by Alice Zorn
“Why didn’t you bring her along today?” He, too, had never been interested in meeting her friends.
“I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Is she younger? Older?” He smeared his fork across the plate to collect any last crumbs.
Maddy hesitated. He would see soon enough. “Younger.”
“Good. More initiative and energy. This” — he tapped his fork on the china — “is worth gold.”
In the stillness of the night Maddy woke to a voice deep in her ear. The cadence was low, yet a girl’s — a girl taunting her with her pretty pink bra. Maddy opened her eyes, not wanting to fall back into a dream about those long-ago, stupid times.
As soon as she’d come home that evening, she’d called Yushi. Rose had answered in her slow, deep voice. Maddy asked for Yushi but then couldn’t tell if Rose had gone to get Yushi or if she was still there. Should Maddy remind her who Yushi was? Remember Yushi, your roommate? The girl had a few neurons missing. Yushi made excuses for Rose, saying she grew up isolated and then lost her mother, but Maddy thought that if a person knew how to pick up a phone when it rang, then she should learn how to use it. Hello? You’d like to talk to Yushi? Just a moment please. Yushi had lost her mother, too. That didn’t make her comatose.
Maddy was about to hang up and call back when Yushi said hello. Maddy was so impatient and excited to tell her how Stan had advised them to proceed, she forgot about Rose. Yushi had had more ideas, too. A cake made with blood-orange glaze, marbled with bitter chocolate. A stacked shelf system she’d seen in a restaurant kitchen. A menu of petits fours to appeal to the cupcake crowd.
So why, Maddy groaned, with her life finally getting on track and everything dovetailing so beautifully, were her dreams dredging up that damp dirt cellar? So sick with shame and fear she’d been. So sick she could have thrown up. One minute she’d felt bold, with her bra tucked under her leg, her shirt still covering her underpants, sipping the whisky or rum or whatever Neil had poured, and then she saw her cards. With these cards she would lose and have to take off her blouse or her underpants. Let the others see her breasts or down there.
Both were too awful. Neither was possible. She tried to keep her voice from trembling and asked where the bathroom was.
The other boy, the one she didn’t like, grumbled, Gimme a break. In the middle of a hand she wants to pee.
Neil cut him off. Upstairs, he said. Past the kitchen, down the hall.
She closed her cards and set them face down on the blanket. By now she’d realized that Tonya wasn’t on her side. She’d played this game before. She’d known to wear a pretty bra. Her low voice rose from deep within her own self-assurance.
Maddy tiptoed up the stairs. The dirt on the steps stuck to her damp feet. She felt air on her thighs because she wasn’t wearing a skirt. The kitchen looked strange because she was standing in her underpants. You were supposed to be dressed when you were in a kitchen. She found the bathroom, where yellowing grey towels and dirty clothes sagged off the back of the toilet and were kicked along the floor. Didn’t Tonya’s mother clean the bathroom? Nervous, Maddy peed. Then what? She stood, not touching the sink, which was grimy with streaks of old toothpaste. A pebble of soap melted in a scummy pool. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t even leave the house without her skirt. She couldn’t make herself go back to the cellar, where the others waited with that weird, eager tension she’d thought she understood but knew now she didn’t. They wanted to take their clothes off. She wanted to keep hers on.
A double knock on the door startled her.
Maddy?
One of the boys. Probably Neil. The other one wouldn’t have come.
Are you okay? You don’t have to play anymore if you don’t want to.
The relief of not having to take off more clothes made her forget she was already missing her skirt and bra.
Open up. I’ve got something for you.
She trusted Neil because he’d been nice to her. She opened the door and nearly closed it again when she saw him in his Y-fronts with that bulge in the front stretching the cotton, but he stood as if so what, he was in his underwear? She was, too. He held two Mickey Mouse glasses he’d filled again. Come on, he said. We don’t need to play cards. Let’s go to my room.
His room sounded safer than the cellar. She took a glass from him and sipped as she followed him down the hallway. The drink tasted stronger than the last one. There was nothing in his room but his bed, with the sheet and blanket kicked against the wall. There were clothes strewn across the floor. He waved at the bed. Sit. Are you cold? He pulled the rumpled sheet and blanket around her. She was glad of the blankets to cover her bare legs. She tried not to look at his underpants. Maybe boys always looked like that. How would she know?
Comfy? he asked.
Yeah. She sipped again. The drink made her face feel funny.
Push over. Make room. It sounded so casual. There was space to sit side by side and finish their drinks. It felt all right, too, when he nudged her and whispered, Hey, look at me.
He kissed her, which felt nice. His hands had crept under her shirt to squeeze her breasts. In his room with the door closed, both of them under the covers, no one could see. He told her to drink up so he could put her glass on the floor. He kept kissing her and she kissed him back. Then he put her hand under the blanket onto — she didn’t know what. A single hard muscle. She tried to pull her hand away. No, he said between his teeth, grab it! He wasn’t kissing her anymore. When she wouldn’t hold it, he started butting against her with his hips, twisting off her underpants, thrusting and pushing. She cried out in fear and he told her to shut up. He climbed on her, kneeing apart her legs, poking and shoving where there was nowhere to go, hurting her! She squirmed, trying to get away. Lie still, fuck you! His hands gripped her shoulders, then he groaned and collapsed on her. It hurt where he’d pushed. Wetness trickled down her legs. She wanted to get out from under him but was afraid that if she moved he would start again.
In a normal tone, he asked if he should get her clothes.
Her clothes! She had to get home! She was way too late. Her mother would yank her hair and pull her ears. Maddy wiped the sheet down the wetness on her legs. The smell made her feel sick. It wasn’t yellow like pee. There was blood, too. What had he done? She hurt between her legs. Her underpants were ripped.
When he came back with her skirt and bra all bunched together in his fist, he said, Are you okay? She didn’t answer, twisting her skirt up her hips, wishing he wouldn’t watch her dress.
The next day at school, Tonya pretended she didn’t know her. When Maddy finally walked over to Tonya’s locker, she squinted evil eyes and told Maddy to get lost. Because she hadn’t kept playing cards? There was no way to ask.
Then Tonya disappeared from school. Maddy dared herself to sneak past the house, but when she finally did it was empty. The cellar windows were dark. When she next walked by, a family with all the women wearing saris was living there.
Months passed and Maddy got fat. When the principal and the English teacher asked if Maddy was having relations with a boy, she didn’t know what they meant. “Relations” sounded deliberate and ongoing. The only boy she’d had contact with was Neil, but that was months earlier, it only happened once, and she never saw him again.
It was the nurse at the clinic who showed her a line drawing of a woman and a man. The man had a prod at the top of his legs that the nurse called a penis. The woman had a place in her stomach where a baby could grow. The nurse said that if a penis went between a woman’s legs, it made a baby. Maddy remembered Neil’s clumsy thrusting that hurt her.
The drawing of a woman’s parts only became truly — horribly — real for her during the day-long torture of birth, when she was split wide to expel a baby.
From a window Maddy saw Frédéric changing the lock on his gate and went out to ask how Fara was feeling
. He said he’d stayed home for a day because she was feverish and anxious about staying alone in the house. Maddy should have told him right then about Ben, but she wasn’t sure how he would react. Despite what Ben had done, she didn’t want him to get into trouble. She would feel more comfortable telling Fara.
She waited another day before going over and ringing the doorbell.
Fara looked wan — and wary. Her shoulders relaxed when she saw Maddy. “I thought it was another ex-con selling rosaries. I think they pick on us because we’re new here.” She stepped back so Maddy could come in.
“They come to my place, too, don’t worry. They do the whole street. Guys with strawberries, kids with chocolate bars, Jehovah’s Witnesses, people selling calendars, you name it. Maybe because our houses are on the sidewalk. Or Pointers are gullible.” She’d stopped in the hallway, admiring the French doors. “These look great!”
Fara slid a glance, as if she didn’t trust what she’d see. “Yeah. That’s where the guy was standing the other day.”
“Frédéric told me. You must have been …”
“I nearly had a heart attack. I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating — if it was a ghost or what. I don’t even believe in ghosts, but at that moment —” She shuddered.
“Scary. Especially if you were already sick and feeling woozy.”
Fara had squeezed shut her eyes and turned her head away from the French doors.
“How are you now? Are you up for a visit?”
“Please. Frédéric’s got retirement cocktails for one of his employees. He doesn’t care about the party, but he’s glad she’s leaving so he can hire someone younger who won’t faint at the sight of a computer.” Fara had walked through to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Do you want a beer?” She handed Maddy a bottle. In the dining room she clicked on a tiffany lamp, motioned for Maddy to sit, and pulled out a chair for herself.
A painting hung on the wall across from Maddy — a large pale abstract of horizontal stripes. The soft light from the lamp warmed the grain of the wood furniture and stroked gleams on the wineglasses in the buffet. “Nice what you’ve done in here,” Maddy said, not that she’d ever seen the room before. Ben’s father didn’t invite people in, and she’d been too young when Ben’s mother still lived here.
“It’s best when the sun shines in. That’s what made me want to buy the house — before I knew people crawled in under the deck.”
“That’s how he got in?”
“There’s a window under the deck. Frédéric never noticed it wasn’t locked.” She smirked and took a swallow of beer.
So Ben hadn’t broken a window. Maybe not for the police, but for her it was a point in his favour. “I wanted to tell you,” Maddy began. “I think the guy who broke in was Ben — the brother of the boy who killed himself.”
Fara’s rueful look faded.
“I saw him hanging around in the alley … near your fence.”
“You told me the guy in the alley was from the rooming house.”
“That’s who I used to see. Ben only recently started coming around.”
“And you think he …?”
“I think he was upset his dad sold the house.”
Fara considered this. “Yeah, I can see he might be. But we didn’t know anything about him and his dad. We bought the house fair and square.”
“I don’t think he blames you. He knows this is about him and his dad, not you.” She didn’t actually know what Ben thought, but she didn’t want Fara and Frédéric to view him too harshly. “I think he only started to miss the house after his dad sold it. And … maybe he wanted to see it again?”
Fara tilted her beer bottle at the French doors. “He was standing right there when I came downstairs. Right where his brother hanged himself.”
Maddy looked where she pointed. Though she’d told Fara about the hanging, she hadn’t expected Fara to identify the exact spot.
“It’s not the house,” Fara said now. “It’s his brother. That’s what he’s trying to figure out. Why his brother killed himself. Except it doesn’t work that way. He’ll never find out.” Fara paused then added, “I know. My sister killed herself.”
Maddy gave a jerk of surprise. Even disbelief. Fara had said it so calmly.
She continued in an even voice, “That’s the thing about suicide — even harder than the loss is the guilt. You beat yourself up because you didn’t notice in time to stop them. It’s probably even worse for him than for me. Remember? You told me how he used to pick his brother up after school and take care of him when their father was at work. My sister and I, we weren’t close.”
Maddy was trying to remember if Fara had ever hinted that she’d had a sister.
“When you’re the eldest, you always feel responsible. You feel like you should be keeping an eye out. There’s this weird connection — and you hate it, but it’s there, too. Always there.”
Fara was picking at the edge of the label on the beer bottle. “I know exactly what he’s going through — probably better than he knows himself. The not being able to figure it out, the anger.… They end their lives, but they leave you with a life’s worth of knowing they chose nothingness over anything you could offer.” She rolled her head from side to side then dropped it forward again. “Sometimes I got so angry at what she did that I thought if she wasn’t already dead, I would kill her. It takes you years to get past that, and even then, you don’t forget.”
“How long ago was it?” Maddy asked quietly.
“Seventeen years. She was in her apartment. I should have known something was wrong when she asked if I still had a key. They give you little messages, you know. Little last chances to see if you’re paying attention. I guess I wasn’t. I mean, I heard her, but was I supposed to be second-guessing a motive behind every word she said? Anyhow, she knew I had a key and I’d be the one to find her. She planned it down to that detail. It wasn’t an accident.”
Maddy recognized the circling logic. How often had she replayed the night when she woke with leaking breasts, and her baby and the woman with the braid were gone? What should she have done differently? What should she have noticed but didn’t?
Fara took a swallow of beer. “I knew right away something was wrong. She didn’t answer the door and I had to use the key to get in — and there was her coat on the sofa. She only had that one coat so I knew she had to be there. I called but she didn’t answer. Then I looked in all the rooms. Where do you look for someone when you know she has to be there but you can’t find her? The bathroom door was closed, but I couldn’t make myself go in there. No way, I thought. She wouldn’t do that to me — one of those bloody bathtub scenes. Exsanguination.” She pronounced each syllable then set her bottle hard on the table.
As Fara sat silent, staring at the bottle, Maddy guessed that was what had happened. “I’m really sorry, Fara —”
“Yeah, so am I.” Fara sounded more dry than sorry. “Most of the time I don’t even tell people I had a sister. Just those words — had a sister — screw me up completely. Because obviously I don’t have her anymore. She’s dead. But that feeling of having a sister doesn’t go away just because she dies. I didn’t grow up alone. I’m not an only child. I still have that sense of a bond. But where is she then? If she’s dead.” Fara sniffed. “Not if. She is.”
Maddy gave a slight nod. She knew this, too. Once you had a baby, you always had a baby, even when the baby was gone. The feeling was deeper than absence or logic.
Fara scraped her hair off her forehead. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, opening that bathroom door. And then —” She snorted. “It was just an ordinary bathroom!” She thrust a hand out, pointing. “Sink, toilet, tub, shower curtain, towel … no blood. No Claire.”
She paused, as if waiting for the rest of the story to reveal itself — as if she, too, was hearing it for the first ti
me. Maddy felt uneasy, not sure what was coming next. Not sure either that talking about her sister’s suicide was good for Fara. Her eyes glittered.
Strangely, then, she smiled. “I was so glad I didn’t have to see blood. I figured I could handle whatever else I was going to find. Stupid, eh?” She glanced at Maddy. “I walked back through the rooms again. I looked behind the furniture and opened the closets. I even looked in the bottom cupboards in the kitchen. She used to do dumb stuff like that when we were kids. Always hiding. She was thinner than me and not as tall. If she really wanted to, she could have squiggled in. It was crazy to look in the cupboards, but I didn’t know what else to do. I knew she had to be somewhere in the apartment because her coat was there.” Fara wagged a hand, pointing beside her at the invisible, yet incontrovertible fact of the coat.
“But I couldn’t find her and then I started to think maybe she was doing the laundry in the basement. Or she was in someone else’s apartment. I didn’t really believe it — she didn’t have friends in the building — but I had to think something. Your mind tries to make sense.”
“Yes,” Maddy murmured. The mind was a great rationalizer.
“I wasn’t even looking for her anymore, just walking from room to room. Waiting for her to show up. Starting to get pissed off at whatever game she was playing.” Fara paused, as if watching herself walk from room to room. “Then I was in the bedroom and I saw an edge of green garbage bag sticking out from under the sheets. I thought, what stupid thing has she done now, leaving garbage in her bed. So I flipped back the duvet.”
Maddy waited. Fara didn’t speak. She’d started scraping her fingernail down the edge of the beer bottle label again.
Finally, Maddy asked, “What was in her bed?”
“She was.”
Maddy flushed with shock. The bald words tingled on her skin.
