Swallow

by Theanna Bischoff

  My mom started setting the table, serving meals that involved multiple ingredients and required heating on the stove or in the oven, not the microwave. When the phone rang during dinner, I hoped the call was from Aubrey. I’d been trying to get her to come over when Dick was around; I needed her opinion. I stood up.

  My mom put her hand on my shoulder, pushing me back down into my chair. “No phone calls at the dinner table.” Since when? I glared down at my food. She could play pretend all she wanted. Make Dick think we were a real family, the kind who ate together and liked each other. How long would that last?

  Aubrey eventually did get a chance to meet Dick when she came to pick me up to go for Slurpees. She sucked back her half-orange crush, half-root beer as we walked back to her house. I kept quiet, waiting for her to volunteer her opinion.

  “What do you think?” I finally asked, once we’d arrived back at her house.

  She yawned. “He looks uneducated.”

  “He’s a plumber,” I said. Aubrey had started painting her nails. Condensation built on the side of her abandoned Slurpee, a puddle pooling at its base on her dresser. “He would have had to have done some kind of school,” I added.

  Aubrey blew on her fingers to get the paint to dry. “Not university. This summer I’m going to start my own babysitting company to save up for university. I’m going to do a master’s degree, like my dad.”

  “My real dad has a university degree,” I told her. “Business school.” I didn’t know whether he’d actually finished or not. As far as I knew, my parents hadn’t spoken since he left.

  Aubrey held her fingernails out, posed, like red claws. “Really? Well, your mom should have hung onto him, then.”

  I asked Papi what he thought of Dick, too. Carly had built a fort out of Papi’s floral couch cushions and throw blankets. When she ran out of blankets, he’d given her a folded stack of his sweaters.

  “He makes your mom happy,” Papi said.

  “I’m happy, too,” Carly said, from inside her fort.

  “It’s very difficult to be without a partner,” Papi said, softly. “I still miss my wife very much.”

  If he missed her so much, why did he only have one picture of her in his apartment?

  I decided Papi couldn’t give an informed opinion. Carly still went over to his apartment after school sometimes, but I didn’t need a babysitter anymore. And Papi was never around when Dick the Dickhead was around; when Papi watched Carly, my mom and Dick went for coffee or to the movies. I volunteered to walk another tenant’s golden retriever, a job that kept me out of the apartment and helped me start a small savings account. I would go to university, too, far away from Toronto. I’d live with a roommate who would make me forget how much more sophisticated Aubrey was compared to me. My mom and Dick could have their stupid, happy little family.

  By New Year’s, they were engaged.

  &I intended to go back to work after Carly died, I really did. My principal insisted I take at least a month off. I’d told him my sister had “been killed in a motor vehicle accident.” Vague, but technically it wasn’t a lie. Nobody, no matter how Catholic, was going to tell me that Carly had committed a mortal sin.

  I drove to St. Sebastian to meet with the substitute who’d been teaching my class — a tall, recently retired woman, perhaps ten or fifteen years older than my mother. I wondered how she’d kept up with my rowdy bunch. They’d taken surveys of each other’s food preferences and made them into bar graphs, labelled the province capitals on maps, built contraptions to drop eggs from the top of the school without having them break. The substitute teacher pulled out their writing portfolios. Since September, I’d had them free write for fifteen minutes every day, usually to a prompt I provided.

  If my house were burning down and I could only save one thing,

  it would be _, because. . .

  My favourite family tradition is. . .

  The best thing about me is _, because. . .

  The prompts helped the slower writers in the class generate ideas. The sub had photocopied a few samples of her own prompts, explaining that she’d started to see some real progress in their work.

  If I could change one thing. . .

  I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I closed the stall and sat down on the floor, kicked off my shoes. The tile beneath me looked grimy. The metal bathroom door felt cold through my blouse.

  I’d have to get a doctor to write a note explaining why I couldn’t go back to work yet. Why I needed longer.

  &Or maybe —

  Even though she wasn’t allowed to venture past where her mother could see her, Stefany wandered down to the grocery store. Her mother was on the phone with her new boyfriend, anyway. Stefany’s hands felt slimy; she lifted her hair into a ponytail, wishing she had an elastic, then let it drop back down against her neck. The sky looked heavy and full, about to rain. Stefany opened the doors in the frozen food aisle, squished her face against the ice creams, the frozen peas. The back of her neck, the backs of her knees felt sweaty. She followed a woman wearing cutoff jeans and a yellow tank top. The woman squeezed avocados and tapped cantaloupes; Stefany could see the straps of her bra.

  Stefany wondered what it would be like to be a grown-up, to have her own apartment and buy her own groceries, steer a tall shopping cart. She would buy the corn chips that went in the little rolls like a tongue. She would check labels for grams of fat, and go, “hmm.” She would have a silver credit card. And she would go to restaurants with her friends and order strawberry mousse and have a very curly signature on the bill and say, “Remember when we were kids? Seems like just yesterday.”

  The woman moved to the counter to pay, loading her tomatoes one at a time, fat and in a line, as though they were schoolkids, lining up for the water fountain. Stefany’s throat itched. The soda machine had a piece of paper taped to it that read “Out of Service,” but she didn’t have any quarters anyway.

  Outside, it started to rain. Stefany pressed her face up against the glass door and watched the rain stream down, a tumbly feeling in her stomach. Mom would send her to her room without TV if she came home soaked. She needed to go to the bathroom. She stood on one foot, then the other, a tiny rain dance, a need-to-pee dance.

  Someone came up behind her, bumping into her with grocery bags.

  “Oops!” he said. “I’m sorry. I almost bowled you over, there.”

  He was very, very tall.

  But then, she was very, very small.

  “Where’s your mom?” he asked.

  Stefany tried to stand up straighter, to look older than she was, not like a nine-year-old out wandering by herself. “She’s at home. I’m allowed out by myself. I’m ten. I just live around the corner.”

  When she got home she might watch a video, maybe Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, even though she’d seen it four times. If Mom didn’t catch her for being out.

  “Do you want a ride home?” the very tall man asked. “You’ll get soaked walking home in this rain. My truck is in the parking lot. Why don’t I load my groceries and pull up to the door?”

  Stefany thought that sounded like a great idea. Maybe Mom wouldn’t notice that she’d snuck out. And she really had to pee.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  When the tall man pulled up to the curb, Stefany dashed across to his truck with her arms over her head. The rain splattered hard against her head and back. The man opened the front door for her. Stefany wasn’t allowed to sit in the front in Mom’s car. Kris was, which meant Kris got to pick the radio station all the time. Stefany hopped in and shook her hair out a little bit.

  The very tall man had a head that was mostly bald and eyes that went down at the corners. He pressed a little button and all the locks went down. “What’s your name?” he asked. He put the truck in reverse and backed away from the curb. The inside of his truck smelled like mouthwash. Stefany scrunched her nose. Oh well, she would be home soon enough.

  “Stefany,” she told him.

&n
bsp; “Stefany,” he repeated. “That’s a grown-up name.”

  There was an old lady who swallowed a bird.

  How absurd to swallow a bird!

  She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.

  She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

  I don’t know why she swallowed a fly.

  Perhaps she’ll die.

  &I set up a counselling appointment at Aubrey’s urging. The counsellor looked younger than me, perhaps only by a year or so, but the gulf was obvious in her apprehensive giggle, her vehemently purple eye shadow, her stumble through the informed consent. She notified me that, should I indicate suicidal thoughts, she would have to break confidentiality. What advice could she possibly give me? She asked if I was taking care of myself, eating right, sleeping okay. She was the kind of girl, I hypothesized, who nannied her way through undergrad, got all As and A-minuses on her transcripts (except for that one B-plus), the kind of girl who threw her parents a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party and drank a little too much, gave an animated flush-cheeked toast and whined to her boyfriend of seventeen-and-a-half months for an aspirin to cure her hangover headache until he finally conceded and got her one.

  “I think it’s important that you try to keep your life as normal as possible. What kinds of things did you like to do before. . .this happened?”

  “I don’t know.” My memories eclipsed. I tried to put myself back there. “I was working; that took up a lot of time.”

  She fiddled with her pen. “What about for fun?”

  What had fun felt like? “Sometimes I went out with some colleagues for drinks, if it was someone’s birthday or something. Some of the girls from school set up a monthly dessert date, but I was so busy with work I didn’t make it very often. I volunteered after school to do the school newspaper with the kids. I went running. Sometimes, I went to the gym, when it got too cold out to run.” Pathetic.

  This sparked her attention. The gym? She was probably a spin-class addict. “That could be a great thing for you, if you took up exercise again. Not only would it be getting back to normal activities, but exercise increases the production of dopamine in the brain, which can elevate your mood.” My lack of response seemed to make her feel like she needed to elaborate. “You know, happy juice.”

  I went to a drop-in step class with the small flicker of energy I had left. At the end of the warm-up, I stood at the water fountain, tried to slow my jagged breathing. My reflection looked gaunt in the mirror as it raised its knees. Up, down, up, down. When Patrick and I broke up, Carly commented on the fact that I’d shed a few pounds, calling it the “Break-Up Diet,” telling me she would set me up with her good friends Ben and Jerry. Carly hated the gym, and had a shameless sweet tooth. She floated Gummi bears in chocolate milk and called it “bubble tea,” sucked the chocolate off Glosettes and spit the raisins into a bowl the way some people discard the broken shells of pistachios. Her hunger to be enthusiastic and bubbly and love-y made up for her lack of exercise, though. The energy to keep herself in smiles all day long was enough of a workout.

  The morning after the step class, my hamstrings yelped at me when I climbed out of bed. I’d left the class as soon as it ended, not bothering to stretch, sweaty and panicked to be away from all the naked belly buttons and breasts in the change room. I’d clocked my time, stepped up and down off my platform methodically for a full fifty minutes.

  I eased onto the couch and probed the backs of my knees with my thumbs, trying to loosen the muscles. The pain felt gratifying. I pushed my thumbs into the crevices until they started to burn. At least I could still feel.

  &I have vague memories of the day Carly was born, the pickled smell of antiseptic, holding someone’s hand and being pulled down the maze of hospital corridors.

  My mother’s belly had bulged large, a summertime watermelon, and I’d imagined one day the baby would just burst out of her. The week before Carly’s birth I’d watched a balloon fill, fill, fill with air until it could not possibly hold any more. Who’d blown up that balloon? A memory of puffed cheeks, a chin grazed with stubble. The balloon exploded. Scraps of purple plastic speckled the carpet.

  “Darcy! Pick up the pieces.”

  My father.

  Was it my father?

  My baby sister would burst forth like this, too big to fit in the world.

  Screaming, fists balled in fury against my mother’s blue-gowned chest.

  “This is your baby sister.” My mom looked deflated. “You’re going to be the little mommy, okay? I’m counting on you.”

  &Like with the media coverage following Stefany Beale’s disappearance, I couldn’t stop reading about suicide. About what my sister did, about what I made her do.

  Jumping in front of subway trains actually has a high failure rate; subway cars approaching station platforms begin to decelerate, and may either lack the momentum needed to cause enough bodily harm, or may allow the driver to witness the event and slow down in an attempt to stop it.

  According to the articles I read, failure rates for subway suicides reached 67 percent, though survivors often suffered injuries, such as limb amputations, which resulted in long-term social, functional, and financial difficulties. Several survivors reported to one study that they’d selected the method because they incorrectly imagined that the method would be lethal. Ninety percent of survivors claimed they were sure they would die.

  Over half, then, did not die. Over half. Yet, despite often struggling to be successful in a number of areas her whole life, and despite the odds against her, my sister achieved what she’d set out to do that morning. What I’d set into motion.

  Behaviours noted by observers prior to a suicide attempt included removal of shoes, sudden dropping of belongings as the subway approached, having sentimental personal items in one’s possession, and avoiding eye contact with other commuters.

  When I wouldn’t stop calling, the constable in Carly’s district finally referred me to the medical examiner, who told me that Carly died after being crushed by the wheels while the stunned driver tried desperately to stop.

  “Knowing the details aren’t going to bring her back,” the ME said.

  Carly was dead by the time paramedics removed her body. The security guard at her building told the police that, on February 14th, Carly had returned to her apartment, alone, shortly after six PM, and did not leave until the next morning, at 8:58 AM, just minutes before she sent me her final text message. No other individuals entered or exited her building during that time period. The police said they’d confirmed his story with the apartment’s video surveillance footage. I wanted to see the tape, to see her again, the way her ponytail swung when she walked, the way she carried plastic grocery bags over her shoulders instead of in her hands. I requested a copy of the footage, but the constable told me they’d released it back to the apartment superintendent. The superintendent told me it had been recorded over.

  When I’d suggested Carly and Ryan move to an apartment with video surveillance, Carly had said, “Seriously? I think it’s creepy. Like, who’s going to be watching me when I’m doing laundry, or taking out the trash? What if the security guard is a pervert?”

  In the background, Ryan said something muffled. I wanted to have the conversation with her face-to-face; over the phone, her attention span wavered. But then, she’d accused me of the very same thing, of multi-tasking instead of giving her my undivided attention.

  “It’s actually safer,” I protested. “You don’t have to worry about break-ins and things like that. What if you’re home alone and Ryan’s working late?”

  When Carly and Ryan started looking at places, they’d wanted to rent a basement suite to keep their expenses low. I’d nagged her to at least look at buildings, making arguments about lighting, amenities, and space, until she’d finally caved and agreed, likely just to shut me up. “I’m your big sister,” I told her, “I know.” She conceded when I told her I’d pay her fi
rst two months rent to help them get started. I filled out an application for another student loan.

  Her blood tests came back negative for drugs or alcohol. It didn’t surprise me. She didn’t need substances to her over the edge. She had me.

  &When I moved to Calgary, I wanted her to come with me.

  “People in Calgary are hicks,” she insisted. “You’re going to come back saying y’all.”

  “You hate living with Mom,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” she countered, “but I would hate living in Calgary, too. I don’t want to go to a new school and have to make new friends.”

  I held back from suggesting that she might actually benefit from a fresh start. “I hate the idea of you being alone with Mom and Dick.”

  “So maybe you should stay here, then. They have teaching schools in Toronto, you know. We could move in together. Like when we were kids.”

  “Calgary is where I got in.” I didn’t tell her that I’d been accepted by U of T, but had turned them down.

  “You’re just going because of Patrick. You’re abandoning me for him. You don’t even care about me.”

  I still thought she would change her mind, and browsed online ads for two-bedroom apartments that I could possibly afford, despite my mounting student loans. It would be worth it in the long run, I figured, not to leave Carly behind. How to tell Patrick, though, that I wanted my sister to live with us? Patrick and I scheduled a coffee date in Kensington market, but he called to say his class had run late and he would be another ten minutes. I jotted down some numbers on a napkin, trying to figure out if we could afford an apartment I’d read about online.

  Patrick loved the individuality of mom-and-pop shop coffee houses. I scanned the menu, unable to find any of the flavoured lattes I ordered whenever I stopped at the chain coffee shop on my way to class.

  Patrick came in and kissed the top of my head. “Math homework?”

  “Budgeting. I’m trying to see if we can afford this two-bedroom place in Capitol Hill. It’s fairly close to campus.”

  He shook some coins loose from his wallet. “You think we need two bedrooms?”