Three Years with the Rat

by Jay Hosking

I laughed again, and this time it felt a little better. “Don’t start that sample size shit again.”

  “I’ve got good reasons to live,” he said. “Who else is going to take care of the rats? And then there’s honouring the dead, hence all the wood and tools. I’d like to build her something. Coffee? I’d rather use it up than throw it away.”

  I moved toward the apartment door. “No. I hate that shit. Anyway, I’m going to go.”

  His words lingered in the air. Honouring the dead.

  “Take care, all right?” he said.

  “Sure. Look, you take care.”

  As I made my way down the stairs to the front entrance of the building, hiking up my sagging jeans and pulling down my T-shirt, he shouted to me. “You’re starting to look very Torontonian, by the way.”

  I opened the entrance door, looked back, patted my stubble. “Yeah, yeah. Temporary lapse in good judgement.”

  —

  The rain had started but it was light. My phone was sitting on the dashboard of my car, three missed calls, all from Nicole. I would catch hell. I didn’t call her back, just flipped the phone closed and set it on the dash again.

  On the ride home, watching my wipers streak the windshield, something began to unsettle me. I replayed my conversation with John, dug at the corners of it, looking for what wasn’t right.

  I kept going back to when he said, about Grace, I wish I had something to tell you. I wish I knew anything that would help you.

  There was something in it, not a lie exactly but not the truth. He had faltered. He knew something about Grace but he didn’t think it would help me. I felt my cheeks getting hot, a nagging itch along my spine. Was he keeping something from me, his idiot friend? Why had I never thought of this before? Was I imagining things? Why didn’t I ever press people harder? I pushed my teeth together and ran my dry tongue along the roof of my mouth.

  I missed another call while driving but caught the last one just after I’d parked.

  “What the hell is your problem?” Nicole said over the line.

  I found the basement apartment empty, the bed unmade. I crawled under the sheets and breathed deeply. The pillows smelled of oranges. I slept late into the day and made peace with Nicole when I saw her later.

  2006

  I’D GOTTEN up early and left from just west of Winnipeg, the middle of my trip. I’d already covered about two thousand kilometres from Vancouver but had another two thousand before I reached the city. No matter how old I was, no matter where I was living, there was only one place I thought of as “the city.” Crossing from Manitoba into Ontario, from endless existential flatlands into the stubborn little hills and gnarled trees of my home province, I felt something turn over in me. I drove all through the day, adding to the pile of plastic wrappers in the backseat. The scenery was tight ditches, blasted rock walls, tiny twists of water and two vast lakes, evergreens and birch shimmering with colour, power lines that went on forever. That night I ordered french fries from a Chinese restaurant near the highway, dipping them in sweet and sour sauce squeezed from a plastic packet onto a beige napkin.

  I got on the road again and drove all through the night, shouting along with the stereo. Grace knew that my old car had no auxiliary input for mp3 players so she’d mailed me a few CDs for my trip. I became familiar with each song without knowing any of the bands. One song in particular got a lot of repetition, and I sang along with its hoarse male vocals:

  There’s no fine future waiting

  In the depths of the freshwater seas.

  I’ll find my oblivion

  In the place where the water meets the trees.

  I drove until the sky went deep green and watched as the sun and the stars shared the horizon for half an hour. I drove knowing every cliché of driving across the country, every wicked word I would hear from Grace, but I drove anyway. I stopped only for coffee, tortilla chips, gasoline, and to take a piss. I drove until my skin was covered by a layer of grime, until my eyes were rotten and untrustworthy, until finally I was passing signs with names of cities where I had visited before. I weaved between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe, past Barrie, and into endless urban sprawl. Other than the road signs, there was no way to tell where the suburbs ended and the municipality began. I took the Don Valley Parkway into the heart of the city and fought my way onto Bloor.

  By then I had been awake for more than a day, driving for almost all of it. I was twenty-four years old when I moved to Toronto.

  —

  “Hello?”

  “Grace.”

  “Are you driving and talking on the phone at the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re an idiot. You’re going to kill somebody.”

  “Grace, where am I going?”

  “Bloor and Bathurst. Where are you?”

  “Bloor Street. And…Dufferin?”

  “You missed it. Turn around and park when you see Bathurst. And for Christ’s sake, don’t drive and talk on y—”

  “Bye bye, now.”

  Click.

  —

  Grace was the success story of our family, and also the storm that hung over my parents’ heads. She had a three-year head start on me in both regards.

  When she was seven and I was four, Grace was a natural swimmer, a promising piano student, knew her multiplication tables up to thirteen, and would battle with my parents over every detail of her life. I, on the other hand, would occasionally use the side of a crayon to hash crude circles onto a piece of construction paper, and was generally referred to as a “sunny” kid.

  When she was ten and I was seven, Grace won first prize in the provincial speaking competition for a persuasive piece on greenhouse gases, in which she made a joke of my mother always calling it “global warning.” Tremendous academic success for her was always paired with tremendous family conflict. I quit swimming after a year, piano after a week, and I still can’t multiply by thirteen, but my parents were too wrapped up in their own arguing, and in Grace’s defiance, to worry about it. My only academic aptitude was, and continues to be, reading, although Grace’s love of biology was enough to pique my interest for a brief time.

  When she was thirteen and I was ten, Grace’s fighting with our parents came to a head. She turned her back on them, on the status quo, and even on her love of science. Bandages started to appear on her arms and thighs, and trips to the hospital became normal for her and my parents. I was kept insulated from the trouble, as if her self-harm was contagious, but from my room I could often hear my parents shouting, demanding to know why Grace was doing this to herself, to them. Grace gave up gender norms, shaved her head, and wore sports bras instead of wired cups. And after the screaming period was over, she didn’t speak to any of us, although most afternoons she still sat with me, quietly correcting my homework before my parents came home and broke us up. Some nights I would wake and find her sleeping beside me, on top of the blankets.

  When she was sixteen and I was thirteen, Grace had bounced back. She re-grew her hair, started wearing dresses, intellectually dominated her classes, and showed nothing but amused disinterest in boys her age. She was considered the most attractive, unattainable girl in her high school. There were still occasional blow-ups, but Grace and my parents now mostly ignored each other. My only accomplishment for that year was discovering our dad’s Playboy collection, stashed in a box under the couch where my father now slept most nights. For my birthday that year, Grace bought me a 1950s edition of Catcher in the Rye and lovingly threw out my sweatpants.

  When she was nineteen and I was sixteen, Grace told me our parents’ divorce had been coming for a long time. My father moved to the suburbs west of Toronto and I stayed with my mother in the suburbs to the east. I got my first A in high school that year, in English. Not one to be outdone, Grace accepted a full scholarship for the University of Toronto. And adding insult to injury, I had to live with guys in grade eleven and twelve telling me “your sister is hot.” Before she left that year, she
surprised me by asking me to stop fighting with our parents.

  Grace may have overshadowed my every accomplishment but she was my role model, proof that our family was capable of greatness, even if it was troubled. Her departure from my day-to-day life was painful but it never lessened my loyalty to her, never diminished the memory of being her teammate throughout the progressively more difficult years of our childhood.

  After she left for university, I got only snatches of information from her. Dean’s list. Double major. Invited speaker. Contributing author. I hadn’t even known she was an academic writer. And then my mother rejoicing Grace is dating a boy, which carried undertones of Grace isn’t a lesbian with it. Then Grace is dating an Oriental boy, which had its own undertones, overtones. By then I had bounced to my dad’s new house in hopes of completing high school and getting away from my mom.

  Although I was only an hour away from Grace by car, the psychological distance from Toronto to its suburbs is so enormous that it might as well have been the other side of the continent. In 2002 I moved to Vancouver, and then it really was the other side of the continent. It wasn’t until 2006, eight years after she went to university, that we found ourselves in the same city again.

  —

  The sky was white-hot and I started sweating the moment I got out of my car. Even on the quieter side street and in the shade of old trees, the air was thick, oppressive, and sticky, and the simple act of stretching sent beads of perspiration gliding down my ribs. I was damp when I approached the white moving van, its contents mostly emptied by that time, and it seemed as though John and Grace’s friends were no better off in the heat.

  To my eyes, the three friends looked like misfits, each one a different variety of circus geek. One was a gaunt giant boy in stripes and slacks, not jeans, his face a little fishy but still handsome enough. The girl was of no discernible ethnocultural background, dark-brown hair and eyes and skin, and tightly bound in denim from top to bottom. And half-bent in the trailer of the moving van was the last guy, his eyes hidden by aviator sunglasses, the sleeves of his shirt cut off, his jeans hanging low and exposing the crack of his ass.

  He was the one who noticed me. He stood, stared, and when he finally spoke, his voice rattled like a stone in a can. “Fuck me, you look just like Grace.”

  All three turned their attention my way, parsing me into heritable little bits.

  “It’s just his eyes,” the girl said. “You ever seen Grace smiling all goofy like that? This kid’s the sweet one in his family.”

  She singlehandedly hauled a sofa chair out of the van and walked away. I wondered how she could bend in jeans that tight.

  The guy in the sleeveless shirt jumped out of the van, brushed some dirt off his bare shoulder, and extended a hand.

  “You’re the deadbeat brother, then?” he asked, smiling.

  “The one and only,” I told him. I put my hand into his and shook.

  “I’m the deadbeat friend. Brian.” His handshake was strong, welcoming. He turned to the tall guy. “C’mere, Steve, you mopey motherfucker.”

  Steve walked like a gazelle and his enormous hand was soft and timid. “Oh, hey. Sorry, I’m just kind of awkward with this stuff.”

  The girl had already taken the sofa around the corner to the apartment and come back. She put her hand gently on Steve’s chest, a gesture of affection, and pushed him out of the way. She turned to me. “Nice to finally meet the little brother. You just as much a pain in the ass as big sister?”

  “Just as much,” I deadpanned, “but in different ways. And you are?”

  “Lee. Not at all a pain in the ass.” She smiled, nodded, and grabbed a box from the van. Steve grabbed a basket and followed her like a love-struck puppy.

  I turned to Brian and asked jokingly, “Where’s your special someone?”

  “Hah! Why the hell would I want that?” He looked over the tops of his mirrored sunglasses at me. Then he laughed again and patted my chest with the back of his hand. “It’s hot as balls out here, eh?”

  Neither of the boys was clean-shaven and Lee wore no make-up. They weren’t sporty or professional, they weren’t overly polite or phony, they had no pretense about their adulthood. I was beginning to feel like I was in Toronto.

  Brian led me onto Bloor Street, where I took in its noise and bustle and general sense of excitement for the first time, bumper-to-bumper traffic with jaywalkers threading between, the thrum of the record store across the street, pedestrians crowding the sidewalks. The doorway to the apartment was between two packed sushi restaurants, and I followed him up the narrow steps and into the apartment for the first time. My eyes were bleary and tired and they struggled to adjust to the indoor light. I rubbed them with my knuckles, the orbits making a dry clicking sound with every rotation, until I could see again. In comparison to my student dormitory in Vancouver, Grace’s place was spacious and old. The walls bulged a little and the paint was textured with layers of history underneath.

  I found Grace and John in the master bedroom, leaning on each other and looking out the open window onto the street below. Grace was chewing on her thumb, working at the nail.

  “Getting your slaves to do all the work for you?” I asked.

  John turned and immediately smiled. I tried to bump shoulders with him, a man hug, but instead he embraced me. I patted his back and it was one big knot of muscle, not overly large but taut and inflexible. The man was all meat and it made me feel puny.

  “It’s good to see you again,” he said. We had met once before.

  “You too, John.” I wasn’t comfortable with such a long, unabashed hug from a man. I was definitely feeling like I was in Toronto.

  Grace was clearly amused with my awkwardness.

  “I’ll let you two catch up,” John said. He released me from the vise of his arms and kissed the top of Grace’s head before he left the room.

  There was a quiet moment. My sister and I hadn’t shared a completely private conversation since we were teenagers. She eyed me cautiously from a few feet away, as though she was trying to make a decision. Her hair was long and messy and pinned with a peacock feather, and she wore dark mascara that accentuated the green of her eyes. Layers were her style these days: scarf, tank top, cardigan, necklaces upon necklaces, rolled-up jeans, small black shoes.

  “Aren’t you hot?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you ashamed?” Her nervous grin started to emerge.

  “Of what?”

  “Dropping out. Again.”

  “Oh,” I said. “No. I’m getting used to it.”

  “Three strikes and you’re out.”

  “Or third time’s a charm. I was done with Vancouver, anyway.”

  Her eyes got bigger. “So does that mean the vagabond is going to stick around?”

  I shrugged. “Thought I might find a place here, work, think about what the fuck I’m doing with my life.”

  Her grin was wide now. She stepped forward as if she was going to hug me. Then she hammered my shoulder with her fist. She stung the bone and I winced.

  “That’s great!” she said. “I’m glad your little bullshit Kerouac phase is over.”

  “Don’t give me too much credit,” I told her. “You at least need aspirations to have a phase.”

  She showed me around the apartment, described her plans for the space, how she would paint, where the furniture would go. John and the friends steadily came up and down the building’s stairs and stacked boxes in the living room. Waves of tiredness came over me and passed. Grace looked a little older but happy enough.

  “What are you going to do with the second bedroom?” I asked her. After my dorm life, it was hard to imagine what people would do with so much room.

  “We’ve got some ideas,” she said.

  Before she could say more, there was a crash on the stairs. Grace flinched and ran to the front door.

  “Jesus Christ, be careful with that!” she shouted down the stairs.

  I came up behind her and looked ove
r her shoulder. Steve and Lee had been carrying an enormous mirror with a comforter wrapped around it. Steve was at the top of the steps and fumbling to get a grip on the blanket. He looked confused and apologetic. And while Lee’s face was half-hidden behind the mirror, she was clearly irritated with my sister’s outburst.

  “Just lost my grip on it,” Steve said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Grace backpedalled. “You were only helping.”

  “What the hell’s the hold-up?” Brian cackled from the bottom of the stairs.

  They took the mirror into the second bedroom and set it in the corner. Grace removed the blanket and searched around the frame for damage. There was a small crack along the bottom edge of the frame but the glass was intact.

  “I didn’t mean to snap at you, Steve,” she said. She bit at her thumb again.

  Lee gave a small nod.

  Brian popped his head into the door frame and poked a thumb in the direction of the living room. “Trouble’s here.”

  A woman’s voice, unfamiliar and deep, said, “Shut up, Brian. Sorry I’m late, Grace.”

  Everyone else went to greet the new friend. I was tired so I stayed where I was, crouched near the mirror. In its reflection my eyes were ringed with red and my clean shave was almost gone. I yawned, scratched the back of my head, slapped my cheeks. I was fading.

  “I hear you’re the deadbeat brother,” the new voice said.

  And that was how I met Nicole: curled up near the mirror while she stood in the doorway. She was long, slender, and nearly as tall as me. Her hair was naturally bright orange, a colour I would never call red, and it framed the smooth skin of her cheekbones. She wore a high-necked sleeveless navy dress that stopped above her lovely knees and hugged her hips and waist. The belt of her dress and her shoes were bright white and she wore a white kerchief around her neck. Her eyes, hazel-coloured and almond-shaped, were narrowed and amused. She wore red lipstick and only a hint of a smile.

  Brian poked his head into the door frame and said, “Trouble, meet Danger.”

  —

  I don’t remember much of unpacking the rest of the van, only that it was uninteresting work.