Girls Fall Down

by Maggie Helwig

  Something, a raccoon or a skunk, had been in Derek’s tent already. The sleeping bag was torn, half the stuffing pulled out; the opened tins of Ensure had been scattered. He pushed through the mess, leaving his gloves on, kicking aside a small pile of dirt-stiffened clothes. There were some bottles of water, some Ensure tins that were still sealed, but nothing worth saving. By the side of the bed he found a few ragged books, university textbooks. Physics, chemistry. An edition of Chaucer. He opened one and looked at the copyright page. Yes. About twenty years old. They were the talismans of Derek’s life before madness, maybe the last things he had owned in the daylight world. Alex searched among the contents of the tent for a plastic bag – there had to be a plastic bag, there was always a plastic bag, all human activity seemed to generate plastic bags – and put the textbooks in it.

  Maybe there was a health card somewhere. It seemed vastly improbable, but there could be something, maybe medical records, something with Derek’s health number on it. He came out of the tent and looked into the first milk crate.

  It was lined with more plastic bags, then a pile of crumbling bricks. From the old brickworks, he supposed. For a minute he thought there was nothing there but bricks; then he realized that there were two layers, and in between them a thick sheaf of papers, lined three-hole pages torn from notebooks.

  Dear Mr. Kofi Annan, I am writing to inform you. FUCK FUCK FUCK SHIT CRAP FUCK. the laws against the evil thing 1) avoiding the touching 2) periodic table equated with hyposodium = GHB tranks. But he had the knife but it didn’t go like that snick snick.

  once upon a time there was a little girl

  Derek would want these, he thought, and put them as neatly as he could into the plastic bag, beside the textbooks.

  The other milk crate was filled with more books, water-bloated and smelling of decay. These seemed to be a selection of whatever Derek had been able to scavenge – a Gideon Bible, a novel by Leon Uris, two copies of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He didn’t think many of them were going to be worth saving, but he began to sort through them, checking to see if there was anything beyond the standard leavings of rummage sales. As he took them out and piled them up beside him, he noticed that there was something else at the bottom of the crate. He shifted another stack of books and saw a photo, an old snapshot, sealed in a clear plastic folder.

  It wasn’t a posed shot exactly, but a bit of a coerced family group, some aunt or uncle behind the camera marshalling the four of them together momentarily in front of a Christmas tree, two adults and two children, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, sitting on the carpet. It was the worst picture of Susie-Paul he could imagine (was she Susie-Paul then? He had never known where that odd nickname came from, though he’d always assumed she had come up with it herself – it wasn’t her parents, he was sure of that. But Derek called her Susie-Paul, so it must go back some way. It occurred to him for the first time that it might have been Derek who gave her the name). Her eyes were half-closed from the flash, her skin blotchy and her face sullen; her brown hair was pulled back tight in an unflattering ponytail. She could not have communicated more clearly that she wanted to be somewhere, almost anywhere, other than this. The spectacled boy beside her was smiling, embarrassed; he looked scholarly and gentle, held a book in his lap. They were very like each other, the same hair, the same features, both wearing jeans and plaid wool shirts, Derek’s in blue, Susie’s red. Derek’s shirt was tucked in neatly; Susie’s was far too large for her, the sleeves hanging down over her hands. Derek had scribbled over his parents’ faces with a ballpoint pen, so Alex couldn’t make out much about them, except that they were old to be the parents of teenagers.

  It told him nothing, really. That she had been an unlovely girl who didn’t like having her picture taken. There was nothing here that could explain it to him, what had happened to these children to make them so alone in the world together, to leave them so terribly bound to each other. Nothing that predicted Derek’s long ordeal, or Susie on the hillside, his heart in her hands.

  He touched the girl’s face through the plastic, and put the folder carefully into his camera bag.

  He sat under the bridge for a while, watching the edges of objects grow slowly definite as the light crept down the hill. There was some shelter from the wind here; at moments it seemed almost warm. But every safe thing is taken from us in the end, and maybe he was not so different from Derek sometimes, their lives a long training in how things went away. He came out from under the bridge into the open plain of snow at the top of the hill, and walked over to the edge of the slope.

  It was a white cold morning now, the sky a scrambled mixture of dark cloud banks and sun. And someone had parked a bike at the foot of the hill and begun to climb. This seemed like such an insane development that he could not immediately think how to react, and by the time he had decided that he should go down towards this person, she was already nearly at the top, and he could see that it was Evelyn, in a black toque and duffel coat.

  ‘Alex, how are you?’ she said, as she pulled herself up and stood. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Alex. ‘But this is too much. I think I’m finding this too much to deal with.’

  ‘I came to get Derek’s stuff.’ She looked at the plastic bag. ‘I guess you thought of that already.’

  ‘Did Susie call you?’

  ‘No,’ said Evelyn. She dusted snow from her arms and took a breath. ‘Derek – Derek’s awake. He asked the nurse to phone the church. He’s, well, I know him, is all. I’ve known him for years, actually.’

  ‘Oh. Susie didn’t tell me.’

  ‘No. She wouldn’t. She doesn’t know. I, well, I’ve spent a lot of time working in the shelters. For a while I didn’t even know he was her brother. But, yeah. After a while I knew.’

  Alex felt his shoulder muscles lock. ‘Fuck,’ he said softly.

  ‘I’m sorry. But he asked me not to tell her. I have to respect that.’ He looked at Evelyn’s serious kind face, and thought that she was in some ways a very disturbing person. ‘You should have said.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. I am sorry.’ ‘I mean, what, does he have a whole social circle that she doesn’t know about?’

  ‘No. Just me. As far as I know.’

  ‘Why would he… oh, never mind. There’s no point getting into his motivation, is there?’

  ‘It might not make much sense to the general public, if that’s what you mean,’ said Evelyn with a small shrug. ‘I keep saying I’m sorry. I really am.’

  Alex lifted a hand and rubbed his eyes. ‘You shouldn’t be telling me this, should you?’

  ‘No. I certainly shouldn’t.’

  ‘You must know that I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Just don’t say that, all right? Just – pretend you didn’t say that.’ She tugged at one finger of her woollen glove. ‘He’s in five-point restraints already, you know,’ she said sharply. ‘I mean, he hardly woke up and they put him in restraints. But he was pulling the IV lines out, so I suppose they had limited choices.’

  Alex was concentrating on staying upright in the dizzy flowing air, his body numb and fragile. ‘I guess you should take these, then,’ he said, handing over the plastic bag, feeling it as as a loss.

  ‘Thank you.’ Evelyn looked into the bag, sorting through the contents. ‘That looks like the main things he’d want. This was good of you.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He wasn’t sure if this made Susie less alone or more so, that she had shared Derek’s pain all along with someone else, with a friend who had never told her. Whether he himself would tell her after all. Or even have the chance. ‘I just, it was just an idea.’ He rubbed his eyes again. ‘I had some free time, I guess.’

  She reached out and put a gloved hand on his arm, and his nerves startled at the muffled contact.

  ‘This is where we live, Alex,’ she said.

  ‘I… what?’

  Evelyn shrugged, her hand still on his sleeve. ‘This is where
we are. Right here. It’s a fallen world, or whatever you want to call it. Derek’s not exactly wrong. There’s dangerous chemicals all over the place. We just… follow it down. Make it what we can. That’s all we do.’

  She turned away, the plastic bag hooked over one wrist, and slid down the hillside.

  In the snow by Holy Trinity Church a man fell to his knees, the Eaton Centre like a cliff of glass behind him, a red flush spreading across his hands. He cried out, an inarticulate noise, stretching his arms towards the men who lived in the square, blankets wrapped over their heads, and one of them stood, staggering towards him. A woman by the icebound fountain saw the falling man, saw him jackknife now and retch on the pavement, and she picked up her briefcase and ran.

  A man sat on the steps at Summerhill subway station and wept, not even sure what he was crying about. Because there could be no end to this, not a proper end with catharsis and resolution. Because there would be neither a single evildoer to cast out of the community nor a moment of realization to draw us together, because there would be no shape or sense but only the ongoing confusion of our lives.

  Because our bodies are permeable to the world, and ash and poison are moving in the air, and we have to persist like this, in anxiety and longing, on high alert.

  Alex hadn’t considered how he was going to get home. He felt too awkward to follow Evelyn on the Bayview slope, so he went back to Derek’s tent, then skidded down the long valley wall that he and Susie had climbed the first night they came here, towards the brickworks, his camera bag over his shoulder, his trousers covered with snow up to the knees. Pulling himself out of a tangle of dried thistles, he made his way along the path to the side of the abandoned building, where a network of footbridges spanned the frozen wetlands.

  He was more tired than he could have imagined possible, his head floating, unable to form coherent plans. His eyes were starting to hurt again. Morning sunlight splitting through heavy cloud to shatter on the snow, drowning him in a milky blur. He thought longingly about the restfulness of the taxi’s back seat, the smell of fake leather, and it seemed to him now like the softest, the most comforting place he had ever been.

  He’d never find another taxi here. The road was thick with rush-hour traffic, but any taxis passing this way would have fares on board already, no one would cruise around the highway turnoffs looking to pick up stray photographers and flower sellers. He’d have to walk to Castle Frank station.

  He went into the old factory hall and sat down for a minute, holding the bag against his chest. He was still feeling somehow deprived of Derek’s remnants. Lonely without them, though he had been their custodian for only a few minutes. But he still had the photograph with him, he remembered. That was reassuring but not proper, he would need to return it somehow, and this gave him a small residual duty, a thing to hang on to. There were the pictures he had taken of Susie as well, the ones he had promised were hers. He was accumulating quite an archive in his bag, and none of it should stay with him. He was terribly tired. But he could do this, he could get to the top of the hill, and it would be easier after that.

  He wasn’t sure what he would do with the photographs. Maybe he would give them to Adrian; one more small thread of knowledge and silence, but Adrian could handle it, he could take them back to Susie and it would be a straightforward thing, not the random complicated mess that it was bound to be if Alex tried.

  He stood and came out of the hall, wet and chilled, blinking hard, onto the shoulder, and began to trudge alongside the road, dishevelled and unshaven, clutching his camera bag. West on the first turnoff, and then up the long slope of highway ramp, under the bare trees, orienting himself towards the great viaduct that spanned the Don Valley, its massive black arches, the delicate suicide veil bending harp-like above, shining silver in the breaks of sunlight.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that when he reached the top of the hill there would be someone there waiting for him – Adrian or the imaginary doctor, or possibly the police, he didn’t know which of these it might be but he felt crazily sure that he was awaited. A wave of vertigo hit him, and he stopped, an acid burn in his throat as if he might need to throw up on the gravel, but it wasn’t that bad, the moment passed.

  He heard the sound of a motor behind him and moved further over on the shoulder. Somewhere behind the trees a car alarm was going off, a mechanized voice barking commands at no one. Please step away from the car. Please step away from the car. He was out of breath, but close to the top of the hill now, and there had to be something conclusive in this. Some expected moment.

  He let himself think that it would be Susie who was waiting for him, though he could not imagine a circumstance which would cause that to happen; and it was not a particularly good thought, a fragmentary swirl of shining brown hair and anger and failure, but it pulled him forward with a quick deceptive longing. He came around the last bend, where the ramp curved through the last edge of the woods and opened up to Castle Frank subway station.

  Of course there was no one there. Please step away from the car, the alarm repeated. It was parked near the subway station, he could see now; someone must have brushed against it on the way in. A woman with a sky-blue helmet rode a bicycle onto the viaduct and spun quickly out of sight. Beyond the traffic island, someone pulled open the door of the station and entered.

  He had never really thought there would be anyone there. He had never really supposed there was anyone waiting, but he stood at the edge of the sidewalk for a while, looking across at the subway entrance, and no one came.

  He wouldn’t see her again, he thought. That was what it meant, that he had looked for her at the top of the hill and she wasn’t there. He needed sleep so badly. He would have a bowl of soup, he would lie down and rest, his cat curled up against his legs, and Evelyn would guard the secrets of the world, and that would be enough.

  He walked across the traffic island, kicking at the snow, crossed the street and entered the station. Inside, a skinny old man stood in the corner leaning on a cane, wearing a bright red coat and a baseball cap with a large Molson Canadian sticker on the front. At his feet, a mechanical clown doll was jerking and gesticulating frantically, reaching out from a paper bag. Someone had scribbled the word FEAR on the glass wall in black marker.

  Maybe she was right that he had chosen to live his life so much alone, though it wasn’t a choice he remembered making. But it hadn’t saved him anyway from the network of debts and payments. It hadn’t saved him at all.

  The doll stretched out its palsied arms to Alex as he passed, as if it were begging him for rescue.

  He was waiting on the platform at Castle Frank, leaning against the wall, when he saw a young man, mid-twenties maybe, with wire-rimmed glasses and a small goatee, sliding an oversized black marker into the pocket of his army jacket and exchanging a covert glance with the woman beside him. She was tall and athletic-looking, dressed in a short black skirt and rainbow tights, her long hair a bright lime green. She was carrying a canvas backpack, and as she turned to look into the tunnel for the lights of the train, Alex could see the top of a can of spray paint. He smiled to himself. So these were the city’s editorialists, then. He was relieved to discover that they were not people he knew, that the FEAR graffiti was in no way connected with him, that there were still a few people around with whom he did not have complicated emotional ties.

  He would have liked to signal to them somehow that he was on their side, a supporter of graffiti in general and largely in agreement with their message. But they would never believe that – he was too old, and despite his current slept-in state too respectably dressed, outside of their world, a stranger. It didn’t stop him from privately wishing them luck.

  The train pulled into the station, and he and the young people got into different cars. He had managed to walk into the morning rush hour, so there was no chance of a seat, but he was pressed so tightly against the people around him that it seemed almost relaxing, as if he were not wholly responsible for
supporting himself, and he closed his eyes, one hand on the metal bar, a dark velvet blanket of exhaustion surrounding him. The train swayed through the tunnel, hot and close and filled with intimate bodily smells; and though he had not really decided if he was going to change at Yonge or stay on until Bathurst, he found himself conveyed almost automatically out with the wave of other passengers at the Yonge/Bloor station, onto the narrow platform of the east-west line. He blinked, his eyes watery, and looked up and down for the sign pointing him towards the southbound train, got onto the escalator, wanting to sit down on the metal steps and see if he could sleep for the few seconds it would take to travel upwards.

  The boy with the goatee and the green-haired girl got off at Yonge as well, and moved quickly through the crush onto the north-south level, then up another flight of stairs and through the turnstile into the mall. Near the drugstore, in front of a large poster advertising a new perfume, the girl turned and raised her eyebrows interrogatively. The boy frowned, doubtful, but she nodded her head, and he slid the marker carefully out of his pocket and into her hand, taking up a position in front of her as she slipped the backpack off and he hooked the straps over his own shoulders. Holding the marker below chest level, she began to slash it across the glass case that housed the poster, moving it in quick rapid strokes, but then the boy’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, and she stopped, the marker uncapped in front of her, the letters FE scrawled on the glass, and a security officer a few feet away, his mouth opening in a sharp command.

  They both knew what you did in this case. You dropped your eyes, you handed over the marker, the spray can, you apologized, possibly cried a bit if you were a girl. You went with the officer, you said you’d never do it again. They both knew this. So there was no explaining what the girl did next, why she suddenly grabbed her marker and ran, the boy coming after her, encumbered by the backpack, the security man chasing both of them. She dashed down the stairs to the subway level, and then reached the turnstile, launched over it with her hands and landed in a neat crouch on the other side, a transit guard appearing out of a booth as the security officer fumbled with the gate and shouted, ‘Stop her!’ The girl bounced up and ran for the escalator, and the transit guard followed.