As I sat downstairs in my parents’ kitchen, pondering Ma’s latest bribe, the youngster with no future napped upstairs in our old bedroom. In the past three years, she had learned how to identify five types of Pacific salmon, but she had never learned how to unpack. Her suitcase lay wounded on the floor. Our bunk beds were long gone, but I could see the gouges left in the moth-colored carpet. Our mother had given up on the carpet, but not on her youngest daughter.
“Cecilia,” she said, “this might be a good time to talk some sense into her. Find out what her plans are.” She did not ask whether my husband, Lewis, would be joining us.
“You know, this is a working trip,” I said, irked at the lack of praise. This was my first major assignment. I had already photocopied my driver’s license, hidden my credit-card numbers in three places, and laminated my permanent packing list, which was divided into categories: beach, city, ski, and summer/rural. I was excited to go west because I’d already resigned myself to the likelihood of spending my twenties in a cubicle, with glorious postcards tacked to the walls to remind me of a world unilluminated by fluorescent light.
After I told Lewis my plans, he left the business card of an associate taped to the phone. The note read, Since you’ve never been to Calgary, you’ve got to call this guy. He’ll tell you where to go.
I waited until I was jetbound, thirty thousand feet above Saskatchewan, before abandoning the card in the seat-back pocket.
I had been talking sense into Allie my entire life. Our parents clocked impossible hours at the family fabric store; whenever they shambled into the apartment and spotted us, they grunted with confusion. They acted as if my sister spoke the Shanghainese dialect and I was the only translator, particularly during Allie’s bouts of severe asthma. When she was ten and I was thirteen, she caught pneumonia and ended up in an oxygen tent, refusing to take her medicine. Ma and Ba threatened force.
I said, “I’ll bet the medicine tastes like shit. She needs a chaser.” For once, they didn’t scold me for saying “shit.” They didn’t ask how “chaser” came to live in my vocabulary. They were too busy peering through the plastic curtain that encircled the bed, checking to see if Allie was still there. Droplets of water clung to the inside of the tent, obscuring her round face; she reminded me of one of those collector’s dolls that are never removed from the box. Her tiny hand cleared a window in the plastic; I thought I could see her waving.
I prescribed the Crispy Crunch bar in my backpack. “She also likes Coffee Crisp,” I said. “And Popsicles.”
Our father began to take notes. Our mother rolled her eyes.
Later, Allie scribbled Thank you on the chocolate wrapper (that she wasn’t supposed to talk was the only aspect of her condition that resembled a blessing). To amuse ourselves, we compiled reviews of her various drugs: If a rock could fart, it would taste like Ventolin, she wrote.
Every day after school, I took the streetcar to the Hospital for Sick Children, pulled up a chair, and listened to her breathe. I learned every note of this horrible music, what our father called the jungle of bad lungs—the birdcalls, the wheezy thunder—dreading the loneliness of the empty bunk above me.
At the Calgary airport, we fought over the rental car, but I came to appreciate Allie’s insistence on a convertible. The wind kissed our bare arms as we cruised past the headquarters of oil companies and the Romanesque leftovers of downtown, the Rockies thumping out their ancient EKG in the distance.
But we hadn’t trekked to the prairie for urban pleasures. The city we’d left behind had theater, museums, and one of Earth’s tallest structures. It had fine dining and enough immigrants to make comparisons to New York only faintly ridiculous. Toronto even roosted on a Great Lake that people remembered to love in the summer, but it could not boast snowy peaks or a familiarity with livestock. In Allie’s opinion, Calgary’s status as the host of the 1988 Winter Olympics automatically made our hometown inferior.
“You have to respect a place that has a stadium shaped like a giant saddle,” she said, as we approached Stampede Park along MacLeod Trail.
On our first date, Lewis told a great joke about King Kong, Hong Kong, and the Saddledome (both our mothers hailed from Hong Kong). He wasn’t tall, but he had an outdoor voice and strong cheekbones, and I thought of him in terms of my preference for small hotels. They had more character. For once, I didn’t have to make the dinner reservation; he picked me up in a car with leather seats and took me to see the Leafs versus the Flames, whispering the play-by-play as we gazed at center ice from our luxury box. Never had the comment “That guy was totally offside” sounded so alluring. I had dated men with money before, but they seemed distracted, as if listening to distant symphonies. Lewis was entirely present. I worshipped his relatives—two independent brothers, parents who literally spent their weekends stocking Saturday and Sunday with golf and brunch and a lake cottage in Muskoka. Their laughs jingled like the lift tickets that validated the zippers of their ski jackets.
The Calgary Stampede takes place every July, luring competitive cowboys to a celebration of the Wild West complete with parade floats and chuck-wagon races and sunstruck arenas where the dust rises in clouds. We wolf-whistled from the grandstand; in the saddle-bronc event, men in denim shirts and improbably white hats got points for coordinating their movements to their bucking horses. How did I know it wasn’t enough just to stay on? My shameless sister immediately went native, coveting a Stetson and a pair of pointy boots. I slipped her the extra money from our mother’s check and said, “I dare you to wear that getup back home.”
Perhaps her hunger was stoked by the sight of all those bulls being roped by men in dented hats. Perhaps it was the heat, a kind of free-range headache seasoned with cotton candy, alfalfa, and victory. Allie loved winning. Her favorite films involved training scenes—apprentices beating on punching bags or flubbing triple axels on the road to perfection. Allie would get so excited, she’d bounce in her seat, her night-colored hair escaping its ponytail.
Bypassing the screaming roller-coasters and the Old Tyme Photo Parlor, my sister hunted prizes in the midway, stuffed animals ripening on the vine at every booth. I followed as she threw darts and aimed softballs. I loaded my arms with the spoils: a tiger, some fuzzy dice, and a defective teddy bear. “The secret to water-gun races,” she assured me, expertly hosing the smile of a clown until the balloon atop its head exploded, “is to pick the most exhausted balloon.” I was familiar with the philosophy. Before I met Lewis, it was usually how I had managed to secure dates.
At the Skee-Ball challenge, she held out her hands, motioning for her toys. “Your turn.”
“Nah, you know, most of these games are rigged. I watched this whole documentary about it—” A rain of clapping mocked my words as a guy behind me socked a ball into the hundred-point ring. Allie grinned and tugged on the foot of her teddy bear; his eyes were glued on lopsided.
“You should exchange him for another one,” I said.
“Why? He’s perfect. You can keep him if you want.”
I shook the bear, his eyes jiggling. “He looks like he has mad cow disease.”
She snorted and bit her lip. Allie’s mouth was always moving, a fact that might have explained her tendency for non sequiturs.
She took the animal off my hands and said, “Ceci, are you okay?” Although my sister’s asthma was under control, we instinctively took care of her; whenever she tried to return the favor, she sounded like she was reading from a TelePrompTer.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m just tired,” I said. But I wanted her to keep prying.
“You must be hungry,” she said, poking me in the stomach. “I am so famished, I could eat this bear.” As she walked away, I observed the parts of her shoulders where her sunscreen had let her down.
I stayed rooted to the spot, hoping she would turn around. She didn’t. I kicked a plastic cup that lay on the pavement. It rolled in a lazy circle and bled Coke all over my running shoes.
“Why don’t you j
ust get a corn dog?” I yelled after her, but she was already beyond hearing.
To look at my baby sister, you would never guess at her insatiable capacity for food. When we were children, I used to warn Allie that she was skinny enough to choke on water, and I took great pleasure in informing her that in the hardscrabble fields of Old China, she would have been the first to expire in times of famine. Allie’s metabolism was the fastest thing I had ever seen, shunting the fuel through her system before she even had time to rest her fork.
Just off the Trans-Canada Highway, we chose an eatery based on its barbed-wire sculpture, which graced the front porch of the roadhouse like hallucinations etched in stars: a rusty pig floated in the air; a cowgirl reached for her lasso. Inside, the dining room was paneled with old barnboard, saddles gleaming in display cases. Giant armchairs hewn from rough logs waited for the out-of-season fireplace to roar back to life.
“Lewis would get a kick out of this place,” said Allie.
I noticed the antique rifles hanging above the bar. “Probably,” I said.
“Work must be crazy. Is that why he didn’t come?” My husband was the co-manager of a mutual fund on Bay Street. He rarely traveled for pleasure.
“There’s a lot going on right now.” The excuse made my throat ache.
At the hostess station, Allie requested a table for two. I couldn’t even enter a restaurant these days without thinking of the hundreds of times Lewis and I had stared at each other over a meal. We had met at a similarly kitschy establishment a few years ago when I was still a history major at the University of Toronto. Lewis, six years my senior, had joined me at my table.
“The waitress told me you’re collecting ghost stories for a book,” he said. This was true. My favorite tales involved mundane specters, eternal hostages who waited for the elevator or opened their mail, night after night.
“My aunt’s basement is haunted,” he said. “By a family of cats.”
For once, I didn’t mind being mocked. I said, “Everybody has a ghost story, even if it’s someone else’s.”
As Allie and I were seated at a window table covered in gingham, she noted that the cracked-plastic tumblers reminded her of shower doors.
“Speaking of hygiene,” she said, “can you stop taking all the shampoo from the hotel room?”
“What?”
“I’ll bet your purse is full of little soaps.”
“Yeah, well, whenever you need a Band-Aid or an aspirin, who gives it to you?” My voice jumped an octave.
I was afraid she was going to remind me of the time she found me washing umbrellas in the bathtub, but she took a long drink of water instead. My elbows avoided the greasy tablecloth; cartoon cows mooned out at me from the menu, which also happened to be the placemat. I tried not to sully my hands, but when I attempted to read the specialties, which were trapped in an illustrated corral, I was forced to wipe off a lick of barbecue sauce.
At the bottom of the menu, a dancing cactus issued a dare:
THE 72 OZ. STEAK CHALLENGE. EAT THIS BABY WITHIN 60 MINUTES AND THE MEAT’S ON US.
“Hey, check this out,” I said. “One man’s insanity is another man’s supper.”
Allie turned sideways, repeatedly smacking her flip-flop against her heel. “It’s only insane if you don’t finish it.”
“No, it’s fifty dollars if you don’t finish it.”
Shaking the ice in her glass, she said, “Ma told me I was insane when I decided to go to school in Vancouver.”
“Yeah, and you dropped out anyway,” I said. “So maybe she was right.”
She picked a sugar cube out of the bowl and hurled it at me. Maybe this was not the best way to proceed.
The waitress came to our rescue. I said, “I’ll have the burger, medium, with Swiss cheese.” I scanned the desserts (I like to decide these things ahead of time), but my sister’s silence compelled me to glance up. Allie’s fist was pressed against her lips, her eyes glittering like fairy lights.
“No,” I said. “You couldn’t possibly.”
Her hands rearranged the silverware in etiquette-unfriendly designations (I was the one who taught her how to set a table). Her clothes made her look even smaller than she was, her legs pushing through her red short-shorts like drinking straws. She hooked both thumbs in her waistband and tested for flexibility.
“Why not?” she said. “Dress for excess.”
“Because nobody who wears spaghetti straps can finish a seventy-two-ounce steak. That’s four and a half pounds of carnage.”
Before I’d even finished voicing my objections, I knew I had essentially given her a gorge order.
Many before her had tried and failed. Grimy photos quilted the room, their Scotch tape curling in the heat from the grill. The walls were divided into losers and winners. Like wealthy landowners, the victors stood out against a meadow of blank wall, their feats reflected in their queasy smirks, empty plates brandished as trophies. In the losers’ section, elderly ladies waved bleeding morsels on forks, drunken contenders holding the uneaten steaks against their eyes.
Allie turned to the waitress and said, “I’ll take seventy-two ounces of your best Alberta beef. Rare.”
I should have hauled her out of the place by her ponytail. It’s what our mother would have done. It’s what Lewis would have done. “Fine,” I said. “It’s your coronary.” I shook my head until my eyes hurt. My sister ignored me as the waitress slapped a form on the table for her to fill out. As soon as the chit went up, an announcement sent the PA system into feedback, an amused voice directing diners to focus their attention on the madwoman at table five. The lights snapped off and a spotlight awoke, ricocheting off the walls before staining our table. Allie was ignited, all 110 pounds of her, wearing the hot halo of attention. Bringing her fingers to her lips, she blew kisses to the crowd as I pretended not to exist.
“Alexandra Wu has decided to take the Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge. Will she succeed?”
“You gave them your full name?” I said.
Guffaws drifted from the other side of the room; in a rising tide of plaid shirts and dirty jeans, men stood up to get a better look at the lightweight. Bets were tabled.
No doubt you have heard of Takeru Kobayashi, who can consume almost as many hot dogs in one minute as there are syllables in his notorious name. (His record is fifty-three in twelve minutes.) The 144-pound reedling has earned top honors for five years running at Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, splitting his hot dogs in a personal method dubbed the Solomon technique. When our mother heard that one of the yat bun people had distinguished himself by inhaling wieners, she said, “And to think we were scared of them during the war.” Kobayashi is a celebrity in Japan and a freak of nature.
The freak opposite me pushed her water glass away. “Don’t want to fill up on drinks,” she said.
Snickering, the waitress dumped a breadbasket on the table as if to say, “You won’t be needing this.” I took a roll and watched my sister’s eyes close—two dashes above her flushed cheeks. She took what my yoga teacher called a “deep cleansing breath” and, sensing my unease, said, “I’m meditating, Cecilia. Just give me a minute.”
I looked at my watch. After the second hand finished its revolution, I said, “So what’s with the Ladies’ Barrel Racing? Why can’t it be Women’s Barrel Racing?” Conversationally, I was a lousy cowgirl, my lariat falling on all the wrong topics.
Allie sighed and opened her eyes. “Look at Wimbledon. The ladies win a plate, the guys get a trophy.” Her hunger was making her flippant.
My burger arrived—a modest puck consorting with a gang of fries. I bit into the patty and waved a fry at her. “You’d better not yak in the car afterward,” I said.
If Lewis had been there, he might have reminded me that the vehicle was a rental. He once said, “You care too much about things that aren’t yours.”
I whipped a legal pad out of my bag and reviewed my notes.
“Have you started the article yet?”
I winced. When I’d fired up my computer at the hotel, writing seemed trivial—I felt the same futility that overwhelms me at planetariums when the lights are extinguished and the fake skies light up with my own irrelevance. “I’ve typed a few paragraphs,” I lied.
The steak restored the peace. When my sister’s meal arrived, I heard it before I saw it: the platter thunked on the table like drawbridges slamming, like Bibles closing, the beef hanging over the edge. Opening before me was my sister’s maw, and what she was intending to put in it was the long-lost eighth continent.
We were agog. It was the same size as my laptop. “Look,” I said. “It’s creating its own weather.” Allie shut her eyes again.
There were rules, of course. At no point would she be allowed to leave the table—yet another good reason for limiting water intake. Her companion was not permitted to assist, not even to help cut her food, not that my sister would have wanted to be treated like a six-year-old. Furthermore, the steak dinner included a baked potato and coleslaw, fixings that Allie couldn’t afford to underestimate.
A huge cheer buoyed the crowd when she fed herself the first bite. The waitress had delivered my sister’s nemesis along with a ticking clock, and I caught Allie’s eyes already flickering to the countdown. She expertly sawed the slab into manageable pieces, paring the gristle and mounding it on her bread dish. A flare of hope lit her face.
She ate steadily, smiling as grease painted her chin, as pink juice dribbled off her cutlery. I lost my appetite, shredding my stale bun as my sister went to work. A couple of times she punctuated the ordeal with offhand comments like “We need to buy gas,” or “When we get back, I’d like to buy new sheets.”
I decided to try again. “Do you ever think about all the things you might be good at, but you don’t know because you’ve never given it a shot? Like, you might be really great at tennis. Or you might be the best ukelele player who ever lived.”
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