I struggle into a sitting position. Robin pulls my pillow up, so I can lean on the head of the bed. He presses the button and sits down on the edge of the mattress as three, clear, female voices rise into the room: “In 1649, to St. George’s Hill, a ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people’s will …”

  Bara comes in, listens. “Hey, wow, what’s that?”

  Robin explains while I work myself to the edge of the bed and turn sideways. I try to rise to my feet but flop back in sudden pain.

  “Lucy, be careful,” Bara says. “Robin, help her up.”

  He does, and I even accept his support to reach the bathroom door. When I come back out, Bara offers to bring up a supper tray for me, but I’ve always hated the idea of eating in bed. “I’d rather go downstairs, but I’ll need help.”

  Robin has disappeared back into the study. Bara calls him to help me down the stairs.

  ***

  Bara insists I sit on the chesterfield in the living room after supper. She uses a towel to wrap another plastic bag filled with ice around my ankle. “That’s cold.” I sound whiny.

  “That’s the point.”

  “How long do I have to do this?”

  “Until your ankle stops hurting.”

  I look around me. “This room is a mess.”

  “I’ll get to it on Saturday.”

  “The dining room’s worse.” Through the arches on either side of the hallway, I can see the sewing machines in their nests of red and black fabric on the table. More red and black pieces hang from the backs of chairs and gather in little piles on the floor. Whole bolts lean here and there. Not to mention scissors, pins, tape measures, spools of thread. A plastic package lies open on the floor, metal grommets scattered on the hardwood.

  “Hey,” says a male voice from the doorway.

  “Hey Gord,” says Bara.

  “Robin here?”

  “He’s gone down to the hospital,” Bara tells him.

  “That’s where I’d like to be.” I sit up, lean my weight on the arm of the chesterfield.

  “You’re ankle’s too swollen. You have to rest it.”

  “But Judith — “

  “She’s got Robin reading to her.”

  “But — “

  She puts her hand on my arm. “Lucy, Robin’s taking care of her.”

  Bara turns to look at the doorway where Gord was standing, and my eyes follow hers. He’s gone.

  “Bara, did Robin leave the cassette player and that tape upstairs?”

  “Probably. Do you want me to look?”

  She comes back down with it, plugs it in and we listen to the song again. “Is that, like, where capitalism started?”

  “One of many times and places. An important one, though, because it transformed England and paved the way for the industrial revolution, which spread colonialism and capitalism around the world.”

  “The stuff Robin’s working on, up in Judith’s study, is it going to be a book?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope so. I want to read it.”

  ***

  The pain has faded by the time Bara takes the ice off my ankle, although when I try to stand, it returns with a stab that sends me back into my seat. “This’ll help.” She has a roll of elastic bandage. She kneels in front of me and I have a sudden memory of Althea washing my battered, frozen feet when I was living outside.

  “Not too tight?” Bara says.

  I wiggle my toes.

  “And wait there. I just remembered something.”

  She disappears into the basement. A little while later she emerges, grinning and holding a wooden cane, plain but well made, nicely curved handle. She helps me up and I experiment with it, hobbling up and down the hall. I discover that, if you get your timing right, it really can take a lot of the weight.

  ***

  “Hello, Robin.” I’m standing at the door of Judith’s study, a triumph of elastic bandage and cane, not to mention Bara’s tending.

  “Hello, Lucy.” He doesn’t even turn around. He’s like a groundhog, burrowing through Judith’s computer.

  The piles on the floor are neater now, each with a file card label. “Have you been tidying up?”

  “A little. Can’t see what’s here if I don’t.”

  “Now, don’t you be snooping into her private stuff.”

  He turns to look at me finally. “Hard to help when she stores her photographs between the books. I’m making a pile. There.” He points.

  I hobble over to find a small collection of old snapshots. Most of them are of Judith at various ages, from one labelled “eight months” to a teenaged Judith awkwardly hunched over tiny breasts barely visible in one of those ugly bathing suits we used to wear. There are square bangs and home perms, the grin with no front teeth, the family standing on the front steps, stiff and unhappy in their Sunday best. These are so much like my own childhood photos, left behind in my parents’ house in Amherst. In every one of these images, Judith looks straight into the camera with those clear, intelligent but worried brown eyes.

  Robin is standing beside me now. From under the pile of snapshots, he pulls a cardboard folder stamped with a photographer’s name and address. Inside it has the gold-edged square mat that should hold a portrait, but instead it contains a small collection of yellowed clippings. He unfolds the top one, presses it flat so I can see. At the top is a photo of a striking, young Black man in lawyers’ gown and tabs, a formal portrait. “Have you heard of Edmund Smith, Lucy? One of the first Black lawyers in Nova Scotia? Judith’s father hired him.”

  “And then fired him.”

  “That’s what these are about.”

  The clippings come from both Halifax papers of the time. They all have the same photo. Two, dated November 1961, announce that Mr. Edmund Smith is joining Maidstone, Parker and Wilson. The other two, dated July 1962, note that Mr. Edmund Smith has been dismissed from Maidstone, Parker and Wilson, accused of incompetence and unethical behaviour.

  I refold them, tuck them back into the folder and replace it under the pile of photos. “We shouldn’t be snooping into Judith’s private things.”

  “When photos fall out, I put them in the pile. Other than that, I’m just assembling the book.”

  “So is it a book, then?”

  “I think so.”

  “How much of it is there?”

  “The more I search, the more I find. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on it, I find another whole piece she was working on. It’s like a labyrinth.”

  “That’s Judith’s mind you’re exploring.”

  “A labyrinthine mind, then?” That big grin of his.

  “It … is.”

  His grin fades. “It does need some organizing. Lucy, my friend, the editor. …”

  “But it’s Judith’s, Robin.”

  He sighs, turns back to the text on the screen.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  It is such a relief to be back at Judith’s bedside. My ankle is healing well, although the trip down here brought back the ache. I like the cane. Should have found one long ago to help with my achy knees. Robin has brought in the cassette player and placed it on the bedside table.

  Judith is lying on her side. Her arm is on top of the sheet, the joints in her shoulder, elbow and wrist obvious, like a famine victim. I pick up her curled claw of a hand and try to pull it toward me. She resists, or her arm does.

  I hear a nurse passing in the hallway. “Excuse me.”

  She hears me and comes in. She’s one of the middle-aged ones, with more time for the likes of me. “Yes, the tendons get tighter all the time,” she tells me. “Early on we try to work them, but by now …”

  “Can I do anything about it?”

  “Pull gently.” I do. “Good. And when you meet resistance, pull just a wee bit more.” I do. “Watch her face. She might grimace if it hurts.” Nothing crosses Judith’s wasted features.

  “If I pull any more, I’ll be using force.”

  “Don’t do that. Just ease it as far as you can, maybe massage her arm. Like this.” She puts her hands around Judith’s bony forearm and skillfully rubs up and down with her thumbs, working her way to the elbow and back again to the wrist. “Or work her fingers a bit, just gently. Over time, it helps.”

  When I thank her, she says, “Judith has good friends,” and smiles. That’s because Judith was a good friend, I think. I mean, is.

  As the soft soles of the nurse’s shoes disappear, I try her up-and-down rubbing technique on Judith’s arm. I pause long enough to press the “play” button on the cassette player. The voices of Aya softly give us “The World Turned Upside Down.”

  “By theft and murder, they took the land …”

  A wet spot appears on the sheet beside Judith’s swollen elbow. Tears are trickling down my face. I take a tissue from the bedside table, blow my nose and then click the machine into silence.

  “He was a priest, Judith, and I was … well, I was no longer a fundamentalist missionary, but I had some pretty deep beliefs about the sinfulness of sex before marriage. But there we were, teaching, talking, walking for days in the hills. We resisted for months, but we were melting. And the danger, the terrible thing closing in on the villages, just made us … desperate. For life. For love. For touch.

  “One evening Nicolás went for a long walk into the woods on the hillside above our campsite. I was worried. We hid our campsites well, and it was getting dark. It would be easy to get lost. Later, he said he was wrestling with an angel. When he came back, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. He put his arms around me and buried his face in my hair. When his tears stopped, the passion just seemed to rise up through him, as it did through me. The desperate love and fear we felt for each other just came pouring out. Neither of us had ever made love before, but it didn’t matter. Pure passion drove us forward.

  “It wasn’t the last time he took a long, painful walk before making love, or sometimes after. It was his vows he was wrestling with.”

  My hands are tiring. I set down her arm, extended a little. It stays where I put it, looking naked and cold. I pull up the sheet and blanket to cover it.

  “I’ve never loved anyone else, before or since, like I loved Nicolás. Have you … ? My god, Judith. I don’t even know if you’ve ever been in love.”

  I reach out to stroke the wispy hair covering the scar. It comes away with my hand.

  ***

  I can hear music from the sidewalk. As I come through the front door, I am assaulted by young talk and laughter. The sewing machines are sitting on the floor along the dining room wall, fabric folded and piled beside them. All of Judith’s bowls are on the dining table, from both the kitchen and the china cabinet, plus some paper ones, all of Judith’s cutlery, good silver mingled with plastic spoons, a mountain of paper napkins and, in the centre, Judith’s wooden salad bowl filled with rolls. Across the hall in the living room, there are kids everywhere, every available seat, cross-legged on the floor, perched on the arms of the couch.

  A visitor from a past generation would think this was a movie about another planet, the odd things they wear. Some outfits are too large, pant crotches and sweater hems touching knees, hands hidden in ragged sleeves. Others are too small, tights like a second skin, pant legs revealing calves, tops revealing bellies. And then there are the tattoos and bits of metal stuck everywhere. How do you blow your nose with a big stud of some sort sticking out of it? Eat with a ring in your lip? There’s a lad in Judith’s stuffed armchair doing just that.

  Then I notice his sleeve, tight black stretchy stuff decorated with red blobs. Paint. Wet. As I watch he begins to lower his forearm toward the arm of the chair. Speaking of the movies, the scene flips into slow motion. “Stop!”

  All noise halts, all faces turn toward me. The young man’s arm comes down. Damn. I point at it with the cane. “Get your arm off that chair.” He lifts it, looks, sees the red spots matching those on his sleeve.

  “Get out of here.” I say it first to the young man in the chair, then begin to swivel around, addressing all of them. “Get out.” I wave the cane, symbolically sweeping them all out the front door.

  There is a shift of bodies in the kitchen and Bara emerges, surprise on her face. “Lucy? Put that down. You’re going to hurt someone.”

  “Look.” Using the cane, I point at the paint on the arm of the chair, then begin to see more, on the furniture, rug, even the walls. “There. And there. And there.”

  They follow with their eyes, dead silent except for the lad who just put red spots on the arm of the chair. In a small voice, he says, “Sorry.”

  ***

  They’re gone, filing out quickly and quietly, except for Bara furiously attacking a sink full of dishes. She turns and, ignoring the big gobs of soap suds flying from her hands, crosses her arms in front of her. “Geez, Lucy. We’ll clean up. Lots of people would have stayed and helped.”

  “And how much good would it do? You can’t get paint out of upholstery.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “And then there’s the layer of dirt under that. Have you seen how grubby that carpet is, where you’ve all been walking through?”

  “I’ll rent a carpet steamer.”

  ***

  I can see the bridge from the corner of Devonshire and Barrington, lights arching off into the dusk, reflected in the inky black water below. The Dartmouth end is hidden by the bulk of the shipyard. I crave my hiding place in the woods by the dockyard fence, but my new cane-supported gait won’t take me any farther. The breeze off the harbour tells me my face is wet. I fish in my pocket for a tissue. Nothing, so I blow my nose on the sleeve of my sweater, scrub at my eyes with the other sleeve. Sniffing, I allow my eyes to follow the curve of the bridge. How long ago was it I thought about jumping? I’m upset, but I can’t imagine doing that now.

  ***

  I study the house from the sidewalk, lit up in the dusk, a whirring machine noise coming from the open windows, too loud to be the vacuum cleaner. I’d hoped to slip in and up to my room without being seen, but now … Bara’s slight form passes slowly in front of the living room window, bent over something.

  It’s a carpet steamer, adorned with a big sticker from Superstore. As soon as she sees me, she shuts it off, scans her work. “I think it’ll look better when it’s dry.”

  I use my cane to point at the china cabinet in the dining room. “And can we put the dishes back on the right shelves?”

  She studies me, that little frown appearing between her brows. “Don’t you, like, get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “Robin has told me what Judith is like now. She isn’t coming back.”

  The tears that had stopped as I hobbled my way back start up again.

  “Oh, Lucy, I’m sorry.” She clicks the handle of the steamer upright, steps closer and puts her arms around me. There’s almost nothing there, she’s so skinny under her baggy T-shirt. Despite the chemical smell of the carpet cleaner, she smells like food.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Althea and I are in Bob Cumberland’s office. Bob sits behind his chaotic desk, but this time there doesn’t seem to be a particular file involved. “Did I tell you that the medical staff are looking for a nursing home for Judith?”

  I look at Althea, who looks back, her face as blank as mine must be. “No, Bob,” she tells him.

  “It didn’t seem imminent at the time.”

  “When was this?”

  “A while ago. A few weeks.”

  “No Bob, you didn’t tell us.”

  “I guess I let it slip my mind. Anyway, they’re thinking this is going to take a long time, even if she …” He pushes his dark-framed glasses up his nose. Behind them, there are dark circles under his eyes. “Hospital beds are expensive. A nursing home can give her the same care, or better, because there’s things going on, music, volunteers to read to the patients, or whatever they call them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Althea interjects, probably to encourage him, because he’s floundering a bit.

  “Sounds good,” I add.

  “The problem is …”

  We wait.

  “ … it’s the first bed that becomes available, no matter where it is.”

  Pictures of Judith’s room flash into my mind, the cloud of conversation we’ve been creating around her, Althea and I chatting with each other, John’s confession, Bob’s accounts of cases and students, Robin reading aloud her own words.

  “They just let me know that a bed will be coming up soon … in Bridgewater.”

  “But Bob, how will we get there to see her? I can’t take a couple of hours out of my day to drive both ways, at least not very often. Lucy does most of the supporting, and she has no car.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. We’ll see that you get there, Lucy.” He thinks for a minute. “How would you feel about driving Judith’s car?”

  “I’ve never had a car, so I let my driver’s licence expire.”

  “I wonder if you need to pass the test again to get it reinstated?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m feeling so heavy I can barely speak, let alone think about finding out how to renew my driver’s licence.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get you there somehow.”

  “Can’t we object?” Althea says. “Ask for her to be in Halifax?”

  “The system doesn’t work that way. I guess we can apply to have her moved back here when a bed becomes available, but it all depends on whose case is most urgent.”

  “She’s not considered urgent, huh?” Althea says.

  “No.” Bob looks helpless, and I guess he is.”How soon?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Soon.”