X in Flight

by Karen Rivers

  What kind of name is Cassidy? you want to ask. It sounds like something you would call a golden retriever.

  But you don’t.

  So, Cassidy, you say in an effort to sound interested. What do you do?

  I’m a doctor, she says. Specializing in gynecology.

  You nearly choke on an ice cube. Which probably would have been okay because she could have saved you, performed an emergency tracheotomy using a Bic pen and a steak knife. Or at least the Heimlich, squeezing it out of your airway professionally without breaking any ribs. For a second, you can practically see it happening, the ice cube popping out of your mouth with all the force of your lungs and shooting across the room into someone’s fancy cold soup two tables over.

  A doctor, you repeat. Well. You must be very smart.

  Just goes to show that you don’t actually have any sense about people after all. You would have pegged her as a model, like not a real model but one who works at car shows or poses in calendars wearing next to nothing. Or a stewardess, the sort who doesn’t care if you call her a ‘flight attendant’ or an ‘air hostess’ who wears her skirts just a bit to short and her makeup a bit too loud. Your father stares at her while he eats, sort of gawps at her really, like he’s never seen such magnificent chewing before in his whole life.

  Oh, God, you think, please don’t be in love with her. No, you say out loud.

  Yes, says Cassidy. I’m a doctor. I suppose I am even what you might call ‘smart’. Does that surprise you? She smiles widely, like someone about to devour the head of a doll, showing off her perfectly capped white even teeth.

  No, no, no, you say. No. You can’t think of anything else. No.

  Your dad shoots you a look that says, Watch it, kiddo. Or Sugarplum.

  Cassidy wears her immaculately overly-highlighted hair in a French braid. You haven’t worn your hair like that since you were nine and used to figure skate. You quit when you were ten. You were tired of being bruised and cold, blue-lipped and tired. You were tired of the fact that your father’s girlfriends clapped for you in the stands, even when you fell. You hated the way they braided your hair and took pictures of you like you were their own kid. You were tired of the fact your father was usually too busy to come.

  You cross your eyes at him, but he isn’t looking. You have a funny almost overwhelming urge to pour your water over her head, just to see what she’d do. Can almost see it beading off her shining, shellacked hair. You have to remind yourself that you’re sixteen, not ten. Instead, you push your cuticles back with one of the three knives in front of you. Not caring that it’s a really pretty gross thing to do in public. Cassidy watches with disdain or disgust, not even bothering to pretend you don’t repulse her, much like the look she probably gives to giant tumours that she carves out of people on a daily basis, or whatever she does.

  You wish so hard that your mother wasn’t dead, you can practically see her shimmering to life next to you. But if she were alive, would they still be together? You hate yourself for asking this, even in your own head, but… really. Well, your mother didn’t look anything like this woman. She wasn’t in this league, this buffed, polished, rebuilt, perfect league.

  A waiter discreetly pours you more water, gives you a new clean knife. You nod at him. Say, Thank you.

  You wish you had a normal family who ate their meals at home and did normal things. You abhor restaurants.

  You sigh.

  How was school? your dad asks.

  Fine, you say. Just fine.

  Do you have a boyfriend? Cassidy asks. You can see a certain cruelty in her face. Maybe it’s her high cheekbones. Or her contact lenses.

  Sure, you say. Lots.

  No, she doesn’t, says your father. He laughs, a short explosion of sound that turns into a sneeze.

  How would you know? you mumble into your glass.

  What? he says.

  Nothing, you say.

  You hate yourself for feeling belligerent and childish. You wish the food would come out of the kitchen. You wish you could really make wishes and have them come true. You’d wish for something amazing. Something unimaginable. You’d wish to go back in time and undo the fire, which was your fault, though no one ever says it. You know it’s true. Although you don’t remember that part very well.

  Or at all.

  Maybe you just dreamed that part, but somehow you think it was real. Your fault. Was it a candle? The white moving curtains catching and slowly flaring up. Or was that a movie that you saw? In your nightmares, that part is almost pretty, like a flower blooming into full life. Still, you wake up screaming. All the time. Over and over. The paralyzed kind of sleep scream that feels like it’s coming through layers of wool clamped over your nose and mouth, the muffled fear that’s like being suffocated.

  Your father says you can’t possibly remember the fire, but maybe that’s just what he wants. He wants you to forget. He wants it to be tidy and quirky and funny and easily analyzed and fixed and cured and sold on national TV. He should know the truth: that you can remember and that you wish you couldn’t. He should know how to fix that. He’s the shrink, after all, impossible to forget now, someone from another table has recognized him and is pointing from behind a menu. You wave sarcastically, the woman blushes and lowers her eyes.

  You point to your father and mouth, It’s HIM!

  The famous, funny shrink.

  The woman won’t meet your eyes. You should really read that book, you think. See what he’s said about you.

  No, no, no. You aren’t ready. You might never be ready to see yourself through his eyes.

  One thing he says TO you is that children don’t remember stuff, that they can’t. But you do. You remember falling. You remember flames. You remember your mother’s voice screaming Ruby, Ruby, Ruby.

  You remember tasting grass and dirt, landing hard, the breath being smacked out of you in a whoomp that felt like dying. Gasping. Your father picking you up. The way he held you so hard you almost threw up or stopped breathing again.

  You’ve constructed a memory based on stories you’ve heard, he says. That’s what happens.

  And you want to believe him, you pretend you believe him, you tell yourself you believe him because it sounds plausible, after all. He knows these things. What do you know? You’re sixteen years old. Sixteen doesn’t know anything. You know enough to know this.

  Cassidy clears her throat again, it’s like a nervous tic or else maybe she’s choking on a hairball. What’s your favourite subject at school? she asks.

  Fuck you, you want to say.

  I don’t know, you say. English, I guess.

  English!

  Yes, English.

  Oh, says Cassidy. I always liked science the best. And math. And gym. I was a cheerleader. I guess I was really well rounded. School was such fun! I loved it. Loved it, she repeats with new emphasis. Just loved it.

  Of course you did, you say.

  Ruby, says your father. It sounds like a warning.

  You sigh again. There isn’t enough air in this place. It’s making you light-headed, all the sighing. Hyperventilating probably. Again. Because you’re thinking about it now, you can’t stop. You sigh once more, as deeply as you can.

  You try to think of things you can say about school, but nothing comes to mind. School makes you anxious. You hate school. School gives you a place to go, to be. You love school. You wish you fit in there like everyone else. You wish you had friends other than Joey, who ignores you anyway. You almost feel like telling Cassidy the truth. You don’t have a favourite subject. Sometimes you don’t go to class. You just sit outside instead, waiting. Like you’re waiting for a bus, only you’re not. When you are inside, you keep your eyes down on the waxed red linoleum floor and breath into your sleeve which smells like perfume. Why is the floor red? you wonder.

  To hide the blood, people say, like that’s funny.

  Blood – the idea of it, the sight of it, even saying or thinking the word – usually makes you
faint. The real colours that spill out from people’s insides, those send you straight to nothingness. The first time it happened, you were only six. You were riding bikes with the girl next door. Eating an ice cream sandwich with one hand, pedaling madly, barefoot. It was summer and the ground was hot, you could feel it rising up from the asphalt, the terrible heat. You were squinting in the sun when you heard her shriek. Her foot in the bike chain, the blood spurting out, her ice cream sandwich melting on the pavement. You hit the ground hard, unconscious. You checked out.

  Fade to black, you always think before you faint, which is often enough that it’s become a bit of a joke between you and your father.

  Daddy, you say when you feel it coming on, I’m going to faint.

  Fade to black, he says, and catches you. He always catches you.

  Thinking about fainting makes you feel faint. You stare up at the lights, crystal chandeliers woven with what look like dead twigs. Focus.

  You see the colour green above your father’s head, a smoky green, grey at the edges. The colour of worry. You can’t stop him from worrying. You don’t want to know that he’s worried. It’s not your job, he has said, to worry about me. I’m the parent. I take care of you, not the other way around.

  But you want to take care of him. His sad eyes watching you eat your cereal in the morning. The notes he leaves on the table saying where he is, when he’ll be back, the dumb jokes he tacks on the end as if by adding something that’s supposed to be funny, he’ll prove that you are both cheerful people. The way he knows when not to talk to you. You wonder if he’s like an animal, if he can smell your fear.

  Cassidy swings her long, blonde braid over her shoulder and starts talking in a low voice to your father about a patient. You feel yourself drifting, bored, concocting fantasies about nothing. Behind Cassidy, there is a wall of mirrored glass. You look in the mirror, and you are just you, Ruby Ruby Ruby. Hair so blonde it’s nearly invisible, not rich and golden like Cassidy’s, pulled back from your face so tight your black eyes look like 8-balls staring out. You actually look like a ghost of yourself in contrast to her sparkling, solid, shiny-lipped, white-toothed presence. Sometimes you wonder vaguely if maybe you did die in the fire and that this, what you see, is just a ghost. Does a ghost know they are a ghost? How would you know?

  But then you spill your water, pour it over the edge of the table, on to your lap and it’s cold and you know that you’re alive. You wouldn’t feel cold if you were a ghost. You wouldn’t feel so empty, so hungry.

  How long does it take to make a burger? you interrupt.

  Patience is a virtue, your dad says. Oh virtuous girl.

  Whatever, you say, and roll your eyes. You see Cassidy shooting your father a sympathetic look. You want to take a mouthful of water and aim it at her, shoot from between your teeth, a jet of cold dissolving her fake big smile, like the Wicked Witch of the West melting in The Wizard of Oz.

  The waiter plonks your burger down in front of you, taking away the four forks you won’t need. You’re so hungry, you don’t even bother listening to your dad and Cassidy and their dumb chit-chat. You stuff the burger into your mouth like you haven’t eaten for months, meat burning juicily on your tongue, raw onions stinging your winter-dry lips.

  The truth is, you haven’t eaten all day. Sometimes you forget. Sometimes you don’t want to. Sometimes you go as long as you can without food just to see how long you can last. It’s not because you think you’re fat, it’s just because you’re interested. You want to know what you can survive.

  You have been afraid for a long time. You are afraid of the following things: death, your father leaving or dying or both, failure, spiders, and throwing up. You are afraid that suddenly you might forget how to talk or how to breathe, and when you think this, you immediately hyperventilate. You are afraid that you are invisible, that no one sees you, that you are here just to see them, to observe.

  You like observing.

  You chew, you swallow, you observe.

  Stare.

  Watch.

  Remember.

  Hours later, when you finally get home, you type it all up on the laptop computer your dad gave you for Christmas, the laptop that you wanted, only better. The best of the best. Only the best for you, he says. For my angel. You stay up late that night, tap-tapping on the keyboard in your room, writing it all down, and for what? For who? You rewrite it so you like the way it flows.

  Why?

  It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. You just do it. Perched up high on the twelfth story of the building where you live with your father, city lights visible from your open window. You type yourself.

  Like this:

  Wednesday. Today was a good day until dinner. It was cold but not snowing although the air was jagged, like snow is coming. At lunch, Courtney and Joanne asked me to sit with them, so I did. We (or they) talked about a party they went to last weekend. Apparently Robbo threw up in someone’s washing machine. Hilarious! they said, but they laughed like they were nervous about it. About him. They’d invited me, I just didn’t want to go. Parties scare me. Honestly? I’d rather stay home and read. Embarrassing if anyone found out what I read. Last weekend, I read Alice in Wonderland for the fourteenth time. I don’t even like it anymore. I don’t know why I keep re-reading it. What am I looking for in there? It reminds me of a riddle, so I guess I think it has an answer, but probably it’s just a weird story. It reads like someone else’s hallucination. I read somewhere that the author was into little girls. Sick. Don’t know if it’s true or not, but I hope it’s not. If it’s true, it ruins everything. It makes it all wrong.

  C. and J. talked about going to a peace rally this weekend but I don’t think they know what they are fighting for, I think they just like the crowds and music. I feel so separate from them. Half the time, I have no idea what they mean when they say, you know? I say, sure. But I mean, no.

  They talked about getting their tongues pierced. Everyone’s doing it, or so they said. I didn’t faint, but I almost did. Grey spidery feeling of fading. I pretended to be looking at something on my shoe, but really I was putting my head down. Remembering to breathe slowly.

  I got 100% on my chemistry test and I felt stupid for it. Does that make sense? Getting a perfect score makes you stand out. I could feel the other kids looking at me and hating me, fleetingly. Just a flash of blue loathing. You’d think hate would be red, but it isn’t. It’s blue and muddy. Love is red. Happiness is a pale orange that looks like smoked salmon. I caught X. staring at me in English. I turned around and he was staring right at me. His eyes are so blue, I’d never really noticed. Big pupils, black like stones. He scared me. There wasn’t even a colour around him. It was like there was a complete void surrounding him. There is something about him. I don’t know what it is. He smiled at me and said something. I think he said, Ruby. But maybe not. Why would he say my name? I smiled at him. It felt like a lot.

  After school, I went out back and watched while Joey smoked a joint in the janitor’s shed. He had his well-worn copy of Alice. He thinks he’s going to make it into a series of poems or songs. Probably songs, he figures.

  I love Alice, too.

  That’s what we have in common. It’s a weird thing, huh. It gives us something to talk about, too. I think it makes me okay to him because I get it, his weird love for a little girl’s book. He quotes it sometimes. I think he’s memorized it, but he got embarrassed when I asked if he could do it off by heart. The whole thing.

  I bet he could.

  He did the Jabberwocky, he does that to make me laugh. Or maybe he doesn’t mean to make me laugh, maybe I’m just laughing. He makes me nervous.

  While we were out there today, he put his hand on my knee, then like he noticed that he did it, he jerked his hand away like it was on fire and said “Sorry”. He wasn’t drunk.

  I am the kind of person that people apologize for touching.

  Had dinner with my father’s new girlfriend. I guess I’m too old to call
them Auntie now, thank GOD. She’s a doctor. She says I should call her Cassidy. She bites her nails. I hate her and I hate her hair. Dinner was a burger. It was awful. I threw it up as soon as I got home. Dad probably thinks I’m bulimic, but the truth is that his stupid girlfriend makes me nauseated. They’re in the living room, talking. If she’s here when I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to … I don’t know. I won’t do anything. I hope she’s not. I don’t want her to be. I don’t like her. I wish … never mind.

  Your own diary irritates you. Your own thoughts. So you stop. You close the lid of the laptop and stare out at the city. It’ s a quiet place. There is traffic, but just a low hum. Your apartment building is near the water, and a siren sounds when the bridge goes up and down to allow freighters and other large vessels to pass underneath. Next door there is a vacant lot that is usually full of garbage and shrubs and birds and drug dealers or people who look like drug dealers. When you walk by, you see used needles and it scares you. Sometimes you hear drums coming from that lot. Sometimes people scream. But not seriously, just loudly. There is a nightclub close by. People spill out, drunk people. They stumble into the vacant lot, probably to pee, and all that emptiness makes them yell. Fuck you, they’ll scream suddenly right under your window and you’ll run to the window and look down but they’ll be gone already. You like the drums. You think that there are some people who live under the bridge. Natives, you think, but you don’t know. They beat drums late at night and chant. You hope they are chanting something spiritual, but when you listen closely you almost think you hear them saying, Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you too.

  When you fall asleep, you dream that everything is new. You dream that you are pretty and that there is applause and laughter when you speak what must be lines but that feel true. You dream your mother isn’t dead, but then in your dream her hair whooshes up suddenly in a fast flame like fireworks and she smiles and starts to melt. When she melts, you cry, not just because you’re sad but because there is something terrifying and repulsive about the melting flesh.. You wake up feeling sad and exhausted. You go into the kitchen for a glass of water and you pass your father’s open bedroom door. You can see him in there, the lump of his body under the sheets. He’s alone. You can smell his stale sleep smell.