All I Ask

by Eva Crocker

  “Who?”

  “The muscle relaxants.”

  My father was in the kitchen; I heard beeps as he defrosted fish in the microwave.

  “I suppose.”

  “They’re making you loopy?” I asked her.

  “Who? Jackie? No, she was fine.”

  “The muscle relaxants.”

  “Listen, what did Vivian say about the cops?”

  “I didn’t really get to talk to her. She was at work.”

  “I thought you were going down to see her.”

  “She was at work.”

  “Does she think it’s that girl?”

  “What?”

  “Your roommate.”

  “God, Mom, no. It’s a mistake. It’s just a mistake. The cops make mistakes. That’s pretty much all they do.” It came out snarly and self-righteous.

  “Stacey, can you come in here?” my father called from the kitchen. He’d overheard.

  “Viv is coming over to my place later,” I told Mom, getting up to leave the room.

  My father was grating cheese into a dented steel mixing bowl. I started chopping potatoes. Big fat snowflakes were melting on the window. I preheated the oven. I thought about how nice it was to walk around the kitchen in socks without feeling cold. We ate dinner in the living room with the plates on our laps and watched the NTV news. After eating, I rinsed the plates and fit them into the dishwasher.

  Before Dad drove me home, I checked my email on the desktop computer in my parents’ bedroom. It took me a moment to remember the password — it was saved in my phone and computer so I almost never had to type it in. !Snot&Courtney! There were no new emails, I refreshed my inbox twice and checked the junk. Still nothing from the fancy Toronto casting director about the joint production. I scrolled through my old emails. Mostly it was just stuff from the theatre — the order from Labatt came in, no more comps for this or that show. Pay stubs from Standardized Patient Testing. Would the cops read all that? How far back would they go?

  I signed out. Maybe they would think I was a degenerate loser because I was twenty-six and scrambling a living together from all these low-paying, short-term jobs without any plan for a more stable future. I thought about checking Facebook to see if anyone was trying to get in touch but I didn’t want to remind myself of all the more personal messages in that inbox. Presumably the cops were rooting around in there too.

  When we pulled up in front of my house around 9:30 all the lights were off. So Holly was staying at Dave’s. Fuck her anyway.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay in there? You could stay at our house,” my dad said.

  “Thank you, I think I want to sleep in my own bed.”

  * * *

  The coughing woman was wearing a pair of headphones and tapping her foot on the fire escape steps. I locked the door behind me. The floors were still covered in salty footsteps from when the cops came. Normally I would watch something in bed until Viv arrived but I didn’t have a computer or phone. Tomorrow the schedule for the theatre would be emailed out and I wouldn’t have any way to check it. Plus other people might be trying to reach me. Like that casting director.

  There was a new collection of beer bottles on the kitchen table. Holly and Dave must have come back and sat around drinking, probably talking about me, before she went to stay at his place. There was a beer box under the table with three full bottles in it. I put the beer in the crisper and shovelled the empties into the box. I flipped the chairs up onto the table.

  I swept, then squirted half a bottle of Pine-Sol into the mop bucket and filled it with hot water from the bathtub tap. I wore rubber gloves and scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees. I used a dishcloth that had been sitting in the sink too long and gone slimy.

  I wiped at the grimy footprints and wrung the square of lime-green fabric out over the bucket. I crossed the living room and moved into the kitchen, pushing the bucket along with me, erasing the cops’ winding tracks.

  The Pine-Sol burned my nostrils and cleared my sinuses. Snot appeared, sniffing the air. He crossed the room, shaking each paw before laying it back down on the wet floor. After the kitchen I cleaned the bathroom. Then I threw the cushions off the living room couch and stuck the vacuum nozzle deep into its crevices, sucking up ancient crumbs.

  When the doorbell finally rang I was kneeling on the kitchen counter, emptying the cabinets so I could scrub the peeling wallpaper pasted inside. I hopped down. Viv was standing on the doorstep with her apron in her fist. It was mild out and the snowbanks on either side of her were steaming. Her bangs were in clumps on her forehead, from the damp night or from mopping the restaurant and racing up the hill.

  “Come in, I’m cleaning.”

  I led her through the dark living room to the kitchen.

  “Do you want a beer?” I opened the fridge and took out two of Holly’s beer. “They’re not very cold. I could stick them in the freezer?”

  “Let me see.” Viv took a beer and pressed it against her cheek. “No, they’re fine.”

  She twisted the cap off and tossed it at the counter, but it bounced and landed on the floor. I picked it up and put it in the open garbage can. Viv dropped her apron on a stack of dinner plates.

  “Where’s Holly?” she asked.

  “She’s staying at Dave’s, did she message you?”

  I put my beer in the freezer.

  “No, I haven’t heard from her in a while,” Viv said.

  That made a happy feeling bubble up in my chest; I tried to keep it off my face.

  “She’s always hanging out with those folk dudes, like Michael Murray and Dave King and them,” I said.

  “Is she sleeping with Dave?” Viv asked.

  “I don’t know, probably.”

  “Can we sit down? I want to look at my blood blister, did I tell you about it? It’s huge.”

  I turned on the floor lamp in the living room. The cats were curled up on the vacuumed couch. I sat beside them and ran a hand over the lines the vacuum nozzle had left on the cushions. Viv put her beer on the coffee table, hiked up her skirt and hauled her tights down to her knees. She shuffled over to the couch with the waistband of the tights holding her legs together and sat beside me. She rolled the stocking off one curled foot and then the other.

  “Sorry, my feet stink.”

  “I don’t smell anything.” I looked out the window; the fire escape was empty. The streetlight shone on the dumpster.

  “Kris was flirting with you at Pleasant Street, she was following you around all night.” Viv lifted her left ankle onto the opposite knee and showed me her foot. There was a wobbly burgundy circle the size of a toonie on the bottom of her heel. The blister was surrounded by a yellow bruise.

  “Holy fuck, Viv. You need to go to the doctor.”

  “It’s worse than earlier.” She tilted her bottle and let beer glug into her mouth. She pressed her thumb down on the centre of the blister and the outside edges bulged with black blood. “Are you into her?”

  “Don’t!” I stood up. “Oh my god, don’t do that. I’m going to get my beer.”

  When I stepped into the kitchen something moved in the glass of the patio door. I couldn’t get a breath. It was

  the shape of a person. It felt like I was swimming up from the bottom of a pool, my lungs were too big for my chest. I could feel blood rushing through the skinny vessels in the front of my brain. Everything inside me was swelling up, trying to burst out.

  “It feels good to take my tights off, let the air at it,” Viv called from the living room.

  The figure’s bottom half was in the same lilac purple as my leggings. I shifted my hips from side to side and watched the blurry figure move with me. I breathed in and my ribs made room for my lungs. Bright white specks danced over everything in the kitchen.

  I swung my head back and forth and shook
the glowing dust motes out of existence. I went over to the door and tested the handle. The doorknob was made out of cheap gold-coloured metal and had a dent in it. The lock was a tab in the centre of the knob that you twisted with pinched fingers. The door was locked but the handle rocked in my hand. Two of the four screws that held the knob in place waggled in their holes.

  “Do you think I should pop it?” Viv called.

  “Gross,” I yelled back, impressed by how steady my voice sounded.

  I turned my back to the door and got my beer out of the freezer. There should be a deadbolt, I thought. I pressed the cool bottle against my cheek like Viv had done. I held it there until it stung and then pressed it into the opposite cheek. I pulled down the neck of my shirt and rolled the beer across my chest. The glowing red numbers on the stove clock changed, it was after midnight. I opened the beer and took it into the living room.

  Viv had her feet up on the coffee table and Snot was sitting in her lap, rubbing his head against the bottom of her chin.

  “What happened with Holly?” Viv asked when I sat beside her.

  “She said, ‘If you know anything don’t tell me.’”

  “What does that mean?” Viv was almost done her beer.

  I took my first sip; a cool relief spread through me. It felt good to be on the couch next to Viv, it felt like Patrick Street.

  “I guess she was implying that I might have something to do with the incident.” I pulled my legs up into my chest and dug my heels into the edge of the cushion.

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “There’s more beer. Do you want another beer?” I didn’t want her to leave.

  “I’d have another beer.”

  “I’ll get it, your foot.”

  I braced myself for my reflection when I stepped into the kitchen. There it was. Snot had followed me in; a blurry version of his tail twitched in the glass. I got Viv’s beer and then I flicked the kitchen light off. I waited for my eyes to adjust and looked out at the patio. There was the familiar outline of my bike and the barbeque beneath the snow. I could see the path the cops had made in the snow when they’d come up to the back door. In some places I could make out individual shoe prints, the size and shape and all the ridges. At the door the narrow path widened — they must have gathered together and peered in, waiting for the bald asshole to beckon them. Sergeant Hamlyn. I heard the gentle sound of Snot lapping water out of his dish.

  “Do you think it’s possible there is something on Holly’s hard drive?” I handed Viv the last beer.

  “Stacey.” She sounded disappointed in me.

  “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “You can’t think like that, it makes me worried about you.”

  “Worried?”

  “It’s paranoid.”

  “Another possibility is, what if Dave did something on our internet? Or someone else she had over here?”

  Viv took a sip of her new beer. The lamp lit her hair from the back, making it almost translucent blond in some places and coppery red in others.

  “The cops said to think about who has been using the internet. People surprise you — remember Jordan Nolan,” I tried.

  “Stacey, you’re going to make yourself crazy.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t say crazy though, it’s ableist.”

  “Okay, I know,” Viv said.

  “Anyway it was probably the previous tenants, did I tell you how they made us take over their internet account?”

  “I don’t know.” Viv shook her head. “You might not know, like ever. Chances are they’re not going to tell you.”

  Then we talked about her sister Jenn who was living in Alberta and working as a receptionist at a dental office. She was coming home to get married. Viv showed me a picture of the bridesmaid dress her sister wanted her to order. A silky purple tube dress with a wide skirt. The screen seemed very bright, it made my eyeballs ache.

  “My head hurts, maybe it’s the cleaning products.” I passed her phone back.

  “You know, there’s something weird about the air in here,” Viv said.

  “It’s the Pine-Sol.”

  “No, it’s something else.”

  “It’s the Pine-Sol.”

  “You’re probably exhausted.” She set her empty beer bottle on the table. “From all this hoopla.”

  I followed Viv to the porch, with the crochet blanket from the couch wrapped around my shoulders. She bent to tie her shoes. She cringed when she put weight on the blood-blister foot. I shut the door behind her and climbed the steps to bed in the empty house.

  Eight

  A few months before all of this, I’d tried to download Carol. When I opened the file I saw something that might have been a snuff film. For a moment I was looking at footage of a naked woman in a bathtub with a curling iron bobbing beside her. The cord stretched out of the frame. What the fuck is this? Is this how it begins? Shaky, handheld footage in a too-bright room. This isn’t what it seemed like from the trailer. Is this the backstory? The camera starts moving towards the bathtub. Click the “X.” Ick. Fuck. Gross. What the fuck was that? The woman was still and limp but the curling iron was see-sawing in the water like it had just been tossed in. The silver tip sinking and surfacing, the red light on the handle bright beneath the surface. That was fake. I hope it was fake. How long was I looking at it? Five seconds probably. Maybe less.

  * * *

  In junior high I was known for having big breasts. Kyle Patterson was known for being a mild-mannered boy. People thought he was handsome, he had dark hair that he wore gelled up into hard curls. He never got in trouble, he even had a reputation for being a goody two-shoes, tattletale kind of boy — but he was well liked. He started this thing of walking up to girls, sticking a finger in their breast and saying “ding-dong.” Maybe he didn’t start it but he made it popular.

  There’s a photo of me when I’m fourteen and my breasts are enormous. I have a kid’s frame with my grandmother’s heavy breasts hanging off it. My nan gave me some hand-me-down bras around that time. They were white or champagne coloured with thick, padded straps. She told me they were a model called “the minimizer.” She said the name like I would find it reassuring.

  Kyle Patterson came up to me in the hall and drove a finger into my breast. There was a knot of what felt like inflamed veins in each of my breasts that ached all the time. In bed at night I squeezed my breasts and it was sort of like poking a blister — it was a relief because it was a different kind of pain. Even through the firm cup of the minimizer Kyle Patterson’s finger managed to make contact with the aching knot. The hallway was crowded and loud, it was the end of the day on a Friday and people were throwing books and boots and jackets in the air.

  He lost steam when it was time to say “ding-dong.” He could tell by my face that he’d hurt me, like caused me physical pain, but he had to say “ding-dong,” otherwise it would be weird. Otherwise it might mean that he liked the poking, that it wasn’t purely a joke for other people’s benefit, and that would be uncomfortable for both of us. After he said it I shrieked indignantly and swung my knapsack at his stomach, but my heart wasn’t in it, it was a performance to save him from the embarrassment of what he’d done to me.

  That night after Kyle Patterson poked me and embarrassed us both, I had a dream. I was watching two or three boys in a field. They had cut off my breasts and wrapped them in cellophane. They were tossing the package back and forth between them. Blood pooled in the places where the plastic wrap rippled. They were laughing and saying mean things, calling me fat, squishing the package in their hands. I was lying on my stomach in some tall grass watching. My chest stung. I didn’t want them to find me but I needed to hear all the nasty things they were saying about me. When I woke up I was relieved the dream wasn’t real but also disgusted that my brain came up with the scene. That’s the same feeling I got when I
saw that woman in the bath with the curling iron. It felt like the scene came from inside me. It was conjured up because there are people in the world who would click on it, and I had. I didn’t mean to but I’d clicked it.

  * * *

  A couple of days after the search I realized I hadn’t cooked since the cops had come, not even eggs. I didn’t like being in the kitchen. The big window in the back door made me nervous. I’d been eating toast with peanut butter for most meals and I was almost out of peanut butter.

  The only food I had in the fridge was a handful of carrots whose tips had gone limp and a two-litre of milk I’d picked up at Needs. Holly rarely bought groceries and she hadn’t been back since our fight anyway. The only things in the fridge belonging to her were a takeout box from Venice Pizza and a Tupperware of orange-coloured soup with islands of white mould in it.

  The theatre had deposited my pay the day before, so I threw away the sad vegetables and went to the supermarket. Snot and Courtney watched in the window as I locked the front door.

  I crossed Military Road and walked through the park, taking the long way to kill time and avoid being alone in the house. People were skating the loop at Bannerman Park, disco music was playing through the speakers that surround the rink. Children dragged each other around the shiny ice, tipping over in their heavy gear and scrambling back up, clutching each other’s coats. The neighbour kids were with them; I smiled and the brother waved. A woman was skating smooth, steady strokes around the loop. Fatima. I waited for her to look my way and waved. She smiled, surprised to see me at the edge of the rink.

  Walking through the quieter part of the park I noticed the stars were out. From a distance I saw a figure playing catch with a big dog in the baseball diamond. Some anxiety shook loose in my chest, tumbled through my body, splattered into my sneakers and seeped out into the snow. I felt light on the way to the supermarket. I caught myself humming “Born to Be Alive,” the song from the skating loop.

  But then the automatic doors at the Sobeys glided open on a sad scene in the supermarket’s porch. A security guard was wrestling a man in a windbreaker too thin for the cold.