The Skin Beneath

by Nairne Holtz

  He shakes his head, then pauses. A flicker of recognition crosses his face. He likes to solve problems, crossword puzzles mostly. “I had to sort out her taxes. She never bothered to file any. According to her T4 slips, she was employed at Le Lapin Blanc.”

  The White Rabbit, where Chloe, like Alice, fell down a hole.

  “Sam, this isn’t about Chloe. This is about you.”

  “That’s not true.” Irritation pinpricks her. Will he always deflect discussion of Chloe?

  Her father’s response is to walk over to the couch and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder, which makes her realize she’s wrong. He’s not avoiding the topic of Chloe; he’s concerned for Sam. The dry warmth of his fingers is reassuring, but she shifts her shoulder out of his reach. She can’t accept his words; she has to shake them off, even as their meaning hooks into her. This is about you.

  Chapter Four

  Sam couldn’t read the numbers on the clock, but lunch had to be soon! Quiet Time, when they coloured and drew pictures, had been going on forever. After sliding out of her desk, Sam walked through a row of kids to the window. She peered out but didn’t see Chloe tromping across the parking lot. Cars were zipping in, but her sister was nowhere to be seen.

  “Sam, you need to get back into your seat right now!” Behind her glasses, Mrs. Jensen was glaring at Sam.

  Sam froze. Her teacher reminded her of an owl about to sink its talons into a mouse. If she moved, her teacher might grab her.

  “I mean it, Samantha. I’m getting tired of telling you the same thing every morning.” As Mrs. Jensen took a step towards Sam, she dashed to the safety of her desk.

  When Chloe finally arrived, Mrs. Jensen had a few words to say to her as well. “I realize picking your sister up from senior kindergarten and returning her to school on time is a big responsibility for an eleven-year-old girl, but if you’re not a little more prompt, I’m going to have a talk with your father.”

  “What a bitch,” Chloe said, as they were crossing at the lights on their way home. When they were safely across the street, Chloe extracted her hand from Sam’s slightly sticky one, which was covered in glue—the invisible glue that looked like Chap Stick and didn’t smell as nice as white glue.

  Chloe continued, “Mrs. Jensen hates kids with divorced parents. All the teachers do.”

  Sam didn’t care about her teacher. She was with Chloe, and they were going home to play Restaurant. Their father always took them out to eat at restaurants. Mom used to make their food, Chloe explained. But Mom was gone.

  In the kitchen Sam prepared their lunch, an easy assembly of cheese and meat slices on brown bread. She wore a white cap and an apron she tied around her waist, just like Dad when he barbecued during the summer. She poured two glasses of pop. Since she was the Chef, she was allowed to “spice up” their drinks. Sometimes she poured sugar into their pop; other times she added Tabasco or Worcester sauce. Today, she just sprinkled pepper and salt. Then Sam set the dining room table and served the food—she was also the Waiter.

  Chloe was the Customer. She was wearing a too-large lady’s skirt with lipstick and a purse. “Who am I?” she asked.

  Sam shook her head.

  Chloe picked up the pop, took a drink, and made a sour face. “Disgusting! Bring me something else immediately!” She leaned over to sniff the drink. “It smells awful, too!”

  Sam giggled. Chloe was so funny.

  “Do you know who I am yet?”

  Sam shook her head again. She lifted her sister’s drink from the table, ran into the kitchen with it, and poured part of it down the sink. Then she brought it back.

  “I’m Mrs. Rich Bitch, and nothing satisfies me,” Chloe said.

  Right, Sam remembered now. Chloe was also Mrs. Sick Bitch, who was elderly and had problems with inflamed joints, and Miss Movie Star, who wore sunglasses so people wouldn’t recognize her, and once she was a barking dog who insisted on eating her food off the floor. Chloe could be anyone, but she was always Sam’s sister who made Sam laugh.

  Chapter Five

  Sam sheds her life in Toronto. Withdraws a small savings bond, gives her notice to both the temp agency and her landlord. She says goodbye, not so much to people, but to the places where she hangs out. The tattoo parlour where she has put a lot of ink on her arms. Church Street, the gay ghetto, where she celebrates Pride and was once queer-bashed. She takes the streetcar west to Kensington Market, which is where she buys fair trade coffee and vintage men’s shirts. Strolling down Spadina, she squeezes by the throngs of Asian immigrants to enter the little stores that sell mangoes and coconut milk. Sam loves cooking, especially food she’s never tried before. At times she’s too adventurous, buys some hairy rambutans, then doesn’t know what to do with them. Sort of the same way she picks up girls.

  She has a drink at Ciao Edie, her favourite Toronto bar, named with vicious irony after beautiful loser Edie Sedgwick, the socialite fashion model who died at the age of twenty-eight after a lifetime of drug use, depression, anorexia, and electroshock therapy. Sunday night is women’s night at Ciao Edie. Deejay Sick plays drum ‘n’ bass in a place too small to dance but where the women dance anyway. The bar is below street level and decorated in ‘60s kitsch. Vinyl furniture and shag carpeting are accented by extravagantly tacky lamps with huge ceramic bases and red and green light bulbs. The furnishings notwithstanding, the place attracts the good-looking, the stylish, even though there’s no cover charge and no doorman unhooking a heavy rope for particular people. And despite the cool factor, Ciao Edie isn’t unfriendly. All Sam ever has to do to meet a woman is buy her a drink, and before she knows it, the girl is sitting on Sam’s lap. Pushing women out of her life is what is difficult. She seems to specialize in fag hags who morph into femmes, women who change their minds about not wanting a relationship.

  Chapter Six

  Grief was a bad guy. A monster who swallowed Sam’s hunger, a pirate who looted her sleep, an extortionist who kept demanding more, more, more. The only break in the grief invasion came in the form of disbelief, in the expectation that her sister would reappear, come back somehow. At the funeral Sam found herself storing anecdotes with the thought of sharing them later with her sister, which made no sense at all. When Chloe’s friend Tory arrived with her mother and a cluster of siblings, she fervently embraced Sam, who barely managed to return the gesture. She had never been all that crazy about Tory. During university Chloe and Tory had stopped hanging out, but prior to that they were each other’s only female friend. “The Pre-Raphaelite” was Dad’s faintly snarky nickname for Tory. When Sam asked him what he meant, he showed her paintings of pale, serious women with masses of curly hair who did, in fact, resemble Tory. Her long, dark skirts worn with a cornucopia of bedraggled scarves added to the impression of old-world-liness. For the funeral, Tory was dressed in a black dirndl skirt accessorized with a solitary black scarf.

  Tory said, “I feel so terrible for you and your father.”

  Sam didn’t know how to reply except to nod.

  “I brought you this book.” Tory thrust a paperback into Sam’s hands.

  Trying not to look ungrateful, Sam glanced at the back cover. Another grief book. This one was about the power of physical movement to help “move” a person through grief. Uh huh. Everything would be so much better if Sam took a tango class. In high school, Tory signed up for a lot of modern dance classes and was always dropping the name Isadora Duncan. Sam asked Tory if she was still studying dance.

  “I’m taking a belly dancing class for fun, but I decided not to finish my dance degree. I’m thinking of doing something more practical.” Tory’s gaze shifted over Sam’s head.

  Standing before them was James—Chloe’s high-school boyfriend. With an appropriately somber expression, he said, “Hello, Tory, Sam.”

  Without returning the greeting, Tory gave him a quick, tight look.

  Sam hadn’t seen James in years. He seemed smaller in stature. He was wearing trendy red glasses instead of contac
ts, and his hair was a natural dark brown instead of dyed. Except for the black jeans and shirt, he no longer looked like a punk musician. Was he wearing black for the funeral, or did he still wear black to be cool? Sam wore black to be cool but had acquired a new respect for the traditional use of black clothing as a declaration of mourning. It was, after all, the perfect way to let everyone know about a loss. You didn’t have to wade your way through awkward conversations, but people knew to leave you alone, to cut you some slack. Why, exactly, had widow’s weeds gone out of fashion?

  Tory spoke. “I should see how my mother and sisters are doing. Bye, Sam.”

  She left without a word to James. Sam wondered, had the two of them dated? There was definitely some lingering drama between them. Sam would have to get the whole story from Chloe. Oh right, Sam couldn’t. How could she keep forgetting?

  Sam felt a pressure against her shoulder. Even though he had never been the type to hug, James had just given her a squeeze.

  He said, “Sam, I’m so sorry. It’s awful what you must be going through. I, um, brought you some Almond Roca. I remembered you always liked it. I put it over on the table where people are putting food.”

  Sam stared at him. The old James would have said, “This sucks. I bet you feel like crap.” The old James had told her he couldn’t understand how she could eat Almond Roca: it looked like rice-covered dog turds. Sam heard herself ask James if he was still in a punk band.

  “No. I just do a little composing at home on my computer. I’m at Ryerson, studying graphic design.”

  Sam had once thought of him as a comet ready to shower the world, but his aura of notoriety seemed to have been extinguished. Perhaps he had never been larger than life. Perhaps Chloe had just convinced Sam that James was the next Sid Vicious.

  Although the months after her sister’s death seemed excruciatingly slow, Sam kept losing time. Events slipped from her memory like change from a pocket with a hole. She would forget a movie after watching it. The only part of the funeral she remembered was talking to Tory and James. She had listened to the minister speak, saw her father stand up and make a speech, but none of it stuck in her head. Only her conversations with Chloe’s friends were sufficiently absorbing for Sam to later notice neither of them had talked about their own grief. Nor did they express surprise over Chloe’s drug overdose.

  People said stupid things to Sam: “It must be getting easier.” “It’s terrible when young people get into drugs.” She wanted to snarl at them, wanted to snap back equally inappropriate comments: “Yeah, so much worse than seniors on crack.” But, of course, she didn’t. No excuse for rudeness, stiff upper lip and all that.

  People were impatient with grief. Sam understood; grief was boring, immersing yet boring. She read the grief books, which, beneath the sympathy, were just as intolerant and demanding. Grief was a process, badges to be merited, hoops to be jumped through, twelve-steps to be worked, in short— achievements. Not very helpful for her. She’d always been a bit of an underachiever.

  The only concession Sam would make was the worst moment was over. Seeing Chloe’s body had been the worst moment. Or rather, seeing her head. From the neck down she was covered with a sheet. Her face reminded Sam of a figure in a wax museum. Never before had she worn makeup so tastefully. Sister-doll, Sam kept thinking, sister-doll. She leaned over to kiss her sister’s cheek, to regard her sister’s face one last time. Sister-doll, your skin is so cold. Dad, you go in the hearse. Dad, you toss sister-doll, what’s left of her, into the crematorium. Sam couldn’t do it.

  Chapter Seven

  Someone will always tell you where an ex-lover can be found, but a dead sister isn’t as easy. All Sam has is her sister’s old address in Montreal, where she lived with a female roommate, and the name of the pub where Chloe worked.

  Sam moves to Montreal with a suitcase, a sleeping bag, and a knapsack. She leaves her furniture with her father, including the pieces she inherited from Chloe: an oak lawyer’s bookcase with glass doors and a Victorian chaise longue. Chloe, who liked antiques, had purchased them at an auction.

  Beside the river, in the Montreal neighbourhood of Verdun, Sam rents a tiny apartment on a month-to-month lease. The place is above a store. The hardwood floors are crisscrossed with gouges and tilted enough for a pen to roll, and the paint is peeling from the mouldings and wainscotting. As Dad’s boyfriend would say, the place “screams faded charm.” But the price is right: two hundred and fifty dollars plus utilities. What spare money Sam made from various jobs went into inking her arms with tattoos, buying clothes, and going out to Ciao Edie.

  She would like to rent on the Plateau, the neighbourhood on the side of the mountain where her sister had lived, but it is too expensive. According to an article in The Montreal Mirror, the free English arts weekly, artists and lower-income people are getting thrown out of their homes on the trendy Plateau because their landlords are selling their buildings to condominium developers.

  On her first day in Montreal, Sam goes to the Plateau. Walks west from St. Denis Street to St. Laurent Boulevard, the dividing line in Montreal between east and west addresses. She then heads north in the direction of her sister’s old apartment. Along the way she wanders into a few vintage clothing stores and vinyl record shops. She also stops for a beer at Miami, a bar she recalls Chloe mentioning. It’s a punk palace of decay where three people try to sell her drugs. While punks beg on the Plateau, Miami appears to be the only place where they drink. Yuppie colonization is at hand. St. Denis has a Gap and a Starbucks, and St. Laurent has fancy furniture stores and overpriced fusion restaurants serving vertically stacked entrees.

  The duplex where Chloe lived is in the north end of the Plateau. Sam rings the bell on the bottom floor. A woman with grey curly hair answers the door. “Out?”

  Even though she has taken two French courses at university, in which she received high marks, Sam doesn’t know how to answer. The nasal jabber she hears doesn’t bear much relationship to the Parisian French she learned at school. In the streets of Montreal people speak the language of tour-tiere, not Moliere.

  “Excusez-moi, est-ce que vous parley anglais?” Speaking French, Sam feels self-conscious, as if she’s wearing a long, dark fur coat, something nineteenth century and Russian. She wants to fling the coat into the gutter but can’t move her arms.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  Sam explains who she’s looking for, even though she knows this woman can’t be her sister’s former roommate— the woman is too old. Chloe hung out with her roommate, whom Sam remembers as being around the same age as her sister. Unfortunately, she can’t remember anything else her sister said about her roommate.

  “I just bought the building. There’s just me and my boyfriend now—we’re making it a cottage. I don’t know the persons who used to live here,” the current occupant tells Sam.

  Around the corner from Chloe’s old place is a funky cafe. Peering through the window, Sam sees a purple and yellow room with worn floors the colour of blackened nuts. She can imagine Chloe having coffee here. Sam goes inside. A CD of Hindi hop plays a masala of drum beats and sitar licks. Clove cigarettes perfume the air, and a chalkboard announces various vegetarian specials. This is hippy-dippy land where the citizens tend to be progressive and gentle. Sam sits down in a wooden booth, made more comfortable with the addition of silk-covered pillows. Art lines the walls— multiple portraits of a short-haired, Bambi-eyed girl stitched onto brown velvet.

  A waitress hands Sam a menu. The waitress is cute with short hair, tattoos, and low-slung jeans. Her style is boyish, but she isn’t. She seems familiar: she is the girl in the pictures on the wall.

  “Are you the artist who did the pictures?” Sam gestures around the room.

  The waitress uses her tongue to spin her lip piercing around. “Do you like them?”

  “They’re great,” Sam lies.

  “They’re all for sale.” Her eyes flick from Sam’s face to her clothes. Sam isn’t sure if she’s being c
hecked out or, more likely, having the cost of her wardrobe calculated to see if she has potential as a patron of the arts.

  Sam hands the menu back. “I’ll just have some mint tea.”

  The waitress tilts her head to the side. “Nothing else?”

  “Can you tell me if this place has been around long?”

  “A little over a year.”

  A year. Chloe moved to Montreal from Toronto more than six years ago, lived on the Plateau for almost two years during 1994 and 1995. But there are few traces of Chloe or of the outre charm that drew her there in the now-gentrified neighbourhood. Sam sets splayed fingers on the striped brown and orange Latin American blanket being used as a tablecloth. She grinds her hands downwards in frustration, wishing she could leave. Instead she waits for her tea to arrive, drinks a cup, and leaves the waitress a too-generous tip.

  Chapter Eight

  During the Christmas of 1994 Chloe came back from Montreal to visit Sam and her father for a week. Chloe had been living in Montreal for nearly a year and looked completely different. Her goth aesthetic had been restyled into grunge, and she gave Sam a copy of Hole’s Live Through This. Dad told Chloe, “You look like you’re going camping.” She was wearing a toque indoors, had stopped dyeing her long hair black, and was twisting the ends of it into dreads. She was also wearing bright colours, which Sam hadn’t seen her sister do since she was a kid: flared red and purple cords, woven bracelets, and tight white T-shirts layered over long-sleeved shirts. But it wasn’t Chloe’s new sloppy cool that made her seem so changed. It was something else altogether—Chloe was happy. It was funny because, to Sam, it was the year of the dead: Kurt Cobain killed himself in the spring, and hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in Rwanda over the summer, but Chloe was light of heart. Was it the pot she smoked every afternoon when Sam got back from school? Sam was in grade thirteen, her final year. Grade twelve had been better, or more exciting anyway, but whatever, she would be done soon.