The Empty Room

by Lauren B. Davis

“I’m sorry, pet. This isn’t your fault. It’s my fault. Mummy’s right about that. I won’t drink anymore, I won’t. I promise.”

  She didn’t believe him, of course, but it felt good to have his arms around her, and so she said, “I believe you, Daddy. I believe you.”

  IT’S A KNOCK-OFF!

  In the shower the water felt good and Colleen wanted to stand there for hours, but there was no time. She didn’t bother to shave her legs either. Thank God for pants. Yuck, there was mildew on the pink shower curtain. She had to buy a new one. That pink was the colour of Pepto-Bismol, or Pepto-Dismal as she called it. Why had she ever bought it? It was vomit-inducing. She’d buy a new one—something in a cool pale watery blue. Clean and fresh.

  When she stepped out of the shower, the towel she rubbed over her face smelled of mildew too. Disgusting. Her stomach cramped. When was the last time she did laundry? She patted herself down, since she’d read in a magazine that rubbing too hard could stretch the skin. Red dots had appeared on her torso over the past few years. Her doctor said they were nothing, just cherry angiomas, whatever the hell that meant. Colleen noted the scatter of them across her chest and stomach. Maybe her liver was giving out.

  “That’s it, kid,” she said out loud, “your drinking days are over.”

  A quick look in the mirror. This was always a dangerous moment in the day. So much depended on not hating oneself completely at such an early hour. Mirrors were treacherous objects. As a little girl she read Hans Christian Andersen’s story about the Snow Queen. A wicked sprite fashioned a mirror with the power to make everything good and beautiful look ugly and mean, and all that was ugly and horrible look even more atrocious. The mirror was smashed into a hundred million and more pieces, some no larger than a grain of sand, and these flew about in the world, and when they got into people’s eyes, there they stayed, and then people saw everything perverted, or only liked looking at that which was evil. Splinters even found their way into the hearts of some people and that was the worst of all, for their hearts became like lumps of ice. Colleen was not convinced this was merely a fairy tale for children, and even entertained the possibility she had such a speck of tainted mirror in her eye, for she thought the world a pretty shabby, violent and decaying place and couldn’t understand why some people seemed so happy all the time, so impervious to the grief and sorrow of humanity. It was hard to believe perceptions could be so different, and impossible to tell who was right.

  She considered her reflection now, and there was no sugar-coating what she saw. She grimaced at the haggard woman she saw before her, bared her teeth and shook her head. Men had once told her she was a pretty girl, they had desired her. Everyone told her she had such good bones, that she was lucky to have inherited her mother’s cheekbones. She did not see good bones. She saw a neck no longer firm, a softened jawline, a nest of lines around her eyes. A crease ran up her cheek. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and a pimple reddened her chin. How the hell could she be almost fifty and still getting pimples?

  She had an urge to smash the mirror. People did such things. She could do it. She could ram her fist into the mirror. But she’d probably break her hand. She could throw something. The canister of bath salts. She could throw that. She pictured a shard of glass actually flying into her eye. Blood and pain. She hung her head and swallowed back unexpected, and inconvenient, tears. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

  She took her hands from her eyes and got to work. A quick swipe of mascara. But she dropped the wand in the sink, leaving a black smear against the flesh-coloured porcelain. Her hands, she realized, were trembling just a little. She towel-dried her hair, which was good hair, fine, but lots of it and with a slight wave. She plugged in the hair dryer and used her brush to lift the hair from the roots. Ordinarily she’d bend over and dry her hair upside down but this morning such an acrobatic manoeuvre would invite disaster. When it was dry enough she piled it on top of her head in a messy but, she thought, charmingly bohemian twist, and secured it with a silver clip.

  On a little plastic shelf over the towel rack miniature perfume bottles were arranged in a circle: Dior, Trésor, Chloé, Oscar de la Renta, Angel, Perry Ellis 360, Intuition, Ysatis, Opium, L’Air du Temps. Looking at the two tiny doves in etched glass on the last bottle brought to mind Ali, the beautiful young man from the Canary Islands, who once gave her a bottle, which she spilled down the back of her dresser the very night he gave it to her. The whole room smelled of gardenia and jasmine for a week. Ali turned out to be married to a woman (possibly two, he was Muslim) back home. Goodbye, Ali.

  Colleen loved these tiny bottles. She bought them years ago at Christmas when the department stores sold them as gifts. She felt she deserved a gift. They were so pretty and light and held all the promise of a lovely dress and a sparkling night, one filled with possibility. She imagined they contained magic potions. Sometimes she took them off the shelf and carried them to the living room, lined them up on the coffee table and lit candles round them, creating a sort of altar. She picked up the squat inverted triangle of the Trésor bottle. Dust filmed the glass. She cleaned it with her thumb. She really should give the whole place a polishing.

  She glanced at her watch. 8:10. She’d never make it. Lipstick, but forget the foundation. No, just a dab of foundation on the broken blood vessels along her nose, and powder, to take the sweat-shine away. Jesus, but her stomach was a mess. She ran naked to the kitchen, smeared a couple of salted crackers thickly with butter and stuffed them in her mouth. Good and greasy. For some reason that always helped. She shouldn’t have anything else. Certainly not now. There were rules about these things. But … there was so little left in the bottle, and a quick swig would settle things down, she was sure it would.

  Drinking before breakfast, however, was against these rules. She often woke up at around 4 a.m., heart pounding with anxiety, legs twitching and restless, as though they’d gone to sleep and were about to burst into pins and needles. This morning had been no exception, and before she managed to fall back to sleep, she vowed she wouldn’t drink today. A detox day, as she called them. Sundays were supposed to be detox days, but Sunday had been such a lonely day. There was only so much reading she could do, only so much napping. A wee drink made everything prettier, and far more tolerable. And so today, Monday, would be her detox day.

  Back in the bedroom, with the recriminating unmade bed and the not-terribly-clean sheets, she slipped into underwear, the same bra she had slept in, black pants and blue turtleneck. She crammed her swollen feet (she had spider veins on her ankles now, her ankles for Christ’s sake, when did that happen?) into knee-high stockings and black pumps. Tonight, when she absolutely would not be drinking, she’d do laundry. For now, this would have to do.

  She hunched into her red wool coat. The red was flattering against her pale colouring, she knew, and the A-line shape hid a variety of flaws. It had cost too much, and she shouldn’t have bought it two years ago when her credit cards were already burdened. It was rather cutting-edge then, though, and she couldn’t resist. Now, even if it was a little out of fashion, she preferred to think of it as classic. She tried to channel Audrey Hepburn, her chin’s insouciant and slightly defiant thrust.

  Colleen squared her shoulders. “Nothing is impossible,” she said aloud, quoting Hepburn. “The word itself says, ‘I’m possible’!” It was a sort of morning incantation. Some people strapped on St. Patrick’s Breastplate; Colleen preferred Hepburn.

  Colleen grabbed her keys from the bowl on the end table and then remembered her phone. She picked it up from the counter and popped it in her purse. Just then she had a sort of muscle memory. The phone. Did she call someone last night? She did. Oh Christ. Whom did she call? She spoke to Lori around eight-thirty or so. Yes, that was it, because The Sopranos was on. But they hadn’t talked long. Lori had kids, after all, and a life.

  Colleen was in the hallway now and just about to press the elevator button wh
en it occurred to her she might have called a man. Yes, it was a man’s voice she recalled, but whose? She prayed it wasn’t him. Jake. She groaned and felt a rush of panic. It probably was Jake, but she wouldn’t think about that, not now.

  Oh, lovely. Now she was channelling Scarlett O’Hara.

  Last year she got a phone bill with a long list of calls she didn’t remember making. When she called the phone company to complain, a woman explained they were from a charge-by-the-minute service. All at once it had come back to her. The late-night commercials with a handsome man saying “Call now, ladies, I’m waiting to talk with you.” It had sounded sexy and forbidden and she’d thought, just this once, why not? Who knew what might happen? But she had to keep paying for more minutes, going deeper and deeper into some mysterious telephone labyrinth where the man on the other end almost said something naughty but never really did. Apparently she’d been on the phone for some time. Apparently she’d made a number of calls. “My damn roommate,” she said, and assured the woman at the phone company that she’d handle the matter.

  The elevator pinged and the doors opened. It was packed, as it always was at this hour, but she squeezed in. Most of the people in the car were young women who worked in the gleaming offices and fancy clothing boutiques downtown. The one with the fancy suede coat, the classic, not-a-hair-out-of-place blond French twist and diamond studs in her ears, worked at Holt Renfrew. Colleen pictured her there, tall and graceful and utterly self-absorbed behind one of the cosmetics counters. She went into the store one lunchtime, wanting to buy some new blush, but when she approached the girl, emboldened by the fact they were neighbours, the girl’s gaze skimmed over her as though she were a cleaning lady or something, and she turned to assist a decked-out matron. Colleen had nearly burst into tears, although she didn’t really know why, not even now. What did she care if some club-bunny, some little tart like that, acknowledged her or not? She’d never been back to Holt’s, not once.

  Now, she smiled in a general sort of way at the crisply dressed young things with their polished hair and nails and perfect skin and tiny waists. The smile was meant to be self-assured, as though she could float through any trial in life with the serenity of a Buddha. She hoped it didn’t look stiff. She couldn’t bear it if anyone suspected how she longed for an empty elevator.

  “Morning,” said a blond girl in a black coat.

  “Good morning.” Lovely girl, thought Colleen. She noticed a rhinestone pin in the form of a dragon on the girl’s lapel, which was approximately at the level of Colleen’s nose. “What a pretty brooch.”

  The girl merely smiled. Colleen felt short. When did everyone get so tall?

  A couple of the young women talked to each other about someone named Danny who was apparently hot, hot, and everyone ignored Colleen. A young man in the back, shorter than most of the women but still taller than Colleen, wore sunglasses, which was such an absurd effort at coolness Colleen might have chuckled if she weren’t feeling so queasy.

  It seemed such a short time ago when she was one of these young girls, her waist an impossibly slender twenty-three inches, her hair long, swinging freely down her back, her delicate ankles shown off to full advantage by a pair of four-inch heels. How many young men had asked her out, on this very elevator, for a drink or a meal, or something else?

  The elevator air was thick with the combined fug of seven or eight different perfumes and Colleen held her thumb and forefinger beneath her nose so as to block some of it. Her poor stomach. Did these girls have no thought for anyone but themselves? Didn’t they take into consideration the fact so many people were now allergic to perfume? Of course they didn’t. They were self-centred in the way of the young.

  They stopped on the sixth floor to let in more people, a couple this time, holding hands, dressed in head-to-toe black, he with a silver buckle on his belt in the shape of a death’s head. Colleen had to step back and practically press up against the girl from Holt’s, who, of course, wouldn’t step back herself. The girl in black had pink hair this morning. It wasn’t always pink. It had previously been green and blue and several shades of red and a black so deep it was indigo. Colleen knew this pair. In the summer the girl wore dresses of astonishing skimpiness, revealing tattoos so extensive they covered her arms like a blouse. Where could such a creature possibly work? What demimonde existed where such a thing was permissible? Like those waiters and waitresses in the Queen Street restaurants with piercings in their eyebrows and lips and noses and great plugs in their earlobes, creating enormous loops of flesh. They called it neo-tribal, for God’s sake. Colleen considered it an insult to regular old tribals. What happened when they took the plugs out? The flesh-hoops must dangle and flap. A sheen of sweat broke out on Colleen’s forehead. For the sake of your stomach, don’t think of that now.

  At last they reached the ground floor. Everyone bustled out, but most turned left, heading for the exit to the parking lot. Colleen and two girls walked to the front exit. Colleen had never owned a car and couldn’t imagine how most people afforded one—the gas, the insurance, the parking, the maintenance. The girl who worked at Holt’s, the cosmetic girl, for God’s sake, had a car. How was that possible? Maybe she earned a little extra on the side. When Colleen first moved to Toronto from Burlington she knew girls like that—leggy, buxom things who worked as receptionists and hostesses, but who lived in apartments Colleen certainly couldn’t afford and who never paid for a meal or a drink. Professional girlfriends. Not her, no way, thank you very much. She was no one’s plaything. She had been propositioned—in nightclubs as well as offices where she’d temped—by men she was sure could afford mistresses, but she didn’t like them, with their loud voices and scotch breath and arrogance.

  She pushed open the glass door and, once outside in the cutting October wind, had a choice to make. The stop for the bus that would take her to the subway was right across the street, but no one was waiting at the shelter, and if she’d just missed the bus, there might not be another for fifteen minutes. She looked at her watch. 8:25. If she walked, it would take ten minutes, but that extra five minutes might make all the difference. A gust whipped a leaf into her face and it stung like a slap. She looked down the street but there was no sign of the bus. Looking the other way, toward Yonge Street and the subway, she thought she saw it.

  “Shit,” she said, and started walking.

  She crossed to the other side of the street, just in case the bus did appear and she could make it to one of the two stops between here and the subway. She already felt a burning sort of pain right on the balls of her feet, and these weren’t even high heels. She tried to ignore it. The wind buffeted her face, making her dizzy. She sucked in air too quickly, and that made her stomach even dodgier. She had never thrown up in the mornings, the way she’d heard some people did, but there was always a first time.

  When she was thirteen and learning how to smoke (something she worked very hard at, since all the cool kids smoked), she used to get appallingly nauseated. Once, while riding the bus to the shopping mall, she smoked a Matinée cigarette pilfered from her mother’s purse. Imagine being able to smoke on buses, or in movie theatres, the way we used to! By the time she arrived at the Burlington Mall, she was sure she was going to throw up. The only question was, would she make it to the bathroom in time, or would she throw up on the floor outside the pet store? She reached the toilet stalls and stood there, trembling, sweaty and pale, her mouth filling with saliva, wanting only to heave and get it over with. Then the waves passed and off she went, to smoke again another day, to repeat the same madness over and over until, finally, she smoked like a pro.

  Now, Colleen was so busy trying not to wobble in her dizziness that she forgot to look behind her, and whoosh, the bus sped by.

  “Shit!”

  She walked faster, afraid she might actually start crying. She should have gotten up earlier. She shouldn’t have bothered with a shower. She mustn’t cry; her mascara would run. There was nothing to be done but wal
k and hope she made her connections. When she reached the subway station she hurried down the stairs with a hundred other rushing people. They reminded her of those biology films showing white blood cells swooshing through veins. She caught a whiff of urine. Heard a thousand pairs of shoes tapping on the tiles, the shriek of brakes as the subway approached the station. She was propelled forward by the force of the bodies around her and into their midst, away from the handrails. She wondered what would happen if she stumbled and fell; pictured her body, in her pretty red coat, trampled underfoot. What if there were an emergency, with all these people crammed together? If there were a bomb, or a fire? They’d never get out.

  A train pulled in and people exiting the car swam in two directions like salmon swirling in a spawning pool, some trying to get up the stairs, Colleen and others trying to get down. She reached the platform and shouldered forward. As she neared the doors she looked down at the gap, which she hated. It would be so easy to get pinned between the platform and the subway car, mangled and crushed … Don’t think about that. Then she was inside, just barely inside, with bodies a solid wall in front of her and even more perfume smells and coffee-and-orange-juice breath, which was one of the worst smells in the world. Someone pushed in behind her and she lurched forward into the back of an older black man.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she said, “there’ll be another train in a minute. No need to crush us all.”

  The man turned to look at her. His eyes were yellowish and the pores on his shiny skin large and open. You could, as her mother used to say, drive a Buick into one of those pores. “Sorry. Not you,” she said.

  “No problem,” the man said. “Sardines have better lives.” He turned away.

  Colleen manoeuvred so she could at least grab hold of a tiny portion of pole. A woman who had pushed in after her stood facing the doors, so her absurdly poofed-up blond hair was in Colleen’s face. Colleen tucked her purse under her arm—this scenario was a pickpocket’s dream—and brushed the woman’s hair out of her face.