“I was pretty upset.”
“Of course you were. Anyone would be. I’ve been in your position, you know.”
“You have.”
“Oh, yes. I was given exactly the same ultimatum you were given, and I took it no better. For what it’s worth, I didn’t take anything you said personally, and I don’t think Dr. Moore did either.”
“I said some awful things.”
Pat chuckled. It didn’t sound like gargled thumbtacks now, but was rather a nice sound, deep and genuine. “Not the first time someone’s told me to fuck off, and you are entirely within your rights to tell me to fuck off again if you’d like. Would you like to?”
“Not right now. I’m not feeling quite up to it.”
“Glad to hear it—I mean, not that you’re under the weather; although to be honest, I suspected you might be. I bet you’re hungover as hell. Yes? Well, never mind. When my boss told me to sober up or get lost I spent a week trying to crawl through the bottom of a tequila bottle. That was my poison of choice. Well that and a certain white powder.”
Cocaine? Who was this woman? Colleen was momentarily speechless. She tried to picture the woman she’d met the day before—the grey tweed suit with gold buttons, that quasi-military air, the head of purplish-red hair, the large rings on her large hands. It was impossible to picture her bending over a makeup mirror cutting coke with a credit card. On the other hand, some people might find it difficult to picture Colleen waking up in bed covered in vomit and urine. Some people.
Pat was still talking. “Crashed my car. Cheated on my husband. Ended up in hospital with a broken collarbone, three cracked ribs and a buggered-up knee. There was a policeman standing at the
foot of my bed. I felt like everyone was against me and I didn’t have a hope in the world.”
King of the Twisted Fairies. Knife thrower
. Colleen found herself crying. It hurt to cry. Her hair hurt. Her fingernails hurt.
“Are you okay?” asked Pat softly.
“More or less. Mostly less,” Colleen managed to get out.
“Does any of this sound familiar?”
“I think I might have felt like that. I may have tried to do something … stupid.” She hadn’t meant to say this, but it dashed out as though someone had slipped her a truth serum. Her teeth chattered now. It was that sort of crying. “I’m pretty scared.”
“I’m sure you are, dear. I’m sure you are. That policeman I said was at the foot of my bed? You know what he said to me? He said he had once been in the same position I found myself in. He told me he’d tried to kill himself, but that he didn’t and got better and I could too. So, now, I’m saying the same thing to you. Here’s a remarkable piece of good news: from this moment on, you don’t ever have to feel this way again. Will you let me help you?”
“Can I have my job back?”
“Before you can do anything else, you have to get sober.”
“I don’t want to go to any rehab.”
“Well, let’s take this thing one step at a time, shall we? For right now, I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
“I’m not going to try and kill myself.” She was almost positive of that.
“Good to know, but I’m concerned about withdrawal. I’m not sure
you realize this, but detoxing from alcohol can be life-threatening. If you’re getting off heroin you’ll feel as though you’ll want to die, but you won’t. If you’ve been drinking enough, however, you might actually go into convulsions and die. So we have to be a little careful here.”
“I wasn’t drinking that much.”
Pat laughed again, and this time it was an unmistakable hoot. “Oh, dear, I’m quite sure you were. I know I was, and I also know I lied to everyone about how much I drank. That’s what we do, we alcoholics.”
The room spun and just for an instant Colleen saw herself as if from a distance, huddled under the soiled duvet, ashen, pasty, trembling, snot flowing, sick as a poisoned dog. What a pathetic bag of bones, what a waste of skin, what a piece of human wreckage. And yet, and yet … the voice on the other end of the line seemed to believe there was something in her worth saving.
What if that were true?
What would life be like if that were true?
“Colleen? … Colleen?”
“Yes. Okay, fine. I’ve made a really awful mess of things.” Toes at the edge of the cliff, breathe deep and push off into empty air. She wanted to speak but her mouth was dry, her tongue thick and heavy. She could almost hear the shrill squeaking of desperate fairies. It felt cruel to leave them when they’d been so faithful to her. Faithful. Like in a marriage. Until death did them part. That was the truth of it. Something was going to have to die, wasn’t it? She
had never wanted to say anything less than she did the words now pressing against her lips. And yet. And yet.
“I’m an alcoholic,” she said.
She closed her eyes, expecting to plummet into some sort of bottomless emotional well … but … she didn’t. She was still here. She stood. She imagined the words, like little shining balls, flitting out into space, leaving glowing trails behind them.
She felt slightly light-headed.
“Congratulations, my dear. That’s a big step. I’m very proud of you.”
The tone of the woman’s voice was so gentle, so kind and comforting. It was enough to break Colleen in two.
“Now, I tell you what …” She was all best-foot-forward and heartiness again. “I think it would be best if I took the rest of the day off and came over to your place, yes? We can spend the afternoon together and have a little chat. We’ll figure out exactly what sort of shape you’re in, and then we’ll go off to a meeting a little later. How does that sound?”
“An AA meeting?”
“Well, not a meeting of the garden society.” She laughed.
“Thank God for that.” Colleen looked around the room. She saw it for what it was, the nest of a sick middle-aged woman. Dirty. Disorganized. Overwhelming. “The place, me, it’s all a horrible mess.”
“I should be there within the hour. Do you think you can stay away from the booze until then?”
“You’re beginning to sound a bit like Mary Poppins.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Hang on, okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Colleen felt like a cartoon character, suddenly off the cliff edge, legs pedalling away a mile a minute, waiting for the death-fall. Pat Minot had better be quick.
“Okay, then.”
They hung up. Colleen gripped the phone as though it were a grenade and she was holding the pin in place. She imagined herself in the back of a church basement, surrounded by the human flotsam such places attracted. She did not want to go. She simply wouldn’t answer the bell when Pat rang it. She didn’t have to answer the door.
No, she didn’t, but if she didn’t, what then? What would she do?
If she didn’t answer the door she would spend several hours being sick, and then she would have a drink, and another, and another, and she would make some phone calls and she would, by the end of the night, be dancing with the King of the Twisted Fairies again. The knife still lay within arm’s reach, right there on the desk in that bit of watery light.
Colleen closed her eyes. She saw a great rock coming toward her, rolling down the hill, about to crush her; she could push and push against it for all eternity and she’d never win.
Let it come. Let it come. She was done.
She opened her eyes again. Such an empty, messy room. Such an empty, messy apartment. Such an empty, messy life. First things
first. She picked up the knife and walked to the kitchen. She put the knife back where it belonged, in its slot in the wooden block. It had no power. It was just a thing. She would have a cup of coffee. She would make enough for Pat.
She opened the fridge to get the milk. There, in the door, on top of the one remaining half-empty bottle of Chablis, sat the pretty little French fairy, beret at a jaunty angle, waving her baguette at Colleen. Apparently it would take more than a simple admission of her disease to banish the faithful little beings. They don’t call it “spirits” for nothing. Colleen ignored her, grabbed the milk and slammed the fridge shut. She’d ask Pat to help her get rid of the booze. Maybe the spirits knew where she lived, but that didn’t mean Colleen had to make them welcome.
She chewed her knuckle. She was terrified, but she wasn’t going to drink over it. She would stay busy until Pat arrived.
She fussed with coffee beans and hot water, with cups and spoons and milk and sugar, and behind her the silence in the apartment grew heavier, as though it were freezing lake water, bucking and heaving as it thickened against the shore, pushing itself upward and outward. It would entomb Colleen as well, and crush her like the hull of a flimsy boat.
Soon the smell of coffee warmed the kitchen, and Colleen poured herself a cup and added three spoons of honey. She sipped it, letting the sweetness into her body slowly for fear of gastric revolt. She carried the cup to the bathroom and set it down to splash water on her face. She considered putting on a little makeup, just some
lipstick, but decided (although she was not ready to look in the mirror yet) she would face whatever came next clean-faced, without a disguise of any sort.
As she walked back to the living room, she thought something flitted past, some ragged-winged thing, frantic and foolish. She would not go chasing fairies. Not now. She stood at the window, looking out onto the parking lot and the silo and the cemetery green with promise. It occurred to her just how much of her life she had spent in an empty room, waiting for something to happen. She was good at it. She would just stand here now, just stand and wait and drink this coffee.
When the buzzer went, it was as loud as a fire alarm. Her heart pounded. To answer the door or not to answer the door? She had made up her mind that she would, and yet now, a great part of her did not want to. A part of her wanted to hide behind the couch and wait until whatever was outside the door went away. She thought of the coming night and how she’d want a drink, how she’d crave it like a dying plant craves rain. She thought of her birthday and Christmas and parties and vacations and endless weekends with nothing to do without the festival of the fairies …
The buzzer sounded again. Like a wall full of angry wasps.
Colleen couldn’t seem to move her feet. She pictured Pat Minot downstairs in the lobby, her ringed fingers against the buzzer, her potato-y face under the red hair registering concern first, and then her mouth pursing with anger, setting in a little pout of disapproval. Finally, she would shake her head sadly. She would turn and
leave and Colleen would be left alone. Alone with the frantic fairies.
Another buzz. This one less insistent, it seemed to Colleen’s ears, fading a little, burning out. Parties? Christmas? Vacations? When was the last time she had been invited to a party? She’d never gone on a vacation. Christmas? Really? But what if she wasn’t funny anymore? It occurred to her that perhaps she hadn’t been funny for a while. She couldn’t remember anyone laughing, not lately.
As though she could see through walls, all the way down to the chilly white lobby, she saw Pat Minot drop her finger from the buzzer, turn and … A rasp escaped Colleen’s throat and suddenly her feet were free again and she lunged to the intercom by the door.
“Hello, hello? Yes?”
“Colleen? It’s Pat. I was afraid you weren’t there.”
“I’m here. Come up. Apartment 805. Please.” She pressed the button to open the door downstairs and heard the electronic whine and click below.
“On my way,” said Pat.
Colleen opened the door and moved halfway into the hall. As she did a rush of air swept outward from the apartment. It was just the physics of open doors and airflow, she knew that, but it felt like something more. As if something swooped past her and swept down the hall. She heard the elevator hum, and realized she was holding her breath.
The elevator doors whooshed open and a second later Pat Minot’s face, as wide-open and hopeful and solid a face as ever there was, peeked round the corner. “There you are,” she said, smiling.
“Here I am,” said Colleen, smiling back as best she could. Her lips quivered as tears approached, but that was all right, she decided.
As Pat walked the last few yards to her door, Colleen glanced back into her apartment. An empty room. Just an empty room. Just a room in need of a good cleaning. Why, Colleen thought, I might fill that room up with anything I please, with anything at all.
T
hanks to my agents, David Forrer and Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell.
Thanks to David Kent, Iris Tupholme, Lorissa Sengara, Maylene Loveland, Noelle Zitzer, Terry Toews, Leo MacDonald and everyone else at HarperCollins Canada, as well as to Allyson Latta and Catherine Dorton.
Enormous thanks to Maria DiBattista and Michael Rowe for reading early versions and helping me see the path through the trees.
Thanks to Sister Rita Woehkle for the continuing epiphanies.
Thanks to Nancy F., and all the other people who walk the sober road with me. One day at a time.
The epigraph is taken from “Good Morning, Midnight” by Jean Rhys. Originally published 1938. First published as a Norton Paperback 1986; reissued 2000.
The quote from St. John of the Divine’s “Dark Night of the Soul” was taken from a 1959 public domain translation by Image Books (third edition).
The lines from Edward Booth Loughran’s poem “Isolation” are
from the 1906 edition of
An Anthology of Australian Verse
edited by Bertram Stevens and published in London by Macmillan & Co. Limited.
The lines from “the song of mehitabel” are from the 1973 version of
archy and mehitabel
by Don Marquis, published by Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York (first published 1916).
All Bible passages are based on the American Standard Version, public domain.
A portion of this novel first appeared as the essay “Breaking Down” in
Winter Tales II: Women on the Art of Aging
, edited by R. A. Rycraft and Leslie What, Serving House Books, 2012.
LAUREN B. DAVIS
is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Stubborn Season, The Radiant City and Our Daily Bread, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named a best book of the year by both the Globe and Mail and the Boston Globe. Born in Montreal, she now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.