Pestilence

Danger was on its way, wafting in on an Asian breeze.

But no alarm bells were ringing yet in midtown Toronto, where springtime had arrived with a flourish, painting the dreary grey city with a vivid splash of colours. People were beginning to smile spontaneously again; you could almost hear the energy buzzing around town.

Alix sat in her small green garden with her first coffee of the day. Six a.m. on Saturday and the neighbourhood was still asleep. Even Greg Malone had not yet started his relentless assault on his front lawn. The kids thankfully were still in bed, although Joe couldn’t be counted on to stay there much longer. Tannis on the other hand wouldn’t lift her head off the pillow until noon if she could get away with it.

How Alix wished she could sleep like that. She blamed hot flashes and prickly skin for her miserable, restless nights, with an occasional extra dose of downright misery. But hey—who could complain on this bright spring Saturday? And in a couple of weeks she’d be at the cottage where she always slept like a dream. She yawned and stretched, smiling at the thought.

The screen door burst open, and Joe stumbled out to sit on her knee, his number one comfort zone. Still half asleep, tousle-haired and bleary-eyed, he was at his most cuddly. But Alix knew that in a couple of minutes he would forsake her lap for the energetic, upbeat morning world of an eight-year-old boy.

Mu-u-um. He looked at her plaintively. "Do I have to go to baseball today?"

Joey, I thought you liked baseball. In fact you begged me to sign you up for it.

I know, but that was before...

Before what?

Before I found out I wasn’t any good.

Alix wrapped him in a warm hug and ruffled his curly black hair. "Oh honey, nobody is good at something when they’re just starting out."

Kiefer Anderson is.

Oh. Kiefer Anderson. He was that aggressive little brat who constantly pushed his way to the front and whined till he got what he wanted. And his parents were worse. They must be driving the coach crazy. But she had a remedy for that.

You know what, Joe? Maybe Uncle Andrew could take you today.

Beloved brother Andrew. Since Tom had died, he’d assumed the male role in her household, even though he had more than enough on his hands already as a busy GP and part-time father of two high-maintenance daughters. Joe and Tannis loved him devotedly, and Alix daily gave thanks to whatever gods there were for his existence.

"Yes!" Joe grinned happily and climbed off her lap, heading towards the Saturday morning TV cartoons. Alix tasted her coffee. Stone cold. Time for another cup while she called her brother.

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Andrew showed up at ten, wearing a Blue Jays T-shirt and baseball cap. Good try, said Alix. But Joey likes the Red Sox.

Doesn’t matter, he replied with a grin. At least I look like I’m interested in baseball. Which I’m not, in case you’ve forgotten.

Andrew never seemed to be in a bad mood—unlike her own not-so-sweet self, Alix thought ruefully. She loved his easy-going nature, his warmth and his wicked sense of humour. Not to mention his relative lack of ego, which seemed almost non-existent compared to most of the men she knew. She worried about him though. He was a devout workaholic whose upbeat personality and dedicated professionalism made him Toronto’s doctor of choice. According to his hard-pressed assistant Tammy, he almost never turned down anybody who needed help, no matter what the time of day—or night. It took me months to talk him into closing his office around dinnertime, she told Alix wearily. But trust me, anytime he hears the word ‘emergency,’ he’s back like a shot.

Although he also volunteered in emergency at the local hospital several times a week, somehow he always found time for his family, not only his two daughters, but also his mother and Alix. She could never understand why Elizabeth had left him. Except of course, if you intelligently concluded that she was an absolute bitch.

By the way, said Andrew as he and Joe headed out the door. Are you on for dinner at Eleanor’s tomorrow? They often called their mother by her first name, and their children had been instructed to do likewise, since Eleanor much preferred it that way. Granny is an absolutely atrocious word, she told them, "and Nana makes me think of that wretched dog in Peter Pan. The kids tended to conveniently forget her edict, however. As Tannis put it: I’m not going to call her Eleanor. She’s an old lady."

Alix sighed. Yes, we’ll be there. Wearing our finery and using our best table manners. They both laughed. When her family came for a meal, Eleanor insisted they all sit at her elegant mahogany dining table, even if she was only serving sandwiches at lunch. Every piece of her fine china and silver would be on display, as would Maria, her long-suffering housekeeper, who never seemed to have any free time. The kids could handle it now that they were eight and twelve, but meals when they were younger had been sheer unadulterated misery. Still, Alix chastised herself, her mother was nearing eighty and would not be around forever. Of course, Eleanor being Eleanor, she would not die until she was good and ready, and it was anybody’s guess when she would make that decision.

She can’t help it, you know. Andrew grinned, as he and Joe headed out the door. She’s a nineteenth-century relic.

Alix laughed and waved goodbye to her son and brother, unaware that at that precise moment a plane was landing in New York, filled with passengers exhausted by their long journey west. Some of them were complaining that they had not been able to sleep at all, thanks to a passenger who coughed violently throughout the whole horrible trip.

Chapter Two

TANNIS DIDN’T APPEAR until after eleven, wearing one of Tom’s old Toronto Maple Leaf T-shirts instead of pajamas. Her face was rosy with sleep and her dark curly hair looked as if it hadn’t seen a hairbrush for weeks. Alix smiled fondly at her daughter. She was probably going to be gorgeous in a few years, but she had yet to grow into the Slavic features she’d inherited from her father. At twelve, she was in the first flush of an adolescence marked by mood swings and unpredictable behaviour. What are you up to today? she inquired as Tannis slumped in front of the television watching cartoons designed for the under-fives.

Nothing much.

Well then, would you like to come with me? I’m going to the mall to get a few things, and we could look for some summer clothes for you and have lunch there, maybe even at McDonald’s. A serious bribe. Don’t forget, in a couple of weeks we’ll be going to the cottage, and I bet you’d like some new shorts.

No thanks. Tannis yawned and scratched. I like my old shorts. If they don’t fit I’ll just wear my bathing suit all the time. Then in one of her rapid mood changes she smiled radiantly at her mother. It’s so cool that it’s almost cottage time. I can’t wait to get there, Mum.

The cottage was their haven. It actually belonged to Eleanor, who had owned it ever since she and her husband, Fred, bought it in the late fifties. Back then it had been a modest wooden cabin on a small island on one of the beautiful lakes north of Toronto. Now that humble cabin had grown into a large, attractive seven-bedroom home that was both elegant and luxurious, while still managing to retain a cottage flavour. It owed its considerable charm to Eleanor, a woman of impeccable taste. AIix was convinced that if her mother had been born twenty years later, when women were encouraged to learn professions and get jobs, she’d have become an interior designer. Tamarack, as they called the cottage, was the outlet for her frustrated talent. She wasn’t able to do more than tinker with her imposing city home, since Fred wanted it to retain its largely conventional upper-middle-class appearance and forbade wholesale change. He didn’t care what she did at the cottage though, so it blossomed into something imaginative and comfortable with giant windows overlooking breathtaking views, large open spaces, and a magnificent cathedral ceiling. Eleanor also ensured that it was equipped with every practical comfort imaginable. I didn’t buy a cottage so I could do dishes all day, she said as she had the newest model of dishwasher installed. Too right, Alix agreed silently. That attitude also explained why her mother handpicked sweet-tempered Maria to be her housekeeper and persuaded her to work twenty-four/seven.

All credit to her mother though for creating a world of beauty and repose. And the island itself was magical. While it wasn’t huge, no more than a mile in circumference, it was large enough to have a varied landscape covered with bush, cedar, pine and spruce, punctuated by grassy glens. At the rocky southern end the land fell away to deep, dark water where it was safe to jump and dive. The rest of the island was dotted with small sandy coves where the water was shallow and perfect for paddling. Graceful tamaracks, which gave the cottage its name, lined the shore. The house itself faced west of course: Eleanor had seen to that. Sunsets on the lake were glorious and the family custom was to toast each one from the comfort of their Muskoka chairs on the spacious cedar deck. When Alix counted her blessings she gave special thanks for Fred’s genius in buying an entire island back when things like that were more or less affordable. They weren’t bothered by noisy neighbours or even many Sea-doos, and while they had something of a commute from the mainland—fifteen minutes by motorboat and double that by canoe— they all agreed the privacy they enjoyed more than compensated for it.

They went every year, for shorter visits when Tom was alive, since he couldn’t bear to spend more than a week with Eleanor, but now for six weeks, the length of Alix’s holidays. Opening up is always exciting. She smiled at Tannis. Who knows what might have happened over the winter? Although if anything disastrous had taken place, they would have heard from Henry Martin, the local fellow who took care of the property. Even so, the long weekend they spent opening up could be tricky since everyone became involved, including Eleanor of course. All well and good if the sun shone but a nightmare if it rained, as was often the case. Three days cooped up inside, even in such a large space, meant everyone invariably became short-tempered and quarrelsome. Also, of course, hardly any of the necessary outside work got done. Alix often thought that it was just as well they shut the cottage for the season right after Thanksgiving. She was pretty sure her family wouldn’t cope well with the enforced togetherness imposed by winter.

Nothing will’ve happened, Mum. Tannis yawned again. I think I’ll go and have a shower.

You do that. One sign her daughter was moving into adolescence was the recent increase in shower activity, a welcome change for the better. She looked at her watch. Time for a few more precious minutes in the garden and a quick shower before heading to the mall. What a pain, she thought as she settled back in her favourite garden chair—a gorgeous day about to be wasted in a shopping centre. No point in complaining though. She only had the weekends for chores, like most working parents. Sometimes the idea of being a stay-at-home mother seemed immensely alluring, even if it meant living in poverty. To lie in the sun with nothing more to do than watch the blue jays battling the sparrows at the birdfeeder seemed the epitome of bliss. Of course she knew that wasn’t really what happened when you stayed at home—quite the reverse, according to her friends who had chosen that life. Knowing herself and her need for structure and organization, she’d probably find it harder than her work as a marketing consultant.

Yoo hoo. Anybody home? Bella, her next-door neighbor, stood on the other side of the cedar hedge.

Hi, Bella. How are things?

Not bad, I guess. What are you up to today?

Nothing much, really. I have to go to the mall to get some things for the cottage. We open up in a couple of weeks.

Do you want company? I’ve got a shopping list a yard long.

Sure. That would be great. Her neighbour was one of her best friends and favourite people. Dark-haired, plump and energetic, Bella ran her household like a benevolent dictator. Her twin boys, Kyle and Kevin, Joe’s best friends, were equally mischievous and irresistible. Her husband, Murray, a successful stockbroker, was no doubt authoritative in his business world, but putty in his wife’s capable hands—at least when he was around, which wasn’t often. Bella sometimes cried on her shoulder about that.

Okay, meet you outside—when? Half an hour?

Perfect. Alix smiled. She’d have more fun with Bella along, that was for sure. Her chatty neighbour had all the local gossip and was a great raconteur. Over a cup of coffee at Starbucks she’d set Alix straight on all the need-to-know news from around town. Suddenly Saturday didn’t look that dreary after all.

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Sunday evening rolled around all too quickly. Dinner at Eleanor’s was always a trial, thanks to her tiresome insistence on formality. Conversation usually seemed stilted and unnatural, partly because Tannis and Joe spoke only when spoken to, Eleanor’s hard-and-fast dinner rule. Andrew’s daughters, Alice and Emma, were with their mother in Ottawa, so they were lucky enough to be spared the ordeal most of the time.

Eleanor led off the proceedings. Andrew, dear, would you please say grace?

Grace, Tannis muttered to Joe, and they both snickered until they were silenced by their grandmother’s glare.

Eleanor saw herself as an aristocrat. Her British father, Sir John Stevenson, had made gazillions of pounds in the food industry, enabling his family to live in a large home in the English countryside and his children to attend the very best schools. But it wasn’t as if he had been serious royalty or anything remotely like it. He’d been knighted by King George VI for his services to the country—code for his services to the Conservative Party, where he had worked as a bagman for years. Before that he had been plain old Jack Stevens, son of a working-class couple from Manchester. As a wealthy industrialist he cleverly cemented his aristo-status by marrying an upper-middle-class woman, Mary Eversleigh, who ensured that their children, Eleanor and Phillip, were raised with all the frills and furbelows of the British upper class. She also saw to it that Jack Stevens was transformed into John Stevenson, and worked tirelessly to achieve an all-important knighthood for them both.

Eleanor’s mistake, if you could call it that, lay in falling in love with, and then marrying, a very ordinary middle-class Canadian, Fred Davies. She met him at a cocktail party when she was in Toronto visiting a university friend. Fred was a waiter, not a guest, at the party, an engineering student who took odd jobs to pay his way through school. Eleanor, remarkably pretty with clouds of auburn hair, large green eyes and dimples, was in the market for a mate. Fred, six foot tall with unruly dark hair and laughing brown eyes, was dangerously attractive—not handsome exactly, but loaded with sex appeal and highly alluring to Eleanor. They connected like magnets. Eleanor wanted to marry him, and she always got her way. Fortunately, since her parents were appalled at the downward direction their beloved only daughter had taken, Fred proved to be both likeable and teachable. Not long after their marriage, Sir Jack launched his first Canadian store in Toronto and made Fred the managing director. Soon the happy couple was able to buy a house in one of Toronto’s most prestigious neighbourhoods, and their successful life together was launched. They rubbed along very well together most of the time: Eleanor remained the aristocrat, and Fred the homegrown boy, and the combination worked for both of them. When Fred died of a heart attack in 1995, Eleanor was devastated.

Joseph, sit up straight, dear, Eleanor admonished. And Tannis, keep your elbows off the table.

Tannis, Tannis, if you’re able, keep your elbows off the table. This is not a horse’s stable, Andrew chanted. The children giggled and Eleanor frowned.

It’s all very well to joke about it, Andrew, she said with a sniff, but table manners these days are absolutely atrocious. I understand some people don’t even sit at a table to eat. They just lounge around the television. I find that kind of behaviour appalling.

As a big fan of good table manners, Alix tended to agree. But Eleanor really could be annoyingly domineering at times. Sometimes, she muttered to her brother, "she really reminds me of Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey."

Except that Maggie Smith could be funny, Andrew whispered back.

They both laughed, eliciting a disapproving look from their mother, who quickly regained control of the conversation. We’re leaving for the cottage around noon on Friday, I presume? The May long weekend was only five short days away.

I’ll have to see if I can get off work early, Alix replied. What about you, Andy?

Yup, I’ve booked the whole day off, believe it or not. The girls are coming on Thursday, and I want to spend as much time with them as possible. Andrew really didn’t see much of his beloved daughters, who had lived in Ottawa with their mother since he and Elizabeth split five years earlier. So far though, they had not divorced—strangely, in Alix’s view, since they had very little in common. Elizabeth was an ambitious double-type-A, who placed a high value on success and money. Andrew was, well, Andrew—hardworking, good-natured and completely unmaterialistic. While they lived together, Elizabeth spent her days in a state of high exasperation over his laid-back attitude, his general sloppiness and his dislike of socializing, especially with the rich and powerful. For his part, Andrew loved her blindly and devotedly and was shattered when she decided to accept a job in Ottawa, especially when his precious daughters chose to go with her. Not that I’ve been a perfect father or anything, he said miserably to Alix. I guess I should have spent more time at home when they were growing up. Possibly he was right, but that didn’t excuse Elizabeth, who had treated him with cold indifference from the moment she decided she wanted to leave the marriage. Alix was pretty sure she had poisoned the girls against him during the separation process: how else to explain their determination to move with her to Ottawa and to see their father as little as possible, when he had always treated them lovingly? But Andrew still seemed to harbour the illusion that they could become a family again and staunchly resisted the idea of divorce. I still love her, he told his sister. She’s always been the only girl for me.

When the topic arose—which it did less and less frequently—Alix had to remind herself that, much as she disliked her sister-in-law now, she’d felt differently about her when they first met. Elizabeth at twenty had been charming, pretty and quick-witted, brimming over with energy and ideas. Her dark side didn’t appear till later, when her single-mindedness gradually surfaced and took over. But Andrew still seemed to see her as she had been, not as she was.

Now his daughters were—probably reluctantly—showing up for the long weekend, meaning Alix would be catering for eight. Not a big problem, as she was the first to acknowledge, since everyone helped out, especially Maria, and the cottage was designed for easy living, with a modern kitchen and bathrooms and a large living space that was easy to clean. The five bedrooms in the main house were for family, while guests stayed in a comfortable two-bedroom bunkie nearby. It really was a perfect set-up.

She prayed the weather would behave. May was often rainy and cold, the sign of a good summer to come according to sailors. But this year she yearned for the sun and for time just lying on the large rocks by the water, soaking in the glorious heat and being, for a short time at least, entirely mindless. The weekend’s going to be great, she said, smiling around the table. According to the forecast the weather should be perfect. Now let’s get going, kids—school tomorrow, and Tannis, you have soccer in the afternoon.

As they walked out the door, Andrew invited himself over for a nightcap. Usually this meant he had something he wanted to talk about. Back at home, Alix shooed the children upstairs, promising to spend time with them once they were in their pajamas with their faces washed and teeth brushed. Joe still liked a bedtime story, currently Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which made him laugh uproariously. Tannis occasionally wanted to chat but sadly less now as she began morphing into a teenager. Alix found it hard to believe she’d be thirteen in less than a year, when only a minute ago she was a curly-headed toddler. But she had to admit her baby girl was now showing all the signs of puberty—and that probably meant her mother better start growing a thicker skin.

Andrew poured himself a single malt from the stash in the liquor cabinet and lay back on the couch, his feet on the coffee table. He looked exhausted, his normally cheerful face weary and drawn. You look terrible, said Alix. What’s happened?

Oh, just a really bad week. I lost a couple of patients, not a great thing for a doctor. He smiled at her ruefully.

Tell me about it.

Well, you know, one of them’s been my patient for about ten years, a nice guy in his early seventies. He came to see me a couple of weeks ago saying he’d been feeling tired and shaky for a couple of months, and it was beginning to worry him. He said what clinched it was he’d been writing a cheque the other day and suddenly couldn’t hold on to the pen.

What would that mean?

Probably something neurological, or at least that was my thinking. I ran a couple of simple tests on him, and they seemed to confirm that diagnosis. So I started the usual procedures for checking him out, primarily blood tests and a CAT scan. I tried to rush the scan, but, you know, the hospitals are booked up to their eyeballs.

So what happened?

He had a major stroke a couple of days later and died in hospital. I can’t help thinking that if I’d been a bit more on the ball I would have sent him there right away. He took a slug of whisky. But there you go. Then a couple of days later I was doing a shift in Emergency when a couple of teenagers were brought in. Two young guys, under the influence, crashed the car—happens far too often. One was dead on arrival, but the other one had a chance. We worked on him like maniacs for hours, but lost him in the end.

Oh, Andy, I’m so sorry.

Yeah, I know, thanks, Sis. He drained his glass. Sometimes I wonder why in hell I ever decided to be a doctor. I can’t stand it when I don’t fix people.

And then I hope you realize that you’re doing a whole lot of good to a whole lot of people. You’re a terrific doctor—your patients are lucky to have you.

The tough thing is that you want everyone to get better. That’s not how it works, though. Unfortunately. Andrew grimaced and stood up.

Just then Joe called from upstairs. I’m waiting, Mummy. Hurry up. Alix kissed her brother goodbye. Well, the good news is that in a couple of days we’ll be at the cottage having a beer down by the rocks, and you’ll feel tons better. I’m going to pray for sunshine and blistering heat.

Back in New York, the cougher had booked into a large Manhattan hotel, where he sneezed explosively as he checked in, splattering phlegm across the counter and into the face of the helpful receptionist.

Chapter Three: Bella

BELLA LOVED HAVING Alix as a next-door neighbor. She was intelligent, interesting and always good for a laugh. Bella didn’t admit it except to herself, but she didn’t have all that many friends. People seemed put off by her chattiness and genuine interest in their lives. Once she heard Carol Martin whisper to Jennifer Cooper that she was a real busybody. That hurt. Maybe she was to them, but she didn’t look on it that way. She just liked people and wanted to know all about them.

She partly blamed it on being Italian. Well, Canadian with Italian parents. When she was in Little Italy,