Girls Fall Down

by Maggie Helwig

  The doctor cleared her throat.

  ‘Okay, doesn’t matter. But yeah. I mean, it may not have been sex as we know it. Do you really need to hear the details? Because I can probably tell you, but I’d honestly rather not.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’ She took out two small slips of paper, scribbled a few words on each. ‘There’s a pharmacy downstairs where you can get these filled.’ She rubbed her eyes and sighed, a momentary vulnerability she should not have shown them. She’d recognized Alex, maybe, let down her guard in the presence of a coworker. Then she caught herself, straightened her shoulders and left the room.

  ‘It’s not open, actually,’ said Alex, when she was gone. ‘The pharmacy. I expect she’s forgotten what time it is.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It opens again at seven.’

  ‘Okay. Whatever,’ said Susie, her head still on her knees. Alex pushed a cup of coffee towards her, and she unfolded herself enough to reach for it.

  ‘The doctor says he’ll probably live,’ she said, her voice low. ‘He’s still breathing on his own. Not too much cerebral edema.’

  ‘That’s good, then. You found him in time.’

  Susie picked a bit of styrofoam from the edge of the coffee cup. ‘There could be brain damage, of course. Epilepsy. Hearing loss. It’ll be a while before they know.’ She lifted the cup halfway to her mouth and lowered it again. ‘I wanted… ’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Alex, I wanted him to die. I did.’

  ‘I said it’s okay.’

  ‘I’m the only one who loves him. And even I wanted him to die.’

  He tried to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away, and he was left feeling as if his hand had hit the edge of something broken.

  A boy and a girl, once upon a time, among the green lawns of the suburbs. The boy makes a DNA spiral from drinking straws and hangs it over his bed. This is what we are, he says. This is what we have to be.

  He draws a picture on his wall and labels it the inevitable heat death of the universe. The girl raises one hand to it and thinks that this, if nothing else, would be a means of escape; but she will find another one, she will do what she has to, she will make herself a way.

  I will save you, says the boy, I will always save you, and she knows again that he is wrong. That neither one of them can really be saved.

  V

  In the centre of the city, several men, unknown to each other, are receiving Rifampin from their doctors; a powerful antibiotic, not commonly prescribed. Each of these men has taken care not to mention it to anyone else, to obscure their thin line of connection, the single young body shared between them all.

  They cannot imagine, most of these men, that they could have had anything at all in common with Derek Rae, as he lay under his bridge, or stood on the corner of Parliament and Jarvis, trembling with the impending traffic and the bad chemicals in his body, looking for a girl who would accept money to perform a temporary rescue. But these men are linked to Derek now, all of them equally marked.

  This is not Derek’s only tie to the city. Among the bleeding ghosts of his mind there are recent memories. He remembers, yes he does, the girl with fishnet stockings, who touched him and gave him her sickness. He remembers his sweet small sister, his one love, her face streaked with black as if she were part of some archaic drama, spotlit in darkness.

  And there is another memory, one that Derek himself does not recognize as part of this pattern.

  There are many transient pains in Derek’s life. He is weak and withdrawn and passive, most of the time, and he has been beaten on the streets for saying strange things, he has been robbed of his disability cheques on several occasions, his nose has been broken. He does not expect much better from the world, and he doesn’t think much, or for long, about all the small terrors and abuses. But he has not forgotten, not really; it’s only that he has no idea of the role that he played, and there is only one person who could tell him, and she is someone he certainly will never speak to again.

  Falling

  I

  ‘No, but I think monkeys are more morally superior than people,’ Zoe was saying. ‘Because monkeys don’t use like landmines and stuff, do they?’

  ‘Unless they were really horrible monkeys,’ said Tasha, and then they were at the park.

  But there was no one playing soccer, no one their age at all, only a few old people walking their dogs along the grass, and a man on a bench, a skinny dirty man, talking to himself.

  ‘Well,’ said Lauren. ‘This is pretty random.’

  ‘Was that guy here before?’

  ‘Yeah, he could seriously creep you out.’

  ‘We should just go to the mall. It’s getting too cold.’

  A woman with an apricot poodle walked by, glancing with disapproval at the girls’ shortened skirts. The man on the bench moved one hand in the air, frowning and muttering.

  ‘Maybe I should go home and write my assignment anyhow.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried the man on the bench, suddenly, loudly. The girl turned, startled. He lifted his head and stared around the park. ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl,’ he said, his eyes fixing on them suddenly. ‘Yes. Once upon a time there was a little girl.’

  Zoe’s hands flew up over her mouth and she moved backwards. ‘Oh my God!’

  The man dropped his head again, and his voice slid down, a low constant murmur, a rhythm rising and falling.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Zoe repeated, her eyes wide. ‘That was so scary.’ The girl opened her mouth, but only a small noise came from the back of her throat. She folded her arms around herself, sickness pitching up in her stomach. Lauren touched her arm.

  ‘That was really bad,’ said Tasha.

  ‘They shouldn’t allow it,’ said Lauren, with a little nervous frown. ‘They shouldn’t let people like that even be in the park. He could be seriously dangerous.’

  ‘This is not fair. This is like, this is like he’s stealing the park nearly.’

  The man’s face was full of hunger, lost and empty. Adults and their needs. What they wanted. The geography teacher’s damp hand on her thigh.

  ‘Pervert,’ she muttered, feeling the sting of tears at the edge of her eyes.

  He said something again. He said something about a girl.

  She hated him.

  ‘Hey!’ called Lauren, raising her voice, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulder. ‘Get out of the park! We want to walk here without being harassed!’

  It wasn’t clear if the man heard her. He lowered his head and shook it from side to side, slowly, and kept on talking.

  ‘I said get outta here!’ said Lauren, pulling away from the others, walking closer to him. He looked up at her and scowled, as if he were confused, and pulled his shoulders in.

  ‘But about the sodium hypnothol, it’s not that simple,’ he muttered. He was chewing his lower lip, it was soft and bloody. ‘Because I said to her, you have to look at the system as a whole. It’s a problem of chemicals.’

  ‘Weirdo,’ said Tasha. She hesitated, then took several fast steps forward, and he shrank away. The girl stepped forward as well. There was another feeling stirring now. That he pulled back from them. That he was afraid. The other girls around her.

  ‘Excuse me. But you have to look at the system as a whole,’ he repeated softly. He put his hands up to his mouth, his hands were shaking.

  ‘This is not your park,’ said the girl, her voice abrupt and half excited. ‘Leave us alone!’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ Megan giggled in terror and excitement. ‘ Why don’t you go home?’

  Zoe was hanging back. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t get so near him,’ she said softly. ‘He, he might grab us.’ But somehow that made it even more sick and wrong and thrilling, yes, perhaps he wanted to grab them, probably he did. But he was a little broken weak man, anybody could see that. The girl felt gooseflesh on her arms but her heart was pushing heat through her body, her limbs warm with it.

  Lauren moved in even closer sudden
ly, almost touching him, then darted back. ‘God, he smells!’ she cried. ‘God, mister, you’re so disgusting.’ She grabbed the girl’s arm. ‘He smells like puke.’

  The girls were in an arc around him now, just out of reach, quick, feral, power moving between them. The man dropped his head in submission, surrender, and his hands moved into his lap in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.

  ‘Jesus!’ screamed the girl. ‘Look at him! What a pervert!’

  ‘God, it’s so disgusting that he’s allowed in the park.’

  ‘He’s jerking off, he is, he’s getting off on it, the pervert!’

  Their bodies lit up like electricity, scared thrilled burning little girls, and without really being conscious of it the girl arched her back and lifted her arms, her smooth white stomach exposed, her long thighs angled.

  ‘Please,’ said the man. ‘I’m not a bad person. I just need a minute to think. Please.’

  ‘Sicko bastard,’ said Lauren.

  ‘Get out, you pervert,’ said Tasha, though of course the man could go nowhere, he was surrounded by their tense wild bodies, could only shrink further back into the bench.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ he said. ‘Please. I never did the crime. I never did it.’

  Megan bent down and picked up a rock. It wasn’t clear if she meant to throw it. Maybe she didn’t, maybe she had no intention, only a thing in her hand. She tossed it from one hand to the other and might have been thinking of throwing it.

  ‘You have no right,’ said the girl desperately, clenching and unclenching her hands. ‘Being like this. God.’

  Megan lifted her hand. It wasn’t exactly a throwing gesture, it was a soft compromise lob, deniable, scared. But the rock struck the man in the shoulder, and he ducked away and whimpered. The girl put a hand across her mouth, the hot flare of excitement in her throat.

  Megan bent and picked up another rock. This time she threw harder, and it struck the man’s head, and he lunged away, and when he fell back against the bench there was a gout of blood on his forehead. His arm flew up, and the girl could smell him as he moved, that close to her, and he could have wanted to hit her, or to grab her, or to push her away.

  ‘Stop it!’ he shouted. ‘I never did! Ask her!’

  The girl moved her own arm. She did not know what she meant to do.

  ‘I never did!’

  He was so near her, that smell, dirty and thick and animal. She had nothing in her hands to defend her. There was a rock in the air. The man ducked.

  ‘You have no right,’ she said, and her nails were nearly against his skin. Her nails were long. The skin would tear. She felt saliva in her mouth, and the clean burn of anger, and she didn’t think, she pursed her lips and spat at his face, and then the sickness hit her again, instant, the sticky wad of saliva shining on his dirty skin. She thought of blood on her nails, and it was as if she had been standing there forever, her spit on his face, her hand

  Someone pushed in beside her. Zoe. She stumbled, and her arm fell.

  ‘This is stupid,’ Zoe was saying, her voice harsh. ‘This is fucking ridiculous.’

  Megan turned. ‘What’s your problem, Zoe? You in love with this guy or what?’

  The girl looked at her hand.

  ‘I just think it’s stupid, it’s… what’s the fucking point, Lauren? I’d rather go to the mall.’

  ‘You like him, don’t you? You wanna marry him? The sick pervert?’

  ‘Oh, fuck you,’ said Zoe.

  ‘I think,’ the girl started to say, her hand held awkwardly in the air, and her legs began to shake; but Lauren glanced at Zoe and said, ‘Go ahead, then. Go to the mall yourself. We’re busy.’ And Zoe yelled, ‘Fuck you, Lauren, fuck you!’ and ran weeping out of the park.

  The man had his head between his knees now, his hands folded above them, but the circle of girls had been broken, the shivery current was dissipating. The girl wiped her mouth, tasting sweat from her palm. She had a pain in her stomach.

  She stepped backwards. The man glanced up, and she didn’t want to look at him but she did, the trapped grimace of his mouth, grotesque. Broken man. The dark hurt eyes.

  ‘Zoe’s a moron,’ said the girl. But she was moving, suddenly, drawing the others with her, away from the man, laughing and pushing each other.

  They were moving away. She was taking them away. ‘God,’ said Lauren. ‘That is so random, letting him be in that park.’

  ‘He was so weird,’ said Tasha.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the girl. ‘Yeah.’ And she laughed, a strange high forced laugh, and walked fast towards the sidewalk, and they followed her. She was doing this. She was taking them away.

  ‘Stupid pervert.’

  ‘Sick bastard.’

  And when they got on the subway she was thinking wrong, she was thinking that certain things were wrong, were very wrong, and she thought somebody could hurt me.

  They could, they could do that, though she didn’t know who they were or what they might do, but there was hurt in the world and she was just too close.

  She was thinking wrong, she was thinking I don’t feel well.

  ‘He was such a pervert,’ said Lauren.

  ‘I bet he goes home and jerks off all night long,’ said Tasha, and the girl laughed her high stretched laugh again. Wrong. And her own half-distorted memories of being pulled from the subway car in the darkness, and trying to understand what she had done to make this happen. Bodies falling around her. As if it were a war.

  You could get hurt. People could hurt you. People could hurt you for no reason, to make you scared, to make you go away.

  It wasn’t right.

  Because she had done something wrong. Or something was wrong, near or around her. But she had. And you couldn’t get away with it. You couldn’t. The man’s eyes, black, his twisted mouth.

  ‘I don’t feel very good,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Megan. ‘You feeling all upset for him? You wanna marry him too?’ But Lauren looked at her coldly, this was too much. Megan never knew when to stop.

  ‘Shut up, Megan,’ Lauren said.

  ‘I just don’t feel good,’ said the girl.

  ‘I feel… I feel really weird.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Lauren. ‘You look sick. You’re scaring me.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Tasha, her eyes expanding. ‘Did you smell anything? Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t know.’ And then she did, there was a smell all over the car, it was like roses, it was everywhere. Somebody could hurt me. And her throat started heaving, and then vomit was pouring out of her mouth, burning, violent.

  ‘Oh my God!’ cried Lauren. ‘Oh God, oh Jesus!’ The girl was dizzy, she bent down, nearly collapsing, her skin starting to itch and redden, and the others gathered around her but she couldn’t make out their individual words, and then the train pulled into the station, jerking her back against the wall, and a grey-haired man walked over to them and asked, ‘Does she have an EpiPen?’

  Girls fall down because they have come to know too much, and have no words for that knowledge. Sometimes girls fall down and bring chaos to the city, not just because of the bad things around and outside them. Sometimes girls fall down because of a tiny emergent good.

  Every Safe Thing

  I

  You should go home,’ said Susie, curled up in a waiting-room chair, an old copy of the New Yorker lying unread in her lap. There was no expression on her face that he could read.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Or are you supposed to go to work today?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I took today off. I can’t really remember.’

  And he should have gone home, he meant to go home. There was no reason to think she wanted him there. He left her his beeper number, but he didn’t expect her ever to use it.

  It wasn’t much of a way to leave, but he wasn’t sure that mattered.

  He went down into the dim lobby, and even here there
were traces of the night, shadowy worried figures drifting back and forth in the darkness, lost relatives maybe, wandering patients, doctors who had been working for thirty-six hours. Outside, he saw another ambulance pulling around to the emergency bay.

  There was a cab parked near the entrance, a warm orange light on the silent street, and he sank gratefully into the soft fake leather of the back seat. He did mean to go home. It was just that he could see the sky starting to fade from black to a dull lead blue, the suggestion of bare tree branches emerging, and he thought of something that needed to be done.

  The driver looked at Alex skeptically as he stood on the shoulder at Bayview and Pottery Road, counting out the fare. Nearly morning now, the streetlights glowing pale and redundant under the wet clouds. ‘What you planning to do here, man?’ he asked. ‘Nothing here at all. You sure you got the right address?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Alex. ‘Really. I know what I’m doing.’

  A police car came speeding around the curve in the opposite lane, siren wailing. ‘I take you where you want to go, you know,’ shouted the cab driver over the noise. ‘You tell me where you need to go, I be happy to take you.’

  ‘This is where I want to go. Honestly.’

  ‘You got something to do, I wait for you and drive you on.’

  ‘I’ll be okay. Thanks, but I’m fine.’

  ‘I’m a good driver.’

  ‘I’m sure you are. I just, this is where I need to be, that’s all.’

  ‘Things pretty crazy on the subway, you know. Better not rely on that.’

  ‘I’ll keep it mind. Thanks.’

  ‘Your business, man. But you know, this very strange behaviour, I must tell you.’

  He waited until the cab pulled away – slowly, and with obvious reluctance – before he began to climb the hill, fearing that otherwise the driver might come after him, furious with an insistent mixture of concern and the desire not to lose a fare.