Left

by Theanna Bischoff

  The striped pattern of the wall—this bed—where?—Right. The hotel. She is at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, it is Monday, she is alone. She stretches out her arms, feels the empty space.

  It took three days to line this all up, to switch her shifts, to book the hotel, to come up with a plausible explanation as to where she’d be, why she’d be out of contact. She hadn’t planned to call things off with Greg so suddenly. But then, the morning after Josie’s wedding, she opened her eyes and looked at him, her brain registering, remembering—the conversation at the reception, the navy velvet sky, her dizzy head. She just started talking, and he just kept looking at her, kept saying, “But what do you mean?”

  No one even knows they’re not together anymore, yet, unless Greg has told someone, which he probably hasn’t. She stares out the window at the clear blue sky behind sharp green pines, the light streaming into the dim room. When she closes her eyes again, the shape of the window burns red behind her eyelids. Too bright.

  She has not eaten since yesterday, and even then, she only managed to gulp back some bitter hospital coffee and take in a few bites of slimy green cafeteria Jell-O just to keep her sugars up, to stay alert enough at work to be functional at her job. She lies still, flat, arms at her sides, toes pointed up. Her closed eyelids flutter, a tiny itch tingles at her hairline. The sheets smell of bleach. Has Greg tried to call? Does he wonder why he’s only getting voice mail? What time is it? Is he on his way to work, now? Is he singing along to the radio, making up lines to songs whose lyrics he can’t remember?

  She breathes, in-out, holding back another splash.

  She could sleep all day. She could buy a bottle of dark red wine, drink it all. She could change her look—cut her hair short, buy new clothes, get a tattoo. She could spend the day wandering in the mountains. She could wander off into the mountains and never come back. No one knows where she is. Here, no one knows who she is. She can be anyone. She could just leave, like her mother did, eighteen years ago. Run away and never look back. Leave everyone and everything behind.

  Josie’s grandparents used to have a cabin time-share somewhere nearby, near the Three Sisters mountains, where exactly Natasha can’t remember, but she does remember how the drive from Calgary felt so long, her skin sweaty, sticking to the leather seats of Josie’s parents’ car, playing cat’s cradle with Jo using two shoelaces tied together into one long loop, trying to keep their hands steady against the rocking motion of the drive, against Jason’s frustrated kicks at the back of Josie’s father’s seat while he drove: “I’m huuuungry!”

  During one of those summers, she’d tripped on a gravel driveway racing Josie to the top of a hill and sheared the skin off her left knee. Josie had gagged at all the blood, so Natasha hobbled over to a patch of grass and picked the tiny rocks out of the wound one at a time by herself, biting hard on the inside of her cheek against the sting. Then she tied her blue windbreaker around her leg like a tourniquet and wiped her bloody hands on her jean shorts. That night, she sat on the ledge of the indoor pool, dangling only her feet into the water, while Jo and Jay and their cousins bobbed and splashed each other, using pool noodles as lightsabers. Natasha had no cousins; had no siblings yet either. During the summers, she pretended to be Josie and Jay’s sister. When she grew up, she would have eight children and there would be no need for cousins or pretend families. Natasha pulled her legs out of the pool and pulled her knees to her chest, which made her wound sting again. She kept getting splashed. Kids under fifteen weren’t supposed to be in the pool unsupervised, but one of Josie’s cousins was fifteen, the oldest girl, and then there was a boy who was fourteen and a half, so maybe that technically counted, since all the adults had gone to the clubhouse to watch a live jazz show. The fifteen-year-old’s younger brother had turned thirteen the week before. Josie’s aunt and uncle had made a birthday cake to celebrate, a chocolate fudge cake decorated in watermelon Pop Rocks candy, and when Natasha bit into her forkful, the candy exploded in her mouth, sweet and fizzy. Afterwards, she’d played Battleship with the thirteen-year-old cousin. She lost, but it didn’t matter. Natasha wondered if someday she might marry him and actually become a member of Josie’s family. He was only a little bit older than her, just like her dad was a little bit older than her mom. She liked the chocolate colour of his hair. Maybe her children would have chocolate-coloured hair and be good at Battleship.

  How strange—a memory of thinking about marrying someone other than Greg, from before she even knew Greg, the same memory tinged with the craving of an only child for a sibling, before Abby, before she even knew about Abby. Although it occurs to her that, during the summer she’d skinned her knee, Abby had already come into existence, just cells at that point, cells dividing. New life, by accident. Just like Abby’s own baby-to-be.

  That night at the pool, Jason had lobbed a ball too high, to the far end of the pool, onto the deck behind the deep end. Natasha scrambled to her feet and darted after it. The ball felt slippery in her hands as she passed it back to Jason, who paused for a moment, bobbing on a blue rectangular flotation device.

  “Thanks,” Jay said. “How’s your knee?”

  Natasha could barely hear him because of the cousins’ shrieks and the way the sound bounced off the water and the pool’s high ceilings.

  Then she felt a shove in-between the shoulder blades and hit the water hard. She felt a sucking—down, down, like being pulled towards a drain—and she thrashed her arms, her body heavy in jean shorts, the hood of her sweatshirt twisting in front of her face. The water tasted salty; filled her nostrils. Her lungs burned. She kicked up, against the suck. Someone came up beside her, hoisted her from below. She broke the surface and gasped. Then she went under again, but just for a moment. The second time she crested the water, she found herself near the pool’s edge. She grabbed on, scrambled up, collapsing on the side, slamming her ragged knee into the concrete in the process.

  Josie crawled up onto the deck, water streaming from her long hair seal slicked down her back. “Are you okay?” she gasped, kneeling down beside Natasha. “It was supposed to be funny...”

  Who had pushed her? Who had helped her out? Did it even matter? The scab on her knee had reopened, and when she reached down, her fingers came back wet with diluted blood. She could hear the teens laughing. She didn’t want to look. Her nose tingled. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” She clamped her lips together.

  In the change room, Natasha stripped her off her clothes and stood still, wearing only a now transparent pair of cotton underwear. Her jean shorts dripped through the grated bench, water forming a slippery puddle underneath. She wrapped a scrawny, bleached-white towel around herself, used some toilet paper to staunch the blood at her knee. When Josie came back with dry clothes from the cabin, Natasha would tell her the push had been funny. She could take a joke. She sat down beside the crumpled pile of her wet laundry and let a few tears come out, but only a few, and just so they’d be gone by the time Josie came back.

  In the Banff Springs Hotel, Natasha climbs out of bed and steps lightly, barefooted to the bathroom. She twists the bathtub faucet and water rushes into the porcelain basin. She had fallen asleep in her clothes, exhausted from the drive, from crying. Can she make herself stop loving Greg? Can she choose that? She strips her jeans off now, her T-shirt, her underwear, her bra. Waits.

  When it had come time for swimming lessons the fall after the pool incident, Natasha faked a wrist injury and wore her arm in a sling for three weeks while her classmates practiced somersaults by kicking off against the pool’s wall and leapt from the tall diving board. She sat up in the highest bleacher with her math textbook and a sixth-grader she didn’t know who got rashes from chlorine. Josie had a new neon yellow bathing suit. The bleachers felt safer than the sidelines. Up high, Natasha could see the instructors throwing heavy black rings to the bottom of the pool. One by one, her classmates dunked down to fetch them.

  There was, Natasha had reasoned, only so much air in a human
being’s lungs. If you went far enough under, at some point, you would run out of time, you would run out of breath. And then, even if you wanted to make it to the surface, you couldn’t. She watched the kids diving down and popping back up. All of them kept making it. But that didn’t mean all of them would always keep making it. That didn’t mean she would make it. It only had to happen once.

  She turns the hotel faucet off now, steps into the water gingerly, letting her body absorb the swell of heat. She still doesn’t know what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. She lies back into the water, leans her neck against the hard porcelain of the tub. The heat and the fact that she hasn’t eaten have made her dizzy. She closes her eyes. Holds her breath. Slides her back down further. Water slips up over her chin. Her mouth. Her nose.

  HIM

  I ALWAYS THINK I RECOGNIZE PEOPLE I KNOW ON THE street. Then I get up close and I see their face, and it’s never who I thought it was. A human face is based on mathematical proportions and symmetry. Bisect an oval horizontally to find the line where the eyes should sit; bisect the bottom half of the face to anchor the nostrils. Each ear anchors to the face at the first and second horizontal bisects. Section off the top third of the bottom quarter—this line anchors the mouth, one lip above the top line, one lip below. Bisect the whole face vertically to find the dorsum of the nose. Divide the first horizontal bisect into five segments; from left to right, the eyes fall into segments two and four. Did you notice that the space between the eyes is equal to the width of each eye? The bridge of the nose is equal to the width of that third invisible eye. The outer corners of the mouth can be located by running two parallel lines down from the pupils of each eye. People always say eyes are almond shaped, but that’s inaccurate. Real eyes lack vertical symmetry. They’re shaped like lemons; the part where the rind forms a nub at the end corresponds to the tear-duct. A computer can be programmed to generate a face to exact proportions according to mathematical ratios; you can replicate a person, create an avatar, a graphical alter ego. But a fully symmetrical face isn’t authentic. Like how you only have a dimple on the left side of your face.

  That first time I saw you out running, I watched you, from the truck. I lit a Marlboro. Seeing you, of all people, recognizing you—it meant something. Meant things were going to be different. I couldn’t just ignore that.

  The air conditioner in the truck was broken; whenever I turned it on, it smelled like gasoline. Better to keep the windows down. The truck was so old I had to roll the windows manually. I tapped my cigarette on the window edge to release the ash. I watched you make a right turn. I hit my turn signal. It tracked you like a heart beat. I followed. You had your headphones on. The truck radio was busted, too. Just static fuzz. I wondered what song you were listening to.

  2004

  THE PICKUP LOOKS WORSE THAN THE AD; AND more blue than grey. Oh, well. John only plans to strip it and sell it for parts anyway. But the guy’s listed it pretty high. Dickwad. Maybe John can lowball him. He’s already driven all the way out to Airdrie to look at it. Cost him a quarter tank of gas. His own windshield is a mosquito graveyard. The wind has started to pick up. John licks his lips, tastes grit.

  “How many kilometres on it?” John asks the guy, opening the driver’s side door and climbing in, running his fingers along the dusty dashboard.

  The guy comes around the passenger door, leans in through the open window. “Six hundred thou. The engine is pretty shot. It’d need rebuilding, but I dunno if it’s worth it. I’d just use the parts.”

  “You flexible on price?” John asks, checking out the gearshift, opening and closing the glove compartment.

  The guy watches him. “I could be.”

  John swivels, checking out the back seat. The vinyl is darkened in some places. John leans closer. It looks like spilled wine, or perhaps blood. He looks up at the guy, jokes, “You have a dead body in here?”

  “My buddy borrowed ’er one weekend and accidentally hit a dog. He tried to get it to the vet in time. Stain never came out.”

  John averts his gaze, rests his fingers on the wheel. Tries not to think about a dog bleeding, panting, moaning, eyes rolling back in its head. John has three dogs at home—two huskies and a yorkie—the yorkie is his girlfriend’s, and it’s more guinea pig than dog, but it’s grown on him.

  He decides he doesn’t want the truck. It’s not worth negotiating. A long crack stretches across the windshield. John can’t even turn the engine on to check any of the features. Who knows what other surprises he might find? He smiles anyway, says, “I think I’ve seen everything I need to. Thanks for letting me take a look.”

  The guy says, “No problem.”

  John steps out of the truck. “I’ll give you a call,” he says, “if I have any questions.” He offers his hand.

  The guy accepts the shake. “Yeah, sure. No problem.” His hand feels rough.

  John starts to walk to his car, then turns back. “That dog make it?” he asks.

  The guy shrugs. “Dunno.”

  JUNE 2008

  I want to be cured of a craving for something I cannot find and of the shame of never finding it.

  —T.S. Eliot

  REUBEN

  REUBEN’S DAUGHTER WET THE BED AND, AFTER GETTING up to change her sheets, he couldn’t fall asleep right away, so he took a blanket and a pillow into the den and turned on World of Warcraft on his computer. He hasn’t been sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time, not since they found the watch. He just can’t turn his brain off. Stacy never lets him play WoW when the twins are awake—says she doesn’t want them to be exposed to violence. Stacy doesn’t get it. Violence is already everywhere. Sooner or later, she’s going to realize she can’t protect the kids.

  Probably no one would have realized the significance of the watch had it not been tucked up under the rubber floor mat on the passenger side. It couldn’t have just fallen. Someone had to shove it up under there. It was the long dark hair that got noticed. A good chunk of it, the width of a finger, wrapped around the strap. Someone had left it there on purpose.

  The doorbell rings, and Reuben stumbles from the couch, his legs tangled in his blanket. He discards the blanket on the hardwood and goes around the corner. Peers through the peephole.

  No fuckin’ way!

  He fumbles with the main deadbolt and the second deadbolt Stacy had installed when they moved in. He flings open the door. The security system starts its low hum.

  It’s her! The vic! Standing on his doorstep, still wearing her workout clothing, her arms wrapped around herself, her bare skin prickled with goosebumps. She shivers.

  “What are you doing here?” Reuben exclaims.

  “I’m so cold,” she says. But doesn’t move to come inside the house.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Reuben yells. The security system has escalated to a loud warning tone; if he doesn’t deactivate it before the time is up, the siren will start, triggering a call to the system’s headquarters, dispatching the police. He really should turn it off, but no way in hell is he going to let the vic out of his eyesight.

  “I’m so cold,” she says again.

  Here’s the siren. “Get inside,” Reuben says, and reaches out for the vic’s arm.

  Still, she doesn’t move. The siren keeps wailing. “I’m so cold,” she says.

  “Reuben?” Stacy yells from upstairs.

  That’s not the siren, that’s his son, crying. Reuben rolls over, feeling the rough fabric of the couch against his face. His pillow has fallen to the floor. Fractals swirl on his computer, the screen saver having kicked in. He sits up, lightheaded. Fucking nightmare. Now that they’ve found the watch, it’s like his lungs are just giving up on him. It feels like he’s having asthma attacks at random times, watching the coffee machine pee dark roast into his Styrofoam cup. Taking his socks off at the end of the night before a shower. Reuben has been given explicit instructions to—how did his supervisor put it?—stop spinning his wheels and make some real headway.
The sergeant even asked that student criminologist who’s been hanging around doing her Ph.D. on missing and murdered Indigenous women to take a look at the file, see what they could be missing.

  But Reuben knows it was the ex-boyfriend who did it. Sick at home, alone, asleep? Yeah right. The fact that she’d started seeing someone else gave him motive, too. Not that the ex admitted he knew about the new fling. Reuben had thought for sure the guy would crack, slip up. All those hours at the station, buddy hacking up a lung, Reuben leaning on him, thinking, come on, asshole, we both know you did it. Coming in willingly for all that questioning, offering up his condo to be searched—made him look like the nice guy, the high school sweetheart who would never lay a hand on her.

  So what if he didn’t own a grey pickup? Of course he’d use a decoy. The pickup means nothing. Could his guys get DNA off the watch? They had her hair in for testing and the watch in for prints. ’Course there was a backlog. ’Course the truck had been dismantled by the time the watch made its way into the right hands, the pieces strewn about, sold, mixed in with other scrap. It had taken awhile for the guys at the scrapyard to figure out the watch’s significance. Reuben had guys trying to trace the truck’s serial number, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

  The vic’s new guy was a doctor she’d met at work. A step up from the perp, in Reuben’s opinion. The doc did have an alibi—a whole team of medical professionals watching him assist on a kidney transplant. He’d come into the station voluntarily, identified himself, just after Reuben found the photo, before he even had time to figure out who the guy was. He’d answered all Reuben’s questions. Apparently they’d just started seeing each other, but they’d had sex recently and it was getting serious. He asked Reuben not to say anything to the media—didn’t want to damage his professional reputation. Not that there was anything to say. His alibi was ironclad. Big guy, six feet, dark skin, dark hair, baseball cap. Cried like a baby, right there in the station. Then he pulled his shit together. Left Reuben his card.