In the bedroom she sat at the desk and opened her laptop. As it booted up she looked out the window. That vast green (now black) space to the south—the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Oh, perfect. The peace, the gentle surrender of flesh and bone to earth—it moved her and calmed her, but really, does anyone really go for long walks in the graveyard without wondering if maybe they shouldn’t just lie down and stay? Inevitable. Why bother with all the messy in-between bits?
The computer lit up in a friendly way. She keyed “Alcoholics Anonymous Toronto” into the search window. She kept misspelling it. But finally managed. The homepage. Such a lot of information. Look at that, a meeting close to the liquor store at Yonge and Eglinton. How convenient. And there, at the top of the page, Have Questions? Need Help? And after that a phone number. The knife lay quietly, for the moment, beside the computer. Well yes, she suspected she just might be able to use the tiniest bit of help. She took a drink. She punched the number into her phone.
“Alcoholics Anonymous, how can I help you?” said a man.
Since Colleen didn’t have the faintest idea how he could help her, she said nothing.
“Hello?” said the man.
“Hello,” she said.
“My name’s Neil, and who’s this, then?”
He was entirely too fucking cheerful. “Barbara,” she said.
“Well, Barbara, how can I help you tonight?”
She took another sip. “I have no idea.”
“Ah. Well, is it possible you’ve been drinking a little?”
“Not calling you ’cause I’m interested in tap dancing lessons.”
Tap dancing lessons. That had seemed such a simple phrase when it was still in her head, but on the way out it had been a treacherous piece of tongue-twistery.
“Ha!” Neil laughed, which startled Colleen. If he was laughing at her slurry-ness, she’d hang right up. He had a funny, honking kind of laugh. “It’s good to have a sense of humour,” he went on. “The devil does so hate a good laugh.”
Lovely, now there would be talk of God and the devil. “I don’t believe in the devil,” she said.
“Then you haven’t met my mother-in-law,” said Neil, and again, the big laugh.
“Are you there all week?” asked Colleen.
“What? Oh, good one. Yeah, don’t forget to tip your waitress!”
He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Can I assume your drinking isn’t making you happy?”
“Lots of things make me unhappy. I lost my job today.”
“I’m really sorry. What happened?”
“Working at the university. I worked there forever. Years and years, and now they tell me I have a problem and that I’m a lousy employee. It’s not fair.”
“At the university, huh? We got quite a few members from the university. All kinds in AA, you know? Drinking have anything to do with you losing your job?”
Barbara was anonymous, so why not just say it? “I think so. Maybe. A little.”
“I lost a lot of jobs because of my drinking. Good thing, too, since I drove long-distance hauls. Nothing like a drunk in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler to screw up the traffic flow. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.” She rested her forehead in her hand. This was worthless. She was tired. So tired. If she was going to do what she was going to do she’d better just get on with it.
“Feeling pretty bad, right?”
“Yup.”
“Do you want to quit drinking?”
“I want to stop feeling like shit.” She was crying. Salty drops hit the laptop’s keyboard. “I want the fucking pain to stop. I can’t take the fucking pain. It’s all so fucking hopeless. I killed my friend’s cat.” Why was she saying all this? Her lips were thick around the words, like she’d been to the dentist and was all frozen. “I’m frozen,” she said.
“I hear you. But you can stop the pain. I promise. How much have you had to drink tonight?”
“I have no idea.”
“That much, huh?” When she said nothing he went on. “Are you feeling sick?”
“Don’t feel much of anything. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is. We drunks drink for oblivion.”
Drunks? Fuck you, she thought, but there seemed no point in saying it. “Oblivion,” she muttered. “That’s where I’m headed.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Think you can just go to sleep tonight, and then tomorrow, can you get to a meeting?”
“Been to meetings. Not for me.” My God, but she was tired. What had she been thinking this guy would do? It wasn’t like the movies where worried strangers showed up at your door and held your hand while you cried out all your troubles. Nobody was coming.
“Tell you what, why don’t we make a plan, okay? Tomorrow morning I’ll have a friend of mine call you, a really nice woman, and you can arrange to go to a meeting with her. There are a couple of meetings around noon, or earlier if you like. Think you’ll be up early? I used to wake up about 4 a.m. every single morning, just feeling like crap, you know? You awake that early you could get to a seven-thirty meeting. Or a noon meeting. She’d go with you. You’ll like her. She works at the university too.”
These last words hit Colleen’s brain like water on a hot skillet. Suddenly her mind was popping and fizzing. She didn’t want anyone at the university knowing she’d called AA. What if it was someone she knew?
“How about it?” Neil asked.
“I have to go.”
“I wish you wouldn’t—”
Colleen hung up. She hit her temples with the heels of her hands. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. What had she been thinking? She checked her messages. Nothing. No one. Nada. The silence crept up behind her, making the hair on her neck stand on end. It stalked her. It was coming for her. An inch or so of vodka remained in her glass. She knocked it back and picked up the knife. She would run the bath, she would sink in, sink under and say goodbye to all her friends on shore. Friends. That was a joke.
She stood up, but the floor danced beneath her feet. She dropped the knife by the bed. No matter. She’d get it in a minute. She was so cold. She must make sure the water in the bath was very hot. The path to the bathroom was a funhouse obstacle course of slip-sliding floors, glittering bits of glass and moving walls. At last she reached the tub and turned on the hot water. She considered bath salts. Why not? Why not pamper herself on her last night? She reached for the plastic jar of lavender salts and poured in a great deal. The scent was cloying and reminded her of old ladies. That wouldn’t do. She let the water run out and started again. She had some sandalwood oil in her bedroom. She would get that.
It took some minutes to make it back to the bedroom, and the last few yards she managed on all fours. The sandalwood oil, in such a pretty little bevelled bottle with a gold lid, was all the way over on the dresser. It was exhausting, this business. She needed a moment. She pulled herself onto the bed and looked at her wrists. They were so fragile-looking, with the green and blue veins like ribbons just under the thin white sheath of skin. Almost anything could tear through that skin. She ran her fingers over one wrist and then the other. It tickled a little. The sound of the running water came from the bathroom. It would be steaming up the mirror, making the edges of everything soft and warm. She looked at her wrists again. Poor little things. Poor wee delicate things. Like baby skin.
She drew the covers round her. She sobbed. In a few minutes she would get up and do this thing. And then it would all be over and she’d wake up somewhere else entirely, or else she wouldn’t wake up at all and both possibilities were just fine with her.
Good night, world.
THEY DON’T CALL IT “SPIRITS”
FOR NOTHING
Colleen felt as though she were scrabbling out of a grave. The earthen sides slipped away beneath her fingers and feet. She kept sliding back down to the black pit. She was sure she was awake, but t
hen she realized she was still asleep and great red-fire danger crouched at the end of her bed. She had to wake up. She tried to move her little finger, to cry out, and it took a terrible effort; her chest felt weighed down by grave dirt. She would suffocate. She would be crushed … Then she woke with a heart-pounding start, swatting at her head, filled with the image of bats swooping down on her. No bats. Just dark dreams. She was damp with sweat and her breath was foul even to her. What time was it? Something other than her breath smelled like death itself. Her eyes were caked shut, and something horrible stuck to her cheek and mouth. She pried her eyes open, pulling lashes out as she did, knowing she must look, but not wanting to see. A pool of yellowish slime lay near her pillow. Jesus, she’d vomited in her sleep, and … more than that. She reached between her legs. Her pants were wet. She’d thrown up and wet herself. A flush of shame seared her nerve-exposed flesh. And what was that fucking noise, like a dentist’s drill in her head? On the desk her phone buzzed. It might as well have been in Antarctica. She tried to sit up and as she did an invisible axe planted itself between her eyes. She wiped away the matter from around her mouth. She had to get to the bathroom. Now.
As her legs swung over the bed and her stomach cramped, her foot hit something. A butcher knife. The big one from the kitchen. She staggered to the bathroom, her mind racing. Why was there a knife in the bedroom? Had there been an intruder? She envisioned an attacker standing over her bed with the knife in his hand as she sprawled before him, dead drunk. Had someone done something to her? The water in the bath was running. What the fuck? Bile filled her mouth and she clutched her belly as she bent over the toilet. Little came out. What did was a yellow-greenish colour, flecked with blood. My God, she was dying. Her face streamed with tears and her nose ran. She gagged and retched and retched until she thought she’d eject an organ. Her stomach, perhaps, or her spleen.
Slowly the sickness subsided. She flushed the toilet, sank to the floor and pressed her face to the cool tiles. Something sharp dug into her cheek. Glass, there was glass on the floor. She ran her hand along the tiles. The perfume bottles. What had happened to the perfume bottles? She realized she’d cut her foot, and blood now seeped from the wound, leaving a red blossom on the sole of her sock. She got to her knees and crawled to the bath. Water ran down the open drain. She turned off the tap.
What the hell had happened last night? Had she meant to take a bath and forgot? Thank God she’d left the plug open or the whole apartment would have flooded. Yes, she vaguely remembered wanting a bath, pouring salts in. Sure enough, the plastic dish of salts was empty.
She peeled her sock off. It was just a little cut. Given the state of her, it was hardly worth noticing. She used the sock to sweep up the rest of the glass. All the pretty bottles, all her treasures, shattered and smashed. She found the tiny L’Air du Temps bottle. There was a chip out of the base, but the doves were intact. It made her want to cry, seeing those doves. The Chloé bottle was also unbroken, but the perfume had leaked out. Feeling a trickle of something, she put her hand to her cheek. Blood. Just a little. She got to her feet and went to put the bottles back on the shelf, but the shelf was gone. There it was, broken off its plugs, behind the door. She put the bottles on the back of the toilet tank. Had there been a fight?
Without looking in the mirror—certainly not that horror—she turned on the taps and ran water over her face. She cleared off the mucus and bile. She peeled off her filthy clothes. Do not look too closely, just kick them into the corner. Shower. She needed scalding water, and fast. She’d have to call the office, tell them—oh, right, there was nothing to tell them. She was the one who’d been told.
She stood in the bath and let the shower, the water hot as she could bear, sluice over her. She was covered in bruises. Her hip hurt. Her stomach was lined with sandpaper. Her mouth was lined with dead-horse glue. Images flickered through her mind. A sense of urgency, of vital information withheld, nipped at her.
It was important to remember what had happened. Colleen trembled and kept a hand on the tile wall to ensure she didn’t fall. She remembered the scene in David Moore’s office. The woman from Human Resources. She remembered telling them to fuck off. (That was clever, wasn’t it, a bell she could not now unring?) Buying booze. Oh, shit, the bathroom stall incident. The moment of the falling bottle playing over and over again in her mind, like some old movie reel on a loop, in which the bottle kept falling and shattering, falling and shattering. She had seen Helen after that. She remembered going to Helen’s. Her mother. Jake. Who was about to be a father, apparently, with no more use for her. So many snippets, but even more holes.
Jesus. If time existed so that everything didn’t happen at once, and space existed so it all didn’t happen to you, well, something had certainly fucked up somewhere.
She had to sit down, or lie down. She had to get something in her stomach. She carefully stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. It smelled of mildew and she threw it on the floor with her pile of clothes. She grabbed her old green bathrobe from the hook behind the door and inched into it, trembling like a beaten cur. She made her way down the hall. The light from outside was the sort of indistinct grey that could mean it was any time at all. It looked wet, the sky rough with low clouds. The clock on the stove said 11:30. Daytime, then. The bottle of vodka lay on its side in the sink and the lid was off. She righted it. An inch of liquor remained. That wasn’t possible, it must have spilled. The fumes hit her nose and she gagged, her stomach convulsing. She considered taking a swig. It would settle her. At the thought, sour liquid squirted into her mouth. She spit in the sink. Please God, no more. Please, please, please. She ran the water and hung her head. Nothing more. Thank you. Thank you. She was feverish and chilled at the same time.
The water was cold now and she filled a glass to the brim. Even in the hangover fog she knew she mustn’t give in to the desire to gulp. She must be moderate. Sips. Small sips. Her tongue, which was a desiccated lump, began to plump under the water’s revivifying effects. She took the water and a handful of crackers and made her way to the living room. Never had the couch seemed so far. She curled up and pulled the throw over her. She nibbled and sipped. She wanted to die.
A flash from the night before. The knife. Her wrists. She cried out. The intruder had been her. She had been the murderer at the end of the bed. In a moment of terrible clarity, she pictured a kind of demon, a malevolent spirit she had called to her by drinking so much. She imagined she’d sent a beacon out into the cosmos and this hideous, silence-souled creature had slithered down it, all the way to her door. It would always know where she lived, now. There was no hiding from it.
They don’t call it “spirits” for nothing.
It tiptoed up her spine on cat’s paws. It peeked out from the corners of the room. It lay beneath her pillow, waiting for her to fall asleep so it could reach up with its skeletal fingers and tighten its grip around her throat. It whispered in her ear.
It was the King of the Twisted Fairies.
It was a deft hand with knives.
Even as she vowed she would not drink today, a small clear voice in the back of her mind sniggered. Wait an hour, the voice said. There’s a dance in the old girl yet.
Colleen stuffed the corner of the throw in her mouth. She shook and tried hard not to scream. Her bowels cramped and the ice-pick pain curled her into a ball, and she knew she’d have to run for it. Then the mad, hands-out-in-front lurching stumble down the hall to the toilet. The fire in her gut. The hot, shameful splash. The stench. It was as though she were rotting from the inside.
Minutes later she rose and huddled in the shower, cleaning herself again. She got out, dried off, and sprayed the room with air freshener. The cloying scent made her gag. She felt hollow, feverish and shaky. She wanted to go back to bed.
In the bedroom she realized she’d have to strip the filthy sheets. She picked up the butcher knife, gingerly, with only the ends of her fingertips, and laid it on the desk. It seemed to twink
le malevolently. She didn’t want to look at it. She managed to get the sheets off the bed, her muscles aching with the effort, her joints throbbing. The mattress protector had to go, too, since it was damp, but the urine hadn’t soaked through to the mattress proper. Be grateful for small mercies. The duvet, too, seemed stained only in one patch. She could live with that for now; she craved warmth more than cleanliness. She threw the mess of sheets and mattress protector into the bathroom where her clothes lay in an accusing pile. Later. She’d face washing everything later. For now, all she wanted to do was get more water and more crackers and crawl into the bed and sleep and sleep and not wake up until it was all over.
There were some bottles of club soda in the kitchen, unrefrigerated. She found one and, hugging it to her chest, walked like a person just getting her sea legs back to the bedroom where the bed and duvet waited for her. It was to have been her refuge, this room. Her writing nest. The stupid picture of Dylan Thomas’s writing shed, her ridiculous journal, the cold-eyed computer, even the Bible, so mute and black-covered and phony with those gilded edges. They mocked her. She grabbed her cell phone from the desk as she half-fell onto the bed. The message light blinked. She flipped it open and saw she had two messages. She lay on her back with the phone clutched to her breast. She was not at all sure she wanted to see who the messages were from. It was quite possible she’d made phone calls last night. It was quite possible the nursing home had been trying to get hold of her. It was quite possible she’d done some damage and would be expected to clean it up this morning. She couldn’t face it. Still, she had to know. She scrolled through the call history.
The nursing home. No surprise, only the rancid acid of humiliation. And a number she didn’t recognize, or did she? It had the same three digits as the university. Some bureaucrat wanting her to fill out forms, probably. To hell with it. She tossed the phone onto the bed beside her, reached for the computer and flipped it open. She hadn’t shut it off the night before and when the screen came alive it did so to her e-mail program. Junk mail in the inbox. A note from Lori: Hey, kiddo, just checking on you. Hope you’re okay. I’ll call later.
The Empty Room Page 23