Three Years with the Rat

by Jay Hosking

  I was last into the apartment and it was strangely quiet. The gear was stacked in the living room and John could be heard in the kitchen, getting drinks.

  Lee came out of the washroom and said, “Was somebody arguing?”

  “I tried to put the gear in the second bedroom,” Steve whispered. “There’s a lock on the door.”

  “What? Why?” Lee didn’t try to speak quietly.

  “Who cares?” Brian said. “It’s probably nothing.”

  Lee looked to me. “What’s going on in there, Scruffy?”

  Before I could answer she got up from the arm of the sofa chair and went to the second bedroom door. She put her hand out and cranked the knob, which turned but didn’t open the door. She fingered the keyhole for the deadbolt with her other hand.

  “Lee?” John now stood at the edge of the living room, drinks in each hand. His face was unreadable, a mask.

  “What is this?” Lee said.

  John slowly put down the glasses. “It’s a locked door, Lee. I would ask that you respect it.”

  Lee flinched. Steve, Brian, and I didn’t move.

  “You would ask that we be fine with it,” Lee said.

  “Yes,” John told her.

  “With a locked door.”

  “Yes.”

  “A locked door in the home where our friend was last seen before she disappeared. After you just got out of the mental hospital.”

  “A month ago,” John said.

  He took a step toward Lee. His back was to me, then, and he was obscuring my view of all but Lee’s elbows that jutted out as she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “John. A locked door. You were the last to see her,” she said.

  Only his head moved, a shallow little wobble of thoughts. I was breathing through my mouth and the air was dry and hot. Then his posture relaxed a little.

  “Maybe you’re right,” John said to Lee. “Maybe it’s unreasonable to ask that you be fine with it. But I would ask you to trust me.”

  He faced all of us, carefully inspecting our eyes one at a time.

  “Or I would ask you to leave,” John said.

  He and Lee took a good look at each other, both of them sad but in different ways. Lee leaned over and picked up her jean jacket, folded it into her arms.

  “We’re worried about you,” she said. “We all are.”

  The three friends filed out together. Brian said nothing but ran his hands through Grace’s coats piled on the rack. Steve held Lee’s hand and mumbled a goodbye to me and a thank you to John. Soon I was the last visitor in the apartment and John still stood proud, staring into his empty living room.

  Without looking at me, he asked, “Drink?”

  I put on my shoes and told him I would see him soon. He closed the door behind me with the tiniest click, then the heavy crank of a deadbolt.

  —

  I was twenty-five minutes late for work the next day but there were prospective clients in the office all morning and my boss was in such a good mood that she didn’t give me her usual grief.

  Only once did she leave her glass-encased cubicle and it was to say, “Thank you. That’s enough.”

  At first I had no idea what she was talking about, but then she pointed to my foot. I hadn’t realized I’d been humming and tapping one of Steve and Brian’s songs.

  Nicole made me lunch at her restaurant before her own shift started, couscous, steamed spinach and other vegetables, a rich sauce with garlic, Parmesan on top. She had been dead asleep when I left for work, with her fists curled in and her face slack but pretty. At lunch she worked her hand across the table until I was running my fingertips from her knuckles to her wrist. We didn’t say much, only put our pieces together for another day. Every bite tasted meticulous and rich and complex. I ate with my eyes closed. When I was finished, she asked me to help finish her plate. While she washed up for her shift, I smelled traces of her sticky, sweet scent on the back of my hand.

  I kissed Nicole goodbye and deliberately held it for too long, until she was laughing and her tongue curled up and our teeth clacked together. She hated this, she loved this, she put her palms on my shoulders and pushed me away. I told her I would make dinner that night and she didn’t say anything, only walked backward into the kitchen with a long, genuine smile on her face. Duchenne.

  Work ended late so I drove to Bloor to buy kimchi, Nicole’s current favourite. Even after a year of living in the city, I still found it amazing that the street was so divided at Bathurst, with bookstores and record shops and the Fortress to the east and the vibrant Korean neighbourhood, its restaurants and Asian produce and beauty salons, to the west. Night was already casting its deep pinks and blues over everything. I called Steve on the walk back to my car and told him I’d been humming his song. There wasn’t a chance to gauge his reaction, though, because I ended the call when I saw John coming toward me on the other side of the street.

  Though the daylight had faded, I could see that John was struggling. Eight or ten planks of wood and a heavy, arrowhead shovel were balanced over his arms. With every step the wood slid and jutted at bad angles. To compensate, he shifted his frame and walked with an increasing lope. But it was no use. Eventually he stumbled under his own gait and dropped the supplies. Other pedestrians circled around him while he fought to collect the wood. As he lifted the pile, the shovel fell out of his hands. As he knelt to grasp the tool, the wood slipped away from him again.

  Hands empty, he shouted, “Fuck!”

  Passersby scattered and fretted.

  By this time, I had jaywalked across the street and was shouting to get John’s attention. He startled like an animal when I touched his sleeve but regained some composure when he finally recognized me.

  “There’s a reason it’s evolutionarily conserved, you know.” He wouldn’t look at me as he spoke. “Anger. Aggression. They’re useful. My hands are shaking now, over some inanimate objects, but it’s a fair trade-off. Violence is the logical extreme of communication, the only language that people will not ignore, the only language that everyone understands.”

  While he rambled I separated the wood into two piles on the gritty sidewalk. I helped him up and together we carried the supplies back to his apartment. My hands ached from the chilly air.

  John avoided using the overhead bulbs of the apartment and switched on the table lamps instead, a bath of warm light. He left the wood piled at the door and lowered himself onto the couch like an old man. He jammed his fists into his armpits and rocked a little. His shoulders stretched the shirt but his chest had started to look deflated.

  On the coffee table was a piece of paper, printed on which was a grid, the alphabet running across the rows and columns.

  “It’s called a tabula recta,” John said absently.

  “What’s it for?” I asked.

  “Officer 2510 asked me the same thing when she came by to see me today.”

  “2510? What did she want?”

  “Only to ask me the same questions, as per her usual.” He un-tucked his hands and began to massage his face. “Have I heard from Grace. Do I have any new information. Why am I so convinced she’s gone for good. Why am I keeping things from the police.”

  John pulled his mouth tight at the corners and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. I sat down on the other end of the couch. He removed his hands from his face and his eyes flitted without focus.

  “And what did you tell her?” I asked.

  “Nothing she wanted to hear.” He coughed, closed his eyes, kept them closed. “I’m starting to treat her like my therapist. Told her I’m swallowing anxiolytics by the handful. Told her I wake up in the middle of the night thinking Grace is in the bed, beside me, whispering in my ear. Told her I’m doing a good job of alienating friends and isolating myself.”

  I’d had my own conversation with Officer 2510 and could imagine her nonplussed reaction to all of this. Her thick monotone was more memorable to me than her appearance.

  I asked, “Did
you tell her whether you’re alienating friends on purpose or by accident?”

  “I didn’t, no. Scotch?”

  He stood and went to the kitchen. I heard the lovely uncorking sound of the bottle, rocks of ice rolling in glasses, a gentle pour. John returned to the living room and sat at the end of the couch, handing me a small, wide glass of golden liquor. We tapped glasses and drank. The scotch was fairly mellow and as long as I kept my mouth shut, I wasn’t revolted by the aftertaste.

  “So which is it?” I asked.

  John looked at me, unsure.

  “Are you alienating us on purpose or by accident?”

  “Ah.” He raised his chin a little. “Does it matter?”

  “Jesus, would I be asking if it didn’t?”

  “I suppose it’s a little of both,” he said.

  I surveyed the living room. Grace’s things were still hanging on the walls, still poking out from under the couch, still taking up every bit of psychological space in the room. I felt closed in, trapped.

  I asked, “Look, you want me to trust you, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I need you to trust me. At least a little.”

  He was about to interrupt but I raised my hand and continued.

  “You just told me you’re struggling. And O.K., I know that shows trust. And I appreciate it. But you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not doing this again. I’m not going to do nothing, this time, while somebody close to me falls apart.”

  With my right hand I poured the scotch into my mouth, and with my left I waved in a circle, indicating the entire room.

  “Look at all this,” I said. “You’re living in a museum. A shrine.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I bet that no matter where you turn, you’re reminded of her absence.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Of our failure to help her.”

  “No. Of my failure.”

  Each sip was more tolerable than the last. I finished the scotch, took an ice cube in my mouth and crunched it. My back teeth stung with the cold.

  “Oh, fuck you,” I said. “We all failed her. You don’t get ownership on guilt.”

  John straightened his posture and cleared his throat. “That isn’t what I meant.”

  I waved my hand again, more violently this time. I could feel my belly slosh with heat.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” I asked. “About your shrine. Look. Choose to live or choose to remember. But it seems like you can’t do both right now.”

  John didn’t respond. He finished his drink and held the empty glass in his hand, staring at the photos on the wall and Grace’s coat rack near the front door. Then he got up and poured us two more drinks, this time without ice. We stood and drank. By now I couldn’t taste anything.

  We made a game plan. First we made piles of Grace’s old things according to vague categories. Next we stuffed them into garbage bags and old boxes John kept under the sink.

  “What about in there?” I asked, pointing to the locked door.

  He hesitated. Then he unlocked the second bedroom and slipped inside. A moment later he came out with a few small things. He’d entered and exited quickly, didn’t turn on a light, so I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the door. I stared at him and made it clear I was annoyed.

  “I’ll show you what I’m working on,” he said, “when it’s finished.”

  We moved on to the master bedroom. We pulled all her clothes from the closet and crammed all her shawls and scarves and shoes into a laundry basket. We carried the bags and boxes down the stairs into the chilly night air. We filled the trunk and backseat of my car with Grace’s possessions, all of it bound for my mother’s house.

  At the time, I thought he was choosing to live.

  John invited me back upstairs for another scotch. I looked at my phone and realized how very, very late I was for dinner with Nicole. I cursed, gave John his customary Toronto man hug, and sprinted home. After the scotches, driving was out of the question.

  Nicole wasn’t home when I got there but it was clear that she had come and gone. Her work clothes were scattered across the furniture and her fall jacket was on the floor. She’d torn a sheet of paper from her notebook and left it on the kitchen counter. The note said Thanks for dinner and she’d cross-hatched a picture of a chubby bird with long tail feathers. I brushed my teeth, put the kimchi on the counter, and considered having another drink.

  “Way to go, you dipshit,” I said to myself. I left the apartment again and dashed to the Cuckoo.

  The night air bit into my skin, strikingly cold for September, a warning of the angry winter to come. I buried my hands in my pockets. Through the front window of the Cuckoo, I could see Nicole talking with a group of people, one or two women but mostly young men. She was smiling and it was clear she was having a good time without me around.

  I stood at the window watching them drink and laugh, and then I turned and walked home.

  2006

  JUST LIKE ANY KIDS, Grace and I sometimes fought, tormented each other, tried out behaviours to see which ones would stick. One summer day, when she was nine and I was six, we went to play in the new subdivision, a construction zone up the hill from our neighbourhood. While we were wandering inside a half-built house, Grace started screaming. I turned around and she had her leg stuck between two planks of wood in the wall, a narrow space that the contractors would one day plaster with drywall. Her plan was obvious, to squeeze through that space and hide on me, only she had gotten stuck on her way through.

  I saw my chance, got right in her face and had the last laugh. She cried, no words, only wailing and swatting at me feebly. I wanted her to sweat, so I left her for a satisfying minute and watched with satisfaction.

  Once my gloating was over, though, it was clear that something was wrong. She sounded too serious, too hysterical, in too much pain. She was pointing toward the floor. I looked down and was horrified: the problem wasn’t that her leg was stuck, but rather that she’d stepped on a nail. I had no idea how long she had been pointing at her foot.

  I remember the nail being huge and rust-coloured, pushed straight through the sole and poking out the top of her shoe. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. I started crying, too, and ran home as fast as I could to get help. Our father pulled the station wagon up to the construction zone, grumbling the whole way, yanked Grace off the nail without hesitation. We went straight to the hospital, Grace got shots, and for the rest of the summer she hobbled.

  I felt wretched about the incident, an unlovable little brother, but Grace never held it against me. If anything, it was times like these that actually bound us together. And after that day, whenever I saw pain ripple across my sister’s face, I recognized it immediately, viscerally.

  —

  “You really want to hear this?” Grace asked me.

  We were sitting in the Cuckoo at a small table, about a month after I’d arrived in the city. In the middle of our table was a tea light in a glass holder, and on either side of it were two large pint glasses full of amber beer. The bar was dim and most of the other tables were unoccupied. The bartender had put on some faint music and an acoustic guitar flickered around the corners of the empty room. I wasn’t sure what day of the week it was. September was almost over but autumn hadn’t come, yet.

  Grace was shawled, eyeshadowed, a little uneasy. It was the first time I’d noticed long vertical lines around her mouth, the first time I would have used the word severe to describe how my sister looked. Her eyes were candlelit green saucers that flicked between her fidgety hands and my face.

  “I should at least have an inkling of what you’re doing at the university,” I told her. “Need to have something to tell Mom if she calls.”

  She cupped her beer and tapped her rings against the glass. There was no rhythm in the sound, only the twitch of anxious energy. “Fuck Mom.”

  I shrugged, neutral.

  “I’ll have to dumb it down for you,
” she said. Then she grinned crookedly, amused by her own insult.

  I laughed. “Humour your idiot brother.”

  The bartender stacked some glasses behind the counter. Grace jumped in her seat. Then she straightened herself and drank some beer using both hands to raise the glass.

  “I suppose what we’re trying to do is measure and quantify subjective experience,” she said. “Ultimately, we’d like to do it in the absence of objectivity.”

  “That’s the dumbed-down version?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you make it dumber?”

  She was visibly irritated by my use of the word dumber. I scored it as a point for myself and gave her a smug look.

  She shook her head at me, squinted, and tried again. “Did the universe exist before you were born?”

  “What?” I asked. She didn’t respond so I thought about her question. “O.K. It existed. So?”

  “How can you be sure?” she said.

  “Are these trick questions?”

  “No. So how can you be sure the universe existed?”

  “Well,” I said. And thought again. “I mean, there’s evidence. Science. Dinosaur bones and such. But I guess I can’t say for sure, without any doubt, that the universe existed. Or that it exists right now. I could be some brain in a jar. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “Not really.” She laughed. “But maybe in a roundabout way. You say that all of this”—she swooped one arm in a wide arc—“could just be a figment of your imagination. You could be a brain in a jar and I could just be a creation of your nonconscious bits. That idea, that the only thing that really exists is pure subjectivity, that we’re all just figments of your imagination, they call that solipsism. And yet you seem more convinced by dinosaur bones and science, right?”

  “I guess it seems more reasonable than being a brain in a jar,” I told her.

  “Perfect. Yes. Exactly. ‘Reasonable.’ We have a reasonable degree of information that an objective reality really exists, outside of our minds. It’s reasonable to think that the tree is still in the woods, even when there isn’t someone there to observe it.”