Swallow

by Theanna Bischoff

  Vergara reported that Kramer, with whom she had a brief relationship, had never known about her pregnancy. Additionally, at the time of the abduction, Mrs. Vergara did not have any current contact information for Kramer, and police were unable to locate him. Following his apprehension, Kramer admitted to police that he had been tipped off by a friend who worked at Stefany’s school. Kramer took Stefany to Lethbridge, where his deceased grandmother owned property, to avoid detection. At the time of the abduction, police turned their attention away from Kramer, reporting that the case was likely an incidence of stranger abduction.

  In 1992, Mrs. Vergara appealed to Stefany’s captor to bring her daughter back unharmed. Several searches of downtown Toronto and surrounding areas were conducted, but Stefany was never recovered. Mrs.

  Vergara reported that, initially, police considered her and her then boyfriend, Adrian Vergara, suspects in her daughter’s disappearance.

  Mr. and Mrs. Vergara, who police cleared of any involvement, were married six months ago.

  Mrs. Vergara’s brother, Gregory Beale, acting as the family’s spokesperson, read the following statement to the press on Mrs. Vergara’s behalf: “It is unfathomable, as a parent, to experience the kind of hurt and suffering of not knowing where your child is or if they are even alive. I was robbed of three years of Stefany’s life. Not only did I have to endure the thought that my daughter had been raped and murdered, but I had to endure suspicion of the police and my community thinking that I or my husband may have caused harm to my precious daughter. I am thrilled beyond belief that my daughter was returned to me safe and sound. I hope that James gets the punishment that he deserves for what he did to me, my daughter, Kristen, and first and foremost, to my beautiful and innocent daughter, Stefany. After being followed by the media for so long after Stefany went missing, I now hope that we will be granted our privacy so that we can reconnect and heal as a family.”

  Stefany was returned to her mother on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Kramer will await trial and sentencing. Police also intend to re-examine early case files to determine whether any mistakes were made that resulted in the dismissal of Kramer as a suspect so early on.

  * * *

  Stefany. Alive. I get up — I need to get up. A grey layer of dust and Kipling’s hair lines the baseboards. I want it gone.

  I haul the vacuum out of the closet, but drop it once before finally getting it upright. Kipling wanders sleepily from wherever she’s been hiding, woken by the vacuum crashing onto the floor. I plug the vacuum in and hit the power button with my foot. Kipling darts away. Mom sleeps through anything, the medications take care of that.

  The dust won’t suck. I push the vacuum into the wall once, and then, again, harder. The force dislodges the canister, making it tip forward and dump a pile of grit and powder onto the carpet. I kneel down on the floor, and then try to secure the canister back into place. It refuses to lock in. I struggle for a few minutes, then give it one hard whack. I whack it again, and then again, until I hear the snap.

  &Mail slides through the slot of the front door and falls to the floor. It takes a while for me to bend down and get it. I have to sink down to my knees to retrieve it. Two bills and then a manila envelope forwarded from Calgary, with Andrew’s illegible scrawl on the front. I’d asked him to forward any mail that came to me, but after so long, the bills and letters have stopped trickling in.

  I hoist myself up by bracing myself on the side table. I’m in pain from the hours of walking, and I’m having mild cramping that began in the early morning hours, spilling into my dreams but not fully waking me. Patrick drove me home in his rental car after dinner. Curious about where I lived? Wanting to know whether I had a partner? Or just trying to be a gentleman, in the self-effacing way he had inserted himself as a pillar in my life after my sister died. My dinner sat heavy in my abdomen — I’d eaten too fast. I tried to find a comfortable way to sit in the car and took deeper breaths. When the cab pulled up at my apartment, Patrick stalled, telling me that he would call me the next time he travelled to Toronto. He’d moved back to Calgary to start a Ph.D. Patrick and Joel — maybe I had a type. I hadn’t noticed it before.

  “If you ever move back, we should keep in touch,” he suggested. I nodded, trying to ignore the pain.

  Holding the envelope, I try to remember instructions I’ve read about alleviating Braxton Hicks. Lie down on your left side. Empty your bladder.

  I tear the large envelope open along its side, revealing much smaller contents: a square, royal blue envelope with my name and address, handwriting I can’t place. The return address tells me this letter has made its way from Toronto, to Calgary, and back to Toronto again, kind of the way I have.

  Your presence is requested at the reception

  for the grand opening of

  PAARC

  The Papiczaw Abraham Animal Rescue Clinic

  on Saturday, April 18, 2009

  at 2:30 p.m.

  at the Toronto Park Hyatt Hotel

  4 Avenue Road

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5R 2E8

  in honor of Elliot Papiczaw (1919–2003)

  employee at the Toronto Feline Rescue Foundation for over 30 years

  &

  Dr. Laura Abraham (1938–2008)

  head veterinarian at the Mississauga Wildlife Veterinary Clinic

  for 27 years

  PAARC is a state-of-the-art hybrid Animal Rescue Foundation

  and Veterinary Clinic

  It will serve the dual functions of rescuing and housing

  homeless, rejected, and feral animals

  and attending to and treating animals’ medical needs on site

  using state-of-the-art veterinary equipment

  Please RSVP to

  Dr. Isabel Abraham

  (416)-555-0283

  I feel my body soften, heavy and tired. Something about the invitation reads like a wedding announcement. I remember Laura’s round, happy moon face. Had she and Papi been more than friends? Some part of me hopes he hadn’t simply pined over Tati for the rest of his life. Maybe he’d felt that happiness again. Maybe.

  I put the invitation in my purse and carry it with me to my prenatal appointment.

  My doctor squirts gel onto my belly, slides the monitor along the right side, where stretch marks have mottled my skin. “How long have you been experiencing the cramping?” she asks.

  “Just since this morning.”

  She slides the monitor to my other side, and the whomp whomp of the baby’s heartbeat echoes in the room. “Might be Braxton Hicks. They’re not uncommon at this stage.” After a moment, she adds, “Okay. Let’s check your cervix.”

  I shimmy down to the edge of the exam table. Her cold fingers slide into me. My doctor pulls her hand back and slips her blue rubber glove off, turning it inside out, and flicking it into a nearby garbage can.

  When I sit up, her lips pinch tight, serious.

  “Darcy, you’ve started to dilate. Only one centimetre, but since we’re a little on the early side, you need to spend the remainder of the pregnancy off your feet. We’ll have you come in again tomorrow afternoon to see whether things are progressing and we have to slow them down, or whether baby’s going to hold her own.” She smiles again, a big dentist’s smile. “At this point, it’s just a precaution, but I think this little girl needs a bit more time. I don’t think she’s quite ready.”

  &A parent at St. Sebastian ran into Conor in the restaurant that sits at the top of the Calgary Tower. The restaurant revolves, so that patrons can get the entire view of the city. I’d gone with Patrick, back when we first moved to Calgary. We’d gone together to the revolving restaurant at the top of the CN Tower, too. Both times I’d sat at a window and watched our perspective of the city seemingly change around me. But it was really me who was changing, me who was rotating. Outside, things were staying exactly the same.

  Conor had gone to celebrate his boyfriend’s thirtieth birthday. Near the end of the evening, Con
or had indulged in a few glasses of wine, rose from the table to pay the cheque, and ran his hand along the side of his boyfriend’s stubbled chin.

  When he arrived at St. Sebastian the next morning, the principal called him into his office.

  “You should get a lawyer,” I tell Conor, over the phone, while he does dishes, rants over the noise and the clatter.

  “I knew working at a Catholic school was a risk. It’s my reputation I’m pissed about. I mean, Jack’s mom actually questioned my whole reason for being a teacher. Just because I’m gay and I work with kids doesn’t mean I’m molesting them in the change room.”

  “She said that?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You should get a lawyer. Patrick was a summer student at Cooper and Lau, maybe try them.”

  “The PTA is going to lose it. I’m just going to quit.” Dishes crash.

  “You haven’t even tried to fight it yet,” I say. “I don’t think all the parents will be as extreme as Jack’s mom.”

  “I bet enough of them are homophobes that working there from this point on would be unbearable. Even if firing me is against my human rights.”

  “What does Michael think?” I still haven’t met Conor’s boyfriend.

  “He’s pretty mad. It’s just ridiculous, I mean, Andrew sleeps with everybody. He fucked a woman who had cancer! She lived in his basement before you did — he brags about it to me all the time. Never in front of admin, of course. That doesn’t fit with Catholic values either, but nobody’s going to question him. No one’s going to accuse him of being a pedophile.”

  “I hate this for you. Your personal life should be your business.”

  I hear the dishwasher start. “I showed your sonogram to my brother,” Conor says.

  At thirty-seven weeks, my baby is the size of a honeydew. “Why?” I ask.

  “Because he’s being an idiot. Because she’s my niece. I want to come out there — for when she’s born. Maybe he doesn’t want anything to do with her, but I do.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “What?”

  “When you showed him the sonogram, he didn’t want anything to do with her?”

  “The whole thing’s fucked up. He did the same thing when Caroline — when his ex, the one with anorexia — went into inpatient treatment, for her eating disorder. That’s when he broke up with her. He wants to be the hero, I told you before you guys even started all of this. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not really.” I pull skin away from my cuticle. It stings.

  “He likes to be in control, you know? He likes to feel like the saviour.”

  My head hurts. “You pushed me to date him.”

  “He really liked you. I thought, she’s just sitting around her apartment, depressed. . .he’s my brother, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  “I thought he liked me, too.”

  The dishwasher gurgles. “He did. He does. I don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s not an asshole. Maybe I’m stupid for believing in him. Having a kid. . .he never planned for that. He needs time to process it, to figure out what he’s going to do. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be in the baby’s life, I don’t know.”

  Blood wells at the place where I’ve torn the skin away from my finger. I press down hard with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand. Cut off the flow.

  “I’m going to be there no matter what,” Conor adds.

  &When we finally moved out of Dick’s house, my mother spent a day in the basement storage area. She refused to let me help, saying lifting boxes would make me go into labour on the spot.

  “You think the family moving in is going to like it if your water breaks and they have a giant puddle in their basement? Do you know what it smells like when your water breaks? I am not going to be in the hospital room when they wrench that kid out of you, just so you know.”

  With me on bed rest, she ventures out of the house more. The YMCA near our apartment offers free swimming the last hour each Wednesday; she goes at the request of her therapist, but comes back annoyed by all the teenagers who swam at the same time. “Those prostitots, lounging around in itty bitty bikinis. Who lets their thirteen-year-old girls go out dressed like that? Those mothers better watch out, or those little sluts are going to get knocked up out of wedlock.” She laughs, deep and throaty, and pats my swollen belly.

  Between meds, Mass, and baking, my mother has formed some semblance of a life. I can’t imagine a day when she might hold down a job again, let alone help others with mental illness like the seven-suicide-attempts guy Joel told me about. But maybe now she won’t get to seven attempts, either. Two. Two’s enough.

  She never legally filed for divorce, but Dick eventually beat her to it. She signed the paperwork, then baked two dozen cupcakes that spelled out FUCK OFF ASSOLE, one letter per chocolate mound. The remaining cupcakes had little hearts doodled in icing. She forgot the H.

  With me on bed rest, my mother has vowed to fatten me up. She herself weighs probably forty pounds more than when I grew up. I try to sneak out of bed to fold the laundry or to do some dishes, but she yells at me, “Don’t be a shitty mom before your kid even pops out.”

  I keep shifting in the bed. My lower back aches, my knee itches. I shift the pillows around, prop myself up into different angles. I want to get out of bed and move. Take care of something. Fix something. I can’t just lie here anymore.

  My mother comes in with a small white book, perches in what little room remains on the foot of my bed. I scoot my feet up and she wriggles in. “I found some old photos in the basement when we moved.”

  She flips the album open to the first page and hands it to me. She wears a pale green T-shirt that reads, “Kiss Me, I’m Irish!” and leans up against a tall tree. Her hair looks noticeably lighter, piled on top of her head in a loose bun.

  “How old were you here?” I ask.

  “Eighteen, nineteen.”

  I flip the pages. Here’s my mother in a bikini at the Harbour-front, her abs toned, showing off her perky breasts, sticking her tongue out.

  And here, wearing a winter toque with a pompom and posing with some girlfriends. Her cheeks glow pink from the cold. I don’t recognize any of the women with her. I don’t recall her ever really having girlfriends, either.

  “These don’t even look like you,” I comment.

  She leans in so she can see the pictures too. “My parents called me Ratty. Short for Rat’s Nest. Because of my hair. Your hair’s like that, too.” Pregnancy has made my hair thicker, shinier.

  I flip to another photo. Mom with her arms wrapped around the chest of a man at least a foot taller than her, with dark hair almost black and a white polo shirt. “My first boyfriend,” she says. “Scott Perry. He rocked my world.”

  “You never showed this to me before,” I point out.

  “Your dad didn’t like that I kept pictures of me and Scott.”

  I scoot over a bit, so she can come closer. “What happened?”

  “I kept them anyway. I just put them at the back of the closet. Forgot I even had this album.”

  “What happened with Scott?” I ask.

  “You know, we were young. He went away to college, I met your father. . .”

  “Right,” I say.

  The remaining pages, a good two thirds of the album, are blank.

  “I just want you to know,” she says, “that I was happy. Back then. I wasn’t always such a miserable rodent.”

  &On bed rest, the baby grows, and I shrink. My bellybutton becomes the highest point, the apex. I surf baby name websites on my laptop out of boredom. I have already picked her name, but I have nothing better to do. Conor arrived three days ago, pledging to stay until his niece is born. I find my own name, “Darcy — Gaelic dark,” and Conor’s, “Gaelic hound-lover.”

  When I tell him this, he says, “Sounds like a personal ad. Must love dogs. Any other good ones?”

  Patrick’s name and my mother’s name
mean the same thing: Noble.

  “What about Carly?” Conor asks.

  I’d looked up “Carly” the week previous, getting a slew of different meanings. Little. Womanly. Peasant. Diminutive of Carla (Latin). Diminutive of Carol (English). Diminutive of Charlotte (French). Feminine form of Karl (German). I settle on the meaning I’d liked best, and tell him — “Free.”

  It is freedom, in a sense, I want for my daughter. To not be tied to others the way I’ve always been — with knots I tied myself and can’t undo. I want her to have wings, not strings.

  Ava — Latin bird. Ciel — French sky; heaven.

  &Pregnant with me, my mom gained forty pounds, and closer to fifty when pregnant with Carly. Conor sets up a crib in the tiny corner of my bedroom. “I may assemble this completely backwards,” he tells me, turning the instructions sideways and examining them from another angle. “I failed shop class, you know.”

  When Carly grew big enough to sleep in a bed, mom finally dismantled her crib, swearing and straining and breaking one of the bars. Mom’s room became bigger without Carly, who moved into my room, closing me in.

  “Carly was a big chubber,” Mom says. “You were six pounds, two ounces. Carly was nine pounds, eight ounces. She had a face like a little bulldog — big cheeks.” My mother always looked more like me, but when she puts her hands on my belly and feels the baby move, a flicker in her smile reminds me of Carly.

  As my due date approaches, I get permission to be more active, but I’m suddenly hesitant instead of restless, not wanting anything to happen to Ava before she has a chance to even be Ava. My doctor reassures me that women deliver a couple weeks before their due dates all the time and their babies are completely healthy. But my baby is safer inside than out. Last week I got my hair cut. Without all the extra weight, my curls spin tighter, and I feel lighter and heavier at the same time.

  Then, getting up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, I feel fluid trickling down my leg. I stand still in the kitchen. The microwave lights blink 2:35 AM.

  I picture my mother, standing in the bathroom, blood between her legs, blood on a white towel, blood on her fingers. I picture her two girls playing outside the door. Carly singing. No — she’d been a baby, too little to sing. It’s me singing, me singing to Carly.