The Substitute

by Nicole Lundrigan

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should I mope for the rest of my life?”

  “Hardly. You’ve moped enough for the whole neighbourhood.”

  “That’s exactly right. And it’s high time I stopped. People can change.”

  “And what might be the cause behind this fresh new you?”

  “No cause.”

  Of course she was lying. Her response was illogical, defied the rules. Such an effect had to be preceded by a defined cause. Things did not function any other way.

  “Oh.”

  “It was time for me to wake up, is all. Hear the birds, smell the flowers. I’ve been down for so long.”

  Maybe she had joined a therapy club, or some such garbage.

  She pulled on a matching sweatshirt, her head popping out of the hood. “I don’t know the reason, Kiddle. Does it matter?”

  No, it doesn’t. Your life is not that interesting.

  “As long as you’re happy,” I said, and I tilted my head, smiled.

  “Not that my heart isn’t still broken.” An addendum for my benefit? “It is. I miss your sister. Miss your aunt.”

  I took a step back. The line of conversation was straying into uneasy territory. My hands and feet were going numb, starting to feel cold. The eels were still there, disguised by darkness.

  “Is that so?”

  “Like someone yanked out my insides. You know? Stomped on them.” Pulling a brush through her hair, she gazed at her reflection in the mirror.

  I stared at her. Again, I questioned how I could have existed inside of her for nine full months, then emerged from that gap between her legs. It was illogical. Foreign. The notion made me feel ill. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know. I know you don’t. And I agree, Kiddle, I think that’s best. Let’s not talk about them anymore. Okay? Let’s just not. We can keep what we have, our memories, inside of ourselves. Like a secret.” Touching her chest. “Otherwise we’ll just always feel sad.”

  I could feel rage seeping into my stomach. Our memories? Our fucking memories? I reached up, touched the base of my skull, stuck my fingernails into my scalp. Closing my eyes, I imagined my hand reaching out, gripping that vase on her night table, full of shitty pink carnations, and smashing it into her face.

  “Kiddle? You okay?”

  I opened my eyes. The vase was still there. Carnations untouched.

  “Do you agree? Do we have a deal?”

  I swallowed, burped, waited a moment for my stomach to settle. “Sure. Yep.”

  “Good. I think it’s best. I really do. Let’s look to the future!” She opened a box on her bed. “See? I bought new sneakers.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen. I just had a thought. Why don’t you invite some kids over from school? Invite them over to the house? You can boil some hot dogs. Play some games. We’ve got a game or two poked away somewhere. Don’t we? What do you say?”

  “Nah.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because they’re all idiots.”

  “C’mon, Kiddle. They can’t all be idiots.”

  “Can’t they be? Have you met them?”

  “There’s got to be one decent kid. Surely if you try. You just need to make the effort.”

  “I hate them all,” I said.

  “Hard to make friends with that attitude.”

  “It’s not attitude. It’s the truth.”

  “Well, I see you’re in an arguing mood. I, for one, won’t be drawn in by it.”

  Annoyed, I said nothing else, left her bedroom, walked quietly into my own. Took a box of matches hidden underneath my mattress, and the glass prism that contained the Luna moth, off the shelf above my bed. Then I went down to the kitchen, into the porch. Opening the second door, I descended the narrow stairs to the basement. In the stairwell, I passed a straw broom dangling from a hook, three blackened pots hung on nails. When I reached the basement area, I swiped my hand through the blackness and found the string, yanked, and a dim light illuminated the space. Though there was a bolted door to the outside, there were no windows, no sunlight. I liked that. Liked that it was always midnight in the basement of our house.

  Three walls were concrete, and for unknown reasons, someone had framed the fourth wall, tacked up drywall. My mother, in a strange burst of housewifery, had glued wallpaper to the drywall. An entire expanse of thin brown stripes, clumps of faded marigolds. Not only was it pointless, it was ugly, damp, and curling near the edges. I could see black mildew or mould blooming near the bottom. It should be peeled off, thrown away, so that the spores did not damage the lungs. But no one ever came down here. No one but me.

  Then, shoes on the linoleum above me. Rubber squeaking from new sneakers. My mother’s shrill voice descending through the floorboards. “I’m leaving! Not sure when I’ll be home.”

  I held my breath, quietly laid the glass prism on the ground, waited.

  “Try to get outside,” she continued. “You’re like a ghost, for God’s sakes. Get some fresh air!”

  A door clicked. The house was silent. I was alone.

  I exhaled, looked around the basement space. My last contraption remained in the corner, very close to a wall. I had built it last fall, sometime in November, but had completely forgotten about it. It was a simple construction: metal bearings, narrow plastic pipes, string, rubber bands, and a wooden salad fork I had stolen from the kitchen. The eventual effect involved a basketball dropping, a string tightening, and a soup spoon snapping forward. Very simple, but affixed to that spoon was a sharpened nail.

  Once the machine was functioning, I needed a target. Something just right.

  Enter: the doll.

  I had taken one of Button’s old dolls, the kind that was a perversion of the female form with unnatural distensions and an impossible waist. I hated that doll. Told Button it was not allowed to play with her other dolls. (No surprise that it was a gift from our aunt. She had been another perversion of the female form, had she not?) I found it after Button died, lost in the back of her closet, and for some reason, I kept it. A few days after Halloween, I brought it down to the basement, removed its clothes, and with a permanent marker, I blackened its bright blue eyes. Then I cropped all the blonde hair, except two stupid strands. With those strands held tight at either side, I fixed that doll to the wall with grey tape. Taped her feet so that she was immobile. Could not kick. Heh. Heh.

  To be honest, it was not exciting. For many afternoons, I reset and reactivated my simple system, making tiny adjustments here and there. The fork poked the basketball, it dropped, the string tightened, the nail flew forward and struck the doll’s smirking face over and over again. Sadly, it did very little damage. There was not enough force. I could barely identify a scratch in her perfectly painted lips. It was disappointing, and eventually I gave up, left the doll hanging there, a piece of tape jammed over her pointed face.

  The sight of it now made me angry. I tore the doll off the wall, taking strips of wallpaper with it. Threw it across the room. Then I kicked the contraption until it was a disassembled mess on the floor. I stared at the pieces. The whole thing destroyed. I hated that I had constructed something that was unique, even though ineffective, and no one was there to witness it. Button was not there to clap her hands and squeal. Button was not there. Button was not.

  I dug out the box of matches in my pocket and, crouching down, tried to light the edges of the wallpaper. It would not catch. I wasted six matches, and nothing happened. Flame held against it, the paper scorched, smoked slightly, made me cough, but eventually extinguished. Pointless. I smelled the chemicals on my fingers and tried not to think about my mother. I was not sure which was worse, when she was drugged and depressed, or now this disgustingly cheerful optimist.

  I decided to think about Button instead. Not that last time, when I had failed her,
but other times. Better times. I remembered when she was given two sheets of velvety ant stickers and I allowed her to place them all over my face. She gave me a moustache, a thick beard, enormous eyebrows, sideburns. All made with tiny black ants. I did her face next, gave her the same, and she pushed her cheek next to mine. “We bwuh-thas,” she said. “We haiya-wee bwuh-thas.” I was happy to be Button’s hirsute sibling. My mother even did something she rarely does. She took a photograph.

  Reaching up, I yanked the string again, and the light vanished. I lay down on the damp cement in the pitch darkness, and felt around for the insect in glass. I moved it so that it was directly in front of my face. Positioning my hands behind it, I struck a match, let it flame and die, and then struck another. As each flame burst into life, all I could see were the feathered antennae, spots like eyes on the delicate green wings of the Luna moth. A reminder of my sister. The light shining through.

  [46]

  Key in a lock, metal sliding over metal. A clang.

  “Up,” someone said. A boy’s voice.

  Placing his feet on the floor, Warren leaned forward, brought his hands down to stabilize himself. A rough mattress, the smell of urine and damp cement. He knew instantly where he was.

  “Up,” the boy said again.

  “I’m sorry?” he whispered.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just get the hell out. We’re not running a hotel here.”

  A hand came at him though the darkness, a clamp under his arm. A familiar sensation, as though someone else had recently touched him that way. Warren stumbled to his feet. His head throbbed so fiercely his whole body shook from the pain. Even his teeth had a silvery heartbeat. Gripping his upper arm, a young police officer led Warren down a narrow hallway, walls grimy mint and covered in black streaks. The officer opened a door to a waiting area, a row of scratched orange chairs, fluorescent lighting, Gordie Smit standing by a counter.

  Warren lifted his fingers toward his friend. His shoulder ached.

  “Buddy. You look like absolute shit.” Gordie’s white t-shirt strained against his stomach. “Let’s get you home, man.”

  As they drove, Warren lay his swollen face against the cool glass of the passenger-side window.

  “Daylene heard what happened. Her sister-in-law’s sister’s friend was there last night. Right in your backyard. Saw a few of them having a go at you.” Gordie shook his head. “Had to check up. Make sure you were okay.”

  “Uh,” he replied. His brain was still hammering so sharply, he could not form a thought. Could not concentrate enough to count.

  They pulled into the driveway, and Gordie rushed around, opened Warren’s door. It was just before sunrise, and there was no one standing outside his home. Everything was strangely quiet. “We got to get you inside, buddy. Watch your step. There’s a thin layer of ice.”

  “Uh.” As he shuffled up the driveway, Warren peered at the side of the house. The gate was destroyed, torn from the hinges. A portion of the fence had been trampled, posts snapped at the base.

  Gordie followed him into the house, through the living room, and into the kitchen. He pulled out a chair, and Warren eased his body into it. The knees of his trousers were stained green and brown. His fingernails were ragged. There were several burn holes in the fabric of his shirt.

  Dazed, Warren looked around his home, looked out into the backyard. Early orange light was seeping through the gaps in the trees, casting long shadows over the frosty grass. His lawn was littered with abandoned taper candles and cardboard disks. Areas were trampled, and some patches nothing more than muck. A forgotten jacket was hung over the railing of the deck. A lone mitten next to it, pulled onto a post.

  “Look at you, buddy. Someone popped you a few good ones.” Gordie went to the cabinet, shook pain relievers from the white container.

  “Seems so.”

  “You don’t deserve this.”

  Warren sipped water, swallowed the pills. “Maybe I do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He shrugged. “I made a mistake,” Warren whispered.

  “What sort of mistake, buddy? What are you talking about?”

  “I ran away.”

  “From Amanda Fuller? Are you undone about that girl? Stupid teenagers, that’s what I got to say. Sure, I was one myself at some point. Not a girl, obviously, but dumb as all fuck.”

  Warren lifted his head, then. Gordie’s face was only a few inches from him. “Beth. My sister.” And. He swallowed the sour mass rising up in his throat. My father. My mother.

  “Shit, buddy. You had me worried there for a second.” He gripped Warren’s chin, lifted a section of his hair, blew air out through tightened lips. “Beth’ll be fine. She’ll find her way.”

  And my father?

  Gordie went to the sink, lifted out a blue dishcloth. Water running, he rinsed and squeezed it, brought it to Warren. One warm hand holding the left side of his skull, he pressed the cloth to the right side of his skull. Warren felt wet crumbs drop onto his neck, tumble down the inside of his shirt.

  “You’re gonna be fine, old buddy. All superficial.” Lifting the cloth, then patting. “You’ll get ’em next time, right?”

  Nodding.

  “You want more water? Something stronger? Hair of the dog, and all that.”

  Shaking his head.

  “Get up, let’s get you to the couch. Time to rest. Enough crap for a full day already.”

  A rapid sip of air, and Warren stared at Gordie’s mouth. “Why did you say that?”

  “I don’t know. Just popped in my head.”

  Those were his father’s words. Not exactly, but the same sentiment. He had heard something similar slide out from Nora’s mouth, and now Gordie’s. Warren had an awareness that his father was all around him, trying to tell him something. Trying to make him understand. Warren brought his head to the cold kitchen table. Maybe his father never meant for him to reach for all the negative things that had happened. Polishing them up, standing them side by side, an impenetrable wall that obscured everything else. Maybe what he actually meant was that Warren should grasp what was beyond. The warmth and sunshine on the other side.

  Tears sprang to Warren’s eyes, and the salt burned his skin.

  “Jesus, buddy.” Gordie patted the back of his neck. “Whatever darkness you got inside of you, you got to let it go. You understand?”

  “I do.” A croak. “I think I do.”

  [47]

  On a Sunday afternoon in early May, I found my neighbour stark naked on his bathroom floor. I had gone to return a book, and as he had told me never to knock, I marched straight up the front steps and into his house. The house was silent except for a soft whimper. Not an embarrassing or dramatic whimper, just an indicator of severe discomfort.

  I followed the sound, and found him splayed on the linoleum beside his bathtub, his lower region covered with a stained bath mat. His face crinkled with pain, but he laughed when he saw me, said he was all out of cookies. Then he asked me “to fetch” an ambulance, and I asked if I was expected to use my paws and teeth, and he laughed again. I went to make the necessary call.

  When I returned to the bathroom, I questioned him, even though the events that had transpired were obvious. I thought it best to engage him in a level of conversation, to assess his cognitive functioning.

  “Got a little dizzy. Slipped.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad enough.”

  His skin was pale, except for a blue circle around his mouth.

  “Have you broken anything?”

  “Something, yes. I’m struggling to get up. I’m a bit brittle.” Faint snicker. “As you might suppose.”

  Tapping my foot. “Not to be insulting, Mister, but that’s very unimaginative. Falling out of your bathtub when you’re a hundred and fifty years old? Couldn’t you have had a more creativ
e accident?”

  He laughed again, then moaned as his body moved. “Leave it to you to say such things. But, yes, I do apologize for being mundane.”

  I covered him with his terrycloth bathrobe, placed a rolled towel under his head. I knew he was conducting heat into the floor, but I was uncertain how to prevent that.

  “Good thing you’re not a horse.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “If you can’t walk properly, you’d get laminitis. They’d have to put you down. Humanely, of course. I would see to that.”

  “Well, good thing I have you on my side.” He hiccupped then. Pain shot through his face, and he panted, “Oh God, oh God.”

  “Are you okay, Mister?”

  “No, no.”

  “I — I could help. If you want to end your misery. You are old. Really, really old.”

  Lifting his hand, “You have to stop making me laugh, my friend.” Deep breaths. “Thank you, though. It’s nice to have the choice.”

  “Okay. But I would, you know. I would.” And I would.

  “I have a daughter.”

  “I know. The one who brings you cookies you can’t eat? Wins the thoughtful award.” Sarcasm. Of course.

  “Yes, her. And my granddaughter. They’re going through a difficult time. My girl lost her job.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wouldn’t want to add to her stress by dying. Planning a funeral is a bother. Most people don’t realize.”

  “I understand.” After a moment, I added, “That’s kind of you to think of them.”

  “I hope so. I hope I’m not being selfish.” A thin smirk. “Maybe I should consider your offer.”

  “They’d probably miss you.”

  “I think they would, too. Everyone should feel that. That someone might miss them.”

  For the first time that day, I thought of Button. I saw her pink face, staring up at me as I watched her from that upper porch. Her cheeks stained with orange. Pleading with me. I could not face her, even inside my imagination, I had to look away.