by Annabel Lyon
Sara learned more about Robert in the months after he had left their lives forever. She realized he had spent a lot of time with Mattie even before the marriage, enough to have remoulded Mattie to his own shape. He had been a good cook. “Too soft,” Mattie said now of Sara’s indifferently stir-fried vegetables, and she asked more than once when Sara was going to bake some muffins or roast a chicken. Robert had been a tidy man, and thrifty. Mattie counted the money in her beaded wallet every night now before she went to bed, and when she couldn’t afford some treat she wanted, she said, “Never mind,” instead of begging from Sara. She folded her laundry now and put it away, packing it into the drawers of her new, smaller dresser with thoughtful intensity, like she was packing for a sea voyage. Sara learned that Robert had been a man who liked to touch, casually, affectionately: a pat on the back, a kiss on the head, a head on her shoulder during the TV news on the sofa before bed. There was no one else from whom her sister could have learned this behaviour. There had never been anyone else at all.
Sara learned how Robert had been in bed. Late every night, after Sara had turned her light out—long after Mattie had closed her own door—Sara would feel her sister slip into her room, slip under the covers beside her, and press her body against Sara’s until Sara put her arms around her. They would lie this way for a long time, until Mattie turned away, backing herself against Sara so that Sara would hold her that way, and then Mattie would sigh and busy her hands between her own legs. The doctor had assured Sara weeks ago that Mattie was healthy and her hymen intact. “You,” Mattie would mumble after she was done, but Sara would only hold her. Every night after Mattie had fallen asleep Sara would promise herself to put an end to these intrusions: a gentle but firm talk, a lock on the door, a sharp, unequivocal word in the night.
But night rolled into day rolled into night and she said nothing, did nothing. She had taken the sun and the moon from Mattie, as the old words went; they would not come again. Skin on skin, and not to be alone: didn’t she owe her this, at least, if her own love was true?
CHAPTER THREE
Fall 2015
Saskia Gilbert sat at her favourite carrel in the UBC library, surrounded by books. Her iPhone flashed a text from her father: phone home. She ignored it because it wasn’t Jenny. Jenny would be working late, as usual, or out with friends. While Saskia was slogging her way through a graduate degree, her twin had charmed her way from an internship to a job with an interior design firm. She drove a hybrid and wore dresses and ate at the restaurants she helped style: the fusion sushi place, the retro-futuristic wine bar, the Brazilian-style churrascaria with the communal tables. Saskia had gone along with her to that one, only last week, and regretted it.
“Talk about your meat market,” she’d mumbled into her wine.
“Would it kill you to talk to someone other than me?” Jenny accepted a skewer of blackened chicken from a passing waiter and flashed him her starlet’s smile. The waiter winked. Saskia sighed. A woman across the table and a little ways down wore a delicate gold lamé camisole and white skinny jeans. The man next to her wore a plum-coloured suit that was either elegant and expensive or ridiculous. Jenny would tell her which. In her heavy-framed glasses, ponytail, and black hoodie, Saskia knew she looked like what she was: a depressed, penniless student who resembled her twin the way a raisin resembles a grape.
“Did you try that aromatherapy spray I gave you?” Jenny demanded. The man eyed Jenny, in her sky-blue silk shirt dress with her flawless makeup and French manicure and her designer tonic water. She’d left the chrome tube on Saskia’s bedside table. Saskia guessed it cost more than she earned in a month of marking papers as a teaching assistant. That was Jenny, whiplashing so quickly from absurd generosity to bullying that sometimes it was hard to distinguish between them. The twins still lived in their parents’ house, a massive Craftsman in Kerrisdale, roommates in the two-bedroom basement suite. As much as their lives had diverged, they weren’t ready to leave each other.
“Not yet.”
“We should go shopping. I’ll give you a makeover.”
“Why mess with perfection?”
“And there’s this guy at work—”
“Jenny, stop.”
“But you’re so boring.”
“I study French literature. You know, existentialism, ennui. Life is meaningless, chérie. It’s an occupational hazard.”
“You’re twenty-seven. You should be dating.”
“I should be finishing my thesis.”
Jenny’s phone shivered where it lay on the table, next to her plate. She glanced at it. “How’s that going, anyway? Still stuck?”
Saskia was watching the woman in the gold top, who was sipping from a flute of Prosecco and flirting effortlessly with the man in the purple suit. “My advisor says it’s unfocused. She says I need to start over.”
“So start over.”
“Maybe grad school’s not for me. Maybe it’s time to face the real world.”
“Hallelujah.”
“It’s just that I know I’m getting closer.” Saskia sipped her own wine, an eighteen-dollar glass she’d been nursing for too long because she couldn’t afford a second. “I feel like I’m getting closer to understanding something about—” You, she wanted to say. Us. “Something about love. And pain. And—sadness.”
Jenny’s laugh was little bells, silver and gold. “Oh god, Sass. Is this where you tell me you’re depressed?” She tugged the string of Saskia’s hoody. “You’re such a cliché.” Her phone shivered again.
“Maybe you could turn that—”
“Hello?”
Saskia listened to Jenny flirt for a couple of minutes and then went to the washroom to kill time. When she came back, she found a note under her drink that said, Got a better offer.
Now, in the library, her own phone flashed again. Phone home.
Saskia set one book aside and reached for another. Her advisor, Madame Brossard, had been unequivocal that morning. No more half-finished papers and half-hearted ideas. She must stop reading and start writing. She was behind. Her scholarship was now in question.
Her phone’s screen lit up with her parent’s faces. Home was now phoning her. Her mother, vague with wine most afternoons; her father the workaholic QC with his bulldog ways. The big house could feel lonely and empty even when they were all there. Her father would work late in his home office. Her mother would drift around like a ghost, glass in hand, complaining of the headaches brought on by light, noise, music, or any kind of cheer. Jenny stayed out most nights; Saskia stayed in the basement.
Her parents’ faces disappeared, replaced by a message indication. Almost immediately, their faces reappeared. They were calling again.
“Hello,” Saskia whispered.
Her father. She could hear his voice booming, not at her, and then there he was in her ear. “Sassy. Are you there?”
Even his questions sounded like orders. “I’m here.”
“Stop whispering, Sassy. We have an emergency. You’re coming to the hospital right now.”
“What—”
“St. Paul’s. Now.”
“Mom—?”
“Jenny.”
She stared at the cover of the nearest book: Camus’s The Stranger.
“Are you still there, Saskia?”
“I’m here.”
“It was a car accident. Jenny’s going to be fine.”
But there was something in his voice, something choked. “Dad, are you crying?”
“She hasn’t woken up yet. They think it’s a concussion. Now, Sassy.”
At some point in their conversation she had stopped whispering. A librarian was walking purposefully towards her, pointing at Saskia’s phone and shaking her head.
“I’m on my way.” Saskia stuffed the phone in her pocket, shrugged on her knapsack, and swept the books off the d
esk and into the arms of the surprised librarian. The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, Being and Nothingness, No Exit.
“I won’t be needing those,” Saskia called over her shoulder as she ran.
Outside, late September’s gold spangled the trees. The sky was that high, pale, honest blue of the last fine days before the fall rains set in. Saskia had parked her car in the lot near the law school. She shouldered her way past men and women her own age in suits and heels, people—as her father would have said—with prospects. She let her hair hang in her face and avoided eye contact when she crossed this part of campus. Her father had always assumed she’d follow him into law.
“You have the mind,” he always told her, growing up. “You can article at my firm. I won’t go easy on you, but I’ll open doors. You’ll go far.”
And she had indeed gone far, as far away from his dream as she could. She shopped at thrift stores and studied dead French depressives. She drove a third-hand Corolla, not because her father wouldn’t have bought her something better, but precisely because it was the car she could afford to pay for by herself out of a TA salary. She refused makeup, social occasions of any kind, the allowance her parents offered. She was, in her own way, just as willful as Jenny. They both hated to be told what to do.
“We’ll go to Paris one day,” her mother said weakly when she told them she was going to grad school to study comparative literature.
“You’re wasting your talents, but suit yourself,” her father had said. “I never would have thought your sister would turn out to be the success in the family.”
Guilt rinsed through her when he said things like that. It was unfair to measure them against each other because they both knew Saskia would always win. Saskia the smart one, the sober one. The whole one.
And indeed it was Saskia he turned to when he needed someone to talk to about work, when their mother couldn’t get out of bed, when Jenny maxed out her credit card for the tenth time, when he brought home a new Beethoven CD and needed someone to hear how beautiful it was. It was Saskia he was turning to now. Pull yourself together.
Ten deep breaths. She started the car, leaned over to the glove box, opened it, then snapped it shut.
She didn’t think of Jenny while she navigated the early rush-hour traffic out of Point Grey, out of Kitsilano, across the Burrard Bridge and into downtown. She didn’t think of Jenny as she circled St. Paul’s, looking for street parking. She didn’t think of Jenny even as she said her sister’s name to the receptionist and was directed to the ICU. She didn’t think of Jenny until she saw her parents in a room at the end of a corridor, standing by a green-curtained bed.
Her twin lay as though sleeping. Her head was bandaged and there was an IV drip taped to her arm. Her mouth was oddly slack under the respirator.
“Shh,” her mother whispered. “She’s tired.”
Saskia hugged her. Her mother’s eyes were far away.
Her father touched her mother’s shoulder gently. “Mary, why don’t you go take a seat in the waiting room for a minute? She’s only allowed two visitors at a time. We’ll give Sassy a chance, shall we?”
“Oh, yes,” her mother said, and she wandered off.
“What did they give her?” Saskia asked.
“Ativan.”
Saskia nodded.
“It’s bad, Sassy.” They hugged. She felt his shoulders heave once, and hugged him harder. When they separated, he pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to leave a mark.
Saskia touched Jenny’s hand, the one without the drip. Her skin was warm. She leaned down and kissed her cheek. Jenny didn’t move.
“We spoke to the doctor about half an hour ago. They’re running tests.”
“What happened?”
“We’re still trying to understand. The police claim she was speeding. She was T-boned at Oak and Forty-first.”
Oakridge Centre, Saskia thought. Her sister loved to shop there.
“She wasn’t wearing her seat belt and she went through a red light. They’re saying her blood alcohol was point-one-seven.”
They looked at each other. Jenny wasn’t supposed to drink.
“I’m going to call Marcel.” Marcel was a colleague of her father’s, a partner in his firm. “He’s the best in the business. He won’t let the police roll over us.”
“Surely it’s not about rolling over us. She must have—I don’t know. She’s seemed so much better, lately. When we go out, she drinks tonic water.”
“I called her office,” Saskia’s father said. “They thought she was on the North Shore with a client.”
“Playing hooky to go shopping?” Saskia lowered her voice to a murmur. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
A nurse gave the curtain a twitch, sending it down the rail. She was a tiny Filipina with a big smile. “How are we doing?” She seemed to be talking to Jenny, so neither Saskia nor her father answered. She checked Jenny quickly but thoroughly, then glanced at Saskia. “Your twin?”
Saskia blinked. “Most people can’t tell.”
“No, what are you talking about?” Saskia recognized the meaningless patter of a caregiver trying to set worried relatives at ease. “Like peas in a pod!”
“When is the doctor coming back?” Her father glanced at his watch. “I want another test for the blood alcohol. That first test was wrong. This has to be done immediately, and time-stamped. There are issues of liability here.”
The nurse referred to her chart. “They’ve already taken a second sample. It’s being tested now. The doctor’s just waiting on all her results.”
“Thank you,” Saskia said, when her father didn’t.
After the nurse left, Saskia’s father asked her to check on her mother. “Get her to drink some water. The Ativan always makes her thirsty.”
Saskia found her mother in the waiting room, chatting with a middle-aged man who seemed relieved when Saskia touched her shoulder, drawing her attention away from him. “Mom?”
“Hello, love.” Her mother turned her empty-eyed smile on Saskia.
“Jenny’s stable. Let’s go down to the cafeteria. Are you hungry?”
They bought bottled water and coffee and apples and potato chips. Her mother used to bring her two girls to the hospital regularly, for twin studies when they were little and psychological testing later. Jenny always loved those visits, loved being the centre of attention. Saskia hated them.
“Why do I have to come?” she asked her mother once. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Well, darling, I think that’s the point.” They looked over at fifteen-year-old Jenny, talking animatedly with the doctor, who was laughing. “You’re the control.”
After twenty minutes in the cafeteria, her mother said she was cold and wanted to go back upstairs. “Maybe Jenny’s awake. We don’t want to miss that.”
They heard the shouting before they turned the corner into the long hall. A security guard in a black uniform rushed past them, followed by a man in a suit and wool overcoat trailing an expensive cologne. Saskia’s mind caught up only belatedly with her eyes: Marcel.
“What’s happening?” her mother asked.
Saskia ran after them. At Jenny’s bedside, her father was berating the ER doctor while the security guard tried to put himself between them. “Incompetent son of a bitch,” her father was booming. “I’ll have you know that I’m—”
“Hugh,” Marcel said loudly. “Let me handle this.”
Saskia touched his elbow. “Dad. Daddy.”
He turned to her with wild eyes.
“Mr. Gilbert,” the doctor said. He seemed surprisingly calm. “I understand this is a profound shock. Our efforts here are not over. We are hiding nothing from you, and your daughter’s care is our highest priority. But your daughter is not the only patient here. You will lower your voice in my hospital.” This was
delivered with the same steely calm Saskia had seen her father use to great effect in the courtroom.
“Sit down, Hugh.” Marcel directed her father to one of the teal blue plastic chairs by Jenny’s bed. Their mother sat beside him and pulled his face into her shoulder.
“Marcel Bouchard.” Her father’s colleague held out a hand to shake the doctor’s. “I represent the family. This is the patient’s sister, Saskia Gilbert.” She, too, shook the doctor’s cool hand. “Maybe you can fill us in.”
While the security guard hovered at a discreet distance, watching her father, the doctor drew them a few steps down the corridor. He was older than he first looked. You noticed the tan and the lean body first, the tiredness and sprinkled grey hairs only up close. He addressed Saskia. “Your sister is in a coma. Like a deep sleep.”
“Did you recheck her blood alcohol?” What her father would have asked.
The doctor hesitated. Then: “We did. There was no mistake. The alcohol may have contributed to the crash, but we think the coma was caused by a stroke. All the neurological tests haven’t come back yet, though.”
“She’s twenty-seven. I thought old people had strokes.”
“A stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted.” The three of them, as though of one mind, turned to look at Jenny. “There can be many causes. A clot, say, or in this case likely a head trauma from when she hit the steering wheel. Can you tell me about any medications she’s on? Any drug use?”
Saskia looked at Marcel, who looked at the floor. “Jenny wasn’t on any medications. She isn’t supposed to drink or take drugs.”
Marcel touched the doctor’s elbow and led him a little further down the hall. Saskia went to Jenny’s bedside, on the opposite side from her parents, and leaned down close. “I’m here,” she whispered. “It’s me. I know you’re there.”