The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn by Gail Bowen Page A

the vulnerability and the toughness of her son. But nothing in the book prepared me for the power of the originals. Jess, at four, an otherworldly child, swinging naked on a tree branch, his small body surrounded by a cloud of light. Jess at two, laughing as he is engulfed by a field of sunflowers. All the fugitive moments of Jess Stephens’s childhood were rivetting,but one in which he seems to swagger as he holds a brace of dead gophers out to the person behind the camera was a knockout. I was leaning close to the photograph, marvelling at the contrast between the black stiff bodies of the animals and the soft radiance of little-boy flesh, when the real Jess came up behind me.
    I felt as if he had caught me trespassing, but he was nonchalant. “You can look at those anytime. Come in the living room, I’ve got tropical fish.”
    We looked at the fish, then Jess drifted off the way my kids always did when they’d fulfilled what they considered their social duty. Alone in the room, I looked around. More prints, not Sylvie’s. Two Robert Mapplethorpe prints of flowers, a Diane Arbus, some I didn’t recognize. Over the mantle above the fireplace was a photograph of Ansel Adams. Handwritten in its corner was a quotation, “Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs,” and the signature, “Ansel Adams.”
    I walked over to a bookcase looking for The Boy in the Lens’s Eye . I wanted to see if the gopher picture was there. But the book I found was Sylvie’s first book, Prairiegirl . It had come out ten years before, and its publication had dealt a serious blow to Gary’s political career. Prairiegirl was a collection of photographs of small-town girls from the southeast of the province. The girls were very young, mostly prepubescent, and their parents, not versed in the aesthetics of Mapplethorpe and Sally Mann, had been outraged when, instead of freezing their daughter’s innocence in time, Sylvie’s photographs had explored their burgeoning sexuality. I had just begun to look at the book when Sylvie came into the room.
    Without a word, she strode over and took Prairiegirl from my hands. Her gesture was so rude that I was taken aback.
    “Jess invited me in,” I said. “He was a very good host till he lost interest. His social skills seem about on a level with my kids’.”
    She didn’t respond. She was wearing blue jeans and an oversized white shirt. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup and her blond hair was brushed back. She looked weary and hostile.
    “Sylvie. I just came for a recipe. Taylor’s birthday is next week and she wanted me to make the same cake you made for Jess … He really did ask me in,” I added.
    She was holding Prairiegirl tight against her chest as if, given the chance, I would rip it from her hands. Her fear didn’t make sense. Then, like Paul on the road to Damascus, the scales fell from my eyes. Sylvie thought she had a murderer in her living room. There didn’t seem much point in prolonging the agony.
    I walked to the entranceway. Sylvie followed me, and as I sat on the carpenter’s bench pulling on my boots, she watched in silence. I put on my coat and headed for the door. When I opened it, Sylvie said, “I’ll send Gary over with the recipe. I wouldn’t want to spoil Taylor’s birthday.”
    I turned. Sylvie had positioned herself in the centre of the hall, and her stance was aggressive. Behind her, Jess peeked out from the living room. “I wouldn’t let you,” I said, and I closed the door behind me.
    When I pulled up in front of our house, there was more good news. A van from Nationtv was parked in my driveway, and there was a young woman on my front lawn talking to Taylor while the camera whirred. This time I was the one who did the grabbing. I took my daughter’s hand and turned to the young woman. “Beat it,” I said. “If I ever catch you bugging my kids again, I’ll break your camera.”
    She started to argue, but I was past listening.