By the Time You Read This

4

“DO THOSE SHOES HURT?”

Kelly Cardinal was sitting at the dining-room table, wrapping a framed photograph of her mother in bubble wrap. She wanted to take one to the funeral home to place beside the casket.

Cardinal sat down in the chair opposite. Several days had passed, but he was still stunned, unable to take the world in. His daughter’s words hadn’t organized themselves into anything he could decipher. He had to ask her to repeat herself.

“Those shoes you’re wearing,” she said. “They look brand new. Are they pinching your feet?”

“A little. I’ve only worn them once—to Dad’s funeral.”

“That was two years ago.”

“Oh, I love that picture.”

Cardinal reached for the portrait of Catherine in working mode. Dressed in a yellow anorak, her hair wild with rain, she was burdened with two cameras—one round her neck, the other slung over her shoulder. She was looking exasperated. Cardinal remembered snapping the photo with the little point-and-shoot that remained the only photographic apparatus he had ever mastered. Catherine had indeed been exasperated with him, first because she was trying to work, and second because she knew what the rain was doing to her beautiful hair and didn’t want to be photographed. In dry weather her hair fell in soft cascades to her shoulders; when it was raining it went wild and frizzy, which pricked her vanity. But Cardinal loved her hair wild.

“For a photographer, she sure hated getting her picture taken,” he said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t use it. She looks a little annoyed.”

“No, no. Please. That’s Catherine doing what she loved.”

Cardinal had at first resisted the idea of having a photograph; it had struck him as undignified, to say nothing of the fact that the sight of Catherine’s face tore his heart open.

But Catherine thought in photographs. Come into a room when she was working and before you could open your mouth she had taken your picture. It was as if the camera were a protective mechanism that had evolved over the years solely to provide a defence for elusive, breakable people like her. She wasn’t a snob about photographs, either. She could be as ecstatic over a lucky snap of a street scene as over a series of images she had struggled with for months.

Kelly put the wrapped picture into her bag. “Go and change your shoes. You don’t want to be standing around in shoes that don’t fit.”

“They fit,” Cardinal said. “They’re just not broken-in yet.”

“Go on, Dad.”

Cardinal went into the bedroom and opened the closet. He tried not to look at the half of it that contained Catherine’s clothes, but he couldn’t help himself. She mostly wore jeans and T-shirts or sweaters. She was the kind of woman, even approaching fifty, who still looked good in jeans and T-shirts. But there were small black dresses, some silky blouses, a camisole or two, mostly in the greys and blacks she had always preferred. “My governess colours,” she called them.

Cardinal pulled out the black shoes he wore every day and set about polishing them. The doorbell rang, and he heard Kelly thanking a neighbour who had brought food and condolences.

When she came into the bedroom, Cardinal was embarrassed to realize he was kneeling on the floor in front of the closet, shoe brush in hand, motionless as a victim of Pompeii.

“We’re going to have to leave pretty soon,” Kelly said. “We have an hour to ourselves there before people start arriving.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shoes, Dad. Shoes.”

“Right.”

Kelly sat on the edge of the bed behind him as Cardinal started brushing. He could see her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. She had his eyes, people always told him. But she had Catherine’s mouth, with tiny parentheses at the corners that grew when she smiled. And she would have Catherine’s hair too, if she let it grow out from the rather severe bob of the moment, with its single streak of mauve. She was more impatient than her mother, seemed to expect more from other people, who were always disappointing her, but perhaps that was just a matter of being young. She could be a harsh judge of herself, too, often to the point of tears, and not so long ago she had been a harsh judge of her father. But she had relented the last time Catherine had been admitted to hospital, and they had been getting along pretty well since then.

“It’s bad enough for me,” Kelly said, “but I really don’t understand how Mom could do this to you. All those years you stood by her when she was such a loony.”

“She was a lot more than that, Kelly.”

“I know, but all you had to go through! Looking after me—raising a little kid practically by yourself. And all the stuff you put up with from her. I remember one time—back when we were living in Toronto—you’d been building this really complicated cabinet, full of drawers and little doors. I think you’d been working on it for like a year or something, and one day you come home and she’s smashed it to pieces so she could burn it! She was on some trip about fire and creative destruction and some manic rap that made no sense at all, and she destroyed this thing you were creating with such devotion. How do you forgive something like that?”

Cardinal was silent for a time. Finally he turned to look at his daughter. “Catherine never did anything I didn’t forgive.”

“That’s because of who you are, not because of what she was. How could she not realize how lucky she was? How could she just throw it all away?”

Kelly was crying now. Cardinal touched her shoulder and she leaned against him, hot tears soaking through his shirt the way her mother’s had so often done.

“She was in pain,” Cardinal said. “She was suffering in a way no one could reach. That’s what you have to remember. Difficult as she could be sometimes to live with, she’s the one who suffered the most. No one hated her disease more than she did.

“And if you think she wasn’t grateful to be loved, you’re wrong, Kelly. If there was one phrase she used more than any other, it was ‘I’m so lucky.’ She said it all the time. We’d just be having dinner or something and she’d touch my hand and say, ‘I’m so lucky.’ She used to say it about you, too. She felt terrible that she missed so much of your growing up. She did everything she could to fight this disease and in the end it just beat her, that’s all. Your mother had tremendous courage—and loyalty—to last as long as she did.”

“God,” Kelly said. She sounded like she had a cold now, nose all stuffed up. “I wish I was half as compassionate as you. Now I’ve gone and ruined your shirt.”

“I wasn’t going to wear this one anyway.”

He handed her a box of Kleenex and she plucked out a handful.

“I gotta go wash my face,” she said. “I look like Medea.”

Cardinal wasn’t sure who Medea was. Nor was he at all sure about the comforting things he had just told his daughter. What do I know about anything? he thought. I didn’t even see this coming. I’m worse than the mayor. Nearly thirty years together, and I don’t see that the woman I love is on the verge of killing herself?

Prompted by that very question, Cardinal had the previous day driven into town to talk to Catherine’s psychiatrist.

He had met Frederick Bell a couple of times during Catherine’s last stay in hospital. They had not talked long enough for Cardinal to form much more than an impression of intelligence and competence. But Catherine had been delighted to discover him because, unlike most psychiatrists, Bell was a talk therapist as well as a prescriber of drugs. He was also a specialist in depression who had written books on the subject.

His office was in his house, an Edwardian monstrosity of red brick located on Randall Street, just behind the cathedral. Previous owners included a member of Parliament and a man who went on to become a minor media baron. With its turrets and gingerbread, not to mention its elaborate garden and wrought iron fence, the house dominated the neighbourhood.

Cardinal was met at the door by Mrs. Bell, a friendly woman in her fifties, who was on her way out. When Cardinal introduced himself, she said, “Oh, Detective Cardinal, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not here in any official capacity, are you?”

“No, no. My wife was a patient of your husband’s and—”

“Oh course, of course. You’re bound to have questions.”

She went off to find her husband, and Cardinal looked around at his surroundings. Polished hardwood, oak panelling and mouldings—and that was just the waiting area. He was about to sit down in one of a row of chairs when a door swung open and Dr. Bell was there, bigger than Cardinal remembered him, well over six feet, with a curly brown beard, grey at the jawline, and a pleasant English accent that Cardinal knew was neither extremely posh nor working class.

He took Cardinal’s hand in both of his and shook it. “Detective Cardinal, let me say again, I’m so terribly sorry about Catherine. You have my deepest, deepest sympathy. Come in, come in.”

Except for a vast desk and the lack of a television, they might have been in somone’s living room. Bookshelves, crammed to the ceiling with medical and psychology texts, journals and binders, covered all four walls. Plump leather chairs, battered and far from matching, were set at conversational angles. And of course, there was a couch—a comfortable, home-style sofa, not the severe, geometric kind you saw in movies featuring psychiatrists.

At the doctor’s urging, Cardinal took a seat on the couch.

“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

“Thanks, I’m fine. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Oh, no. It’s the least I can do,” Dr. Bell said. He hitched his corduroy trousers before sitting in one of the leather chairs. He was wearing an Irish wool sweater and didn’t look at all like a medical man. A college professor, Cardinal thought, or perhaps a violinist.

“I imagine you’re asking yourself how it is you didn’t see this coming,” Bell said, expressing exactly what had been running through Cardinal’s mind.

“Yes,” Cardinal said. “That pretty much sums it up.”

“You’re not alone. Here I am, someone with whom Catherine has been discussing her emotional life in detail for nearly a year, and I didn’t see it coming.”

He sat back and shook his woolly head. Cardinal was reminded of an Airedale. After a moment the doctor said softly, “Obviously, I would have admitted her if I had.”

“But isn’t it unusual?” Cardinal said. “To have a patient who keeps coming to see you, but doesn’t mention that she’s planning to … Why would anyone continue seeing a therapist they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, confide in?”

“She did confide in me. Catherine was no stranger to suicidal thoughts. Now don’t get me wrong, she gave no indication of any imminent plan. But certainly we discussed her feelings about suicide. Part of her was horrified by the idea, part of her found it very attractive—as I’m sure you know.”

Cardinal nodded. “It’s one of the first things she told me about herself, before we were married.”

“Honesty was one of Catherine’s strengths,” Bell said. “She often said she would rather die than go through another major depression—and not just to spare herself, I hasten to add. Like most people who suffer from depression, she hated the fact that it made life so difficult for people she loved. I’d be surprised if she hadn’t expressed this to you over the years.”

“Many times,” Cardinal said, and felt something collapse inside him. The room went blurry, and the doctor handed him a box of Kleenex.

After a few moments, Dr. Bell knit his brows and leaned forward in his chair. “You couldn’t have done anything, you know. Please let me set your mind at rest on that point. It’s quite common for people who commit suicide to give no sign of their intention.”

“I know. She wasn’t giving away objects that were precious to her or anything like that.”

“No. None of the classic signs. Nor is there a previous attempt in her medical records, although there is plenty of suicidal ideation. But what we do have is an ongoing, decades-long battle with clinical depression, part of her bipolar disorder. The statistics are indisputable: people who suffer from manic depression are the most likely to kill themselves, bar none. There is no other group of people more likely. God, I almost sound like I know what I’m talking about, don’t I.” Dr. Bell held his hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “Something like this, well, it makes you feel pretty incompetent.”

“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Cardinal said. He didn’t know what he was doing here. Had he come here to listen to this rumpled Englishman talk about statistics and probabilities? Clearly, I’m the one who sees her every day, he thought. I’m the one who’s known her longest. I’m the one who didn’t pay attention. Too stupid, too selfish, too blind.

“It’s tempting to blame yourself, isn’t it?” Bell said, once again reading his thoughts.

“Merely factual in my case,” Cardinal said, and could not miss the bitterness in his own voice.

“But I’m doing the same thing,” the doctor said. “It’s the collateral damage of suicide. Anyone close to someone who commits suicide is going to feel they didn’t do enough, they weren’t sensitive enough, they should have intervened. But that doesn’t mean those feelings are accurate assessments of reality.”

The doctor said some other things that Cardinal seemed to miss. His mind was a burned-out building. A shell. How could he expect to know what was going on around him at any given moment?

As Cardinal was leaving, Bell said, “Catherine was fortunate to be married to you. And she knew it.”

The doctor’s words threatened to undo him all over again. He just managed to hold himself together, like a patient fresh off the operating table clutching together his stitched halves. Somehow he blundered his way out through the waiting room and into the gold autumn light.