“People are full of surprises,” I said.
“Aren’t they just? At any rate, the plan is to have Livia speak, then Womanswork sing, and then I thought you could talk. Did you and Dr. Warren agree about what you were going to say?”
“We thought… just some personal memories,” I said.
Rae’s brown eyes misted. “Better you than me,” she said. “I don’t think I could get through anything personal. Anyway, after you’ve finished, Naama has a story she wants to tell. Then Solange wants a few moments to talk. I hope she’ll be okay. Molly Warren is her doctor, and apparently she gave her some kind of medication to bring her down.”
I looked over at Solange. She was gazing at the crowd in the library quadrangle, wholly absorbed in her private reverie. “She seems calm enough,” I said.
“Calm is good,” Rae said. “There’s a lot of emotion out there. We don’t need to add to it.” She fingered the silver labrys at her neck. “After Solange, I guess Womanswork will do another song, and Livia will announce the candle-lighting. Have I left out anything?”
“It sounds as if everything’s taken care of,” I said.
When Molly Warren returned, her lipstick was fresh and her jaw was set. “Let’s go,” she said, and she started for the door. The women in the doorway parted to let her pass; then they followed her outside.
Rae turned to Taylor. “Time to get moving, kiddo,” she said. “Those candles aren’t going to hand themselves around.”
In one of those cosmic ironies that twist the knife of grief, the night into which we stepped burned with beauty. The sun was low in the sky, and the horizon flamed, turning the water of Wascana Lake into molten gold. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” Rae murmured. The sky might have glowed, but the concrete bulk of the library cast a shadow that plunged the mourners waiting for us into darkness.
Rae picked up a wicker basket of candles and handed it to Taylor. Her hand brushed the top of my daughter’s head in a lazy benediction. “It’s good to have someone from the next generation with us.”
Livia stepped to the microphone. We were long-time colleagues, but that night she surprised me. Even during the agonizing last months of her marriage, Livia had been much in demand by organizations wanting an expert on American politics who wouldn’t sabotage their pleasant lunch with dry history or legalisms. The day after her marriage ended, she had asked me to provide moral support at a lunch meeting she’d agreed to address months earlier. She was hungover and heartsick, but she still managed to sparkle her way through her set piece on the relationship between a leader’s character and his or her political policies. Wretched as she must have felt, Livia had come alive in front of the crowd. But the night of the vigil, as she adjusted the microphone, her hands were trembling so badly she had difficulty completing the manoeuvre. When she began to speak, she surprised me again. I was expecting another helping of New Age bilge, but she spoke from the heart.
Pulling her shawl around her, as if she were cold to the marrow, she began. “I would give everything I own not to be here tonight,” she said simply. “Ariel was my student, my colleague, my friend, my hope.” She looked down at the brilliantly coloured shawl as if seeing it for the first time. “Two weeks ago, she gave me this. ‘A thank-you,’ she said, ‘for everything.’ It was too much…”
I was puzzling over the ambiguity of Livia’s sentence when I realized that, although she was still standing in front of the microphone, she’d fallen silent. Ann Vogel was quick to react. She moved swiftly to the podium, draped her arm protectively around Livia’s shoulders, and led her back to the rest of the party. The whole sequence was over in a matter of seconds, but what I saw in the faces of the two women shook me. Livia was expressionless; her eyes had the five-hundred-mile stare of a shock victim. But Ann Vogel was – no other word for it – smirking. Then as quickly as it had appeared, the tableau was gone. Kristy Stevenson and Womanswork came forward quickly and the program continued.
The trio of women who made up Womanswork had a family resemblance: all three wore their dark hair centre-parted and brushed back to frame gentle faces, wide-set blue eyes, and delicately arched brows. They were in tank tops, black slacks, and platforms, and they moved with assurance. Kristy stepped up to the microphone. “We’ve chosen two songs tonight. Neither of them is ours. I wish they were. I wish I could come out here and tell you that we’d written lyrics that spoke to Ariel’s dreams or, even” – Kristy smiled sadly – “just a tune she hummed in the shower. The truth is I didn’t know her very well; she was at a fundraiser we did for the Dunlop Gallery a couple of weeks ago, and afterwards she came up and told me she had really connected with a song we did by Beowulf’s Daughters. It’s called ‘The Sparrow Knows.’ Here it is.”
The voices of Womanswork were strong, and the opening line was a grabber. “The sparrow knows that the meadhall moments are few.” As the trio sang, I followed Rae and Taylor’s passage through the crowd, warmed by the sense of community that enveloped them. Most women smiled; some reached up to Taylor, thanking her, including her. I had worried about bringing her. Now I was glad I had.
Ann Vogel’s tap on my shoulder was the proverbial rude awakening. “You’re next,” she said. My mind went into free fall. The only anchor I had was the song to which Ariel Warren had felt a connection, but as I listened to the words, I knew Womanswork was giving me what I needed. When I stepped forward, the sentences formed themselves.
“I don’t know which words in ‘The Sparrow Knows’ Ariel was drawn to,” I said. “Maybe all of them. But I know the line that resonated for me. ‘Darkness is our womb and destination,/Light, a heartbeat glory, gone too soon.’ My memories of Ariel begin and end with sunlight. The first time I saw her she was six years old. My daughter Mieka invited her to her birthday party. Mieka’s birthday is October 31 – Halloween – and Ariel came dressed as a sunflower. The yellow petals that circled her face were so bright.” I turned to Molly Warren. She smiled, acknowledging the memory. I drew a breath and carried on. “The last time I saw Ariel was this morning. She had taken her class out to that little hill by the Classroom Building.”
“I was there!” The voice that came out of the crowd was very young.
“You were lucky,” I said. “If you were in that class, you were being taught by someone who knew that all learning is an attempt to pass on the heartbeat glory of light. Tonight it may seem as if the darkness is overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean the light isn’t there. Ariel heard the call of lightness all her life. Let your memories of her turn back the darkness.”
Molly stood up and embraced me as I stepped back from the microphone. “That was just right,” she said. “I hope to God it was enough.”
As organizer of the vigil, Ann Vogel had appointed herself spokesperson for the students. I had feared she would lob some feminist firebombs, but all she managed was a wet, self-indulgent fizzle about how blighted her own academic future would be without Ariel Warren. Her narcissism was as sickening as Kevin Coyle’s, but I was relieved that she hadn’t ventured past her obsession with herself. She could have done harm. She didn’t, and I was grateful.
As Ann returned to her place beside Livia Brook, I thought we were home free. Solange had given Molly Warren her word that she would behave well, and she was a principled human being. She was in agony, but she would honour her commitment.
As she came to the microphone, she seemed to be in another time and another space. When she began to speak, I wasn’t surprised that she returned to what was obviously the best moment of her life. “Last New Year’s Ariel and I went to Mount Assiniboine. The air was sharp with the smell of fresh snow and pines. We were very happy: we knew summer would bring wildflowers, and we promised each other we would come back to see them, and that in autumn we’d return to see the larches turn to gold and, in winter, to see the valley fill again with snow.” She fell silent. Then she held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I just wanted you to know that Ariel had many plans. I wanted you to know that she died fully alive.”