“Is that you, Kimberly?” he said.
“No,” she said. “It’s Violet.” Violet was her second name. He asked what he could do for her, and she touched the ellipsis her lamp had spawned on the chrome paperweight and said, “A friend of mine took one of your classes, and, um, she told me about it.”
“Okay.”
“So . . .” This was impossible, excruciating. “So I was phoning to see if you, if you teach a Saturday class.”
“I do. I teach a beginning-level hatha at ten and an intermediate at two thirty.”
“Two thirty,” she said.
“For your first time we ask that you arrive early. Two fifteen.”
“Two fifteen.”
“What are you doing right now, Violet?”
What was Rose doing? She was robotically repeating the ends of his sentences.
“We’re having a party, here at the center,” he said. “It’s just getting under way. You’re welcome—”
Rose threw down the phone.
Silent explosions discharged in her head. It was barely conceivable that on her own, before Harriet, she had heard about the yoga center and Marsh and had brought this knowledge to the episodes. But how did she know about the party? How could she have brought that to an episode?
“Please hang up and try your call again.”
“What?” she said, terrified.
“Please hang up. This is a recording.”
“Okay, it’s okay,” she said. She retrieved the phone and jabbed end. She wasn’t losing her mind. Knowing more than you could possibly know wasn’t insanity, it was telepathy.
On the windowsill a wet pigeon dipped its head and examined her with an orange eye. The episodes were not some exotic form of dream life, they were actually happening. Every time she thought she was entering Harriet, she really was. She looked closely at her hands and arms. Surely her body didn’t travel as well, at such speed, returning intact. The sense of her flesh shrinking, surely she only imagined it.
She got out her mirror again, took off her glasses, and examined her face closely for signs of change, of damage. The harder she looked the more she longed to see Harriet’s face, to confirm her existence, as she’d just confirmed Marsh’s.
She told Fiona and Lloyd that she was going to meet her friend Robin for a drink. Robin and her husband were having problems, she said. She promised to be back before the end of the movie.
She took the car. Pink sky glazed the puddles. She wondered at her ability to distinguish Harriet’s emotions from her own and figured it must be like distinguishing fact from conjecture, or present circumstances from memory. She had the pulled-thread sensation beneath her skin.
The yoga center was in a converted factory on Carlaw Avenue. A professionally painted sign said, FRUIT OF LIFE YOGA CENTER—CLASSES, THAI MASSAGE, TEACHER TRAINING, AND STUDIOS. A handwritten sign said, Party Upstairs.
Rose went downstairs.
That the hallway was the one from her last episode made her head swim. She reached the changing room and pushed the door’s metal plate.
The sinks seemed lower, and it took her a moment to understand that this was because she was a good six inches taller than Harriet. She dug in her purse, found a quarter, and opened locker number eight. The pink padded hanger was there, the hanger that Harriet had touched. She pressed it to her pounding heart, then shoved it as far as it would go into her purse and hung the purse on the hook. The key she put in her pocket.
Above the brawl of voices they were playing panpipe music. It drew her hypnotically up the stairs, along another hallway, into a packed room.
She located Marsh among a crowd of young men to the guffawing amusement of whom he was demonstrating robotic dance moves. There he was. Not a dream, not a vision. He had changed into a shiny red shirt, blue jeans, and a belt with a silver buckle the size of a hamburger patty. A cowboy-disco look, except he still wore his rubber sandals.
She searched for Harriet. A young woman with a buzz cut smiled at her invitingly, and although Rose kept searching, the woman inched over and snaked an arm around her waist. “Don’t be sad,” she pouted.
“I’m not sad,” Rose said.
“What’s your name?”
“Violet.”
“No,” the woman said, “way.” She withdrew her arm. “I’m Violet.”
“We’ve got a regular flower show going on,” quipped a guy to Rose’s left.
“Would you happen to know someone named Harriet Smith?” Rose asked.
Violet shook her head.
“I know a locksmith,” said the funny guy.
“Thanks anyway,” Rose said and burrowed into the room, glad of her height. The music was now “Back in the U.S.S.R.” People were dancing. A vision came to her of Harriet and David necking, and she was wounded, not by jealousy but by the far more absurd feeling of abandonment: the two of them going ahead without her. She lost Marsh, then found him again at the buffet table. He was with a woman pushing a walker. The room seemed to tilt in their direction.
“My stuffed mushrooms,” the woman was saying.
“Is that goat cheese?” Marsh asked.
“Herb-and-garlic. Try one.”
“I intend to try many.”
“Well, don’t wait forever. They go fast.” The woman moved her walker farther along. “My spring rolls.”
“Let’s put those near the front,” said Marsh. He reached for the plate, and Rose slipped in behind him.
“My salsa pockets,” said the woman.
“They look delicious,” Rose found the wherewithal to say.
“Try one,” said the woman. She scooped up the biggest, set it on a napkin, and passed it to Marsh, who went to pass it to Rose. But at his touch they both got a shock so powerful he dropped it.
“Bugger,” he said. It had landed on his sandal. “Sorry, Helen.”
“Nonsense,” said the woman.
“It’s my fault,” said Rose. She had a giddy, euphoric feeling. “I gave you a shock.”
“You gave each other a shock,” said Helen. “I heard it.” She shoved napkins at Marsh. “All that lightning must be electrifying the air.”
From his crouch Marsh smiled at Rose. “Are you burnt to a cinder?”
She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
People were squeezing by, and once he was standing, he put his hand on her shoulder to encourage her to step aside. No shock this time, only that penetrating warmth she remembered from when he put his hand on Harriet’s shoulder. “Where’s the recycling?” he asked, looking around.
“Here,” said Helen. She snatched the napkins and poked them into a plastic bag that hung from the walker’s crossbar. To Rose she said, “Take another one. They go fast.” She thumped her walker in a semicircle. “I need to use the facilities,” she announced. Off she went onto the dance floor, straight through dancing couples.
“Proof that angels live among us,” Marsh said, and Rose, who’d been on the verge of laughing again, altered her expression. “Now you,” Marsh said, clasping his hands. “You need a plate.”
“That’s okay,” Rose said. “I’m not really hungry.”
“Something to drink? We have twenty varieties of juice. Apple, banana-grape, blueberry.” He was listing them on his fingers. “I’m Marsh, by the way.”
“Rose,” she said, to disassociate herself from the dimwit he’d spoken to on the phone.
“Cranberry, cranberry-raspberry. I have to go alphabetically.”
I saw you in my mind, Rose rehearsed. An hour ago. You were teaching a yoga class. You had on a white T-shirt and navy track pants. His smile would waver but courteously hold. As evidence she would recite phrases from his and Harriet’s conversation. He would assume she had eavesdropped. “I’m good, thanks,” she said.
He studied her. He stroked his jaw. He had a repertoire of convivial poses. “I’m trying to remember where I’ve seen you. It wasn’t in a class.”
He might have spotted her at the Regal, but sh
e preferred to think she carried a trace of Harriet. Suppressed laughter convulsed her chest. Why was it all so hilarious? She turned her attention to the dancers and craned to see Harriet among them. For yoga types drinking fruit juice, they were a rambunctious bunch.
“You’ve lost somebody,” he said.
“I’m looking for somebody.”
“Perhaps I can help you.”
“Harriet Smith.”
“Harriet,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “She isn’t here. She couldn’t make it.”
“Oh,” she said, sobered.
“Are you a friend of hers?”
“A friend of a friend,” she said and instantly regretted it. Why would a friend of a friend imagine Harriet might be here, when only an hour ago Harriet had still been making up her mind?
But either the question didn’t occur to Marsh, or he chose not to pursue it. He took his glasses off and twisted the tape that held the arm in place. “I should buy one of those miniature repair kits,” he said.
He sounded frustrated, lovelorn. Out of the ruins of Rose’s own hope, a pain for him moved her to say, “She’s missing an awesome party.”
He put the glasses on. “She is, isn’t she?” he said, brightening.
Rose suspected that David and Harriet were still together. Or maybe David had left, and Harriet was alone and unhappy. Rose’s need to see her rebounded with sickening force.
“Would you like to risk mutual combustion?” Marsh said.
“Pardon?” she said.
“Shall we dance?”
“Oh, okay. Sure.”
The music was “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” He steered her through a number of fancy turns, and she took a breath and said, “You wouldn’t happen to know Harriet’s address, would you?”
He leaned back to see her face. “Why do you ask?”
“I have a manuscript I’m supposed to give her.” She winced apologetically. “I know, it’s the last thing an editor wants at a party, but I promised I’d try to pass it along.”
“I can give it to her.” Their dancing had dwindled to swaying back and forth. “I’ll be seeing her soon.”
Rose freed her hands. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” had segued to “Chain of Fools,” and women were strutting onto the dance floor. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’m driving, so I could just as easily stick it in her mailbox. If she doesn’t live in Scarborough or somewhere.”
“Not that far away. She moved a few weeks ago.”
“Oh, really? Where to?”
“The west end,” he said, with a smile for a woman who was finger-snapping her way over.
“This is our song!” the woman cried.
He let himself be tugged by his belt buckle. “I’m sure if you drop it by her office, it’ll get to her,” he called to Rose.
Right up until he said “the west end,” she’d felt trusted. She should have strung the conversation out, talked about neighborhoods and streets, only gradually circling in on a specific area. She looked at her watch. Five after ten. She escaped the party and hurried to the changing room for her purse. She couldn’t get the hanger any farther in, so she concealed it by holding the purse under her arm, the hanger’s silk padding cool and soft against her bare skin.
There was a sheet of fog some fifteen feet off the ground. It made for such a convincing impression of a low ceiling that everyone drove cautiously. The west end covered a lot of ground, but even so, she was tempted to turn west in the hopes of picking up a psychic charge. Like those people who cruised around searching for free Wi-Fi.
She fingered a cigarette from her pack. She was shivering and sweating, feverish. You’re in the middle of a miracle, she thought. This is how a miracle feels.
Who could she tell? Not Victor. Worse than challenging her sanity, he would advance his “You’ve got a lot on your plate” theory, which, frankly, attacked her sanity by implying that, given enough stress, she competed with her mother to see who could manufacture the most elaborate delusion.
Her poor mother. Memory by memory Fiona was losing herself, while she, in the most concrete way possible, was finding another self.
FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2005
She dreamed she was a young girl among bad-tempered people who were her family, although she didn’t recognize anybody. “Hit her, someone,” squawked the grandmother when Rose wept about being served a fish with the head still on.
She woke up and saw the pink padded hanger on her bedside table. All over again she was awestruck. She felt materially altered, lighter, her extremities colder, her heart rate faster, as if while she’d been sunk in normal sleep her entire cellular structure had reconfigured. She put her glasses on, and the fact of the miracle beamed from her dresser and bookcase. They knew, these things. Her Sony clock radio, conduit to voices and frequencies, certainly knew. She dialed around for a top-of-the-hour weather report.
Victor’s forecast kept changing. Late last night he’d said the storm would arrive closer to three. This was during their bedtime phone call, in the aftermath of an argument they’d had, and not entirely resolved, about him taking it upon himself to research Lloyd’s prison record.
“The Weather Network is saying between one and two,” she’d said, still angry apparently, since it pleased her to contradict him.
“They’re wrong,” he said. “Are you worried about a migraine?”
“Mom does her shopping at three. I’m worried about her driving in a downpour.”
“She shouldn’t be driving, period.”
“She’s fine when she’s driving, she doesn’t have strokes when she’s driving,” Rose said testily, understanding that this was the case only so far, but she didn’t like him ruling on her mother’s faculties.
680 News was now calling for the storm to hit sometime after twelve. Where they and Victor were in agreement was with the probability of the humid air mass hanging around until the middle of next week.
And then what? Would the episodes be over, or was the trigger simply a thunderstorm, any thunderstorm from any air mass? In which case Rose would enter Harriet ten, fifteen, twenty times a year until one of them died. Right now the episodes were addictive, but the prospect of them never ending, of her entire life being split between two worlds, was terrifying. Don’t think too far ahead, she told herself. One thunderstorm, one day at a time. She went to the window and opened the drapes.
Fiona was out there, kneeling on her cushion, weeding the garden. Rose tapped the pane, only to say good morning, but Fiona stood and walked over, a grim cast to her face.
Rose cranked the window open. “You’re up early,” she said. Warm, humid air poured in.
“Get the binoculars,” Fiona muttered.
“What?”
“He’s spying on me.”
Rose needed a second to realize. “Mom,” she said sinkingly, “he’s inside.”
“He’s been peeking through the living room drapes. Get the binoculars, you’ll see.” She glanced over her shoulder. In the same moment Charles came out onto the porch, and she cringed back around and said, “Is he looking?”
“No.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s going to the sofa. He’s sitting down.” For the first time since the heat wave he wasn’t wearing a suit jacket. He had on a vest, though, and a long-sleeved shirt and a tie. “Now he’s getting a cigarette. Okay, now he’s looking.” She waved.
“Don’t wave,” Fiona hissed.
Charles raised his hand.
“Did he see you?”
“Yep.” In a gust of fellow feeling she added, “He comes out to smoke.”
“They have a perfectly nice patio.”
“You can weed later.”
Fiona’s jaw hardened. “I weed in the morning.” She strode to the cushion, elbows working.
Rose showered and dressed and fixed herself a crash-diet breakfast of black coffee and muesli with skim milk. To burn off even that, she planned on walking to the theater. She put the hanger in her briefca
se.
High cirrus clouds were pushing in when she left the house, and Fiona had progressed to digging moss from between the paving stones, the very moss it had taken her years to grow.
Victor was right, Rose thought. Her mother shouldn’t be driving. “Mom,” she said, “let’s do the grocery shopping together.”
Fiona pitched a clump of moss into the bucket. “You know, it’s not my business if you’re having an affair,” she said.
A pulse started up in Rose’s throat. “What are you talking about?”
“Is he looking?”
“He’s”—Rose squinted—“asleep.”
Fiona turned her head cautiously. “He’s pretending. He does that.”
“Why would you think I’m having an affair?”
“He’s watching me under his eyelids.”
“When would I have time for an affair?” Rose persisted. “Who would I have one with?”
“I just want you to know, I don’t blame you,” Fiona said primly. “I’m sure Victor is no bargain in the bedroom.”
Rose gave up. “I’ll be back before three,” she said. “You’ll wait, right?”
“For what?” Fiona looked at her.
“For me to go shopping with you.”
“You want to go shopping?”
“Yes.”
“Well.” A sigh. “Don’t be late then.”
As soon as she turned the corner, she lit a cigarette. She couldn’t get over her mother’s acuity. If kissing David with Harriet’s lips didn’t qualify as an affair, in terms of pleasure it felt like nothing less. From the shreds of her mother’s disintegrating brain, new networks must be forming. Freak networks, telepathic transmitters.
She cut through the park. On this holiday Friday the playground area was crowded, and she didn’t notice the little boy toddling toward her until they almost collided.
“Dat!” he yelled and pointed at her stomach. He wore only a diaper.
Rose held her cigarette out of harm’s way. “Where’s your mommy?”
Extreme expressions vied for his face. “Dat!” he yelled again, stabbing his finger, and a man—the father, presumably—caught him and swung him off the path. The boy wriggled to keep Rose in sight.
Little Sister Page 7
