Swallow

by Theanna Bischoff

  “I’m a terrible teacher,” I told Conor, my tongue fuzzy with donut sugar. Conor, who taught all the students gym, but did not have a homeroom class, had no obligation to stay.

  “Mary Kay Letourneau was a terrible teacher,” he challenged. “You need some perspective. I’m going to run grab a sandwich before soccer practice. Want anything?”

  “I’m okay.”

  He eyed my donut. “Nutritious.”

  Patrick had often mocked my tendency to graze on whatever food I had nearby for dinner or eat at odd times. He insisted, even while in law school, that we had to eat full, proper meals — a meat, a carb, a vegetable. He couldn’t really cook, but he always “assembled” proper meals by boiling frozen peas and carrots, browning rubbery chicken in olive oil on the stovetop. Even when we ordered pizza, he often opened a package of carrot sticks to go along with it. His parents did this, too. Carly and I had grown up with haphazard meals that came from a can or could be contained within two pieces of bread. The most common vegetable consumed in our house had been pickles.

  I’d acclimatized to grab-and-go food, a source of energy and fuel, for the primary purpose of keeping my blood sugar up, keeping me functional. When Patrick and I moved in together, and he set down placemats, I couldn’t stop picking at them, twiddling the edges between my finger and thumb. Sugared donuts for dinner: totally against Patrick’s rules.

  &It’s surprising how easily someone can stay lost when no one looks for him.

  And then, surprising how easily someone can be found.

  Dell Nolan.

  Search.

  On the website for an accounting firm in Markham, I read the name Dell E. Nolan beside the title “Marketing Manager.” Was it my father? My father, who didn’t even know his daughter had killed herself.

  D.E.N. We had the same initials.

  His name lit up blue; a hyperlink. I’d hovered my cursor over it. What if there was a picture of him? I couldn’t recall his face. I thought of those twin faces, deadpan. Their itchy corduroy jumpers. When I clicked over, the link revealed just an email address and phone number. No facts. Had he remarried? Had other children? There could be other little girls out there, who looked and sounded just like Carly. Who had Carly’s blood. My blood.

  I closed the window, closed my laptop.

  I didn’t want to know. He’d been good at running away. Maybe I could be, too.

  &Because of our age difference, when I played board games with Carly, I cut the kid some slack, played easy and allowed her to accrue points, even win. But later, when we became more evenly matched, I played more competitively, taking the lead in Yahtzee, or Clue, or Battleship. When I beat her, Carly stormed off in a huff. “You’re cheating! This game sucks!” Sometimes Col. Mustard and the candlestick got tossed across the dining room.

  “I’m not going to play with you again if you’re going to be such a poor sport,” I admonished her.

  “Whatever,” she spat. “I QUIT!

  ”

  &Most evenings after the school day ended, I immersed myself in marking, then immediately fell asleep. If Patrick came over, which he often did, he cooked while I marked, and then we ate and fell asleep together, chaste and exhausted. One evening, looking for something with which to mark my students’ journal entries, I rooted around in my junk drawer and closed my fist around a pen. Purple. I don’t know how long I held it, not moving, until Patrick, unaware and in the kitchen, asked if I had any basil.

  Did I have any basil?

  Seriously?

  Since “successfully” transitioning back to full-time employment, I didn’t have any more appointments with the physician. But work — the bare minimum at work — sucked dry any resources I had. My principal stopped by more often than he had the previous year; always with a smile, but hovering at the back of the room, while I staggered through a math instruction I hadn’t properly prepped. Certainly I could not replicate the energetic and ambitious teacher I’d been, determined to make my students not only learn, but love to learn.

  In October, I stopped outside the school to shake an Advil free from my purse. It hurt going down my throat when I swallowed it dry. I hadn’t watched the time close enough. My bus had come and gone. Thirty more minutes.

  “Darcy!”

  I turned. Joel, all smiles, headed across the parking lot. “Long time no see.”

  I swallowed. “You’re here for Conor?”

  “Yeah, he has a date tonight — I brought him an actual dress shirt. With buttons and a collar. He’s moving up in the world.”

  “Okay.” Conor hadn’t said anything about a date.

  “You want a ride home?” Joel offered.

  “Um, I’m okay, thanks though. I’m fine taking the bus. Do it every day.” I noticed the little yellow emoticon faces patterned across his tie.

  “Come on, it’ll make up for the terrible food the last time I saw you.”

  In Joel’s new Mazda, I picked at my cuticles, one of Carly’s bad habits.

  “How’s work?” Joel asked, as he slowed for a red light.

  “Um, kind of crazy. Almost time for report cards.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I get a lot of referrals following the first report card of the year. Parents freak out when they don’t get the feedback that they want. You know, when little Johnny gets a Needs Improvement in Conflict Resolution, or when little Suzy’s reading skills are way below grade level.”

  “Right.” Psychologist Stephanie had removed Jacob Bartony from my class that week for a psychoeducational assessment, handing me a stack of questionnaires to fill out. Instead of thinking of Jake’s behaviour, though, I kept thinking of Carly, of that call from the school about her reading difficulties and Dickface refusing to give consent for testing. Would special help have made a difference? What if she’d seen a child psychologist, like Joel? How much of a difference, I wondered, could it really have made, given that, at the end of the day, she still had to go home to my mother and stepfather?

  I’d moved out on my own. Left her with them. Moved to Calgary. Left her with them again.

  “Makes me glad I don’t have any of my own,” Joel said.

  “Any what? Kids?” I peeled away a piece of skin from my cuticle. Felt the sting.

  “Yeah. Being a parent, having a kid twenty-four-seven. . .” He didn’t finish the sentence. Turned the windshield wipers on. I hadn’t noticed the rain. We stopped in front of my home.

  “Nice place,” Joel commented.

  “I live in the basement. I’m just renting. Trying to save money.” He probably already knew this information, I thought, just after saying it. Who knows what information Conor had spilled.

  When I’d moved into Andrew’s basement, the intent hadn’t been to save money, though certainly at that point I couldn’t afford an apartment like the one Patrick and I had lived in. Twenty-six years old, still renting someone’s dingy basement. Every year on my birthday, Carly unfailingly executed some sort of surprise, though she often ruined the surprise first, hinting way too obviously or trying indiscreetly to ensure I would be home between four and six PM. On my twenty-fifth, she’d sent a barbershop quartet to my classroom with cookies for the kids. I thanked God that none of my students had any nut allergies and resisted the urge to admonish Carly for spending way too much money, though I honestly had no idea what a barbershop quartet cost. On my first birthday without Carly, Patrick came over just before ten with a single peanut butter frosted cupcake. He set the cupcake down on the counter and crawled into bed with me, then, suddenly, roughly, kissed me on the mouth. It was the most intimate move he’d made since Carly’s death.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, immediately after. “I should go. I’ll call you.” He clambered out of the bed, clumsily, and I heard him take the stairs up from the basement two at a time. I lay alone, trying to remember our last real kiss; the last one before he’d broken up with me. Had it, too, been intense? Or just a rush peck at the door? Maybe just two mouths, barely touching. A curs
ory, unconscious farewell.

  In the morning, the whorls of sugar icing on the birthday cupcake’s surface had dried stiff and crusty.

  Joel put his hand on the gearshift. “Hey — ” he said when I unbuckled my seatbelt. “So, I got invited to a book launch this weekend and I think I’d feel a little out of place. . .but a colleague invited me to go. . .anyway, I thought maybe you’d want to come. You have a degree in English, right?”

  I hadn’t told him about my degree. “Sounds interesting, but I’m way behind in marking. I don’t think socializing is on the agenda. Sorry.”

  Inside my apartment, I phoned Conor. “What did you tell him?”

  “I’m driving, Darce.”

  “What did you tell your brother about me? What does he know?”

  “Hold on.” Conor and I had eaten lunch together — had sat and chatted about how he’d pulled a calf muscle at the gym and how I’d forgotten to pay my cable bill for so long the company had disconnected my services. Not once had his date come up. Maybe, like Aubrey, he’d started leaving me out of parts of his life, assuming I couldn’t handle it, or couldn’t show support.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment, “I pulled over. Basically I just told him you’re my friend, you teach at my school. That kind of thing.”

  “Does he know about my sister?”

  “I mentioned that she passed away. I didn’t give him details.”

  “So he knows that’s why I wasn’t working.”

  “Yeah. But who cares? He’s not the judging type, he works with, you know, families in crisis. When we were kids, Joel had a dog phobia. My dad really wanted a Husky, so my parents sent Joel to a counsellor. We ended up with a cat. He’s kind of an anxious guy. I’m sure he could empathize with you. Me, I’m the strong, silent type. Why all the questions today?”

  “He drove me home. He saw me in the parking lot and offered me a ride. He said he was dropping something off for you.”

  “I think you should hang out with him. He’s damn good-looking.” “I’m going to ignore that. And, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m. . .do you really think I’m in any condition to date right now? I can barely keep my own head on straight!”

  “That’s okay,” Conor said. “He’s a psychologist. That’s his thing, being the hero. All his ex-girlfriends were kinda. . .don’t take this the wrong way.”

  “What?”

  “Well, they were. . .you know, damaged. Like, one had anorexia. She carried a little measuring cup with her, a quarter cup. She measured everything. She’d eat like, a quarter cup of grapes for dinner. Or, this other one had major daddy issues. Her parents had this really horrible divorce — when she and Joel split, she stole his car.”

  “Sounds intense.”

  “I’m not saying marry the guy. Just go on a couple dates with him. Try to remember what it’s like to be with people again. I don’t think he’s going to be scared off because you have a shitty life right now.”

  “I can’t, anyway,” I said. “Patrick and I are — ” I stopped myself. “You know.”

  He paused. “Do I? Do you, even?”

  &My first boyfriend, Alex, the only boyfriend before Patrick, had curly hair and played soccer. Three years older than me, and about to graduate, he happened to take the same English class as me, and was placed in my study group. After the final exam, a brutally long essay test that left our hands thoroughly cramped, we went to Future’s Bakery on Bloor and Brunswick and had soggy French toast and split a pitcher of sangria. When he walked me back to the subway, he kissed me goodbye. We slept together, my first time, on my nineteenth birthday. The first few days on the pill, my skin looked green in the mirror, and I struggled not to vomit, knowing if I threw up, the hormones wouldn’t do their job.

  “Am I supposed to feel like death?” I asked Aubrey, who’d started taking birth control behind her mother’s back in Grade Ten.

  I never asked how many other girls Alex had slept with. He hadn’t said I love you yet, but he seemed to love me. Afterward having sex, lying in his bed at his off-campus apartment as he slept, I listened to the sounds of his roommates cooking breakfast. When he woke up, he traced his finger along my naked spine.

  “Do you want something to eat?” he asked, then joked, “I don’t even know how you like your eggs.”

  That July, a job he applied for in Vancouver came through, and he told me, cross-legged on my bed, that he didn’t think we could pull off a long-distance relationship. We’d only been together since the semester had ended, and I still had three years of my degree to finish. Explaining things to Aubrey over coffee, I called the break-up “amicable,” then commented on the “hottie” sitting three tables away from us to prove I was fine. But Alex had left a toothbrush at my place, and for several months, I brushed my teeth with it, until the bristles frayed.

  The October after I’d gone back to teaching, Patrick began to leave a toothbrush at my apartment. Brushing my own teeth, I plucked his blue Colgate out of the glass where it rested. The Patrick I’d dated was a germophobe, carrying his toiletries in a plastic bag with a zipper, sealing his toothbrush into its own little container, warning me about flushing the toilet with the lid open, how germs spray everywhere and land on toothbrushes, and then people stick their toothbrushes in their mouths. Leaving a toothbrush on the counter was equivalent to drinking water from the toilet. Kipling occasionally did this — drank water from the toilet — which had made Patrick cringe, swat her off the seat and then wash his hands.

  “She’s a cat!” he’d exclaimed, as she skittered from the room, smudgy paw prints marking the toilet seat cover. “Don’t only dogs drink from the toilet?”

  Several of Papi’s cats had drank water from the toilet, too. “They hear the water running, it’s like being in the wild, they think it’s fresh.”

  Patrick the germophobe. His extra toothbrush voluntarily exposed on my counter as though nothing could happen to it. I placed his toothbrush back in the glass, gingerly beside mine.

  Eight months. We were friends. More than friends. We were going to be more than friends. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I didn’t want to ask, either.

  &I’d become accustomed to it being snowy by Halloween in Calgary. This meant that kids had to get creative with their costumes and find a way to fit a winter parka underneath. Ultimately, kids often had to go as an obese princess, a corpulent cowboy. My students had started talking about their costumes by mid-October. Halloween also marked Patrick’s birthday — twenty-seven.

  During silent reading, Jenna Shanlon slipped Celina Janik a note at the back of the room. I walked around the room making sure the kids paid attention, helping sound out any difficult words. I let the note slide. Celina’s father had not yet returned. I hadn’t noticed her behaving any differently, but I was still being vigilant. Sean Cibley raised his hand and I made my way over to his desk.

  “What’s this word?” he whispered. Sean’s reading skills reminded me of Carly, but he remained dedicated, unfailingly applying strategies he’d acquired the previous summer after his parents enrolled him in private tutoring. Sean pointed — masquerade. “I tried to sound it out,” he whispered. “Mas — qua. . .”

  “Try again,” I said, squatting down to his level. “The q-u makes a k sound here, like in cat.”

  Right around the time our mother remarried, Carly developed an imaginary friend, Elemeno P. Eight years old felt, to me, at least, too old for an imaginary friend. At the reception, with some sort of smudge on the front of her yellow puffy-sleeved flower girl dress, she told me Elemeno P. wanted me to read the menu out loud. “Chicken Cordon Bleu,” I told her, “or roast beef and gravy. You pick.”

  She was so slow; it took forever for her to sound things out. When learning the letters, she called the lowercase l “one” and the lowercase u “happy mouth.” When I’d finally learned about the process of reading — phonemic awareness, visual memory, sight word vocabula
ry — sitting in a lecture theatre at the University of Calgary — I wondered again about the way I’d tried to teach Carly to read. Repetition, repetition, repetition. And then, near the end, some bribery.

  “When you read through Where the Wild Things Are all by yourself, I’ll take you to get a Slurpee.” Where the Wild Things Are consisted of surprisingly advanced vocabulary for someone like Carly, with all the signs of a reading disability. . . .mischief of one kind or another. Who was I kidding?

  Sean stared at the letters on his page, tasted the word for a moment. “Mas. . .ka. . .rade? Oh, masquerade. Like Halloween.”

  “Right!” I said. “Good effort, Sean.”

  “For Halloween, I’m going to be a pirate.”

  “That’s a neat costume.”

  His eyes, blue, like my sister’s, had a green ring around the irises. He closed his book. “What are you pretending to be?”

  There was an old lady who swallowed a dog.

  My, what a hog! To swallow a dog.

  She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.

  She swallowed the cat to catch the 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 dreamed that I slept in a room filled with Matryoshka dolls — dolls scattered all around me, on the floor, on the countertops, on shelves. I took one and split it in half. Inside lay the tiny, dead body of my sister, curled in the fetal position, not breathing. I reached to my right and cracked open another. Aubrey, in a wedding dress, her eyes pinched shut. I reached for another and another. Papi, Patrick, Conor, Joel, my mother. I held their bodies in the palms of my hands, not knowing what to do with them. More dolls multiplied around me. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t breathe.