Rebecca looked back at the open box on the floor, continuing to study the ruined objects until she heard Zimmer’s footsteps coming down the hall. Looking over her shoulder, she saw him in the doorway. He carried a red plastic bucket and pulled a large, industrial garbage can on wheels. Stepping into the storage space, Zimmer walked past Rebecca and placed the bucket on top of the Lisa stack. A drop splashed into the empty pail, making a hollow plastic sound. Rebecca pushed her hands under the waterlogged box marked LISA REYNOLDS TAYLOR. She stood up. She carried it out of the storage space and dropped it into the garbage can. She and Zimmer leaned over the top, looking down at the letters and papers that had spilled out of the box.
Rebecca went back inside unit #207, took the red pail off the stack and carried all the boxes out to the hall, dropping them into the garbage can. When she had finished, Rebecca set the bucket on the floor, where it continued to catch the drip. She turned off the light and stepped into the hall.
“It could have been much worse,” Rebecca said.
“But it’s still sad,” Zimmer said.
“It isn’t, Edward,” Rebecca said, surprising herself. Grabbing the door of unit #207, Rebecca closed it. She locked the padlock. Zimmer put his hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. Together, they walked towards the elevator, the plastic wheels of the garbage can squeaking through the empty hallways of E.Z. Self Storage.
11
The taste of forgiveness
Leaving Edward Zimmer to take the water-damaged boxes to the Dumpster, Rebecca drove home and, three blocks from her front door, she felt a pain in her chest. It was severe, but by the time she’d pulled over it was gone. Her hands remained shaky, and she was suddenly quite tired. She felt confident that she could make it home, but her fatigue worsened as she drove.
Having parked her car on a side street behind her house, Rebecca was so tired that she was barely able to unlock her front door, and she fell asleep the moment she reached the couch.
She saw herself sitting at the kitchen table in the Toronto apartment Lisa had shared with Lewis, but whether she was dreaming or remembering was impossible to tell. She was dressed in flannel pyjamas patterned with tiny ducks. They were children’s pyjamas, but they fit Rebecca well. She watched as her sister made breakfast. Lisa put two slices of bread in the toaster. She ground beans and began making coffee. Then Lisa put her hands flat against the counter, keeping her back to Rebecca.
“I’ve decided to forgive you,” Lisa said.
The toast popped. Rebecca watched as Lisa smeared forgiveness onto it. She dumped two heaping spoonfuls of forgiveness into a mug and filled it with coffee. Lisa carried the toast and the coffee from the counter to the table, setting both in front of Rebecca. She sat across the table and looked at her expectantly.
Rebecca took a tiny bite of the toast. The forgiveness was very bitter and she could hardly swallow. She took a sip of the coffee, which tasted no better.
“All of it?” Rebecca asked.
Lisa nodded.
Rebecca ate more of the toast and drank more of the coffee. The taste of forgiveness filled her mouth and lined the inside of her throat with something sticky and black. It sat heavily in her stomach. When there was nothing but crumbs on her plate and grounds at the bottom of the mug, Rebecca looked up. Lisa stood and stretched out her arms. They embraced. The hug continued, but Lisa began getting thinner and thinner. Before Rebecca understood what was happening, her sister disappeared.
Rebecca woke up. She could still taste the forgiveness in her mouth. She took off her shoes and socks and put her bare feet against the floor. She sat on the edge of the couch for several minutes, staring at the carpet. She was able to recall her sister’s death in two vastly different ways: in one, she thinned until she disappeared; in the other, she died because of a tiny hole in her aorta. Each way seemed equally authentic, but neither made Rebecca sad.
12
The T-Bone experiment
The next morning, Rebecca woke up on the couch with a stiff neck and diagonal lines on her face from the throw pillow she’d slept on. She was already late for work. She showered and dressed quickly. As she stepped into the alley behind her house, en route to her car, Rebecca was surprised to hear a dog barking in her neighbours’ yard. The dog was new, but as if prompted by its bark, she remembered the dream in which Lisa forgave her.
With her keys in her hand, Rebecca wondered how she could have believed, even momentarily, that it had been a memory and not a dream. Still, every detail remained as vivid as if it had actually happened: the feel of the flannel pyjamas, the bitter taste of the coffee and the toast, her sister becoming thinner and thinner until she faded away. Rebecca became very sad, and was then overwhelmed by the feeling that something was missing.
The feeling was so strong, and hit her so suddenly, that she began searching her purse for her keys before realizing they were in her hand. She continued looking, easily finding her wallet and her reading glasses. Still the feeling remained. Then the dog barked again, and Rebecca’s attention turned to how she was going to get to her car.
Her neighbours were the only house on the block that didn’t have a fence between the alley and their yard. This posed a problem, since Rebecca’s fear of dogs was profound and she had to pass their yard to get to her car. Taking slow steps, she walked down the alley, past her neighbours’ yard. Looking to her right, she saw the dog before the dog saw her. It faced the house and was tied to a tree in the middle of the yard. It had thick muscles where its legs attached to its body, and ripples of skin at the back of its neck.
Sniffing the air, the dog turned and growled. Rebecca’s fear grew. The dog’s natural ability to sense fear was intensified by Rebecca’s natural ability to project her emotions. The dog curled its upper lip and growled again. Rebecca remained still. This had happened before. It happened each and every time she encountered a dog. She knew that her best move was to remain still and assess. Just below the tree the dog was tied to, Rebecca could see several coils of the chain—but the length of the leash was impossible to determine.
Since she did not know whether the dog could reach the alley, Rebecca closed her eyes and pretended she was wearing workboots. The workboots she imagined were tan. They were well worn and steel-toed. Silver lines showed through scuffs at the toe. The lines glinted in the sun as Rebecca lifted her right boot, pulled it back and swung it forward. Boot met dog. The dog’s head snapped back. Its lower jaw went left and its upper jaw went right. It yelped.
Opening her eyes, Rebecca looked down. The dog took a half-step backwards and lowered its head. She walked directly in front of it. She reminded herself that in four steps she would be past it. Her feet felt heavy. She took three confident strides, but on the fourth she looked down and saw black Italian leather instead of scuffed tan workboots. Her body tensed. The dog’s growl became a loud, angry bark. She heard the chain as the dog begin running towards her. Rebecca looked up. A string of drool hung out of its mouth. Its ears bent back. As its front legs left the ground, it opened its jaws. Squeezing her eyes closed, Rebecca crossed her arms in front of her face.
Rebecca’s fear of dogs stemmed from a very specific moment, when she was eight years old and something had barked in her neighbours’ backyard. It sounded like a dog, but Rebecca couldn’t be sure. She stopped brushing her doll’s hair, sat still and listened. The fence separating her backyard from theirs was six feet tall, much too tall for her to climb. However, her house was in the process of being painted, and the painters had left a ladder leaning against the west side of the house. It was long enough that tipping it backwards would put the end of the ladder against the top of the fence.
Rebecca’s father had warned her and Lisa not to touch any of the painters’ equipment, but when the bark came again, Rebecca became certain it was not the bark of a dog—maybe a tiger, perhaps a wild boar, but definitely something much more extraordinary than an everyday dog. It was something Rebecca had to see. Setting down her doll, she walked up to t
he ladder. She crawled underneath the bottom step. With her back against the wall of her house, she began to push. It was easier to make the ladder move than she’d expected, although it was also much louder when it fell on the fence.
Rebecca looked up and waited, and when her mother did not appear, she began to climb. Because the base of the ladder had remained relatively close to the house, the arc wasn’t steep. It was, however, very wobbly. Twice she almost fell. When she reached the top, she looked over the fence.
The dog saw Rebecca before Rebecca saw the dog. She tried to pull away, but the dog had already jumped. Though she jerked her head back, it was too late; the dog bit into her throat. Or so she thought as her momentum carried her backwards. In truth, the dog had only managed to get hold of her T-shirt, ripping the collar. But Rebecca thought she was mortally wounded as she fell off the ladder, which jiggled, turned and then fell on top of her. She woke up in the hospital with her arm in a cast and a profound fear of dogs.
Although Rebecca put the ripped T-shirt inside one of the growing number of shoeboxes under her bed, it did not trap her new fear of dogs, only her fear of this one specific dog: T-Bone. While it was true that no other dogs or people could feel her fear of T-Bone, this helped little with her fear of dogs in general. It was an important lesson for Rebecca: objects stored only kept the emotions specific to the moment.
Keeping her arms crossed in front of her face, Rebecca heard the dog’s jaws snapping shut. But then, nothing happened. When nothing continued to happen, she opened her eyes. The dog’s leash was taut. It stood on its hind legs, with its face less than an inch from hers. Its breath was sour. It barked. Flinching, Rebecca took a step backwards. The dog fell to all fours, then jumped back up. It strained against its leash and continued to snarl.
“Fuck you, dog,” Rebecca whispered. She turned and walked away. Four steps later, as the dog continued to bark, Rebecca turned around and yelled “Fuck you, dog!” At the end of the alley, she yelled again. “Fuck! You! Dog!” Standing in front of her car, having already unlocked the door, Rebecca stopped and turned around again. “Fuck you!” she yelled. “Fuck you, dog!”
She was in her car, still muttering “Fuck you, dog, fuck you,” when she realized that her feelings about Lisa were no longer just foggy; they were absent. Rebecca began sobbing, not for the loss of her sister, but for the loss of every emotion she had for her. Rebecca shut off the engine and pulled the keys from the ignition. She cried for some time.
She continued to sniffle as she drove towards the hospital. As she signalled her entry into the parking lot, she had a thought. Was it possible that her feelings about Lisa had been eliminated when she threw away her keepsakes? And if so, would throwing away any keepsake eradicate whatever emotional history was attached to it? It seemed ridiculous. It was the least likely explanation for the sudden absence of her feelings for Lisa. But realizing that the presence of the dog in her neighbours’ yard was the perfect opportunity to test this theory, she turned off her signal and drove directly to E.Z. Self Storage, where she parked and went immediately to the second floor.
Hanging the open padlock on the door of unit #207, she returned to the stack of boxes in the front right corner. She removed the top two boxes and then opened the one marked fears. She tipped it over, spilling its contents across the concrete floor. With the toe of her right shoe, she pushed objects out of the way until she found a child’s T-shirt with a ripped collar.
Rebecca left unit #207 with the ripped T-shirt in her hand. Opening the back door of E.Z. Self Storage, she went straight to the Dumpster. A plywood bookshelf leaned out of the left corner, and two torn La-Z-Boy chairs were piled on the right. She scrunched up the T-shirt, making a tiny ball of cloth, which she threw into the air. It opened while still going up and then drifted lazily back down towards the middle of the Dumpster.
“Fuck you, T-Bone,” she said. “Fuck you.”
As the T-shirt landed amidst the trash, Rebecca felt the pain in her heart again, only this time it was much less intense. It was gone before she reached her car. Checking her watch, she saw that less than an hour had passed since she’d left her house. Just after she started the engine, she had a daydream in which she was a child playing in her parents’ backyard. Digging in her sandbox, she uncovered a set of miniature dogs. She lined them up in the grass and taught them to bark the national anthem. Again, this felt like a memory, though she knew it wasn’t. She’d practically forgotten about it by the time she parked on the side street behind her house and walked back to the alley.
When she reached her neighbours’ backyard, the dog was still there, still tied to the tree. Its muscles were just as thick, its teeth just as sharp. Rebecca walked towards it. The dog did not growl or bark. As Rebecca continued to approach, she thought about the moment with T-Bone when her T-shirt had ripped and her fear of dogs had started. Although the facts remained vivid, emotionally it was if the event had never happened. Her fear of dogs had been completely wiped out. This reality was made impossible to deny by the fact that, as Rebecca stood next to the dog, it still didn’t bark, growl or snarl. It lifted up its head and, when Rebecca reached out her hand, the dog licked it, its tail wagging.
13
The Prairie Embassy Hotel
There were few, if any, reasons for the Prairie Embassy Hotel to exist. Located three kilometres outside the town limits of Morris, Manitoba, it was not near a major tourist attraction, a natural wonder or even a major highway. The rooms did not have cable; they did not even have televisions. The phones were rotary. There wasn’t a computer in the building.
Perhaps Margaret’s most antiquated notion as a hotelier was her insistence that the front desk be manned until 2:00 a.m. regardless of how many guests were booked or anticipated. As the hotel’s only employee, this task fell to Stewart. So at 12:45 a.m. on Thursday, August 25, when Margaret came downstairs to find out why the phone kept ringing, she should have found Stewart behind the front desk. All she found was his cellphone, which, as she stood there, rang again. Margaret knew that a search of the hotel would likely prove fruitless. There was a much better chance that he was five hundred metres from the hotel, hammer in hand, working on his sailboat.
Stewart sat securing the last of the quarter-inch trim around the cabin, so focused on his work that he neither saw nor heard Margaret as she climbed the stepladder, coming aboard.
“Stewart!” she called, but he still didn’t look up. Waiting until his hammer was high in the air, Margaret adjusted her scarf and tried again. “Stewart!”
Startled, Stewart turned, saw Margaret and set down his hammer.
“You sure want to finish this thing,” she said.
“I’m so close! Four or five days and it’ll be done.”
“As long as we don’t get any guests?”
“Well …”
“It’s okay. We probably won’t.” Margaret kneeled on the deck and then lay flat on her back.
“Do you want me to turn out the lights?” Stewart asked.
“Could you?”
“Of course.”
Hanging from the mast were four industrial lamps, each of which was plugged into a long orange extension cord that ran out the back of the hotel and up to the boat. The instant Stewart unplugged the lamps, the sky filled with stars. Stepping carefully around tools and scraps of wood, Stewart lay down near Margaret. Their heads only inches apart, their bodies making a forty-five-degree angle, they stared upwards.
Three years and six months earlier, when Stewart left Rebecca, he did not think he was leaving her forever. He had left her before, on three different occasions, and after a little time to himself he’d always returned to her. But this time was different. Something peculiar happened to Stewart He experienced a moment of divine intervention while barbecuing.
The house he was staying in belonged to a couple whose recent separation was so painful that neither of them could continue living in their home. When Stewart arrived, he’d been startled by the eviden
ce of quick abandonment: the bed was unmade, mildew-covered laundry filled the washer, and on the kitchen table was a half-full mug of coffee with mould growing inside it. For two days, as Stewart moved around the house, he had the odd sensation that he was on board a ship that had suddenly sunk; the kind of wreck where, years later when the scuba divers discover it, the sails are at high mast, the bunks contain skeletons, and the treasure is still safely locked in the hull.
Just after eight in the evening, Stewart checked the freezer, because cooking felt like less effort than talking to a deliveryman. He was more than a little drunk, having discovered the liquor cabinet earlier in the day. Finding a stack of seemingly inseparable patties, he carried them to the backyard. The problems began when he discovered that the barbecue was not gas but was filled with charcoal. Remembering childhood barbecues with his father behind the grill, Stewart searched for a can of lighter fluid. Finding one, he squirted a liberal amount of fuel on the coals.
Stewart went back to the house and returned with a box of wooden matches. He opened the box without realizing it was upside down. The majority of the matches fell through the grill and onto the coals. Lighting one of the few that remained, Stewart dropped the match. The sudden whoosh made him close his eyes. Putting his hands to his eyebrows, he confirmed that they were still there. When he opened his eyes, Stewart saw what seemed to be dangerously tall flames rising from the barbecue. The flames did not get bigger or smaller. They seemed to burn without consuming anything. In the centre was a tiny blue flame that flickered higher and lower as it spoke. “You know as well as I do that she has to ask you back,” the tiny blue flame said. His voice was kindly and familiar. “And she has to voice it. She has to say it out loud. And what she’s saying underneath it, what she’s saying with her heart, has to be the same.”
The Waterproof Bible Page 7