Girls Fall Down

by Maggie Helwig

  ‘I was just going to see Derek.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. I got your message.’

  ‘I don’t have to go right now necessarily.’ She played absently with the string of the balloon. ‘I talked to this guy, this psychiatric social worker, he’s going to come with me and see him next week, if he’s got my okay maybe Derek’ll talk to him.’

  And suddenly he couldn’t bear any of it, the hunger and the damage, the constant covert search for signs of other men in her life, the moment when she would leave him this time. He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Good. Great. You won’t be needing me anymore, then.’

  She pushed her hair back and looked at him, frowning. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Never mind. It’s probably just as well.’

  ‘Alex.’ She sat down on the couch beside him, and he edged away.

  ‘I said it’s okay. Look, I was convenient. I’m aware of that, and if you’ve got some other guy to take over, that’s fine. I can’t really do this any longer anyway.’

  Susie lifted one hand to her mouth and began to chew on the edge of her thumb. ‘Okay, I don’t get this. Where is this coming from all of a sudden?’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ He stretched out his legs and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘We both know where I stand. I mean, you never bothered to call me for thirteen years, did you? You called Adrian and not me, for God’s sake.’

  ‘This is bullshit.’ She twisted her thumb between her teeth. ‘In case your memory doesn’t extend back a full three weeks, I did call you, how the hell else would you even be here?’

  ‘Yeah. Eventually. You did.’ He didn’t know why he didn’t stop, but he couldn’t, the rush of it, high and reckless. ‘Your brother was missing and you wanted somebody to be your, your good luck charm or whatever. And apparently you didn’t happen to have any other admirers around at that point, or, or your husband, whoever the hell he was – ’

  ‘His name’s Nick McCawley,’ said Susie fiercely, biting off a strip of nail. ‘He works at Legal Aid. Why don’t you give him a call, collect a few more stories you can throw in my face?’

  ‘That’s not my fucking point!’ He didn’t mean to shout, but it happened, a stab of pain in his head. ‘I’m trying to tell you, I can’t do it again, Susie-Paul, I can’t go through this again.’ He put his hands up to his eyes and rubbed them. ‘For God’s sake. Of course I want you. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, probably everybody wants you. But it costs me too much. It costs me too fucking much to hold your hand until you feel like going away. I can’t give up everything else just to be a marginal player in the dramatic life of Suzanne Rae.’

  She stood up then, without saying a word, picked up her coat and walked past him to the stairs and left, closing the door hard behind her, and suddenly he was alone in her apartment, half-panicked by what he had just accomplished. He couldn’t stay here without her, that was ridiculous, he had to – oh Christ, he had to follow her again. He ran down the stairs and out into the street.

  She was far ahead of him, a distant little figure under the street-lights. He had to keep running, his camera bag thudding awkwardly against his hip, to catch up with her, and for a minute he thought that he wouldn’t, that he’d have to stop and lose sight of her. In the darkness she kept receding, a small shadow in the shadows, and by the time he reached her he felt such relief that he almost didn’t expect her to be angry.

  ‘Get lost,’ she snapped. He tried to touch her shoulder, but she shook him off, still walking.

  ‘Susie, cut it out,’ said Alex, struggling for breath. ‘I wasn’t making fun of your life. I’ve seen what you go through with Derek, I know it’s real, and I know the breakup with Chris must have hurt you in its own way, but Jesus, it nearly killed me, and you never even noticed.’

  ‘That is not true.’

  ‘Okay. You did. You noticed that I was someone who would just hang around and be in love with you forever and never ask too much of you. But I,’ he tried to catch his breath; she was so much smaller than him but she was moving fast, ‘I have a chronic illness, okay? I don’t like to say that, but it’s true. The first night we went down into the ravine, I nearly had a hypo episode, and then my sugar went up way too high, and I had something close to a hemorrhage from the stress, I had serious damage to the blood vessels in my eyes, I’m, I’m, I’m losing my sight for fuck’s sake, you can’t do this to me!’

  She didn’t stop walking, but she slowed down a bit. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Well, what was I going to say?’

  ‘I’m sorry, then. About that, I’m sorry. But about everything else, you’re just wrong.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Do you really believe – God, Alex, do you think I could ever…’ she moved her hands in the air as if she were trying to shape a sentence. ‘Alex, I’m sorry about what happened back then. I fucked up. I treated you badly, I know I did. But you have no idea. You have no idea what it took to call you, what it – Alex, you, you are not, you have never been marginal. You can’t believe that. You can’t really believe that.’

  ‘It’s actually not very hard, all things considered.’

  ‘No. No, you just want to think that.’

  ‘Fuck that, Susie-Paul.’

  ‘You do. You don’t want to think that I was confused too. You don’t want to think that you mattered. That’s too hard. You just want to live in this pretend world where you aren’t responsible for anything.’

  ‘I’m not responsible? You left. You just left. You never even sent me a fucking postcard.’

  ‘Go home, Alex,’ she said quietly. They were nearing the intersection with Broadview now. ‘I don’t need you.’

  ‘No kidding,’ said Alex sourly.

  ‘God, you like that idea, don’t you? Poor Alex, out in the cold, all fragile and powerless. As if you… as if it never hurt, knowing you were always there – wanting things I couldn’t give you or, or anyone…’ She turned her head sharply, scanning the road for a break in the traffic. ‘As if you never hurt me. Jesus.’

  ‘It’s not the same at all. ‘

  ‘Okay, then.’ She turned to him. Her face was cold and very still. ‘I had an abortion in Vancouver. Will that do?’

  He wasn’t immediately aware of any emotion. The first thing he thought was that he needed to sit down, and his legs folded up onto someone’s front lawn. He saw the outline of Susie standing in front of him in the darkness, a faint red wash from the Christmas lights of the house beside them, her arms crossed.

  ‘Good enough, Alex? Happy now? You think maybe you did enough harm after all?’

  ‘Oh God. Stop. I don’t… I don’t… ’

  ‘What I really hate,’ she went on, her voice tight and controlled, ‘is that I can’t tell you for sure if it was yours. Because I don’t know. You have no idea how much I hate saying that, but I don’t know.’ He pressed his fingers against his temples. ‘Not that there are a million candidates. It was either you or Chris. I just can’t be sure who.’

  ‘It’s not…’ he said, and the words came out too high-pitched, ‘… surely it’s not very likely it was me. I mean, it was only… ’

  ‘No. But it’s not very likely it was Chris either. One way or another, something unlikely happened, all right? It’s true I was sleeping with Chris on and off until I actually left town, which in retrospect seems pretty sick, but on the other hand,’ she took a breath, ‘when I slept with Chris, we used birth control.’

  He dug his hands into his hair. ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ ‘I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. I thought… I assumed you would have said something if… oh, hell. I guess it doesn’t help to say I wouldn’t do the same thing now.’

  She sat down on the grass beside him, and he put his head on his knees.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Yes, you should’ve.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. Not really. I’m sorry I bro
ught it up this way.’

  ‘No. I had to know.’

  ‘Chris doesn’t know. I don’t plan to tell him.’

  A car drove by, lights passing over them. His eyes were throbbing. ‘Suppose,’ he said hesitantly, ‘suppose you had known… say you knew for sure it was Chris’s… would you have… ’

  ‘Please. Don’t. It’s not worth going that way. I was by myself in Vancouver, and honest to God, neither one of you was looking like fantastic father material.’ She swallowed once, and he thought she was trying not to cry. ‘I nearly did tell you. I had my hand on the phone once. But how the hell can you say to somebody, I’m pregnant and it could be yours, but then again maybe not?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess most people just lie.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he saw dimly that she was lifting her hand and wiping her eyes, ‘that wasn’t the only thing. I just… Alex, my twin brother is schizophrenic.’

  He bit his lip. ‘Yeah. And I have diabetes.’

  ‘Oh God, you don’t get it,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘Do you think I meant – ’

  ‘I don’t know what I think. I don’t think anything.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, I wasn’t thinking about the, the child having it. I was thinking about me. I was thinking,’ and now she really was crying, he heard the small gasping sounds between her words, ‘I would lose my mind, I would go crazy like Derek, and I would have this baby, this poor little baby, and it would have to love me, it wouldn’t have a choice because babies don’t, and it would have to watch me lose my mind. Probably just when it was old enough to really – to have its life totally destroyed, and I could see it so clearly, I could see how I would fall apart, little by little, and I would, I would do awful things, I would hurt it, hurt it in all kinds of horrible ways, and it was so easy to picture, so easy… ’

  ‘But why… for God’s sake, why would you… ’

  ‘I was sitting in, in this chair, in this house in Vancouver, and there was this picture in my mind of putting a baby’s hand on the burner of the stove, and I thought, I will believe that I’m helping it. I will do this and I will think that I’m helping it. And I couldn’t, it wouldn’t go away, and I couldn’t get up from the damn chair, hours, a whole day, I don’t know how long. I would believe it was kindness.’ Her voice broke up completely, and she had to breathe fast and shallow for a minute before she could speak again. ‘Alex, it shouldn’t have been just Derek,’ she said, her voice faint and strained. ‘It should have been me. You didn’t grow up with us, you don’t understand, you think these things are far away, but they’re not far away, they’re close, God they’re close, there’s nothing there I don’t already own. It’s right here inside me, all of Derek’s sickness, it’s in me too, and maybe it won’t ever get me, maybe I’ll always escape, but it’s still there, it’s still mine.’

  Alex sat with his head on his knees, trying pointlessly, stupidly, to remember if there had been a clinic in Vancouver back then or if she would have gone to a hospital. He hoped there had been a clinic, but he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t kept track of those details. He’d only taken pictures.

  He imagined a past where he might have said different things. Where he might have said, I will love you, I will look after you, whoever you become and whatever you do. Where he might have said, Stay here. Stay with me. We are all of us mortally sick. Stay here. But it wouldn’t have been real. He wouldn’t have understood what he was saying.

  ‘I was a stupid scared kid, but I think I did love you sometimes,’ said Susie. ‘So fuck off out of my life, okay?’ She stood up, wiping her nose, and crossed the street, without looking back at Alex as he followed her.

  They walked in silence down Pottery Road, into the darkness. The night-vision problem was worse. He could see very little. He remembered the day that he caught her as she fell from the railing, and the sudden feeling that was like a revelation. You are mine. He thought that, after all, it was nearly true, and that it was far more painful and complicated than the person he was could ever have dreamed.

  Along the narrow shoulder of the highway, the lighting was unpredictable and sporadic, and the route seemed too precarious, the cars curving directly towards him, each missed step a waiting disaster. They crossed the Don River and he felt gravel under his feet along the curve of the road towards Bayview. An ambulance raced past them in the other direction, its light pulsating.

  At the foot of the hill, she could not any longer pretend to be unaware that he was behind her. ‘I never invited you to come,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What makes you think this is any of your business?’

  He had nothing to say to that, so he simply shrugged. Susie turned away and began to climb, towards her brother, her magnetic north. He waited a few moments, leaving a distance between them, before he started up the slope himself.

  But when they reached the top, above the streetlights, he was nearly blind. The ambient light that he remembered was useless to him now, his eyes unable to register it. He took an uncertain step forward, unbalanced, and reached out for something to put his hand against, but there was nothing there. He walked another unsteady pace and stopped.

  ‘I can’t see where the railway track is,’ he said.

  Susie didn’t speak. He would not have been wholly surprised if she had left him there. He heard her moving in the darkness, the soft friction of boots in snow. Then her gloved fingers closed around his wrist.

  ‘This way,’ she murmured, and led him forward. ‘Now.’

  He stepped out carefully and felt the track under his feet, stumbled across and stopped sharply at the other side, remembering that the steep downslope was very close. Susie let go of his wrist, and he shuffled downwards in a crouch, clinging to dry branches, until he saw a dull light to the left. Derek’s lantern. He could make out the shape of the tent by the concrete wall now, pick his way to level ground. Susie went ahead of him. ‘Derek?’ she called.

  There was no answer from the tent.

  ‘Derek?’ She moved closer to the front flap. ‘It’s Susie-Paul. Are you there?’ Then frowned, tipped her head as if she heard something faint. ‘Hello? Derek, are you okay? Talk to me, Derek.’

  Alex wasn’t aware of any sound except the distant traffic, but Susie leaned closer to the flap. ‘Hello? Please, Derek, answer me. Hello?’

  Her hand moved out, and Alex caught his breath as she unzipped the tent flap. In the light that spilled from the opening, he could see her put a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening. ‘Derek, Jesus Christ, talk to me!’ She disappeared into the tent, and he was crouching and heading towards the entrance when she looked out.

  ‘Alex, come here,’ she said shakily. ‘He’s really sick. Physically sick.’

  He got down on his hands and knees and crept into the tent, the cold nearly as bad inside, the wind crawling through small rips in the fabric. The rotting sweet smell of unwashed human, sticky acrid male smells of urine and semen and sweat, and something else, the swampy scent of illness. Derek was lying on the ground on his side, unmoving, and Alex realized now what Susie had heard, the rasp of hard breath. He had heard this before in the hospital. Not agonal, not the last breaths, not quite, but very bad.

  She had moved to the side of the tent, deferring to his quasi-professional status. The lantern was inside, and he could see well enough. He didn’t want to touch this man, but there was a duty here, some elusive transfer of the medical oath to Alex, the next best thing.

  He put a hand on Derek’s dirty forehead, and there was a trace of response, a twitch and a moan, consciousness.

  ‘He’s burning up.’ He tried to think what to do about fever. Derek’s mouth was open, the lips dry and puckered. ‘He’s extremely dehydrated.’ He looked around the tent, piles of ragged clothing, old books with foxed pages, rat droppings. There was a bottle of water in one corner. ‘He’s kind of semi-conscious. It’s possible I can get him to take some fluids.’

  Susie handed him the bottle, and
he took hold of Derek’s shoulder, thinking of fleas and mites, and pulled him over. He would have to hold on to him. He put one arm around the other man – realizing for the first time he was a fairly small man, of course he was, he was Susie’s brother – and lifted him partway up. Bodies in space. Derek muttered, and his legs flexed up spasmodically; then his whole body moved, and a thin stream of stringy vomit ran from his lips down the side of his face. Alex put down the water bottle, reached for a rag and wiped the vomit away, then picked the bottle up again and tried to pour the liquid into Derek’s mouth.

  He should have noticed it earlier, but maybe he hadn’t been at the right angle. Derek’s shirt was partly unbuttoned and hung open over his skinny chest, ribs like sticks, and Alex saw the rash, the dark purple explosive spots scattered across the skin. He froze where he was.

  ‘Do you have your cellphone?’ he asked, trying to control his voice. Susie nodded. ‘Call an ambulance now. Right now,’ said Alex. ‘This is meningitis.’

  She took the small phone from her pocket, but she couldn’t get a good signal under the tracks, had to crawl outside the tent and stand on the hillside in the open air, leaving Alex alone counting how many days it had been since he’d shaken Derek’s mucusy wet hand, trying to remember whether he had touched his own mouth or nose afterwards. How many days it had been since, oh God, Derek had kissed his sister.

  Susie crept back into the tent. ‘They’re on their way. You should take the lantern up to the top of the hill so they can see you. I’ll stay with Derek.’ She was unnaturally calm, her face stiff. Alex was still holding Derek, the heat of the fever close against him. ‘Susie, honey, he’s very contagious. I’ve had more exposure than you up to this point, maybe I should… ’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Leave me with him.’

  She was right. Of course she was right. He lay Derek gently down on the floor of the tent and moved out, his eyes on Susie as she knelt beside her brother, and as he backed out of the entrance he saw her bend down, and put her lips once more to Derek’s.

  He pulled himself up the slope of the hill in the circle of light from the lantern, hearing her voice behind him, a soft continuous sound. He couldn’t make out the words. He passed over the tracks and stood at the highest point of the hill, holding the lantern up, level with his head.