Vanishing and Other Stories (34 page)

I saw that she'd taken one of the blankets that had been thrown over the leather couch and draped it over her shoulders. She adjusted it to cover herself, and took a sip of beer. Without looking at me, she said, “It smells bad in there.”

“It does? I didn't notice.”

“I thought that's why you were out here too.”

“I'm out here because I can't get drunk. It's this problem I have. There's something wrong with my body.”

“It's probably your liver.” Her eyes looked glazed over, so I could tell she didn't have the same trouble I did. “You're Christin, right?”

“Caitlin.”

Mary Louise tipped the last of her beer into her mouth, then put the empty bottle on the porch's wooden rail. I could hear the snow crunch under her wheels as she rolled forward. Then she stopped moving and we were both quiet. We looked up at the Milky Way, that shimmering backbone of the night.

“There's supposed to be a meteor shower in Gemini this time of year,” I said.

“What do you mean? Like falling stars?” Mary Louise
shrugged, the gesture so subtle that it was hardly perceptible under the blanket. Since she'd lost movement in her legs, it seemed the rest of her body had become less expressive too. “I've never seen one. I have bad luck with that kind of thing.”

If I had been an astrologer, I could have told Mary Louise her future. I could have cheered her up. I could have told her that in a few months she would join a wheelchair-basketball team and she would start smiling again. And that a couple of years after graduation she'd marry Jordan, and eventually she'd become a successful radio broadcaster. I could have told her that years from now, long after she'd forgotten meeting me at this party, her voice would wake me up in the mornings.

But I couldn't predict the future, so I said, “If you were a planet, which planet would you be?”

“What? Which
planet
?”

“Yeah, you know, like, which one suits your personality? I can see you as Venus.”

“No. Not Venus. I'd be Pluto.” She looked at me. “Caitlin, what do people say about me?”

“About you? Nothing. I don't know.” I was a terrible liar. I shrugged dramatically. “I'm only in grade eleven.”

“Everyone thinks he dumped me, don't they?”

“You mean Jordan?”

“People just assume things.” She closed her eyes and swayed in her chair. It must have felt like every star, planet, and moon was whirling around her, like she was the centre of everything's orbit. “You know, we still do it sometimes. When I feel like it.”

“What?”

“Me and Jordan. We still do it.”

“Oh.”

“Everyone wonders about that, don't they? Whether it's still possible. Everyone's curious.”

“I guess so.”

“Sometimes he lays me out on the bed. Or sometimes we do it like this.” Using her arms, she scooted herself to the edge of the chair and leaned her torso back. “Like this.” Her head rested against the back of her chair and she closed her eyes. She kept them closed for so long that I thought she'd passed out. Then she said, “Do you think I'm still pretty?”

She sounded drunk. She sounded needy. She sounded the way Nicole had when she wanted to borrow my skirt.

I looked at her clear skin and closed, heavy-lashed eyes. Maybe it was the light from the stars, but she looked prettier than I'd ever seen her. Maybe her broken body made her face more endearing, more shocking. Death had brushed against her, and she'd been touched by a greater sorrow than most of us had seen so far. Loss lived inside her now, and this made her even more lovely.

I said, “You're beautiful.”

She shivered, maybe from the cold. Then she pressed her palms against the arms of her chair and tried to straighten herself. But she couldn't do it. I guess she'd lost a lot of strength over the past months, or the alcohol had weakened her arms. She squeezed her eyes shut, shifted her weight, and struggled to make her body do what she wanted it to do.

“Let me help,” I said.

“It's fine.” She was out of breath. “I'm fine.”

But still, I leaned down and put my arms around her. I lifted her body, which was heavier than expected, and sat her up
straight. After, I didn't let go. I held her the way Jay sometimes embraced me. And she hugged me too, her arms around my neck.

We held each other for so long that the porch's motion-sensor light flicked off and it became dark. I could smell her hair and hear her breathing. It was like we were sisters, reunited after a long separation. Or like gravity locked us together: the Earth and its moon. All the rules, those social boundaries, seemed to waver and break, and I would never believe in them again.
Welcome
, I could hear Armand say,
to the world of Black Holes
.

When we finally separated, I straightened her blanket so she wouldn't feel a draft, and she said, “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

We never spoke to each other again. It had started to snow, so we stayed outside for only a few minutes longer. I watched the snow melt into her hair and she looked as betrayed as Christ. As heartbroken as Him too. She was Demeter, aged by her loss. She was Eve, cast out and cold. Or she was just an ordinary girl. An angry, heartbroken girl. In any case, I had told the truth: she was beautiful. And that's probably why she'd hugged me. She was probably just drunk and grateful for the compliment.

Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe she wanted me, in a way that Jay never could. Maybe she'd held on to my body because she craved it for herself. Maybe she wanted to switch skins, switch lives, switch fates. I was so ordinary in my jeans and coat that she wanted to inhabit me, to live in the temple of my normalcy.

I know why I held her. Mostly because I missed Jay and Syl and I didn't want to be alone. But it was also that I wanted to touch the divinity in Mary Louise; I wanted to see the sublime. I wanted to know what it was like to climb up on that rock and look out
over a glittering lake. I wanted to still believe that the stars held a pattern. I wanted to feel the air on my face, just for a second, no matter the consequences. I wanted that moment, before the fall. Then I wanted to dive.

 

 

 

 

 

SHE CAME INTO OUR LIVES SUDDENLY
, like a radio song—the type you can't stop humming no matter how hard you try. It was the summer after I'd finished high school, during the hottest months this city has ever seen. I had no prospects and no interests other than an impractical one in history, so it was decided I would apprentice in my father's tailoring shop. Each morning, my father and I walked from our house on Borden to the shop on Spadina. Once at work, I started looking forward to lunch. That's when we walked to the hot-dog stand and ordered beef smokies piled with relish and fried onions. We ate them on a bench outside the shop as the sun beat onto the tops of our heads.

Every day, my father would comment, “Not a bad life for us guys, eh?” I would chew and nod in agreement. When we finished our dogs, he'd say, “How about a cone?”

Then we'd walk to the ice-cream shop on Kensington, one of the first places to cater to the new market of tourists and students. That's where she worked. She wore an outdated uniform and a tag that said
Simone
.

When we met her, my father ordered rum-raisin—his favourite—and said, “This your first day?” He was one of those. The kind of man who instinctively flirts with waitresses and sales clerks. She was at least twenty years younger than him.

“Yeah.” She bent to scoop the ice cream, and I'm sure we both noticed her greying bra strap.

“It's a terrible uniform they make you wear, isn't it?” My father leaned against the freezer. “What is that? Polycotton?”

She looked up at him. “I don't know.”

“You should talk to them about ordering new ones. I've got some fabric that'd be perfect. A soft yellow. It'd look nice with your hair.”

She handed him his cone.

“I could even whip up a blouse or something for you. No charge, I mean. Those old bolts of fabric, I'll never use—”

“I don't need a blouse.”

“Good point. No blouse, then.” My father dropped coins on the counter. “Simone has spoken. Miss Simone, the high priestess of soul.”

“Can I get rocky road?” I wanted to kick my father in the balls. “One scoop?”

“You mean Nina Simone?” She leaned against the freezer. “I was named after her.”

I figured she was lying. I figured she was angling for a tip.

“No kidding?” My father waved the change away. “You're a bit like her.”

“No, I'm not.” And she wasn't. This Simone was pale, freckled, and skinny.

“You've got the same regal air.”

She laughed, and it reminded me of the small bell that rang each time the ice-cream parlour's door was opened. “No,” she said. “I don't.”

In all the years that have passed since that afternoon, I haven't had the courage to ask Simone what crossed her mind as we walked toward the door. Maybe she noticed my father's dark hair or his confident posture. Or maybe it was his suit: the elegant fabric, starched collar, and the way his trousers hung over his shoes in a perfectly effortless way. I'm sure she didn't notice me.

“A dress,” she called out. The bell had just bestowed its charming ring, and we were nearly out the door. “You can make me a dress.”

 

 

A WEEK LATER
, she appeared at our house to pick up the dress. It was a simple sleeveless design, with a boat neck and a hem just above the knee. She put it on, then stayed for dinner. She didn't talk much, but she ate a lot. My father had made one of his famous lasagnas, and she took three helpings. For dessert, she'd brought a bowl of something made of canned fruit and gelatin that her mother had taught her to make. When she said the word
mother
, we all got quiet and looked at our plates.

After dinner, my brother, Sam, gave her a tour of the house. He said things like, “This was our rosemary plant, but it died,” and, “Alex and the TV live in the basement.” While he showed her
around, Simone found Mom's records. She slipped one out of its jacket then set it spinning on our dusty record player. “It's Too Hot for Words” started up, and my father stepped out of the kitchen, that vein in his temple tensing, because no one since Mom had touched those records.

“Billie Holiday was my age when she recorded this.” Simone moved her hips to the beat, and that yellow dress fit her perfectly. “It was before all the shit that happened later.”

My father handed her a gin and tonic, the same as he drank, and offered Cokes to me and Sam. “I'll take something stronger,” I said, hoping I sounded like Jimmy Stewart in the movies Mom used to watch. But my father ignored me, so I went to my room. I lay in bed but couldn't sleep because of the music. When they tired of Lady Day, they put on Ella Fitzgerald and played
Live from Carnegie Hall
all the way through, as loud as it would go.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING
, I found Simone in our kitchen. She was drinking a glass of orange juice and looking through one of my mother's cookbooks. Sam was already at the table, reading what my dad called the funnies. My father was frying eggs in a buttered pan.

Simone looked up from a recipe for roast chicken and smiled. “Morning,” she said, and flipped a page.

“Hello,” I answered, and the hot pan spit at me.

The next day, I found her on the couch with a cup of coffee. The morning after that, I heard her in the shower. This went on for about a week, until it was clear she had moved in.