Avenue.
Another advantage to living in the Kitsilano neighbourhood was its proximity to no small number of great restaurants. Fourth Avenue alone housed Italian, Indian, Vietnamese and Mexican restaurants, along with specialty stores that sold food from small countries I wasn’t sure I had heard of.
If I actually felt like cooking, which I admit was rare, I could also walk easily to Granville Island Public Market, an island oasis of fresh produce, meat, bakeries and coffee. The island is also a cultural mecca in the urban centre of Vancouver, with four live theatres, renowned quaint bookstores, galleries and craft stores, all placed under the steel girders of the Granville