she says.
My cup of coffee is now a warm brown splat in the snow. My ears are stinging from the wind. Snow is melting inside my shoes. “They should spread salt in this parking lot,” I mutter.
I let her lead me to the car like I’m a wayward child. I start to shiver uncontrollably. She wrests the car keys from my hand and helps me in the passenger side.
“Here,” she says, taking off her scarf and wrapping it around my neck. It’s one of those long crocheted jobs with tassels on the ends. I feel like I’m in drag.
“It doesn’t go with my outfit,” I say. Its warmth feels good against my cheek.
She starts the engine and runs the heater full blast. My shuddering subsides to an occasional spasm. Marla adjusts the seat and rear-view mirror so she can drive.
“You know,” I say, “this could be construed as a carjacking.”
“If it were a carjacking, I’d have left you in a snowbank.” She gets out and grabs the brush and ice scraper from the back seat, casting a warning glance my way as she does. “Don’t get any ideas about slipping behind the driver’s seat while I’m out there.”
She slams the door shut and begins cleaning snow off the windshield. I lean back and close my eyes—only for a minute, I tell myself. The sound of chipping ice blends into a gauzy background of white noise. As sleep rushes in to ambush me, the book-jacket picture of Jack Livingston comes alive in my head. I see him sitting with Helen at our old dining-room table, pleasantly pissed, seducing her right in front of me with tales of his randy adventures in Europe. And then I look again and realize that it’s not Helen he’s talking to but Severn.
Chapter 6
I returned to the bookshop on Richmond Street the Saturday after Farley Mowat’s visit to my history class. I was hoping to find Helen behind the counter, but no such luck. A man who could have passed for the sinister schoolmaster in a Dickens novel was presiding over the till. His greying beetle brows cast a perpetual shadow over his eyes. He seemed to be all bone and sinew, angular in appearance and acute in demeanour. I learned a little later that he was Helen’s father, Walter Donnelly, the man whose name was so meticulously painted in the bottom corner of the storefront window, above the word “Proprietor.”
I’d just bought Helen a bouquet of spring flowers, a thank-you for working her charms on Uncle Farley. Walter peered over his half-lens glasses at me as I entered. It was a look designed to turn a man to stone. I know now that it’s an instinct all fathers possess: the ability to smell out men who intend to pursue their daughters. Not that the bouquet didn’t flag me as a pretty obvious threat. I momentarily considered turning tail and heading back out to the street, but I elected instead to drift casually to the shelves in the back and pretend I was just another weekend shopper passing through on his way to meet his sweetie at a café up the block.
It was one of those quirky little shops with uneven wooden floors and a pressed-tin ceiling. A calligraphy sign warned “Watch Your Step” where more than a few patrons had likely failed to do so. As I peeked around the bookcase that held the titles on philosophy, art, and architecture, I saw a faded floral-print curtain drawn across the opening to a closet that contained a narrow set of stairs. They led sharply upward, almost like a ladder. It looked like a portal to the Land of Narnia.
Will was giving a woman in a red vinyl raincoat who’d picked up Don Quixote an unsolicited lesson on the life of its author. After working the full measure of his charm and convincing her to add The Canterbury Tales to her purchases, he made his way over to me.
“Let me guess,” he said, seeing the flowers. “For Helen.”
“I wanted to thank her for coercing Farley,” I said.
“Ah. Yes, well . . .”
“Is she around?” I asked, trying not to show my nerves.
Will gestured towards the ceiling. “She’s in her writing garret.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The little room upstairs,” he explained. “Where once she plumbed the depths of her creative soul. Not that she’s been using it for literary pursuits lately.”
As if on cue, I heard the sound of footsteps from inside the closet. Surprisingly heavy steps. A man with a precisely clipped beard and shiny pate emerged from behind the curtain. I immediately sensed that he fancied himself a Sean Connery clone. His face was flushed, but somehow I doubted that was simply from climbing down the stairs. He leaned back into the closet and looked up the staircase.
“Well, are you coming?” he called.
In an imitation of gallantry, he held back the curtain and offered his hand to Helen as she descended the stairs. She paused on the last step to polish the top of his head with her sleeve.
“I can see myself,” she exclaimed, pretending to admire her reflection. “Except that the lumps on your head make my face look fat.”
“Very funny,” the man said, accepting the dig with a lover’s forbearance.
“Hello, Helen,” I say.
Her smile snagged when she saw me standing there with the bouquet. She quickly recovered her grace, though, sliding her hand down her middle-aged boyfriend’s arm before gliding towards me.
“I just wanted to thank you,” I said. The flowers were an embarrassment to me now, a badge of gullibility.
“How sweet,” she said, seeing the hurt in my eyes but choosing not to acknowledge it to spare me further humiliation. I felt like a peevish first-grader pining for the attentions of his teacher.
She made her balding Romeo wait while she found a vase for the flowers. He squinted at me, sizing me up, wondering just what I was thanking Helen for. I could tell that he didn’t appreciate my interruption. He picked out a book from a nearby shelf and started flipping through it to show me I wasn’t worth his interest any more.
When Helen returned, she thanked me again for the flowers and apologized for not being able to stay to chat. I tried to sound magnanimous, saying I understood. She took her boyfriend by the arm and said goodbye, tossing me one last rueful glance as she stepped to the front of the shop.
Will had apparently seen my crushed look on the faces of other men before. “He’s a biology prof at Western,” he explained. “Divorced and fighting a mid-life crisis.”
“That’s his sports car parked out front, I take it.”
Will nodded. “He’s lasted longer than most. This is his second week.”
Helen slid behind the front counter and gave her father a goodbye peck on the cheek. Walter’s scowl didn’t soften. His Medusa gaze bore down on Helen’s middle-aged beau.
“Why do you suppose daughters so enjoy tormenting their fathers?” Will asked me.
Helen was rubbing up against her biology prof like a purring kitten now, trying to convince him to let her drive his car. I could tell it was eating away at Walter to watch her fondle a man who was almost as old as he was. On the way out the door, Helen rooted in her boyfriend’s pants pockets for the car keys. Old baldy looked annoyed, but I knew her groping was probably giving him a hard-on.
Will glanced at his watch. “And so ends Helen’s workday,” he said wryly. “Early as usual.” He picked up the book that her boyfriend had tossed on a display table and returned it to its proper place. His fingers trailed gently along the covers of the other books on the shelf. “Someday all this is supposed to be hers. Walter wants to pass the shop to another Donnelly, and she’s all he has.” A crooked smile crinkled his lips. “I doubt she knows even half of what we have on the shelves.”
I realized then that we were both failed suitors—in my case for Helen’s affection, in Will’s case for Walter’s favour. His was a hopeless love for books, mine for an errant woman.
“She’s