by Sheena Kamal
“I want to explain,” I say, careful to keep my voice neutral and calm, like when you’re talking to a bear. Hands up and back away slowly. I should have done it when I saw her come down the stairs. Her defensive nature makes it impossible to deal with her in any other way.
“Oh, now you want to explain,” she snaps. “Now. After our SUV is at the bottom of a fucking ravine!”
I decide to give her some backstory, to prepare the both of us. “After I enlisted—”
She laughs. “You want to go there? That was ages ago. And then you got kicked out. Just like you get kicked out of everything. You used to be the smart one . . . what the hell happened to you?” She leans against the doorjamb and narrows her eyes at me. “I could have told you it was a mistake, you know. You. In the fucking army. Trying to live up to that bullshit Dad went off about before he killed himself. Honor my ass. They were never gonna accept him for who he was and so he made up these stories to tell us and you bought it. You couldn’t even finish high school and you think you could have made it in the Forces.”
“Lorrie—” I begin softly, trying for a fresh start. She is right about why I enlisted and why I failed. So was Brazuca. A problem with authority is ingrained in me. But our father was the only parent we remembered and even though we sometimes saw through his lies, they were so sweet. He spoke of belonging, of the camaraderie that he felt in a few, fleeting moments. I was old enough to remember those stories and I used to tell them to her. It was his sister we lived with before we were shipped off to foster care and separated who told us the truth. That he was as unhappy as everyone else, and made up stories to make himself feel better.
Lorelei’s nostrils flare and I realize my mistake of using her pet name from our youth. She hates it even more now than she did then. She holds up a hand, as if to ward me away, as if I’m some kind of curse that has been brought down on her head. “No. Just don’t. After what you did you have no right to come here, to call me that. Who do you think you are, showing your face here?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am.”
“I shoulda known when you showed up at my door that you were still up to no good . . .” She pauses and then something ugly in her breaks through her pretty façade. “Mary.”
I go still. “What did you say?”
Her smile is bitter. “You think I didn’t know? You told that journalist, that goddamn parasite, everything about our family! About Dad being adopted into the States, how he came back here and found nothing but a sister who was as fucked up as he was, how he killed himself. Us being in foster care and you being on the streets. Mary? Yeah, what a choice of a name. No saintly virgin you were. What, you think I don’t read the newspaper, Nora? Jesus. You told him all your shameful little secrets about what a dirty slut you’ve been—”
It couldn’t have been worse if she’d hit me. My knees go weak and I’m thankful for the small mercy of being seated. I’ll admit our visits were infrequent but she never mentioned once that she’d connected me with Starling’s story. And, if she knew about Mary, she knew that there was a child. She had a niece, and she didn’t care.
“I was drugged.”
“Please, you were a drunk. Always were, always will be. That’s what got you in trouble, Nora. You can’t deny it. Isn’t that how you got the drugs in you? Couldn’t have been that hard.”
The chair scrapes against the kitchen floor as I push away from the table. I’m angry now, too. “Someone had to be a fuckup, just to show how perfect you were in comparison. How else would they know that the sun shines out of your ass?”
“Get. Out.” There are no words for the amount of scorn and bitterness she can level in just two syllables. It’s an art, really. She snatches David’s phone off the counter. “Or I’ll call the cops. I swear to God I will.”
Does she even believe in God? It seems like something you should know about your sister. I go to the door and watch my hand as it hovers over the doorknob. I want to say something so penetrating and hateful to her that she’ll remember it for the rest of her life. I want my words to have the power that her words have over me. But in the end I can’t and they don’t because they never have. She’s always been better than me in all the ways that matter and I’ve always been okay with that. So I settle on the only thing that comes to mind.
“You’ll never really know,” I say to her, hating how shaky my voice is. “What it was like to find him.” Lying in a pool of blood, a gun in his hand, his skull blown wide open. I was a child, but she was even younger. I never allowed her to see him like that. Even at that age, I knew that something like that could break her. Like it did with me.
Her eyes narrow into little slits. “Spare me your sob story. I’ve heard a million of them. Dad was weak and so are you.”
See, this is what happens when you try to explain yourself.
I release the breath I’ve been holding. “You should change your alarm code.” As last words to the only family I have left, they’re more than a little anticlimactic, but all I can muster. She has always had this effect on me. It feels like the end of something, but that’s her intention. The end of a bad relationship that soured just after I turned thirteen and she caught me behind the school surrounded by empty beer bottles, a group of stoners and a joint being passed around us like a hot potato.
She watches me go, expressionless.
“Is that my tire iron?” David says, before I’m out the door. It is sticking out of the waistband of my sweatpants.
“No,” I say and then I walk out. Really, who can tell one tire iron from another? I would have given it back if my reception by them had gone otherwise, but I’m not above pettiness.
Also, what’s another lie between family?
A few minutes later David pulls up to the bus shelter in a rental sedan. Probably a perk of his purchasing insurance on his SUV. I’m alone at the stop for the moment and there’s no bus on the horizon. He gets out of the car with an envelope and holds it out to me. “Here,” he says. “Take this.”
Inside the envelope is eight hundred dollars in cash.
“We want you to have that, to help you out since you seem to be going through such a rough time.” He pauses and tries to broach his next topic delicately. “And, it’s probably a good idea if you don’t come back anytime soon. Your sister is . . . well, it would just be better to stay away for now. Okay?”
After Howlin’ Wolf had made his mark on the blues, after he’d played show after show, growled song after song, after he’d strummed and howled and made the kind of money a blues man never even knew that he could back in those days, he tried to reconcile with his mother, who had cast him away because he played the devil’s music. She threw the money he tried to give her in his face.
I’m no upstanding woman of God, but enough is enough. I toss the envelope back through the open car window. “You can’t get rid of family, Dave,” I tell him, before turning away.
I know, because I’ve tried.
6
There is a working pay phone at the train station. Simone answers on the third ring in a cool, masculine voice. “Simon here.”
“It’s me.”
There’s a pause and then her voice takes on a sultry note. Whether or not this is a deliberate move or an unconscious one, simply because this is how she’s used to speaking to me, I’ll never ask. After what I’ve just been through with Lorelei, I’m glad for the familiarity of it. “Where are you?” Her voice is full of concern. I hear her clicking away at a keyboard and become acutely aware of how traceable phone calls are.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“You sound shaky.”
Dammit, I do. I stare as a transit official walks right by me with a steaming cup of coffee and then turn my back to him. “Have you found where Zhang lives?”
She pauses for so long that I think she’s going to refuse. “His assets are spread around, but I’ve managed to locate a few pro
perty records. Call back in twenty minutes.”
“Can you make it fifteen?”
“Don’t push me,” she says, and hangs up.
I duck into the public washroom, where I spend eighteen minutes trapped in a stall or at the sink, scrubbing my face and hands and finger combing my hair. Almost twenty minutes later, I call back. She reads out three addresses. A house in Richmond, a condo overlooking English Bay, and a mansion in West Vancouver. “You have a map up on your screen?” I ask her.
“Right here. What do you need?”
“If I was going to hide someone, it wouldn’t be in a condo. Too public. Elevators, neighbors, that sort of thing.”
“I see where you’re going with this,” she says slowly, her fingers still tapping away. “Okay, the house in Richmond was once part of an exclusive neighborhood, but it’s become quite dense.”
“Too many prying eyes. You can’t exactly control the situation there and if there was an escape—”
“Someone would have seen something. Which leaves the mansion as your only real option . . . Look, if they haven’t found her yet, do you really think she’d be in the same area that they kept her captive?”
“She hasn’t gone home, been to see her best friend or her boyfriend. Where else would she be?”
“Nora, I hate to say this, but maybe she’s gone. Maybe she’s dea—”
“Thanks, Simone,” I say, placing the receiver gently back on its hook before she can continue that thought. If she’s right, then it was all for nothing and I can’t accept that. I take the SkyTrain into the city and try some positive visualization. The other passengers are giving me dirty looks and I realize, quite suddenly, that despite my efforts in the bathroom back at the station I must smell completely awful. I’ve been on the road too long, have spent too much time in my own company to notice, but others are not so forgiving. I think about stopping by the basement, but with Whisper gone it won’t be the same and I don’t want to be in our home without her.
I take the bus from Granville Station to the north shore. A sudden cold front turns the rain into pellet-sized hail that clatters against the window at the rear of the bus where I’m seated. I watch as the pedestrians and drivers, united in their astonishment, scramble for safety. The bus, however, has a schedule to keep. About thirty minutes later I get off at Marine Drive and the Dale. It’s a short walk to Water Lane, where a dozen cars are parked at the side of the road.
The address that Simone gave me belongs to a massive mansion, secured from view by tall hedges and a stone wall. A real estate open-house sign points to the driveway. A well-dressed older couple emerges from a Porsche and walks onto the property without sparing a glance in my direction.
“Thank God you’re finally here!” a voice behind me exclaims. I turn to see a brunette in her fifties, wearing a pencil skirt and sharp blazer, emerging from a BMW. She’s glaring at me as if I’m the source of all that is wrong in her world. From her dress and attitude, I take her to be the real estate agent. She stubs out her cigarette and looks me up and down. “Well, I suppose you’ll do. Come on. I hope you know a thing or two about pruning.”
People mistake me for the help all the time. I guess I have that kind of face. At least she hasn’t cast aspersions on my tits or my hair. Yet.
“What are you waiting for? Let’s get a move on,” the woman says, striding past the huge mansion and manicured lawn, and down a path that leads to the back of what I can only call an estate. She stops in front of an overgrown rosebush and frowns. “I don’t know how your people missed this the last time, but a couple of our prospective buyers have commented today. Take care of it.”
She turns on her heel and walks away.
“Hey!” I call to her retreating back.
She looks back at me, tapping her foot impatiently. “What? I’m assuming you have your own tools somewhere in your vehicle, right? Because I’m not prepared to teach you how to do your job.”
“I’m just doing them a favor today, but I’m a cash operation.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Here.” She digs around in her purse and hands me a fifty-dollar bill. “Anything more you’ll have to invoice. Just get it done.”
I pocket the fifty and give her my most obsequious smile. “So the people who live here, they’re selling the house? How come? These are pretty sweet digs.”
She’s not used to answering questions from the help but apparently decides to put me in my place. “The people who own this house haven’t lived here for over a year and, not that it’s any of your business, yes. They are selling. That’s why you’re here pruning the rosebushes that some anal retentive millionaires have been muttering about.”
I nod and walk up the path, back the way we came, my steps eating up the distance between us. “You’re getting your tools, right?” she says as I pull closer.
“Nope,” I say, quickly passing her.
“But what . . . ? You’re going to come back with them, aren’t you?”
“We’ll see.”
“Who . . . who are you?” She’s now concerned that she’s given away too much to someone who has no business being on the property.
I throw a look at her over my shoulder. “Me? I’m nobody.”
“Hey, you thief! You owe me fifty bucks!” she shouts at my back. But she can’t do anything about it. Her high heels prevent her from moving at a pace faster than a constipated dog and she has no chance of catching up to me.
Women.
7
The Hastings office boasts three tiny windows that look out into the dank alleyway. One in each of the offices and one in the reception area. It’s not much of a view so Seb and Leo don’t pay it any attention. Whisper, however, is not used to such luxuries and has planted herself right by the reception window to monitor the situation. I stand in the rain and watch as Seb scratches her head on his way out of his office and Leo kisses her snout on his way into his own.
I look at her for a long time, but I have no desire to go inside. Things are clearer to me out here. I’m lying and I’m drinking, two things I swore to myself and Whisper that I’d never do. I’m also stealing, and while I never had a vow about that, it’s just another shitty thing that marks the bottom rung I’m clinging to. I’m a thieving, drinking liar, but I haven’t hit rock bottom yet and there’s no sense trying to fix what’s right until I have.
Leo goes to my desk and rifles through it. He finds an old sticky note and punches a number into the office phone. Seb wanders over and, while Leo’s attention is on whoever is on the other end of the line, he slips a strip of jerky to Whisper. It is gone within seconds.
Since Bonnie disappeared, my internal axis has tilted. I wonder now if my place is inside that office or out here on the street. I’m scared of the answer, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I know it’s not her fault. I can see the pieces of the puzzle falling together now and whether or not she ran away from home, she would have been caught up in this mess in some way. But I can’t deny that it’s because of her that, after all these years of trying to straighten myself out, I’m still on the outside looking in.
My homeless friend is asleep near the dumpster. His feet poke out of the holes in his socks. I pull out the extra pair from my pack, stuff them into a plastic bag, and put them near him, careful to keep near his feet and not his face. You don’t want to startle a sleeping body on the street; they are as likely to wake up angry or scared as not.
He stirs just as I’m about to turn away and blinks up at me. “I’m still here,” he says, his voice hoarse and scratchy. I don’t know if he’s recognized my face from before or if he’s just talking because he sees that I’m no threat. “They try to take me away—”
A harsh cough racks his body and it takes him a full minute to recover.
“Who? Who tried to take you away?”
He closes his eyes and turns his face away. “Still here . . .”
When Leo disappears into his office, Whisper turns to the window. She stares at me
through the rain-splattered glass pane for several long seconds, then she starts to howl. By the time Leo comes crashing in from his office to see what’s wrong, I’m already gone. I’ve done what I needed to do. She looks as happy as she ever has, which is not saying a lot given her feline disposition, but at least she doesn’t look abandoned. She has graduated from one person to love her and now has two. That is not a bad life and I haven’t done wrong by her.
As far as tying up loose ends goes, this is the best I can do.
8
Bonnie wakes to flashing lights and the incessant beeping of an ECG machine. There are tubes going into her arms. She thrashes and screams, but her reflection in the mirror tells a different story. It tells a story of a girl lying in bed without sound or motion, her dark eyes red-rimmed and wide open with fear. She knows what the tubes mean. She knows that they are monitoring her, that they have taken her back because they want her blood. She doesn’t cry, though. It will be over soon.
How long will it take to drain her completely? She hopes it’s quick this time.
Part V
1
When you feel like having an enema without all that pesky shitting, try using the provincial ferry system. It is not the only way to get from the mainland to Vancouver Island, but it is a fraction cheaper than taking a seaplane—and that’s not much of an endorsement. I’ve spent more money in the past few weeks than I have in a year and am not much in the mood to watch my bank account balance sink even lower, so I open my wallet and bend over.
We sail past little islands, lush protrusions of land thrusting from the depths of the ocean. Without all the tankers blocking the view, it’s easy to imagine that we’re in an earlier time, that we’re perhaps the first Europeans to come sailing through these waters, gaping at the cool beauty of it. Everything is shrouded in mist, like the setting of a fable. Only the foghorn dispels this notion and reminds us that we exist in the present day and all romance is dead.
