The Substitute

by Nicole Lundrigan

  I placed the glass prisms back on the shelf, next to Button’s Luna moth. Light shone through them, and I could identify not a single scratch. Not even a greasy fingerprint. He had taken care of them. Which, of course, was what I had expected.

  I will admit I had not considered Mr. Botts when I chose to appropriate his backyard. I did not consider the implications in using his bonus question. Or tossing my scribbled drawings into his garbage can. His yard was convenient, and the question just happened to inspire me. I did not mean to hurt him. When I saw his anguish because of my choices, I had searched my mind for a filament of remorse. And I found it there. Spindly, unstable, like a structure made of damp matches. I determined that was regret. Present, but hollow, and easily trampled. Mr. Botts did not deserve the pain, but I simply did what I had to do.

  “Kiddle?” My mother was yelling down the hallway. “I’ve lost something. Can you come here?”

  I ignored her.

  “Kiddle?”

  As he was leaving, Mr. Botts had waved and smiled at me. Young wrinkles around his grey eyes. His fatherly gaze was soft and willing. Even now, after everything he had experienced, he was still the same. There was no anger or animosity inside of him. I understood his personality was an aberration, that gripping innocence, that perpetual openness. Even when the world slammed its fist in his face, he still smiled.

  Some people are like that. I remember a book I once took from my elderly neighbour’s window. It was full of weird cases where people lived totally shitty lives. And did shitty things to each other. One was about a little girl whose parents kept her in a small crate. When cops found her, pulled open her metal door, she emerged from squalor, and back hunched, she grinned for the cameras. That kid was happy. She was laughing. She was jubilant.

  I found it difficult to wrap my head around that mindset. I recognized it was a form of illness that afflicted Mr. Botts. Definitely afflicted Evie, too. And in its purest form, it had afflicted my little sister, Button. I found the idea of it weak, detestable, but also beautiful. More beautiful than anything else in existence. It needed to be protected, insulated from the world. I had not understood the value of it when Button was with me. These rare individuals had something broken inside of them. Their hearts were blinded. And even though there were moments of doubt, they believed through and through that the world was a compassionate place. A loving place. That good would inevitably flutter up and shadow everything else.

  I glanced out my window toward the direction of her house. Evie and I had slid through the densely packed cedars so many times, we had created a teardrop hole in the hedge. I could see her just now, on the other side of the gap, peering up at me. She was wearing the red and white striped hat I had stolen for her. The matching gloves.

  I touched the glass, and she motioned for me to lift my window.

  “Hey,” I called out. “What’s up?”

  “Ice cream. That’s what’s up.”

  “You want to go and get ice cream? It’s freezing out.”

  “What? You can only eat ice cream in a t-shirt? That’s totally weird. And lame, Libby! Put on a sweater. A scarf. And get your butt out here. Ice cream is the best thing three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I’m going. Like, in literally ten seconds. Don’t ask me to bring you anything back. Not like it would melt or anything.” She shrugged forcefully, laughed. The sun caught the metal crisscrossing her teeth, braces realigning her dents du bonheur.

  “Okay, okay.” Her rambling always made me feel slightly dizzy. As though someone had smacked me in the side of the head. But in a good way. “Give me a minute.”

  I pushed the window closed with my fingertips. With Evie, things were starting to shift back toward normal. It was taking a lot longer than I had thought it would. There were moments when I wondered if she would ever be the same, but she was gradually returning to her usual self. Which meant bouncing constantly, and talking a mile a minute. Seeing her waiting there, I was aware of those sneaky eels sliding around my rib cage. Squeezing firmly. Letting me know that feelings were present, and if they chose to do so, they could pull me down. Crush the air from my lungs.

  Maybe I did love Evie. In the same way I had loved Button. But also, in a different way. One was not a substitute for the other. My love for Evie was arresting and wistful and furious and benevolent. A swirling storm that had claimed me. There was nothing I would not do to protect her. Protect her blinded heart. From that moment when she had looked at me, practically naked in the school hallway, I had decided she would be safe. I would never leave her. And she would never leave me.

  My mother was stomping around the kitchen, slamming cupboard doors. “Where the hell is everything gone?” she yelled. “Kiddle? Have you seen my pills? Those pink ones? Did you take them?” Another door slammed. “Jesus.”

  I pulled a thick sweater over my head, and looked in the mirror. My hair was full of static, and ragged bangs covered my eyes. For the first time in my life, I was trying to grow it out. Though I had never bothered with my appearance in the past, for once, I wanted to look different. I would admit it. I wanted to look pretty.

  “Kiiiidddd-ulllll!”

  “I haven’t seen your stupid pills,” I yelled back, as I dug through the clump of clothes on my closet floor. There was a crocheted scarf hidden in there somewhere. “Leave me alone, will you?”

  “Kiddle. I was calling out to you. You didn’t hear me?”

  Looking up, I saw my doughy mother blocking my doorway. Her voice was calmed, and I assumed she had found her medication. Had the promise of numbness already swallowed, dissolving inside her acidic stomach.

  “I heard you. You just didn’t hear me.”

  “Come on, Kiddle. Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

  “Don’t call me that again. You know my name.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Libby.” She held out her sneakers. “Do you, ah, think I could take these back? I cleaned the bottoms. Rubbed a tiny bit of corn oil into the black to shine it. They look completely unworn to me.” Turning them to show me the soles. “What do you think? At least a store credit?”

  “Do what you want.” I saw the fringe of the scarf and tugged it out from the pile, knotted it around my neck. Loosely. “Some salespeople are dumb enough.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try, I guess.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care.”

  She sighed. Frowned a thin frown. “We got to get along, you know. It’s just you and me, Lib. Like it’s always been.”

  Like it’s always been.

  The words volleyed back and forth inside my skull. Testing the strength of my bones.

  “Close my door.” I tilted my head, raised my eyebrows ever so slightly. “Would you, please, Mother?”

  I could feel the blood moving through my veins. Feeding every part of me with oxygen and nutrients. Allowing me to think. Imagine. And, thanks to the influence of Mr. Botts, I had started counting.

  How could we be so different? My mother and I?

  I did not know if I ever resisted myself. Pushed back against who I was. But my mother! She had reinvented herself. Slid parts of her past out of her story, inserted others. Within the snarl of her lies, her scum husband had adopted a softer personality, a pitiable illness. She told gullible Mr. Botts he had died of complications related to lupus. An infection. Kidney failure. Something like that. No mention he was a drunken wife-beater who nearly smashed her skull. And she omitted the part that he had damaged my favourite tree when his forehead burst through a windshield and struck it. I did not mind those lies, to be honest. In fact, I thought her story was creative and, in a way, I respected her ingenuity. But then. But then my mother took it too far.

  She erased Button. Never so much as mentioned her to Mr. Botts. Her stunted life. Her perfect heart. Her sticky, gaggy death. She had pretended none of it had ever happened. How could she do that? Act as though Button we
re nothing more than a piece of plastic in a kid’s party game. Tucked inside some loser’s clammy fist. As though out of sight were really out of mind.

  Was that necessary? To edit Button from our shared narrative? The first person in the world who actually loved me?

  It needled me. Like a twist of black hair caught in the throat. I could not swallow it. I could not cough it out.

  I would communicate that to her. Let her know of my disappointment. Maybe, at some point in the future, I would build a machine to fully express myself. Me and Button. Sisters, side by side. I would show my mother everything that she had missed. All the wonder that was tucked inside my sister’s tiny body. Then my mother would realize her mistakes. And she would experience humiliation.

  When the time was right, I would uncurl my fingers, open my palm. Show her what was hiding there.

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my wonderful agent, Hilary McMahon, of Westwood Creative Artists. She is unfailingly enthusiastic and supportive, and her words of encouragement keep me moving forward. Thank you to my first reader, Aniko Biber, for her genuine insight and never-ending kindness. On this novel, I was blessed to have two extraordinary editors: Adrienne Kerr and Douglas Richmond. Their astute observations transformed this book. Thank you to everyone at House of Anansi; I am grateful to be in such fantastic hands. And finally, much love and thanks to my children, Sophia, Isabella, and Robert, three beautiful lights that guide and inspire me every single day.

  NICOLE LUNDRIGAN is the author of five critically acclaimed novels, including Glass Boys and The Widow Tree. Her work has appeared on best of the year selections of the Globe and Mail and NOW Magazine and she has been longlisted for the ReLit Award. Born in Ontario and raised in Newfoundland, she now lives in Toronto.

  HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”