(I both love and hate Chem as he watches us go, waiting for me to meet his eye, to make a plea that never comes.)
In the elevator, I slump against the mirrored wall, closing my eyes against a wave of nausea. Jon stands uncomfortably close at my side, his hand a vice around my forearm, his head tilted upward, watching the numbers turn. I can think of nothing to say. I’ve been snapped violently back into my old self, and I cower within my own skin, unable to handle anything more difficult than keeping myself from throwing up all over the checkered floor.
This is right, Jon says, nodding his head several times in quick succession. This is the way it should’ve been all along.
It isn’t me you want, I manage to say, swallowing back the vile taste in my throat. I press my cheek against the cool glass of the mirror.
On the contrary, Jon says. He moves closer, his hands pressed against the mirror on either side of my head, caging me in. He says (his every word dirtied by his mouth, tarnished as they pass through his teeth), Everybody wants you, isn’t that right, angel? Why should I be any different?
The elevator jerks to a stop on the ground floor.
(Do I spit, scream, make a fuss? Do I struggle to get away? How can I? I’ve only been trained to go along, to tease and grin, to reprimand always partly in jest. I have no ability to contradict. I am Regan as she made me, but still myself as well, crippled by the one trait Regan and I always had in common, though she never saw it: I don’t know how to say no.)
Outside, as Jon fumbles for his keys, the bedroom boys come out of the woodwork. I’d forgotten about them, what with all the circus hullabaloo, but here they are anyway in their largest gathering yet, a fan club to beat all fan clubs, their faces masked by the dark as they converge. They surround the car and Jon and I, their anger ripened by hours of waiting. They won’t be denied this time.
Chained to the spot by Jon’s steel grip, I’m attacked by a cacophony of bitter diatribes, of thinly veiled threats and heartbroken accusations (leaving me wondering, am I being rescued or abducted? Will I be carried off to an even worse fate?).
Suddenly their hands are on me, wrenching me away from Jon (as he calls her name over and over), propelling me into the street to be circled and enclosed, to be sure I can’t get away. Again I find myself the center of attention, again I’m surrounded, crowded. Again I find their hands on me—but this time it’s very, very different. This time there’s no rush of warm feeling, no adoring buzz. This time I get to see everything Regan’s been running from right up close, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that all this time when I thought I had everybody fooled, it was really Regan who was fooling me.
The worst part is I don’t even know what they’re talking about. As I’m flung roughly from one pair of hands to the next, like a bony hot-potato, I recognize a face here, a voice there, but for the most part they’re a writhing crowd of furious strangers, all their Regan-how-could-yous and Regan-where-were-yous blending into one shrill voice of complaint. I don’t know the boy with the horn-rimmed glasses who grabs my shoulder, his nails digging into my skin, and demands that I give it back or so help him god. I don’t know the Asian boy who shoves his tear-streaked face into mine, screaming unintelligibly through his clenched teeth. I don’t recognize the one who threatens to pull my hair out, or the one who yanks me by the collar of my dress, or the one who spits in my face and calls me a whore.
I push at their bodies, their thick sweaty limbs, trying to swim through the chaos before it bubbles over, but always I’m pulled back in, held in place by their outrage, their accusation. I’m bawling, my mouth hanging open, cries I would never recognize as my own rising up from my bowels (and from somewhere behind me I hear Jon’s outrage too, his intermittent calls of, You’ve got to be kidding me!, his reminder that he’s waiting, and I should hurry it along).
I’m falling, torn and weak, trying desperately to remember that I don’t really care. Because after all, I’m not Regan. It isn’t really me they want. It isn’t me they’ll tear to pieces. It was never me.
A face I know, or knew, jumps out at me from the crowd as I’m turning in circles. What is his name? I can’t remember (but it seems I may have kissed him once, long ago).
Simon says, What’s this? He’s gotten between me and the raging hoard, his freckled face creased with concern. My head spins at the sight of him, my mind whirls, my gut lurches.
I bend over and vomit onto the concrete.
Simon holds my hair out of my face and hands me a tissue to wipe my mouth. The crowd has quieted (because apparently my regurgitation is alarming, though moments ago they were threatening to have me disembowled). What’s going on? Simon asks, and for a short minute I try to come up with an answer.
Regan, Jon shouts (his voice far too loud for the moment). I can hear his incensed expression, though I can barely see him through the press of bodies. He’s still standing by the car, keys in hand, expecting me to come to him. Regan, come on!
Simon says, What did he call you?
(If they’d grabbed me then, they could have had me. I would have let them eat me up and spit me out. They could have licked my bones. Because I was nothing then; not Regan, not myself. I was a body with a face and torso and legs that walked me through the melee and carried me block by block back to The Apartments, but I wasn’t a person. I wasn’t real anymore, and I would have let them have me, because what’s the use of sticking around if you aren’t really there? If you aren’t really you, then who are you? What are you?
And what are you doing here?)
Part 3
Though I’m the one who’s been through the ordeal, it’s Regan who falls ill. She takes to her bed with a fever and I sit with her for hours as she wrestles with the blankets, alternately pulling them up and kicking them off. She refuses all food except oatmeal and it becomes my ritual to wake up in the mornings, peeling myself from the armchair in the corner of Regan’s room, and make directly for the kitchen to put on a new batch in our only cooking pot.
As Regan’s cough becomes a concern and she begins to develop other mysterious symptoms (an aversion to light, an itch in the palms of her hands, a rash across her neck), I try to convince her to go to the doctor, but she refuses.
If I were really sick, she says, you’d be sick too, wouldn’t you?
I smile faintly and nod, stroking her forehead. The blonde in her hair is growing out and the dark roots only emphasize the dark circles under her eyes.
I hate doctors, she says. They always tell you what you don’t want to hear.
As sick as she is, there are days when Regan could venture outside, if she wanted to. Spring is arriving, melting the snowdrifts into small rivers that cascade down the streets and sidewalks. I tell Regan that some fresh air would do her good, that the birds are singing, that the world is missing her. She turns away from the window and asks me to close the curtains. She’s put herself in isolation, refusing all calls and visitors, declining all invitations.
For me? I ask her. For my sake?
She shakes her head, her breathing shallower now, as though she doesn’t have enough space in her body for air. She says, For both of us.
At first, the calls come thick and strong, though naturally we never answer. Never has Regan disappeared with such finality before, never completely taken herself out of the equation. The bedroom boys are plentiful in their apologies and utterly repentant, and if only she’d come out again, if only she’d allow them a glimpse of her from across a crowded room, they would be satisfied, they would leave her alone, honestly they would.
The Grimly Men are far less conciliatory. Trevor, miles out of the loop, leaves dozens of confused messages packed full of unanswerable questions.
What the hell happened? he demands, his voice high and shrill. I leave you guys alone for a few minutes and all hell breaks loose! Jon says you were attacked? He says you won’t return his calls? Regan? What is going on with you?
(Jon, it seems, has developed an interesting version
of events for that night, one he’s circulating among the Grimlys and others. We find portions of it tucked into phone messages. A boy named Billy says he’s glad Jon was there to pull Regan out of the fray. Henry says he’s sorry if he and his buddies did any harm to poor Jon when they trampled him. Andrew says he’ll drink to Jon and hopes we will too.)
Chem’s messages are the only ones I listen to from beginning to end, pulling the answering machine into my room late at night. Are you alright? he asks. Jon is a basket case. He’s turned the whole thing around in his head. I should have stopped him. I should have saved you. (I imagine he’s talking to me directly, amazed at how much comfort this idea gives me. Amazed that Chem has become the almost-hero of this scenario.)
Once, when I’m sure Regan is asleep, her breathing regular in its shuddering intakes and exhales, I go so far as to call Chem, though when he answers I can’t think of anything to say. We sit in silence on either end of the line until he says, We miss you, Regan, and I hang up, appalled. I never call him again.
The nights are the most difficult for me. My body has acclimated to Regan’s backward schedule (wanting sleep only in the early hours of the morning, fully waking only near dinnertime) and I have too many dark, empty hours to fill while Regan sleeps in fits and starts (though she begs me, near tears, to come to bed with her, to sleep with my arms around her like I used to, claiming it will heal her. I can only protest that she thrashes in her sleep now, that she moans in the night. I can only lie).
After a winter of bolted windows and doors The Apartments’ air is thick and stale. I wade through it in the dark, ever listening for Regan’s ghostly calls, wandering through the shadowy rooms as though searching for something, or someone. The Library, its doors creaking in protest as I pass through them, strikes me as a frozen tableau, Regan’s notebooks lying open on the floor, just as she left them. The room leaves me chilled and I enter it less and less on these restless nights, avoiding its stench of the ancient, of the dead (because she isn’t dead at all, or even dying, though I’m already beginning to forget her. But Regan won’t die just because I forget her, no matter what she says. And if she does die, she can’t take me with her… can she?).
Something has broken between Regan and I, though she won’t admit it. I can’t anticipate her reactions anymore. I can’t even understand what she wants when she commands me to stay with her, clinging painfully to my body, begging me to amuse her, to help her, to make her feel whole again.
I tell her it’s the sickness that’s making her feel empty. Soon you’ll be good as new, I say. Soon you’ll have your old life back.
She stares at me, her skinny limbs clearly outlined beneath the thin blanket. Mine or ours? she asks.
I tuck the covers around her and pretend I haven’t heard.
As the days lengthen and the sun shines more persistently, I start to awaken to something new, something beyond Regan. A yearning for the outside world takes up in me and won’t be silenced, though I try my best to quiet it with hours spent on the balcony watching the people passing below (as Regan scowls through the window, calling me in for a dozen silly reasons, ignoring me for hours afterward if I’m too slow to respond).
She becomes increasingly possessive, interrogating me on where I’ve been and why if I dare to leave her room for even a moment, imploring me not to go (her eyes panicked and bright) every time I turn toward the door. One day she threatens to refuse food, claiming she’ll starve herself if I ever leave her alone again.
Drawing strength from god knows where, I stand firm. I will be gone for an hour at the most, I tell her, and when I come back you will eat.
I won’t, she replies, raising her chin. I’ll die over this and it’ll be your fault.
No, Regan, I say. None of this is my fault.
And instead of the rebuke I expect, instead of the hard reminder that nobody ever forced me to do anything (in short, instead of the truth), she collapses into tears, her worn body shaking, her stringy hair falling over her face. (I’ve never since seen anything so terrible as Regan crying, as Regan hopeless. It shocks me to the core.)
Relenting, I climb into bed beside her and rock her as she trembles.
Don’t leave me, she pleads, hooking her fingertips into the wool of my sweater.
Never, I reply (though it’s a blatant lie and she knows it).
My friends (the ones I haven’t heard from in months, the ones who claim they thought I was doing a semester abroad this whole time) find me somehow and show up at the door. Unwilling to let them into The Apartments (imagine the disaster that would be), I meet them in secret at a coffee shop on the corner, late at night. They’re full of excited questions, thrilled to giddiness by the covert meeting. They crowd around the small circular table, eager to be closest to me.
What’s your roommate’s name again? one of them asks. Why can’t we meet her?
I make up a story about Regan’s crippling anxiety, her fear of crowds, her panic attacks. I sip my coffee and try not to notice their disbelieving looks.
You look so different, another one remarks, eyeing my outfit. (I still dress in Regan’s clothes.) She says, You look like a celebrity in disguise, then looks around for confirmation. Doesn’t she? she asks the others. They all nod together.
Please, I say, re-crossing my legs (but would the old me have said such a thing? Wouldn’t she have blushed, or looked away in embarrassment, or stared into her lap? Have I lost her too?
Have I become what Regan once was to me, someone to imitate, someone I’m pretending to be?).
I’m me, I say as they cast me dubious looks. I’m just me.
Around this time, Regan’s indefinable sickness plateaus, not releasing her but not progressing either, and this stagnation has a terrible effect on her. While before Regan was desperate for entertainment, for conversation (continually asking me to talk to her about anything at all, if only to hear another voice in the room), now she shuns it. She closes her eyes when I ask her how she’s feeling. She does nothing all day but stare at the walls. When I walk through her room her eyes follow me, but she never speaks. When I try to cheer her with stories of the past, of her exploits, her eyes go dull and I can tell she isn’t listening.
My secret excursions out of The Apartments become a daily occurrence. Regan seems not to notice, though I always re-enter her room with a ready excuse (I was cleaning the kitchen, looking for a soup bowl, stuck talking to a neighbour when I went out to get the mail). One afternoon I decide I want to attend one of my classes, as encouraged by my well-meaning friend who calls me at least once a day now (with sappy, sloppy gossip that I lap up, and strings of questions that go unanswered). Although the semester is close to over and I’ve failed every one of my courses, I’m fascinated by the idea of being in a classroom again, of holding books and pens and striving for something. I leave Regan asleep or nearly, and lock the door to The Apartments behind me decisively.
When I return three hours later, flushed with learning, Regan isn’t in her bed. I fly from room to room, throwing open a number of doors I never bothered to open before (even discovering a bathroom I didn’t know was there), and finally find her emaciated form crouched on the floor on the far side of my bed. She has a pair of scissors in her hand and her fingertips are bloody. All about her lie her writing notebooks, her opus, cut or ripped into tiny pieces that flutter up to the open window, sticking to the skin of her forearms and legs.
Regan looks up at me with sweaty eyelids, the scissors held aloft, as though she expects me to snatch them from her (which I do).
I drop to the floor, the dappled sunlight falling over my knees and hers.
You weren’t here, she says.
Regan says, It’s just like old times, isn’t it?
I have to force a smile (because Regan would never have asked me a question like that. Regan would have stated it as a fact. Regan was like that).
We pick a spot on the grass, away from the kids playing volleyball, and listen to the tam-tam player
s. A little boy sitting on a blanket next to us is blowing soapy bubbles. They cascade over us, popping in our hair and on our skin. Regan squints in the sunlight and smiles once or twice (though these small grins are nothing compared to the spectacular smiles of her past, the ones I basked in, once upon a time).
It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon at the beginning of June. This is Regan’s first time outside in two months.
The park on the mountain is full of people, but nobody approaches us. Regan’s months of sickness have left her changed, her once golden skin tinged an unnatural yellow, her thick head of hair now thin and lank (though restored to its original brown, thanks to my amateur dye job). Regan’s eyes (once so striking, entrancing even) are sunken and dull, her movements slow and lacking in grace. She’s unrecognizable as Regan Lathie—the socialite, the goddess—not a hint of that old self remaining. The new Regan, the one who rests her head on my shoulder and laces her fingers through mine, is easily alarmed and wants to move when a cocker spaniel comes sniffing at our sandaled feet.
I lead her to a bench behind the busy line of vendors, their wares of leather bracelets and linen skirts spread out on bed sheets on the grass (and she follows without question, allowing me to choose our destination, hardly wondering what it will be). We watch the hippie girls dancing, their hips moving fluidly with the beat of the drums, their beaded necklaces trembling on their chests.
Did you ever dance like that? I ask Regan.
I don’t remember, she replies.
I think you did, I say teasingly (trying for her).
I don’t remember, she repeats, her eyes on the dancers. I wouldn’t want to now, anyway. It’s so hot.
I spot a Popsicle vendor across the square and get to my feet but Regan pulls me back, her fingers clenching around mine. Don’t leave me, she says (but with none of her former vehemence, the words falling from her lips almost robotically).
The Grimly Queen Page 7