The Book of Living and Dying

by Natale Ghent

  “Come on, I have something to show you,” he said.

  Leading her outside, he gestured to the sky where the moon was rising as bloody and monstrous as a vanquished king, its great vermilion face eternally frozen in horrified betrayal. Reflected in his eyes, two miniature red orbs made Michael seem like a demon lover. He held her hand, his warmth, the rum seducing her.

  “Someone lit the moon on fire,” he said.

  “My brains are full of gum,” she whispered.

  He pulled her down the hill, tripping over rocks and tufts of grass, the night swallowing their laughter, the moon gaping. He towed her along behind him, her hand in his, tugging her through the parking lot to the place where the little fair stood, closed, abandoned, prettier in the crimson light, the maze of hydro wires casting shadowy webs over the buildings and the ground.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, giggling.

  He worked the lock on one of the buildings, more like a trailer, and the door opened with a creak. He drew her into the darkness, her sneakers squeaking on the floor.

  “I can’t see.”

  He pulled her through. He knew the way. Pushing her into the centre of the room, he cast a spell with butane and she saw herself and him, reflected infinitely in the mirrors, like some crone’s trick.

  “My God,” was all she could say.

  He conjured a small candle from his pocket, lit it, and a million little flames magically appeared. Taking her hand in his, he used a pen to draw a spiral in blue ink on her palm. “For life,” he said, kissing her at last, his mouth warm and lingering.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The curtains billowed languidly in the morning breeze, the window to Sarah’s room still half open, the screen leaning against the wall where she had left it the night before. She’d snuck through the window, not out of fear of her mother, but in honour of him. He was there with her, the smell of him, his hair, his skin, the sound of his voice. Her mind danced like a honeybee when she thought of the night, their reflected images stretching endlessly before them like an augury. She wanted to be with him, wanted to feel his hands against her skin again.

  If only she hadn’t drunk so much. She massaged her forehead methodically then reached for the aspirin bottle. She would have to take a double dose today. One for the drink and one for her old friend, the migraine. But she didn’t regret a minute of it. After all, she’d been so out of it she’d managed to climb into bed without thinking about John’s ghost. For that, she was grateful. There had been one moment, though, when she’d thought she saw something move across the threshold of her room. But she hadn’t allowed herself to care. And if it was John, he had thankfully left her alone. In the comfort of her bed, with the sunlight streaming through the window and the scent of Michael’s skin on her own, she felt she could be hopeful.

  Rolling over to reach the aspirin on the milk crate, she hesitated as the floorboards creaked outside her bedroom door. There was a brief pause, then the creaking resumed and receded as her mother finally trundled by, the odour of cigarette smoke attending her like a shadow. Sarah waited for her mother to settle back in to sleep the morning away.

  She looked around the room, at the signature of it, the books, posters, clothes and the leaves—lots of leaves everywhere, push-pinned to the corkboard, arranged on top of shelves. There wasn’t room for anything or anyone else. She had made sure of that, filling up all the spaces, arranging it neatly. Like an old widow, she had blocked the world out, living in a house too big for her dwindling emotional income, shutting off rooms in her heart that she could no longer afford to heat. No wonder she’d been seeing things. But then Michael had come. Now the curtains waved invitingly; the breeze slipped through the open window, fingering loose papers and leaves, offering a new order. Wasn’t Michael just like that, entering her life, rearranging things? The strange thing was that she wanted him to, wanted him to sweep the dust from the corners, to shake things loose. She had been holding on so tightly, hadn’t she forgotten why or even how to let go?

  The blue ink spiral he had drawn on her hand winked from her palm. “For life,” he had said. And so it seemed to be true, that life had a way of asserting itself, reinventing itself, of taking an unexpected turn and springing up in the most unlikely places—in alleyways, beneath uprooted trees, in the cracks of sidewalks, in the palm of your hand. So does death, she abruptly thought. Touching the spiral with her finger, she flexed her hand to see it jump in and out. John had seemingly broken through to her world. But Michael had thrown the door wide, offering promise like spring rain. And she was amazed at her own thirst.

  The breeze lifted a fan of leaves from her dresser, whirled them to the centre of the room and dropped them in a scatter across the blue-and-green cotton rug that covered the trap door leading to the basement. The trap door. It took up most of her room, causing her to keep her bed shoved against the wall by the window and her dresser pushed against the other wall by the door. Little usable space. She hadn’t minded the trap door being in her room before except that she worried it wasn’t stable. Just a piece of plywood dropped into the two-by-four frame, no hinges. Looking at it now, Sarah realized how easy it would be for someone to crawl into her room. All they had to do was break a window in the basement and come up the stairs from inside. It would be best to just nail the door shut. There was no reason to go down there anyway. There were hookups for a washer and dryer, but they weren’t going to get those any time soon. They used the laundromat down the street.

  Sarah suddenly noticed the note, folded into a neat little tent card sitting next to her photo. “Pushover.” Donna’s handwriting. How had she left it there, and when? “God, Donna!” Sarah said aloud, the bedsprings in the next room answering noisily, then growing silent again. She got up from bed and stuffed her legs into her jeans, the pain pulsing firmly at the back of her eyes. Her black turtleneck caused her hair to jump and spark as she pulled it over her head, making her way from the room.

  Flipping the light on in the bathroom, she turned the hot water tap in the sink. After testing the temperature with her hand, she splashed water on her face. Her skin turned red with the heat before she resigned herself to showering instead. It would make her late for school, but no matter. It was Friday. Half the seniors wouldn’t show up for class. They skipped school to drink. They had the shirts to prove it: “FEWD,” for “Forget Education, We’re Drinking.” Not that she ran with that crowd any more. She avoided them; she didn’t want anything to do with their type. Besides, Donna wouldn’t allow it. She had made that quite clear. She hated those pricks with their stupid drinking club, she said—and their stupid matching shirts. She was going to have her own shirt made: “FU2.”

  The pipes to the tub rattled and thumped as the water coughed out, brown with rust. They knocked with diminishing frequency, like a dying drummer, until the water finally ran clear. The steam rose up, a genie in the cool air, filling the tub and eventually the room. Sarah stripped down, kicking her jeans with one foot to the corner of the bathroom. Stepping gingerly into the shower, she let the water rush over her, the temperature almost too hot to bear, then freezing. “Don’t use the water!” she yelled into the mist.

  There was a light tap on the door. And then another. Sarah depressed the shower lever with her big toe to stop the water so she could hear. Her mother’s thin voice mumbled through the door. Why does she always mumble?

  “What?” Sarah shouted back.

  “Telephone. It’s the school.”

  Sarah opened the door a crack, clutching a towel around her. Her mother’s disembodied hand thrust the receiver through.

  “Hello …”

  An angry voice shouted on the other end. “We won’t tolerate your tardiness any longer. If you insist on thumbing your nose at school policy we have no choice but to expel you.”

  “You got me out of the shower, Donna, you jerk!”

  Cackling laughter seared through the line, followed by the click and buzz as the phone was disconnected. Sara
h tossed the handset back into the kitchen. “Donna’s a stupidjerk!” she wrote in the fog on the mirror, her finger squeaking against the glass. When she was finished writing, she wiped the words away with her palm and found John’s face staring back at her.

  Sarah gave a terrified shout, whipping around to face him. The mist hung in the air, drifting languidly across the bathroom toward the gap where the door was ajar. She kicked angrily at the door, letting the steam escape into the kitchen. Whatever ghosts were there had evaporated with the mist.

  Turning back to the mirror, she studied the room in its reflection. Her clothes in a heap on the floor, the shower curtain scrunched to one side, the tub vacant. The possibility that she had imagined the whole thing crept into a corner of her consciousness and curled up there. John beside the bed. His reflection in the mirror. It was stress causing these visions, she told herself. Stress, squeezing the synapses in her brain, fabricating phantoms from little more than misdirected chemicals. It could do that so easily, she knew, fracture the eggshell integrity of the mind. And she had been under stress lately—lots of it. More than one person could bear. She covered her face with her hands and hung her head. “Please, God,” she prayed.

  The sudden notion that he was somehow still there, watching her, devoured her self-pity in an instant. She wrapped a towel tightly around herself, snapped her clothes from the floor, glanced furtively in the mirror, then trotted quickly to her room, where she dumped her clothes in a bundle at the foot of her bed—though not before checking underneath. Pulling on a clean pair of underwear and her jeans, she unwrapped the towel from around her chest, scrubbed her hair dry, threw on a bra and the black turtleneck from before, swapped the turtleneck for a hooded sweatshirt and put on her jean jacket. After combing her hair until it was straight, she grabbed her green knit toque and pushed her hair up underneath before daring to inspect herself in the round vanity mirror above her dresser. Her grim reflection stared back at her. She spun around sharply to make sure that she was alone, then turned back to the mirror and challenged John to show his face again. “Don’t be a coward,” she said. When he didn’t appear, she grimaced at herself, applied lip gloss and searched her drawer for socks. There was a thin blue pair without holes. She yanked them on quickly, slung her knapsack over one shoulder and her purse over the other. She checked her pockets for money. Ten dollars. Shoving her feet into her sneakers, she popped two aspirins before throwing the bottle into her purse and slamming out of the house toward school. Anything was better than being at home.

  The hallways were empty, the students already in class. Sarah felt exhausted and the pain in her head was growing. Her feet dragged as she climbed the seemingly endless marble stairs to the third floor. Stair after stair. How many stairs had she climbed in her life? There had been many. Maybe enough to climb to the moon. She used to count them, when counting was all she had to keep herself sane.

  The Terrace General Hospital had 29 terrazzo stairs between floors, for a total of 87 steps—minus landings—to reach the chronic care ward in the west wing on the third floor. There were two sets of elevators, only one of which worked on a regular basis, the second havingfallen into disrepair when budget cuts apparently prevented regular maintenance from being performed. It took 162 steps to reach the stairwell from the main floor lobby, with an additional 412 steps and three right turns to reach the wire-reinforced glass doors leading to the chronic care wing. Once through the doors, a total of 69 steps were necessary to reach the nurses’ station, 94 to reach the showers, 108 to reach the linen closet and 258 to reach Room 319, with another 17½ steps to reach the bed from the doorway, the half step a compromise between the floor and the edge of the bed. Room 319 was a single-occupancy facility, a rarity in chronic care wards, with a wide dusty window overlooking the hospital atrium—a square of weeds and forgotten flower beds, no seats. Rooms facing south overlooked the cemetery.

  Donna was waiting for her in the hall outside of class, striking a pose against the green-painted cinderblock wall, brown plaid kilt cut just below her crotch, black boots to the knee, one foot kicked up behind her buttock. Sarah walked past like she didn’t know her.

  “Don’t even think about it, Wagner. You’re late anyway. You’ll just get a detention.”

  Sarah sighed. “Why do you torment me so?”

  “If I didn’t, who would? Come on. The Queen’s calls.”

  Sarah didn’t want to go. She wanted to see Michael. But Donna was right. She would only get a detention if she entered class this late. Donna tromped down the school steps, towing Sarah along behind her.

  “Man, did you miss out last night,” she gloated as they reached the street. “A bunch of us went to hear this great band at the Southside Hotel.”

  “Who’s a bunch of us?”

  “Peter and some friends from out of town.”

  “Oh, right, Peter.” Sarah didn’t have the energy to fake enthusiasm.

  “But these guys show up,” Donna continued, “and they’re making like they own the place, you know, ordering all these drinks and taking up all the good seats, stealing chairs from our table, talking big, and the next thing you know, Peter’s friend grabs one of these guys and nearly splits his head open with a head butt, and then everybody’s fighting and smashing beer bottles.”

  Sarah looked skeptical. “Peter?”

  “You should have seen him!” Donna said, becoming more animated. “I’m just sitting there when the waiter throws his tray across the room and slams these two guys right on top of our table. I jump out of the way and nearly get suckered by this freak, but Peter dives on the guy and punches him out.”

  “Sounds like a great time.”

  “Don’t be a bitch. It was a riot.”

  “Literally … I can’t see Peter fighting.”

  “Oh, he can fight,” Donna assured her. “There’s lots of stuff you don’t know about him.”

  “I can live with that.” Sarah leaned on the door to the coffee shop and stumbled inside to the thick smell of deep-fried food and the haze of cigarette smoke. Moving to their usual booth at the back of the shop, she dumped her knapsack on the seat, then squeezed in beside it. Donna sat across from her.

  “Okay, so give me the scoop,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked. She searched Donna’s face for a clue as to what was coming.

  “Come on, Wagner. You’ve been out to lunch lately, daydreaming and getting all pissy about everything. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said, shrugging. “It’s this headache. It won’t go away.” She dug for the aspirin in her bag.

  “Go see a doctor,” Donna suggested, producing a bottle of Advil and tossing it across the table.

  Sarah scowled. “No! No doctors. I’ll never see another doctor again, I don’t care what’s wrong with me. They can’t help anybody.” She shook two Advil from the bottle and slid it back to Donna. “Thanks,” she said in a calmer voice.

  Donna dropped the bottle in her purse and tapped a couple of cigarettes from her pack. She lit both at once with her Zippo and handed one to Sarah. Sarah took a deep drag, exhaled appreciatively and looked around the shop. There were several people scattered around at tables and in booths. Dishes clattered in the kitchen as Nick called out orders, coffee cups settled into saucers, lighters sparked, cigarettes glowed, newspapers rustled beneath the low groan of comfort while a middle-aged waitress skimmed adeptly along with dishcloth and coffee carafe synchrony, her dirty blond hair and expression moulded to withstand the smoke and grease and demands of the patrons. Sarah settled back into the booth. It was a relief to be there after all, playing her part in this small theatre of life. Taking another long drag on her cigarette, she slowly exhaled. “I’m sorry, Donna. I guess I’ve been freaking out.”

  Donna considered her through hooded eyes. “Over what?”

  “I don’t know.” Sarah picked the foil from the cigarette pack and began folding it into smaller and smaller triangles. “I think
I’m seeing things.”

  “Does it start with an M and end with an L?” Donna smiled patronizingly behind her cigarette.

  “I’m serious,” Sarah said, furrowing her brow. “I’m kind of scared.”

  “Scared of what? You haven’t told me anything yet.”

  Sarah looked into Donna’s face. Beneath the shock of short black hair, her eyes shone green and clear, her unnaturally large pupils the size of nickels in the light of the diner. It gave her a nocturnal, otherworldly quality—almost trance-like, Sarah thought, raising the cigarette to her lips. As she did this, she felt a warm fluid run down her finger. It exploded in a brilliant red starburst onto the table.

  “Sarah, your nose!”

  Sarah drew her hand from her face. Her fingers were crimson with blood. “Shit.”

  Donna reached for the napkins and pulled a handful from the dispenser. “Here, pinch your nose with these.”

  Dropping her cigarette in the ashtray, Sarah grabbed the napkins from Donna’s hand and crammed them over her nose, tilting her head back.

  “God, that was weird,” Donna said, pulling more napkins from the dispenser. “Maybe you should go to the bathroom and check it out.”

  The napkins blossomed red as Sarah slid across the booth. In the bathroom, she removed them cautiously and inspected her nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. There was a smear of blood above her lip and her fingers were sticky with it. Turning on the tap, she rubbed her hands vigorously under the water, then leaned over and repeatedly splashed her face. She did this until the red-tinted water ran clear down the drain. Using a wad of paper towels, she dabbed her face delicately, afraid her nose would start to bleed again if she used too much force. When she was satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, she opened her compact and applied powder heavily. She surveyed her face in the mirror. Her skin was pale and malnourished looking. Dark circles like tea-coloured stains had crept into the hollows below her eyes. She looked tired and worn out. And somehow thinner. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? It was a good thing she hadn’t gone to school today. What if the nose bleed had happened in front of the whole class? In front of Michael? She found her lipstick and dotted some on her cheeks, blending it into her skin. At least she wouldn’t look so pale now. After fussing with her hair for a bit, she threw the blood-stained napkins in the garbage and went back out. She was going to tell Donna about John.