The Empty Room

by Lauren B. Davis

  The garage door opened and then she heard the car door close and the engine start up. She walked back around to the driveway. Sure enough, there was the car, the white Skylark with the red interior, backing out onto the road. She watched her father drive away.

  Pixie whined and nudged her leg. “Okay, puppy, okay.” She stroked his head and he mouthed her fingers, not biting, just holding on. Colleen turned and saw her mother in the master bedroom window over the garage. She had a cigarette between her lips. She, too, watched Peter Kerrigan drive away, and then she looked down and smiled at her daughter. A second later the curtains closed and Colleen was left standing in the driveway.

  Colleen was glad she hadn’t taken off her coat when she came in the house. Where should she go? She realized she was shivering. In fact, her teeth began to chatter and she knew she would, if she gave herself half a chance, start crying. She would not cry. She would not. She’d go to the park. She’d sit on the swings or on the bench and she’d wait until it was late at night and then she’d go back to the house and see if the car was back in the garage. First, though, she’d go down to the gas station and get some chips and cookies for supper.

  “C’mon, Pixie.” She tucked her hands under her armpits as she walked away. She didn’t look back, and slowly the chattering and shaking subsided.

  A DANGEROUS CURRENT

  Standing in the toilet stall, Colleen realized she probably wasn’t going to be able to will herself insane right here and right now, although she acknowledged the possibility remained on the horizon. She stepped out of the stall. As she moved, she noticed the bottom of her left pant leg was soaked in vodka and cranberry juice. She looked up just as the other woman exited her stall. It was Diane, of the expensive burgundy boots, the dove-grey wrap-dress and perfectly tousled hair. The smell of alcohol wafted round the bathroom like a malicious spirit.

  They don’t call it “spirits” for nothing.

  Diane blushed. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course. I’m fine. Absolutely fine. I’ll clean that up if there’s a broom or something. Silly carrying salad dressing in my purse. I just picked it up at the market and didn’t want to lug an extra bag around, you know?” The vodka sloshed against the inside of her skull and she realized full well she was talking too much, but maybe, just maybe, she could walk out of this bathroom and Diane wouldn’t say anything to C&C and Colleen could go back to taking that stupid fucking test.

  Diane washed her hands at the sink. “Don’t worry about cleaning it up. I’ll call down to Maintenance.”

  Why would she call Maintenance? Colleen thought she should wash her hands as well. That was what one did. That was what well-mannered people did. She pumped the soap dispenser, but it was empty. She pretended it wasn’t and rinsed her fingers under the water.

  Diane pulled a paper towel—just one—from the dispenser and carefully dried her well-manicured hands. “I think I should tell you,” she said as she tossed the used towel into the bin, “I’m a C&C placement officer. I was assigned to work with you.”

  Colleen’s stomach pinged. “Lovely. I’m almost finished the tests.” She reached for her own towel as Diane stepped closer to the door.

  Diane looked at her watch. “It’s nearly three. Perhaps it would be better if you came back tomorrow. You know”—she crossed her arms and looked down for a moment, then up again—”perhaps you should come back when you’ve given this some more thought—when you’re … refreshed.”

  Colleen stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Diane’s gaze was level and she looked as cross as a schoolmarm, but just a little sad too. “I have a sister with a drinking problem.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She got sober, though. She went to AA.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Perhaps you should try going to a few meetings.”

  “I appreciate your advice, and if I had a problem with alcohol, I’m sure that’s the first place I’d go. However, I think it’s presumptuous”—Did I slur on that? Did I say “prezuptious”?—”of you to say something like that to a perfect stranger in a prefeshonal … professional setting. I’ve had a bad day is all. A very bad day.”

  Horrified, she realized she was crying. Hot, stinging tears oozed from her eyes and dripped off her chin. She slapped at them with the palms of her hands.

  Diane was looking at Colleen, her lips in a little moue, her head cocked, her brow furrowed. She placed her hands in the prayer position, just under her small sharp chin, and opened her mouth to say something.

  Colleen pre-empted what she presumed would be the woman’s self-satisfied pity. “Oh, to hell with it,” she said, and hurled herself toward the door. Diane hopped aside, her hand to her throat.

  In the hall, Colleen realized she’d have to go back into the office and get her coat, her lovely red coat. But the hallway seemed at an odd tilt, and she put her hand against the wall to steady herself. Panic rose in her chest like a black eel, slithering and squirming. She had drunk too much, had slipped over the line and was in real danger of careening out of control. She could fall, or pass out. She closed her eyes and for an instant it was impossible to tell what was up and what was down. Behind her, the door to the washroom opened, and she knew Princess Diane was about to parade her perfection up the hall, tossing judgment like coins to beggars.

  Holding onto the wall, Colleen ducked round the bank of elevators into the hall beyond the C&C offices. Safely out of sight, she leaned back and tried to breathe deeply. It wasn’t the drink, was it? This was an anxiety attack. Oh, the humiliation. It rose up in waves, along with the alcohol fumes. She looked around her. She stood in front of a dentist’s office—Dr. Lipshitz—what kind of name was that for a dentist? Now she was laughing and crying at the same time, although laughter was definitely winning, which was a good sign.

  After a few minutes she began to feel better; her chest was less constricted and the hall wasn’t doing the old dipsy-doodle anymore. She could go back and finish the test probably—but she wouldn’t, would she. Look at this place. The linoleum was stained and peeling in spots. A dead ficus tree rotted in a chrome planter by the dentist’s door. The glass shades of the overhead light fixtures sported a spatter of dead flies. What kind of a job would she get from an agency housed in a dump like this? Another cheap lawyer’s office in need of a fast typist, or some executive looking for a body to sit in front of his door while his secretary was on vacation lest an empty desk indicate how unnecessary the position was. Maybe she’d get lucky and work for a few weeks at some dismal, third-rate marketing agency and they’d want to hire her full time at less money than she made at the university. Lucky her.

  This was not the new start of which she had dreamed. She was wasting her time. It was only the shock of the day that had led her here at all. She should give herself a few days to figure out her next move. Something in the film world, perhaps, or the music business. She’d enjoyed working in a music management office back in 1985, even if the boys in the band were divas. Tony Madison, that was the name of their manager. He’d liked her, and told her when she left to go back to the university (so sure she’d get her degree that time around) that he’d be glad to have her back if she changed her mind. There were people in the music business who would remember her. Maybe she could get a job in a recording studio.

  Colleen felt better. She strode back into the offices of C&C Staffing. Kev was at his desk again and looked up from his crossword puzzle as she walked in. He blushed red as a radish. So, little Princess Di hadn’t been able to keep her perfectly lipsticked mouth shut. Exactly what you’d expect in a place like this.

  “We didn’t know if you were coming back. Are you going to continue your testing?”

  Colleen walked past Kev and snatched her coat from the back of the chair by the carrel at which she’d been working. She also picked up her test papers and stuffed them in her purse. She didn’t want anyone looking at them and snigger
ing at any questions she’d answered incorrectly. Kev watched her leave, but didn’t say a word. Not even Will you be back? Not even Goodbye.

  Who cared? Out the door she went. Elevator down. Across the lobby and back onto the street.

  And now what?

  People flowed around her like schools of fish. Cars and buses zoomed past. Bicyclists, too, and a man on a silver scooter going faster than the cars. Where was everyone going in such a hurry? Colleen realized she had no destination. There was nowhere she needed to go and no one who cared if she got there or not. Where was her life?

  Over and over again, she saw that bottle of vodka crash to the floor. She had been caught. She had done what she never thought she would: she had huddled like a fugitive, drinking out of a hidden bottle in a bathroom stall. But was that true? No, it wasn’t true. She had drunk from a hidden bottle in a number of bathrooms—at work, in movie theatres, at her mother’s nursing home (quite often there, in fact), in people’s homes when the booze wasn’t flowing fast enough to suit her, in restaurants when she deemed it more economical to bring her own … She’d just never been caught before.

  This was not who she was, though. She was not a woman covered in vodka in a bathroom stall. This was not the Colleen Kerrigan who loved James Agee and Gabrielle Roy and Graham Greene and Thomas Hardy and all those other wonderful writers. Not the Colleen Kerrigan who had her first poem published in the school yearbook and who even though she never had anything else published surely would, one day, she surely would. She was a bluestocking, a woman of the mind, who lived in her thoughts, and who read books on God and science and history and understood all of it. It didn’t matter she’d never graduated from university. Neither had Ray Bradbury nor Truman Capote. Everyone had always said how smart she was. Even Jake, who was about as cheap with a compliment as ever a man could be, said she had brains.

  So how had she let that terrible moment happen? How? She drank too much—hadn’t she vowed just this morning not to drink at all today—and in a hideously fluorescent-lit moment of clarity, she understood she was probably exactly what Princess Diane had said she was. A little cry escaped her lips and a man passing glanced at her. She put her fingers over her mouth. It was true, wasn’t it, and not the first time she’d thought it either. The problem was, she couldn’t possibly stop drinking today, and it had been that way for a long while, hadn’t it.

  She felt lost, adrift. What a desultory sort of life she’d been leading, rambling, meandering, being knocked from one place to the next, led not by any map or plan, but merely in reaction to one damn thing after another. She was a little boat that had slipped its moorings and was floating off into a dangerous current leading to a turbulent open sea. She could not help thinking of safe harbours and whether or not she would ever find one.

  The air stank of car exhaust and dust. The whole neighbourhood, which used to be so trendy, looked down on its luck. Plastic bags fluttered by the curbs. Garbage cans overflowed. The never-quite-solvent businesses that changed every year or so … a spa, a laser treatment centre, an answering service (who used those anymore?). The public school looked like a refugee from 1960s Russia. That was the problem with this city; it tried so hard, but never quite managed to live up to its potential.

  Colleen wanted to get away from the C&C building in case Kev or Diane came out and saw her just standing there like a piece of battered driftwood. She walked toward Mount Pleasant, reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. Maybe someone had called her. She flipped it open. You have two missed calls. Colleen’s heart did a little Texas two-step. She dialled in to her messages and listened.

  “Ms. Kerrigan, this is Carol from Spring Lake Place. Can you give us a call when you get a minute? Everything’s fine, but your mother’s had a bit of a fall and we’ve sent her off to St. Mike’s just to be sure.”

  Shit. Colleen was about to call them back, but then thought she should listen to the second message. Maybe it had all worked out without her. She could not handle her mother today. Of course she fell, again. She fell all the time, because she refused to use the walker that everyone, except Deirdre, agreed she needed. She kept saying she just wanted to fall down and be dead. Eventually, Colleen assumed, she’d get her wish, but not without causing a great deal of trouble beforehand.

  Ah, that was a terrible thing to think, and she knew it. But it was the truth. For Colleen, her mother’s death was something she both feared and desired. For forty-nine years she had lived under her mother’s cloud, and the possibility that she might one day be free of it was incontestably attractive. On the other hand, when Colleen thought of her mother she was filled with regret, for even though Deirdre was the cause of so much wanton destruction, so much slash-and-burn, Colleen understood her life had been a miserable one, and when it was finally over she knew she’d grieve for all the things that might have been and never were.

  She listened to the second message.

  “Hey,” a deep male voice said. He said. Jake. “It’s me.” Of course he never gave his name, always assuming she’d know. Cocky bastard. “Give me a call. I want to talk to you.”

  She should call the nursing home back. But they said everything was all right. There was nothing she could do. And besides, this was the worst of days and she couldn’t cope with one more goddamn thing. She was disappointed. Lori hadn’t called, nor had anyone from the university. What did she expect? Well, she had hoped maybe one of the profs would call to see if she was okay, to see if there was anything they could do. They would have heard by now.

  She didn’t want to call Jake from the street because she knew talking to him, the person who maybe knew her better than anyone else in the world, and from whom it was impossible to hide, could lead to tears. She hurried back down Mount Pleasant and by the time she reached Davisville she was nearly sober again. In fact, she had the post-drink droops, all energy gone, mood plummeting to her heels. She might need a nap. She was also hungry. Her stomach growled as she stepped into the empty lobby and she realized she hadn’t eaten since that breakfast sandwich on the way to what-used-to-be-her-job. The elevator was as deserted as the lobby. She imagined a post-apocalyptic city with all the people gone, just her and the plastic bags tumbling down the forsaken streets. It was almost comforting. What would it be like to never have to worry about what other people thought of you?

  As she opened the door to her apartment she was struck by how still it was. A miasma of loneliness thickened the air. She snorted at her own sentimentality—either what she smelled was a miasma of loneliness or the milk was off. She dropped her purse, took her coat off, hung it in the hall closet and went into the kitchen. Whatever she had smelled when she came in was gone now. Perhaps it had been a ghost, or perhaps she was becoming more like her mother than she wanted to admit. Her mother’s condo, the one she’d moved into after Peter Kerrigan succumbed to lung cancer seventeen years ago, had this smell in it—pungent and cloying—an old-lady smell it had taken Colleen weeks of cleaning to eradicate before she put the place up for sale last spring. Deirdre never seemed to notice it. Maybe this was how it started: you walked in one day and there it was, an odour so sharp it peeled the wallpaper, and then, as quickly as you started smelling it, you stopped smelling it. It just became the smell of your own house, which no one really smelled, did they? She vowed to watch the faces of those who crossed her threshold for signs of sniffing, and if they appeared she’d drown the whole place in bleach and burn sage for a month.

  There was nothing in the fridge she wanted: yogourt, stale bread, two apples, a jar of olives, celery. The white wine bottles stood in a tidy at-attention row in the fridge door. How clean and cool they looked. She had to call Jake back, and she couldn’t do that without a glass of wine in her hand.

  She chose a packet of cheddar cheese slices, and the stale bread. She toasted the bread and made herself a sandwich. Then she poured herself a glass of Chablis. The taste on her lips was as refreshing as a dip in a mountain lake. The perfect accompanimen
t, she thought, to a cheese sandwich. There she was, the little French fairy, all decked out in verbena leaves, released from her bottle, flitting around the room.

  Colleen brought the sandwich and the glass (not the bottle, just the glass) to the couch. The apartment was too quiet. She turned on the television and listened to a big old bald Southern boy with a cheesy moustache telling a crying woman this wasn’t his first rodeo and something about a pancake having two sides no matter how flat it was.

  “Fucking genius,” Colleen said to the screen.

  She turned the television off and when she did the silence rushed back in to fill up all the available space. The room looked the same—the blue sofa, the black coffee table, the television, the battered leather chair under a reading lamp by the window, the shelves of books (most bought from remainder tables), the small table and four chairs in the dining area no one ever sat in—but the objects looked slightly askew, as though someone had come in while she was out and moved everything an inch to the left. This sinister silence, whatever it was, invaded her home with intent. They don’t call it “spirits” for nothing. She finished her sandwich, refilled her glass and called Jake.

  “Yeah, hey,” he answered, because of course her number came up on his phone and that was how he spoke to her, casual, almost bored. She understood this was because he didn’t want her to know his true feelings. The old game.

  “I’m having a bad one, a really bad one,” she said. She hadn’t meant to start like that. She hadn’t meant to sound so needy. Why did just the sound of his voice turn her into Imperilled Pauline? Not that what she said wasn’t true.

  “Yeah, I thought you might be.”

  Why would he think that? Last night? The phone calls? She didn’t want to ask. She’d learned the best way to handle what she called her “grey-outs” was to pretend nothing at all had happened, but to listen for clues. “Really? What are you now, psychic?”