If Sylvie Had Nine Lives

by Leona Theis

  What, then, was her hook? Only to make a purse that would be what a woman needs it to be.

  After another day of pretending busyness on the phone each time she heard the approaching tread of Barry’s soft-soled shoes along the corridor at work, she’d hefted her mother’s old machine onto the small table in her apartment. She cut apart a winter coat she was bored with and plotted a design. The coarse run of the fabric under her fingers on its way to the needle delighted her. The flick of the presser-foot sounded like possibility.

  She had taught herself to sew when she was seventeen and hankering after a new outfit. Her mom had one of her good weekends and was, she said, more than happy to demonstrate backwards and forwards on the Singer and the best way to pin a pattern. “We’ll make whatever you want. Pants, dresses, skirts.” More than happy, but then her arthritis took her low again and she went to her room to rest her joints and Sylvie knew she might not walk again for weeks. On Monday after school she loaded the machine into the wheelbarrow and trundled it over to her Aunt Merry’s. When her aunt came home from work Sylvie was at the table ripping out a mistake. “Dad says to work here so I don’t bother Mom. Can you show me how to attach the sleeve into the hole?”

  “I’m not much for sewing. I know you need to gather it.”

  “Gather?”

  “Pull it into a ripple.”

  “I’ll figure it out.” Sylvie dug through the linen closet, found an old sheet, cut it up and experimented until she’d solved it. Late the next afternoon by the time her aunt was home and shrugging out of her overalls, Sylvie was ready. She stepped into the kitchen modeling a blue minidress that pleated open at the front to show a pair of shorts sewn in underneath.

  “You’re not going to wear that creation to school.”

  “It’s hotpants. Everyone has them.”

  “Is it supposed to have that extra tuck, there on the left?”

  “I had some trouble on that side.”

  “Principal Siding lets you girls walk around like that, all legs?”

  “If you ask me, he wants us to walk around like this.”

  FURTHER INTO THE Quonset Sylvie smelled mouse bait, a faintly sweet whiff she recognized from the elevator of her apartment building. Encounters in the elevator were the only times she saw the concertmaster at close quarters: olive skinned, a serious and shapely mouth, flowing dark hair, a fashionably cut black trench coat, her long fingers gripping the handle of her violin case as she said a neutral hello. The local daily had recently made reference to her talent and the offers she received from elsewhere. What did the concertmaster see in that moment she said hello to Sylvie? Someone more kempt than she’d seen a year before. There had been

  the shapeless hair

  the oversized glasses

  the ten redundant pounds

  Until along came

  a stylist who knew her scissors

  new technology in contact lenses

  cross-country skis left behind in the laundry room

  (Sylvie was pretty certain they’d been abandoned; surely they didn’t belong to anyone who still lived in the building).

  Barry for one had noticed the changes. He’d been soft-soling past her office door for ten years and one morning quite suddenly he stopped to chat and didn’t even pretend it was to do with work. He made brief jokes about construction noise and weather, followed by, “Drinks?”

  “All right,” she answered, not even pretending to think it was a bad idea.

  ALONG THE SOUTH WALL the Quonset smelled of wet cardboard. Sylvie pulled aside a flattened carton and watched a garter snake slither through its own little exit to the grassy world beyond. She used to bite the insides of her cheeks in order not to laugh as Will tried to explain to her, as they walked together to yoga class, what he knew about the Kundalini, the force coiled inside a person like a snake, the force that could bring self-healing, higher awareness, creative genius. She could use a little Kundalini now. Was there any hope that a tour through the past could deliver a person to the future?

  Drawn by the mellow light sifting through the single intact windowpane, she made her way toward the workbench. She lifted a rag, shook out the stiffness, and used it to clear a space at the centre of the pane. Through the swirl of grime that remained she saw Chad, Walkman in hand, dancing on the gravel laneway.

  In the beginning, with Barry, that was how it felt. Dancing inside, where no one could see. Passing him in the coffee room without so much as a brush of the hand. The thrill of the clandestine and the sweet pain of impossibility.

  They’d sat one evening at her small table, a candle burning low. For atmosphere she’d turned off the ceiling light and left the bathroom door half-open offering a second-hand glow. Making do. (She was good at making do. It was how she’d managed, without benefit of formal training, to work her way from receptionist to crack office manager.) A simple meal, pasta, salad and wine. Playing house. She’d planned a chocolate fondue to follow: chunks of banana, a cake from Safeway cut in cubes. They had the time, his wife out of town and not due to land till 1:00 a.m., but after a few bites of pasta he set down his fork. “Forget dessert.” He took her hand and coaxed her out of her chair, kissed the inside of her wrist once, then reached between her legs. He worked her with his fingers, through her jeans.

  She heard a catch of classical music. “Do you hear the violin?”

  “Hmmm?” Pulling her to the bedroom doorway. “There’s a rumour she’s leaving.”

  “There’s always that rumour.”

  In the morning the second pillow was empty but for the scents of sweat and shampoo. In the kitchen, dry white cubes of cake and chunks of slick banana sat browning on a plate. Sylvie picked up the jar of chocolate sauce, twisted the lid and heard the pop of the vacuum seal. She slid a spoon into the goo and pulled it out, covered in chocolate, and sucked.

  ON THE WORKBENCH lay the skeleton of a small bird, collapsed onto a spread-eagled pair of pliers. The fine bones of the bird and the jaws of the spread pliers seemed as if they might once have supported the heavy and light parts of the same creature, a dead grotesque with an open beak. She set the soiled rag on top of it and looked instead at the boy out the window, dancing alone. He flipped open his Walkman to switch tapes. Sixteen. Her own would have been fourteen. Girl or boy, it did no good to speculate which. She wasn’t sorry, just sometimes she wondered, that was all. She slipped a thumb and finger into the pocket of her jeans — the fit was getting snug again — and pulled out the skinny joint she’d helped herself to from the baggie inside a coffee tin in Mavis’s cupboard. She flicked her lighter. Sharp crackle, fast burn, and the smell, that welcome green funk.

  “THIS IS WRONG, wrong, wrong,” Barry had said a week ago in the ten minutes they’d stolen in the alley behind the A&W close to the college.

  “It’s true. We should never have begun.”

  “It’s time to do something right.”

  Uh-oh.

  “My son is settled in his own apartment.” Barry had a practice of not using the names of the members of his family, not wishing to pull them into the affair. “My daughter will be off across the country to U of T in a couple of months.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I’ve told my wife she and I need to talk. She said, Yes, we do. So come the weekend, we’ll talk.”

  Sylvie hadn’t thought it necessary to say she wouldn’t want to play house if there actually were a house and the two of them free to play in it.

  “Sweetheart?” he said. “Things are changing.”

  “Changing.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m leaving her.”

  “I wasn’t really — We should get back to work, do you think?”

  He passed his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture, and she watched the way his bronze curls fell against his forehead. Handsome. Sylvie kept her eyes on those curls because she couldn’t meet his eyes. He was a good man. She wished she could have loved him. He didn’t even know he’d overlapped with others. She wished she co
uld have loved any one of the good men she’d known. Some people seemed to manage it, or at least to fool themselves into it. Love, children, satisfaction. A full glass.

  She made her way back to the Quonset’s entrance, flicked off the lights and strained to close the heavy sliding door.

  SYLVIE STOOD BAREFOOT in shorts and a T-shirt near the edge of Mavis’s pool, holding a gin and tonic. “Coward,” she said under her breath. She fished out the wedge of lemon, put it in her mouth and felt its sour sting. She tipped her glass and slid the three ice cubes up the side and into her hand, held them there and braced against the cold bite. She felt the surprise on her toes as the melt dripped onto them, then slid dark onto the concrete.

  Mavis had been the first one down the stairs that long-ago day, the one to find their mother; Sylvie the first to run for help. They were both just home from softball practice, Mavis right field, Sylvie left, lowering their voices from field volume to the necessary hush of home as they came up the back steps. But Mavis, in the door first, spoke out loud. “Why’s the basement door open? Why’s the stair light on?”

  Ruth Fletcher, a woman who, on a good day and relying on two canes, struggled to manage a single-floor path from bedroom to bathroom, kitchen to living room, had for reasons unknown attempted to navigate a narrow descent. Whatever she’d been after, from shelf or trunk or rickety wardrobe down there, she could have asked either girl and they’d gladly have fetched it. Gladly. The errand that took her to the stairs that day died with her, a stubborn knot inside her husband’s and her daughters’ separate hearts.

  “Chad?”

  He lay by the pool, half-shaded by the pot plants, a corner of his damp towel lying over his eyes in a skinny twist. “Mm?”

  “Can I borrow a bike?”

  He lifted the towel away from one eye, and that one eye looked to be considering how to say no to an aunt.

  “Not one of your good bikes. The one you rode into the pool yesterday.”

  “Cool. Are you going for a ride along the grid?”

  “No, um, can you help me lift it onto your platform?”

  “Aunt Sylvie, I don’t know if —”

  “I’ll be fine. If not, you’re not responsible.”

  He did help. He even held the bike steady while she got on. She swung her leg over the rear wheel, lowered herself onto the seat and struggled to sit steady. “People do some reckless things, don’t they?”

  He shrugged. “Auntie, straighten your handlebars.”

  “How’s this?”

  “You sure you want to?”

  Sylvie pictured him speeding into the pool the day before, knowing water couldn’t break him, finishing with a glorious splash. “I’ve taken stupider risks.” She settled one foot on the lower pedal, where its serrated metal edges pressed into her bare sole. She raised her second foot to the other pedal. The bike listed and Chad wrenched it back into balance. “Oh Jesus,” Sylvie said. “Oh Jesus, Jesus.” She tightened her grip.

  “I’m letting go now, Auntie S. Okay! Go-go-go!”

  Love it! Love it! the whooshing no stopping, love it! The wheel slipping sideways, sideways. Pull back, pull back! Just before the pool’s edge the front wheel skidded off the ramp. She careened in sidelong to the wall. Watersmack, neck jerk, head against concrete, hard, hard. The bicycle dropped away below her. She was under water with a fury of pain in one shoulder. Nose burning. Don’t move that shoulder, don’t! Up. Up now. She kicked to spin herself around, grabbed the edge with her good arm and hung there coughing out water.

  Chad helped her into her car and floored it to what passed for a hospital in Ripley. He left her with a nurse, who called the doctor, while Chad sped off to the Co-op to track down his mom. Sylvie had torn her rotator cuff. She might need surgery. In the meantime the doctor fitted her with a complicated sling that included a tie to wrap around her waist. She was not to move that arm, strictly not. The doctor feared a concussion and ordered her to wait under observation while he went off to do whatever small-town doctors do between emergencies. Observing her in his absence was nurse Beth, who’d been Sylvie’s classmate from grade one through to graduation. They’d never been close, but they’d been to the same parties. They’d hardly seen each other since the final day of high school. Still, their shared history might support a small request.

  “I don’t suppose you could rustle up a joint?”

  “You’ve got opioids in your system. And don’t go asking Mavis, either.”

  “Please. I bet you’ve got one in your pretty pink pocket.”

  “I bet I haven’t had one in my pocket since 1974.”

  A shame. A little green would have eased their awkward catching up, especially when Beth said, “Office work, huh? That’s nice. We always thought that out of the bunch of us you’d be the one that got to university.”

  Sylvie tried to guess who Beth might mean when she said we. The whole bloody town? Seven hundred-odd people she’d let down by bootstrapping up the lower rungs of administration.

  “And here I did,” said Beth.

  “Life is funny.”

  “Yeah, you have to laugh.”

  “Sometimes” — Sylvie shifted in her bed and winced — “it’s the best strategy.”

  Mavis appeared, in her collared Co-op shirt with her name above her left breast. “Look at you. Mascara smeared halfway to your chin.”

  “Yours too, sis.”

  Mavis took a tissue from the squat cabinet by the bed and looked at Beth, who left the room on her quiet white shoes. “I told my kid to take the ramp down. Jesus, Sylvie. What got into you? I mean, what?”

  “I don’t know. I needed to get past a few things.”

  “Things. Now would be a good time to be specific.”

  “It isn’t what you’re thinking. Just that I need to put my more — my recent past behind me.”

  “There are other ways to move from A to B.”

  Sylvie closed her eyes, felt a nudge to the bed as Mavis shuffled her chair closer, felt her sister’s hand close over her own. She found it best to concentrate her attention on the feel of that hand and little else. They sat this way for a good long moment. When the time felt right, Sylvie opened her eyes. “I’m sorry to take you back there. It wasn’t even in my mind.”

  “It was a long time ago, Sylvie. I’m okay. Are you?”

  Sylvie shrugged with her good shoulder and smiled as best she could. “I’ll have to put my business idea on pause. Possible surgery. Can’t operate a machine.”

  “I thought the idea was you’d be the brains, hire the brawn.”

  “Brawn costs money.”

  “Yes. And I have news. Geoff was at the Co-op when Chad came barreling in. We were having yet another conversation about your idea. He still wasn’t sure, then Chad bursts out with your escapade. Well. Anyone with the spunk — Geoff’s word — to ride down a ramp into a swimming pool at the age of thirty-five —”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “— he said that would be a person he’s happy to support.”

  “I tore a body part I’d never even heard of.”

  “By now I’m running to my car, of course I am, thank you very much Sylvie, and he follows me out and what he says as I’m closing my door is that he likes a risk taker.”

  “A risk taker who can’t steer.”

  “I know. Take it or leave it.”

  And take or leave the city. This month’s rumour said the concertmaster had landed a position in Hamilton. The city was an empty room with no more music threading through the wall. The city was her hollow kitchen with its drying cubes of cake and browned banana.

  She was afraid. Afraid to borrow money, afraid to be the boss. These, she had learned at a business seminar, were

  typical fears

  and could be dealt with.

  But to circle back to Ripley? A town the same but different, where people thought they knew her but they didn’t; where Erik, who’d helped her practise how to kiss, now managed the gas station and liv
ed on three acres with a wife and four kids; where one of his brothers worked in the grocery store and the other at the rink, which was a year-round facility now, with artificial ice and hockey school in July, no longer a place for dusky trysts; and where the house that held her childhood had long ago been torn down and replaced.

  Her elbow was restless, held close at her side by the strap that circled her waist. “Watch yourself,” Erik told her more than once, years past. Well, she never really had. Maybe if she were on her own awhile she would. Maybe for the time being the person to get close to was herself. Suppose, though, her new friend disappointed her? This was the real fear. Suppose her new friend wasn’t enough to fill the void. She strained against the binding at her elbow, and hot pain shot from her shoulder on down.

  “Mavis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get in touch with Oprah for me, okay?”

  “I’ll find the number. You can make the call.”

  Honestly,

  … I DO WONDER why the fiftyish man with the clipped beard in colours of rust and salt has left me alone in his office as if I can be trusted with all the private whatnot: company books, confidential records, almost certainly pills and elixirs in the squat cabinet where I’ve set my folded jacket. Over there’s a monitor, the word dozing in pale blue letters sliding across the screen on the diagonal; up on the wall a clock with a brown surround that reminds me of the one in the principal’s office from my sixties childhood. Maybe, unprepared to deal with a case such as me on a Saturday morning, the man stepped out to collect himself. He did look nervous, kept squeezing one pale hand with the other. I just now saw him go into the bathroom — Employees Only — past Shampoo and to the left. Are you still squeezing your hand in there, Mister, or are you squeezing something else?

  Think I’m funny.

  He’s left me here to consider my sins. All right. I watch the second hand as it jerks, jerks its way around. I am not, at the core, a dishonest person, though others have their doubts and at times appearances support their view. Sometimes I think I do it just for the feel of a thing under my fingers. A new and secret friend among the monotonies.