“So I’d love to hear about the research you want me to do,” I said.
“Yes, of course.” Molly cleared her face of Hannah-related emotions, pulled a pen and pad from her purse, and told me that for years, she’d wanted to write an illustrated history of Rose Park for children, in a picture book format, with a puzzle on each page. “The Rose Park Puzzle Book, I’d call it.” She grinned. “Catchy title, eh?” On the pad, she sketched an outline of an open book. “Every double-page spread would feature a different Rose Park landmark.” She drew a house shape inside the book frame, added a few gables and a chimney and a wide front porch. “And alongside each illustration would be text that gives a history of the site and provides a clue or marker to a hidden feature in the picture.”
I imagined her sketch come to life in full watercolour splendour, with every detail of the house realized, a path painted in, trees all around, rose bushes in bloom. I could almost hear a leaf-blower roaring. I said, “I like the concept, but are there enough picturesque landmarks with interesting stories in Rose Park to make a book?”
“When you take into account that each site will take up four pages — two to introduce the puzzle and two to reveal the answer — the nine sites I’ve picked should fill a picture book just fine. The problem is that I haven’t had a chance to study them and find a feature at each that’s hidden in plain sight. That’s where you come in.”
Next to us, the orange coverall guys stood up, scraped their chairs on the floor, tossed their garbage into the bin with basketball-type shots, made sports announcer commentary to match, and walked out. In the ensuing quiet, I said, “Could you give me an example of what a hidden in plain sight feature might be?”
She flipped the page over on the pad, started to draw on a clean sheet. “One landmark I want to use is the Field Street footbridge that spans the east ravine. Do you know it?”
“Vaguely.” I wasn’t a keen ravine-goer, never had been.
In a few quick motions, she had delineated a wooden bridge arched over a tree-lined chasm. “It could be something small.” Her pen hovered over the drawing. “Maybe a workman carved his initials in the bridge supports years ago.” Squiggles appeared on her drawing to indicate initials. “Or it could be something bigger. Like that on a clear day, you can see the harbour from a certain spot on the bridge.” More squiggles suggested a far-off lake.
I closed my mouth, which had hung open while she’d drawn and talked, while I’d moved outside myself into a world of her creation. I won’t claim a sparkle lit up my eyes, but a spot of colour might have come into my cheeks. “This sounds like it could be fun,” I said. If I could remember what fun felt like.
“But do you think you can find me the nine hidden features in two weeks? I promised my editor I’d have a complete manuscript to her, including illustrations, by September, and I don’t want to miss the deadline and give her an excuse to cancel the project, seeing as she only agreed to it in a weak moment when the first book of my twin detective series did so well. Though considering I’m behind on the new twin book, and Larry and I are leaving on Monday for a holiday in Nova Scotia, I’ll still have to work like a madwoman when I return to finish everything on time.”
“Two weeks should be fine.” The guy in the baseball cap pushed a trolley full of bagels by us, and I caught an appetizing whiff of roasted rosemary and yeast. “I might even have time to come in here every day and keep your seat warm.”
We discussed money next. I said I’d do the work for free, and she offered to pay me a high-sounding figure she said was a standard researcher’s hourly wage. When we’d both said, “No, I insist,” four or five times, I accepted her offer and we made a date to meet later that afternoon at her house for a hand-over of the puzzle book file. We parted outside Bagel Haven, she for a hair appointment at a nearby salon, I for the return bike ride home to bid my parents goodbye — they were going to England for one of my father’s legal conferences.
Dad was standing on the porch, surrounded by luggage, when I wheeled into the driveway on my bike. “You all set?” I said.
He peered in my direction, appeared to recognize me. “Just about. The airport limousine should arrive any minute. Your mother’s inside, on the phone.”
From across the street and down a bit came the sound of childish voices, accompanied by kid commotion in front of a large white house halfway down the block.
“Blithe, you’re here!” Mom emerged in her travel outfit of coiffed hair, gold jewellery, pantsuit, and pumps. “And we’re off. I hope you won’t be lonely with us gone.”
Lonely? More like grateful my brooding sessions would be uninterrupted. “I’ll be fine. Have a good trip.”
“Shall I give your love to Noel?”
I was about to say no, I didn’t think so, but she wouldn’t have heard, was waving a cheery hello to a fortyish blond woman coming down the sidewalk toward us. The woman’s small son preceded her on a tricycle. Twenty paces back, on foot, walked an older girl with long frizzy hair, reading a book.
“Who’s that?” Dad whispered.
Mom whispered back. “Jane Whitney, your partner’s wife. From down the street.” It was the woman Kerry had spoken about at Mom’s party, the museum curator with the unpopular daughter. She came within speaking distance, stopped, made cordial small talk to my parents about their imminent departure, and introduced us to her children. Joshua, the boy, yelled hi, then careened up and down the sidewalk on his tricycle making “vroom” sounds. The girl, Alexandra, stayed back, sat on a low stone wall in front of the house next door, kept reading, and raised a limp hand in a minimal greeting when asked to say hello.
“No school today?” Mom said.
“Josh only goes to half-day kindergarten,” Jane said. “And I sometimes take a morning off with him.” No explanation given for the daughter’s presence on the street at ten o’clock on a Friday. Jane looked back at Alexandra and a ripple of something —worry? sadness?— crossed her features. Would she say more? No. Only, “Joshua, stay on the sidewalk. A car’s coming.” And to my parents, “Is that your limo?” In the flurry of baggage loading and bon voyaging that followed, Jane and her children made their escape.
Halfway into the car, Mom said to me, “Don’t leave Tup alone too much. He’ll start chewing the furniture if he feels neglected.”
“I’ll bring him over to my place as soon as you drive away.”
She handed out a few more reminders about the gardener and garbage collection, Dad ahemed, and they left. I waved until they were out of sight, wheeled my bike up the driveway to the coach house, and caught a glimpse, through a gap in the cedar hedge, of the straight back ofJane’s daughter, still walking fifteen paces behind her mother, still intent, to the exclusion of the world around her, on her book.
On the first day of school in my grade twelve year, I was reading a book, under a tree, at lunchtime, when Hannah showed up, plunked herself down on the grass, and stuck with me for the next two years. Why, I never quite understood.
My first guess was that she might be using me to get to Noel, but he was away at Harvard and rarely came home, and the few times I mentioned his name, she showed no interest, asked no questions. She asked a lot about Northside High, though. Which teachers were the biggest pushovers, she wanted to know, which the easiest to fool? Who gave the least homework? What school rules had to be followed and which could be bent? How could she find out about the darkroom? Did I have any idea why the student council social director, the very blonde Kathleen Caswell, was giving her hostile looks? And what was the story on Peter Matheson, who drove the green BMW convertible? He’d asked Hannah out already.
I didn’t run with the likes of Kathleen Caswell or Peter Matheson, but I’d observed my peers in action