Best Canadian Stories 2020

by Paige Cooper

  When did it clear? the detective asks.

  The liaison officer checks the paperwork. It never did, he says. It’s always been empty.

  The detective curses. He hands the slot back to the liaison officer and walks off, the plainclothes following.

  Most people would never guess it, but almost all the government slots are empty. People rush to get on waiting lists for them, rush to stake their claim as soon as their children are born, sometimes even before their children are born. But they hardly ever get around to putting anything inside. There are books you can buy, seminars you can attend, a whole industry of advice on what to bring with you. But people just don’t follow through. They die in car crashes and house fires and of sudden failures of the heart and of the blood and they never believe such things are coming and even if they did, it would make no difference. We weren’t built to think this way, to imagine the else-space of our lives. We don’t know how not to know. Here, and I’d bet at every other centre, most of the government slots are taken and most of the government slots are empty.

  *

  A memory stick full of movies and songs

  A small jar of sand

  A resumé

  We close early on Christmas Day. The inspectors and the security guards and the other janitors go home, a day’s worth of time-and-a-half pocketed. I stay to do the overnight clean. It’s quiet at night. I like it when it’s quiet.

  They make a sound, the boxes. It’s a soft thing, like breathing, and hardly anybody notices it. During the day it hides behind the background noise of the place, the sound of people arguing, the beep of the metal detector and the squeak of soles against the linoleum. But at night you can hear it.

  It’s the sound of air rushing in. When a box empties it empties completely, and were it not for a small pneumatic hose attached to the bottom of each one, the slots would crumple in on themselves every time. The hose pumps air in, and the air wards off collapse. It’s a sound like a sharp breath through the nostrils, a whispered leavetaking.

  A little after midnight a young woman starts slamming her hands on the front doors. The sound is loud enough that I hear it from one of the hallways. She’s yelling to be let in.

  I walk to the lobby to see what’s going on and I make the mistake of letting her see me. They come to the centre after hours sometimes and we’re never supposed to let them in. We’re supposed to ignore them and if they get too violent, we’re supposed to call the overnight guard.

  But I make the mistake of letting her see me and once she does she starts begging me to come closer, to just listen. I know it’s a bad idea but I walk toward her, until I’m standing on the other side of the locked door. The evening sleet has made a mess of her. She waves papers at me, waves a key.

  He doesn’t have time, she says. Please.

  I can’t help you, I reply. I hold my mop up to her, as though it proves something.

  Then she screams at me. Not words, just a sound, an emptying. I don’t know what to do. I take my key out; I open the door.

  She pushes past me, and as she does she shoves a few sheets of paper at my chest. It’s the usual stuff—photocopies of drivers’ licenses, a power of attorney, the Expedited Processing form any doctor will fill out for a couple hundred bucks. She runs down one of the hallways. I follow, watching.

  She stumbles, gets the wrong box at first, then the right one. I can tell it’s pointless before she even turns the key. The light has already changed from green to amber. But I don’t tell her. I watch her open the box, and I watch her look inside. I watch her fall to the floor.

  What’s human about us is a burden, I think.

  I walk to where she is. The sound of the mop-bucket’s wheels against the ground seems for the first time obscene to me. I lift the bucket slightly, and within the walls the whispered rush of nothings is once again audible. I set the bucket back down. I let the wheels squeak.

  She sits there, vacant. She holds a chocolate cupcake, half-mashed in her hand. The inspectors would have never allowed it.

  I want to ask her a question, but I think I already know the answer. People die a long time before they’re dead. So instead I tell her the same trite thing I’ve heard a million times, the thing the counsellors say to people who show up too late, people who waited too long, people who just didn’t see it coming.

  You know, they have no proof, I say. It could just as easily be these things go nowhere. It could be they just disappear. Nobody really knows.

  She looks up at me and I think she’s going to slap me. Instead she laughs. You see that a lot, too, people laughing. She smears the cupcake against the floor, the way a smoker puts a cigarette out. She stands up and walks past me. She doesn’t bother taking back her forms.

  Another thing you notice, working here—they don’t walk out the same way they walk in. If they show up confident, purposeful, they walk out looking at the floor. If they show up broken, they walk out with their heads held high. Something about this place does that to people. It inverts them.

  I dip the mop. I clean the mess she’s left behind. There’s a window at the end of each hallway, but the sleet has turned heavy and I can’t see much outside.

  Daughter of Cups

  Kristyn Dunnion

  “You know what to do,” he says. “Pretty girl like you.”

  It’s like a baby eel in her hand, skin as smooth but hot, dry. Ohio lets go and it bounces against his beer belly. She laughs.

  Don takes hold of her wrist. “Like this,” he says, pressing. His Live to Ride belt buckle jingles when her hand pumps. He breathes louder through his nose, a high-pitched whinny on the exhale. Ohio wants to give him a Kleenex but she doesn’t have one. She stares at the tattoos covering his forearms and biceps and peeking out the sleeves of his black T-shirt. Don’s face is tan and wrinkled, his stubble silver. His eyes crinkle shut.

  Ohio closes hers, too. The curl and crush of waves smacking the sandy shore lulls her. Now she is Melanie Williams—blonde, popular, stacked—and Don is Kevin Moody, the cutest boy at school.

  After, Don drives off and leaves her sitting at the end of the Lake Erie pier. She squints across to Sandusky. She can swim, but how far? She can dive, sink to the weedy muck and disintegrate surrounded by treasure and ballast from long-ago shipwrecks, succumb to the naiads, handmaids to the lake queen, as per campfire lore when she was a kid. Or she can walk back to town, north on the main road. Ohio hoists herself up and walks. She can keep going to the highway and hitch the hell out of here, or she can turn left at the only stoplight. She stands in the heart of town, eying the fingernail sliver of moon in the still-bright summer sky.

  Eeny meany miney moe.

  Friday night. The bank clock says eight-thirty. A car drives by and Darryl Hicks chucks a crushed beer can out the window.

  Ohio turns left, toward home.

  At the convenience store she scours magazines until Mr. Cooper yells, “Gotta be eighteen!” She buys Fun Dip. There’s a crisp twenty-dollar bill in her pocket, but she doesn’t break it, not for candy. Across the street the Bingo is packed—cars zigzag on the grass and sidewalk. She jumps on the gas station hose to ring the service bell, so Tommy Knight will have to get off his lazy ass. She keeps walking. The closer she gets, the stronger it smells: dirty chicken grease blowing from the KFC. The Colonel’s secret spice is her homing device. She sits on the KFC stoop. Stares at the empty road, eats Fun Dip. Dips the candy stick into the grape powder and licks. Dips and licks.

  Her mom yells out the upstairs apartment window, “Ohio, where you been?”

  “Nowhere!”

  The window slams shut.

  Ohio waits for something to fall from the sky.

  Don had said, “What kind of name is that, anyway?”

  He’d gotten it wrong, twice.

  “That’s me,” she’d said, pointing over the lake.

 
“Erie?”

  “Ohio.”

  “Wiyot—I knew a girl called that,” he said.

  “Not Wiyot. Ohio. Like the state.”

  “Some kind of Indian name?”

  “That’s where my mom had me.”

  “Oh,” he’d said. “Used to work the car plant over in Sandusky. Good union job. ‘Til I got jumped in with the boys.”

  Full truth: she was named Ohio because that’s where her mom met the man and fell in love and that’s where her mom got knocked up and where she gave birth, on the side of the road, right where the man left her. Her mom says they’re never going back. Says she hid her baby girl up in her sweater and brought her across Lake Erie in a bartered boat. Swears a monster, the fabled queen of the lake, emerged from the depths, demanding a toll. No word of a lie. In exchange for safe passage, her mother sheared the matted ropes of her hair with a knife, dropped them overboard with her maidenhead, sacrificing her womanly powers. The waters quieted, and she paddled all the way back to her hometown. Been here ever since.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  It’s Mary Louise, who lives in a run-down bungalow on the other side of the KFC. She pushes her glasses up her nose. A piece of tape holds the broken arm in place. Mary Louise’s mom cuts her hair using a mixing bowl as guide, which makes her look like a medieval clown. Mary Louise is twelve, two grades behind Ohio. Her parents regularly kick her out so they can party all night.

  “Oh-hi-Oh,” she says, “Can I have some?”

  Ohio gives her the last bit of powder. Mary Louise jams her finger in the corners of the packet and sucks back and forth until it’s gone. Her mouth and finger are purple. Ohio wipes her face hard on her sleeve.

  Motorcycles.

  The girls lean forward at the first faraway rumble. Reverberating bass fattens with grinding gears that choke and pop, that spit like gunfire. Sky begins to shake. Like a funnel cloud ripping from the west, gathering strength, flattening an unrepentant path in its wake, the hogs’ engines detonate a primal roar in Ohio’s cranium: her mouth waters, belly pools to nausea. A red sun hangs low in the sky; its light explodes off chrome, blinding. Motorcycles fill the road, two across. Ohio shields her eyes with sugar-stained fingers. Her molars vibrate, her braids dance. Ribs rattle, thighs too. The girlfriends sit tight behind the men, long hair slapping vests as they zoom past. There’s darkness in the leather. Boots clamp silver stirrups.

  Ohio can’t breathe; her mouth is full of metal, her nose of gasoline.

  Mary Louise claps like a headcase. “Two, four, six, nine—thirteen!”

  Don, the last biker, rides alone. As he passes, Don winks and pops a wheelie.

  Ohio sits taller on the stoop. A secret flush dapples her skin, heats the bill in her back pocket. Earlier that afternoon, Don had thrust forward with a gurgled shout, releasing himself in long arcs on the sand. One gush had landed wet on her leg and dried like snot. He’d zipped himself, smaller and softer, back into his jeans. That’s a good girl.

  Mary Louise looks at Ohio, mouth open.

  An engine backfires somewhere down the road.

  “You know him?”

  Ohio shrugs. Why didn’t he stop, put her on the back? Take her away from this place?

  Later, Mary Louise says, “Why don’t they ride their own bikes?”

  “Who?”

  Ohio is shrinking. Pieces of her dull life fall back into place now that Don and the bikes have vanished.

  “The girls.”

  “Those things are really heavy, Dork.”

  “I guess.”

  If Ohio’s mom had had her own motorcycle, maybe she wouldn’t have been such a mess when the man dumped her ass. Might have fixed him good, stone-pillar punishment. Wouldn’t have severed her own Goddess head and dumped it in the lake, defeated. When she was a kid, Ohio had a green two-wheeler she pedalled everywhere—banana seat and tall, rusted handles with streamers like seaweed. That was joy, the kind of freedom she’d never have traded.

  “Even my dad can’t fix his,” says Mary Louise, hopping from one foot to the other. “It’s been in pieces all over the garage since I was born.”

  Ohio climbs on top of the KFC garbage can. Says, “Your dad’s a dick. No offense.”

  “It’s getting dark,” says Mary Louise. “I’m going home.”

  *

  “Move it, Ohio.”

  Saturday morning.

  Ohio sprawls on the bed. Her mom pulls the faded seahorse-print sheets out from under her, spilling Ohio this way and that as she yanks them off the mattress. Her mom’s stubby ponytail shivers with every tug. Her hair is greasy and there are dandruff flecks near the roots. She stuffs the sheets into a basket of dirty clothes.

  Ohio flattens face down, arms and legs a starfish. “I never get to do anything,” she says into the mattress.

  “You get to do the laundry any minute.”

  “No!” Ohio curls like a sea urchin and transports herself to Atlantis. She’s a mossy-haired beast with venom-tipped fangs.

  Her mom sits on the edge of the bed, and her weight sags the mattress. Ohio rolls into her, unbidden. Her mom wears stretch pants, a too-tight Club Med T-shirt, and the pink-sparkle flip-flops Ohio gave her for Christmas. The waistband at the back of her pants is frayed. Ohio can see the large mole a couple inches above her crack through the thin, grey fabric.

  “Ohio.”

  Ohio grunts.

  “I’m doing the groceries.”

  “You’re changing, right?” says Ohio.

  “What’s your problem?”

  Ohio chokes on the memory of her mom wearing these same pants while bending into other people’s trash for empties, to get the deposit.

  Waste not. Want not.

  Ohio says, “I hate this town.”

  Her mom sighs and her shoulders droop.

  “It’s not the worst place in the world.”

  She heaves off the bed and the mattress plumps back up. Sets the laundry basket on an old skateboard they found at the beach and rolls the towering pile to the door. Ohio is supposed to push it all the way through town like that.

  “No wonder I don’t have a boyfriend,” says Ohio.

  “Oh, you think you want a man,” says her mother. “Divide your money and multiply your sorrow. I was a bit older than you when I started working summers at the factory.”

  “Right.”

  “I was bored, so I quit.”

  “I get it.”

  “Had some adventure. Met your smooth-talking snake of a father. Haven’t been bored since.”

  “You’re the one who liked him,” says Ohio.

  “Loved.” She hands over some quarters and the box of detergent. “I’m on afternoons. Be home late.”

  Ohio kicks open the door and lets it slam behind her. Mary Louise is curled in the stairwell. “Morning, Oh-hi-oh!” Her hair sprongs in all directions and she’s got the same shirt on as yesterday, only dirtier.

  “You can’t go downtown like that,” says Ohio, and goes back inside to grab a clean shirt from her dresser. She tosses it to Mary Louise and slams the door again.

  “Put yours in the basket.”

  “Okay.”

  Ohio hauls the basket down the steps. Mary Louise gets the skateboard. They push the laundry up to the stoplight. It’s hard work, even with both of them. South one block to the Coin-o-Matic. Penny Middleton’s sister is inside with two dirty kids. One of them doesn’t even have pants on, just a filthy T-shirt and bare bum, tiny bobbing penis. Penny Middleton’s sister’s big belly pushes out from her T-shirt and joggers. The hard knot of her bellybutton stares: kid number three! Ohio picks the farthest away washer and loads it, measures out soap. Mary Louise jams in the quarters. The machine shudders. Water spits onto the clothes and the girls can’t help it, they thrust their hands inside to cup the rush, l
et it soak their thirsty skin. When the machine is filled, Ohio slams the lid. It’s hot, so they sit outside on the plastic chairs.

  Kevin Moody walks by with his peach-fuzz moustache and his blond hair parted down the middle, a perfect flip on each side. His tight jeans are ripped at one knee and bunched at his puffy white sneakers.

  Ohio tosses her braids and wishes they were blonde. She puckers up, as if readying for a kiss. She read all about how to get your lips noticed in Teen Beat Magazine. Kevin Moody stands in front of her, obviously noticing her lips.

  He says, “Is that your sister?”

  Ohio turns. Mary Louise has one finger up her nose.

  “What is she, retarded?”

  “Fart off,” says Mary Louise. She flicks a goober at him.

  “You girls are the ugliest chicks in town, you know that?” Kevin shakes his head and keeps walking.

  “After your mama,” shouts Mary Louise.

  Ohio slugs Mary Louise on the arm, hard. “No one picks their nose in front of Kevin Moody.”

  “Who cares,” says Mary Louise. “He’s a burnout.”

  *

  Saturday night, TV is broken. Melanie Wilson, also going into grade nine, is having a party, but Ohio isn’t invited. Lying on the linoleum, she fingers the Great Lakes on the most worn page of their atlas. Voices like tiny cracked bells whisper: join us. There’s an X pencilled north of Put-In-Bay, where her mother saw the beast. A zigzag line traces their journey along the chain of cormorant- and gull-infested islands—Rattlesnake, Sugar, the Sisters—where they stopped to rest. It took days. The crap motor conked out and her mom had to row. “This is how you got here,” she says, showing her biceps. And, “You’re lucky to grow up in Canada. We got health care.” Another X on Pelee Island, where a local took pity and drove them to the ferry dock. Ohio was just a newborn, but sometimes memories surge: the slosh of waves against a rusty bow, the thud and creak of oars in the outriggers, the smell of fish and gasoline, and the fearsome sound of her mother by turns swearing, weeping, beseeching the gods, all the way across the lake. “All for you,” her mother likes to say.