The Empty Room

by Lauren B. Davis

  Roughly once a month she dreamed about Jake. They were strange dreams in which she didn’t know she was dreaming, but thought she was awake and aware she had recurring dreams about him, and in the dream they understand each other, finally. They know each other and will be reunited, as they were always meant to be. They’re holding onto each other, and she can smell that spicy-woodsy scent of his and feel his muscles and she’s just on the verge of telling him about how she’s always dreamed of him, that they’ve always been tied in some mystical way, and then she either realizes she’s dreaming, or she just plain realizes she can’t stay with him, and all this loss and grief pours down on her and her heart breaks all over again, and she wakes up in tears, longing for him.

  It was ridiculous.

  Did she call him last night? Probably. Heat ran up her neck and over her ears. She had to stop calling him. It did no good. She couldn’t remember what she said. Jake might be the love of her life, but he wasn’t safe and the better part of her knew that. After they broke up but while he was living in New York, he would come back to Toronto now and then—his family was still here—and show up at her office, drunk and crying, or at her apartment in the middle of the night. He scared her. She wouldn’t let him in. He banged on her door until she threatened to call the cops. Then he went back to New York and the nobody-there calls started. She wanted him to stop, but then again, she didn’t.

  Colleen realized she was frowning and must look sour. That was no way to walk into the office, especially at … oh God … 9:27. She smoothed her hair and put a pleasant expression on her face. Maybe Moore was in his office at the back. Maybe the profs were all in class. Maybe Sylvia was off sick. She opened the door to the department office and there, ever so professorial in his khaki pants and tweed jacket, loomed Dr. David Moore, the Chair, talking with Sylvia, his assistant.

  “Good morning,” Colleen said. “Did you all have trouble getting in today? I don’t know what was happening on the Bloor line, but my God, the number of people! I waited for three or four trains to go by before I managed to get on one.”

  Dr. Moore merely crossed his arms. Sylvia stood next to her tidy desk, with her tight little sweater, unbuttoned just so, and her shiny black bob and oh-so-hip retro nerd glasses, her deep plum lipstick and those appalling furry boots. She smiled, tapping a file folder, and said, “I’m glad I live close enough to walk to work.”

  “Aren’t you lucky?” Colleen hung her coat on the rack, stuffed her purse in her drawer and sat down in front of the alarmingly high pile of papers and folders on her desk. Things had been so much better when Eppie Goldman was David’s assistant; she had been a lovely old thing, even if she did have that unfortunate gum-chewing habit, and besides, when she retired, Colleen should have been promoted to Assistant to the Chair. They shouldn’t have hired from outside.

  Why didn’t David say anything? What had he and Sylvia been talking about? Sylvia looked at her and widened her eyes in the oddest way, and then glanced down to the file she’d been tapping a moment before.

  Old Harry Barnes wandered in just then from the back hallway where the professors had their offices. Colleen liked Harry a great deal. He reminded her of an aged heron, or a stork. He made her think of an elderly Jimmy Stewart, especially in how kind he was, and gentle. His field was Historical Geography, the study of human, physical, fictional, theoretical and “real” geographies of the past. He always used those little air quotes around the word real, which Colleen found endearing.

  “Colleen, dear, I have been waiting for you. We’ve so much to do today. Class at ten, you know, and I need the handouts I gave you Friday.”

  Handouts? What was he talking about? “I’m sorry, Harry, which …?”

  Sylvia and David, who still hadn’t said anything, watched her. Sylvia pressed her lips together as though trying not to say something. She inched the file on her desk toward Colleen. David’s face had gone a little red and his mouth was set in that way it did when he was annoyed.

  “I don’t quite remember, but I’m sure they’re here.” Colleen just needed a few minutes to settle in, just a couple of minutes to catch her breath.

  “Growth and Urbanization, 1860–1920,” said Harry, as he riffled through one of the piles on Colleen’s desk.

  “Are you sure you gave them to me?” She picked up a pile of papers from her to-do basket, which was admittedly a bit fuller than it should be. A paper to be typed for Professor Rose, the Medical Geographer, on dengue fever; something on the Olorgesailie prehistoric site in the Kenyan Rift Valley for Michael Banville; expense accounts to be tallied …

  “Quite sure, I’m afraid. And I do need them rather urgently.”

  Sylvia coughed. “Colleen?”

  Colleen looked at her. She was staring down at that thick file on her desk. Was that the file? What the hell?

  David Moore and Harry Barnes looked at Sylvia now as well. Sylvia’s skin was mottled.

  “This might be it,” Sylvia said, picking up the file. “It just got misplaced, I’m sure.”

  Colleen stared at the folder. She didn’t trust this. She had no recollection of making the copies. Misplaced my ass, she thought. Sylvia was holding out the folder and she had no choice but to take it. She opened it and sure enough: Growth and Urbanization, 1860–1920.

  “Did you make those copies, Colleen?” asked Moore.

  It was very hard to know what to say. If only she could remember, but nothing was clear and everything was happening so fast, she couldn’t think. “It’s just copies, right, and here they are …”

  She held them out to Harry, who grabbed them. “No matter, no matter. No harm done. All’s well and all that,” he said as he scurried out of the office.

  David Moore asked, “Did you or did you not make those copies, Colleen?”

  There was a trap here, she knew there was, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see where to step. What if Sylvia had taken the file purposefully, to try to make her look bad? The idea of sabotage swelled thickly in her chest.

  “I didn’t give her anything. If she has them, she took them on purpose. It’s all on her.”

  “Oh, Colleen,” said Sylvia softly. “That’s not what happened.”

  And from the hurt, puzzled look on Sylvia’s face, who couldn’t possibly be that good an actor, Colleen knew she had blown it. She felt the same flush she saw on Sylvia’s face appear on her own. The blood rushing to the surface of her skin felt like hot needles. Maybe she could still back out.

  “Maybe I forgot. We were so busy.”

  Moore ran his hand over his head. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation about bloody photocopies. Fine. Sylvia, did you make the copies or not? I want a straight answer.”

  “I just did them, that’s all,” she said as she fiddled with the pens and papers on her desk. She glanced at Colleen. “I was going to give them to you … I was only trying to help. I didn’t mean … I mean, I thought I’d see you before …” She flicked her eyes toward David.

  “I was going to do it,” said Colleen.

  “Were you?” David Moore looked unconvinced.

  Her ears were so hot she was afraid they might ignite and the space under her desk looked remarkably inviting. “Of course I was.” But was she? She didn’t even remember Harry giving them to her. What had she been doing on Friday? It seemed so long ago. She went out for lunch with Pam, the department’s librarian. They’d gone to Le Select Bistro for a bit of a Friday afternoon treat.

  Colleen turned to face Sylvia and David. She was trembling and the only thought in her mind was to get the hell out of there. How could she have messed up such a simple task? She tried so hard and wanted so much to be a good employee. She was always five minutes away from being the person she wanted to be. She would be better. She would do better.

  But there was Sylvia, the Cheshire Bitch. “I’d appreciate it if you would let me do my own work, Sylvia. Taking the papers only confused matters. I don’t understand what your agenda is.�
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  “My agenda?” said Sylvia. “Honestly, Colleen, I just wanted to help. I didn’t mean to make anything worse.”

  “Let’s just get on with it, shall we?” David said. “Colleen, I wonder if you’d mind coming with me for a few minutes?”

  He walked out of the main office and down the hallway without even looking at her. Colleen felt as though she’d swallowed a large chunk of ice.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Sylvia. “I’m really sorry.”

  Go to hell, thought Colleen, as she followed Dr. Moore.

  When did this hall get so long? Her heels echoed on the tile floor and bounced off the glass-fronted doors. The fluorescent lighting made the walls look like those of a mortuary and for an instant Colleen imagined her own skin under those lights, how much like the walking dead she must look. David Moore had never liked her, not since she’d been so sick just before her mother had the strokes. She’d had walking pneumonia, she was sure of it, and she took time off to get better. She coughed so much she threw up. The spasms were so violent she wondered if she’d cracked a rib. Just as she got back on her feet, her mother’s crisis dictated more time off to deal with the hospitals and social workers and all that. David had called three times a week, demanding to know when she was coming back to work and asking for a medical certificate. She got him the damn certificate. She’d been offended then and it still rankled. No one had ever asked her for a medical certificate before. Moore was a little bean-counting bureaucrat. He never reprimanded Sylvia the way he did her, even though Sylvia spent as much time on the phone with her boyfriend as she did working.

  Colleen stepped into the office. David Moore was already on the phone. How rude, Colleen thought. Hadn’t he just asked her to come in?

  “Five minutes? Fine. Right. Thanks,” he said into the receiver and then replaced it in the cradle. “Come in, Colleen. Close the door, please.”

  His big oak desk was in front of a window, which was the only wall not covered in bookshelves, one of which, to the right, included a locked cabinet containing his prize collection of antique metrological equipment: several brass barometers, a rotating vane anemometer, a brass hair hygrometer and mercury thermometer, several pocket forecasters, and a number of other metal objects for which Colleen had no name. His desk was tidy—three stacks of papers arranged with scientific precision, his fountain pen and matching pencil resting like surgical instruments in a silver tray. The photos of his wife and daughter in matching silver frames. He drummed his fingers on the spotless leather-edged blotter and then with a wave of his hand indicated she should sit down.

  Colleen sat in one of the two leather chairs facing him. Moore was silhouetted against the light, making his features indistinct, shadowy. The sun had come out and the brightness made Colleen squint and want to shield her eyes. She couldn’t help but wonder if he knew how this backlighting made him look like some great inquisitor, and if he liked that. She folded her hands in her lap and sat ramrod straight. She was tempted to look down to see if the thumping of her heart was actually visible beneath her turtleneck. It was absurd. She was only a year or two younger than Moore. To be made to feel like a child called to the principal’s office was offensive. The way he looked so stern, so authoritative. He’d only been Chair for a year, Colleen thought, and yet you’d think he’d been crowned King.

  Two years ago, when she first came to the department from her previous job in the History Department, when Michael Banville was Chair, the whole place was more fun. They went for lunch together, had drinks together. Michael even hosted them all at his farm for a weekend. Moore would never do anything like that. He kept his distance from the rest of the department. He probably didn’t think he was up to the job any more than she did and that’s why he threw his weight around.

  “Colleen,” he said, his hands clasped, index fingers resting on the top of his nose, thumbs under his chin. “I wonder how you think you’ve been performing on the job the last while. I’d like your thoughts.”

  I’ll bet he wouldn’t, not if he really knew what was going on in my head. “I’ve been late a few times, I realize that. And if I hadn’t been hijacked by this photocopying business, I’d planned to tell you I was very sorry and that I’d be happy to stay late tonight to make it up.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said.

  “I really don’t mind.”

  “It’s more than you just being late, Colleen.”

  “Is it?” The big toe on her right foot began to bother her, the way it sometimes did, as though the bone itself were itchy. She wriggled it around in her shoe. It didn’t help.

  “I think you know that.”

  “Let’s say I don’t.” God, all she wanted to do was take her shoe off and scratch the little bastard. She couldn’t help it; she reached down and rubbed the spot through her shoe.

  “Are you all right? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine.” Stop, toe. Stop! The sensation disappeared for a moment and then returned with a vengeance. Fuck it. She slipped her shoe off and scratched her toe violently. It hurt but that was the only way to make it stop. “Sorry. I’ve got an itch.”

  “Right, well—”

  Someone knocked lightly and then, without waiting for an answer, opened the door. The woman who appeared wore a grey tweed suit with gold buttons that gave a military impression, and had a head of improbably red hair. Her hands, one of which now held the side of the door as her head poked round, were manly, even with the large sparkly rings on her fingers.

  “Here I am, here I am. How is everyone?”

  “Come in, Pat. Colleen, I don’t know whether you know Pat Minot from Human Resources?”

  Colleen fumbled with her shoe and got it back on. “Ah, no, I don’t think so.” She blinked several times and felt the blood that had rushed to her face and ears a few minutes before cascade to her abdomen.

  “Hello, Colleen.”

  The woman held out her hand so Colleen had no choice but to shake it. She wanted to wipe her hands on her pants, since they’d become moist in the past half-second, but she couldn’t do that; she couldn’t look like she was panicking.

  “Nice to meet you,” Colleen said, and shook hands. She noticed that after the woman pulled back her hand, she folded her arms for a moment to discreetly wipe her own palm on her jacket sleeve.

  Pat Minot took the seat next to Colleen’s and turned her attention to David Moore. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “I was just asking Colleen how she felt she’d been performing recently.”

  “Very good.” Minot turned to her and smiled. She had a square, potato-y sort of face. If she’d been a man, Colleen could have imagined her as an Irish priest, about to have a heart-to-heart with a juvenile delinquent. “And how do you feel you’ve been performing, Colleen?”

  Colleen suspected, in a wave of icy hopelessness, that it didn’t matter much what she felt. The scene must be played out. “I’ve been late a few times, and perhaps a bit distracted. My mother, you see, she’s had a series of mini-strokes, and it’s resulted in brain damage. I’m her only living relative and it’s been very difficult, getting her into nursing care, dealing with the doctors, cleaning out her condo. She’d been hoarding, I’m sorry to say, and I can’t tell you the things I found in there. The shower stall was packed, floor to ceiling, with laxatives and toilet paper—and yes, I do see the irony in that—and bags of raisins, for some reason, and toothpaste …” Moore and Minot exchanged glances. “I’m rambling, I suppose, but I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been. If I’ve forgotten a thing or two at work, well, I would hope my co-workers would understand.”

  “I see,” said Pat Minot. “What a stressful situation. Caregiving for a parent is awfully hard. And I wonder if that hasn’t contributed to what we suspect is the real problem.”

  “The real problem?” And here it comes, she thought.

  “Dr. Moore, perhaps, since you’re Colleen’s supervisor, and you work with her on a daily basis,
you’d like to continue?”

  “Oh. Right. Yes.” He took off his glasses and polished them with a little cloth he pulled from his inside jacket pocket. “It’s quite sensitive, I suppose, but the complaints have been frequent.”

  “What complaints? From whom?” Colleen sat up a little straighter. The best defence might demand she bristle.

  “If I might suggest, Dr. Moore, it’s best to simply be direct here. As direct as possible.”

  “Right. Yes. The thing is, Colleen, we believe you have a problem that’s affecting your performance here in the office.”