"That wasn't the question," I said.
"I steered you back to your car, realized you couldn't drive, and decided I would drive you home and take a taxi from your place. I wasn't used to your car, and that lane is very narrow, and I really shouldn't have been driving anyway. I scraped the fender, I know. There was a post at the end of the lane way where you turn into the street, and I didn't notice it. I just kind of freaked, and left the car where it was because I didn't think I could get it back in its place without hitting something again. Did you get towed?"
"No," I said.
"That's good. I got us both into a taxi, dropped you off at your home, and went home myself. I was going to phone you first thing to tell you about the car, but then this business with Anna…" Her voice trailed off.
"You don't know where I live," I said. "Do you?"
"It's on your driver's license, and you did confirm it was your place when we got there. I watched you stagger in the door."
"I can't remember any of this," I said.
"Obviously, you have a problem with alcohol. But right now, I have to say it's just not that important to me," she said. "Anna's dead. The funeral's Friday. Let me know the damage on your car." She hung up abruptly.
No doubt she thought I was a selfish sod, worried about my car when an old friend had thrown herself off a bridge. How could I explain that I was filled with a sense of dread, an unshakable feeling that I had been involved in something terrible the night before?
I turned on the television. The car Anna had landed on was there, all right, flashing on the screen every few minutes as the bland commentator droned on about it, including constant mention of the fact that the jumper had suffered from mental disorders and was known to have been depressed. The car was hopelessly crushed, and it was a miracle the driver was still alive. I made myself some tea and toast and tried to pull myself together. I just didn't know what to do. I felt I should probably just turn myself into police and go to jail for whatever it was I'd done, but given I didn't know what it was, I would certainly look like an idiot at the police station. I could call Rob back, but what would I say to him?
By midafternoon I was in sufficiently decent shape to venture forth. I went to the shop first, and endured Clive telling me how nice it was of me to drop by, and went to look at my car, the lane way and the post. The car had sustained a fair amount of damage: no doubt it would be an expensive repair, which obviously I was not going to charge to Diana. As for the post, the truth was just about everybody hit that post at some point, and there were so many marks on it, I really couldn't say whether my car had hit it or not. What I did decide was that it had not sustained enough damage to have gone through the glass at the Cot-tingham, so I told myself to relax.
Then I drove to Rosedale, parked my car on a side street, and walked on to the Glen Road pedestrian bridge over the Rosedale ravine. It was a beautiful fall day and the colors were splendid, the sun warm but the air with a touch of a chill. I found it hard to believe that something so terrible had happened in such a lovely place. I went and looked over the railing. It was a very, very long way down. A few yards away a tiny piece of pale blue cloth had caught in one of the uprights. Anna had been wearing a blue dress, and that was almost certainly a piece of it. This must have been the spot where she'd gone over the side.
"You're not going to jump or anything, are you?" an anxious voice behind me said.
I turned to see an elf-like man in plaid pants, a green jacket, and a rather jaunty tan cap.
"Don't worry," I said. "I have no such plans."
"Woman jumped last night," he said.
"I know. She's an old college classmate of mine. I just came here to…" To what, really?
"Saw the whole thing," the little man said.
"What?"
"Live there," he said, pointing to a yellow brick apartment building on the edge of the ravine. "My window is the one at the end."
"You saw it?" I said.
"Don't sleep much anymore. Retired, you know. Don't have enough to do during the day. Sit at my bedroom window for hours. It's interesting at night—the trees and the city lights, the fire hall across the way. The city never sleeps, just like they say."
"So what did you see last night?"
"Young woman runs out on to the bridge."
"What do you mean by young?" I said.
"Born in 1922," he said. "Looks young to me. She keeps looking over her shoulder like she's being followed. Then there's this bang, and she's up and over the side. Took her two or three tries, and all the while she's looking over her shoulder. Figure she was running away from somebody she's pretty scared of."
"This bang?" I said.
"Sounded like a car hitting something, like maybe the barricade at the end of the bridge. Can't see that from my window. But there was something. Told the police, but they think they're dealing with a crazy old coot. What do you think, being her friend and all?"
"I don't know," I said. "Let's go look at the barricade."
The truth of the matter was that it would be difficult, but not impossible, to get a car past the flower beds and up to the barricade, but no way to get up enough speed to actually knock down it down. The barricade was metal and showed many signs of wear, but nothing that I could see that looked particularly fresh. The stone wall around the flower beds was a different matter. A large stone had been dislodged and there was dirt on the sidewalk around it. The last geranium of summer lay on its side, roots exposed.
"There," the man said. "That's where it must have been."
I kicked the stone to roll it over, and sure enough there was a streak of color on it, a scrape really, in silver, and while silver was an extremely popular color for cars, it just happened to be the color of mine. I had eliminated one possibility, I'd thought, for the dent in the bumper, and had just been presented with a truly dreadful alternative. My stomach churned.
"You know who'd have been chasing the poor thing?" he asked me.
"I have no idea," I said.
"You believe old Alfred, don't you?"
"I think it's possible," I said.
"Then, maybe you'll tell the police," he said. "Hearing it from somebody like you might make them believe it."
"I'll try," I said. But I didn't. I got the man's name— Alfred Nabb—and phone number, and after commiserating with him for a few minutes about shoddy police work, made my escape. I picked up the phone to make the call several times that afternoon, but I didn't really know what to say. They had the same information I did, and if they chose to do something with it, then surely that was up to them. For myself, I was going to have to wait until I felt better to figure out what I was going to do.
September 9
Anna's funeral was a dismal affair, but perhaps that says more about me than the event, having spent the two days in the interim expecting the police to arrive at my door at any second. I kept pulling at the threads of my memory, but still there was nothing. The service was held in one of the huge downtown churches, way too big for the dozen or so of us who turned out. Our footsteps echoed on the stone floors, and we huddled together in the first row. Cybil sobbed through the whole thing. They'd already cremated the body, and a rather plain urn sat where otherwise a coffin might be. All of those who had been at the reunion were there, including Frank, as well as Anna's mother, a sad little creature by the name of Doris, and quite remarkably, Alfred Nabb. "Thought old Alfred should pay his respects," he said, continuing what was obviously a habit of avoiding the word "I" at any cost. "Under the circumstances. You call the police yet?"
I had to confess I hadn't, but promised I would.
"Too late," he said. "The city's already been around to fix the stone wall and the garden. If you wanted them to do it, it'd take them years to get around to it."