Crow

by Amy Spurway

  […]

  “Allie, what the fuck?” It’s all I can stammer when I see her propped up in her hospital bed at the understaffed, rundown General Hospital in Town.

  Her golden hair is woven into a careless braid, fluorescent lights give her skin a dewy, ethereal cast, and her grey eyes a blue, mirrory shimmer. IV lines and leads tether her to the moment-by-moment realities of her blanket-draped body. She looks perfectly at home here, in the cool, sterile professionalism of the clinical world. There’s an eerie elegance to her, like a porcelain doll in a glass case. Vulnerable and ­fragile, yet safe and secure. Allie would have made a kick-ass doctor. But she makes a beautiful patient, too.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she mumbles, like she’s lost in a rather pleasant daydream. I stifle a gasp, as around her head I watch a band of blackened blue wrap around a wobbling sea of cobalt waves. A greyish-white froth erupts and is swallowed over and over again, as that hallucinatory ocean bashes against the hallucinatory wall. Meanwhile, a sickly smear of thick soot has moved in and settled over Allie’s midsection.

  “Crow? You okay?” No mumbling now. Allie sounds concerned. On point. Like her practical, everything-is-under-control self.

  “Me? Yeah. Fine. Why?” I say, pretending I can will away the surreal things I am sick of seeing. Still, the black blue band around her head bulges up in response to the thrashing and crashing. It’s like a pimple. I cringe, feel my shoulders lurch up toward my ears. It looks like it’s going to pop.

  “You just spaced out completely. Petit mal seizures. Ask your doctor about petit mal seizures.”

  “No. Shut up. I’m fine,” I say, bent on redirecting her attention to where it belongs, but where she was never good at putting it. “What happened, Al? I had no idea it was this bad . . .”

  Which is utter bullshit. If I’d stopped to pull my head out of my own miserable arse for a minute, I’d have seen it. Her mother died. Allie wasn’t there when it happened, like she always swore she would be. And just when she thought she might at least be free to do her own thing, whatever escape hatch she was banking on was taking too long to open even a crack. Long enough for guilt to creep in, for her to see that her father and brothers were eating frozen hot dogs and wiping their arses with pages from the phone book. They needed her now. Allie was pinned beneath that relentless old beast of family duty. Again. You don’t need some sort of foolish tumour-induced psychic power aura vision to know that breaks people. But pleading ignorance is the best mea culpa I can muster.

  “It was an accident.” She smiles. The tumult of colour around her head surges and thrashes harder.

  Bullshit.

  I watch as the pressure builds in the bruise-coloured bulge, and the cobalt sea rocks and roils into whitecaps. In the bottom half of my field of vision, the black soot spot starts to swirl, making me dizzy and nauseous and slightly panicked. I can’t look away. Something’s gonna give. It just needs a shove, but I don’t know how. Until all of a sudden I can see little pink daisies exploding into ribbons of blood-red, streaming from Allie’s wrists, her stomach, her heart.

  “I saw Char a few weeks ago,” I squeak. “She said you should watch what you eat over Christmas. And some cryptic shit about sharp daisies and love flowing better than blood.”

  “What a psycho bitch.”

  “Allie, the pills? What were you trying to do with the razor blade?” The words push past my better judgement as I watch and wait for the air around Allie to respond. “Char wanted me to apologize to you for her.”

  Sure enough, she explodes. “She’s a sick little sociopath, you know that. I’m fine. They pumped my stomach and are sending me home tomorrow.”

  Then the daisies, the ribbons of red, all disappear as the blue-black dam bursts. The wall that stood between Allie Walker and her damage is swept away in a violent rush of spilling sapphire.

  “You’re not fine,” I hiss at Allie, moving closer to her. “This wasn’t an accident. This was a cry for help, and I’m here, Al. I’m listening. Tell me what’s going on so I can help.”

  Her alabaster cheeks stay propped in a pleasant grin, un-eroded by the streaks of salted pain that are now streaming from her eyes.

  “I thought I could escape, Crow. The right way. To something better.” Her voice trembles, but her prim smile doesn’t so much as flinch. “But they wouldn’t let me in. Because of what I did. Even though it was long ago, and it wasn’t my fault. So this was another way out.”

  Her hands hover over the sooty black hole on her belly. The black belly hole has been there since 1998, but I couldn’t see it, and Allie couldn’t speak of it. Until now.

  It wasn’t the abortion. It was what came after. It was all the stuff she didn’t think of when she took Char’s advice. Abortions were technically legal and available in the big city of Halifax then, but that didn’t make them easy to get. Especially for a twenty-one-year-old university student who couldn’t shell out the seven hundred bucks for the Morgentaler. Instead, Allie had to convince the stodgy old man doctor at the university health clinic — who also happened to be a prof in the pre-med program she was trying to get into — to refer her to the Termination of Pregnancy Unit at the hospital. And then wait weeks to actually get in for an appointment, and hope to God that everyone at that hospital would forget who she was by the time she was through school and doing her residency there. Allie was already nine weeks when she found out. Her courses were getting tougher to handle, especially the biology class that was covering human fetal development in excruciating detail. Her mother was getting sicker. The casual fuck buddy who knocked her up was a resident assistant in her dorm, and he was getting annoyed and impatient. She needed it over.

  She asked Char to loan her the money, but Char had a better idea. “The trick,” she told Allie, “is to just be a basket case. Say the word ‘suicidal’ and watch how fast they get that shit done.”

  So Allie pinned her hopes on Char’s scheme. She’d play the basket case card, do what needed to be done, and move on with her life like nothing had ever happened. She went to the stodgy old man doctor at the university health clinic and told him she was pregnant, and suicidal because of it. Just like that, she got a prescription for Prozac and the procedure done, no questions asked. Which would have been more or less fine, had it ended there. But it didn’t.

  Within days, the stodgy old man doctor went to the pre-med program admissions committee and questioned Allie Walker’s suitability for pre-med, what with her history of mental illness. Then, he met with the annoyed and impatient and now uncomfortable resident assistant in Allie’s dorm and told him that the girl in room 307 was suicidal. This made the RA more annoyed and impatient and uncomfortable, since he was the one who knocked her up. So there were meetings about Allie Walker. Discussions about Allie Walker. Conclusions about Allie Walker.

  The pre-med program admissions committee was not comfortable having such an unstable woman in the classroom. The Residence Life Team was not comfortable having such an unpredictable woman in their midst. What if she hung herself in her closet with a bathrobe belt? What if she slit her wrists with a bashed-up pink Daisy razor in shower stall number four? What if one of the bright, promising young students with wealthy alumni parents was traumatized because they found this bursary-dependant, loose-moralled head case from Cape Breton dead in the common room some morning? Allie Walker was a chance the powers-that-be just couldn’t take. So they withdrew their recommendation for her pre-med program admission on account of her slipping grades. And they kicked her out of residence on account of “complaints” about her partying. When Allie found out, she marched right into the room of the uncomfortable resident assistant, and that’s when things got very, very uncomfortable. Because Allie walked in on him screwing Char. It all went to hell in a handbasket right there.

  Allie ended up being charged for destruction of property and uttering threats. Char ended up diving out the dorm-room window buck naked, and buying herself a one-way ticket to Germany the next day.


  It was convenient that Char was ready to go within twenty-four hours of Allie charging into our place that night, calling her a psycho cunt face and wishing her a lifetime of rotting in hell. It was convenient that they left me out of all this because I had my own little dramas and traumas to deal with at the time, although none of them involved gut-wrenching choices and crushing decisions and showing up in court alone and scared to try to explain it all to a judge.

  I listen as Allie recounts all of this. I choke back a gulp of guilt. I watch as the tide of colour around her head turns to a trickle. Except for this one little blob of blackened blue that sits squarely, staunchly, over her head. A fresher-looking bruise on Allie Walker’s long unhealed soul.

  “Do you know what I was doing when my mother died?” The corners of her mouth inch into a flat smile as the edges of her eyes swell with the clarity of expectant tears. “I was holed up in a slummy motel room at the border, drinking a bottle of vodka and making a pros and cons list for dying or just disappearing. There were fourteen pros for disappearing. I was about to count the pros of dying when Lennon called to say Mum was gone.”

  “But the job interview? In Boston?” I say. “You said it went fine.”

  “It didn’t even happen.” Allie’s voice is cracking and choking, but her lips stay twisted in the smile of habit. “They wouldn’t let me cross the border. Pulled some file, started asking questions about the peace bond from the university, my mental illness. Told me I couldn’t enter the country. I’m a security threat.”

  I reach for her, to hug her, to hold her, to stop myself from seeing or hearing or feeling any more of the sorrow I should have seen and heard and felt with her all along. Allie recoils.

  “So this is what I get” — her voice swells in volume and intensity, as the bruise on her soul deepens and darkens and spawns a new sea of cold blue anguish — “for trusting Char MacIsaac. It’s like karma, right? I faked wanting to die, thinking it would help me get on with my life, and now I still can’t get on with my life and I actually wish I was dead. Meanwhile, Char, Queen of Conniving, doesn’t have to grow up. Screwing the same guy as your friend, Char? Oh well, just pretend you’re helping her but wreck her life instead! Got a kid? No worries. You just keep being your crazy little self, Char! Somebody else will deal with it. Then there’s good old responsible, sane Allie! Her mother’s dead and she’s stuck out in the woods, like Snow Fucking White in a house full of lazy entitled man-babies who can’t even put down the toilet seat!”

  She is yelling now. A nurse comes in, armed with a compassionate smile and a syringe full of calm. Allie juts out her arm with no hesitation. The landscape of pain around her dissolves in tandem with the rate of the nurse’s injection into her rigid arm. A soft blue halo materializes, gently undulating around her head as she dutifully slides beneath the blanket and turns her face to the wall. The nurse assures me she will be fine. I tell the nurse they’d be wise to make sure she can’t get her hands on anything sharp, no matter how fine they think she’ll be.

  As I make my way to the door, I hear Allie call out over her chemically unburdened shoulder, “Hey Crow, wanna know what Dad’s last words to me were, while they were putting me in the ambulance?” Her voice takes on a deep tone of paternal concern, each word spoken with weight and bewilderment: “‘Uh, Allie, sweetie? Do you think that turkey is done yet?’”

  […]

  On Boxing Day, Mama gets called into work because half the girls at the Gale called in sick. I sprawl out on the couch, eating leftover broc-o-glop and watching Golden Girls reruns. Until Peggy shows up to drop off a couple of gifts, keen to tell me how she heard that Chrissy and Willy showed up together for midnight Mass at St. Pius’ on Christmas Eve. And that Shirl Short saw Chrissy Parsons buy two tickets to the New Year’s Eve dance at the KoC, them control-top pantyhose, those stick on bra-cup things that are supposed to make your boobs look perkier, massage oil, and — ahem — cinnamon-flavoured intimate lubricant, down at the drugstore.

  I don’t even have the energy to tell Peggy to fuck off, let alone absorb what the local trash talkers say regarding the movements of my former booty call and his newly knocked up rehab project. I have better things to concern myself with. Like stalking people I don’t give a shit about on Facebook. Watching funny cat videos. Doing online quizzes and pretending that they give me deep insight into my shallow self. What Star Wars character are you? Yoda. What Harry Potter character are you? Voldemort. What food are you? Pizza. What decade do you belong in? The ’00s. What arbitrary thing are you? A hill of beans.

  So I’m just gonna lie on the couch and sulk for a while, licking the various wounds of body and soul that life seems hell-bent on inflicting. I probably deserve it. That’s the real insight, right there.

  Peggy seems genuinely disappointed by my lack of interest in the topic of Willy Gimp and Chrissy Parsons. So she ups the ante.

  “How’s Allie doing?” she says, as if she hasn’t already heard one godawful tale or another about her.

  “Fine. Took too many anxiety pills. It was an accident.”

  “How goes the little quest to dig up the family dirt?” she says.

  “See me? Fresh outta fucks to give about whatever stupid secret you think you’re keeping,” I say, hunkering down under a quilt and taking a moment to lick the bottom of my broc-o-glop bowl.

  Of course, I am lying through my broc-o-glop smeared teeth, and Peggy knows it. I can tell by the way she’s scrunching up her snout. By the way her top lip curls and twitches.

  “Oh well. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Or your mother.”

  “That Betty White is a riot.” I jack the TV volume up to stun.

  Peggy plods toward the door. “There’s a present there I forgot to give you. Merry Christmas.” Then, from out on the step, she hollers, “It smells like a Dutchman’s arse in there, by the way!”

  I wait till I hear her car clatter down the driveway, then I grab the rectangular package she left. It is clumsily swathed in cross-eyed reindeer wrapping paper, the bejesus taped out of every seam, and “Crow” scrawled right on the paper in black marker. There’s a faint rattle clunk when I give it a shake. Every year, dollar store bubble bath. She knows I’m allergic. Dutchman’s Ass scented, I bet. Or maybe a box of Nova Scotia tartan-print thank you cards with little fiddle envelope stickers, from the sale bin at some stupid tourist kitsch shop. Whatever.

  I shut off the TV and go to bed, chucking the box into the back corner of my closet on the way. But curiosity nags at me. I get up, fish it out, and open it to confirm the cheapness, the thoughtlessness of Peggy’s gift. But it’s not bubble bath or discount tourist schlock. Inside are photographs. One of me that I’ve never seen before, standing in front of the shocked and mortified crowd at my high school graduation, post-slideshow, my face flushed and my mouth wide open in that final “Caaaaw.” The others are the Wall of Shame pictures of the Spensers, and Lucy and Black Bernie Fortune, which Char saved from the bonfire on head-shaving night. And there’s a little tartan notecard etched with Peggy’s heavy scrawl that reads, “If you don’t come to grips with where you came from, you sure as hell won’t understand where you’re going.” Which is worse — even cheaper and more thoughtless — than I expected. So back into the box, back into the farthest corner of the closet, out of sight and out of mind goes Peggy’s rotten excuse for a Christmas present.

  I stay in bed, where I can piss away hours toying with the mindless voyeurism, amusing distractions, and faux self-awareness contained in my pretty little touch screen world. All the while pretending that the snow and the sorrows of the tangible world aren’t piling up right outside my door. I have better things to do. Like combing the internet for ideas on what should be done with my corpse, for example.

  Having my dead body put out on display in a box and then buried in the ground seems so old-fashioned, so pedestrian, so dull and depressing. There must be a better way. And what do you know, there is. My former high school classmate
and new Facebook friend Sasha Marnelli has clicked “Like” on a share from my old arsehole enemy, Becky Chickenshit. Becky’s comment reads “Here’s one for vain egomaniacs . . .” Naturally, I click on the link. There it is. The most brilliant way to be dead I’ve ever seen. I want to be made into a diamond.

  A company in San Francisco called Gem-Mortalize takes your ashes and squashes them into a big fat shiny diamond. They even do different colours. Mama’s gonna hate it, but I don’t care. It’s my death and I’ll be a diamond if I want to. Mama can have my sparkly stone self set into a tiara and wear me to fancy parties. Or she can just hold me in her hands late at night when she’s drunk and alone and listening to John Denver, or lift me up to the sun, and revel in the light as it bounces through my coloured, crystalized facets. A new perspective when her world gets dull and flat without me. Mama, make me a diamond when I’m dead. Strong. Brilliant. Beautiful. In-de-fucking-structable. Who could say no to a dying wish like that?

  […]

  Mama comes home from work looking more exhausted than usual. Thinner, too. They’ve been running her ragged at the Gale. One week she’s on nights, the next week all days, plus staggered split shifts and overtime she won’t turn down. If she wasn’t so damn proud, a seasonal layoff would probably do her a world of good. Let her arthritic joints rest so she wouldn’t have to be marching around pretending she isn’t in agony all the time. And maybe she wouldn’t have to sit by herself every night and get just drunk enough to fall into a relatively pain-free sleep. Mama, ever the pragmatist. Even in her vices. But there’ll be no pogey for Effie Fortune. She would rather work herself to death than take the dole. And they know that about her at the Gale. So they take full advantage.