Little Sister

by Barbara Gowdy

“There’s nothing in it.”

  “That can’t be,” Fiona said. She got up and left the room. Coming back, she made for the fridge. “Sometimes I put things in the freezer,” she muttered.

  Rose stood with her hands on her hips. She was remembering Lloyd’s “How high?” when she’d said she gambled online. His “No rush.” She found his cell number on the bulletin board. “Was Lloyd still here when you opened the safe?” she asked her mother.

  “Why? Who are you calling?”

  “Lloyd.” She got a rapid busy signal and hung up. “He robbed us. Thank God we’re insured.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He suddenly comes down with a migraine. He leaves and doesn’t tell me. His phone isn’t working.”

  “Lloyd would never rob us,” Fiona said, appalled.

  “The safe is empty.”

  “That’s me.” Fiona rapped her chest. “I did it.”

  “You took everything out of the safe?”

  “I did.”

  “Where did you put it? Not in here.”

  Fiona opened the oven.

  “I’m calling the police,” Rose said.

  “The police!”

  “Mom, we’ve been robbed.”

  Fiona snatched the receiver and slammed it in the cradle. “We are not calling the police,” she said with quavering ferocity. “We’ve called the police on an innocent man before.”

  Did she mean Gordon? Well, who else?

  “I might have thrown everything out,” Fiona said, composing herself. It was possible that she hadn’t intended the reference to be so blunt, or even to let it slip. “Let’s look.”

  They looked in the recycling bins. They looked in the snack bar and ticket booth. They switched on the houselights, and while Fiona poked around backstage among the old projectors and lobby chairs and film canisters and sheaves of mailing tubes with their vintage movie posters that Rose kept meaning to sell on eBay, Rose shined a flashlight under the seats. She did the same in the balcony. She searched the washrooms. She searched her office and the projection booth. All she’d done all day was search. This time she was going through the motions so that later she’d be able to remind Fiona that they’d looked everywhere. She called Lloyd’s number again and got the rapid busy signal. She joined Fiona backstage and beamed her light down tunnels of rolled carpeting. By now Lloyd would be over the border. Rose imagined him in a wrecked car (he had only so much ready cash) on his way to Mexico (his skull tattoos), but against her mother’s heroic exertions she said nothing. She would miss the Rolex.

  A moment came when Fiona sank onto one of the chairs and kicked off her pumps. “If only I could remember what I was thinking,” she said.

  “You’ll remember in the morning,” Rose said, humoring her. Lloyd’s absence tomorrow would speak for itself.

  “Wait,” Fiona said. She stood and walked determinedly in her stocking feet to the front of the screen.

  Rose followed. “Mom,” she groaned, “let’s call it a night.”

  “Hold your horses,” Fiona said. She descended the shallow steps to the orchestra pit and marched to the shelf beneath the stage.

  “I looked there,” Rose said.

  But Fiona reached way in.

  “I found it,” she said, tense with achievement. She loosened the string and felt inside. “Everything’s here.” She gave the purse to Rose and went over to the stairs and sat. “And you thought it was Lloyd.”

  Rose opened and shut the jewelry cases. “Don’t tell him,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t tell him. Don’t you tell him.”

  On the short drive to the house Fiona slept. Rose slowed for speed bumps and came to gradual stops. Never again would she trust Fiona with the cash purse, that was over. She would change the combination. She would wear the Rolex, and when she wasn’t wearing it, she would hide it in her dresser drawer. What else? Unplug the stoves, they never used them anyway. Confiscate Fiona’s car keys.

  At home she told Fiona that she was having an early breakfast with their accountant. “I’ll put your pills out,” she said. “Sleep tight.”

  Rose herself was too wound up to sleep. She opened a bottle of wine and went into the living room to watch the Weather Network. Thundershowers at eleven tomorrow, an eighty percent chance as opposed to the ninety percent she’d grown accustomed to. A forty percent chance on Tuesday, twenty percent Wednesday. Clear on Thursday.

  So, seventy-two hours at the outside, and then there would be an interval of however many days, weeks, months as she waited to learn from the next band of storms whether or not the episodes were over. They had better be over. All her berserk racing from one corner of the city to the other would kill her. It had almost killed her today. Her limbs began to tremble, and she drained her glass. I hope you’re asleep, she said to Harriet, after what you put us through.

  She returned to the kitchen, poured more wine, and drank it down. She rummaged through her purse and briefcase. Where were her cigarettes?

  She walked. The car was low on gas, and you could get to the theater almost as quickly on foot. She didn’t worry that Fiona would start wandering before daybreak. It had never happened. She brooded over Harriet’s baby. Lately, every faint ticking noise—the car engine cooling, the dishwasher starting—was the baby’s heartbeat.

  In the lobby she turned on the wall sconces. And nearly tripped over a folded sleeping bag and two lumpy pillows. The brothers was her first thought.

  It wasn’t them, although they were smoking with Lloyd outside the kitchen door. The tall one spotted her and raised his hand.

  Lloyd glanced around. “Hey, Rose,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  The brothers slipped away like cats.

  “I left my cigarettes upstairs,” she said. It was jarring to see him after how close she’d come to calling the police. He offered his cigarette. “Thanks,” she said and took a puff.

  “Keep it,” he said.

  A brown leather carryall and his tobacco pouch were on the table. “Is that your sleeping bag in the lobby?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sorry. My cell died, or I’d have checked if I could crash here, just for the night. I get home, and the people in the apartment above me are having a monster blowout.”

  “Where’s your daughter?”

  “With her mother.” He saw Rose looking at the bottle of Crown Royal on the counter. “Fiona probably told you, I came down with a migraine.”

  “How is it?”

  “The pills work. In combination. Can I pour you a drink?”

  She hated whisky. It was after one o’clock, and she wanted to be at Harriet’s office tomorrow before eight. “Sure,” she said.

  He passed her the jar lid that served as his ashtray. “Water? Ice?”

  “Ice.”

  “Ice it is.”

  Her desire for men had always been predicated on some aspect of their circumstances or history she could feel sorry for. This wasn’t that. There was nothing pitiful about Lloyd. This was all his years, all the other women he’d been with, his chin deflating into pleats when he looked down, his prison record. Or so she told herself. She pulled out her mother’s chair. “You’re welcome to sleep here every night,” she said, closing the obituary pages. “Free security for us.”

  “We’ll see how many parties they have, but thanks.” He brought over the drinks, and she started in on hers. He sat across from her and began rolling a cigarette, making a filter first, which he placed on the end of a second paper. His pinch of tobacco was exactly enough. He plucked out a bud.

  Watching a certain type of deft manual activity sent Rose into the same state of sensual bliss she got when somebody combed her hair. She had that feeling now. “They could have warned you,” she said.

  “Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered me. But with a migraine. Have you ever had one?”

  Interesting question. “I thought I had a silent migraine once.”

  “Silent migraine.”

  “Y
ou get the aura and light sensitivity but you miss the headache.”

  “Kind of like what other people call a buzz.”

  “Well, scarier. So how’d you get here? Did you take a taxi?”

  “No, I took advantage of an opportunity. I was trying to sleep in this girl’s car. She’d left it unlocked—”

  “She’d left it unlocked!”

  “Actually, she’d left the keys on the seat.”

  “That’s not smart.”

  He licked the paper’s glue strip. “Anyway, it smelled like dead dog in there, even with all the windows down, so I think, wait a minute, I can drive off.”

  “You drove off?”

  “Parked right outside.”

  She put down her glass. “Did you tell the girl?”

  He smiled and dug a lighter out of the front pocket of his jeans. “Rose, you think the worst of me.”

  “No, I don’t.” But she did. Forget earlier this evening, a few days ago she’d nearly accused him of drugging her coffee. “Okay, you told her.”

  “She’s someone I hang out with occasionally. And no, I didn’t tell her. She was”—a pause to light the cigarette—“unavailable.”

  “Hang out with” sounded like have sex with. “Unavailable” sounded like having sex. “Unavailable how?”

  “Passed out.”

  “From what?”

  “Shots. Weed. Partying. I told her friend.”

  “She shouldn’t be driving,” Rose said, glad for a reason to reproach the competition. “You might have saved her life.”

  “There you go.”

  They smoked their cigarettes. Rose coughed. “My virgin throat,” she said.

  “You’re a late bloomer.”

  “I’ve never smoked weed, either,” she said, hoping he would take care of that as well. He watched her. He wasn’t about to comment. “Pathetic,” she said. “Right?”

  “What’s pathetic about it?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any on you.”

  Back came the smile.

  “That’s not me thinking the worst. That’s me wanting to party. For a change.”

  He reached for her glass. “Refill?”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “You don’t party?”

  “Hardly ever. I’ve always been scared of letting go. Getting lost. These past few days, though, let me tell you, I’ve—” She stopped herself. She was talking too much. “Thanks,” she said, accepting her glass.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What about LSD?”

  “What about it?”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “You’re talking to an old hippie.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Acid?” He tilted his chair back. “As I recall, it’s like reality turned up a hundred percent. Everything amplified, but real.”

  “Has it ever, I mean, did you ever . . .” She crushed her cigarette in the jar lid. “When you were on acid did you ever feel like you were inside someone else? Inside their body?”

  “That isn’t how psychedelics work, not in my experience anyway. You’re you, it’s your body. You always know that much.”

  “Okay.” She had hoped she might be on to something, a chemical angle. She shut her eyes from a sense of herself in outer space and the earth receding. “I should lie down,” she said.

  She went to the lobby, got his sleeping bag and pillows, and dragged them to the concession, out of sight of the front doors. She unfolded the bag and lay on her back.

  He tucked a pillow under her head. “Is this the whisky?”

  “I had wine at home. I’m not much of a drinker. Jeez, these are crappy pillows.”

  “You might be more comfortable in your office. On your couch.”

  “I’m fine.” She took off her glasses, which, for her, was like taking off her blouse. “Why don’t you sit beside me?”

  He squatted, knees cracking.

  “Sit on the other pillow,” she said.

  He did, and she patted his boot, acknowledging its proximity to her hand. After a moment she found herself stroking the rough, wedge-shaped toe between her thumb and fingers. Was this as sexy for him as it was for her? “You know what?” she said, getting herself upright. “I’m better vertical.” Their arms touched. She looked at him. He smiled. She zeroed in on his lips.

  “Not a good idea,” he said, leaning back.

  “Victor and I broke up.”

  “You’re my boss. I like this job.”

  “Right. You’re absolutely right.” How mortifying.

  He retrieved her glasses. He helped her stand and jogged upstairs for her cigarettes. He couldn’t do enough for her. He offered to walk her home but she said, “No way,” and laughed and said, “You’re fired,” and then, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”

  “I’ll see you out,” he said.

  Under the marquee he lit a cigarette. She fluttered her fingers—Bye! Suffering his gaze on her bum was what she got for renouncing Victor, making their breakup sound permanent. But it was permanent, she thought. And then she realized that Victor had already figured this out. It was why when she’d said, “Until then,” he’d said nothing.

  MONDAY, JULY 4, 2005

  The car needed gas, and Rose wasn’t sure where to park around King and University. She called a taxi. While waiting for it, she wrote her mother a note: Mom, I’ve gone to my breakfast meeting. You aren’t on a cruise ship. Open the front door and go out to the porch if you don’t believe me! xx. She put the note on the toilet seat lid and took another Advil for her hangover.

  At eight o’clock she was stationed near the elevators in the lobby of Harriet’s building. By eight fifteen she was back on the sidewalk, smoking, monitoring the subway exit.

  The Indian-print dress she’d worn on Thursday she now judged to have been too flamboyant. This morning she wore a cream-colored cotton blouse and a plain dirndl skirt, greenish blue, the same color as the Advils. She knew what she was going to say. It wasn’t what she wanted to say. She wanted to confess everything she’d seen and heard and felt inside Harriet’s body from the first phone call on Wednesday afternoon to the exchange with Fiona at the snack bar. But she could hardly do that. She would keep it to a brief, half-truthful, unalarming, “Excuse me, Harriet Smith? Hi, I’m Rose Bowan from the Regal Theater. My mother told me she had a lovely talk with you the other night. We actually met, you and I, a couple of years ago at a book launch”—to explain how Rose recognized her. “I don’t want to hold you up, it’s just I’ve brought my father’s manuscript, and I promised my mother I’d give it to you personally.”

  Of course, a conversation wasn’t essential. But to be addressed by that croaky voice, to watch the lips move.

  Eight twenty. The receptionist hustled by with her severe hair and scowl. Eight thirty. Rose sat on the edge of a concrete planter and lifted her feet to let an elderly cleaner sweep her cigarette butt into a pan. “Sorry,” she said. He nodded. His face was as indiscriminately lined as a breadboard, whereas the lines on a face like Lloyd’s were organized and readable: smile lines, crow’s-feet. Not a good idea. She cringed. What had she been thinking? She was as bad as her mother. Maybe their mutual attraction to Lloyd pointed to another coincidence, in this case one provoked not only by the psychic fallout of the episodes but also by the massive uproar of Fiona’s dementia—two grand, mind-altering events crossing paths at the nexus of their ex-hippie, ex-drug-using employee.

  Eight forty. She wondered if the building had another entrance and went back inside. And on the wall between the third and fourth elevators, somehow invisible to her earlier, was a parking garage sign.

  The subway is a hundred feet from your office, and you drive? she berated Harriet. She dug out her cell and called Goldfinch.

  “May I ask who’s calling?” said the receptionist.

  “I’m from the Canada Council for the Arts,” said Rose.

  “She’s on another line. Would you like to hold?”

&n
bsp; Rose hung up. Harriet was there. But how to get to her?

  The answer came seconds later. An elevator opened, and David stepped out and strode past her and into the coffee shop. She waited, heart jumping, collecting herself, strategizing. When he reappeared, he was frowning at his phone. “David, hi,” she said.

  He looked over. “Hi,” he said, clearly unable to place her.

  “Rose. We met last Thursday. You told me where the washrooms were.”

  “Rose from the Regal.” He produced a smile. Until now she hadn’t spared a thought for how he might be feeling about having had to end things with Harriet. “Up?” he asked and pressed the button.

  “Up. Yes.”

  He returned to his cell.

  “Goldfinch is considering publishing my father’s book,” she said.

  His gaze slid over. “Really?”

  They entered the elevator behind three other people. “It’s a history of the Regal and his forty-five years at the helm.”

  David nodded. “Okay.”

  “Not many people know that it started out as a vaudeville theater.” She had to keep him talking so that the receptionist would think they were together. “In 1894.”

  “It’s that old, eh?”

  She moved to let a person off. “There were all sorts of incredible acts back then. Aerialists, gigantic human pyramids, a guy who could juggle seven flaming torches.”

  At some point she would have to mention Harriet in order to find her office. He saved her the trouble: “Who’s your editor?”

  “Harriet Smith.”

  “Harriet.” He rubbed his jaw. “Interesting.”

  He kept rubbing his jaw. Rose felt her cheeks flush, and she looked down. His fingers had smelled of oranges. “I remember you saying how you love our cupola,” she went on. “Well, it nearly didn’t get built. The architect was this prima donna.” She chattered away. They arrived, crossed the reception area, and made it unchallenged to the hall. “So,” she said. “Harriet is . . .”

  He nodded over her shoulder. “Hang a left, halfway down. There’s a poster of Virginia Woolf on the door.”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  He raised his coffee cup.

  One of her recurring early-childhood dreams was of walking in a state of hypnotic expectation down a long, carpeted corridor. Since Thursday, if you counted the thin runner at Fruit of Life, she’d been living this dream every day.