Losing It

by Alan Cumyn

  “Thank you. Thank you anyway,” Julia heard herself say. She pressed the phone back on its cradle while her pen dug deep black lines into the pad balanced on her knee.

  I can’t look after her, Julia thought. I wish I could but I’m just not a saint! And she remembered how her mother would spit out those words at her father. How majestic she could be. “You must have married the wrong woman. I am just not a saint!”

  Julia let her eyes linger on a picture by her bed of her sitting with her parents on a big rock in front of a waterfall. Her brother, Alex, had taken it. Her father and mother were on either side of her; little Julia, about ten or eleven, with short-cropped hair, a sun dress, white knee socks, an underbite that orthodontics would soon erase. Although it was a holiday – they’d been hiking in Vermont – her father was wearing a shirt and tie, long pants freshly pressed, polished leather shoes. He was balding already, had his ubiquitous cigarette between his fingers, but down by his side, away from his daughter. He looked confident, all-knowing, vaguely bored. Her mother was in a skirt and stockings and a pale sleeveless flowered blouse, with low-heeled pumps, though not completely flat. No one would wear them for hiking now. But she looked normal, herself, an arm around her daughter, her mouth set, but just for a moment – she seemed to be on the verge of telling Alex how to take the picture. The falls were behind them, mostly mist and fuzz with this focus and angle. And it was just a trick of the angle, too, that made it seem that they were all on the verge of falling over, were standing innocent and unaware, flushed from the hike so far, had no idea how close they were to the brink.

  In the picture her mother looked like a woman of her generation, but who’d had her children somewhat late and reluctantly, a woman who knew seven different recipes for pâté, who folded the napkins like flowers in the wine glasses and was aware of her partner’s strong suit even if she didn’t always lead to it. A woman who planned birthday parties with the organization of a military campaign, who knew in her bones the minute you failed to brush your teeth or wash your hands or put soiled linen in the laundry hamper, who borrowed guide books from the library months before a vacation and within days of the return had the best photos pasted in an album with cheery captions printed below: “Alex finds a leaf!” “Trevor looking handsome.” “Lost in a good book.”

  She was the backwards-spelling champion of her elementary school, and at breakfast used to torment her daughter with elaborate tests of mental arithmetic, impatiently tapping her fingers on the table while Julia tried to work things out. This brainy, glint-eyed woman who had all the answers but never quite seemed to know what to do with her life. How pathetic she would appear to Julia just a few years later – constantly starting this course or that, on the verge of being saved by Intro to Sociology, the Art of Pottery, or the Bible in Modern Thought. Unable to make up her mind, to commit to something while the whole world was changing.

  Too late now, Julia thought. Somehow decades had gone by. She picked up the phone again to give in, to call Fallowfields, but then put it down. It was her last option really, but she didn’t want to think about it now. She carried the framed photo downstairs, where she found her mother squatting on her heels in the den, pawing at the rug.

  “What’s the problem? What are you looking for?” Julia asked.

  “Nothing!” her mother said, pawing, pawing. It was a strangely animalistic movement, as if she were digging, or cleaning herself off.

  “Here, I’ve found something,” Julia said and put her hands on her mother’s to make them stop.

  “I believe I have too!” her mother said.

  “What have you found?”

  “It’s really something,” she said. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve lost the word. How does that happen?”

  Julia stayed with her, squatting, holding her hands, until her mother stood up suddenly and announced, “It’s been lovely!” and started walking away. She walked to the sofa and pulled up one of the cushions, examined it intently, then threw it aside and pulled up another.

  “Mom, I’ve found a photo of all of us from many years ago that Alex took in Vermont. Do you remember when we went hiking? Here, leave that and come have a look.”

  “Is there anything I can get you?” her mother asked. The second cushion went on the floor on top of the first and she uprooted the third.

  “No. Please leave that and come sit with me for a moment. I’ve got this photo to show you.”

  Her mother took the photo in her trembling hand. “Trevor is going to be so annoyed.”

  “No. No, he won’t,” Julia said. “Do you remember this trip? Daddy broke the clutch outside of Stowe and we rode down the hill all the way to the garage. Do you remember that?”

  “I do remember that. I remember it very clearly,” her mother said.

  “And the little motel where we stayed? A deer came right up to the window in the morning. Daddy wanted to go get his gun but you wouldn’t let him do it. He was just fooling anyway. He hadn’t even brought it. The deer was so tame he ate out of my hand.”

  “And we lost the baby,” her mother said sadly.

  “No. No, there was no baby.”

  “The wolf came. It was awful. I remember the sandwiches. Sand, and garlic, and old worms. Just awful.”

  Julia put down the picture. “I’m sorry,” she said, and tried to give her mother a hug, but she pulled away.

  “It’s terrible what they’ve done. I think they should put a stop to it immediately!”

  “Don’t worry,” Julia said. Her mother was making a rolling motion with her hand again as if she were in the car trying to open the window. She looked about anxiously. “Are you getting hungry, Mom?”

  “Awful! Just awful!” she said and got up, walked back to the front door. “I don’t know where I’ve put him!”

  “Who, Mom?”

  “The little one!” she asked.

  “You mean Matthew? He’s gone with Bob to do some shopping. They’re getting some tooth powder for you. Do you remember Longworth’s? I bet Daddy never went out to buy you sanitary napkins.”

  “That’s what I mean!” her mother said. “They go off! Just for anybody! You have to watch them like a wolf!”

  Alex called sometime later from Calgary. Julia was surprised – he could go weeks without inquiring after their mother, and Julia had not yet phoned him about the current crisis. She summarized quickly now, downplaying the problems, then left her mother in the den with the phone to have a half-cracked conversation with him. Julia didn’t have the heart to try to make her make sense, or interpret for her brother, whose concern did not run as deep, she knew, as his relief in not having to handle the brunt of the responsibility for their mother. While they were talking, Julia took the picture back upstairs, picked up the Fallowfields executive director’s card again, put it in her pocket. She gathered the dirty laundry from the hamper and from Bob’s closet, brought it down to the kitchen, where she paused to look at the dishes piled in the sink and overflowing from the dishwasher, and to look at the ugly floor. She thought, a colour, I need a colour. Then there was a loud crash and Julia dropped the laundry, raced into the den to find nothing. Her mother was gone. She looked in the bathroom and the living room, then finally in Bob’s office, the door to which she thought had been locked. But her mother was there looking out the window to the back garden, and Bob’s large brass stand-up lamp was on the floor.

  “It’s lovely,” her mother said, her face nearly pressed against the window. “It must be beautiful in spring.”

  “Are you all right?” Julia asked. She picked up the lamp. The bulb was smashed, but the rest seemed intact.

  “Just gorgeous,” her mother said.

  “Where’s the telephone?” Julia asked.

  “Oh, that. It wasn’t working. I threw it out.”

  “Threw it out! Where? In the wastebasket?”

  “Yes,” her mother said, distractedly. “Oh, robins, it must be cold for them,” she said.

  The pho
ne wasn’t in the wastebasket. It wasn’t under the pull-out couch in the den or behind Bob’s desk or on any of his shelves. Julia scanned the kitchen cupboards, looked in the oven and the freezer and the fridge. Finally, she went to Bob’s fax machine, which was on a different line, and dialled the home number. The upstairs phone rang but not the den phone. It didn’t seem to be anywhere and her mother was no help; she was entranced by Bob’s office and the view of the dead back garden, the trellis and patio stones and the wicker chairs they still had to bring in before winter.

  Julia looked in the downstairs linen closet, in the bathroom wastebasket, and then in the toilet. She knew as she was lifting the lid that it would be there. She knew because she knew her mother, and because this was the worst possible place it could have gone. Even before she saw it she had a sense of things falling away, soundlessly, terribly, without reason, just falling away, and there was nothing to do but fall as well.

  She heard Bob come in the house. He walked right up behind her – she was on her knees, staring into the toilet – and he asked, “What are you doing?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “We didn’t get the grape robot vitamins, and the girl at McIntyre’s said these sanitary napkins don’t have wings, so it’s her fault if they do. McIntyre’s is on Richmond, by the way, not Rideau. What are you doing, anyway?” he asked again, so she pulled the phone out of the toilet and held it out to him as if he had a call waiting. He was carrying Matthew, and his gaze betrayed a momentary suspicion that the family madness had spread to her as well. He started to ask what was going on, then stopped.

  “I can see you’ve had a good time,” he said instead.

  21

  I saw you there in black and white

  I saw you spread your wings for flight

  I saw you in the dead of night

  I saw you kiss the knife so bright

  I saw you slither in delight

  I saw you slit your tongue

  Ricky entered the tiny residence room. Sienna put down her pen and looked at her: the hacked red hair, purple now at the ends, with blonde-black roots, a very cute little diamond in her nose, the tiny gold ring on the edge of her lip. She was carrying groceries in a brown paper bag, had on her big green army jacket, thrown open, and sloppy black pants, a tight top that showed her belly-button, also ringed, and wore her black heavy boots.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen!” Ricky said, her face alight as soon as she saw Sienna. “Just back from New York – Ms. Sienna Chu!” She threw her grocery bag aside and launched herself at Sienna, who was sitting on her desk chair, swivelled around so that her legs were stretched out on her bed. She was wearing one of Ricky’s giant T-shirts with black fleece tights and no shoes or socks. Ricky landed somewhat roughly on Sienna’s lap and the chair rolled backward and bumped the desk so that they both bounced and laughed.

  “Did you get the stuff?” Ricky asked, “Did you get it?”

  They’d talked on the phone the night before. Sienna had told her everything, and she nodded now. “I got it,” she said. They were on Sienna’s side of the tiny room: books stacked on her desk shelf by height, clothes away, bed made, shoes and boots in the closet by the sink. Even her fashion magazines were arranged in an orderly way on her desk: a symmetrical, semicircular fan, Elle on top ahead of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, Paris Match and Vanity Fair, a cornucopia of pouty bee-stung lips, plunging necklines, thong panties, impossible eyes. Ricky’s side was a pandemonium of papers, textbooks, boots, shoes, bicycle parts, two computers on her desk, spent printer cartridges, boxes of diskettes, a CD burner, scanner, a nest of cables and all the boxes piled higgledy-piggledy, bits of foam and plastic packing peeking out.

  “Let me see, let me see!” Ricky said, squirming with excitement, but Sienna refused. “Come on!” Ricky pleaded. She was short and solid, almost heavy, quite strong. She wouldn’t let Sienna look away.

  “It’s for research,” Sienna said finally, so Ricky snatched the poem from the bed, said, “All right, then I’ll have to read this!”

  “No! It’s not finished!” Sienna said, and though her arm was longer she couldn’t reach it, Ricky whizzed it around so quickly.

  “Let me see the stuff!” Ricky insisted. Sienna bucked and twisted then, upended Ricky onto the bed, and though the paper tore a little when she took it away, the damage wasn’t serious, only part of an unmarked corner was ripped. She sat back again and Ricky grabbed her ankles, started whirling her on the wheeled chair. Sienna shrieked and laughed, and in no time they were on the floor in a heap together, Sienna on top, both of them breathless with hilarity, kissing but not being able to keep it up, having to gasp for air.

  “You promised you’d show me,” Ricky said, and she tweaked Sienna’s right nipple till Sienna tweaked hers. Then Ricky lifted her booted left foot and lodged it against Sienna’s stomach, threatened to launch her if she didn’t show her everything she’d bought.

  “It’s private. It’s for research,” Sienna said.

  “Bullshit,” Ricky said. “I think you like this one.”

  Sienna shifted her weight back stealthily, then suddenly cleared herself away from Ricky’s foot, which didn’t move. Ricky remained on her back on the thinly carpeted floor with her leg raised. Sienna wiped a bit of dirt from her front, stepped back, looked inside the big paper bag that Ricky had brought: saltines, cheese, some tired red grapes, a mickey of rum, a small packet wrapped in foil.

  “I think you like him,” Ricky said, propped up on her elbows now. “I think he gets to you.”

  “It’s research,” Sienna said. She took out the saltines and started to eat. She kept her eyes down, hated it when Ricky got like this, aggressive and jealous. Sienna held out three crackers but Ricky stayed where she was. Her legs were wide open and she had that teenaged-boy look in her eyes.

  “What’s so different about this guy anyway? I don’t understand,” Ricky said. “You can tell me. That was part of the deal, anyway.”

  “The deal was I’d share my findings,” Sienna said. “I’m not finished yet, so I can’t share them, can I? It would be premature.” And she slid her bare foot along Ricky’s leg, watched those eyes narrow, turn into glistening slits.

  “You’re avoiding the question,” Ricky said after a while, but she didn’t turn away, didn’t stop Sienna’s foot. When Sienna reached the middle she turned her foot to the outside edge, eased it back and forth, then stirred the pot gently. Ricky put her hand on the foot then and began to guide it, increasing the pressure then decreasing, along the edges and down the middle and then pressing sweetly at the top until Ricky’s eye-slits were closed, her head thrown back, the small of her back arched in such a pretty way.

  “I think you like old fat men who tell good stories,” Ricky then said bitterly, ruining it. This whole thing is getting dangerous, Sienna thought. “I think you like a big hunk of red meat every so often,” Ricky said.

  Sienna withdrew her foot, wheeled her chair back to her desk and sat down again. She had another cracker, examined her feet, which were quite ugly, she thought, too long and thin, bony, and her ankles were lopsided and large.

  “The inscrutable Sienna Chu,” Ricky said from the floor.

  Sienna picked up her poem from where it had fallen, put it in the bottom drawer of her desk, then flipped open a textbook at random and peered at the page. “When the relation of aggregate consumption to national income is in a state of disequilibrium, payments to the factors of production can fluctuate unpredictably, depending on several variables. Consider figure 3.21, which charts the maximizing behaviour of individual economic agents.”

  “She shuts you off whenever you try to get too close,” Ricky said. “We had an agreement, don’t you remember?”

  “Don’t you have any assignments due?” Sienna asked.

  “I’m supposed to be done tomorrow,” Ricky said. “But I don’t have all my data ready, do I?”

  “I don’t know, do you?”

  Ricky did a funny walk on her
knees over to Sienna and turned her around in her chair. “I thought of a line for you,” she said. “For one of your poems.” She buried her face for a moment between Sienna’s legs, made a funny blowing noise. “ ‘More twisted and beautiful than rain.’ Do you like that?”

  “It’s nice,” Sienna said and pushed Ricky’s head away, crossed her legs. “But it’s not for me.”

  “No,” Ricky said after a time. She was looking too closely into Sienna’s eyes, it made Sienna uncomfortable. Ricky knew it too; she looked just long enough for Sienna to squirm, then she got up and walked over to her own desk, had to clear some books and papers just to get at her keyboard. “You know I hate this,” Ricky said in a little voice, almost as if she didn’t want Sienna to hear.

  “Hate what?”

  “This – thin ice,” Ricky said. She turned on both of her computers. The screens started to come to life.

  “What thin ice?”

  “You know,” Ricky said, so sadly. She could go like that, be thirty feet down in half a conversation. Sienna wondered for a moment if she was on something. It was sometimes hard to tell.

  “Do I?”

  “Two months ago I didn’t even know you,” Ricky said. “Next month you’ll be on to somebody else. You can have anybody you want. And you know it, it shows.”

  “I want you,” Sienna said, and walked over to Ricky’s chair. There was a sudden noise outside the door, it sounded like a gravel truck roaring down the hall, with yelling and screaming, pounding on doors. “Water fight! Water fight!” people shouted, and they could hear the sounds of spraying and laughter, girls screaming and cursing. Then a few seconds later the fire bell started.