RAVING GRACE

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

MEGAN LAMBE

In partial fulfillment of requirements

for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

June, 2010

Megan Lambe, 2010 © Library and Archives BibliothSque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'gdition

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada

Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-67460-4 Our file Notre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-67460-4

NOTICE: AVIS:

The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.

The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission.

In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these.

While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Thank you..

To my mother and sister who taught me about strength, and for all of their medical expertise; to Krisy Moore, for reminding me both of the power of one voice and that there is goodness all over this world; to Nate Dawe for the verve and the metaphor of music; to Kate MacLaggan, there are no words for how immensely grateful I am for you; to Kelly and Kemar, for giving me a face for years of research; and most importantly, thank you to Russell Smith for your attentive eye, and for teaching me the importance of good bones. until we are sick, we understand not -Keats Page 1 of 239

1: Astra

...seared withered blistered please...

No Lilly. No I don't understand.

On Thursday mornings at 9:00 we go to the library and after, you get your double latte cinnamon on top always after for the walk home; not first never first. Okay Lilly I don't want to argue. Okay Lilly, it's fine and I'd just like coffee; not a latte thank you, coffee with milk the same almost the same and no froth not six dollars just the coffee. Thank you.

Lilly with that tongue click and head shake she flicks a bill and hands it to a man behind the counter with a six buttoned black shirt who's turned to yell the order to a bald barista tied in a green apron with his back to us who repeats the order and slices with a silver spear into a silver canister and screech the hiss of skim milk. The register ear- splitting open slides open slides shut and the counter man he clinks coins into the cup of

Lilly's hand. She pitches her head to the left and says, bathroom, shuffling down the slow tongue of red carpet into the mouth of the hallway while I wait perched on palm on the long speckle counter flanked by cartons of cream.

Across the room a top a black and bone checkered-top table and on it two white china mugs: wrapped around one are the fingers of a black sweatered blond in a black beret and around the other, the indigo-wool-fingers of a tall man in blue and a white pocket square who strokes her wrist with his thumb back and forth. A strait of sun splits the polish of the wood between their elbows and it flickers in the window between them. Page 2 of 239

Green apron puts a paper cup in front of me whipped cream and chocolate curls and steam. I turn he's turned again I've missed his face. From the archway, the slow open swing of the bathroom door and a man and something slithers bitter up the underside of my skin my mouth something hiss.

He slides both hands down the front pockets of his stained denim shirt and takes a place in line. He looks up reaches up at the frosted globe lights dangling on long strings from the ceiling before letting go he sees me and his eyes, dark pupil tunnel he's digging a hole in me and the earth is my hot flesh, raw and seared withered blistered please, to ash if I can't and the milk whistle, the milk whistle pitching split.

The register the black and bone checker the china that fire, flicker me raw, his soiled slide sucking for air pocket mouth but I am stuck where the breath the breathe I need

he is sowing at the earth of me, worming up I am earth burning up-inside-out mouth and worms he is sewing up in soil kneading stitch and I am split

Please, in need, please: Lilly, my sister help me yes, Lilly. Please no thank you Lilly, I'd rather not I can't explain we have to go it's time we need to go go go. Page 3 of 239

2: Lilly

...in a silver dress threaded through with sequins...

I'm the oldest twenty-three year old you'll ever meet and here is one example.

When the phone rings at half past three in the morning, my first reaction is I've been asleep how did I let myself and then comes it's bloody freezing in this attic and then, what time is it and who calls this late. I blink. The sheets where's the blanket got to and I scramble for the phone and the first coherent thought I have, the first thing I say into the receiver is,

Mom?

No, says the woman on the other end; my name is Bernice. I'm calling from St.

Christopher's?

Is that a church?

No, St. Christopher's is a hospital, she says. There's a loud voice on the PA in the background. Is this Lilly Hallet?

Is it my mother? I ask. Thank God, is she all right? What street is St.

Christopher's on, I wonder: where is my bank card do I need to get a transfer I should probably tell Catherine to get the paper who knows how long and where is my blue scarf.

No dear, says Bernice. I'm calling, well there's been an incident with Astra

Hallet? Astra? I whip my head around and blink again. I focus on the outline of a sheet cluster, and pillows, and my sister's empty bed.

Yes, Astra your sister?

Yes, Astra, my sister she's okay right is she okay?

Well, we need you to- Page 4 of 239

I'll be right there, I say. If I took the 29 to the Dufferin station, transferred at

Spadina and got on the yellow line south...no that would put me at Museum, no I'd have to go to Yonge. Yonge to transfer right?

Excuse me dear? Your mother needs to come sign some forms, says Bernice. Is there another number where we can reach her?

My mother? No. Its fine, it's just, no I'll be there soon.

Well we'll need her, for the papers? Is there another number dear?

God damn Astra.

Near the end of our time in Halifax, I was getting these phone calls all the time:

Hi, um I found this girl I think she belongs to you...I just found this girl crying in the entrance of my apartment building and she has your number on a piece of paper, pinned to the inside of her jacket can you come pick her up?...Now I'm being kind calling because she gave me this paper but this girl's nuts. You gotta come get her outta here or I'm gonna call the cops.

The calls were after midnight, usually: on the nights I had fallen asleep (so sue me), and Astra would slip out the window to commit an "incident" or a "situation"; I even got a "disturbing scene" once. How do I even describe them. She trembles and her eyes go. Big and they. The people tweak out it's like they feel her looking into them and she screams and she.

I can't describe them. I can't tell you what the hell they're all about either.

Try as I might to stop her, I am only one person. Most of the time I can go without sleep but she waits she must know my breathing and then she's gone.

Crazy, maybe; but not stupid, no way. Page 5 of 239

I didn't leave the scarf at the bus stop, no: maybe Astra took the scarf oh forget it just forget the God. Damn. Scarf. Then. I grab my keys off the table and that bloody

stair damn it someone could break honestly.

I must have uttered something hyperbolic because by the time I get to the foyer at the bottom of the steps, Catherine is already at her door, slipping her arms through a silk bathrobe.

Lilly! Heard you banging around up there everything all right?

Yeah, Catherine, sorry about that. It's that stupid stair.

Oh yes, I'll get someone in to fix it this week, sorry. Everything else okay?

It's just fine I'm on my way out.

Pretty late to be going out now, isn't it dear? She grasps the ends of the robe in two fists and shoves them into her armpits.

It is yeah, I've just uh, well I'm headed to St. Christopher's? Hospital, the um, emergency? My sister is uh. Do you know if it's better to take the yellow line to

Dundas to get there or the green?

The hospital? Oh honey what happened?

Sorry I don't really have. Yellow right, puts me at Dundas and Yonge-

Oh honey, she says again, tilting her head to look up the stairs, her mouth wedged open. Is your mother coming?

If Astra is the wrinkle across my forehead, my mother is my yet to be diagnosed coronary disease that will send me to an early grave.

Of course I called my mother. Page 6 of 239

Hi you've reached Suzanne: I'm not around but if you let me know what you're calling about, I'll evaluate whether I think it's important, and get back to you appropriately. Have a good one!

Mother, Astra's in the hospital you have to call me back. Why do you have this phone if you won't put minutes on it? Meet me at St. Christopher's and check your stupid messages.

Oh Suzannah. When she was good and ready: that's when she'd come home and not a second before, at five in the morning or some equally inappropriate time, traipsing up the stairs in heels with some obvious winner on her arm wearing cowboy boots with a pony tail, or maybe a dude with a shaved head and an obvious affection for mosh pits.

hilly take a pill! She'd say, peeling the heels off her blistered feet with both hands, the cigarette lodged in the corner of her mouth. I was just exploring, you know: this city is so big! And aren't I the bloody parent here? Lay off Lilly, really!

A new city full of barstools licked with black vinyl for old Suzie Q to leave the imprint of her bony ass on. All that bourbon, all that ice and those fudgy fingerprinted glasses to be branded with the smooch of her glossy plum pout. And Toronto, it's so big

***

I won't hear of it, Catherine says. She waves an arm in front of her, sweeping away imaginary smoke. Just one minute now let me get dressed. Here, she ducks her head inside and a second later a hand flicks out jingling a set of keys on a Maple Leafs keychain. Just the one with the black, there. Press that button it unlocks the doors.

Really, Catherine, it's really. It's late, and you're all ready for bed.

I'll be right down right there Lilly. And then we'll go get Astra. Page 7 of 239

The handle slicks up and the lock freezes and you have to jiggle at it. Come open just bloody open for God Jesus mother.

She sounded cranky, that nurse; sounded like she had been already working for sixty straight hours and when do I get five minutes so I can eat my deluxe pizza and my cherry cheese Danish. Would she really make me wait, have me sit around in the waiting room staring at the vending machine, the TV on mute, no captions, for Suzie Q?

Would she keep trying the number, keep saying well, it still seems to be off...

Tou're okay, Astra: I'd tell her. Oh, yeah mom is on her way, she just took the wrong subway. It's all so confusing I'm sure you know. The lake is south, remember that okay Astra?

If you're ever lost, the lake is south.

The seats of the Civic are cold. Hurry up Catherine let's go. I click at the buttons, click at the glove compartment and start pulling out CD's and hmmm what do we have here until I see her teetering down the stairs and fold my hands over each other. Nothing to see here.

It's a nice car. I realize then it's been a while since I've sat in a car. Busses: that was what I was used to; the 29, the 36. The Greyhound from Halifax: our turtlenecks and Tupperware and all Astra's porcelain dolls stuffed in duffel bags under our feet.

This was a much roomier ride indeed.

Your seatbelt, she says slamming the door closed.

Sorry?

Seatbelt Lilly. Put your seatbelt on.

The engine makes the leather seats throb with cold and the music comes on real loud and everything feels like an assault. Catherine peels maroon leather gloves over Page 8 of 239 her chapped hands. She curls her gloved fingers around my headrest, sprouting her head and straightening her back as she backs out of the driveway.

So what does that mean dear? She asks. An incident? She shifts gears and fixes her mirror. My Henry he was a diabetic, is it like that? When the blood sugar gets too low?

Well not really.

She's sick?

I lean my head and watch the window tear with condensation before I mutter, I don't know. I really don't.

What's the problem?

There's no problem! The Suze said, ice crackling from the Jim Beam spurting in gushes from the tipped thick glass bottle. I'm so sick of people saying that.

This is the fifth time this month, I said: Dr. Wong is saying Gillcrest, mom.

Picking at the chip in the mouth of her glass she said, screw that Asian doctor and his nut house they don't know anything. Chopsticks maybe. She shook her head and a long brown curl fell loose from her clumsy ponytail. But Gillcrest my ass, she says. Astra's not like those bloody. I won't have her in one of those with the bed and the padded walls and. If that little Jap isn't gonna help us-

Mom!

She's just sad she isn't.

Maybe they could help her there. He says there's not much else he can do.

Not for Astra, no: she'll stay here we'll take care of her. Flowers maybe that would cheer her up huh? Page 9 of 239

No flowers. She needs, you know. They have pills-

Don't. Use. That. Word with me Lilly Marie! Look at your sister in there: she doesn't look sick, Lilly: face isn't pale, hands are steady! Pills, she scoffed. Here is where my mother took ten seconds to steady herself on the couch before getting up. What do they do but make a mess. Look at your Uncle Jerry.

Not everyone is like him.

You're right she is nothing like him. One nut short of a bushel that one. Gulp.

Too beautiful to be crazy, just needs structure and sunflowers! Bet that would make her so happy!

Dr. Wong-

If he's not willing to help us, maybe it's time to move to a bigger city. Maybe

Toronto, and find some doctors that will.

I turn the radio dial up and tip my head against the window again. The seats are warm now yeah there's a button for that but the window is still cold on my face.

Catherine clicks the radio off again. I've noticed that your mother hasn't been home in a few days, she says.

Mmm.

Do you know where. I mean, when she.

***

What you need to know about mom is that she wasn't a drunk not for the first four years of my life, and not again for eight years after Astra was born, either. In those first four years, my parents were happily married: we went ice fishing and to brunches and to carnivals and all and so I thought we were doing okay. But then one morning we Page 10 of 239

weren't I guess because I woke up and Suze was like, your father is gone Lilly and we

don't say his name never ever again. Then came ol' Jimmy Beam.

That was the same night I learned that my neighbours didn't think much about ol' Suzie Q, and neither did her mother, my Nanny Hanna. One morning she came and picked me up I mean I wasn't even done my breakfast and Nan said, you come stay with me while your mom gets all fixed up. This time in my life was good because I got to sleep in the guest room at her house and the sheets smelled fresh and Nan Han made fried molasses toast and milky tea and we picked berries from the bushes behind her house. She read me Dr. Seuss and did the voices, too; she took me to church and helped me build my forts.

Now because mom was drinking so much then, and had taken to forgetting to eat, she also didn't think too much about missing her period for three months. But when Nan found her passed out on a patio chair in her backyard saying it hurts ma, she called an ambulance and they took blood and let her know the good news. Surprise.

Suze did the best with a bad situation, I'll give her that: cried for about twelve hours how could I how could I do this and held me in her arms and said, I'm sorry baby

I'm so sorry and sent herself to rehab. She got her anniversary key tags and called me every Sunday is Nan treating you good are you eating your vegetables and six months later in the treatment center. She gave birth to Astra who was a little underweight but had all her toes and all. When they came back home, Nan insisted we stay with her until Astra was big enough to hold up her own head, and after the three of us back home, Suze didn't drink anymore not even in secret. She went to all the school functions and wore these real sexy skirt suit numbers and tall shoes and lots of face powder. At Christmas she did the house up with all twinkling lights and made Page 11 of 239 gingerbread houses and people knocked on the front door to get that yummy pepper- mint cheesecake recipe. She was the vice president of the PTA for Christ's sake.

Then when Astra was eleven, she made her first public scene in gym class.

That's what Principal Mullins called it anyway. Suze came to talk to the counsellor who said, I don't know, bring her back to see me and mom said, screw that woman what does she know.

Not long after that Nan Han died of breast cancer.

It was at the funeral service after shaking Suze's new boyfriend's hand that Astra had her second episode which people didn't think was so strange. People didn't look on, for example: they said things like, poor girl and sweet little thing she misses her Nan.

The funeral director took us both out back and Astra sat there, pulling a thread from the bottom of her dress, unravelling the hem and he said I know, children, I know what it feels like to lose a loved one. He rubbed Astra's back and until she calmed down and he said, I do know and his answer was the book of Matthew. And she sat with her head on his shoulder as he told her Jesus stories and she nodded.

Then the day after the third episode (like it matters anyhow, but it was with that stupid gym teacher again) Mullins decided uh-uh, no more. We just can't keep her in this class anymore if you won't get her help, Mullins told my mother. She is scaring the children and some of the parents are starting to ask questions.

And that's when Suze stopped sending us to school and started stashing mickeys of bourbon in the lettuce crisper. It didn't take long before she was leaving forties on the counter with the cap off. Without Nan around to sort things out, I had to learn how to do things like make nutritious meals and do the laundry you can't wash the towels with the shirts or they get knobby. I learned how to be a mother to them both by the Page 12 of 239 time I was fifteen.

It had been three months since we'd been to school and one night I told Suzie how it was: we needed to go back and she said, not that school. And I told her no mom, another one: the public one downtown we can take the city bus there. And she said, okay Lilly, yeah, that's a good idea.

Our first day at Johnson Memorial Astra. There was a boy in a wheelchair and she touched him and she. From day one people looked at her funny, asking what the hell is wrong with her. So I started a rumour Astra was retarded and I let everyone call her that because at least that stopped the rumours that she was possessed by the devil.

I don't know to this day if I feel guilty about that.

When I was fourteen Suzie stopped coming home. The first time I waited up all night and just past eleven in the morning she barrelled through the door with fresh O.J. and take-away from the Golden Griddle and said sorry, Lil I got stuck in a bad spot without a ride it won't happen again.

And that's all you need to know about my mother: it did happen again and usually, I knew where to find her but then she decided it was time to move so no I don't know where the hell my mother is or when she's coming back.

***

Here. Catherine passes me over a crusted Kleenex from her coat sleeve and I smear that tissue across my eyes, shove it up both my nostrils make a honk and say, thanks.

And where did they find Astra?

Subway. Someone probably pulled that emergency bar? Then the conductor or whatever probably called an ambulance and at the hospital, when they still couldn't get Page 13 of 239 her to talk, she probably pointed to that stupid note on the inside of her jacket and they called me.

But she can talk right? I was talking to her the other day about the garden.

Yeah it's atrophy? I don't know actually I don't know what it is. She can't- I'm sorry she can't um, she just freezes up.

What have they diagnosed her with?

What are your pills for?

Excuse me?

Your pills. I snap my fingers on the latch of the glove compartment grab the small bottle and shake it.

That's none of your business, she says.

Then don't bloody ask me about diagnosis. You want to share stories that's one thing but.

We don't talk for the rest of the drive.

Here is another example: I'm staring out the window at a girl standing on the corner of Dundas and Yonge in a silver dress threaded full of sequins with a wide red mouth. Holes everywhere. She smacks a man who is wearing a wide lapelled jacket and he rubs his hands down her naked arms out for the world to see. Isn't she cold? I guess it's so she won't have to pay coat check at whatever fancy club they're going to. I guess it's so people will look at her and think, how beautiful.

She's gonna catch her death, I think. And then as Catherine's car roars past her,

I whip my head back to check her face and make sure it isn't my mother. Page 14 of 239

When we get to the emergency room entrance, I unbuckle, open my door and let my legs hang there while I think about saying nothing and slamming that damn door.

But you see, I'm too old for that kind of thing. So instead I say, I'm real sorry about saying that, Catherine, and thank you for driving all the way here. I'll check in with you when I get home. She waves the imaginary smoke away again.

I'll park the car, just be a minute.

Oh. And I sit there for a minute before I say, Okay. Thanks, and start walking toward the blinking entrance.

And Lilly! She calls, her elbow bobbing up and down as she rolls down the window. If they tell you they need your mother, if they won't let you sign any of the papers you tell them I'll be right there.

Oh. I say. Oh-okay.

The doors open, ready to swallow me and close me into a mess of fluorescent lights and bright orange plastic chairs.

Hi, um, hi, I say to the woman scribbling on a pink form behind the desk. There is an empty Tupperware container on the stack of files. Yes, I'm looking for Astra

Hallet?

Hallet? Hallet, Hallet, she says scanning a paper with a stubby nail painted mauve. Fourth floor east they've got her, she says. I'll call ahead and get a nurse to meet you at the door. They'll have to buzz you in when you get there.

I say thank you, and as I walk away, she says oh, and they'll just have some paperwork for your mum to fill out when you get up there. Is she with you dear? Page 15 of 239

3: Thelma

...all to cotton...

Nine: how many years of school I got under my belt. In total.

Seven: how many years I spent making pot pies and meatloaf and scrubbing the floors of a man who beat me and our baby girl.

Zero: the amount of reasons you have to believe a word I say.

But one is the amount of times you need to hear what I heard to know what I know, and what I know is that girl, that Hallet girl, the one that's sharing the room with that Gina Urbach; they're all saying that Hallet girl she's crazy or whatever they're calling her, she's none of those things not even one bit.

It's true I don't have any paper on my wall that says I'm qualified to talk about anything, or even a wall for that matter. Around here no one asks me what I think about anything that doesn't have something to do with getting rid of the smell of urine, or what brush's best to get blood stains out of the sheets. So why should you believe me, then, if it doesn't have something to do with my janitor duties that is? When I start telling you about when things go quiet when they shouldn't be: I mean, there are things happening around you but your ears, they go deaf and it's like you've heard something from inside you, well: I guess I believe that you'll know I'm telling the truth. You'll feel it. Some things you believe because you feel them from inside.

Only once before have I heard it and that kind of quiet and that was sixteen years ago the day I left Lawrence. How do I even explain it to you? Think about a church choir, all those voices, or a jazz band with all those instruments but all you hear is one song. Now think about hearing that beautiful layered song from the inside instead of the other way round: I mean, it's like that. Sort of. Page 16 of 239

It was as if a ripple had run through me and that day I left him, the inside-out sound I heard was go. What a crazy woman I must have looked like with no coat on, running down the street with my baby girl in my arms. But call it coincidence this woman picks us up and she gets us into that shelter...

Sorry, where was I?

Right: not until I saw that Hallet girl today did I hear that thing from the inside.

Here I am mopping the floors on the psych ward, a little after seven in the morning, thinking about my daughter and that stupid boy she's been hanging round with, worrying about that girl in the next grade went and got herself pregnant and wondering if my baby's up in my bed with some boy trying to do what the rest of those girls have been doing so they've got something to talk about. Here I am slapping around my mop and lemon water going down the hallway past the open doors when I hear a mumbling and I swear, that Hallet girl says my name:

Thelma, she's in great pain. You have to tell someone.

My belly gets tight and my mouth goes all to cotton. With my head in the doorway, my one foot off the ground and both hands on the mop I see her: poor thing sitting on the edge of the bed with her shoulders sagging, her knuckles all gripped up on the bed rail, white as the driven snow.

What did you say? I call into her room, but she doesn't look at me. I turn to the desk where my Doctor friend is looking through some papers and I say, I think she asked me something. He peeks his head into the room and says, no, Thelma, she's on heavy sedatives. It's just babble.

What's wrong with her? I ask. He sips from a big red plastic mug and tilts his head before he says; I'm trying to figure that out. Page 17 of 239

And the other girl that's in there? I say pointing to the sheet pulled closed around a second bed in her room and he says, she was in a drug-induced coma. So here

I am wondering how you tell a Doctor you think you might have you know, heard something from inside your soul or whatever when I blurt out, that girl in there: I might have heard her say something. Could you check on her?

The Doctor goes into the room and says excuse me, Astra, drawing back the curtain with one hand while he sips his coffee with the other. Doesn't he see how pale she is? He looks at me the whole time never looking at that coma girl and he says, see; and when he sees the look on my face he turns around and says, shit! Then he calls a code and starts screaming numbers and Thelma get me a nurse and that girl is in a tremor he looks like the devil came and passed right on through her.

And as the nurse and the Doctor are with the girl I'm watching this Hallet girl now because something's happening to her. And because I'm not too quick, I just get to catching her before she smacks her head on the floor. She lifts them big grey eyes up and locks them on me and they roll right on back into her head until all I see is white.

The nurse her mouth is moving so fast she's standing with the paddles from what they call that one of them Defimbolor and the Doctor he's yelling too, but I don't hear any of it I just feel everything is on pause until Astra screams and all the noise comes back into the world. That's when the nurse says, oh God and grabs Astra from me and tells me you gotta get out of here, Thelma and I stand at the door until she tells me again,

Thelma get out of here, go! And I spend the rest of my shift wondering what happened to those girls because they won't let me back on the floor they won't let anyone back up on the floor not for the rest of my shift. Page 18 of 239

Now let me say it one more time you believe it or you don't that's up to you, but there 'aint nothing crazy about that Hallet girl just you wait and see. Page 19 of 239

4: Lilly

...like an itchy sweater...

I'll tell you this: I barely believe four east myself and I saw it with my own two eyes.

In the common room, which is where I've been instructed to wait, I watch a plump Asian woman in a hospital gown sits in a tall white pleather chair watching

Nanny McPhee. She's asked me twice if I have a cigarette can I get a cigarette, and the third time she asks a plain clothes teenage boy says Jesus, Brenda you're not even allowed outside to smoke shut.up. He turns back to me and says, don't answer the gowns they're on Form.

Oh, I say.

Brenda says you shut up De-von.

That means they're mandatory, he says: they can't leave.

But the clothes-

It's strongly suggested I stay here, but yeah, I'm voluntary I can leave if I want.

You want to play Jenga? He asks. I shake my head and think, huh: even on the psych floor, a hierarchy.

Catherine is at the nurse's station committing acts of crime or acts of kindness with a black pen and some legal documents; however you want to look at it. Her right leg is twitching and it's obvious she's up to no good; or, maybe just a little delirious, which I guess a mother in a legitimate capacity might be in this state, so could be part of the act who knows.

Across the table from me, a septuagenarian in a sailboat sweater is demolishing a chocolate bar and honestly, I may never look at a Hershey's the same after seeing that Page 20 of 239 chocolate mucked all up over his lips and chin and on the end of his nose. Half because

I'm scared and half because I don't know where to look without pissing someone off or getting roped into a game of go fish, I reach into my bag and pull out my book.

It's fair to say that I'm the rational thinker in this band of misfits otherwise known as my family. There are the Hallet girls: the drunk, the crazy, and well, you've got to have the rational one, to keep the boat from sinking.

It's because of this that when I get to really feeling something, I'm talking any emotion right down into my fingernails I'm so involved, I've got to do something with it. It's why I've developed these strategies.

It's why I drag around my father's old Dictionary of word origins with me everywhere I go, written by a guy named Herman Ayto; words comfort me, or distract me, or give me something to put my back into (which is weird to you, maybe, sure: unless you know about my father.)

This is what you need to know about my father: we don't say his name. He was a

History teacher, or philosophy I don't know, and he had a lot of books. Every night he'd read me things like Diderot or Althusser even though I said I didn't understand and please please Red Fish Blue Fish. But he never did, and because I really liked the sound of his voice and the words sounded like the kind of words they might use at places with lacy dresses and people dancing, I made up my mind to listen anyway.

Oh, and you should also know that when he left he left in such a hurry that he left all those books behind. Since Nan was the one that got rid of it all and it goes, she said: it all goes, I had to act quickly and so I was only able to save a few and hide them Page 21 of 239 under my bed and in my closet. And so when I got to wanting to talk to a member of my family that might not pass out mid conversation, or one that might not scream in my face, I'd open one of his books. I'd read the notes he made in the margins and talk back and act like it was all some kind of disjointed conversation: I disagree, Dad. Or, bang on. Roger that.

I carry the Ayto with me everywhere. It's why I can never carry one of those trendy little clutch numbers with the clasp.

Where was I? Oh right, the words.

I just want her to be normal: that's what I'd said to Uncle Jerry about Astra.

Normal. How the hell do I know what that is? I freeze up when I've got to board an escalator, but only the one that goes down. I like dill pickles on sandwiches but if I've got to touch them with my bare hands forget it. I don't understand plucking your eyebrows, and I try to swear in every conversation I have with a stranger so that I seem edgy. The smell of onions cooking offends me; sometimes garlic too, but not when I'm really wanting some spaghetti. I am still refusing to make the switch to DVDs so if it's not on VHS the answer is no, I have. not. seen. it.

There are times when I think everything to do with Ma and Astra is all my fault.

All this wondering and guilt gets me thinking about what someone else might think is normal; what other people think about it all.

And this is how I get to the word, you see.

I think of Ayto as this paternal type: medium height, grey hair— picture that dude off the fish sticks commercial. I settle myself deep into the hard chair and picture him plunking down next to me and wrapping a good long arm around my shoulder. Page 22 of 239

First off, Lilly, he'd say, pushing glasses up the long bridge of his nose, normal is

an adjective (which you'll remember from that time we talked in the bus station), is a word to

hang your hat on, a word that means "placed on top " of something. Normal is usual, typical, or expected. Love your hair like that by the way, Lilly. It suits the shape of yourface.

Thanks. So, normal means serving to establish a standard, then? Ayto nods. If there's a standard where's the damn manual then? I ask. Making dinnerfor your husband on Sunday night, good. Screaming at the top of your lungs on the Subway on a Saturday night, bad. Is this supposed to be an obvious distinction?

It's when I start to get really enraged that's usually when Ayto takes off. He doesn't like to deal with the backlash.

To, Ayto, one more thing before you go?

Shoot, he says, but make it quick. I got a function.

Does that mean that everyone whose like, an individual: anyone that's ever departedfrom that common way of doing things, I mean by definition, they're all crazy then?

(Etymology. Try it.)

That's when I look up to see Catherine is standing in front of me.

That nurse is asking me if she's on any medication, Catherine says, nodding her head backwards quick. I told her I just had to check in with you before I finished the papers. What is she taking?

Nothing. No pills, I say.

Oh. Oh, oka- and, she asked about the family history too, what do I tell her?

History of what?

Mental illness.

Oh. Yeah tell her my uncle. My dad's brother, he's schizophrenic. Page 23 of 239

I can tell she wants to ask more questions but she shuffles back up to the desk and nods her head twice before settling back down beside me, telling Brenda after she hits her up that no, sorry I don't; smoking is a terrible habit.

The nurse said just another minute, Catherine leans in to tell me. The doctor will come talk to us. What have you got there?

I close it, covering it with my arm and say, just a book.

Catherine fiddles with the buckle on her purse, grimaces at the Sailboat sweater man, glimpses at the TV. Do you want me to go in with you? She asks, quieter than before. I mean, I don't know if he will, but if the doctor takes you into one of those interview rooms, do you-

It would be you he'd take in the room, Mom.

Oh right, sure, yes you're right, she says. Can I get you anything?

I don't answer right away. We both stop to listen to the old man ask a nurse could you take me to the bathroom, and her respond right, Leonard I'll be right back.

You hungry? She asks.

She slaps both palms on the front of her purse and says, all right Lilly, I know: I shouldn't have snapped at you when you asked about my pills I'm sorry: but, it's private.

I don't respond because there's something about a long silence; it's like, an itchy sweater you know. People will wiggle their way out of it by any method necessary, even if it means exposing themselves under fluorescent lights.

It's anti-anxiety if you must know, Catherine says to the purse, picking at the clip and inching away from a Gown playing solitaire. A very low dosage, she says; I have Page 24 of 239 since, you know. Henry being gone and. It's a big house and you never know with all you see in the news these days.

I resist the urge to turn my whole body to her and nod my head back once.

Most of the time it's fine, she says. I keep busy, there's enough to keep me busy.

But, well, I get lonely, she says, her voice getting quieter, sharper. Sometimes I even go out and walk the streets just so that I can be near other people. She blushes. You must think I'm such a foolish old lady.

That's when I give her the torso and the eyes because she's earned it and stop myself just before saying we've got something in common. She touches my hand.

That doctor, he's going to say schizophrenic. They've said it before, I say lowering my voice. After we tell them about Uncle Jerry, they say it. I watch Leonard cross his legs and start rocking back and forth.

Okay, she says. She is so quiet now I can barely hear her.

Astra isn't anything like my uncle, Catherine. The doctors always try to put her on a bunch of medication I bet this one will too.

But is that bad? Maybe they help fix her, help her to feel better.

I just can't get straight about that word, either. I think about saying a lot of things to Catherine but what finally comes out of my mouth is,

But she's not broken.

In a lot of ways Astra is the best friend and only friend I ever had: we smoked our first cigarette together, for example; we make pancakes and trade makeup and go to the movies. But I can never have a conversation with her about, I don't know, ketchup for example. It just isn't interesting enough for her or something. Once I asked her, Page 25 of 239

You want ketchup on your mashed potatoes, Astra?

What is red? She asked. Blue is sad, yellow is happy, what is red?

Angry?

Then no. No I don't want angry potatoes. What's your favourite colour, Lilly?

Red, I said. You?

Green.

Why?

Blue and yellow: happy and sad together.

***

Before the doc has a chance to say anything, Leonard says, Doctor, I have to go to the bathroom! The doctor calls out to the nurse who is sitting at the desk eating a bag of Sun Chips. One sec-onA Leonard, she says licking her fingers. She doesn't move.

Suzanne? My name is Doctor Vieshell, he says. I'm the psychiatrist on call tonight. You're Suzanne?

Yes, that's me, Catherine says, tucking an imaginary piece of hair behind her ear and wrapping her hand slowly around his.

You're kidding, right?

This Doctor Vieshell walks into the waiting room in his white coat but besides that you'd think he was homeless. His hair is so greasy it looks wet and his eyes look like he's been smoking a joint and his shirt well, I just can't be bothered with this mess any further. And he's the one that's going to tell me about my sister's health? Page 26 of 239

Allow me to be the logical one for a second here okay. Let's say you go into a gym. You march right on up to the counter and ask for the best guy they've got: I want the one that's going to make my thighs smaller and my breasts point up the right way.

You're telling me that a guy with a belly the size of Santa rolls up, you're wouldn't say, I don't think so?

I don't say anything to the Doc and I don't need to. I just stare up and down and up again while he licks his chapped up lips. Ew.

...due to what you've reported here about the family history, I've gone ahead and started her on 150 mg of Seroquel.

Catherine tilts her head to the side and slides her silver pendant up and down the chain and nods. She's looking for the subtitles.

What does that do? I ask.

As long as the medication works her body chemistry, it should control the delusions, calm her nerves. He rubs his eye with his fist like a two-year old.

And if it doesn't?

We would have to try another neuroleptic, he says. He makes this sound like shopping for shoes. And who was we anyway? Was he talking about me and him or was there a bloody panel involved.

I've really got to go, Leonard says. Jesus do I ever.

Doc shuffles the pages on his clip board and says, so you are...from Halifax?

Yeah, I say. So?

Cold winters, he says leaning against the wall. I make my face as still as I can and tell my eyeballs don't even think about blinking. Page 27 of 239

Doc Weasel glances back at the kid, brings the file real close to his beady little eyes, clicks his pen. It says here, he says, that Astra is not currently on any medications.

And when did she stop taking the medication, to your knowledge? The Asian woman giggles wildly and stomps her foot. From down the hall I hear, it's just applesauce, Stan its okay.

She's never taken pills, I say. The Suze doesn't believe in them.

Catherine looks at me with her mouth open and wide eyes. I look back at her with the same and she shakes her head like, oh yeah that's me.

Never? He asks.

No. Ne-ver, I say.

But you have to be aware, her symptoms are severe, he says to Catherine. Mrs.

Hallet, symptoms such as your daughters require-

Oh, Ms. Hallet, Catherine says. I'm not married.

What does it treat? I ask. I mean, when do you use those kinds of drugs, what do you think she has?

Seroquel is a neuroleptic, otherwise known as an anti-psychotic-

Really right now I'm going right now in my pants, Doctor!

I'm sorry, I say, stomping to the nurse's station. I reach in the open side window and pluck the bag from the nurse's hand and say, you need to get off your ass for two seconds and take that poor man to the fucking. BATHROOM!

Tell me which kind of silence you think happens now: blue or yellow. Page 28 of 239

5: Astra

...are there night lights...

...longer than normal train operations westbound approaching St. George due to signal

issues...

There's been a delay and this train isn't moving. Wedged in a concrete belly, crawling

through by screeching up and under. The sound of sharpening knives, the slap of squeal, the sporadic lick of orange lights across the shadow of fumed faces and I wonder, has the sun come up out there. Has it been that long how long has it been.

To my left the tweed knees of a man gripping a metal pole and poking at my ribs, the elbow of a woman in white tights: her skin is soak and copper and her plastic bag is leaking oily okra-coloured puddle and like bacon. A panhandler hooked, his plastic cup and sunglasses, asks can he coin and a red head flicks a twenty with a smile. An underground chorus in suit and tied, they shuffle-stand in their flat-pitched shoes while

I try standing still. I wonder are there vents in this metal vein? This air is caulk and choke can't quite catch my

And then there's that father, tight to the right-mittened hand of what a daughter.

Through the slack fingers of his left, he's shifting pink roses wrapped up in newspaper: stems wilting green, bleeding through that dry headline numbering the casualties of this foreign war by country.

Counting bodies cannot count and I suppose yes, that's why the numbers are so inaccurate: because people cannot fathom in foreign languages. And yet things are Page 29 of 239

similar over there: there are florists clipping stems and baby's breath, but they watch

children with grenades and guns out of their windows they are not plastic and this is

not a game; children, the secret weapon

Breathe in two three four the panic

can't get through because of the signal won't make my yoga class she won't believe me she'll

think I forgot

out two three

At the far end of the car is a minor making a deal thirty's all I got with a tall man their

moves are sharp and beside them a couple trading blame how dare you their exchange is

base. This chorus springs with lilting and I'm scratching bloody scratching for this whole thing's got me itching for the savage mouth of day and I wonder, has the sun come up yet.

Breathe in and shift to find the air, can't seem its running out when I see a woman: I'm stuck no room to part I am still: and her eyes, burning query suction through me kneading pulling but I'm pulled, my breath again but stolen— a quarry sinking in me a fire in me or I am flame, am I hole?

Crooked loving, warped those children all those children? Can't be right this isn't right where is my skin being skinned am I—I am my breath oh God, please breathing help me help me help Page 30 of 239

6: Vera Purvis

...that is strange honey..,

A delay? That's all I need. If I'm gonna be stuck underground in this train car I

better get some breathing space. Move it boy and if that man with the cup asks me for a single dime I'll watch me yes I will. Hurry up hurry and fix this. Move.

No. No, they'll tell me no.

Right?

Oh, God. Oh God oh God. Would they? How did I miss it how do you miss...no. They're wrong of course they're wrong. No. I'm gonna get down there, march right into that police station and it's all gonna be a big mistake. Wrong guy Mrs.

Purvis. Sorry, they'll tell me; so incredibly sorry. I wonder if a lawyer could get me some money for appropriation of justice.

But there was that file that file. It wasn't accidentally created on our computer how does that happen why didn't I ask more questions. Vera stupid Vera why didn't I believe that why didn't I ask more questions. Stupid who is that stupid? Okay, Henry: it was an accident yeah that is strange honey. Well, just get rid of it.

Because there are things that are uncomfortable to talk about.

Why did I believe him my mother oh God my mother what is she going to say, when she reads the headline: Karl Purvis convicted on how many counts of child pornography oh God the headline oh God. What will the girls at work think they're gonna want to know what I meant when I said, I have to leave it's an emergency. Oh no that bitch in accounting will tell everyone. Page 31 of 239

The parish oh God will they let me stand up there on Sunday and serve the wine? Will they even let me sit in service?

How long can you breathe down here I wonder, if the air runs out? Can the air run out are there air holes in here? I don't have nothing for you in this bag, no sir aint got no business for you here you better back the fuck up off or I'll yes I will.

What will the neighbours think will they think I was a part of.

I'm gonna be sick.

The headline. No. No.

They don't usually get those things wrong, though, do they? The cop on the phone he said they had proof.

Did Karl know those children? Did Karl know those children did he oh God. I'm gonna bloody vomit not my Karl.

He said proof.

All those late nights up working. A pass code on the computer it's confidential information for work, Vera. Why didn't I ask more questions?

Did he do it how many did he. And then he shared my bed with me, touched me with those same hands. Will the police take my computer will they rifle through our house what will they find did I do the wash oh God oh God was I a part of this? Did I know did I know and put it away because it's something that you I mean how do you ask that?

Their parents, those kids, those poor kids did he know them?

How do people go on after this is there after are there people am I people? Page 32 of 239

No the police they have to have it wrong sorry Mrs. Purvis. If no, when it all clears will Karl have a record? Did I love him still? Does it just shut off can you turn it off like a switch? What is the God damn problem move. Train: move.

What's wrong with this girl looks a little pale does she look. Oh God she's going to be sick she looks like she might faint. I ask her,

Hey are you okay? I ask her. You look-

And she screams: right in my face and she doesn't stop and her eyes are so sharp they feel like they are peeling my face away and when she screams it sounds like my voice oh God.

Was it my voice? Page 33 of 239

7: Doc Weasel ...I think it might have been Tuesday...

Objectives: To sustain my living as a doctor, husband and father and to accomplish these things simultaneously.

Once, I looked at every case as a lesson, advocating for the fact that it is in fact the relationship between therapist and client that most greatly affects therapeutic outcome. My colleague Doctor Carpenter and I worked fervently on studies published with Health Canada a few years back that found that the consistent use of neuroleptics trained the brain to be dependent on the increased supply of dopamine the medication provided. I was the keynote speaker at conferences encouraging such values for Christ's sake.

I used to spend my free time in the library examining case studies, hypothesizing and testing different theories. I read classic philosophy, the newspapers, alternative medical journals and health magazines. I watched women in coffee shops and took the bus everywhere so I could watch and consider people's body language a clue.

Everything was relevant, everything was in the name of my research by Psychology, and psychology was my religion. Now, I simply don't have time for the luxury of those optimistic notions.

Method: I am unable to answer this question anymore.

This shift began at 8 o'clock yesterday morning. In eighteen hours, they've admitted five patients. Five. I have yet to complete patient reports for the last four, and

I have not had more than thirty minutes of sleep since Tuesday I think that it might have been Tuesday. If I was not required to know the date for filing purposes, I would not know that it is now Friday. Page 34 of 239

I have been unable to answer this question for quite some time.

If I have to pinpoint an event that I can identify as the catalyst of this transformation, I'd have to say it was the summer of 2007: this is when the budget cuts changed everything. First it was daily recreational therapy, then group sessions, then something else; and with every cut, my perception and my energy gradually decreased: so slowly that I woke up one morning and realized that the face of medicine had become a stranger to me.

At least there used to be something to complain about when the hospital didn't have the money. My wife, Nora laughed at me when I attacked education, saying such ridiculous things as, that's where my tax money goes? Sure, it's great there are enough pencils, but what about prescriptions?

The board says the hospital cannot run a deficit because there's just no money in the country to spare. I am unclear who is to blame any more, or what effect it would have on my behaviour if I possessed that knowledge, either way.

I'm waiting for the day when there's no longer the luxury of right or wrong in the medical profession, only the best: when the reality of "can't win all the time" takes my livelihood out from under me. When it's the choice between psychiatry and neurosurgery, which one do you think they'll find is really more important?

The problem is I'm outnumbered. With all this warfare and the surplus of information, people are finding it increasingly difficult to keep it together.

I haven't slept since Tuesday and now there's another patient coming in?

Is this right? A sixth? Who is the damn crisis nurse tonight is she letting everyone in? Page 35 of 239

It certainly can't be legal for me to treat another one without at least a nap. I am barely able to read the words on this file: Hallem? Is that an MP If I were behind the wheel of a car I'd be apprehended for reckless driving, and yet, it's time to be a Doctor.

That is what I do.

There just isn't the time to shake her hand. There just isn't the time to have a conversation, to watch the subtleties of how she carries herself and make notes to contemplate while I do my research later. There isn't the time to ask, how can I figure her out?

There are no extremes of speed in my days anymore: no too slow or too fast, only a medium pace. I used to think, never about a lot of things: I would never be the kind of Doctor to cut corners, or lose my ability to feel, but now, instead I say please.

Please, I hope this works, and please, I hope I might get to sleep for just a half an hour.

Please, that I might get home by 8:30 in the morning and see my daughter Hazel off to school and that she lets me kiss her good-bye without telling me I haven't earned that privilege. She takes after her mother, who no longer considers me worthy of any aspect of our marriage as I am losing my ability to feel I'm hoping that she isn't right. Please.

I don't have the time to investigate the matter further and to be honest I've just wasted precious time here hypothesizing. It's time to go tend to the repair of someone else's daughter while I wonder if my own has discovered body image issues or something else yet as a result of her parents constantly fighting.

The method...what can I do? I can splash my face and get to work that's what I can do. Page 36 of 239

Results: I was hoping that the Hallet girl was in fact some kind of textbook sick. That, when I evaluated her case I would find her a perfect match for:

Page 97. case study 3: hebephrenic schizophrenia, resulting in hallucinations, incoherent

speech, delusions of being able to hear the thoughts of others. Also extreme anxiety

attacks, characterized by screaming and shaking. Long periods of complete auditory shut

down, which entail complete withdrawal from conversation. Possibly agoraphobic: high

stress with mention of crowds.

I am hoping that she would suddenly recall some incidence of sexual abuse from her childhood. A neighbour or a trusted relative. A softball coach. A step father. I am hoping for that.

But instead, she says nothing she is so traumatized. If I had the time, I'd figure out exactly how to get Astra Hallet back to stasis; however I'm having a hard time remembering what that stasis is.

No, tell me please, if you've know what the alternative method is. I'm begging you, please.

Conclusions: Hallet, A,

Admitted by ambulance 2:36 a.m. Saturday morning after an extreme anxiety attack and hasn't spoken since. Her mother says there is a history of schizophrenia on the father's side, and that these episodes have been happening for years.

Schizophrenic, to be treated with 150 mg Seroquel.

Seroquel... it's a band-aid cure for Astra Hallet you poor thing, and I am aware that I know better. At least a band-aid will stop the bleeding temporarily. Page 37 of 239

Do I know that she will need to continue the treatment just to keep her brain operational? And even then, there is a good chance I've affected her functional mentality permanently?

Yes. Yes I am aware of all of these things.

Tuesday.

Further research required. For now there are patient reports to write and where is the bloody Visine. Page 38 of 239

8: Astra

No. way. Not. Today. Page 39 of 239

9: Lilly ...as good a time as any...

It's been three days now and this is what you've missed:

I was almost admitted after my little episode with the Sun Chips nurse.

Catherine had to plead with her I'm so sorry, my daughter is severely sleep deprived, and made me do so also, so that she wouldn't charge me with assault. Now every time I pass the nurse's station she stares me down.

Doc Weasel's made the official order to keep Astra here, on account of he's not sure if she's paralyzed from the medication or just refusing to talk but either way he's concerned.

Catherine and I wait for hours in the common room for her to wake up and come down, and when she finally did, she glanced in my direction and then turned to the TV.

She didn't answer me when I said, hey Astra nice of you to make an appearance how are you? She didn't even seem to notice it was Catherine and not the Suze sitting beside me.

There was something cloudy in her eyes: glassy, like the windows were all fogged up or something.

I sat with both hands over her hands, waiting for her to turn back around and ready with hey, how about that dude with the twitches huh? But she didn't. The only thing she said in response to me in three hours was okay, thanks anyway and not really.

She hasn't increased her conversation since then.

Weasel came yesterday to check on her, and asked me, is this her usual behaviour with his red eyes that don't blink. I tell him she's strange all right I know, Page 40 of 239 but not vacant, never vacant. He nods and then keeps his head low without writing anything for so long I say uh hello? Did you fall asleep?

I know he's sloppy and all, but there's something about him I don't know; I'm starting to suspect I didn't give this Weasel enough credit. I mean I'm not sure but I'll keep you in the loop.

When Catherine realized on the first day that there was no use arguing with me,

Lilly you should really come home and get some sleep you can't even get in to see her until visiting hours at one, she hugged me and told me she'd be back in the morning.

Monday night when she was leaving, she asked me to make a list. What the hell for? I asked her and she said, of things you need. I'll head up to Wal Mart in the morning and get them for you.

I told her no thanks, but she showed up with travel size versions of every personal hygiene product you could think of including baby powder, a king size box of

Crunch and Munch and fresh underwear. I've been washing my face in a handicap bathroom with an herbal wash she picked up at the gift shop that smells like mint and oranges. My complexion has started to improve.

It's nice to have someone to spend the early mornings with, while we wait for visiting hours; to talk to about the colour palettes on the home makeover shows and to agree with me when I say, that's terrible about everything Elisabeth says on The View.

I've learned a fair amount about Catherine's dead husband and his diabetic history and her daughter that lives in Florida and doesn't call often, and Catherine won't go to visit because she doesn't understand Florida. She's pale and she has to get a special kind of sun block from a department store and that stuff gets expensive why would anyone want to be in the sun all the time. Page 41 of 239

The Suze has still not been located.

Oh, and I've started smoking because I can only sit in that common room for so long with my sister not answering me, and now seemed as good a time as any to start.

This morning I dart out the side door to get some air and here is this girl about my age with big purple lips in a long purple plaid coat with a fur collar, leaned against an orange railing, smoking and busy being God damn beautiful.

Cool hose, I say, pointing to her stockings.

Yeah, thanks man, she says, scratching at the brim on her lime green silk bandana. Then, adjusting the tiny bejewelled tiara on top, she says you need accessories.

And I say yeah, even though I have no idea.

You have another one of those?

Yeah. She holds out half of a some-kind-of-meat sandwich and says, you want?

No thanks, I said. I'm a vegetarian, I tell her. I meant the smokes. She gives me a long hmm and says, not even chicken?

Nope.

Whatever, she says. She passes me her lit cigarette and pulls another one from her pocket, lighting it with a long orange Zippo flame.

I breathe in four thousand chemicals and I'm not trying to be clever but I swear,

I taste every one of them. I stifle a hack and she says yeah, they might be a little stale;

Mom's got me on rations. I nod, resolving to smoke enough that I can figure out why it makes her look so relaxed leaned there in that happy spot.

When she asks me, what are you here for, I tell her a round of sister-crazy, to which she says I wish. Crazy is much sexier than cancer.

Oh, I say real quiet. Is that, I mean, are you. Page 42 of 239

She nods real quick, knocking the crown forward. Stage four, she says, picking a fibre off her gooey sticky lips. All chemo and crossword puzzles make me a dull gal! She

exhales a laboured puff and gives me a side smile that says I'm. so. sick, of telling that joke.

So what's with the crown, I ask her. Cancer queen?

She gives a sharp laugh. No, from my mom: it's just, this joke we have about.

Well, it's hard to explain it's just this joke. She stares hard into the crack in the pavement and I say, yeah.

I saw you with your mom eating in the cafeteria yesterday, she says. She was in front of me in the Druxy's line: got roast beef on light rye, isn't that right?

Oh, well she's not.

Yes, it was! Roast beef and extra Dijon. She offered me her cookie: you know, it comes with the combo and I don't need the sugar, you want it? That's what she said to me. Seems solid, your ma. Sorry, you were saying, she's not..?

Yeah, I say picking at my shoelace. I double lace it before I sit up and say, she's not, not a vegetarian.

Whatever, she says. And after pulling the tiara from her head and thrusting it down into her pocket, she looks up at the dark sky and says, looks like rain.

It was warm for late April, and so and Astra and I were sitting on the roof. By warm I mean 13 degrees, so here we are in tanks and shorts both trying not to shiver and both waiting for the other to fess up and say it's cold let's go inside. And she says to me, what kind of weather, Lilly?

I don't get it. Page 43 of 239

If you had to be: what kind?

Astra, please. Come on later okay I don't want to play.

If you love me you'll answer me, she said. We both used that one.

Fine okay lightning I guess, I said. Like, a thunderstorm, before the rain starts

and everything is loud and people are scrambling to their cars.

You want to make people scared.

Sounds about right. What about you?

Fog, she said. Fog most definitely, the most ubiquitous kind of weather. And peaceful.

Peaceful?

It doesn't change: it just covers what's already there. You know?

Sure Astra. Whatever, sure.

Lilly, what kind of weather do you think Mom would choose?

Rain no question, because-

Forget it, it's cold we should go inside now. Page 44 of 239

10: Suzie Q

...withyour broken wing and clotted lip...

What a terrible mother, right? I mean, that's what you're thinking: how could she do that to her children, right?

Why don't you pull up your socks and try my shoes on for size, sweetie. I dare you.

You can start with those little white pointy sling backs, with the lacy bow and the kitten heels. So what! Your mother tells you when you say, no way Hanna, I'm wearing the flip flops instead, these are pinching and she says, bloody hell it's your wedding day. So you grip your fingers tight around that bouquet and focus on his face at the end of the aisle trying to ignore it. And I'm sure it's just because you're focusing so hard that has to be why you see something flicker there in his eyes. That's when you're thankful for those damn shoes because as you walk by yourself down the aisle, you chant it's all just paranoia it's all just paranoia and put all your attention down into that aching big toe.

During the vows, when the voice telling you it's not paranoia gets louder, you push down harder on that toe now, sweetie: wedge it up into that point until you have to check and make sure you aren't bleeding through the satin. Oh, don't worry it won't, the fabric's too thick: and after the ceremony is over you can stuff yourself in the corner of the Handicap stall and clot it up with some toilet paper.)

How about the big black Ugg boots: warm, cushioned, familiar. You bought them that first winter you spent as newlyweds, in that bachelor on Tobin. Page 45 of 239

It was a Sunday and you had just trodded up the icy hill to the farmer's market.

You were shifting hot feet in thick socks and squeezing pears and you caught him staring at a produce girl peeling apples out of paper holders: her little black half- ponytail and yellow-hazel eyes. He was staring straight down into her and stripping down her emotional lingerie. And when you said hey, what the hell he said, sorry.

That's what he said: sorry.

He put his hand in the small of your back and he looked at you with those bulging brown eyes and said sorry, I will try. I will try. And you went back to the pears and you bagged three and then you moved onto the mangos, because you were terrified to ask any more questions.

Remember those worn out navy flats. You wore those tired old things every day when you were pregnant with Lilly. You would come home from that lame data entry job and eat dinner together in front of the TV and then he would peel them off your feet and you would lay your legs across his lap and he'd rub them and shout out the

Jeopardy clues before Trebeck even had a chance to finish the question. And when he went to bed at 8:30 because he had to be up early for work you told him yeah you were exhausted anyway just so you could fall asleep together.

You even slept in those shoes. On Thursdays and Saturdays when you worked late, you came home and ate whatever he'd left you wrapped in tinfoil on the table. You didn't take off your shoes or your coat because he had fallen asleep on the couch and you didn't want to wake him by opening the closet. After you were done eating, you'd curl up next to him on the couch still in your clothes and shoes so that he'd wake you and take the shoes off and say, come on babe, let's go to bed. Page 46 of 239

Oh, right. Slide those on slow, those three-inch open-toed sparkly silver heels.

You bought them for that ridiculous Halloween when one of the men who worked in your husband's building asked him to come to a function at his house and yes, you had to wear a costume.

You went as a fairy. You had those pointed ears and those turquoise and amethyst wings and you caked thick glitter silver shadow on your eyelids. He went as a cowboy, with the bandana and the saddle coloured boots. You made your crab dip for the party and got Lilly movies and a babysitter there's coke and extra dip in the fridge and you had the sitter take pictures. You both smiled wide and she said bye, Daddy I love you and he kissed Lilly goodbye like he meant it.

When you got to the party, he introduced you to the man and you said this is a beautiful home and he said, Suzie, right, Suzie and you could tell from the cross of his eyebrows he had never heard your name before.

You left a trail of glitter across the carpet and after apologizing profusely and getting dirty looks from the man's wife, you told your husband come on I'm embarrassed can we go and he said just a few minutes okay. So you told him you'd be on the balcony, where you went to smoke a few cigarettes. It was windy and damn those heels, you teetered on them struggling to get a light and fell into a hanging brass planter. You cut your lip and took a slice out of the right wing. As you looked out over the lights and the city, you blotted your lip with the tail of your skirt, and when you turned around, through the glass doors there was that yellow-eyed produce girl: all laced up in an angel costume, her halo leaned into your husband's chest.

That's when you saw that flick go across his eye again. Page 47 of 239

You held the banister and everything got hot and everything sped up and scenes flashed through you like a bad movie: the face he made when he changed Lilly's diapers.

Those times you found him staring hard into the wall with the coffee mug in his hand.

The time you and Lilly brought him Chinese food and found him sitting in his office, staring at the blank computer screen. Every time she said please please Red fish Blue fish and he pulled out those bloody etymology books. Every quiet sigh and rub of his forehead, all of it, and then you remembered him say, I will try.

You slid back into the party and into a corner of the kitchen. You watched him laugh and watched her touch his arm. You drank spiked orange punch from a white plastic cup, blotted your lip and said, yes the crab dip: paprika that's the secret. When he came to get a drink and said oh, hey, I've been looking for you, you asked him is it time go home. He said fine and didn't ask you about your lip.

When you got out into the hall he rummaged for the keys in his pocket and told you shit, I forgot to say good-bye to someone, and here, go wait in the car I'll be right down. When you watched him in the side mirror with that smile on his face you wondered, even if you had the words what would you say. The space between you in the cab on the drive home was a mile long. You reached your hand out for him and you couldn't find him in the dark.

You paid the babysitter and sat down at the kitchen table with your broken wings and clotted lip. You pushed into the strap across your ankle that was starting to scorch it was so chafed and listened to your heart beat faster and faster. He filled a glass of water and held the liquid in his mouth one, two, three seconds, tapping his fingers on the wooden cutting board.

Beat beat. Beat beat. Page 48 of 239

With all the passion that had shrivelled inside you, you stood. You picked up the tails of your skirt and you walked yourself over to him. You sat on top of the counter and leaned back on one hand and wrapped the other around the back of his neck and said, take me. You bit your lip not to say, please.

You moved your hand down the buttons of his shirt and undipped his belt buckle. He didn't move. You unzipped his jeans and unbuttoned and wrapped both legs around him. He didn't kiss you. He pulled down your tights furiously and pushed into you without looking at your face. You pulled him closer, into the hollow space inside you as you felt him pulling away and by the time he came inside you, you knew he was already gone.

You stayed supine staring up at the silver pot dangling from a hook above you, watching headlights from the street flash inside it. He went to the bathroom and when he came back, he stood in his boxer shorts with both hips braced against the edge of the counter shuffling through the mail. He plucked an open envelope from the stack and stared at it for a few seconds.

You didn't pay the MasterCard bill this month? He asked. What followed was his monologue and you didn't interrupt. It was so loud, the fury of ideas that had nothing to do with money. Too old for this life he had with me.and.my.daughter at the age of 28. He wanted a new life that included girls who worked in supermarkets and had rings in their noses and didn't have a caesarean section scar.

You're leaving? you said.

I can't do this.

You don't love me?

I can't. Page 49 of 239

What about me and Lilly?

I'm sorry, I have to go Suzie, he told me. (I mean you: he told you. Oh whatever

this shoe thing is boring just pay attention okay.)

It was the end of October and there was no heat on in the house. I sat for what could have been an hour on the edge of the counter after he left, my tights and underwear still bunched up around my knees and goose bumps sprouting everywhere. I sat staring at a bottle of Woodford Reserve on top of a glass tray with two crystal tumblers his great aunt or someone had given as a wedding present, trying to wrap my head around something solid. And finally I slouched off, pulled my tights up and poured myself a half glass.

I sat down cross-legged in the wicker chair next to Lilly's bed, wedged my heel in through the hole in the side. I touched my lip to the glass and oh yeah, it's cut and I was biting it and it was bleeding again and clotted and bleeding again and I reeled from the sting, the bent wire of the wing stabbing into my back. I put the glass of bourbon on top of a Robert Munsch book on the floor and wonder, what the hell am I going to tell her huh. He went out for milk sweetie? Or, he's gone on business? No, that was no good because she'd ask when will he back.

My baby.

I stared at her, searching her face for an answer. How can I help you? And I stared and I stared at her for so long that when the light started to break across her face, it started to change her, distort her and my baby looked like a monster. That's when I gulped down the drink in one shot and it made me feel so warm inside that I decided another might not hurt. Tell me you wouldn't want to be warm, too. Page 50 of 239

And by the third drink, I had a theory: this wasn't my baby at all. Lilly was a

bookmark, left between the pages of this fictional life he'd written with me that he had been flipping through which ultimately he had decided to put back up on the shelf. Set aside for future consideration or not. And the more I sat and stared at her, the more I found I couldn't wrap my head around her.

Mama, mama, what's wrong? she said when she woke up.

Lilly, I told her: we don't, ever, say his name, again, okay. And she started to cry and wipe her little eyes with her red pyjama sleeve and I marched myself down the hall and called up my mother and I said he's gone. Yes I know its four thirty. Yes that's what I said, gone. No for good he's not coming back, I said. What happened is he left yes mother he took his toothbrush and his shampoo uh-huh. You've got to come get

Lilly. Yes I've been drinking you've got to come get her now now now.

Gulp.

I got a bowl out of the cupboard and dropped it in the sink but it only chipped. I got the Captain Crunch ready and I started spilling the big white jug of homo milk everywhere so I just turned on Bobby's World and put the jug and the box and a bowl and a big silver serving spoon down in front of her, pulled a balled up Kleenex from the waistband of my tights and said, here. I flicked a big woolly white blanket around her shoulders and went to sit on the porch.

When my mother pulled up I bolted right up and down the driveway I protracted myself to get around her opening door she said where's Lilly and I said she's inside. Yes, I already told you I've been drinking. Out I'm going out I've packed her a bag you should take her to your house but you might want to make sure she's got Page 51 of 239 enough underwear. A few days, at least a few. Out. I'm. going, out. I'll call you. Don't follow me. Mother, don't. Go get your Lilly don't leave your grand baby go.

After I yelled at my next door neighbour it's none of your business Do-ris don't worry about it no shut up you shut up. I walked to the water and I spent the rest of that morning with that bottle sitting on a spray painted rock next to the ocean just trying to get warmth to the spot inside that wouldn't heat. I've just been trying ever since.

And now, at least if you want to continue thinking I'm a terrible mother I mean, that's your choice but at least it's an educated opinion. And if not, hurry up and tell me, rocks or neat? Page 52 of 239

11: Lilly

... 'aint no mittens like my red mittens...

This morning I went to the gift shop. I bought a pack of king-size menthols and

a tie-dyed lighter that says, Flick my Bick, and then I set up camp at the front entrance

to practice smoking. I regret not buying the Player's because it feels like I've been kneading Vick's Vapo rub into my lungs. I make small talk with uninteresting people

and watch others that don't want to talk wipe their eyes and noses on coat sleeves. I offer my lighter to everyone that gives me their eyes, even people that are just passing through.

My smoking friend pushes the door open at around lunch time with one hand and takes long strides towards me and says can I get one of those?

Menthol.

Mmm forget it, she says. It's like smoking gum. She sits down beside me so our shoulders are touching and says chemo kicked my ass today. Neither of us say anything else we just sit and smoke and shiver and with each exhale we lean in a bit closer to each other.

Cold, she says.

When she goes in to meet her mom, I take a break from my practice and go to check on Astra. I pick up the phone and listen to it ring eleven times before I see a nurse come around the corner. She slows her pace when she sees me through the window.

Yeah they all hate me.

Before I can get through the doorway of the common room, Catherine is yelling down the hall to me. Page 53 of 239

Lilly! Where were you? I was worried! I was looking everywhere for you where were you? I looked in the lobby and the gift shop-

Smoking. Is she all right what's up?

Astra is yes, she's just taking a nap. All this time you were smoking, Lilly? I didn't know you smoked. I quick nod. Well, you shouldn't, she says, it's terrible for you. Anyway, your phone was ringing but I didn't answer it because the nurse was walking past and she gave me a serious eyebrow scowl and told me to shut it off.

Was it ma? I ask.

I don't know, honey. Is there a message?

I flip open the phone just as I do it starts to ring again. I press the green button and say, Ma?

No, hey yo Lil it's Un-key Jerry here.

I say ugh and he says, thanks kid you too and I say, sorry dude, but I just don't have time right now. I'm at the hospital and I'm not supposed to have my phone on and he asks me why.

I think it's because it messes with the X-Rays, how the hell do I know Jerry?

Then I tell him that its Astra, she had another one.

Oohhhh he says. Then he tells me, the Suze should be there you should call her

Lil. I say, yeah thanks, yeah that's a, yeah she sure should. Unfortunately, Jerry, I've misplaced her.

But I just talked to her, he says. Didn't I? Yeah, yeah, I did, just twenty minutes ago. She told me she was making strong coffee for her and, a man with a biblical name.

She called you? Page 54 of 239

Noah? Or, Abraham?

Jerry?

I called the house looking for you, actually. See, you took my mittens with you when you moved, Lilly and there 'aint no mittens like my red mittens Lilly, and I need you to send them. Like, in the mail, at like, your earliest convenience okay.

She's at the house? I don't get it, why didn't she call me back?

Did you leave her a message? I heard Jerry clicking something on and off and on and off. When I asked for you, Suze said she must be out with Astra, that's what she told me.

I left a bloody message on her cell phone.

You know she never has minutes on that thing Lilly.

Oh God, Jerry yeah. Okay! I gotta go, I say, my voice echoing as I run down the stairwell. I take the stairs two at a time.

Is she you know. Is she okay, Lil?

Well, they're asking about family history and all, they've got her on Seroquel?

Really? She'll gain weight on that one. Make sure you keep an eye out for blisters. Anything on the skin: my friend Len, they had him on that one for a while but he had this erection that lasted for over six hours. But I guess you don't really need to worry about that.

Right, so I'll just-

Is there a post office at the hospital? Just that I really need-

Your mittens yeah Jerry I gotta go now, so-

Fine fine Lilly but listen: she's not sick. She's not sick like me.

Okay Jerry, right lemme call you back oh-kay. Page 55 of 239

My fingers feel numb and my head is spinning from the smoking and the stairs and I have a hard time dialling the numbers.

He-lloooww, Isaac's House of Pancakes?

Ma? Jesus, Ma-

Oh, ho-ney I was wondering where you were? You and your sister on a field trip?

Ma.

I met this man, this Isaac man at a coffee shop, he's here with me. He's a cook isn't that exciting! She giggles. Sorry, sorry, a chef. He's making me fancy pancakes, what do you call them babe? Oh, lemon ricotta and we just picked that real thick maple syrup. You want me to save you some Lil, where are you?

I'm at St. Christopher's.

Suzie yelps. Ouch! And giggles again. Sorry honey, Isaac is just pinching me, devil you! You're where, Lilly?

St. Christopher's mom! You've got to come-

A church? Well that's not very interesting Lilly Marie. I think you should come home, we'll have a nice breakfast and you can meet-

MOM! it's a hospital? Astra is in the hospital you've got to come they found her on the subway she's on pills mom you gotta come. You've got to take the Bloor line south to Spadina and transfer.

Found her on the. This morning?

Friday, mom. I haven't spoken to you since last Wednesday.

Oh. Page 56 of 239

It's Thursday today mom.

Oh.

Are you...you know. Have you been...at all this morning? I ask. I mean are you sober, mom? And from the background I hear her Bible man ask her, just how Irish you want that coffee: are we talking shamrocks?

I hang up the phone without knowing if she's coming, and wonder if my mother knows which way is South. Page 57 of 239

12: Suzie

...after the lesbian with blue streaked hair...

I've never been one for directions.

When Lilly was four, the last summer we spent together her father and his whack-job brother Jerry and I took her camping. Just me and her went for a nice night hike and I got us lost out in the dunes. When I figured that out, I just sat down and started to cry. It was Lilly who had to tell me about you gotta follow the North Star,

Mama.

I don't know what that means Lil.

You look for the pointers duh.

Again: Lilly I don't get it.

Pointer stars? The two stars farthest from the handle of the Big Dipper.

Lilly Marie, I said I don't- so, like big whoop, the Dipper. How does that get us back to the campsite?

We follow it to get out of the forest.

Even at four years old, my daughter was smarter than me. I've never understood that whole looking for North thing. What did that mean when I was at some random intersection in Toronto, trying to figure out: was it north or no. East, was it East?

The receiver was still hot against my ear and buzzing. No, this wasn't good.

This meant they were going to put her Jesus, they must have already put my daughter on pills.

How did I forget to check in for five days? No. It couldn't have been that long.

It wasn't Friday was it?

Jesus. Page 58 of 239

I steady myself and get to the kitchen, grip the counter with one hand and my mug with the other. I swallow a gulp of hot coffee and let the whisky burn my throat and stomach before I say Isaac, honey, I got some business to take care of, and tell him it's time to get moving let's go. He argues with me about I paid like, thirty bucks for all the pancake stuff Suzie, so I say, take it with you then.

This Isaac, he's actually a pretty solid guy; and if I told him I had to go to the hospital because my daughter, well whatever, he would've offered to take me in his old

Dodge. He probably would have stopped at the smoke shop to pick me up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, too: he was that kind of cat.

I don't have time to fall in love with a cook. A chef, a chef I mean.

While I'm brawling with my parka, he stacks all the stuff in my refrigerator.

Then he rips a corner off the bag of brown sugar and scribbles on it with a blue pen. I take one more long sip of coffee, give him my wide eyes and make a windmill with my arm toward the door while I hold the hot liquid in my mouth.

There is a woman sitting in the glass booth at the bus stop. When I sit beside her, she brushes off her nose a few times with the back of her mitten before getting up and standing outside. Buttons up her coat and shivers. Screw you too old woman. I plunge my hands deep down into my pockets to look for a piece of gum and pull out the scrap of the sugar bag:

YOURS TRULY,

ISAAC T. BUTTS

647-884-4554

Butts, yikes. Guess you can't help the last name, though. Page 59 of 239

Naming your kids now, that's a tricky business: especially when you're doing it on your own. You have to avoid the names that would guarantee them a life of abstinence: Bertha, or any name that makes them sixty from birth—Agnes, or Myrtle.

Oh, and the nicknames you have to remember the nicknames. Fatty Patty.

I got the name Astra from a woman I met when I was at Haven Woods, the rehab facility in Manitoba. Haven Woods: compliments of Hanna Happy Birthday, I'll take care of Lilly go get yourself well and take care of that little baby. And smarten up, woman. Smarten up.

My roommate at Haven Woods was a tall woman with big red Velcro hair who read Greek mythology, owned three pairs of "spectacles" and screamed things like don't you dare Derek, and get the fuck away from me in her sleep. Every woman in that joint had her back up about me being so preggo and in rehab and all; ballsy if you ask me.

Everyone that is but her; she listened to me cry, massaged my feet, even let me talk ask questions of her daughter, the doula, on the phone. She told me, it's never too late to be a good mama, Suzie.

But apparently, it was too late for her.

One morning while I was at doctor's appointment, they found the fifth of vodka in her pillowcase. She was gone before I got back. I didn't even get to say good-bye.

This was all unbeknown to her daughter, who came with her lesbian girlfriend like they told her they were going to, for a nice morning visit carrying a box of books, a little bag of bagels and a small coffee maker.

So nice to meet you finally, the daughter said dipping her head to me. Where is my mother? Page 60 of 239

I looked to the girlfriend with a kind of, how-do-I-answer-this-one, and she

knew, instantly. I swear she knew. She shook her head at me, folded her arms and

leaned into the doorway.

I'm sure they made a mistake. I mean don't worry I'm sure she'll be back soon,

they'll figure out they made a mistake. I told them that because it's what I really

thought. Where do you think she might have gone? I asked.

Her daughter stood there with the box inching down her chest, glaring at my belly. You tell me, you deadbeat mothers, she said. There a club for you losers? That's where my mother will be. Do me a favour, she said, pushing the box back up her chest with her knee and then pushed it at me. If she does come back, you tell her strike three.

You tell her no more, Suzanne. You tell her that I'm done, she said, and off she went: clicking and scuffing her heeled boots down the hallway. The girlfriend stood in the doorway staring at me for what seemed like a long time before she pushed off with her shoulder. She shuffled slowly across the carpet right up to an inch away from my belly and pointed a long finger capped with a short red fingernail at my face and curled her fingers up into a fist.

Now think of everything pure and everything real and everything you've never had to question in your life and put eyes on it: big strange blue eyes with glittery lashes, and stare into the face of them for eight seconds. (Look at a stranger for eight full seconds: it's a really long time.) I was scared and on the verge of tears and it was every

God damn emotion and not one word between us and I knew exactly what she was saying. She nodded, and I nodded back in agreement.

I understood I was making a promise. Page 61 of 239

Then she flicked her chopped up hair and the air whipped in front of me and she started to hurry down the hall her hair smelled like blueberries.

Never in my life, before or since, have I been so moved by the presence of someone. And that's why I decided to name my baby after the lesbian with blue hair.

Astra, I said out loud thinking about blueberries, and my little baby kicked my belly.

The night after I squeezed her out (why didn't I take the epidural Jesus Lord no drugs. Sure, it seems like a natural idea and I did it because the doula would have wanted me to but dear Jesus take the epidural), the nurse asked me what's the name and

I told her and she said ah. A little warrior.

Huh? No, I looked it up, I said. I think it means wandering stars.

Not in my language she said, wiping up and between Astra's legs with a white cloth. In Hindu mythology, astra means a supernatural weapon: different deities had different ones. She worked on bundling Astra up in a pink blanket. A weapon? I asked, looking into her little face.

Very powerful one. She tapped Astra's nose, and in a baby voice, she told me about Vayu, whose astra was a gale that could lift armies right up off the ground, and

Surya, whose was a dazzling light that could dispel any darkness.

And you couldn't just take your opponents astra away, either, she said: it had to be summoned, and then passed down by word of mouth only. It was too dangerous to write it down. Then she leaned in and handed her to me and whispered your warrior.

*** Page 62 of 239

The bus driver snaps the doors shut and starts driving so fast I don't even have a chance to grab a pole. Asshole. I land half in the lap of a man with slicked black hair who says whoa whoa in a British accent. When we get to Bloor, the driver gets on the speaker and tells us the bus is short turning and everyone's gotta get off. I stand in front of him while people elbow around me, watch him inhale a Boston Cream in two bites, the cream slopping down over his wedding ring. He finally looks up, a little startled.

When does the next one come? I ask.

I don't know, lady. Like, three minutes.

Your wife hates her life, I tell him.

I do what the rest of us do: stand outside the bus stop house, shiver, and lean off the kerb to look up the road for the bus. I think about a cab, look at the place my watch would be if I wore one, and then I see an LCBO across the street.

Well really, I can't go in smelling like this. I'll just pop in to get a few airplane bottles of peppermint schnapps.

Bag? Says the clerk with a waxy moustache to which I say, sure.

Its 5 cents.

Fuck your mother then, I say, and walk out.

There's a guy with white and grey dreadlocks sitting cross legged at the bottom of the stairs. He's wearing sunglasses and playing a ukulele with long bony fingers and bobbling his head. I stand there cooling my stomach down and freshening my breath, watching until the end of his jam when I say, right on brother. Nice tune-age.

Ukulele be the happiest instrument in the world, he says. Page 63 of 239

You like schnapps? I pass him two airplane bottles and squint down the road.

Gotta finish them before the bus comes.

Right, sister. He takes a swig and it dribbles into is beard. I thank you. Sit?

No. Waiting for the bus.

Everyone got somewhere to go. Somewhere special to be ah?

Hospital, I say. I take a mouthful and swish it up over my teeth and up over my gums, looking at the crowd of people crammed around the bus stop on the other side of the street. Hey, can you tell me is that south, up that way?

He laughs a smoke-filled lung laugh. Tha's east, my sister. East. See, the sun.

Forget it. I have no clue what you mean by that.

While I'm finishing the last of the liquor, a screeching bus stops and opens its doors right in front of me.

You go to St. Christopher's? I ask the bus driver while I climb the stairs. He tells me you have to take the 514 or the 29 something and transfer at Yonge and forget it, I tell him.

I trip (it's icy there, watch the last step) making my way quick up the street into the sharp sun toward a maroon and yellow taxi cab and think, I really should have taken that ride from Mr. Butts. Page 64 of 239

13: Lilly

...fondling stained glass and hand knit baby sweaters...

The first time I fell in love it was with a barrister named Harrison.

No, not like an actual barrister or anything but the guy that steams the milk and knows how to make doppio espressos and all that business at Second Cup. Whatever they're called.

It was January, and it was cold and snowing, surprise. I had ditched Astra at the bus stop that morning and told her I had some errands to run downtown so she'd have to survive on her own for the day. She looked down at me from the bus stairs, holding her stupid purple square back pack in both her hands.

So, I'm going by myself, she asked. To school by myself. She nodded and her bangs flicked quick.

You got it Astra. You gonna be all right?

She nodded again. You're fifteen, Lilly. You go do your errands. You deserve a little liberation in your life. And don't worry about me I'll be splendid; besides, I can take care of myself. We nodded at each other not because we knew it was true, but because we both agreed that it should be.

I walked up Spring Garden to the Second Cup and ordered a Green tea latte. I was slotting the change back into my coin purse when I saw him; my barrister, big black eyes and straight black hair and yum-o. Looked like the kind of guy that listened to indie rock and belonged to local save the enviro groups. I tried to think of anything to say to him that wasn't, would you like to father my future children but I had nothing.

He blinked up at me a few times while he steamed my milk, but mostly it was just Page 65 of 239 awkward, because life isn't always all dreamy. Sometimes it's just awkward silences and steaming milk is all.

I sat at the granite counter and worked on my pout-the-lips-and-peruse-the- business-section-with-a-stick-straight-spine look for about nine minutes or so, sipping on my latte (go try it, seriously it's so damn good) before Harrison came over to say, I'm sorry to bother you but you are excruciatingly beautiful, and would you be interested in hanging out? I get off work in like twenty minutes.

Sounds jolly, I said because love, it makes you alame-o.

He had a thick accent I thought was Swiss but turned out to be Australian. He wore a navy leather coat and walked with a kind of swagger. We walked down Queen

Street and he smoked Peter Jacksons and told me about Queensland, which is apparently about as progressive as a Mennonite village in terms of women's issues. We poked around in the shops, fondling stained glass and hand-knit baby sweaters, asking questions of each other like if you had a pet iguana would you name it Chip or Sal.

Bonjour! I said to all the shop owners. Oh, non nous sommes tres desoles que nous ne parlons pas l'anglais! And when we were leaving I yelled, Au revoir! De rien!

You speak French, he said. Impressive. No I don't, I told him. I just like to cook

French cuisine, so I've picked up a few words.

We went to a vintage store where I tried on an ivory slip with a chocolate brown leather crop jacket and knee- length riding boots. Gorgeous. I would get married in this, I said and he got down on one knee and asked will you? And he pinned a ruby snail brooch on my sleeve because they didn't have any rings and the clerk clapped and said congratulations. Page 66 of 239

Thanks for the snail, I said.

It's a ladybug.

That conversation was so us.

While the clerk rung us up she said, what do you do Harrison and he said she's a

French gastronomist, and I brushed his hair up out of his eyes and said he's a barrister and she said wow. Is that like a lawyer and I said yeah, he has a real reputation. The other lawyers call him Harris-ment. They both laughed at me. Or with me I don't know.

We walked through the Canadian Tire on Quinpool and contemplated windshield wipers what do you think of these hon, and in the lighting department he kissed me and I swear, my knees must have started shaking. Now you might think of course, Lilly: everything got bright because we were in the lighting department but it wasn't just that. Everything got better in that moment like, it clicked into place.

Did you buy that?

No, I don't suppose you did. No one says illuminated or shaking knees do they?

And Astra would never tell me I needed liberation in my life.

And absolutely no one would describe my beauty as excruciating.

Let me try again.

When I was nineteen, I answered an ad in the paper for a job at a resort in Lake

Louise. I lived in the hotel and barely ever left that place. I worked early mornings washing sheets and folding towels and slept most of the day. I didn't really meet anyone except a janitor named Javier. Page 67 of 239

It wasn't him I fell in love with. Ew he is like fifty with a handle bar moustache.

Ew.

I shared a room with a Vietnamese girl named Lin who drank Mike's Hard

Lemonades, smoked a lot of pot and always wore her hair in two French braids. She really didn't like people, except for me for some reason, and that's why when her brother surprised her with a visit, she said, Lil is the only one worth bothering with in this place trust me. That might have been one of the factors that caused him to fall in love with me. But I'm sure it also had something to do with my groovy big lips and my come hither nature. I'm sure it did.

His name was Umberto and he was 6"4. He had the roundest hazel eyes and long eyelashes I've ever seen, probably. It's always awkward to fall in love with your roommate's visiting older brother because you have to share a bathroom and a bedroom within the first 24 hours of meeting, but we made it happen.

When Lin passed out in the recliner the first night, we didn't wake her up. We sat up talking and he told me about going to school to be a veterinarian, and that he was the only one in his family that took care of his brother Vic who had the autism. This made me love him a little more.

I lost my virginity to Umberto in the laundry room that night. And I'm actually pretty conservative about talking about those kinds of things so suffice to say I did, and it was pretty typical. Poof, I wasn't a virgin anymore.

While I was getting my underwear back on, my phone rang. It was Astra: so where might I go about finding the Suze? She asked, because it'd been a few days since she's been home and I'm just getting a little hungry Lil, no big deal, but there's no money or shampoo. I don't need you to come home or anything, she said, but Lilly Page 68 of 239 could you maybe just send some rice pudding and Perrier and then everything would be right as rain.

When did she leave, I asked Astra.

Friday.

And have you been out of the house?

Once.

What happened?

No one, she said. I mean nothing, it wasn't a big deal I mean, its fine now. Just some rice pudding Lilly that's all I need.

I turned around to Umberto, who was swinging my bra from his index finger.

You know you have to go, he said.

What about that? Is it better at least?

Hmm. I don't think people say poof. Let me try one more time.

The first time I fell in love I was in Montreal on one of those Breakaway Tours deals. His name was Lionel. I met him at a bar called the Monkey where he was doing shots of Lagavulin and playing the bass in a band called Les Mains. He told me about how passion was the most important thing to live by et cetera et cetera, and kissed me and his lips were dry, and he told me he'd love me forever but I told him eventually I had to get back to Halifax because that's where my sister lived and she needed me and he said what is she a retard or something and I told him you know what, Lionel your mother was the retard, Lionel. What a stupid name. Page 69 of 239

Okay fine. So I've never been in love before and I have no idea what it feels like.

I've never cut school and I've never been anywhere further than a few miles from my

sister in my entire life. I've certainly never been on any vacation, or spoken to anyone who plays an instrument at a bar named after a marsupial (or a simian or whatever it is) on a nightly basis to pay rent on his studio apartment and support his habit of drinking fine Scotch.

I am still a virgin. So what.

But I do know that if you have to choose between the hydro bill and the water bill, you always choose the water because:

1. the man at the hydro office will always let you slide by with a $10.00 payment and keep the power on as long as you promise to pay it next time, and

2. water is much more important than electricity.

And aren't those things more important, really? This is yet another example of why I am the oldest twenty-three year old you'll ever meet.

I know how to be a responsible 30. I just missed the opportunity to be a convincing anything age 14-22.

A few times, I willed myself to dream about falling in love. Intention setting? I read that you can do that: like, draw things to you by putting the energy out there. So before bed I drank some mint tea with the leaves in it and read Shakespeare sonnets. I fell asleep with the book across my chest, repeating verses like, ...to the lark at break of day arising, from sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven ys gate.

I did this for a good two weeks. I've heard people say everyone dreams every night, regardless of if you remember or not. That's bullshit, in my opinion. I only had Page 70 of 239 one dream: I was in an orange grove and I was wearing a lavender gown and there were white flowers in my hair. The trees were bright green trees and the oranges and there was this man that looked like Harrison (it was Harrison, I mean really, they were both born from my imagination) that sat beside me. He said, well, I can't tell you what he said I mean it's private, but then from across the meadow I saw Astra. There were these red and black birds that were trying to pull at her and the faces on these birds were all squished and if it wasn't my dream and/or it wasn't my sister, I would have run and run and run. But of course I said, Harrison help me. I turned and he was gone, so I ran across the field, tripping over oranges, because you would rather be the hero in your own dream than the asshole that sat and watched.

While I was running, my purple dress became this purple cape and puffy pants number, and I had a shield, and I pried the birds off her and my shield squished them and they turned to dust. And Astra said, my hero, and we ran off into the sunset together, where there was a big barrel of liquorice allsorts at the end because they are my favourite candy because let's review one more time: the. oldest, twenty, three, year, old. ever.

Confession: in the dream, I was the asshole that sat and watched.

Harrison, of course, he didn't see because his back was to Astra. He was kissing me because you know; it's my dream and maybe the one place where it's not the all about Astra show all the damn time. I saw those birds, saw one pecking at her arm, and

I closed my eyes and I kept right on kissing. Page 71 of 239

Why? I'm sure Freud could tell you why. I'm sure you've got a few theories, too. My theory has something to do with the fact that for Christ's sake, I deserve to know what it feels like to fall in love. Page 72 of 239

14: Doc Weasel

...Helen'sfather, a realfather...

Knock knock kncok.

To which I reply, go away.

Hazel has been reading the dictionary lately; she's on E already, which means she already knows all about depression and deadbeat and divorce. She's got a little pink journal just like the one I saw Astra Hallet with last night, and God only knows what

Hazel's been writing in that thing. Last week she drew a picture of our family. She was dressed in her Brownies uniform, which she coloured a dark brown, and she was waving from the front porch. Nora was in the window, wearing her blue housecoat with her hair a messy scribble of yellow pencil crayon, her eyes rimmed with a bright red. I was in my white coat waving from a window in a building with a big red cross on the top that took up more than half the page. It was double the size of the house.

You don't need to be a psychiatrist to figure that out.

Though this was going to be another morning of Hazel going off to the bus without me, another morning of her thinking I've chosen work over her, I had to get some sleep. I'd rather that than her find dear old Dad asleep on the love seat in the home office. At least there's a consistency in that version of me failing her.

Louder, knock knock knock. Doctor Vieshell?

How did they even find me here? Page 73 of 239

I don't care what you need, I tell the person knocking at the door. I don't care who you are or what it is, I am not on shift until 8:00 and I'm not answering any questions until at least7:45.

Fm sorry to disturb you Doctor, a familiar voice says to the pulled blinds. But that Hallet girl...um, I just think you should come right now.

Thelma Moore had found me on the roof about a month ago in between shifts. I had just finished a phone conversation with Hazel which ended with her telling me, don't bother picking me up at Helen's house if you're going to be late, and that Helen's father, a real father, offered a ride instead. I hung up and began a small stream of swearing and from behind me I heard, oh that has to be daughter trouble. Boys?

No, too young for that. I'm sorry I'm just a little out of sorts today, I said. I suppose she took this as a conversation starter.

You know, you guide them by example that's the best you can do. I resisted the urge to ask her, then, if her greatest aspiration was to have her daughter work the night shift cleaning hospital toilets.

This lack of sleep has been wearing on my people skills for some time now.

In order to avoid saying something ignorant, I undipped the beeper from my side pocket and said, oh I'm so sorry but I've got to go it's one of my patients. However, something must have shown in my face because she stopped me mid excuse, touched my arm and said, are you all right? And even though I reassured her, she told me, listen there isn't any shame in one parent talking to another; even if I'm only a janitor I'm no less a parent than you are. Page 74 of 239

I didn't get the feeling, not in the least, that she was interested in me

romantically. Why then, was she so adamant to have a deep conversation? I couldn't

figure it out. I apologized to her again before assuring her my excuse was all very

legitimate, but every time I'd seen her since, she continued to attempt these meaningful

conversations with me; every time, except of course the last time I'd seen her. There

had been no time for all of that business then, the morning when she had tried to tell me

Gina Urbach was out of her coma and that she was in pain.

No. What she'd said is that she thought she had heard Astra tell her there was

something wrong with Urbach. And how did Thelma know that?

Of course there was something wrong with her, though, anyone could see that:

Gina Urbach was a twenty year old with a death wish. This was her third time in the

hospital in four months (two overdoses and one incident with a knife) and Thelma, most

certainly, had seen her here before as well. Her most recent suicide attempt (or in her

opinion, attempt to feel better) entailed melting down six Fentanyl patches and

injecting the liquid between her toes in an attempt to conceal the tracks, putting herself

into a drug induced coma. I had to have a sit-down with the nurses to explain protocol

for such an incident because no one in the medical field had ever thought up the procedure to save someone that had injected herself with the liquid melted down from

six Fentanyl patches.

How did she even know to do something like that?

The Internet most likely, where they can learn how to psycho analyze, how to diagnose themselves and what kind of flower essences will cure their mild depression

and insomnia. I mean really, who needs doctors when a janitor can tell you what's wrong? Page 75 of 239

Knock knock. Doctor? I'm sorry-

O-kay Thelma yes I'm coming.

I sit on the edge of the bed and wring out my hands, hoping to rid myself of the thick fuzz I feel on my skin. I flick the switch and the lights burn black speckles into my retinas. I hold the cold door handle in my hand and open the door.

Thelma leads me down the hall and I hear the flicking buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights getting louder. Flick flick a patient in a shiny-too-shiny wheelchair, a cart carrying silver serving trays of scalloped potatoes, ham and broccoli and I feel my stomach churn. The overhead speaker hums. Thelma turns back when she gets to the door and I fumble in my pocket for my ID card and says, I know you're gonna see it, as soon as you see her I know you're gonna see it. And I resist the urge to tell blurry

Thelma, I can't guarantee that I'll even be able to see her.

Such questions that arise in my mind as we scurry down the hall are: when is the last time I've seen her? What time is it now?

Thelma, her room is here, I say, stopping. Thelma where are you going?

She walks back, her shoe squeaks and she takes my hand. She's not in her room, she says.

I let her hold my hand and walk the few feet down the hallway to the waiting room, where I find Astra huddled in the corner between the wall and a coffee table topped with magazines, rocking back and forth, half exposed and shaking and drooling and she's biting down on her lip so hard it's started to trickle blood.

Is this a reaction to the medication? Is this my fault? Who else has seen her?

Would they check my reports was there an error in the reports? Page 76 of 239

Jesus.

This is mine to fix. I have to fix this: not Thelma, not the sister, me. What am I going to do to fix this? I shuffle over slowly to Lilly, keeping my eyes on Astra. What's going on? I ask her. She lunges forward and stands back and I see she's as pale as her sister.

Lilly whispers, I've never. Astra keeps talking like she's having full conversations with herself; she doesn't even acknowledge that I'm here. She's twitching and she says she's cold, but she's sweating. She's crying and berating herself, but then she's scratching herself I can't get her to stop. And she always listens to me but she won't-

Okay, all right, I say. I creep up to Astra quietly and ask her, Astra can you hear me? And she throws her back against the wall, her eyes wide and full of tears. She puts a finger to her mouth, smearing the blood up over her nose.

Shhh, she hisses. Too much talking too much too much too much. Page 77 of 239

15: Astra

...twinkle wish and the star winks...

Its cold in here no it's warm in here are you warm? These blankets too hot sweat red hot fiery hot these blankets are stiff they are stiff smell like it must be bleach I mean they smell like it must be bleach have to get away from the blankets have to walk have to walk you are ugly you are worthless just end it no one would even care did you hear that was that the TV?

The TV is showing a war drama oh the character right, yes it must have been the character the character is being mean to me but not me, of course right, I mean it's TV but it is dangerous, and those vibrations the television can be cancerous I heard that they can be yes I did

Water water I am thirsty I am sweating are you hot? So ugly you are not good enough not good enough Astra no way you heard that right I mean you heard it? Change the channel change the TV is being mean and my head is aching everything is too loud your teeth are crooked your legs are Jesus, idiot they are too big and people are looking at you, your hair is stringy your nose...see them staring at you because you're a freak you're crazy

stop it they think you are stupid absolutely too dumb for words your mother doesn't even want you shut up shut up I am not those things I am not I am not breathe in two three four out two three don't bother, lunatic you are a lunatic and no one cares about you why bother why is it so hot hot thirsty water please, make it stop: name it, it stops it makes a crack I am sick, no more fighting no the fighting getting worse before better fighting gets better? Page 78 of 239

I'm talking about the TV of course leave me alone of course I'm talking about TV here

fighting equals killing and eventual tolerance or peace or both I don't get it

of course not because you 're stupid and useless

I must be useless if I don't get it you are right

don't patronize, it's not that simple idiot

why not? tell me, so much hurting all this pressure shoulders heavy breathe in two

three four thirsty cold no it's hot no I am cold so cold God damn it answer me why.not I

want an answer why not that simple? why aren't we stopping it we? speak for yourself

don't you dare tell me what to do I'm confused of course you are I don't understand why aren't

you part of this and why can't it be you?

A bomb drops from a plane but it's just TV right on the TV of course it's important

to remember that this is born from an imagination a drama of course that's not

half as dangerous of course these things aren't real never could be right?

imagination never could be let's be clear about That

Breathe out two three right: imagination, never

When the little girl on TV she sees what she believes is a bright star in the sky twinkle

wish, and the star winks and the sky sighs it bloats and unravels a tongue of fire

swallows smoke up half the city in flame and swallows up her wish that it is just a star

please, just a star of course never reality no, you don't know the difference do you? how sweet you think it's you, don't you? Stupid girl it isn't you it could be but it's not it could be no no Page 79 of 239 no more voices that's enough make it stop I just want Lilly make it go away I can't breathe make it stop please, shhh

too much talking too much too much too much Page 80 of 239

16: Lilly ...the difference between a prophet and a schizo...

Jerry Richeter here, how can I direct your call?

Jerry, I say. What did you mean she's not sick like you?

Hey-yo Lil, let me guess: you're calling to tell me you've sent my mittens?

Sorry I've been a little. What did you mean when you said, Astra's not sick like you?

Well hello to you, too. If you were in my house, now might be the time I'd offered you a tea, or some of those Digestive biscuits with-

Jerry, please.

He breathes deep into the phone and I listen to the silence for a few seconds.

She's just different than me Lilly. We're not the same.

It looks like you're a lot the same, in fact. She had this episode yesterday I mean,

I've never seen her like that before.

This one was worse than before?

Jerry I've never seen her like that before there was blood she. She's hearing voices, Jerry. She's having these delusions.

The voices are different than mine, you know that right? You know they're different.

Not sure I do.

He takes a long breath again. Did I ever tell you about the time I found Astra in

January up at Five Corners?

What? No, you never...what? Page 81 of 239

I can hear him splitting the plastic on a fresh pack of cigarettes, plucking the tinfoil from one side and putting the smoke to his mouth. I wait.

She was up on Robie, standing in front of the Just Us! Coffee watching a young homeless guy playing a guitar and kind of dancing to his music. You were gone on some weekend retreat or something, Lilly; I don't know where you were.

Uh-huh, I say, feeling my face get hot. At Owencreek, I remember: a weekend retreat I had to attend to pass grade twelve religion class. A forty-eight-hours-of- singing-and-time-for-deep-reflection deal. I remember telling Mr. Reid I had the measles to get out of it because I was worried The Suze would forget to keep an eye on her. I remember my teacher telling me I needed to pick a more current child malady next time I faked being sick. I didn't pack my toothbrush because I was sure I was getting out of it and the Pastor had to give me an extra. It was purple.

It was snowing that day, Jerry says: white-out snowing, that everything quiet kind of weather, when you can't see an arm in front of you. And so when I see her I think, no way: I'm just hallucinating, because she's standing there in a little t-shirt and jogging pants: Care Bears or something. Her hair was wet, flat down her face and her head bent and she's just, waving her arms and tapping her feet and doing those, what do you call when you put your hands up in a circle and twirl around-

Pirouettes.

Yeah, those. So I walk up, right up to her cause I've had to make sure that I wasn't just seeing things you know because sometimes. And I said, Astra? I looked at the guy like, what the hell and he shook his head at me and kept on playing. Astra, I ask her, what are you doing down here, where is your coat? Jerry inhales deep and my lungs hurt for him. Page 82 of 239

Isn't it beautiful? That's what she asked me, Lil. I put my coat around her, said something like, Astra: its winter and, you know, but she shook her head and said, shh stop: you're missing it. Missing what? I asked her. She shrugged my coat off and held her hands out: the snow, the music: it, she said. I looked up into the snow and I said, right, snow and she said, no: stop trying to look at it, Uncle Jerry just be in it. And I stood there with her: the two of us, shirts soaked through, and the jacket between us on the ground, staring up into the snow listening to some hippie strum the chorus to a

Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.

Bob Dylan.

And Lil, when I think about that morning, the first thing I think isn't that Astra is just like me. What I think is that she knows more than her mind knows what to do with, and that sometimes she buckles under the pressure.

She's talking about intensity of colours, Jerry. She's talking about how things seem brighter and how everything is connected, and that there are voices? That the TV is talking to her or something, or the characters on TV? I don't know.

Are they bad voices? Did she tell you about bad voices?

I think they are I mean she was really freaking out-

What is she doing is she reading what is she doing?

Well yeah; I mean we both like to read you know that.

It's not philosophy I mean she's not reading philosophy is she? Tell me no, Lil.

Oh, is that like a dangerous sign of psychosis if she's reading Plato or something?

Lilly, it's something we do: research. It's a way to close off. I started off innocent: reading your dad's Descartes and Aristotle in our parent's basement with a Page 83 of 239

pen light. But I became kind of what, dependent on it. I had to read it because it made

me feel, like, less alone you know, because other people had thought about the same

conspiracies about what I was thinking about. But then I thought I had tapped into

something. I thought there was a code, you know like a code, and only I knew about it

and there was a hole, I found this hole in the Universe. I was on the brink of figuring it

out. I know. I know I was. I was on to some secret that everyone else was just too

stupid to see: too closed off to see. I thought people were scared of what I knew; the

way people are scared of what they just don't understand you know, Lil? Then I started

thinking that they wanted my secrets and like, what's the difference between a prophet

and a schizo maybe I'm a prophet you know and so they were going to come and get me

for it and they were really gonna hurt me and so I had to start keeping knives in my

dresser and they were coming to get me, Lilly, they knew I knew and I wasn't suppose

to know and I had to be ready to hurt them. Well they were going to hurt me that's

just survival. They were going to hurt me. Like one time, there was a squirrel, Jerry

pants, with his tail stuck between two of the boards on my patio and Nathan told-

Nathan?

Yeah, he says. His voice is high and loud now. One of the voices, his name is

Nathan and he told me to take it up by the neck and squeeze to see if the eyes would pop

out. And he told me to like, to half-saw off the rungs on your dad's ladder and I

watched him climbing from a bush and when he fell, I laughed and Nathan told me good job good job and, but, well, you know.

I. Well, I don't know, um.

. Did Dr. Connors tell you to call me?

No, Jerry. Page 84 of 239

Because he told me not to talk about Nathan it's bad to talk about Nathan. Is this a test?

Jerry, I don't want to do anything to hurt you I'm just really trying to make sense of all this.

It takes him a few minutes of breathing loud into the phone before he says, you can't, Lilly. You can't understand it: that's the difference between me and Astra. That's the difference, he says. I can hear him sliding the drawer back and forth again. Dr.

Connors calls it the flat effect, um my emotions are blunted. It's not that I'm bad, Lil: I just don't know how to feel bad, or I don't care enough about things all the time. It's work for me to care all the time.

I'm sorry, Jer I don't know. I wish I did but I don't.

Don't say that you don't want to know. And Astra, either she would never think about hurting someone just for the hell of it, Lilly, she's not wired that way. For her: there's what's good in the world, and there's the empty hole left over when it's taken away. He flicks the light again on off on off. She just, fell in Lilly, he says. She just fell in.

Hey, Lilly?

Yeah, Uncle Jerry.

Is it snowing there?

Yeah.

Suppose to be all night, he says.

Yeah. Yeah, Uncle Jerry, you're right. Page 85 of 239

I wait a few seconds not sure if I should speak again. Then he says, I better call

Dr. Connors now.

That's a good idea, I think.

Right. Just don't forget that she's not, okay. Don't forget she's different Lil.

Yeah, Uncle Jerry. Okay. Page 86 of 239

17: Suzie

...Extra sugar free and Dr. McGill cuddy's...

Good morning, I say, pointing to the nurse's sagging nametag. Millicent, hi I'm

looking for my daughter. I bend over the counter and run my finger down a list of

names. Last name's Hallet.

Millie pushes my hand away. Do you know what floor? She asks kind of tenting

up her hands around the paper. When she notices that I'm glaring down at her

Tupperware, she holds the tent up but then slides her elbow closer to it. The whole

show is really ridiculous. Don't know the floor, I tell her. I know she came in

Friday.

Millie runs her finger down the page, says Hallet, Hallet. I pop my gum. She

blinks and one, two, three, blinks down again. (Ri-di-cu-lous, I tell you.) She stops at a

name highlighted in green and says, fourth floor.

I have to call ahead and get them to buzz you up, she says raising one eyebrow.

Then she pitches the tent again. What did you say was the relationship?

Astra's my daughter, I say. Why is this woman looking at me like I have eyes on my chin, I wonder. So I ask her, why are looking at me like I have eyes on my chin?

Oh, well I must be thinking of someone else. I thought the Hallet mother was, well, anyway they have to buzz you up.

Do what you gotta do, Mill. The Millster, I say, turning around and spreading my elbows across the cold counter.

She goes in the small office to make her phone call and takes the list with her.

She cups the mouthpiece with her hand and mumbles. I snort at her. I flick her

Tupperware onto the floor. The lid wasn't on tight and her Chocolate Danish took a Page 87 of 239 linoleum hit. She looks down at it, then back at me with I swear, what looks like a tear in her eye. Whatever, Millie.

She looks like a Millie, too: the knit-sweaters-for-the-nephews, beige-panty- wearing, Danielle-Steele-reading, doubles-the-butter-in-the-cookie-recipe Millie.

Husband, Hal I'd say: works at the Dow plant screwing plastic caps onto I don't know, something sharp and toxic to the environment. They can't have children: Hal's probably sterile and Millie's uterus is surely like St. John's in the middle of January.

Who names their kid Millie really?

Three days after unpacking at Haven Woods, I called my daughter to tell her I was changing our name back to Hallet. Why mama, she said, and I told her because

Daddy isn't going to be around anymore, so we need to take mommy's name back before your little sister comes. So we all have the same name, baby.

What a bastard I was. It would take me a few years to understand the in-your- face-deal-with-it-and-get-it-over-with strategy didn't really work for four year olds.

She told me he is coming back mama, he is gonna and so I told her okay, okay we'll give it a year okay baby a year and she said mama and I said yes, and she said in case he doesn't come back, I don't want the first name he gave me either. If he doesn't come back I want a brand new name, all together and I said, sure Nell, sure.

Oh, right did I forget to mention Lilly was named Nell back then?

(Okay, let me back track a little bit before you get all judgemental again.)

Eleanor: that's actually what I let my husband name my first born. Page 88 of 239

When I first broke the news about the baby, (by which I mean I threw the pee stick onto his keyboard and said, congrats Daddy) he didn't say a word. He stared at it, for a long time, until he got up, walked out of the room and then right out of the house.

I sat up in bed waiting for him that night. When I woke up his shoes were by the door and the door to his office was closed. And while he sat across from me eating his oatmeal the next morning, he didn't say a word until he got up to put his bowl in the sink and said, I'm sorry. I still don't know exactly what for and if he was telling the truth.

What I do know is that a part of him never came back that night. A phantom part of him left and went back to the market to find the produce girl. After that he started coming home after I was asleep and I started spending a lot of time at Hanna's.

For over a month with very few exceptions we communicated through notes: hey did you pay the cable bill, and extra potatoes in the fridge.

It was like that until I came home with the ultra sound picture. The technician had written congrats, it's a girl on the top in pink marker and I stuck it up on the refrigerator with a ladybug magnet. When I woke up that night, he was sitting on the edge of the bed smelling like good whisky and holding the picture.

A girl, he said.

That's your daughter.

He put his hand on my belly. It was the first time he'd touched me in months.

I've been thinking about Virginia, he said.

Who the hell is that?

For a name.

You've been thinking about names? Page 89 of 239

Virginia.

As in Woolf? I asked.

Too heavy? Might be too heavy, he said, to carry that around. He nodded and I gave him a I-don't-get-it look. She weighted her pockets with rocks and sunk herself in a river, Suzie. No never mind: I think Eleanor.

After Roosevelt?

He nodded.

Not very attractive was she?

Suzanne.

No way! I said: veto maximus. What am I suppose to call her, Ellie?

You could call her Nellie? Or Nell?

Uh-uh... that's not a little girl's name that's an old ladies name...and such similar conversations and then, somewhere in the third trimester I said okay. I said okay (and you figure out why if you're so smart) and for the first four years of her life, I called my first born Nell.

(I know.)

I didn't remind her when the one year date came. I didn't say, hey honey: it's been a year since your father left us: let's celebrate with a name change! I woke Nell up with Astra in my arms and like nothing was different I said, morning Nell and she said, is it the eighth of April? And I said, yes sweetie and she said, well then Nell is not my name anymore. I said, all right then, what is your name? And she said ummmm...Betty?

The next morning it was something else. Every morning for almost three months, I'd go into her room and I'd say, good morning, miss, and what is your name? Page 90 of 239

When people came over, they'd say to her, well hello, dear: I don't believe we've had the pleasure...and you are?

She spent a lot of time listening to 99.9 FM, because she wanted to pick up a

rebel name or a rock star name. Such favourites included Lennox, Boy Georgia and

Billy Jean. She walked around with a tape recorder, narrating her day: "Roxanne is eating grapes without the seeds...Tiffany likes the colour periwinkle..." and at the end of the day, we'd discuss why it wasn't a good fit.

It's ironic, though: that she ended up with a Church name.

Hanna didn't like the changing name business: she said, it's unnatural, and if the little girl is looking for a good name, she should learn about the good names, in the Good

Book. (Oh P.S. Hanna was a born again circa her mid 50s. Her mid-life crisis involved finding a man and when she couldn't she found Jesus). So Hanna started taking her to

Sunday service and I got to hear all about Delilah and Mary Magdalene over brunch. It was three weeks into this ritual that my daughter (from here on in known as Lillith) came storming in the house and said, I got it and this is final: my name shall be Lillith.

Are there eggs?

Hanna shook her head and tossed me my daughter's backpack. Well, that's the last time she's welcome at Sunday school, Suzanne. Do you know what she did today?

Do you know what she did? Her Sunday school teacher was telling them about Lillith,

Adam's first wife-

There was a first wife?

My mother sighed. Lillith is one of the most blasphemous names in the Catholic

Church, dear. Honestly Suzanne, you should really. Sigh. Lillith was yes, the first wife Page 91 of 239 made of the clay as Adam was, but when they were directed to lie together, she refused to be the obedient partner.

Instructed to fornicate. Hmm, can't imagine why that might be a turn off, I said.

After a deathly stare, Hanna said, so God sent Lillith to a cave. Apparently a hundred children died because of her every year Suzanne honestly, look! She's getting marmalade in her ponytail, now Suzanne! Seriously that child.

Some story tellers, those Christians.

For a while after we changed Lil's name, my mother continued to call her

Eleanor until she refused to answer her anymore. When Hanna realized it was a permanent change, she started calling Lilly Puddin'. I never heard her call her Lillith, not once.

***

When Millie comes back to the desk, she picks up her Danish and puts it back in the Tupperware. She's going to brush it off and eat it later, I know.

So, you say you're Mrs. Hallet?

No, I say I'm Ms. Hallet.

Of course, she says and rubs her wedding band with a smirk.

Shove it in your Danish, I think.

You see the problem, Ms. Hallet, is that Astra Hallet's mother is already here.

What?

Yes it seems she's been here since late Friday night or, early Saturday morning.

(I got nothing). Page 92 of 239

Do you expect me to believe, Ms. Hallet, that you're daughter has been here for the past four days, and this is the first time you're coming to see her? She shakes her head. I'm sorry, ma'am but we can't let you up there.

Was it the schnapps? I wondered. No, I had the gum. Or could she still tell?

No. I mean, this Millie doesn't look smart enough to tell the difference between Extra sugar free and Dr. McGillicuddy's schnapps. So I ask her, why not?

Because Ms. Hallet is already up there, with her daughter.

Okay listen I'm sorry about your Danish, but this game you're playing isn't funny. I'm going to see my daughter-

Ma'am, I'm only going to ask you one more time, and then I'm going to have to call security-

Now wait wait, now, you're saying this, mother of my daughter, or whatever.

Okay you know Bee, just call the room then, at least let me talk to my other daughter?

So I can figure out what's going on?

She hesitates and looks at the Tupperware. I don't have to do anything for you, she says. So I clench my teeth and utter, please. She smirks and then dials the number.

Hi Bee? she says into the receiver. Millie here. Can you get Astra Hallet on the patient phone? Thanks. She passes me the phone. She's sleeping but they're going to get her mother on the line for you, she says.

Her mother?

Her mother.

I grab the phone. Hello? Says a woman whose voice sounds somewhat familiar.

Ms. Hallet? I ask.

Yes, who is this? Page 93 of 239

Ms. Hallet. (She's got nothing). Who the fuck is this?

Suzanne, says the other Ms. Hallet. She takes a deep breath before saying,

Suzanne-come-lately.

Listen, lady, I don't know what's going on-

Your daughter has been in the Hospital for seven days, Suzanne: and you are just getting to the Hospital, that's what's going on. This is Catherine, by the way: I am taking care of things now. Just go away go back to wherever you go when you disappear.

Wait wait wait, Cath-erine? As in, my downstairs neighbour Catherine?

Suzanne, go. She doesn't want you here.

Now, Kitty, let's be clear here-that's my daughter.

She clicks her teeth and says, right, your daughter.

Let me talk to Lilly.

She's asleep.

Wake her up!

It's been an extremely stressful day for the both of them, Suzanne. That's not going to happen.

Lady, you better watch your fucking mouth and put Lilly on the fucking phone!

Ma'am? Bee reaches for the receiver. That's enough now, give me the phone you're going to have to-

Catherine, so help me if you don't put my daughter on the phone-

-Bruno is the security guard and he is going to have to take you outside, now-

She doesn't want to talk to you, Suzanne. She doesn't need this right now.

Need this? Need this? I am her mother! Page 94 of 239

-Ma-am you're clearly drunk, and I need for you to leave.

Go and get a cocktail, Suzanne I've got it under control here.

Get your fat hands off me, Bru-no! What do you think you're trying to pull, la-

I want to see my daughter! I need to see my daughter!

Give me the phone, ma'am, give it-

Astra. Astra!

Let go of the phone, ma'am. Let go. Let go.

Lilly! Get her, get- that's not their mother! That's not their I'm their- Lilly! Page 95 of 239

19: Catherine

...the ugliest things I'd ever seen...

I sit with my hand over the receiver, listening intently for Suzanne coming up the hallway before finally letting go of the receiver and settling back down at the long table across from Leonard. I fold my hands in my lap.

She sounded drunk as usual: that slur, that husky low snarling voice. I huff without thinking, then quickly cover my mouth and look to make sure I haven't awakened the girls.

I go to Lilly, tuck the blanket under her arms. Poor girl. She refuses to leave her sister's side. And until Astra is ready to leave, I'm not leaving them, either.

Someone needs to be there for them.

And Astra God love her. She's been sleeping for hours and hours now. I've been praying for you, I think: praying that that Doctor will figure out how to make you better. We'll figure it out, now: don't you worry.

I go to the door and listen. I sit back down and look at the phone before going back to the door. It's all right, I think: she's not coming. I'd hear the door, I'd know if she was coming in.

I make a mental list of things I need to pick up in the morning: lotion, mouthwash...flowers, I think. Tomorrow I'll get some flowers. Have to brighten up her room. And a plastic vase.

It's unnatural: a hospital room without flowers. When Henry had his heart attack everyone sent flowers: bouquets with tiny helium. The paper boy's mother sent hydrangeas and a card that said you're in our prayers. Page 96 of 239

When I called my daughter Maggie from the hospital pay phone, I said hi darling it's Mom. She wasn't excited to hear from me. She said oh, I didn't recognize the number. I said is that a baby I hear in the background and she said yes it's my son.

She said his name is Kieran and I said oh: what a beautiful name. She asked me what I wanted. I told her that was no way to speak to me: what if there was something wrong with your father, and here you are being snarky? I asked. Is there something wrong with him she asked, and I said, well there could be. She told me she didn't have time for my games and she had to put her son down for a nap and told me that if her father needed her he would call her. She told me he called her all the time. I said he does?

And she said okay mom great talking to you good-bye now.

I couldn't even ask Henry if that was true because he wouldn't wake up. When the Doctor brought that paper and pen in and told me, here on the line if you want to put him on the breathing machine, I had no one to help me figure it all out.

If I want? I asked. Why would I not want that?

The Doctor looked me right in the eyes. He will never be able to breathe on his own again, Mrs. Liddell. I'm sorry.

So he will be loaded down with medication, hooked up to a breathing machine, for what purpose?

To keep him alive.

To keep him alive? I asked. To force him to continue his life: breathing air provided him by a machine, his veins coursing with drugs, in order to keep him alive.

There's a chaplain you can speak to. I don't have the answer for you, I'm truly sorry, Mrs. Liddell. Page 97 of 239

Is the chaplain going to tell me if my husband knew about our grandchild? The doctor said I really don't know how to answer that.

Well, do I have to decide now? I asked.

I'll be back at eight tomorrow morning, he said. You have until then to decide.

I had never seen steel grey hydrangeas before. When they were first delivered around noon they had looked so beautiful in the late afternoon light. But as I sat there, as the night passed by me hour by hour and I sat in the leather chair with them leering over me, those roses became the ugliest things I had ever seen.

At four in the morning, I kissed Henry on the forehead and gave his hand a squeeze. I took the elevator to the cafeteria and bought a cup of coffee and the man asked me, small? No, large I told him: I always get the large.

I added the sugar and stirred and stirred and then I went and sat beside the window and watched a young couple kissing at the bus stop. Did he talk to our daughters all the time? Why wouldn't he tell me? They were probably lying. Yes she must have been lying.

I knew what he would tell me to do. He wouldn't want this life. It wouldn't be his life: it would be a fraction of his life it would be someone else's life. Not my Henry, no it would not fit my Henry: who had served in the navy; my Henry, who had built our house up panel by panel, no I knew what he would tell me to do.

I sat there like that, holding the coffee as it got cold in my hands. For two hours and thirty seven minutes and then I rode the elevator between floors for another twenty-three before getting off on Henry's floor. Page 98 of 239

I stood at the elevator, watching the orange light for I don't know how long.

Then the doors opened and I saw Henry's doctor. He looked me in the eye and then looked at the paper in my hand before saying, I'm so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Liddell.

Sometime between me stirring the sugar in my coffee and riding the elevator back to his floor, my Henry had made the decision for me. I sent my daughters the obituary clipping the day after the funeral with a note that said, I tried to tell you but you didn't listen.

My heart skips and I get up and peek my head out into the doorway, thinking

I've just heard someone coming. When I realize it's nothing, it's all right, I settle back into the leather chair.

Sunflowers, I think: sunflowers would really brighten up this room. I write it on my list of things to do in the morning, under more shampoo, and after taking the phone off the receiver and putting it on my lap under a pillow, I shut off the light. Page 99 of 239

20: Doc

...the face of a big black crow...

I have loved two women in my entire life and the second was my wife.

The first time I saw Nora she was sitting on a bench alone in Griffith Park, reading a finance magazine. I told her she was absolutely stunning and asked could I take her out for dinner sometime. She pointed to the psychology text books in my hand and said that depends: are you going to keep me interested, or bore me all night with medical talk?

On our first date I took her to a tiny Mexican restaurant at the end of my block.

She wore tiny barrettes in her hair and she touched my hand a lot. As I was paying the cheque, I asked her what did you think? She said the guacamole was bland, and I wonder if the waiter is legal: I give it two thumbs down. But you I like.

That is what I loved most about my wife: no guesswork not even a little.

Nora has worked for the same non-profit youth center with some of the kindest people I have ever had the chance to speak with since before I met her. She complained about them, even back then: they find me too much to take, or they say I'm rude she says. At least once a week, she used to ask me: do you think I'm rude Walt? And my answer was always the same: no Nora, you're just honest. Open about your feelings, that's all.

She hadn't asked me that question for a long time. Last night I heard her talking to the secretary from a shelter and actually heard her call the woman daft. This woman who had committed her life to providing shelter to teenagers who had nowhere else to live. If my wife had asked me last night, do you think I'm rude, Walt? I would have told her, yes, Nora I think you are rude. Page 100 of 239

Even through this whole separation, Nora has been very matter of fact. No:

Nora has been cold. In monotone: your bed is made up in the office, Walter. Here are some sheets and don't even think about kissing me. Of course both parties are always to blame in these situations, it isn't all her fault: I'd say what I've lost is my appreciation for my wife's blunted nature.

I mean, blunt.

The first woman I loved was a widow named Jasmine Soraya, whom I met back when I wanted to be a dermatologist.

For the first year of my residency, I studied melanoma, discoloration and abscesses. I spent my days staring down the barrel of a microscope. But after renting that little apartment in my second year, my interest began to change.

It was a disaster that place: the washer and dryer were in the kitchen, which we'll have to share, Jas said; the hot water heater took up half of the bedroom, and you could hear the subway going past every few minutes. It's small, she said. But I cook.

If it hadn't been Jasmine that lived on the main floor, this striking forty- something with the longest, sleekest black hair I'd ever been close enough to touch, I would have laughed. Seven hundred a month for this? I would have said. But it was her and so instead, I said absolutely.

Every night when I came home from the hospital, there was a plate waiting for me in the fridge. For the first few months, she stayed in her room most of the time with the door closed, and didn't speak to me. Until one Saturday, because I thought I heard her crying I climbed up the stairs and listened at the door. Everything was quiet and suddenly she flung the door open, and she stood there holding it with her long Page 101 of 239 black hair twisted on top of her head, that emerald robe open and half her naked body exposed. Her face was puffy and streaked with mascara. She stood there glaring at me with her eyes sea-glass green from crying. I said sorry and stood there looking at her, trying not to look directly at her breasts. Then she pushed open the door and blinked.

After taking my virginity, Jasmine rolled over on her side and cried. I sat up in bed, going through every terrible thought a man could think about himself, before she said: it's not because of you: I'm just not good at life some days. Just no good at life.

I brushed my fingers through her hair. Can I do anything to help, I asked.

You're sweet, she said. I really enjoy the company, but no, I can't do relationships: especially with someone as young and bright as you. Some days are just like this. If you're going to be around, you'll learn.- some days I don't want to leave my room or talk to anyone, and I don't need to feel guilty about making someone feel slighted on top of everything else. I just don't have time for that, too.

Well, what is it? I mean, have you seen a doctor?

They think its bipolar disorder, but I'm on all these medications and I still have days like this. Who knows, she said curling into me. How old are you, anyway?

Twenty four.

She smiled. So young.

I crept into the bathroom after she fell asleep and opened the medicine chest.

(Everyone does that. Don't lie.) It was a pharmacy in there: there were over thirty bottles. I took each one out and slowly read over the names before I crept back to bed and wrapped myself around her naked body. Page 102 of 239

The next day I missed my lab. After spending most of the morning making love to her, I spent most of my afternoon researching the drugs I had found. For hours I did this. For weeks following, I swear I researched every mental illness there was.

I started skipping my evening lectures so I could be home in time to eat dinner with her.

Before I got through the door, I had learned to ask her, good day or bad day? If her answer was good, I would sit down and nod and chew and listen to her, while I made tentative classifications of her behaviour in my head. In bed, she would ask me things like what are you afraid of? What keeps you up at night? She said it made her feel better to know that even the doctors sometimes feel a little crazy, too.

Then there were days when I would come home from class to a note on the side door- Walt: Didn't cook today, sorry. Bad day. Please don't see me, I want to be alone today.

Those days, I would sit in my bedroom, trying to study but mostly listening to her cry, run a bath and smash things against the wall. Sometimes she talked to herself. In the mornings after these days, she always cooked bacon and eggs without her clothes on as a kind of apology.

I guess there was something dependable in that.

One of my professors, Doctor Haggerty had taken a real liking to me because of my strong work ethic, and so naturally, when I got a B- on my neurodermatits paper, he told me to come see him in his office.

Now, Walter I don't need to tell you I was quite surprised by the quality of this paper. It lacks the kind of critical analysis I have come to expect from you. Is there any reason you can think of why that might be?

Lately, I've simply been a little overwhelmed with some personal issues, sir. Page 103 of 239

I've checked your most recent records at the library, Walter. He sipped his scotch and squinted at me. Is there anything you want to tell me about?

Tell you? I asked. Pause. I laughed. You don't think-

Quite a few pharmaceutical books aren't there, son. He crossed his legs. What are you taking?

What?

What kinds of medication are you taking? Lorazepam? Ativan?

No sir, I'm not- I mean, the pharmaceuticals I mean, no sir! I've been researching bipolar disorder, manic depression: looking into the contraindications of treatment-

With what purpose? You're studying dermatology, my boy.

I remember I looked out the window into the face of a big black crow and said, with good purpose sir, trust me.

Lay off the pharmaceuticals and don't lie to me again, he said tossing the paper at me. This paper is piss. Fix it.

It wasn't a week later that Jas found my journals. I had been keeping them to record both my research and conversations with her. I wrote things \i\ie, family history: mother potentially manic, father out of the picture. Doctor adjusted dosage of Lorazepam from

20 mg. Have noticed glazed look in her eyes. ..December 12, bad day: I think she may be hearing voices. Heard her talking to herself. I was very thorough but apparently, not careful enough. I came home and she was sitting at the kitchen table reading one and I stood there, without a word in my head.

...Jasmine doesn't like to speak about her father, she read out loud: potential history of abuse... what am I, your patient? Have you been observing me all this time? Page 104 of 239

I tried to explain how I just wanted her to get better. She told me, I don't get better, Walt, I get by or I don't each day, that's it. I'm not your patient.

That's not what I-

With everyone else, it's always been, oh: have to tiptoe around Jas's sickness, have to deal with her mood swings. You never made me feel that way. You made me feel good. I really felt like we were a fair trade, you and me.

We are, Jas I love you-

You loved the thought of figuring me out. If you'll excuse me, Doc-tor Walter, she said pushing me back to the door; I don't need your special attention anymore. I've got enough Doctors in my life.

As a chance to pull up my grades, I had secured a volunteer position with Doctor

Haggerty setting up booths at a skin cancer conference in Montreal that weekend. I stood at Jas' door, knocking and knocking saying please let me in before I go, Jas please.

When I realized after about twenty minutes that she wasn't going to, I yelled I love you and I'm sorry, and I left.

I left her there.

I called her every chance I got. I left message after message saying please pick up pick up pick up but she never did.

And that Monday when I came home I found her: drowned in the bath tub, six bottles of pills in her stomach. I sat next to her, watching the light on the answering machine blinking red, looking at the suicide note written on the back of a paper ripped from the journal, the green robe hanging on the back of the door. Page 105 of 239

21: Lilly

...paintinggourds and making vegan spiced cookies...

There was a boy, one time: but I wouldn't call it love because well, he turned out to be such a douchebag.

He was this Italian kid named Claudio Dimuzzio who was two years younger than me and lived in the duplex at the end of the road. He had a gut and a cowlick. He was always playing some lame kingdom game by himself, and he wore an orange vinyl tablecloth as a cape tied around his neck with packaging string. He had a paper towel roll he used as a sceptre and the other kids on the street made fun of him, when they weren't making fun of Astra.

I remember it was fall because Astra and I were raking leaves for Claudio's dad in exchange for cannolis. Tradition: we did it every year, it was good for Astra we had traditions. And Claudio was whipping around with the sceptre and he fell into one of my piles and I said, hey what the hell, and he bowed to me and said I am so sorry to insult the queen. He licked his lips and he smiled in what he thought was this sexy way.

I was sixteen, okay. Other girls my age would have rolled their eyes at Claudio and told her girlfriends and they would have said ew look at his paunch, what's with the cape anyway. But no one had ever called me a queen before so I smiled at him, and the rest of the day, he said, here's another bag, queen, I brought you some cannolis and milk, queen. Claudio and I sat at the picnic table and Astra said I want to bag the leaves myself. We ate pastries and he wiped his mouth with his fingertips and then he kissed me. His mouth was dry and he just swirled his tongue around and around mine and because I didn't know any better, I thought it was romantic.

For the rest of the week, we met and kissed secretly during recess in the kindergarten bathroom stalls and after school in his garage. And then one day Astra Page 106 of 239 caught Claudio telling his little brother he felt me up and my nipples were ugly (which wasn't even true I mean, I'm not a tramp) and she punched him really hard in the stomach and then the brother too, for laughing.

I didn't know why: what I knew was that Mr. Dimuzzio came over with her by the shirt sleeve and knocked on the door and when I answered he said I don't want you girls raking my leaves no more, and kind of flung Astra inside the door. I cussed at him and he said something about if my father hadn't left us maybe we'd be more well behaved (thank God the Suze wasn't home) and I had to pull Astra back and shut the door in his face because she was going for his stomach, too.

I'd never seen her like that before. I said, what the hell Astra and she told me,

I'm having a bad day and she sat down in her chair and held her sore hand out to me and frowned. Please don't ask me anything else, she said. I must have rice pudding now, and a bath I must anoint this battle wound.

While she was in the bath I went to the store to get the pudding. I was walking through the skate park and Claudio's brother was there with some stupid Mexican kid and his brother said hey where's that God damn nut job sister of yours: she probably has ugly tits like you, and they laughed. I ran up the slide and pulled him by the ear down onto the metal platform and I stepped on his head, not that hard but hard enough, and told him I'll smash your skull if you don't spill the beans, O-lym-pi-o. (Truth be told if there's a nut job in the family, well.)

When I got home, I told Astra I thought I was falling in love with Claudio, just to see how she would react. Isn't he nice? I asked her. She licked the spoon clean and chewed slowly and put her palm up like, let me finish. Then she told me, I have a bad Page 107 of 239 psychic feeling about the ill deeds Claudio has done in a past life as a Baron in the sixteenth century. You don't want to doom your soul, Lilly: he's cursed.

When we saw him after that, Astra would whisper things about when Claudio was a Baron, he used to castrate sheep in his castle dungeon, and force his wife to drink the blood because he heard it would increase her chances of procuring a male heir. I laughed with her as we passed him, not because I believed in past lives, but because it was our joke and none of his stupid business. When we saw Olympio, he held up a cross and said the devil the devil and sometimes Astra whispered Latin phrases and I bet that's how the demon rumours got around town.

That became the fall we started a new tradition of painting gourds and making vegan pumpkin cookies with cashew cream on top. Even though she never told me, I know Astra hated them, but she always ate them anyway and now, just now became the moment that I realized Jerry is right: there is nothing flat or blunted about my sister's ability to feel. Page 108 of 239

22: Doc

...old Johnny starts to go batty...

When Nora called me at work this morning, they paged me twice before Bernice

came and tapped me on the shoulder.

Your wife? She says. Line three.

When I hear Nora's voice, for reasons I can't quite decipher I say hi, Nora I'm

sorry. How are you?

Hazel is doing a book report she wants your help with, she says. Are you

working tonight?

I'm on until tomorrow morning, I tell her. But I have a few minutes right now,

can you put her on.

Hazel has a book report due on Dracula and she has some questions about,

what's his name? Dr. Seward. Have you read it Walter?

Absolutely I can help.

Nora cups the phone. I hear the words right now if you need the help, and it's for your assignment, Hazel. A few seconds later my daughter gets on the phone and sighs,

Hi, Walter.

Last time I checked, my name was Dad, Hazel.

Walter, I have a series of questions to ask you in regards to one, Dr. Seward, a

character from the nineteenth century contemporary novel Dracula. Are you aware of

the book in question?

Contemporary means current, sweetie it's- Page 109 of 239

Walter, if I can jog your memory, Dr. Seward works at Carfax, a mental institution. He has a patient named Renfield there, whose madness he discusses over the course of many journal entries via the telephonograph player-

The phonograph, Hazel.

-as you'll recall, she says speaking louder and flipping pages, the patient suffers from what Seward calls zoophagia. What I have to do is compare Jonathan Harker to

Renfield. You know, talk about why they're different.

Well, they're in fact very similar Hazel.

That's not my assignment! She yells at me. I hear her passing the phone to

Nora, and her muffled voice saying, that's not my assignment; he's not listening to me.

Do you want to talk to him or not? Nora says. Hazel hell-o! Do you want the help or not? And Hazel gets back on the phone with a nasally sigh. My assignment is to pick a novel and discuss two of its characters.

It says that? It asks you what the differences are between them?

Or similarities, whatever, she says. I have to pick two of the characters and compare them.

So why did you choose the two you did?

I don't know it doesn't matter: look, I have a whole page of stuff.

Such as? I ask her. A blond nurse hands me a small stack of patient files and I take them, fling them on the counter in front of me and wave her away.

Okay, so Jonathan, he's like the perfect gentleman right: and civilized and religious and all this stuff. And Renfield, he's like, well he eats spiders, and he tries to kill Dr. Seward.

But John tries to kill Dracula. Page 110 of 239

But that's different, Dad.

Why?

Well because Dracula's the bad guy obviously!

Maybe Renfield thinks Dr. Seward is the bad guy. He's keeping him imprisoned at Carfax like Dracula is keeping John Harker imprisoned in his castle.

She says hmmm, flips some pages. But, Dr. Seward doesn't kill people so he's not a bad guy so that means that Renfield is in the wrong.

But think about how old Johnny starts to go batty by the end of his stay at the castle. Maybe Renfield is starting to get confused.

She giggles. Batty. You're funny, dad. So, would you think Jonathan Harker was crazy if they brought him in to see you?

We don't say crazy, Hazel. And I'm asking you, honey. If John Harker had been brought to Carfax, do you think Dr. Seward would have found him insane?

Probably.

Why?

Well, because he's talking about a Count with no reflection and no heartbeat that sleeps in a coffin! Now, that would sound crazy to me.

And if Dr. Seward had met Renfield on the street, would he have found him insane?

Well, he acts like a gentleman a lot of the time, so- no?

It's your opinion, honey.

Oh! And Dr. Seward, he invented that term: the zoopha thing, about eating the bugs because there wasn't a name for Renfield's condition already. So if Harker had come to him, he might have made up some term for him, too! Page 111 of 239

I think it all depends on who is making the call, sweetie. That's the really hard part about my job some days: I really have to listen to what the patient tells me. What's real, what's okay, is different for everyone.

Are you ever wrong, Dad?

All the time, Hazel. I'm human, and my patients are human, and what's right, well that's different all the time for both of us.

Oh, you know something else? Renfield and Jonathan, they both climb out their windows and crawl their walls. Yeah, I'm going to do that. Hey, thanks Dad. Will I see you in the morning?

Sounds like a plan, Stan.

I'll make you some Count Chocula bwaa ha ha, she says. Thanks again. You want to talk to mom?

Sure, honey.

I hear her shuffle with the receiver and then she says, oh, well she's doing the dishes right now. And then after a second, one of them moves a plate around on the counter.

No problem, Bugs. I heart you.

Don't call me that. Bye.

I hang up the phone. Well, hopefully she has something nice to write about me in her journal tonight, I think.

The journal. This is when I feel something fall inside my stomach.

Doctor, the blond nurse says as I jog down the hallway, did you sign the papers I gave you-

Not now, I say. Right now I've got something else I need to read. Page 112 of 239

23: from Astra's journal

...but the fire...

Reflections on Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children:

On the news, of course.

Shotgun little brother closet bullets Missouri.

Kitchen knife teenage son the neighbour Toronto.

Terrorist ten years old with clutch on a pin it was too late maybe.

Baby smothered there was an intruder fifty dollars taken New York and his accidental-mother's confession.

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken... in their suits and bright lipstick, reporting

Converse-speak on a mission:

like a politician,

the kind that doesn't say,

the double-twice-back-over-take.

a sales pitch for the solid the animated the replicated

truth we cannot afford

not to purchase—

while off-track, Page 113 of 239

the model for this verisimilitude seems

liquid, like water running

away; as if tangential, as if

an enemy of firm ground.

where would we stand, for example, if we followed

this model line that so recently seamed parallel to our purposes.

in fact, this Conversation

he's more clever than a politician.

The casualties of Monday well, I just can't keep track.

Though this isn't a matter of simple arithmetic,

I'm no longer sure what the matter is about.

I met a young woman whose body was burning, her voice just like my mother's; and a man, a man with a voice like my uncle's: loud, but his laughter was a whisper. Page 114 of 239

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow; a girl who sounded like looked like me: listening for the formula, going deaf in the reverberation, my veneer flesh and the colours like a shallow puddle rainbow up my sleeve;

or, up her sleeve I mean.

but the fire. and when and when is this hard rain gonna fall. Page 115 of 239

24: Lilly

...Orangeyou a Slice...

If I hadn't pissed off the nurses in the psych ward, I might not have had to wander around between waiting rooms all night that first night before a kind nurse in Emerge finally said, are you looking for a place to sleep, hon? And, don't you know about the family rooms?

I tried the Emerge room first, but it was too busy; then neuro ICU but everyone there was too jittery. Then I went to Peds, but a nurse with fake eyelashes kept coming in and staring me down like I was a pedo or something, and that's how I ended up back in Emerge, where the nurse with the huge engagement ring said, yeah; the family rooms, and gave me directions to a room where I found a green leather couch, a TV and a view of the river. So I kicked off my shoes, curled up on the couch and watched

Wanda Sykes on Conan. This morning when I woke up, I felt rested for once.

Since Catherine has an appointment with her podiatrist this morning to get a

Planter's wart removed, I'm on my own until noon. After washing my face and fixing my ponytail, I sit down at a long orange table in the cafeteria to eat my toast and crack open my book.

What is it today, Lilly? Ayto asks me. He's leaned against the sink with a toothpick in his mouth.

Hey my man! Can you tell me, what did they do with all the people that were crazy before they created the word madness? Or like, were there no nut jobs before they made up the word?

Madness came about in Middle English to replace the word wod, Lillith, which meant, quite literally, beside oneself with excitement or enthusiasm. It also meantfoolish. Page 116 of 239

So at first, it was an excess? That's weird, eh A-dog? If you were wod, then you were in excess of something good, right?

Both carry a positive connotation dear-

Where are your other glasses? What colour are these anyway, aqua?

Don't touch them you'll smudge them please. It's called teal, and it's very in right now.

Whatever. I think you look lame. Anyway I gotta pee so I'll check ya later.

Since Ayto seems to be a real buzz kill today, I head back to the Emerge waiting room and watch two brunette nurses taking turns with the hand sanitizer and shaking off the willies they just got from one Bernard Craft. Apparently, Craft has a dripping case of Chlamydia and bed sores and ew, his underwear was like grey. Oh my God, I know I had to hold my breath he smelled so bad. Like a toilet.

I don't know Craft, I think to myself: but I could. I could have met him at a bar one night (maybe a bar named after a primate, or a simian or whatever) and right now, courtesy of these two, I could be getting the news that I in fact now also have

Chlamydia. The Clap. Leave it to me to have sex with some random I meet in a bar.

I'm enraged. I feel so violated.

It could be the case. Or Craft could be my brother. How can you speak about my brother that way! I should stand up and tell the nurses that. How dare you! Watch their faces get splotchy red and embarrassed. Don't you have to pass a class on all that?

Patient care, or ethics or something?

I think the nurses in this ward are stealing from Astra. Page 117 of 239

I'm pretty sure I left my American Eagle hoodie in the common room the other day but it wasn't there this morning; plus, Astra can't seem to find her journal anywhere and besides her and her roommate, the Doc and the nurses are the only ones with access to her room (the journal is pink, if you see it around.)

If I didn't know better, I might assume it was Astra's roommate Gina. But I do.

I mean, she's cool; besides the drug overdose attempted suicide thing and all. When she can get a smoking pass, she smokes cigarettes with me and my Cancer Friend. True I don't know a whole lot about her, other than she's really into wizards and like, Lord of the Rings stuff and that her grandma who has Alzheimer's and swears all the time and burps real loud. Oh and that she can't spell—that I know after beating her at three games of Scrabble.

But she's no thief. She's real good with Astra gives her her pudding cup and stuff, and she tells me, your sister is like, fucking amazing Lilly, but I like, can't explain why.

I know Gina wouldn't steal from her.

I don't trust her Doctor anymore though. After the episode Wednesday morning, the doctor increased Astra's dosage. He's also got her on Ativan now. He wouldn't even look me in the eye when he told me. Catherine said oh, that's probably a good idea but how the hell does she know, how does anyone know.

Before Catherine left last night she warned me three times not to answer the phone if someone called while she was gone for Astra. She said there was a reporter that called last night wanting an interview for the Sun; had heard about the subway story but I feel like she's lying to me.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Page 118 of 239

This ward fucks with my head, and I only spend eight hours of my day here at the most. When I want to leave to smoke a cigarette or take a walk, I don't need to wait to get an escort, or a smoking pass. I get a break to laugh about it; to go down to my couch, be alone and process it, to be outside of it. I don't have to wait an hour for a nurse to get my face wash out of a locked cubby, or listen to the woman in lock up screaming about the devil's plan to murder her in her sleep. I don't have to worry that

Edward the Mexican kid will find out what room I'm in and come to surprise me in my sleep.

Of course it's changing my sister.

Usually, when something happens Astra will look deep down into me, in that way that makes me feel like empty Tupperware, and I tell her you're okay, Astra. I force every cell in my body to be that thought, force myself not to think about anything else, and my sister will smile and tell me okay Lilly. If you say so.

But I can't seem to reach her anymore.

She keeps having these muscle spasms. And the way she's talking, its, I don't know. Last night Leonard and Devon were watching the news and the weather man with the shiny suits came on and he was talking about rain in his Kermit-y voice and I said, hey Astra look: it's your boyfriend (because she really hates his haircut and it makes her mad when I say it) and she just said that man is. His hair is.

She can't even finish the bad thoughts anymore: it's as if they're just short circuiting so that every time she's about to follow through on one, it just dead ends. I brush her hair and paint her fingernails with a shade called Orange you a Slice, and I keep looking into her eyes while she sits there looking at me but really looking at nothing. I mean she's looking at me but she's not looking at me. Page 119 of 239

What's going on in there, Astra, I ask her. What's happening in there?

Segue: I have started buying Belmont Mild's because they're white and silver and look cleaner than the duMauriers with the ugly brown filter and my Cancer Friend with the crown is right: the menthols, they do taste like gum.

I lean against the wall, trying not to get wet, and glance through the glass door back down the hallway. Our meeting's pretty routine: she always eats her meat sandwiches and I drink apple juice. Sometimes, I throw out random vegetarian stats like you know more than ninety percent of meat comes from factory farms and like, don't you know the average human eats more than eighty animals a year. Sometimes, she brings me the classifieds: the car section, with the same VW bus ad circled and says here see, be perfect for when you go on the road with your band, eh hippie?

We've started telling each other certain things. She told me that she didn't start smoking until she found out she had cancer because when in Rome. I nodded: not because I knew (honestly it doesn't make sense, does it) but because that's what you do when someone confides in you. And you trade information: she knows that my sister is maybe-crazy and whatever treatment they have her on isn't helping, for example; and that Catherine isn't my real mother.

But some things we don't know: like each other's names. She calls me hippie, or other derogatory terms that reference the ridiculousness of my unnatural lifestyle choice to refuse the deliciousness of meat, and I don't call her anything. Well, not to her face. Page 120 of 239

Afternoon, she says stepping outside. I have to hold the door open for her today because she can't push it all the way. I hand her the pack and she says, thanks. So how's your sis today?

I shrug. She doesn't even talk to us. We sit there like, all day and she stares out the window and says maybe two words. She can't even make fun of the weather man's toupee anymore, I say.

Sounds serious. Heard from the cunt? (That's what she calls the Suze). I shake my head. She leans in to me and says, cold today. I say yeah, even though my back is sweating a little from the sun.

Ouch, she says. Something in your coat is stabbing me.

Oh. I take the book out of my pocket and say, sorry.

She mouths the title and flips through it. You like words, huh?

I make a grand sweeping gesture with my arm, and in my best British accent I say, in the words of the great Oscar Wilde, what a subtle magic there is in them! They seem to be able to give a plastic form to useless things-

Easy, English. You didn't have a lot of friends growing up did you?

I'm not giving you any more cigarettes.

She laughs. I just asked you a yes or no question. What's with the words,

anyway?

I shrug. You can figure things out when they have names. Or something, I say, picking a piece of tobacco from my mouth. We watch a dump truck back up and tip a dumpster over and watch it drive away. Neither of us says a thing.

I used to puke a lot, she says finally.

Oh. O-kay. Page 121 of 239

Food when I wasn't too nauseous to eat, but mostly blood. She bites down on the filter while she buttons up the top button on her coat with both hands.

That's awful, I say.

She flicks a hand at me as if to say, that's not why I'm telling you this, and shut up. That's when Ma started taking me to specialists, she says. It's when I got real used to spending time in The Cherry. I raise my eyebrows. It's what we called Ma's minivan, before she had to sell it. Anyway I had stopped going to school by then, no point right. But at 7:00 in the morning, almost every other day for over two months, she had to wake me up as if it was a surprise. And she'd say: road trip! She bought these flavoured sparkling waters and made cupcakes, or muffins, stuff with wrappers to take with us. She even made me fancy hot drinks in travel mugs. She brought coloured napkins and everything.

La-de-da, I say.

That's where the joke with the crowns came from, she says touching her head though she's not wearing the crown. I remember the day, too: it was a Tuesday, because Ma used to make Banana muffins on Tuesdays the house smelled like them.

And apple cider, she brought me apple cider. And she pulled the blankets off me and she said, road trip! And that day, I just couldn't get up. Who knows how long it had been since I'd showered and my hair was looking really greasy I'm sure. She touches her head again. I wrap the end of my ponytail around my finger, nod and then I rub my fingers together. I stare hard at the ground and count backwards and realize it's been six days since I've washed my own.

When I woke up Ma had that crown on my head. I had it from one Halloween I went as Cinderella. I think I was ten? No, nine I was nine. And she came home with Page 122 of 239 the Snow White costume and I told her, this crown sucks. I actually said that! This crown sucks I want the Cinderella crown. Such a brat. She inhales, exhales through her nose. It had the jewels on it, you know? You've seen it. I nod. So Ma buys it for me.

She laughs, holds her hand out. Pause. It rained, too: on Halloween. I refused to go trick-or-treating, but Ma said I'll be damned if I paid all that money for that costume and you're not going to wear it. So we got in The Cherry and she drove me around town while I stuck my head out the window waving, like this. She makes a cup with her hand and waves a beauty pageant wave.

Did you go with her? To the Doctor? I ask.

She smiles. I'm here to transport the Princess: that's what Ma said to me that morning with the blankets. She said we're going to a very exclusive engagement: a private party. There was talk of Taquitos and strawberry milkshakes after.

I hate milkshakes. Dairy cows. I mean if you only knew.

I wore that crown the entire way to London, and when we passed any cars with tinted windows, Ma yelled Princess! and honked and I had to wave.

Was it that Doctor? That figured it out, I ask.

No, he was an idiot, that one. He smelled like wax, and he breathed heavy, and when he asked me to take off the crown I said, but I'm a princess and he looked at my mother all like, that's inappropriate. She did his voice. (Russian, maybe, or Arabic? I can't tell). So Ma told him to forget it we don't need your help. He just didn't get it. It's like I bothered him for some reason.

Myopic.

Sure, English. No, it was some specialist in Winnipeg that figured it out. It's a rare kind of lymphoma and he found it too late. It's hard to see on the thing right, she Page 123 of 239 said drawing a box with her finger, because of the cells. She coughs twice and says you know our first reaction after sitting there for a good quiet minute was to thank that

Doc. Isn't that weird? He said, six months, maybe, and Ma and I said, thank you and hugged each other. And we laughed. Isn't that strange? It was just, I don't know, a relief to know, finally.

I nod. Because I do know.

Later that night, I curl up in my makeshift bed and I ask Ayto if he can tell me anything about cancer. When he tells me in a really harsh tone, that's really not my area

Lillith sorry, I tell him, you're really starting to get on my nerves. What are you doing with your beard? It's all trimmed here and it looks weird. Did you dye it?

That's an unfavourable way for a young girl to talk, dear.

Yeah, well you're not my father, so.

No,you're right.

Yeah, I know that duh.

Right. Lilly, it might be usefulfor you to look at thefamily of the word. This origin sourcing with me, I don't believe it's benefitting either of us anymore, don't you-

But I don't let him finish because I tell him no, he doesn't get to leave me I mean, it's my call and I say I'm leaving him, you know. He doesn't get to make the call so I'm leaving him. Let's be clear okay I'm leaving him.

What a stupid hobby anyway. I mean, screw that fish sticks idiot. Page 124 of 239

25: Doc

... what about skin...

When I hear the door open behind me without taking the back of my head off the tarmac, I say good morning, Thelma, and I put the tiny pink book back in my pocket.

So, she says, sitting on the edge of a planter. What's going on up here with you

Doctor? I know you aren't up here praying.

I laugh uncomfortably and resist the urge to ask her if she'd ever read Nietzsche, or Beckett; if she'd ever stopped and contemplated the Holocaust, or watched a nine year old boy take his last breath. Instead I say, busy morning; just taking a time out so you might excuse me if I'm not so eager to talk about religion.

Sure, she says. Who said anything about religion anyway?

You were just asking me about prayer. And you're a religious woman, are you not? I am. I'm a Baha'i but I didn't come up here to talk to you about that.

Baha'i you say? I've never heard of it. I take a sip from my plastic mug of coffee. In my mind, I'm lumping Thelma into a category of New Age religions that worship at altars and visualize wellness, discounting the entirety of the medical profession. It must be new is it? I ask.

It's over a hundred years old, she says. I can't tell from her tone if I've irritated her.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, I say.

I'm not offended, but unless you're desperate to know about my opinions on faith, I don't need to give you all the details do I?

I'll pass, I tell her. Again, I mean you no disrespect Thelma, but more wars have been fought in the name of religion- Page 125 of 239

I also didn't come up here to talk about war, but since you brought it up I do in fact agree with you there.

But yours is different, I suppose? Managing a condescending chortle.

Are you interested in learning about my quest for social justice today?

As I said already Thelma, I came up here for a time out so I'd really appreciate-

I don't blame you for being on edge after that thing with the Hallet girl the other day, she says.

Thelma, I'm trying to understand why you've been pestering me lately. You seem very adamant to speak with me about what, prayer? Your religion? I mean what are you, are you trying to convert me?

It must be easy to get a big ego in this business thinking everything is about you. She shakes her head. It's not entirely your fault I suppose. She waits before continuing and I can tell she's selecting her words wisely. You've been walking around this hospital lately with a look like you're not sure when you're asleep and when you're awake anymore. What I'm ad-a-mant about, Doc-tor, is making sure for the sake of that young Hallet girl and her mother and her sister, and that Urbach girl too and all the other patients all the other parents children you're supposed to be taking care of, that you're awake in there. Lately I've been wondering. She waits again. That's the reason

I've been pestering you, Dr. Vieshell. So, are you? I just need to know, are you awake in there?

It's simplifying matters to say I felt responsible for Jasmine's suicide: no, that wasn't it. If I had been home that night she had took her life instead of smearing sun block samples on middle-aged Francophones, she simply would have done it another Page 126 of 239

night. I know that: she didn't want my help, but I did feel that I had a responsibility to

stop it from happening to someone else: to ensure she hadn't died in vain. That's why less than a week after the funeral I found myself walking back down the long haul to

Doctor Haggerty's office, practicing my speech.

Psychiatry? He held a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue over his glass. Are you serious? He asked.

I sat in the chair across from him and winced as the leather, hot from the morning sun stung the back of my arms. Holding the bottle over a second glass he said, see? Your face: you're having second thoughts already. Scotch? I shook my head and pointed to the clock on the wall which was clicking half past ten and said I'm afraid I am, sir. Completely serious.

I hope you aren't here for a letter of reference, Walt? Because I'll tell you, I won't do it.

Listen, Doctor I know it's not the choice you would've made for me-

You listen, Walter: until 1974, the DSM still classified a gay man as ill, which is when they put forth their oh-so-useful theory of sexual orientation disturbance. There are Doctors still spending hours of their day working to explain away my homosexuality based on the fact that my mother gave me a doll when I was five Walter, really. He swallowed his two fingers of scotch in one gulp.

There are some problematic theories within the field, sure, but that doesn't mean

I have to abide by them.

What about skin! You are so good at dermatology. Why give that up? I didn't answer him, there was no point. There are politics involved that you just don't know

Walter: relationships with the pharmaceutical industry, for one- Page 127 of 239

I do know, I said. Eyes wide open, sir.

Not to mention the families! Psychiatry deals with phantom sickness, my boy; you can't see it clear up or shrink and you can't monitor its progress on an x-ray. You'll have husbands and fathers and wives chasing after you, saying you've stolen their money if they don't see the kind of results they expect. He motioned to the bottle with his glass and again and I shook my head. So why would you put yourself through that?

I looked out the window. I have my reasons, I said.

He cleared his throat. Listen, I heard about your girlfriend and I'm extremely sorry for your loss. But this isn't a reason to leave what you're good at! I've seen what that field does to people. What I know about you Walt is that you're the kind that won't be able to settle yourself at the end of a day. You'll get home to a wife and family and you'll lie in your bed and you won't be able to shut off your mind. You'll take every misjudgement as a personal failure.

It's what will make me better.

It will tear you apart, Walter.

Will you write the letter or not?

I can't. I can't do that. When you're ready to come back I'll take you with open arms-

That won't be necessary. Thanks for your time, sir.

Walter, he said as I stood with the doorknob in my hand. I didn't turn around. I hope that field doesn't eat you up and spit you out like the rest of them, he said. I hope to God it doesn't. Page 128 of 239

26: Lilly

...I don't actually know the name...

Cancer Friend never showed for lunch our lunchtime smoke. She had taken my lighter with her the night before so I sit there waiting with legs crossed and my unlit cigarette between the fingers on my right hand, and as people passed by and asked me, do you need a light I said oh no; no, but thank you.

I decide to go check on her and make sure, you know, to make sure. When I get to her floor, there is a skinny red headed nurse in turquoise paisley scrubs and indigo eye shadow sitting at the desk. Good colours on her. She doesn't look like the kind of woman who talks smack about her patients: she looks like the kind of woman that holds hands and cries with the mothers when she has to give them bad news. That's why she works in the cancer ward. The cancer ward must be the Prada of the hospital world.

She asks me, can I do something for you hon? And I simultaneously realize that first off, I don't actually know the name of my Cancer Friend; secondly, trying to explain our relationship and why I don't know her name to this nurse isn't really something I can figure out how to do, and lastly, I'm not sure I want to know if there is news, at least for a little bit more of this day until I can. So I just tell her oh, my sister is having a baby. Can you tell me where, I mean this hospital is a maze; I've just been everywhere looking for the maternity floor. The nurse gets up from her chair to point at a hospital map drilled to the wall and presses the elevator button for me. She says, would you like one, Love? and I realize I've been glaring at her little china bowl full of scotch mints. So I pop one into my mouth and say thanks before getting into the elevator. Page 129 of 239

She says congratulations, auntie! and I look at her confused for a second. Just as the doors are about to shut I shout, oh, right. Thanks!

There's a computer in the waiting room of the maternity ward and a man in a plaid shirt with small eyes. I smile at him. He looks worried and he rocks back and forth and looks at the ground. I sit in the cushy leather chair in front of the computer and log on to check my e-mail: a coupon from Bloomex and a Shoppers Optimum newsletter: double the points on Saturday with purchase of Maybelline products.

I consider going to the vending machine for Fritos but decide against it. I look to the plaid shirt out of the corner of my eye. He's still with the rocking, so I look back to the computer. Now I never do this, okay: mostly because I don't want to infect my home computer with a virus, but I click on one of those flashy screen deals, right on the belly button of a cross legged Buddha because he's holding a banner above his head that says, your wOfate^cwted/ifyowclufchere/! And I figure hey, maybe okay, just maybe this is like, a divine message just for me.

Suddenly I'm thinking about Richard Gere. It's not such a disjointed line of thinking if you know anything about the man: like he's a Buddhist. It's true: I looked into his whole life when I was younger after I saw Pretty Woman because I wanted him to come rescue me from a fire escape and take me away. To this day I still think his films are life changing and that he is one of the most creative minds of our generation.

It's interesting, though: Gere, and I mean all the Buddhists, they believe the physical world is an illusion made by the imagination. I remember talking about it and a million other medical conditions with Ayto, on a bench outside the hospital the first Page 130 of 239

day Doctor Wong suggested Astra go to Gillcrest. This was back when Ayto still

looked like a dad and not like some bloody pervert. Oh the good old days.

I asked him, so what's the difference between Gere's illusion and say, Jerry's

delusions? And he told me nothing except that with delusion, no one shares the

perception of reality as a sham. I remember telling him that was a really lame

distinction.

He also told me about apophenia, this inclination to see a relationship between two or more unrelated objects or ideas. I said, but Cohen (that's another notable) and

the Dalai Lama (honestly, you had to know that one) were Buddhist geniuses

specifically because they could do that and he said a ha, Lillith very good: creativity and apophenia are often connected to each other. I suppose that's what makes creative people great though: that they are able to do something with their weird way of looking at things without letting it make them insane. Boundaries or something I don't know fuck I'm no Leonard Cohen.

Why did you have to start wearing those glasses anyway, Ayto, I think.

I mean whatever doesn't matter I don't need him anyway.

I go through a few screens of providing information to the Buddha belly guy, but when they ask me for my home address I give up denying myself of the wish story of my life. A janitor passes by the glass, slowly wiping spraying wiping spraying. At first it's because I'm bored that I find myself watching him, but then I realize that I think he's cute and I hold a little smile waiting for him to look at me. No teeth: for some reason all the Hallet's have terrible teeth. British in the genes I guess.

He's about my age, Janitor: dark hair, really skinny. He's wearing headphones and jerking his head slowly until he sees me and from the way he drops his squeegee Page 131 of 239

thing I wonder if I've got something on my face. I notice that he has a long tattoo up

the back of his arm: scrawled writing and I tip my head, trying to read it, still smiling my lame smile. He smiles back and looks at me for a few seconds too long for regular

social decorum (right? Wasn't it? I think so. I mean maybe.) He finishes the last pane of glass, stalls for a second and then him and his cart mosey on.

I start to think about the kind of music he is listening to; Pantera, probably, or

Alice in Chains. Oh I'm sure he's an orphan, that's interesting, and he's probably a textile designer I mean, that's his real job. He works at the hospital as a front because he sells his materials to a Chinese knock off company and he doesn't want the government to catch on...

That's when I realize Jesus I really need a life.

A nurse in Hello Kitty scrubs comes into the waiting room to tell Plaid Shirt that there is now a Plaid Shirt Jr. 8 pounds 6 ounces in the world. He laughs a barrelling smoky laugh and picks the nurse up off the floor and hugs her. Whoa she says and looks at me with wide eyes like, is this guy serious? I tip my head to her and I stand up because I know he's looking to hug whoever wants a hug and I want a hug.

Congratulations, I say. He smells like sawdust and lemon juice and he lets me go first. Page 132 of 239

27: from Astra's journal

...a glimmer green the glint...

I. Billy

On the way to the market Lilly and I are going to make a primavera sauce and buckwheat noodles, I trip over big black shoes and laces in between them a guitar case and a sign that says IF IT WERE YOU SITTING HERE, I WOULD HELP YOU. I crouch down to eye level and shake his hand I remember this man or he is familiar I should say.

Hello I say and ask him his name. I shake his hand and with it I feel him, Billy

coursing through me,

the fuchsia flashing flicker coral he was in love I see her,

melting her face her hair withering to ashes black,

now dark water through a pinprick pierce

the dripping arm is running, poisoned veins are dark

but bright the whites of his eyes the heart still

Billy, with those eyes on me a glimmer green the glint

of people in my peripheral but I am blind to that beat

I am beating

I hear Lilly as she walks on, lists, artichoke hearts and carrots... and I touch his face, rough and scaled the beard coarse under my fingers and those eyes ...red peppers, sun- dried tomatoes...

We laugh: why I'm not certain but it's beautiful. I take a bright green apple from my purse and hold it to him. He holds it with both hands cracked from the cold and nods. Page 133 of 239

From up behind me Lilly and she lifts me by the armpits. Astra no Astra what do you.

You don't talk like that to people like. So I say, good-bye Billy and he said, Astra and

the green

The heat in the market was too high. I picked tomatoes from crates and bagged spinach

double knotted the plastic handle. Zucchini, okay Lilly. When we got back to where he

had been sitting, he was gone and in the center of the sill of the vacant art store

window, the green apple.

II. The Dance

I remember,

Tuesday nights I took ballet classes from a beautiful couple in the top apartment in a building on Strawberry Hill eighteen steps up from the street. The man, Jelenik wore dress shirts always olive or a more saturated green always open three buttons from the top. He sat in a wooden kitchen chair, played the violin with his whole upper body.

His wife Aggie the ballerina she was Russian, tight faced and leotard.

I saw them kiss in the kitchen once. He held her with both hands by the small of her back, tipped her backwards and her laugh chirping. There were three other girls on

Tuesdays: Mexican girls they brought plantain chips and sometimes dried mango.

The recital was in an elementary school gym. I got dressed in a classroom there were pencil shavings on the ground and an equation scrawled in purple chalk on the green chalkboard X equalled 2. Concrete walls painted eggshell. I sat at a chair attached to a Page 134 of 239 desk by a long chipped arm of orange metal. I rolled the pink tights on up over toes over heel over knee, the other one up over toes over heel over knee snap up over hips. I pulled my pink leotard up over them and twisted into the tutu, the crinoline coarse on my fingertips Ponytail tight triple tied tight ponytail silky.

I packed lamb's wool into the wooden toe of the slipper's soft wool. Satin pulled ribbons up and over and winded through my fingers swish. Tight pulled to my calves, and bunched up in the criss-cross the tights so I pulled the ribbons tighter. I arc and I double knotted satin bow and slip my toes down into wool

The Mexican girls they giggle while I'm busy breathing, hear Jelenik strumming warm up the strings. We scurry onto the stage and take our places. Orange plastic chairs black duct tape circle on the floor blue mats Velcroed to the walls looking up at us and parents say, awww. Jelenik now, in pluck and strum, quiver music point and flat and I shuffle across hardwood in elaborate sting, in frenetic half circles I am no part of a dance I am its method, the dance the ribbons track up my legs and point toes flat point are pressed deep pressed downy wool and the ribbon knot the pressing and my leg twitter to the pull

Pirouette sweep with toe crossways the crack in the hardwood I am a whole note the dance frantic I am Page 135 of 239 unravelling in the bass

My crinoline ring is not in line with the rest as they fold up and down, the dance crooked. At half mast mothers are gasping as I fold my body down over my legs lay straight, the blood sprouting in small red points seeping the pink ribbon and my mother says stop

The lamb's wool is bleeding now too: my toenail bent back. I don't have to concentrate, for I am the dance, my legs crisscrossed with the cut the pluck the strum.

Jelenik says don't cry and Aggie says to my mother, please don't take her, she says: a natural but my mother gasps my mother saying, stop and I say no, I am a dance but this is a memory.

Today my mother said we are moving to Toronto. In a box in the attic Lilly found the ballet slippers and she swung them from the ribbon into my lap still the faint brown spots of blood and she said, remember? And my mother said, toss. My mother said, oh but your rubix cube here Astra this we'll keep you loved this but this I don't remember.

III. St Christopher's Hospital

The place where trees sting green and the clouds choke seamless skies; where two women shuffle their small feet across cracks in the sidewalk and lap in the laughter of Page 136 of 239 each other, it is so far away now I am blind to it maybe; the harrowing screech of this ubiquitous chaos has burned an unrelenting hollow in my sense.

I watch the sun bleed through barred windows, through these pink curtained walls, but

I don't feel it; see quick shadows of birds pass in my peripheral but mostly, all I see is what's in front of me; my roommate Gina, the Sick coursing through her in her white sheet sleep and prick pupils and sharp up and through black dreams wide and fast through the split of me she is an eclipse in a world of filtered sun.

I hear able tongues in open mouths ticking for a taste of conversation; watch them flick rainbows of careful sedatives and turn vacant contemplations. What colour is this response.

I no longer trust my instinct that the unfiltered seeds of other's truths won't bloom quick weeding through me, yet the questions begs: am I a breath short of breathing, a clotted fog in forward twisting sky or am I, please tell me that I am a natural. Page 137 of 239

28: Suzie

...like a string...

Is that my dresser?

Oh God, my head.

Am I wearing underwear is there someone next to me?

Is it morning? What day.

Holy mother.

I prop up on my elbow veeery carefully, trying to dodge that squeak my bed makes when I move. Nope. No underwear. I don't look at the man lying next to me. I slink onto the floor, put on a t-shirt I find wrapped in the sheets, and crawl, I'm talking hands and knees, to the bathroom. Hitting the wall because my balance a little off so sue me.

Oh dear God, my head.

Longest pee of my life, wow. Head head head. Head head head. Blink. Blink.

Yes, my bathroom. My toilet paper, my shower curtain. I finish, put the lid down veeery quietly and look myself in the mirror.

Holy mother, I say out loud. Shit, I think. That was loud. Did he hear me? I stand with both hands over my mouth, wait. Then I hear the squeak.

Suze? Suze, you okay?

I clear my throat. Um, sure! I shut the door. Yeah, I'm. Yup!

Squeak, squeak. I'm gonna make some coffee babe, you want? I'm going to make those pancakes I promised.

Isaac? Page 138 of 239

Yeah, babe?

Oh. Oh, I'm. Just, I have to shower.

Squeak squeak. Just come down when you're ready, I'll cook while you're showering.

Kay, I say in a phlegm laden voice while I turn on the tap. Holy mother indeed.

How was the shower? He motions at the chair in front of him for me to sit. I slide in slowly. I turn down the volume on the news why so loud seriously.

Gold. The water here is terrible: if the guy in the basement is using his at all, its ice cold.

Old houses, he says. Cream?

I shake my head. I notice his hair is really shiny.

You need to eat something. He sits in the chair in front of me and from the tall stack of pancakes in the center of the table, he forks two onto the plate in front of me.

He picks up the container of syrup and flips the red lid and says, syrup babe?

Did I call you last night?

He laughs, hovers the bottle over them. Do you want syrup?

I peel a cigarette from his pack and light it. Then I shake my head. He puts it back on the table and dives in, all knife and fork.

I knew you wouldn't remember, he says. I told you, Suzie: in the morning I'll have to explain this all to you over pancakes, and you told me to fuck my mother.

That's what you said to me.

I stare at him.

It was rude, Suzie. Page 139 of 239

I stare at him. Did I call you it's a simple question. He nods. When? I ask.

Early last night. The sun wasn't even down yet.

Where was I?

At a Pickle Barrel. He laughs.

I don't know what that means.

It's a restaurant on Bay Street.

. (What this looks like: me, staring, not responding).

It's a chain? There's another one in North York, in a mall. There's a bunch of them.

You passed out in a booth and they asked you to go and you gave them the piece of paper with my number on it Suzie. Some waitress called me.

And you came?

He puts his fork down. Of course I came.

Yeah, well sorry about all that. Listen, I've got to get going here, so.

To see Astra?

I blink hard.

Get something in you and then we'll go.

. We'll go?

You asked me to.

I light another cigarette, realize I still have one burning in the ashtray. He squishes the old cigarette against the side of the glass. I wonder if it's a special conditioner he uses in that hair. What else did I tell you last night? I ask. Page 140 of 239

A lot. All about your mom, all about Astra and Lillith. He nods. A lot. Now

come on, eat some pancakes. He stabs three big pieces off" his plate, loads them with

syrup, and forks them into his mouth. The cheese alone in these costs over twenty

bucks, he says.

All about my mom?

Mmm-hmm.

Is that why you're here?

He stops chewing, half eaten pancakes on his tongue. Are you joking?

For her money, is that why you're still here?

You're serious.

I raise my eyebrows.

Wow, he really did a number on you.

Who did?

Your ex husband.

Oh, God. I turn away from him and that's when I see the clock on the wall.

7:30? At night? I ask. I look out the window. (Yeah, smart ass that's the first time I looked out the window. One thing at a time.) Shit!

We were up late, you know. Was after 10 this morning before we closed it down. He nods to a bottle of Tanqueray.

We were drinking that?

You were. I brought it. I don't really drink that much.

Oh God. I don't drink gin it makes me. Fuck, Isaac I have to go right now right now.

Okay okay, babe, I'll drive you its okay. Page 141 of 239

What did I even say to him? I mean, how would that conversation even go: all about your mom...

When my mother died, she left all her money to me.

Oh, the money? Right, she sued the Doctor that put her in an asylum and kept her there for over almost two years for observation.

What was wrong with her? Well, nothing. That's why she sued.

What did they think was wrong? She was a bad wife I guess she just hated being stuck in the house all day with nothing to do and no one to talk to. They didn't really know what to do with her so they just doped her up.

My father?

She loved him. Loved me too: but I just don't know if she knew what to do with that back then. She always sabotaged herself—little things, like she'd leave the souffle in forfive minutes too long so it caved in. It was like, too many variables isn't thatfunny?

How much money? Oh, a lot: it was a class action. There were six other women, four other Doctors. I've got newspaper clippings! Let's just say it was enough to support us and I mean, there's money for the girls if they want to do something with their lives. If they want to.

More gin, please. And a lemon.

Can you drive faster?

No, Suze. There are cars in front of me.

The directions say you have to make a left here at the light.

I'm taking the one way. Those directions are no good; he says pointing at the phone map. See, Google won't tell you to go that way 'cause they always give you the Page 142 of 239 most straightforward way. See, I'm going east, here on this street; I'll just cross Yonge going north, here. I stare at him. You have really long eyelashes, he says.

You use product in that hair?

And they're like, green but brown, too, your eyes. Beautiful.

SMASH.

...all about Astra....

My youngest daughter takes after her grandmother, we think: the too many variables thing. It's genetic, you know: the crazy. Her uncle on her father's side is also a whoohoo! She didn't have a chance, plus oh God, before I knew I was pregnant with her, I must have filled that uterus up to the brim with whiskey ha ha. Never went thirsty in there, I am sure of it. That's funny.

They want to put her on these medications and I say no, you know: Hanna said whatever I do with my life, whatever else you screw up don'tfail your daughters. Don't let them lose their voices let them speak for themselves. How do I know? I guess that means don't medicate my daughter. Right? Yeah, I think that's what it means.

She knows these strange kinds of things, you know that I don't know how someone would know. Like this one time we were driving up to Truro and before we left Astra said there's dark on the tunnel road. There's dark on the tunnel road, what does that even mean? She said she didn't want to go. I don't want to go mummy and with her little lip trembling: I don't want to go mummypuh-lease I don't want to go. But I make her of course, and we get halfway there and pull up to a little red car jammed up underneath a transport truck. The couple was decapitated.

Gin, please. Page 143 of 239

I was dating this man named Griffin this one time. I know what a name isn 't it? He

was a bartender. I brought him to my mother's funeral with me, and when she saw him she put

her hands over her ears and I looked at her and I said, what baby and she said, grey storm clouds

and he has to please needs to leave and then she starts like, screaming at him right: you have to

leave, please, so loud that the guy just, he grabs his coat and says forget this I'm sorry about your

mom but I'm the hell out of here.

I mean of course it's probably just a coincidence that I saw that him and three other bouncers from his club were being held for assault. They had kicked him out, and he was fighting them,

trying to get back in to give his girlfriend her house keys. The man died in the hospital about a

month later.

(1 wonder if I started crying. Usually when I think about that story I start

crying.)

What do you do for someone like that, you know. How do you help a kid who knows more

than you about those things and then, how do I know that, you know I mean is that just a

coincidence and then is that genetic and then was that my fault? Is she like that because of me?

The street Isaac and I had been driving down, well: it was one way, apparently,

but hell if this old dude that hit us cared. Or maybe he couldn't see the signs or

whatever.

The up side is that now I'm in an ambulance that's rushing through the street

and he doesn't need Google maps to tell him the quickest way to get there. My head is

thumping still from the hangover but now whoa even more because I might have a

concussion. The cute little paramedic keeps snapping his fingers in my face because you

keep closing your eyes, ma'am keep your eyes open, ma'am! And man, Isaac is flat out Page 144 of 239 on a stretcher beside me. Is he okay? This ambulance kid needles me with something and now I'm feeling all right about life and are my eyes ever open! Is he okay?

Don't worry, ma'am, he tells me. How old is this kid? Can't be past early twenties. No way he's been doing this job very long.

Over three years, ma'am, he tells me: but I assure you I know what I'm doing

here. Whoops, guess I said that out loud.

It's my job to make sure we're going to make it everything's gonna be fine okay, he says.

He keeps saying okay. Is he trying to convince me or himself, I wonder. To be safe I help him out and say, okay.

I can't be worried right now. I mean physically, I am not really able to care about much right now. Is my arm broken? It looks all floppy-

Don't move your arm, ma'am. You have to keep still.

-like a string. Look, Isaac! Oh man, Isaac is flat out on a stretcher beside me. Is he okay?

He's unconscious, ma'am, and you have to keep that arm upright.

That stupid old man hit us smack on front and Isaac's airbag deployed. I swear those things do more harm than good. Are we going to St. Christopher's? I ask him flippering my feet. I lick my lips. That's the closest hospital right?

That's right, that's right. The kid also keeps repeating everything twice while he hooks and fiddles with tubes. If I wasn't on this needle stuff I'd tell the ambulance driver to go faster but I guess there's no need everything feels pretty fast right? I know there's no faster we can go.

What's your name?

Toby, ma'am. My name is Toby. Page 145 of 239

No. No, I think that's really girly! How about Don? And hey! Hey, what's going on here? I say looking out the window. Flipper flipper lick lick. Why are there all these people around is this normal? Is that a woman wearing flower pots for shoes?

What did you put in my tube ha!

It's called Nuit Blanche, he says. They do it every year in the city: bunch of art installations and exhibits- Mac, 5 ccs? You think 5?

Better make it 10, says the driver.

Whoa! Where'd you come from! You're BIG, Don! Whoa! Was that a bunch of ghosts, singing a song in that park over there?

Sir, Sir? Can you hear me, Sir? Mac, he's coding!

...and about Lillith...

My oldest daughter is better to Astra than I am. You know she pays our bills! She cooks all the food, she does my laundry... I once woke up in the morning in total surprise in my bed in my pyjamas and she was making eggs and bacon for the three of us. Once? Wow, that's a lie isn't it?

It's really not funny, poor girl. You know I've never known her to have a boyfriend? I'm always telling her to go out and date, and I know she's mad at me but she tells me she's not going to put the energy into fighting with me. You saw her right? That's her in the picture. She doesn't look anything like me: she looks just like herfather. She's heavy for her age, right: I know, but it's because she spends a lot of her time in the house reading and eating those stupid liquorice candies. I know! They are disgusting!

She's so smart. I see her reading all these books about the economy and about agriculture and she knows all these weird things aboutfood, and about language, too. She just knows these Page 146 of 239 weird things. I really wish that she'd take the money and go to school, but I don't think she feels safe leaving her sister. Tou know the truth? She's right. What thefuck do I know?

Gulp.

She's a vegetarian, Lil. And a great cook. Her eggplantparmesan is muah! Beautiful!

I don't know where the vegetarian thing camefrom. Not from me. Tou know: everything that's good about her she didn 't get from me.

What do you mean the whole bottle is gone?

My sedative is wearing off. The arm is sprained, the Doctor says: but it's just a mild sprain. Doesn't feel minor but what do I know. They aren't going to cast and he's not going to give me any more sedatives because I bet he smells the booze seeping out of my pores and thinks I did this on purpose or something.

How is Isaac? I ask him.

I can't tell you anything about your friend quite yet, ma'am.

Everyone is so rude around here.

When he goes out of the room, I grab my purse off the chair and motor down the hallway to the elevator and ask the other Doctor I meet there, what floor is this?

He tells me seven and I ask him, where is the psych floor?

Going there myself, he says. Fourth floor.

We stand there together and wait. When we get in he presses 4 and looks back at me. You doing okay? He asks. I nod. Car accident?

Yeah, I say. How did you know? He points to my forehead. I guess I must have a cut there. I was at triage when Doctor Warren brought you and your boyfriend in, he says. Page 147 of 239

Dr. Warren is a dick, I say. Whoops.

He gives me a short laugh. Yeah, Doctors are dicks sometimes, he says.

We both get off on the fourth floor. When I stop and peel a pamphlet for grief counselling off a nearby corkboard, he turns and looks at me a little suspect but ultimately, turns back around and scans his card across the sensor. I'm quick you know so I shuffle in before the door closes completely and by the time he turns around, I'm already inside a small room where two women in gowns are painting and eating sandwiches. I smile at them and the blonde Gown claps and then they look back to the painting. I glance out from the doorway and see he's busy and talking to a nurse at the desk, I slowly make my way toward the patient rooms and that's when Catherine turns the corner and bumps right into me, chocolate bars falling to the floor. I stand there for a split second before I commence the hair pulling. This is when the doctor notices and oh God, he says and tries to play referee and one nurse that was headed toward the door turns back around and the nurse is watching from behind her desk and I bet she's rooting for Catherine they're probably buddies you know and that moment, that right there is when I hear that high pitched screaming and everything goes quiet.

I know that scream. Page 148 of 239

29: Vera Purvis

...I want to strangle those birds...

I pluck my hat from the coat rack. I put it on. I put it back. I put it on again. I stand in front of the mirror and look into my face and become conscious of the fact that nothing on the surface has changed but everything beneath it has been reduced. This is the best I can do to explain the hideous nature of the reflection. Through the mirror I see the bed I can no longer sleep in and I tell myself, you have to go.

That girl. That girl on the subway there was a reason she had that anxiety attack. What it was that caused it that I have to know. She had been looking in my eyes. Her voice was my voice I swear it. Did she know about my husband? I have to know I have to know what she saw.

I take small steps down the stairs. Once on the street I walk quickly for quite some time before slowing down completely. I can't do this. I turn back and get as far as the end of my street before turning around and continuing on.

I have to do this.

I understand of course I do: it's horrific that I would put this girl through the pain of seeing me again. I understand your heart goes out to this girl. My heart goes out to this girl God how it does. In no way do I plan on inflicting pain on her in order to stop my own for mine will not stop. This is not the nature of my intention. There is no end to this torture, understand that.

But I cannot live with this pull in my stomach, this revolting maybe dragging every thought into a pit I cannot claw my way out of. This is a matter of preservation.

Please don't put yourself in my place I do not wish this on anyone: the place you must be in to deny, the place you must be in to still love a man who. To question Page 149 of 239 something that proof can explain. But, though you owe me nothing please: consider doing me this one favour. Contemplate what you might do if everything you know for certain became inverted. Do you feel that pull?

Get inside it. Unless you feel that itching from the inside, that nauseous feeling like the sick is inching its way through the red of your blood making it black not a cancer worse than a cancer, a black there is no healing for, you are not there. Unless you feel this sensation that it will never it will never ever stop the black will spill it will bleed into the street and make the world black and it is in this moment you ask yourself, what would you do? What would you do to halt that, to get out of this moment to ensure that it didn't swallow you and others?

Think about the depths you must get to in order to plot stealing into a psych ward; that you cannot even make your way to the consideration of the kind of ramifications of your actions—the blood running through your brain and your heart is black. Your brain cannot produce a thought of this kind.

Do you feel it?

My hope is not that you do, but that you have no idea. I hope you are not I hope to God you cannot conceive of what I ask you.

I hope you think I'm as great a monster as my husband. I hope when the train comes and you watch me get on it, you are filled with an unmistakable loathing.

This is a matter of preservation.

The Police told me when I got to the Police station they are not going to release my husband. They say we have to keep him on account of the evidence: Mrs. Purvis, Page 150 of 239 they say calmly, we have found a substantial amount of evidence on your home computer.

Karl says he's been set up. At first he said, this stuff isn't mine Vera, it was an accidental file, and now he's saying, I've been set up; this man at the office, he's been gunning for my job for months now; Vera I swear, he says, this guy he wants to ruin our life.

This man could hate you that much, Karl? That much that he would break into our house and plant those kind of. That kind of. On our computer? He would get past your password and plant naked pictures of children? To this he said, well it looks that way doesn't it Vera.

My husband always calls me babe. Babe can you bring in the mail, babe could you make that swordfish tonight.

He says Vera he says Vera too many times.

I took the train home alone and I watched a young mother feed her baby and I. I walked down the street did not fasten my coat I did not stop to buy an umbrella. I walked up the front steps counted the twelve front steps and I stopped at the door. I could not go in.

I did. I got into the house past the front door and I kept my coat on. I sat down in his big leather chair at the desk with all the cables sprawled out and still plugged in but attached to nothing, there where the computer had been, a cube stamped in the dust.

The computer we had used to photo shop Christmas cards. The computer we had used to purchase tickets to Niagara Falls as a celebration of our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Page 151 of 239

The phone rang. I did not answer it. It stopped. It rang again. It stopped. The third time I unplugged the phone another cable across the desk.

My mother came to the door. She knocked she yelled, I know you're in there

Vera. Answer the door. Vera. Vera?

Then she went away.

I ran a bath. I shut off the faucet. I flipped down the toilet seat and sat on the toilet still wearing my coat. I watched the water drip drip drip. I couldn't bring myself to get naked not in this place where.

I went into our bedroom. I pulled all of the socks out of his sock drawer. I smelled his socks. I unrolled every pair. I tore the lining out from the bottom of the drawer.

I went down to the basement. I opened all the boxes that belonged to him. I sifted through hockey trophies and equipment and travel coffee mugs, looking for what.

A clue that would help me answer,

Did he. Is it. Am I.

I sat in the chair again. I closed my eyes. I ran my fingers over the cables and a beat ran through me; irrational fear responding to its own rhythm and settling in.

I stared out the window at some birds on a telephone wire. I thought about strangling those birds. I wanted to hurt something. No. Of course I would never. I just didn't know what to do with all of this, what all of this, what. Anger betrayal anger loathing anger sadness, sick I'm going to be.

And doubt. Page 152 of 239

It's possible a man broke into our home. It's possible: Karl was so good at his job. And of course there was a password on our home computer I mean, people were

breaking into our home. Of course Karl was trying to secure his work.

Jake McTavish, ten years old.

And he had received that promotion: clearly my husband had been doing

something right.

Jeffrey Lennox, eight years old.

And certainly the locks on our doors weren't so hard to break. My mother just

half an hour ago had almost snapped the deadbolt in half trying to get in. Certainly, if

someone wanted to get in it wouldn't be that difficult.

No lie can run that deep. This man that I have spent the last nineteen years of

my life with.

How.

No I could not be that stupid. This man there was a man he was in my home, on

my computer. He had sat in this very chair; he had looked at these very birds.

No. That was the bottom line; do you really think I could be capable of

something like this, Vera? Do you really?

My instant reaction was no. I didn't.

But did he. Is it. Am I.

Why won't these questions go away? Why can't I be certain?

I'm so sick of all the people on the subway, and of the transportation in this city.

The woman next to me is dipping Thai spring rolls dipping into peanut sauce from a tiny plastic cup. The whole subway cart smells like peanuts and grease. Why are there Page 153 of 239 so many people in here? More than usual, what's going on. I really don't know. Maybe this is a normal crowd; I haven't been on the subway this late in years.

Excuse me, you've just spilled peanut sauce on my coat.

Oh man, sorry, the woman says. I'm so sorry. I let her wipe my coat with her napkin and look out the window.

The mothers have started to picket outside the jail. They have signs like PURVIS

IS A PERVERT. They have pamphlets about the details of the case even though the details were not supposed to go public they have gone public; someone has leaked information to the press. The press know how many and now my mother my mother knows and my congregation everyone knows.

The number that number, it can't be right.

Do you want one? The woman asks holding out the greasy box of spring rolls.

I feel so bad, she says. Hey I really like your hat!

There are so many teenagers on this cart and so many more around me when I get up to the street. Maybe this is what happens downtown on a Friday night. There are lights in the sky it must be a carnival or something. I go into the hospital through the emergency room entrance and ask a janitor which floor the psych ward is on. I don't ask a Doctor, because I don't want them asking me questions about who I'm looking for.

The entire subway ride, I have been considering how I might get into the psych ward. I assume that the security is aware of all my considerations, however so when I arrive on the floor, I stand at the door for a moment in a panic state running over these Page 154 of 239 options again. I can't break the glass; physically there are bars. The door is locked, obviously, and I don't know much about picking.

There's a phone. I pick it up without knowing what to expect and it starts ringing. A nurse answers and I tell her I'm here to see my niece Astra, and I start to consider what I'll say if she asks me her last name since I don't know what it is. I only know her first name from a small piece of paper she gave me that said, MY NAME IS

ASTRA PLEASE CALL MY SISTER LILLY, 416-995-8707. But the nurse doesn't ask me the last name. She says, all right. I hear a buzz in the phone and realize the door is unlocked and I hang up the phone and I pull the handle and I step inside.

A nurse is headed towards me and my thoughts start running again. She's going to ask me my name and she's going to go to Astra and say, your aunt is here. My aunt?

The girl will say. I don't have an aunt.

Will they arrest me? What would the charge be? Oh God think about that headline.

But before the nurse can get to the door, she is diverted by two women fighting: one woman is pulling the other's hair. I wonder how often things like that happen in here.

I breathe a sigh of relief and I start to inch my way down the hall and this is when I hear one of the fighting women say, Astra is my daughter, and she points into the room to my left. I pull the hat down over my face and when I get to the doorway of this room, I see Astra sitting in a white chair by the window and she turns to look at me there are those eyes again and she opens her mouth wide and I move my hands in a motion to tell her, no please don't scream but there is no use it's too late and the room is Page 155 of 239 filled with that devastating ery. And in the midst of this cry I say, please I need to know.

I hope you think I'm a monster. I hope to God you do. Page 156 of 239

30: Lilly

...flowerpots for shoes...

I missed my morning appointment with Cancer Friend. I hadn't been outside to smoke since last night because there were people everywhere carrying light installations and boxes and I don't even know what that thing is and, I swear, there was no room, not even a comfortable inch for me on the whole street to stand and smoke in peace. And now it was close to 8:00 and I was starting to get cranky.

All this stuff: it's Nuit Blanche, which as far as I can understand from the paper, means that the city is celebrating contemporary art, or participating in it, or both.

There are zones all over the city with different events, and the subways are running late and the city is a zoo. People who seem happy about this include artists and every underage girl looking for a ticket to be out and to stay out all night to make out with their boyfriends and wear shirts that barely cover their everything and where are their mothers.

I realize I said that last part out loud. I turn around to see Catherine standing in the doorway of the cafeteria.

I'm not talking to myself, I say. I'm just working out some things. Out loud.

Of course you are, she says chirping a little in a way that makes me realize she's patronizing me. Why don't you go down there and see for yourself? That's what people your age are doing in this city tonight.

Oh no. There's no room out there for me.

She laughs. That's a very odd thing to say, Lillian.

No, I mean I couldn't-

Of course you could. Go on. Page 157 of 239

But I mean, if Astra wakes up-

Lilly, she barely speaks to us when we're there. I don't think she'll miss you dear. We spend more time talking to Leonard than we do Astra!

I don't know Catherine-

And I'll be here; I'll be here if something happens, and her Doctor is on call tonight. Take your cell phone and if I need you, I'll call you.

I shake my head. But I've got a strange feeling, I say. If Astra doesn't remember you, or if she gets confused-

Lilly, you need a break. You haven't left the hospital since Saturday.

I've been outside at least thirty-seven times.

Besides to smoke those cigarettes. Go, she tells me, pulling at my elbow, go forth, and live as twenty-something's do, I demand you.

I give her a hook smile with the right side of my mouth. I stand there. She goes out into the hallway and presses the elevator and after a ding, I hear her yell come on,

Lilly the elevator's waiting. This man is getting very angry with me holding the door open.

I hurry in and give the hook smile to the man wearing a fedora and he certainly is not happy about all this.

Are you going up to see her now?

Right now, honey.

Make sure you brush her hair I always brush her hair.

Lillian, don't worry honey: I'll call if I need-

It's Lillith, I tell her as the door closes. My name is Lillith. Page 158 of 239

The fedora guy looks down at me without moving his head and I say, busy out there and he says a mess, a mockery to real art. He obviously hates me, so I stop talking, but I do whistle because I can tell from his huffing that he hates it. I take the elevator to the second floor because I hadn't pressed a button and that's where he gets off.

It's the cancer floor (coincidence, I think not) and the red haired nurse is working again. She passes the bowl to me. I pop one into my mouth she just sits there looking at me.

So? She says.

So?

Your sister's baby?

Oh right, right. It was a girl, I tell her. 8 pounds, 6 ounces. Juneya, I say.

That's a beautiful name, she says.

Isn't it? I know. Icelandic I believe.

I see my Cancer Friend's mother coming toward me with the crown in her hand and her eyes are puffy. I swallow hard to get the chewy out of my teeth.

Hey, are you okay, is she-

Nothing new. I'm just, God this is embarrassing I'm sorry. She breathes through her trembling lips and shakes her head. How's your sister dear?

Same. No change.

What are you doing down here? Did you come to visit? She pulls a Kleenex out of the arm of her sweatshirt.

My mother (no need to complicate the story by saying, my fake mother) wants me to go see the exhibits. I wasn't going to go, but- Page 159 of 239

Oh, you should. You know, there's an exhibit at Massey Hall everyone's says it's supposed to be amazing. It's just right there, across the street. Ursula's been talking about it all day. There's already a line going down the street.

Ursula? I thought. That's her name? Terrible. Is she okay? I ask. I mean, would that be okay?

She needs to get out of here for a night. But can you do me a favour? Just make sure of one thing for me okay.

Anything.

Make sure she wears her crown.

It's cold out, surprise. Ursula is wearing a toque under the crown and a matching mitten set and as I rub the dry skin on my knuckles, I keep thinking I should have bought those mittens at American Apparel last week but twelve bucks. They weren't even lined.

We take our place in the line lighting cigarettes and leaning against the wall.

The people are actually lined up around the block. People stand together, sipping from

Starbucks cups and turtling their heads into scarves. They're talking about hockey. No,

I told him Tuesday night league aint gonna work for me. Bull shit Burger King:

Harvey's man, their chocolate milkshakes are the best. Cocoa Butter lotion: Palmer's is the best for stretch marks. No, no Palmer's.

The guy behind us is wearing a Montreal Canadians toque. He keeps whispering to the guy beside him, it's so sparkly, and trying to touch Ursula's crown.

Then he punches me in the shoulder. Right in the bloody shoulder blade and I tell him Page 160 of 239 to watch his stupid-damn-stupid-hat-self or else (The Canadians, seriously) and I push him back. His friend says hey; take it easy, he's on mushrooms.

Well, that's smart, I scoff. So irresponsible, that's what that is. Ursula laughs at me.

What?

You sound like his mother, she says.

Astra would have held his hand and asked him to explain what it felt like.

Then this guy falls off the kerb: I'm talking supine on the cement. And a Brink's truck almost hits him and the Massey Hall security guy is having a hard time using the radio and holding the guy up with both hands. I don't offer to help. Ursula looks down at a map of events happening in our zone.

I want to see the Ice Queen in the Eaton Center, she says. It's like, this woman in a tent dress and she like, retreats or something. And there's some big silver rabbit looking glass balloon exhibit in there, too.

What do people call you for short?

Ula, she says. (Terrible.) And there's some like, big letter thing look between the City Hall towers, she says: four letter words, an automated code sequences run between live performance times.

What?

Lights. She flicks her hands open. In the sky.

Whatever, sure.

After an hour and a half we finally squeeze in to Massey Hall. We have to go up these creepy back stairs and halls and everything is painted like, hurt —your-eyes-aqua and there are security guys. We sit down, everyone crossed legged on the Massey stage Page 161 of 239 facing the seats. There is a man in a suit sitting in the second row and he gets up and bows at the stage. People clap I don't know why. Two little kids are sitting a few rows behind him. The man takes his suit jacket off and brushes it twice before tentatively sitting down and brushing down his pocket square.

There are piano strings hanging from the ceiling (that's what the guide tells me they are). An Asian girl in black high heel boots and a long black turtleneck dress comes ambling down a runway. People are still talking. Some guy says shhh it's started. Oh. The Asian girl plucks a string from a hole in the runway and attaches it to one of the hanging contraption thingy-s (I don't know the names of them). There are outer space noises playing, I don't know if it's coming from the guy sitting in the second row, or maybe the two dudes sitting in the box with all the electric equipment are doing it but they haven't moved since we came in so I don't know where it's coming from.

The girl keeps flicking at the string and moving it back and forth and the whole thing takes about ten minutes and then she sits down. People clap sporadically. One guy gets up on his knees, motioning to leave.

I don't get it, I whisper to Ursula. The shhh guy clicks his tongue at me.

Then the little boy and girl get up and do the whole thing with the strings again. While that's happening, some guy on the top tier of the balcony strung up to

Bungee equipment shuffles around with some stuff. I look around and everyone is looking at the dude. Ursula whispers oh man he's gonna jump, but he doesn't. The kids stop playing and the guy in the Bungee equipment sits down and everyone awkwardly claps again.

Brilliant, says Clicky Tongue. Page 162 of 239

Seriously? Ursula asks me. We laugh about it all the way back down the stairs.

The security guard nods at us like, I know.

Astra would've nodded at Clicky Tongue. She would have said, wasn't it? And then, beautiful. Just magnificent.

We can't even smoke and walk there are so many people crammed around us that I can't even get the Bic out of my pocket so I stop trying.

On the way there, we walk through a bunch of people dressed up as ghosts and singing a dirge. I stop and lean in to read the words on one of their booklets. The lyrics are written in Latin and the song is haunting.

Ursula is coughing a lot. You okay? You want to go back? I ask, but she shakes her head and tells me to shut up. There is a silence here, but the kind that old married couples share because there's nothing weird about it.

When we get into the Eaton Center, we stand in front of the tent woman and tip our heads.

Where is she? I ask.

Just wait. She's supposed to dance or something.

And why does she-

Something to do with global warming or women's issues. Just wait.

We do. For four minutes. Finally I say, if I have to stand here any longer I'm lighting a cigarette.

Okay, she says. Let's go see the Rabbit thing.

We stand on the second floor of the Eaton Center looking down at this big silver rabbit balloon. And we look.

Maybe you have to be on the ground level, she says. Page 163 of 239

We stand on the ground floor of the Eaton Center looking up at this big silver

rabbit balloon. And we look.

It reflects the needs of culture and society and can represent so many different things to

the viewer, she reads. And we look.

Are we stupid or something, I say finally.

I think there's a bar upstairs. What time is it? You think they're still serving

food? I'm hungry.

I thought you said there was like, a looking glass-

She hacks. We're going okay we're, let's go.

You'd think, Ursula says, taking a break from chewing to blow a stream of cold

air from her mouth (or, warm air I guess), that they'd keep some restaurants open.

Really stupid business move on their part. We sit down on a bench. A girl walks by

with flower pots for shoes and Christmas lights wound up and around her legs.

But then no one would buy the street meat, I say, licking some ketchup off my

finger.

How's your fake meat, Veggie Mite?

Terrible. How's your grinded up rear ends and pig testicles?

Bloody wonderful, thanks. You know they grill them on the same grill. You got juicy pig in yours too, you know.

I look down at the dog and pitch it into the trash can. I'm such an ignorant vegetarian.

Bet you his name was Porky, she says smacking her lips.

Shut up, I say. Page 164 of 239

Don't think I don't see you over there, she says; I see you over there. Stop

looking at your phone, Lil: your sister's fine. Catherine's there, she's fine. So do you

actually know what's really in these? She asks me, looking down the hot dog with one

closed eye.

Do you want to know?

No, no I don't want to know, I laugh.

What? She chomps, blows again. Hot.

Just that. Once, when I tried to tell The Suze about animal stuff, she said, "I-

don't-want-to-know." Because honestly, if you did know, you know you wouldn't want

to eat it.

Just tell me this: is it gonna kill me?

Come on, that's funny, she says.

I don't think it is.

Eh: matter of opinion. Look it started again. (Lights in the sky.)

I light the cigarettes and we pass them back and forth and say the words out loud as they change. TENT, PACK...Ursula doesn't tell jokes and I don't educate her about hot dogs we just sit close to each other and say the words and smoke. MAKE,

HOPE.

This woman with an orange crocheted toque and a big head of red curly hair walks in front of us and we both stop to look at her. And when I hear the ambulance siren I swear, it's like something jumps up inside me.

OPEN.

Oh my God we've got to go something's wrong, I say. Page 165 of 239

What happened?

Hurry up! We have to go something is wrong

I push my way through, looking back to make sure Ursula is still there. I finally get the phone out of my pocket and dial Catherine's number. I stop and turn around.

What did she say; did you get a hold of her? Oh my God you are like, so white right now what's going on.

I got a prompt that I have no minutes on my phone and so my call can't be completed as dialled, I tell her. (Seriously.) She doesn't do a very good job of pretending not to laugh.

When we get to the door on the fourth floor the first thing I see through the soundproof glass is the Suze yeah, the Suze is standing there with a handful of

Catherine's hair and a nurse with one arm on each of them and chocolate bars everywhere and they're all looking into the common room. Then I see a janitor on her knees. The next thing I see is the Doc dragging some woman in a big hat into the hall by her armpits and another nurse trying to pull him off of her. Oh my God.

Dear Jesus, Ula says. Page 166 of 239

81: Suzie

...made bad on my promise to the lesbian...

I don't know where I've seen her, not right away: but as I watch this woman in her big hat standing there in front of Astra, it dawns on me: her face from a clip on the six o'clock news as they took her husband, that pedophile Purvis into the courtroom.

Every mother in the country saw her face on the news as they took fucking pedophile

Purvis and thought, how do you stand beside a man that does something like that?

When I realize my daughter is screaming, I swear it feels like a hand grips my spine and slides down the bones one by one. Call it the maternal gene; or, blame it on the morphine, or the gin, or all of the above, but I could kill this woman right now.

This Purvis woman is hurting my daughter. I want her as far away from my

Astra as humanly possible I'll do anything to get her away. How does she know my daughter anyway why is she here? They could be friends for all I know. Has she been to their house or something? It would be just like my daughter to try and help this woman. Has Catherine been letting her visit my daughter? How could I have let this happen? Where the hell have I been? So I drop Catherine to the ground on her mouth and I'm ready to truly I mean if I do kill this woman it's the place to plead insanity isn't it (sorry, that was inappropriate) but that cute Doctor gets to Purvis first and now he's dragging her down the hall.

Astra baby, its okay I'm here, I tell her holding her as she trembles in my arms.

Its okay calm down I won't let anything happen to you I'm here to help you honey I'm sorry I'm so sorry. She looks up to me with tired, throbbing eyes and then instantly looks over my shoulder. She's looking for Lilly. Page 167 of 239

I realize I've never done this. I've never held my daughter in my arms and told her, it's okay, or sorry, or I'm here to help you Astra.

It's then, when I figure out my daughter is looking for her sister that I realize

I've made bad on my unspoken promise to the lesbian. Page 168 of 239

32: Thelma

...this Doctor developed Tourrettes...

They're all crazy in there, I tell you. Even that doctor is crazy.

I'm on the fourth floor today mopping my floors and thinking about getting

some of those lemon cookies from the gift shop when that woman on a mission hurries

past me: that one with bruises all up her arm. Here I am thinking about maybe some

coffee, too when the bruises woman she starts yelling something about, she's not your

daughter! at the grey-haired woman I thought was the Hallet girl's mother. The

doctor there, he saying okay, calm down but the two mothers they're too busy yelling

about face wash and you have no right to tell me to go away, and I'm so confused now,

cause the bruises woman she's saying Astra's her daughter and the other one's saying,

you are no mother to her. The bruises one, now no surprise there she looks scrappy, she

push the other woman into the waiting room and over a chair and the doctor is trying

to get them away from each other and the nurse is in there, too but I don't know what

happens because while that's happening, okay some other woman with a big hat she

looks familiar, maybe? Anyway she gets off the elevator and I watch her, I mean she

looks suspicious to me creeping along the hallway right by these women who are

screaming at each other like nothing's strange about it. I watch her as she goes into the

Hallet girl's room and it's like some things you just know and I just know this one's up

to no good and call it instinct but a split second, only a split second before it actually

happens, I know this Hallet girl's about to scream.

The doctor and the two mothers they hear her but not right away over their own screaming at each other it's so loud, and so for those seconds in between nobody's doing anything and someone needs to do something someone needs to help that Hallet Page 169 of 239 girl so me with my big clumsy feet I try and get to her but I kick over my bucket and so

I'm trying to pick up my bucket slipping on the water everywhere and by now the mothers and the Doctor they're in the room and everyone is yelling at everyone. But this is why I'm on my knees with my mop in my hand when the Hallet sister is coming off the elevator with a little bald girl in a bandana, and the doctor pulling the hat woman out of the room by her armpits and the hat woman's screaming at the Hallet girl

I need to know, you're the only one, please I need you to tell me please! And tears all down her face and the mother and the sister they're trying to calm their girl down and the doctor dragging this hat woman and the doc he's yelling now like he's developed a bad case of Tourrettes; and the bandanna girl say to me, what the hell? And the doc says, Nurse please, and here I am still on my knees with the mop, face to face with this woman he's dragging. And now I know why I recognize this woman she's that Purvis woman from the news and now she's yelling at me, I need to know!

Then there's a what, a moment: clearly I'm not so good with explanations so the best I can explain it is there's just a tick of time when there's only sharp fast colours and sharp angry pinches in my stomach and everything feels sucked in. I don't know how else to. And then I'm back on the floor again on my knees. Just a tick. But while the doctor still screaming to the nurse, where is the floor security? Get Bruno up here right now, I know this Purvis woman hears me when I get right down and say in her ear,

Guilty as sin, my sister: guilty as sin and you knew it all along. Page 170 of 239

33: Lilly

...gratefulfor the face wash and all...

Stupid bitch Catherine. I told her, didn't I: I told her that I didn't think I should go because I had a feeling and what did she say? She said, it'll be fine, Lilly.

Looks fine doesn't it?

Here is my advice: when you know something in your stomach don't listen to other people. That's what makes you an adult: knowing when to listen to your gut.

I'm sitting in the recreational therapy room staring at a Play dough sculpture of

Nixon I think well the nose looks like him and this plastic chair has to be so bad for my back. I'm not a crook, I think. While I'm contemplating Watergate, the Doc is in there with a police officer talking to The Suze and a security guard okay, so you're the real Ms.

Hallet? And, okay, so you where in the bathroom when this all happened? Where was the relief? Getting coffee? Are you serious?

Catherine comes in and sits down next to me with a Dr. Pepper can on her lip.

The Suze got her good.

Your lip okay? I ask her (and yes I know my leg is twitching.)

You poor thing, she says shaking her head. Your mother is absolutely crazy. I don't know what got into-

Nobody is saying that word, Catherine.

Lilly! Catherine's tone shifts indicating that I'm about to get a lecture. Suzanne had no right to come after me like that-

You going to press charges?

I haven't decided that- Page 171 of 239

I heard my mom say, two days ago Catherine: what did she mean, two days ago?

Catherine rolls the can up and over her lip. I can see she's buying time. She makes her eyes wide and shakes her head and looks at the floor. Who knows what she's speaking about, Lilly, she says. Did you smell the alcohol on her? And she looks like she's been hit by a car!

So you don't know what she's talking about then? She said she was here two days ago, you don't know what she means?

Your mother is a drunk, Lillian she doesn't know-

You have no right to press charges—she came two days ago and you knew and you wouldn't let her see my sister. And I bloody told you my God damn name is Lillith, lady.

Lilly watch your mouth!

Yeah, you know what? I'm real sorry about your lip, and I'm grateful for the face wash and all? But you really need to leave.

The overhead screeches a page Teresa to the desk for your medication. Pause. You need me to leave? she says. I do my fast nod and she scoffs. You aren't really thinking-

My mother may be a lot of things Catherine yeah, a lot of things but she knows better than to doubt my instincts and she's never ever lied to me in my entire life. And that head roll you just did there? That head roll well, that tells me you're lying so yeah,

I need you to leave. They repeat the page and neither of us move for a few seconds. She sits staring into my face and I tell my eyeballs again stay. put.

Well! She says putting the can down.

Right. Right, I said thank you. I'll go and get your things- Page 172 of 239

Don't bother; she laughs picking up her purse. To think: I tried to help you.

You know, that sister of yours, did you not see her in there just now? She's sick. She's seriously ill, all that screaming, and that deluded drunk of a mother and you, well. Yes you'll do quite the fine job dealing with her won't you? It's on your hands Lilly on your hands now. Oh yes and let your mother know this is your verbal notice I don't want -

Us living in your damn house right yeah, I get it right. My plea-sure.

***

Harsh, says Ula clicking open the Dr. Pepper.

I know right? I take back the lighter from her and tuck it in my pocket. I shake my head when she offers me a cigarette because I'm not smoking anymore; honestly, I'm sick of waiting for it to feel cool and it hurts my lungs. I just don't have the energy to try and be addicted to cigarettes today on top of everything else. I mean, the nerve, I say. The nerve she has to call my mother that.

Catherine? Lil, are you kidding? This woman has been there through all of this taking care of your sister. She's taken care of you, ran your damn errands and slept in a hospital room for the past week. The nerve of her? Really? You're kid- you're kidding.

I know Suze drinks a bit much and all—

A bit much? Ula coughs. Wake up Lilly! Your sister's been here for how long?

And the cunt just showed up today?

How would she know until I told her, Ula?

Sure: because otherwise she has no good reason to check in with her daughters?

The nerve is right, Lilly. I can't believe you treated Catherine like that.

You're unbelievable, I say. I don't know why I thought you'd get it but clearly you don't. Page 173 of 239

No I guess I don't. Ula is glaring at me now and holding back a cough. No you're right Lilly I guess I really don't. A bus passes and three people get off. A man and a woman kiss and the woman crosses the street. Yeah, well this has been swell and all Lilly but I have some radiation I'm just dying to get to, so.

Yeah right yeah have a great time with that.

Uh-huh good luck with your sister and The Cunt, yeah good luck with all that and I need my lighter please? My lighter? I hand it to her. She fixes the crown and says, since you're not you know, with the smoking anymore I guess I'll just see you around. Page 174 of 239

34: Doc

...maybe our teacher is an anti-Samaritan...

Truth be told, the Vera Purvis incident is exactly what I needed.

When the hospital advisor calls me into his office and says, what the hell

happened today Walt, I know this will be the end of this issue if I say, I've worked over

eighty hours this week and my judgment, though I wish I could say it isn't, has

definitely been affected by that.

Have you become emotionally involved with this patient? He asked. Do you feel

that has hindered your ability to treat Ms. Hallet objectively and effectively?

No, absolutely not I told him, making a grand show with some arm movements.

I'm a father, Ernie: it was a paternal instinct et cetera I was thinking of my own

daughter et cetera. I apologize for pulling the woman down the hall by her armpits, and

tell him I will do what I need to in order to clear the hospital's name. He tells me I'm

lucky: she isn't pressing charges probably because her family's name is in the news

enough right now, and that I need to take a few days off to get some rest until things

cool down. It's extremely lucky for me that he knows if he were to attempt to pursue

the matter on his own, I would have too many angles to retaliate with in my defence;

where was the security? How did both of these strange women get into a locked and

monitored ward? It was not out of sympathy that he did not fight me. It was not out of

sympathy that he said, go home Walter. Get some rest.

As tragic as it may seem, this incident with the Hallet mothers and the Purvis

woman is the reason that I'm home before breakfast for the first time in weeks, sitting

down at my table with my red plastic mug of coffee watching my daughter cut up a grapefruit and listening to Nora curse as she burns egg whites on the stove. When she Page 175 of 239 asks me how my night was, I tell her, it was fine Nora, and turn to Hazel to say, so how did your paper go Bugs?

Dad, it's not fair you call me that since I lost my baby teeth don't call me that!

She puts her bowl down heavily on the table. It's finished, she says, but I don't know if it's any good.

Oh honey, I'm sure it's better than you think. What's wrong with it?

Well, I was sure Harker and Renfield were the same but then the more I thought about it, the more I started to read I found all these things that- I don't know, they-

Complicated your argument?

I don't know, Dad: I just found a lot of conflating evidence-

Conflicting -

-that made it difficult for me to argue one way or the other. Do you think they were both crazy? I don't know anymore, she says slurping up a section of grapefruit.

That's the beauty of literature, babe: it's not like math, it's not a problem, it's more of say a mystery; there are no wrong answers, only ill-informed ones. You can't be wrong as long as you have support and evidence for your argument.

She looks up at me, and then to Nora who is hovering at the coffee pot, and she says, ah over my head, Dad? I think my teacher just wanted like, a chart. She draws a grid in the air with her finger. Harker, Renfield: and then crazy, check. Both spend time in a hospital, check. Like that sort of thing.

I laugh. We'll work on it, Hazel.

Okay. Any more relevantory questions for me, oh Father of mine?

I sit with my hand on my pocket, touching the small pink notebook. I think about Astra's wide eyes and Thelma on her knees. Hazel, do you believe in God? Page 176 of 239

fFal-ter, Nora says. This is the first thing my wife has said to me since I've come home.

She looks tired; her hair is like straw, tied in a sloppy ponytail and the makeup under her eyes is thick.

It's a fair question, Hazel says licking her spoon, for a man that's not around a lot, Mom. Good to check in on my evolutionary processes and such from time to time.

I'm a growing girl! Hazel curls her arms up and flexes. I'm what they call an agnostic,

Dad; that means I'm still weighing my options. Commitment issues and all. Can I have coffee?

You're e-leven, Hazel, Nora says. You'll have milk with your breakfast, not coffee...

Meh. Sounds like a pretty adult conversation is all, thought I'd check.

Not appropriate conversation is what it seems like, Nora says glaring at me.

Not appropriate? Nora, I really don't see what's inappropriate about asking our daughter about her beliefs. I turn back to Hazel.

Seriously, if I put a lot of cream and sugar in it?

Do they even talk about religion at your school?

She shrugs. Last year Billy Winter did his social studies project on Orthodox

Judaism. He's a Jew: you know, and she makes a triangle out at her nose. But his mother works at the Budget car rental on Mercer Street and they're not in the school district for Paul Penna. Billy, she laughs, he tried to lead us in this prayer and he brought in you know, those cup hats for everyone-

Yarmulkes, I say. Page 177 of 239

- and he got sent to Principal Turner's office. Isn't that funny? Because it's potentially offensive, or maybe because our teacher is an anti-Samaritan. But junior high is way more liberal, Dad. I've got a friend who's a Zoroastrian, you know.

And what does that mean?

Walter really, Nora says.

I don't know Dad I'll ask him. There's this world religions course he wants me to take with him next semester.

You should, I say. It's good to know how other people think; good to remember there's different kinds of people. Are you going to take the course?

It's at the same time as band, Dad.

So? I say. She looks to Nora and then to me and slurps up some grapefruit juice from her spoon.

Walter, she's got a better chance at a future playing the flute than she does philosophizing about Christians and Zoroastrians, Nora says.

Hazel why don't you get your things? I'll walk to the bus stop with you. Before she's is up the stairs Nora says, where the hell did that come from? There are no wrong answers? So now when our daughter gets a terrible grade, she's going to try and argue that it was her prerogative. She wants to be an architect, Walter. Did you know that?

She has blueprints pinned up in her crawlspace. Don't you think all this subjective truth bullshit is going to hinder her chances at being an architect?

Actually, I-

She needs to be spending less time with that Zorro whatever boy, Walter. She thinks she's in love with him. And did you know Jim and Cindy's girl is tutoring now? Page 178 of 239

She is. Grade twos: comprehension and grammar at recess. Hazel should take a lesson from-

She shouldn't be more like anyone, Nora.

And since when are you so interested in God, anyway? You're an atheist for

Christ's sake, Walter, she says scraping coffee grounds into the trash. Hazel could be damn good at that flute with some practice: if-

Nora, Nora, please, I say. I'm tired; I've had a terrible day at work. I don't want to have this argument with you-

Oh, that's convenient isn't it? Always such a hard day taking care of other people's families. What a waste of energy this is, she says. Are you sleeping here tonight or are you working?

I don't answer.

She snorts. Of course you are. She shuffles through some mail and flings it onto the counter. I'm sick of this too, you know: I mean, what are we doing here, Walter?

Really, what are we going to do?

Do you love me? It startles us both. She stares at me for a second before she shakes her head and looks back to the mail. Nora, I say. Do you even love me anymore?

This is ridic- I'm so angry at you, Walter. It isn't about-

This is entirely what it's about, Nora. I haven't been here, I know. But you-

Oh right, this is my fault? You have some nerve-

I'm not trying to say. It's not. Listen: I am tired of fighting with you. I'm saying if we want to try and fix- Page 179 of 239

-with all the hours you work, and then you come in: and you're tired well so am I! and then with your theology 101 and-

Nora.

- did you see the picture she drew? She asked me if you were moving out yesterday. She found the blankets folded up in your office.

I know I have to fix things with Hazel. I'm asking you about you and me, Nora.

Well apparently it's my fault, so-

You're not listening to me.

Walter, she needs us both here for her. It's what's best for her. It doesn't matter what-

What we want doesn't matter? It's not what's best for her if we're living like this. I take a long sip of coffee. Do you or not, Nora: simple question.

There isn't any right answer to that question, Walter, she whispers, flicking her hands like fireworks and making her eyes wide; it's a mystery.

I'm ready to go, Hazel says coming down the stairs. You ready Dad? She jingles my keys.

One sec, honey I'll be right there.

Nora nods to Hazel and turns to wash the dishes in the sink. You'll need to put gas in the Bronco, she says. And don't forget to give her some money: she's going over to Jim and Cindy's after school they're taking the girls to the movies.

I stare at my wife's back for a long minute waiting for her to turn around before

I stand up from the table. I put my hands on the counter on either side of her, my lips an inch from her ear and I say, me neither, Nora. Me neither.

*** Page 180 of 239

When I park the car in front of the school, I give Hazel some money and kiss her on the cheek. While she holds her car door open with her foot, she asks me if I'm going to be home when she got home and I say no. She says oatmeal when you get home from work, oatmeal for breakfast then? And I say, oh, well, honey I might not be home in the morning. Are you working over time? She asks. I hesitate for too long. She shuts the door and folds her hands in her lap.

Listen, she says. I know.

You know?

About you and mom. I've suspected it for a while now. I had myself convinced it was my fault but I can't go on in denial anymore, not after that display this morning.

Are you getting a divorce, then?

Oh Bugs, I say putting my arm around her head rest. She looks up at me waiting for more but this is all I have. I'm not prepared for this conversation. I am not good at lying to my daughter.

She looks out the windshield. You're moving out, aren't you?

I don't know what's going to happen, Hazel. I'm just I'm going to stay somewhere else for a few days. (Are you supposed to tell your kids that kind of thing?)

You're going to rent an apartment in some high rise condo building on a floor that smells like curry and your neighbours are going to be an old woman with too many goldfish and a retired waiter who watches old history documentaries too loud and the gunshots will freak me out. I'll have to sleep on a pull out couch when I come over, won't I. Page 181 of 239

Hazel that scenario is ludicrous: you know how I hate elevators. (What a ridiculous thing to say. What a terrible father I am.) But she smiles and so I laugh an awkward half laugh.

You don't love her anymore do you?

I look down at the parking brake. That's complicated, I say.

Simple question actually. When I look back up it seems that my daughter has aged five years in this moment: her eyes look darker, the lines on her face have grown more serious.

You are just like your old Dad, aren't you, I say. Cut to the chase.

You don't, do you?

Not like I used to, Hazel. (What kind of father I mean seriously?)

She nods. It's better this way. She nods again. Yes, it's better this way. Make sure you call me tonight okay. Mom will probably spend all day thinking of some lie about why you're not there and I'll have to go along with it. You know, for her sake.

Thanks for the ride.

That's it? I ask. Do you want to talk about this more? This is a lot of news in two minutes.

No, she says. No, I've been preparing myself for it since you started sleeping in the office, she says. I blink hard. It's why I drew that picture: I was hoping it might make you think about spending some time apart. It's not good for kids to get stuck in the middle of these things, Dad. I blink hard again. I may be a kid, but I'm a very perspective one, she says. And I have good ears.

A perspective kid, I say with a straight face. Okay. Got it. Yes, Bugs you are. Page 182 of 239

She kisses me on the cheek. Can you pick me at the house tomorrow morning so we can have breakfast together? We can go to Tim Horton's maybe?

No coffee.

I wasn't saying for coffee, Dad: I like the walnut crunch donuts.

I'll check with your mother tonight.

And so it begins, she says. Don't forget to call okay. Love you.

I don't know if I say it in return. I've already started to wonder, did this conversation just happen? In this moment as I sit with the car idling, I feel like a terrible father, and I feel freer than I ever remember and I feel these at the same time and strangely, these two things don't cancel each other out. Page 183 of 239

35: Astra Hallet's Journal

. thirteen dollars and ten more years and thirty kilometres before..,

If you want to help me, find me a way to taste without being swallowed; a way to being without

What I need is my shadow to remind me that I'm living in a body so I know which direction I am not moving from, and how to find my way out

Strategies to deal with my condition don't you see? they have made a house of me,

where the furniture is metal-reflected hard

surfaces and jagged colours and the sun;

surrounded by these mirrored walls that speak

out of turn, or windows completely

transparent in touch.

My fingers are whet; I trace the rain fall

through the glass and you say no umbrellas inside,

but outside, outside is confused about the distinction

between solid and surge where Page 184 of 239

does it take off its shoes?

I watch the six o'clock news, consistently

in half-hour increments, a catalogue resolute in-

decision; dealings never in question, sources taken for face

value never the alternative

angles considered and never a whether report:

never a resolution regardless to offer something

more, something true genuine real.

Advertisements give a break something for people to puzzle

pick up cereal what colour for the curtains Brownies at six o'clock

thirteen dollars ten more years thirty kilometres too late before be

quiet too hot hold on wait your turn.

Quite often I wonder if my vision must not quite be

you see: no thank you, please: I don't want to be like

I am baffled, certainly: it's mysterious that in a curved space, these arrow-cures these strategies they carry on straight, when I find so often I'm circling back on myself Page 185 of 239

With the earth-changing-shape again potentially, the new-flat-opinion may not translate forward as absolute progress; I am not a snail living in soil burrowing up for surface. I have feathers if you want to help me, give me a suitable view let me wonder cross and crooked and please remember that never do I scream when no one is listening. Page 186 of 239

36: Doc

...very useful and satisfactory for home service...

Had I not ignored every well mannered thing I'd been taught in my internship about bed side manner and treatment of patients, I would still be at the hospital right now and my marriage would still be, however loosely, intact. Instead, I'm packing a small box of books that I thought might prove relevant to the Hallet case to take with me to the Holiday Inn.

On the bottom shelf in my home office, I find the rough draft of my master's thesis: case studies, examples scratched up with a purple fine tipped marker. I tell myself again: only take what you need and come back for the rest, and so I put it back on the shelf for no longer than five seconds before I take it off the shelf and open it again.

Though I had lived with it for over three years, I find myself now thirty years later nodding over and over as I flip the pages, as if I'm learning about the Bystander

Theory for the first time. How proud I had been then of my findings:

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in her apartment in Queens, New York.

The attacks spanned approximately a half hour. During this time, one man turned up his radio.

Another man shouted at the attacker, as Genovese screamedfor her life, "Let that girl alone!"

Her attacker, Robert Moseley then left, changed his hat, and came back to finish the job. While

Genovese lay dying, Moseley raped her and robbed herfor about 49 dollars. Approximately a dozen people heard or saw parts of the attack without taking any action to stop the attacks. Page 187 of 239

How clumsy my research was. I wince at my optimistic propositions, and resist the urge to revise my work with a nearby black pen. Some of my statistics are so outdated: over half of my case studies are no longer relevant.

The Theory indicates that the greater the number of people in a crowd, the lower the likelihood that someone would step forward and come to the aid of the victim. Contemporary renderings of what was deemed normal...

My practice is consistently evolving. If I need the current protocol for how to proceed with any given condition, I look to the most recent study from the New

England Journal. I am responsible for familiarizing myself with these new practices, which change, at the very least, three times a month. There are, consistently, variables which must be assigned temporary value in order that I can make judgments: so that when I assure my patient and their families I've done all that I could, I can believe in that.

Contemporary medical truth is as fluid as any other.

In medieval times, my treatment of Astra Hallet would have been informed by the opinion that her womb wandered throughout her body, causing pressure and inevitable damage to her other internal organs. One hundred years ago, women who exhibited her signs of irritability, insomnia and nervousness would have been considered hysterical. If she was married, my treatment plan would have entailed a prescription of sexual intercourse, considered especially effective if she had become pregnant; but for my single Hallet girl, I would have recommended manual stimulation.

I would have sent her to the nearest Sears and Roebuck's and told her to get herself a Page 188 of 239 vibrator: on the second floor next to the vacuum cleaners, under a sign that read something like, THE LITTLE CONTRAPTIONS THAT ARE VERY USEFUL AND

SATISFACTORY FOR HOME SERVICE.

I jam the thesis into the box between some philosophy text books with the black pen and think to myself, it might be time for new practice.

The Vera Purvis incident, as tragic as it may seem, is exactly what I needed. Page 189 of 239

37: Suzie

... drink OF and listen to Johnny Cash and make coffee tables...

What you need to know is I have good reason for saying no pills but you have to suffer through this story to understand why so just shut up and listen.

I was fourteen when my pop took Hanna to the asylum. They still called them that then.

While my mother was in the nut house, several important things happened: I got boobs, fell in love for the first time, lost my virginity in the alley between a produce store and a Greek bakery, got dumped for the first time, got my name written on the wall in the boy's bathroom at my junior high for the first time, and read The Stone

Angel. Amongst other things.

In all that time, I didn't go visit her. I didn't call her to ask her advice because

Pop said it was better for us to let her heal. He said it might embarrass her, Suzie so let's give her space. He wasn't a bad guy, my Pop; that's just how the husbands thought back then.

The day we went to pick her up, Pop told me wait in the car I don't want you to see that place, so I waited. When they came out, Hanna walked all the way to the car looking at the ground in front of her. Even as she opened the door and sat down she didn't look at me. She buckled her seat belt and flipped the visor down, fiddling with her bangs before she shifted her gaze and said, well look at you Suzie. My mouth is dry.

Is there water?

No one said anything on the drive home as Patsy Cline played on the radio.

Once we were in the house, Hanna propped up some pillows on the couch, laid down Page 190 of 239 and turned on MASH. I said, are you comfortable, mom and she said, Suzie, please not now.

I would come home from school and she would say, come here and paint my nails and tell me baby, how was school? And as I painted I would say, not so good, mom and she would say that's nice baby. Don't get the polish on the table baby.

I needed her and she was somewhere else and Pop didn't want to talk about it.

He came home with her bag of pills and he lined them up on the table and he stocked the fridge with ginger ale and he restocked it when we ran low. Pop tarts, too: she ate pop tarts, the cinnamon ones. Once in a while, Pop made corned beef hash for me with ketchup smiley faces like I was ten years old again and we sat at the table and played cribbage and pretended like we didn't hear my mother in the next room yelling at Alan

Alda. Most of the time, though, Pop put the groceries away and the pills on the table and kissed me on the head and said, you okay? And I always told him yes, because I knew he wouldn't know what to do with any other answer. After that he went down to the basement to drink OV and listen to Johnny Cash and make coffee tables and rocking chairs out of oak and maple. Saw dust. Sometimes when he forgot to start the record over again, I could hear him crying.

I started taking off in the middle of the night but I didn't need to sneak out of my house. I walked right out the front door. Once, I left it wide open just to see if they would notice. When I came home, it was still open and Hanna was asleep on the couch and Pop was asleep at his bench in the basement. That's just what they did back then.

I had a lot of boyfriends around then. I lost track. Boy after boy and don't get polish on the table, baby and the chirping of the saw in the basement. Sometimes the grocery store was out of cinnamon pop tarts and Pop bought cherry and then there was Page 191 of 239 a fight. He gave up trying to plead with her after a while because a person has to get sick of hearing, sure, sure whatever I can't see my show move out of the way, and did you remember straws this time?

On the night of my fifteenth birthday, a boy that smelled like pine needles took me out for a burger and then to have sex in an alley and he was really rough. He pushed my face against the brick. When it was over, I sat down on the back stoop of the bakery and he said, pull up your underwear for Christ's sake. I sat there and maybe I was bleeding, I mean I don't remember. That boy he called me some name and lit a cigarette and I think I remember hearing him whistle as he walked up the street. I don't remember what his name was.

A woman from the bakery came out with her two trash bags and swore when she tripped over me. When she saw I was maybe-crying she brought me inside. She wasn't much older than me. She put her coat around my shoulders and sat me up on the deep freeze and brought me a small blue plate with two pieces of baklava and a glass of milk and said, here, and she put her hand on my knee. I cried and she held me close to her and I snotted in her frizzy hair and she put the coat back up around my shoulders when it fell because I put my arms around her neck and she rocked me and she rocked me. It okay, she said; it okay. I thanked her and when I gave her back the coat she hugged me like she needed it as bad as I did.

I think. I mean I don't remember exactly or anything. (Where was I? Sorry.)

Later that year, Pop died. He was whittling the legs for a nightstand when his heart gave out and I found him. I thought he had fallen asleep on the floor.

Suzanne, my mother said while the paramedics were in the basement. Why are these ambulances here? Are they coming to take me back to the hospital? Page 192 of 239

I shut off the TV and sat down beside her. No, Mom. Pop is dead.

She sat there looking at the TV, the lights from the ambulance flickering across her face. It was a heart attack. She looked at me, looked back at the TV. She leaned in and took a slurp from her empty glass and put it back on the table. Then, she looked at me and said, I can't feel it, Suzie I mean I know that I'm but I can't. She looked back at the TV and said can you turn it back on please.

Mom I said, to which she said, Suzanne, please: my show.

That's the moment when I decided no more medication for Hanna.

The next few weeks, I spent as much time as I could away from home. I slept in weird places: the bus, the library. When I was at home, Hanna cursed at me and said, where the hell is your father? Does he have another woman or something? And sometimes when I came home, she would have all the dishes pulled out of the cupboards, all the condiments in the fridge broken and smeared on the floor, all the cutlery spread out on the counter.

Where are they, Suzanne. Where are my pills?

You don't need them anymore.

To hell I. I am your mother smart ass. I tell you what to do. That's bull.

Where are my pills? I'm sick.

You're not sick.

And where the hell is your father?

No more, I told her. Nope.

And then one morning she woke me up at 4:30: crying and hugging me and she said, here I am Suzie I'm sorry baby I'm here I'm here here I am. When I woke up in the morning there were pancakes on the table and tea and she even went to the corner store Page 193 of 239 and bought butter and eggs. When I saw the bag on the counter, I said good for you mom.

What a weird thing to say: good for you.

The morning after that, she sat across from me while I ate my cereal. I stared at her and she sat there with her coffee and she said what. I said, you tell me, what. She poured milk into her coffee and she stirred it very slowly and she said, your father is gone isn't he and I said yep, he's gone and she said, do you think he's coming back and I said, no mom. He died. Oh, she said. Right, so he did, and gulped her tea.

That night when I came home from school, she had made creamed corn and spinach and stuffed chicken and she said hey kiddo how was your day? I said why are there five places set at the table? And she said there's a lawyer coming to dinner and my friend Sherri I met while I was in the loony bin? She's nice. Her husband is coming, too: he owns the Irving Station on Robie? Anyway, he's got us a lawyer. We're going to sue that Doctor for over medicating us. Our lawyer says it could be a ground breaking case: says we could stand to win quite a bit of money. Here, Suzie taste this: is this spinach too garlicky?

There's no way to know if it was the pills, or the fact that Hanna didn't have to be someone's wife anymore that she became able to get things done: cook meals, sign my permission slips, stop me at the door and say, I don't think so when I tried to sneak out the front door after midnight. But because there is a very very good chance it was because of the pills and because Hanna tells me it was because of the pills, that's why: excuse me if I don't want my little girl to turn out like that. Page 194 of 239

I close the door to Astra's room, keep my hand there a moment before I turn around and see Lilly sitting in the waiting room. I give her a half smile and sit down beside her.

Hey baby. How was your day? Page 195 of 239

38: Lilly

...in the yellow ball cap with the twiddly thumbs...

This morning, I run into that janitor with the dark hair and the tattoos again. I am sitting in the cafeteria with my soggy toast, staring at my cold coffee when he says, excuse me do you mind?

He sits down in front of me and starts sawing at a steak with his plastic fork and knife but mostly, he keeps looking at me. He thinks I look familiar. He's tells me he's a graphic designer, and that this is just his night job. He's saving so that he can move to

Spain; Pamplona, actually, he has a Great Aunt there. He tells me my sweater is a good colour on me and I say peach? No, right, but it's a nice material, he says. He reaches for the sleeve. His tattoo reads Idle hands are the devil's workshop. The letters are curvy.

He'd love to take me out for dinner: there's a Keg up the road, he says.

(Seriously.) I say, I'm not really looking for anything at the moment and this is kind of a bad day. But he's leaving for Spain soon, he says. Right. No, right. I mean, I'm full, I say. And I'm a vegetarian. They've got fish, he says. Right, I say. I mean, not fish either. Oh.

He's really intense and his eyes are mostly pupil and they move with me as I shuffle around. I don't know enough about men to know if that makes him sexy or creepy. Sexy I hope.

Well, um hey can I show you something, he asks.

Well, um.

Please, he says.

Well, okay. Page 196 of 239

The waiting room in the maternity ward is empty. He logs onto the computer and types in an address and stands back to watch my reaction as the page loads. I blink.

I look at him. I blink. I look at him.

When did you make this?

Last month.

You mean, before I saw you that day? He nods. But it looks just like-

I know, he says.

How did you-

I don't know. Would you believe me if I said I had a dream of you?

No, I'd say that's lame.

Maybe it was a Loblaw's flyer, then, he says.

This drawing, it's a bunch of blue and white cubes behind a woman and guess who the woman is? I mean, her hair's a little redder than mine, but the similarity is.

The woman is me. (This is for real: I mean if I had made it up I would have at least had him eating a less offensive lunch for Christ's sake. And that fish thing? Come on.)

So what would a normal person do in this situation? Would they go, oh God I'm so sorry, my sister is, and I. Right away, and I. You know, I'm so sorry I really have to go.

But well, that's what I do.

But-

I'm sorry, I say. I'm sorry I have to go.

I run, yes I run, back to the handicapped bathroom. I squish down beside the toilet and I hyperventilated a little and I don't even care that I'm sitting beside a toilet.

I'm sure Janitor cleans it every day. What's the Devil tattoo thing about? Maybe he's a Page 197 of 239 devil worshipper. Maybe he owns a copy of Malleus Malleficarum and other witch burning paraphernalia. Maybe maybe shut up, Lilly.

This isn't going to work. I get up slowly and walk slowly and climb the three flights of stairs to Astra's floor slowly and take a deep breath before opening the door.

***

After three nurses and a security guard have corroborated my identity yes I am the real Lillith Hallet, and I sit down in front of my mother, I answer her.

How was my day? I say. Well, mom, my day is not going so great. Sometime after my conversation with her last night, at 4:36 a.m. to be exact, my friend Ursula lost her fight with cancer. Or she stopped fighting or whatever. She's dead. I mean, she died. At 4:36 a.m. to be exact.

Oh, baby, says the Suze.

Ursula probably didn't even care if I knew or not. Her mother found me in the cafeteria and she told me and I sat there. I just sat there and then you know what I did?

I offered her a piece of my toast. That's what I did. I said you want some? She pulled me in tight me and she said, we lost her we lost her but she's happier there, she'll be better there and I thought, I wonder if that would make Ursula mad: that her mother was saying we. And I thought, what does she mean by that, better there, anyway?

I don't think I believed it until I was just sitting in the bathroom, I say. I mean all morning I've been waiting for Ula to show up and yell at me for letting her mother say we to me. I know it was just a fight that we had. And if we had more time, we would have figured it all out. We'd have had dinner with red wine and lunches where we'd eat paninis and we'd have gone to each other's kid's soccer games and gone door-to-door with their stupid chocolate bars and done our Christmas baking together. We would Page 198 of 239

have figured out how to, and it would have been fine. But no, I guess not. Right?

Because in that version, she wouldn't have cancer, right. In that version I mean, I guess

I would have never met her. Stupid.

You are not, Lil, says Suze handing me a napkin. It's rough on my nose. She

can't even get Kleenex right.

She didn't even have a good ending you know. What a stupid end to her story. I

take the Kleenex and rip it in half and shove the pieces up my nose.

I'm so sorry about your friend. Whatever the fight was about, honey, I'm sure-

Did you see Astra yet?

She's resting. They let me go into her room and check on her she's out for a

while. Sleeping pill.

Hm. Did you talk to the doctor?

I think he got in some shit for pulling that woman. We both smile. No, I

haven't seen him. The nurses tell me he's started tittering her medications.

What's that?

Taking her off.

What? He didn't tell me he was doing that.

He says he told Catherine.

I am angry and instantly I feel bad. I can't tell you why. He's good, I say; her

doctor. I had my doubts, but he really seems to care about her.

Doctors, she says, folding a sweater in her lap. They're all dicks. He shouldn't

have put her on those pills in the first place.

I watch a schizophrenic woman named Mary Beth sit down and start playing the piano. Page 199 of 239

It was about you, I say staring her right in the face. Our fight was about you.

Your fight was about me?

Ursula called you the cunt you know.

Ouch, she says. Don't know what to. Ouch.

She thought I was making the wrong decision telling Catherine to leave and taking your side.

The Suze nods her head. I know that hurt her feelings and I don't feel bad.

Ursula was right, I say. She nods again. How the hell did you get those bruises up your arms, anyway?

I was in a car accident.

You were driving? Where did you get a. You drove?

It was my boyfriend's car my boyfriend was driving.

Your. I don't even. Your 6o)friend?

Isaac. He's a nice man, Lilly. He's a really nice man.

The Irish coffee guy? You picked up some guy when you were totally plastered and I'm sure he is a really nice guy. I'm sure he is mom, a really nice. In the meantime, here I am with. You irresponsible-

I know.

- you inconsiderate-

I know, Lillith.

- you can't just go around meeting men and doing whatever you. I mean, you can but. It's so easy for you isn't it? So easy for you, too and while you're out there, and while you're out there you aren't here when Astra needs you, mom. Our neighbour had to forge your signature on all the forms. You weren't here, I say flicking the napkin Page 200 of 239 over my right nostril. That woman whose hair you grabbed, whose mouth you busted up, that woman who I sent away—she did a good thing for us and for nothing. For nothing else besides to take care of us. She screwed up but she tried at the very least, she gave a shit and you didn't. Not about anyone but Suzie. Not about anyone but

Suzie and fucking, some pancake making, some bible named, some. I needed you, mom.

So many times and it's been Lillith fix it, it's been Lillith do it.

That's when Suzie stands up and pulls me to her and starts sobbing into my hair.

Oh my baby I am a cunt I'm here and I'm not going anywhere I'm here I'm here I'm here. It's the first time I remember hugging her in a very long time and not smelling booze on her breath or seeping through her skin. It's the first time I remember hugging her in a very long time. Page 201 of 239

39: Doc

...chalkboard suspended over a metal box with fishing wire...

It was such a fleeting feeling that easily, I could have convinced myself it had not in fact happened.

But it had. In the hotel elevator, as I watched the doors open onto my floor, I knew that this moment was familiar: everything from the flash of light on the gold doors as they opened to the lingering smell of rose perfume in the hallway. I knew before I walked into the hotel room that the carpet would be pink and that the cup on the bathroom counter would have a water stain on the rim. It was as if I had remembered something I wasn't aware I possessed the memory of.

It started there. I set my tiny box of books down on the desk, grab a lager from the mini bar and pluck Zelan's book from the box, wanting nothing more than to re- familiarize myself with his studies of deja vu, and hoping somehow this proved beneficial to me. Somehow.

I read of a woman who recalled the experience of travelling through a local market square in Budapest. Though she'd never been here before, she led her family down residential streets, describing the smells of chicory and chipotle they would soon be coming across and the booths which carried small wooden bowls of multi-coloured glass beads. She was accurate about every detail.

From there I find myself sorting through Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and James' theory of religious belief. This leads me to Plato, which leads me to Freud and Piaget and back to Jung again. At some point I sit at the desk and begin to scribble spider maps and group ideas together on pieces of the hotel stationary. Page 202 of 239

Hours later from out the hotel window, I hear the ding of a bell and lean over to open the drapes and see an old woman with erect posture riding a bicycle down the street. There is a wire basket on the front of her bicycle and there are purple tulips drooped over the side. Coming up to the intersection is a blue Prius and behind its wheel, a woman in a bright red wool coat looking in the visor mirror and tap tapping lip gloss onto her top lip. Hey, hey look up! I say out loud and though she can't hear me, she does look up just as the woman on the bicycle rides just past her. The woman on the bicycle hasn't noticed that she's almost been hit by the world's quietest car. Most likely has cataracts and doesn't know a thing about an environmentally friendly car; she's been riding bike since the eighties.

I come close to the window so I can feel the cold glass without touching it. I see the Prius woman clutch her chest with the same hand that holds her pot of lip gloss.

She closes her eyes. She holds her breath. And when a nun in a GMC van pulls up behind her and gives a courteous honk, the woman exhales and shakes her head before finally pulling away.

I laugh at the nun before looking back at the desk. It isn't until now, looking at the empty beer bottles and stacks of open books and papers that I realize the magnitude of what it is I have in fact remembered.

***

Can we go? Jas had asked me when she saw the ad for the guest lecture in the

University paper. Mikhael Loughlin discusses theories from his newest book, Flow: How to tap into your creativity, she read. It sounds interesting, Walt.

She had hit me twice during the lecture because I couldn't stop staring at her, and didn't say a word on the way back to the car. Page 203 of 239

You okay? I asked her as we pulled out of the parking lot. She didn't respond.

You aren't angry with me because I wasn't paying attention, are you? Jas, if you expected me to concentrate, you shouldn't have worn that sweater-

I used to make art installations, she said.

O-kay, I said tentatively.

I went to an art class at the community college. I paid four hundred bucks for that Professor to tell me they were garbage but they were good, Walt.

This was one of the many conversations that I would have with Jas that entailed me nodding while she talked with herself.

That Loughlin guy...didn't you think what he had to say was really interesting?

That the most creative people are the ones that come up with a lot of ideas, that they let themselves get past that judging stage.

I nod.

Hard to do that when someone says something is no good and you're, you know.

She made a circle with her finger at her right temple.

Don't Jas. Don't do that.

She looks out the window. They were good, she said. They really were.

Then you should make more.

I will, she said. I think I will.

She asked me to sleep in my own bed that night, and I didn't see her for three days. I came home from class and the door to the back hallway was closed and there was a note on the kitchen table: Busy with a project. Please allow an artist some creative space. Ham and turkey in the drawer for sandwiches, xoxo. The days with the notes on the table were the worst: me eating my sandwiches in my own bed listening to her bang Page 204 of 239 around with The Allman Brothers blasting, waiting to hear her open the door to the kitchen so I could hurry up the stairs and ask her, what are you doing with a drill. I never knew if she ate at all in the days with the notes on the kitchen table.

On the third day as I walked up the street from my evening class, I could see the candles flickering in the window. I could smell the roast as I walked up the driveway.

Close your eyes, she said greeting me at the door. She walked me over to the table and said, see? It's called Self. What do you think?

It was a chalkboard suspended with fishing line over a metal box. You see, this is me, she said, running her fingers over a strip of blue carpet glued to the chalkboard.

These are my bad days, and these little squares of textured wallpaper, these represent when I feel closed in.

What are these? I said, pointing to pieces of a china cup glued on the board next to the wallpaper.

White and smooth, but broken and sharp at the edges. The chalkboard, too: see the outlines of spirals and blue triangles? They're strategies: rubbed out and written over so many times, sort of a palimpsest of my theories of how to get by. They never really go away I just keep writing over them.

And what's the box about?

Some poet's concept, I forget who: negative something or other. Kind of a symbol of accepting the nature of some things as unresolved. So you see, she said stepping back, my interpretation here is that I'm always suspended in that idea or suspended over that idea, but I'm not going to fall in. She flicks the fishing line. No, I won't. You really like it? She asks.

It's beautiful, Jas it truly is. Page 205 of 239

I mean, I forgot I had forgotten how it felt to do it, she said making elaborate hand gestures. I know it's just a bunch of weird things and some glue but I really feel like doing this gives me something. Putting strange things beside each other, when I'm reassembling things, it helps me feel what... connected or something, and meaningful.

Do you know what I mean?

She was doing so well for so long after that making those installations that I thought she had found the antidote to her illness. We started planning a vacation and she asked me if she could meet my sister and her husband. I even stopped keeping the journals for a time.

And then, that morning.

I told her it was going to rain. She said, so what I want to go for a bike ride. She said, come on let's go; wear a hat Walter, don't be a baby.

If I had refused, she never would have skidded out on that puddle. She never would have fallen and bruised up her face and broken the two fingers on her right hand.

After I took her to the hospital, after the doctor had casted her hand she said, I won't be able to do my art Walter. I sat in the chair next to her and put my face next to hers and I told her don't worry baby it will only be six weeks. And she said, that's too long Walter. I felt a fat hot tear stream down her face as she said, it's too long.

It wasn't two days after she came home I found her box of art supplies at the kerb and a note on the kitchen table that said, Don't. Not today.

She was right: it was too long.

That's when I started keeping the journals again.

*** Page 206 of 239

I crack another lager and start compiling a list of books I need to collect from the house in the morning when I go to get Hazel. I order a cheeseburger and coleslaw from room service and have a long shower and another beer before dialling Nora's number and realizing this is Nora's number now, no longer our number. This feels strange.

I check with Hazel about breakfast and she tells me Nora is in the bath in a way that assures me she's sitting right next to our daughter. She tells me Nora says it is fine if I pick her up in the morning. I tell her I'll be there by quarter to eight, that I just have two quick things to take care of at the hospital first, and I think I say I love you one too many times because she reminds me to get some sleep twice.

I stack my papers, turn out the light and watched the city lights move. And then before I lay my head on the pillow for a sleep I know will last longer than a half hour, I practice three versions of a long speech I want to give Thelma when I find her in the morning before deciding to simply tell her yes Thelma. Yes, I am awake. Page 207 of 239

40: Lilly

...Lemon is the old man flavour...

Suze slept on the floor in the family room with me last night. I offered her the couch and she said, Lilly don't be silly. It confused me. It didn't seem silly. Usually when we slept in the same room, she passed out on the bed or the couch and I slept on the floor beside her.

She wakes me up in the morning and passes me a coffee and says, did you sleep okay? I tell her yes, though my back hurts and I've been up most of the night watching the lights across the water and hoping that Purvis woman's husband gets the electric chair.

I was just up to see Astra-

Visiting hours aren't until 1, I say.

Right, the nurse told me that. But the doctor called and he wants to meet with us at 11. What time is the funeral?

I tell her 3 and I tell her no, I don't have anything to wear. She tells me, I have an errand to run but I'll be back by 11. Meet me in the cafeteria? And so I say whatever, yah buh-bye. I don't expect her to come back; at least not until she is good and sedated anyway.

About an hour later she comes traipsing across the cafeteria with a white H&M bag in one hand and a brown McDonald's bag in the other.

She opens the brown McDonald's bag and tips it open. Pancakes, she says.

Sound good? Here, she says handing me the white bag: an outfit for the funeral. Go change so I can see it.

I come back in the black dress and the leggings and Suze she says, it looks good. Page 208 of 239

Little tight, I say.

Good thing you put it on before the pancakes then, she says. Do you want me to come with you? And I shake my head. No you stay with her.

Okay, sure: my tone is cold. Whatever you don't know. Suze has done this before had these phases where she suddenly came home with three bags of groceries

(pizza pockets, hamburgers, stuff we didn't eat) or tickets to a movie, or new sheets for our beds. It doesn't mean she's reformed.

But this time, I can't smell the booze on her. I can't even smell yesterday's booze on her. When I am leaving, she hugs me and tells me, good luck. What a weird thing to say.

It's not for an hour yet, I say.

All right. She doesn't let go.

With my arms at my sides, I say, when I go, don't leave. Don't leave Astra

alone.

She doesn't remind me she is the mother here. What she does is pull back and rub my sleeves up and down and say, okay. Okay, Lil, I won't.

***

While we're eating the pancakes in the common room and waiting for Astra, the

Doc comes to talk to us about some potentially helpful treatments that he wants to try.

His eyes aren't red and he seems really chipper: still completely square, but happy about it.

There are women's groups he thinks she might benefit from, and another one for people suffering from anxiety disorders, and another one for empaths. EmpathsP Suze asks him. People who think they can feel for other people. I suppose they're one step Page 209 of 239 down from psychics on the intuition chain. Anyway yeah, there's a support group for that.

There's also a treatment called EMDR (which stands for Eye Movement something-something) he wants to try. Initially, he explained, it was used for post traumatic stress patients, but they've found it particularly helpful for patients with a distorted perception of self, to access where in the memory these thoughts occur, and other stuff I don't really understand (or, I just stop listening because I'm busy with the pancakes). A machine records the eye movements, which somehow tells Doc where there are painful memories stuck in the brain, so he can plan treatment around working to unlock and release them.

It would be experimental, he says to Suze, and I can't guarantee anything. But I have a good feeling about this.

Suze smiles at him and it's the first time I've seen her smile at a man without getting the feeling she's trying to pick him up. Ever.

I used to be in plays. (Did I tell you that before?) I wasn't very good; it's not like

I wanted to pursue a career in acting or anything, but I did. I only know that because when we were moving to Toronto, I found a little shoe box with some old play bills from our grade school, back when Suze used to be the president of the PTA. In all likelihood, I was only in said plays because I needed to be; so that Suze didn't have to pay a babysitter while she spent all those hours with the seamstress and the people who painted the backdrops and all the other play people. But I don't remember any of it.

When she found the shoe box Suze said, it took us six months to get ready for that play: six months, and then a month of performances, twice a week, of Alice in Page 210 of 239

Wonderland. Astra was that beetle with the bright wings and you were the caterpillar

Lilly, and you kept asking me about chrysalis. Do you remember? You weren't

interested in the stage, or the props, none of it. The other kids were all whipping their

tails and fussing about the glittery makeup, but you: you couldn't be bothered to learn

the dances because you were busy reading a pop-up book about butterflies that Mrs.

Yang the librarian had given you. Don't you remember that honey?

But I was twelve years old at the time: obviously, that's why my answer was no.

And yet, I remember the first time I had to do laundry by myself perfectly. I washed the

towels with the jeans and the shirts and everything came out kind of knobby and navy

blue-ish. I remember the first time I went to the corner store to get groceries and the

clerk she was wearing a crochet hat and she laughed at me when 1 asked her what is the

daily recommendation of sodium, and do you think Mr. Noodles is okay to eat twice a

day?

Our neighbour in Halifax, Mr. Mercer: he had a tomato garden. He always wore

black suspenders and rubber boots and smoked cigars while he gardened. His dog was a

black mutt and her name was Nikki and her collar was blue and her eyes were a yellow- brown. Mr. Mercer's license plate was 559 NLJ. His home phone number, in case of emergency Lilly call Mr. Mercer, was 782-3255.

Case in point: you remember strange things. But what I don't remember hasn't affected me in the least. I mean why do I have to be anything other than neutral about caterpillars? Really, it doesn't matter. I hate Captain Crunch and I don't have a good reason. Do I need to? Is there really some incident that happened in the past that I've locked in my subconscious; a memory that is the real reason why I wince at the sight of that big red box and his stupid little blue hat and moustache, that would provide me Page 211 of 239 with revelatory information that might change my perception of how I see the world?

Is it the reason why I eat too many liquorice candies, or why I have such a problem with men, for example? Really. EMDR: sounds like a load of bull.

Where would I be, had I had to live a life all about Lilly? If I had been forced to make the decisions and say, no thank you I don't want to, when those boys had asked me to go out on- okay okay, z/"boys had asked me to go out on dates. What would have happened was that I would have had to make decisions for myself. I would have had to pick a city to live in and a college to go to and a program to study. I would have had to shop around for apartments, and consider the aspects I found deal breakers in roommates and if I would have only women roommates, and write essays about why I felt I deserved bursaries and I would have. But I didn't. Because someone had to be there for Astra.

And now, now that someone else might be there for Astra, or now that she doesn't in fact need someone to be there for her all the time because Astra just might learn life strategies for being there for herself, I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember how to live a life for Lilly and I didn't know which part of the brain to look in for that memory, either.

I finish the pancakes and thank the doc and check my phone and Suze's phone for minutes and I tell Gina to take care of my sister. And it's as I'm walking to the funeral, a June bug lands in front of me and that's when I remember that Astra was wearing wings: the morning of the episode that got her thrown out of school, the day that Suze retired as PTA vice pres and started drinking the Jimmy, Astra was wearing wings.

There was a knot in the string on them and I yelled calm down Astra, because I couldn't Page 212 of 239 think about how to get it untied with the stupid caterpillar costume making me all hot her screaming in my face.

EMDR... what a load I mean that's easy isn't it: is the release of a memory like that supposed to change my life or something? I stomp the June bug into the pavement and watch him twitch and I stomp on him again and listen to the crunch before I walk away.

Honestly, I mean honestly, who gives a fuck about caterpillars anyway.

***

Apparently, Ursula liked olives. They were her favourite food. At the reception, there is a long white table with at least eight different kinds of olives in little white dishes and tapenade with fancy crackers and a vegetable tray. Olives.

There are a lot of things about Ursula that I didn't know: like she was an award winning Irish dancer. She had seven uncles and one of them has a bulbous nose with a lot of broken blood vessels and he holds my hand in both his hands when he talks to me and I can't help but stare at the nose when I talk to him. I bet his name is Merv and that Urs called him the Perv. Her cousin owns a funeral home and his name is Lewis and he is tall and has a very nice smile. Lewis.

And she was Anglican. Her church is full of stained glass windows and the pews are shiny and slippery.

I also didn't know Ula was friends with my tattoed, young cute artist Janitor.

What are you doing here? I say with a mouth full of tapenade when I see him coming toward me. Are you following me?

Hey, now- Page 213 of 239

I raise my eyebrows and poke my head in his direction. Are you? You're a creep. How could you follow me to a funeral?

He laughs. Well okay then, he says. Don't flatter yourself: I'm not here for you anyway. Ula was my friend. I mean, we hung out a lot the past few weeks.

A man comes between us and takes a few crackers. He lifts one up as a kind of salute as he walks away.

We talked about comic books, he says.

(See: she liked comic books. I didn't know that either.) She never mentioned you,

I say.

She never mentioned you either you know. What's your problem?

You creep me out. (I can't believe I said that.)

No, I don't, he says spitting a pit he's been sucking on into a little blue napkin.

You are interested in me and that's what weirds you out.

Right: I don't think this is appropriate conversation for our friend's funeral.

What's appropriate funeral talk?

Ursula's mom catches my eye from a few feet away and winks. She was mad at me when she died, I say.

For what?

She thought my mom was a disaster and I disagreed. And other stuff.

You are so strange, he says. Is that why you've been at the hospital for the past week? Your mom?

I'm strange? Pm strange? You're the one who painted a picture of me.

Now wait a minute I painted a picture of a woman I dreamed about that looked like- Page 214 of 239

No, you didn't: you totally saw me in the maternity ward that day and you were like oh! I'm gonna be creepy and then you went home and drew a picture of me-

Holy, shit, woman: do you know how long it took me to paint that canvas?

Don't flatter yourself. He leans in then, yes he does, and he tells me I'm insane.

Don't call me that, I whisper. Fuck you. Fuck you and your dreamy what-the- ma-fuck painting. (Damn: here come the tears.)

Hey, oh man, I'm sorry. He touches my wrist and it makes me shiver. I didn't mean to make you-

Don't flatter jyowrself, I say looking around. I stare at a set of ginger twins and think about throwing olives at them; the big purple ones, the big salty purple ones with the cheese in the middle. Then I think about strangling the Janitor. I think violence might be a productive means of releasing this anger. But I just keep crying instead. I think that's what the normal reaction is in a situation like this.

Hey hey, calm down she had a good life. She really did.

She was twenty years old! Good li- she didn't even get to become something you know? She never got to go to college and like, do something: adult, like. Or have her own apartment or live with other people besides her family. Even if she lived in a bachelor apartment and became a God damn janitor, even then.

Listen, I'm a graphic artist; cleaning hospital just pays my bills. And I make good money there.

Well you know what I'm saying. She could've been a- I don't know. She could have been a butcher.

. A butcher?

She loved meat. Page 215 of 239

He nods. Or a supervisor at Maple Leaf; bet they're hard up for employees since

the listeria outbreak.

She could have done a lot of things with her life. She could have become my best

friend. I rub my nose with one of the blue napkins. I have a hard time keeping friends, I

say.

No, you? You're so easy to talk to.

Forget it, I say.

No, I'm sorry I'm sorry what were you saying?

I fold the napkin fold it again and unfold it twice before I say, it's my sister.

Why I've been at the hospital? She is, well she was, I mean they think. Her Doctor,

this Weasel guy he has all these theories about how to help her. He thinks he can help

her.

Vieshell? He says. Oh, if anyone can help her it's that guy. He's a legend.

Right, that's. No, I mean, that's great. Excuse me.

I walk to the pedestal with the tiny urn on top of it and trace my fingers down

the golden engraved cherry blossoms. Ula's mother wanted her buried in a coffin and

they argued about it mostly because her mother hated the death conversation

altogether. But when it came down to it, Ursula had wanted an urn not a coffin and so

that's what her mother gave her.

As I rub it I think about making a wish, and then I feel like I should act more appropriately, and then I think, Ula would have really appreciated me having the inappropriate thoughts. That's what she would have wanted. Page 216 of 239

If you're lucky, you remember to do the things that the people you love ask of you. Even if these aren't the things that you would choose for them, or things that you think are important. Because you can just never ever know.

Are you okay? Janitor asks me. You're all sweaty. Do you need to get some air?

No, I've got something I need to do, I say. I've got to go I have to get a package to someone.

Can I come?

No. You creep me out I told you.

Come on, you shouldn't be alone.

Fine whatever, do you know where there's a post office nearby?

There's money, Suze told me one night after coming home drunk, surprise. I was peeling the nylons off her feet and putting her into bed. I put a finger to my mouth, pointing at Astra on the couch. Your Nan Han, Suze said at the same decibel level: she left you money.

Uh-huh, arms up! I whisper; I know she left us money to live off of, that money she got in that settlement or whatever. I've seen your bank statements, mom; I know she left you a lot of money and that you're running through it like. Never mind. I sit on the edge of the bed. I've seen your bank statements is all.

Not that money, Lil. She left you money. In an education fund.

I looked blankly at my mother as she turned into her pillow. You're graduating high school next week, she said: you can use that money to go to school. You're smart: Page 217 of 239 and your Nan knew that. Now, can you bring me some water, baby? With a straw, mmm.

The next morning, Suze talked about the man she had met the night before, but she never said anything about our conversation. We never talked about it again.

There was a period of about three months when Astra didn't have an episode at all, when she was seventeen and in love with the homeless man named Billy who slept in the doorway of Ardie's art store beside the fruit market. I know that now.

I was halfway to the cereal aisle, talking to her before I realized, that first day they spoke, that she wasn't with me in the market. I went back outside and she was kneeling in front of him and I said, Jesus Astra come on.

He's nice, she said, turning back to wave. Don't you think? His name is Billy.

Come on Astra, focus: primavera. Go get me some artichokes, please. What do you think of some zucchini?

I know she was looking for him when we came back out but he was gone. After that day, she'd look in the fridge and say, shoot we're out of apples, or Lil, we really gotta go get some spinach; we're gonna need to go to the market. And when I told her okay, she'd go and fix her lip gloss and braid her hair.

After a few times of waiting at the corner while she talked to him, I yelled to her, okay Astra time to go and she said, can I stay, Lilly? Can I just stay and talk to him while you shop? I promise I won't go anywhere.

And I did. Against my instinct, I agreed to let her sit with him and went to do the shopping alone because her look was so desperate and because it had taken her Page 218 of 239 nearly an hour to do her hair that day. Of course I only ended up with some grapefruits and some cucumber because it's all I could get and still see her out the front doors.

The next time I saw him, I noticed he had clipped his beard and brushed his teeth. That day I stood and watched them the entire time and when I came out with nothing I pretended I had left my wallet at home. I watched him as he played the guitar for her and her play with her hair and eventually I branched out further into the market until I didn't check on her at all.

I would come back out to the street and say, the bags Astra come on my shoulders hurt and she would say, bye Billy. And he would say, bye Astra, bye Lilly and would say, Astra why did you tell him my name and she would say, Jesus, Lilly he's homeless not a murderer. And then one day when we came by, Billy had a trolley and wheeled it out in front of me, here Lilly: so you don't hurt your shoulders anymore.

And well, I guess that's when I stopped hating Billy so much.

Next she asked me if he could come over for dinner. I told her, no Astra.

Inappropriate. He could steal from us. She said, Jesus Lilly he's homeless not a thief.

So as a compromise, the next day Astra and I brought him a container of homemade

Paella and a heel of crusty bread and I left her there to eat and play pocket scrabble with him while I shopped for some used books.

Later that night I caught Astra sneaking out of the house. I said Astra what the hell and she said, sorry; um, well we forgot to give him the butter, Lil. And the night after when I caught here again, she said, um, the mustard?

The next night I didn't catch her. The next night I woke up and she was gone and this is when I started hating Billy again. Page 219 of 239

I had fallen asleep on the couch while I was watching Jay Leno, and by the time I found her, she was all the way down town in the entranceway at Ardie's, curled up in

Billy's sleeping bag and laughing with him.

What is wrong with you? I said. Do you know she's sick, Billy? Do you have any clue how dangerous it is for her to be out and alone like this? With you? You stay away from her if you care about her! And Astra got up and said, Lilly please okay please let's go. She didn't even say good bye to him she was so embarrassed.

As we climbed back up the hill that night I yelled at her, how foolish can you be he could be a thief he could be a murderer and she didn't say a word. When we got home she turned to me and said, I thought you got it. I thought you understood. I said, Astra

I'm sorry and she said you don't though, do you. You don't. I'm a little sensitive, Lilly but I'm not sick.

This is the only time in my life when Astra asked me to leave her alone.

She didn't speak to me for three days until I said okay let's go to the market then

I embraced her hair. But Billy wasn't there, and he wasn't there the next time either.

The third time, when we passed the doorway, Astra stopped and sat on the stoop. I sat down beside her and I said I'm sorry. I know he was a kind man and I know he wasn't dangerous. He was a kind man with shitty luck and I know that and I really am. I'm so sorry, I told her.

She took my hand and held it against her cheek and put her head on my lap. I know, Lilly. I forgive you. I know.

A few days later while I was in the bathroom at a Starbuck's, Astra had an episode. And another the next day at the market so we had to go to Sobeys after that. Page 220 of 239

It was a month later, on our way to go see Uncle Jerry, I saw Billy. In the North end in front of a Mary Brown's playing his guitar and I didn't pull the string to stop the bus and I didn't say, Astra, there he is, Astra. Where would they be now, had I pulled the string.

Money wasn't an issue: if I had given her some money, Billy and her they could have rented an apartment. I could have lived in the same building. I could have even lived on the other side of town and checked on her in the mornings and I could have told Billy to call my cell phone if there was any reason to be concerned.

I could have got a job cooking at a French restaurant, or an Indian restaurant

(why not Indian?) and rented the apartment next door. I could have learned to cook

Aloo Gobi and Channa Dal with Naan bread and I could have had them over for a housewarming party. I could have bought Billy one of those blazers with the suede elbows on it and lit candles and Astra could have danced in her point shoes to his music and their life could have been good and so what he was homeless and a few years older than her, and so what she was a little sensitive? Maybe he needed her, too. Maybe Billy knew better than I did how to help my sister. Well, maybe.

In all the time I wished for Astra to be better, in all the time I spent imagining her life episode free: what she'd look like, how she'd smile, I never thought to picture what I would be doing. I never got further than that.

Billy was a good man, I knew that. The reason I didn't pull the string that day was because before that day, I had never considered Indian food.

***

This must be why Suze loves the booze so much: it makes you forget things.

Morning. Smoke? Janitor asks, leaning into brush my hair. Page 221 of 239

I twitch away. I look back at the pull out couch I'm sleeping on and realize I'm in a trailer with the Janitor who has been sitting at a tiny fold down kitchen table watching me sleep. My leggings are on the back of the chair.

I vomit in my mouth a little. No please no, I say. He leans in to brush the hair off my forehead. Are you okay?

This is my trailer, he says. You're a fun drunk aren't you! You wouldn't let me stop! You also made us a bunch of friends last night, Lil I tell ya.

Apparently I didn't drink quite enough because I remember it all, though it hurts my head to remember. Oh God, I really told him I was a virgin. Oh God. I look at the clock. Five thirty? In the morning? I ask. Ugh. I still feel... fuzzy.

Janitor passes me a glass of tomato juice and I take a drink and make a face. I think your tomato juice is bad, I say.

Not tomato juice. It's my special hangover tonic. You really don't drink I mean, you only had, like five screwdrivers last night.

Is this where you live?

No, he says. I have an apartment in Vaughan, but this is where I stay most of the time. It's where I paint.

Did you do these? All of these? I ask, looking around at the pictures of mountains and water and snow and saying ugh again because I turned too quick.

He lights a cigarette and nods. It's the sugar, you know. You drink the whisky your head wouldn't feel like that.

You travel a lot.

Mmm-hmm. Do you? Page 222 of 239

Not really. I've never been anywhere but here and Halifax and a convenience store in St. Louis du Ha! Ha! In Quebec. The Greyhound broke down and we were there for almost seven hours. I pull the sheet up around my naked chest.

But you hate Toronto, he says. I shrug. So when are you planning to leave?

I struggle out of the sheets and open my phone. Three missed calls, but no Suze.

Suze has it covered. Suze is the sober one out of the two of us and right now I think,

Astra's better off with Suze. Suze is sober. This is a new feeling. This is a strange feeling.

It's complicated, I say.

Three days before I was supposed to leave for Italy, I got into an accident he says. I was rounding the corner at St. Clair and Dufferin on my bike and a Greyhound bus hit me. Shattered my femur in three places, but I boarded the plane anyway. I traveled around Venice in a wheelchair. I mean, it's really the city to do it in: you spend most of your time sitting in a boat right. It's never as complicated as you tell yourself it is, Lilly. You go when you need to wherever you need to keep yourself intact. And you hate Toronto, so.

He exhales and the smoke sits in the hot air between us and I watch it twist under the lamp light.

I've thought about Iqaluit, I say.

Really? You know how cold it gets there?

Ah, I'm from Nova Scotia? I actually built igloos when I was little. One winter my uncle had to shovel us a tunnel so we could get out the front door. So yeah, I do know: minus 52 is their record low for January. That was rude, I think, so I smile. Did you know the addresses are all wrong there? I ask. Because they built the houses so far Page 223 of 239 apart, and then they kept building and so the addresses go from like, 1230 to 629. It's impossible to find the right place. I gulp the sour tomato juice again. Or Yellowknife

I've thought about that, too.

Did you know they eat seal blubber up there? He says. And a head of lettuce costs like 5 bucks.

I slap the blanket with both hands. No, I didn't: apparently I'm kind of bad at the vegetarian thing, I say. You're sure this isn't... he shakes his head. I really like Jell-o and scrambled eggs.

Jell-o?

The gelatine. He shakes his head again. It's like, animal bones crushed up, I say.

You think that would make me want to stop eating it. But sometimes I just want Jell-o.

What kind?

Cherry.

There's so much I don't know about you, he says kissing my hand. I like lemon.

Gross. That's gross, I say pulling it back under the sheet. No one chooses lemon. Lemon is the default flavour. Lemon is the old man flavour. Oh, God I think about my snotty nose again. Oh God.

I also like Thrills gum, he says.

The soap gum?

And barbecue peanuts.

Again that's gross. I lean back on the pillow and say, I like to cook. And I like books: I mean I like words. I find them really. You can learn a lot from the way people.

From the kind of words that they choose. Page 224 of 239

Are you like an English teacher? Or a journalist or something? I shake my head

and shift because there's a spring sticking in my back ow. Like we know I'm a janitor,

he says. So, what do you do?

This is the first time someone has ever asked me this question. I'm not a grown

up yet, I say. (That's actually what I say to him.)

This is when I think I may not be the oldest twenty-three year old after all. Not

at all.

Oh, I thought you were older. What are you, like nineteen? Please tell me

you're at least nineteen.

I'm twenty-three.

He shakes his head. Strange, strange girl. Well then: what do you want to do

when you grow up? And, when might that be anyway?

I've thought about cooking school, or maybe becoming a linguistics professor. I

pick up a CD off the floor and say, Tchaikovsky? Really?

When I'm painting, okay; it's different depending on my mood. A professor,

wow; that's like, a lot of school.

I liked school. And I like the Smiths I guess, and Rise Against.

Yeah? Ever see Rise Against in concert? They're pretty good.

I've never been to a concert before. He shakes his head again. Strange, right I

get it, I say.

Well then we should go, he says. They're coming to the Rogers Center next month. Page 225 of 239

I gulp down more tomato juice and look at my phone again. But you're moving to Pamplona: so, I guess not, I say. His teeth are so white. So white for a smoker, especially. I hold up my phone and say, sorry, I just have to, do you mind?

There are good schools in Toronto, you know. Oh, and I might be moving to

Pamplona. And as he steps outside, again he says, might be.

Lillith Jane Hallet, do you know it's Wednesday?

Good morning, Uncle Jerry.

Wednesday. And since I've called you at least six times a day for the past four days, twenty-nine times I've called to be exact-

Jerry-

-Six times A DAY, Lil! Six times before you finally return my call, do you know? Do you know I was worried sick?

You don't need to be worried. Astra is really she's okay now, Jerry and Suze is with her at the hospital. She's got this Doctor-

Do you know how difficult it's been? Lilly, I can't wear any other kinds of mittens. It's been minus twenty outside all week and I haven't been able to leave my house did you mail them? Tell me please did you mail them? They haven't come. They haven't I checked the mail this morning what time is it there? It's early.

I did, Jerry this afternoon; sent them Express Post so they should be there in a few hours. I'm really sorry it took me so long. Page 226 of 239

41: Suzie:

...were enough until they weren't...

The doc bent the rules again and let me wait for Astra in her room. He's cute.

Really well kept: clean part in his hair, shirt tucked in, high belt matching shoes. Not

normally my type but he looks safe. Safe is good when you're a mother. No leaving in

the middle of the night you know. He's wearing a wedding band though.

When Astra wakes up for the first time and sees me sitting at her bed, there's a flicker of anger that goes out when she blinks, and then she says, thank God you're okay. Thank God I'm okay?

That's what my daughter, lying in the hospital bed, says to me.

Now I'm sitting in the chair watching her sleep with my head on a really

uncomfortable pillow and ouch, my neck Jesus and I'm wondering where the hell Lilly is—well, our world is just completely upside down. I don't even really know what to do with these emotions. But I'm not going to call her. No, she's an adult and she deserves a night off: maybe she went out drinking and well, she deserves that much.

Drink: that's what I want to do. That's what I usually do when I find myself thinking too much about something or sleeping in a strange place. But I'm not doing that anymore. Tomorrow, I think leaning over and scribbling it on a scrap piece of a

McDonald's bag, find an AA meeting. I'm going to start going to meetings again and

I'm going to stay sober. Yep I'll get my white key tag and I'll find myself a sponsor and

I'll smoke with everyone on break and drink too much coffee and at the end of every day

I'll get used to feeling that is what getting through a day feels like and then I'll do it all over again.

The problem is I feel like it won't work. Page 227 of 239

The only requirement to be a member of AA is the desire to stop drinking; however, seven of the twelve steps talk about a higher power, and at least five of them name it God.

This is just me being logical here, and maybe I don't do that so well, but when you've got your doubts about God which, let's be clear, most people in a room full of addicts might, there are some people that might be put off by this. I was open minded; I could tolerate sitting through conversations about Him, put my foot in the circle and ask Him to give me the power blah blah, and ask Him to remove my short comings et cetera. But at some point during the recovery as a result of the steps, each addict is supposed to have some sort of spiritual awakening: accept God in their lives and restore their faith.

Yeah. Well, I didn't. I had eight lucky years clean and then I had a permanent relapse due to failure to spiritually awaken.

Maybe I've seen too many things in my life to let me believe in all that. I want to: and I want to be a mother to my girls. When I was younger and going to meetings,

I felt like it was okay that I didn't believe in the God stuff or the higher power stuff because my babies were enough reason for me. My babies were my religion, or my higher power or what have you: my reason to be better, to try harder, to call my sponsor when I found myself standing outside of a bar. They were enough, until Astra got sick and the stress of being her mother and being no good at it and not being able to help her and was it my fault, well. My babies were enough until they weren't.

The problem is I don't know if I want to start asking certain questions. Some questions shouldn't be asked because the answer will never be good enough anyway. I might just be better off the way I am, really. What if I figure out I can't help my Page 228 of 239 daughter? What if whatever is wrong with her isn't something that can be fixed?

What if it's not medication and what if this is my fault? I know I'm not so kind to my liver, but I'm absolutely sure my heart can't take that.

Okay, so I'm unreliable. And okay, so I may be a little embarrassing. But I can still be there for my girls.

I just have to make sure to put minutes on my phone.

I'll set limits for myself. I won't drink before 5 o'clock— that's reasonable. And on week nights, I'll just have one drink. I can do that. I could just have one or two drinks. I mean, really it would just be to take the edge off. Yeah just a few. I could just drink a few. What is this pillow made of? Plastic? I wonder if these windows open man it's hot in here.

Mom?

Sorry Astra honey, I didn't mean to wake you but it's hot in here isn't it? Why don't the windows open more than this?

Mom.

I mean really, you're in a mental ward I mean, no offense sweetheart but you think they might take fresh air into account this crack isn't' really enough-

Too much, mom, sit down you have to sit down, she says. I turn around and see my daughter with her hands over her ears shaking her head. Astra, oh no do you need the nurse? Where's your buzzer we should get the Doctor-

She takes my hand in hers and shifts her gaze back and forth between my eyes. I don't need the Doctor, she says. She looks down my face and up again. No, Mom.

Please, don't. Page 229 of 239

You don't want fresh air? I hear my voice crack. Why do I feel like that's not

what she's talking about? Her stare is deep and her grip on my hands is so warm it's

almost hot it's too tight. I want to let go. Why do I feel like she can hear? No. I mean

she can't. Why does it feel hot between us what the. I want my daughter to stop it,

Astra I want her to stop looking at me and it's burning ouch, my hand now. Burning

and so I let go.

Astra, I'm just going to get a drink of water, I'm so thirsty are you thirst-

Are you coming back.

You know I think the gift shop is closed? And you know me, well I don't have

any change for the vending machine so I'm just going to run up the street I think I think there's a corner store there and get some waters and I'll pop right back.

Are you coming back. Her eyes are shifting their colour somehow they are getting darker the way they do when she has her episodes.

Astra, now calm down okay I just said yes, now you need your rest I'll be I'm just. Go back to sleep okay honey. I'm gasping for air now as I fast walk out of the room without saying good-bye. I can't handle those eyes anymore.

The nurse takes her sweet time waddling to the door to let me out. No matter how you feel about them, though you have to smile and say, thank you so much because you don't want to give them reason to think you belong there.

When I'm in the elevator I gasp for air and I feel my back sweating and I realize for the first time I am absolutely petrified of my own child: my Astra, my warrior.

My mortal weapon.

Let's go out west. Page 230 of 239

I take the elevator to the second floor and ask the nurse for Butts, rethink the visit oh, God that name, Butts, and get to Isaac's room and I sit on the edge of his bed.

He's wearing hiking boots and the lace is untied on the left shoe. There is mud crusted on the bottom of the leg. He has a little plastic grocery bag of belongings tied up and sitting beside him. His bed is made. He made his bed. I'm sorry, what? I say.

I'm so glad you came, Suzie. I called down to the front desk to ask where Astra was but the woman said no way no more visits for that girl. I thought I might never see you again. So I resolved that if you came back to me, the first thing I would say was, let's go out west.

Isaac, why would I do that?

My brother and his wife own a micro brewery and resort in Kelowna. When I called him to tell him about my accident, I mean our accident he says, rubbing my arms, my bro he told me he just got rid of his head chef, immigration issues or something, and he wants me to take the job. Timing, huh? I'm just waiting for the nurse to okay me and I can leave and we can go right away, or we can wait or, well what do you think?

I can't have this conversation right now.

Isaac touches my face. His hands are warm but not too warm and it feels nice. I put my hand over his. Yes, you can Suze. We can live in a chalet and I can bring you hot chocolate and we can make love in the hot tub all that cheesy stuff. Suzie, I almost died the other day. He touches the stitches on his forehead. Well, it was serious. And thank God, it made me realize... (oh, sorry I tuned out there for a minute). Hello?

Suzie?

I'm sorry, I was thinking about my daughter.

Honey, I'm so sorry I've been so preoccupied how are your girls? Page 231 of 239

Her Cancer Friend died, I say. Lilly's. I guess she's okay I don't know where she is though but she's right, yeah, I mean I'm sure she's all right. And well Astra you know she is, she um. Her Doctor is really good, he's really hopeful he can help her without medicating her. There are strategies, different strategies he wants to try.

Good, that's great. Are they releasing her soon?

The Doc asks me, does she like music? And I tell him she used to play the xylophone when she was little, and my mother had a banjo she used to play her banjo.

He says arts therapy might be good for her it's really successful for a lot of people. I pick at some dirt under my nail. She used to do ballet too, I say. I had to take her out because she was frantic about it: she had her ribbons tied so tight that she started bleeding and her toenail bent all the way back there was blood there was so much blood.

(Hello? Do you have a Kleenex?) Her Doctor says she can go in the morning, but she's saying she doesn't want to leave.

It's terrible here, why would she want to stay? He says wiping a tear from my cheek. Whoever cooks the food is a rookie. Isaac laughs and then straightens his face when I look at him. I'm sorry, Suze.

She has this roommate Gina, I say picking at the frayed stitching on his blanket.

She almost OD'd and Astra seems really attached to her. The Doctor told me he's seen

Gina like at least three times in the last year. He told me that this is the first time he feels confident that when she leaves, she may not be back. The Doc thinks Astra's helping her somehow.

Isaac nods and strokes my hair. He is a good listener, I think and look up and down his face, but his nose is a little big.

You don't want me to go with you, Isaac you don't even know me. Page 232 of 239

I know you.

Do you?

I know enough.

Do you know I don't like to wash my hair more than once a week? It takes too

long to blow dry. Yeah and some days I drink almost half a bottle of bourbon all by

myself. And that I like Great Big Sea?

So? I still listen to Oasis, he says. And Garage: I have a crush on the lead

singer.

I'd call myself an atheist but I don't even have the energy for that. You just said,

thank God. Yeah, I don't believe in all that.

You would if you sat at the top of the mountains in Kelowna, he says.

I'm an alcoholic and I'm not a good person.

I can help you and I don't believe you.

I shake my head and start to count the holes in his boots while he rubs my back.

My mother didn't forget about Astra: she left money for her too, I say. Hanna said,

when the time comes Suzanne, you'll know when to give it to her. And I took Astra's

money Isaac, what do you think of that? I started just taking a little bit and a little bit

and I just. Well I guess I just. I thought, what the hell would she do with it? Nine,

ten, eleven. It's half gone now. What kind of mother am I?

I know the idea of going out west might seem like bad timing, Suzie but it's perfect. We could go biking and hike and find you a counsellor so you could deal with this stuff. And we'd be living at the resort for free, you could send Astra money, or she could even come with- Page 233 of 239

No! The forcefulness in my voice surprises us both. A nurse yells something

about switching a shift down the hallway and we both stop to listen. Finally, I say,

something else you don't know about me is that I used to be vice president of the girl's

PTA. Yep I did and I was good at it. I was good at organizing things and budgeting

and pipe cleaners. And the other mothers were jealous. Al-right, he says slowly.

I know that certain people are destined for great things I know that. Astra could

be great. She's so incredible. But I'm not: I don't want to do anything extraordinary.

My biggest wish I ever had was to just be a good mother and I will never be any better

than this. They have been better mothers to me than I've ever. I've tried and I tried

and I just don't. I just don't have it in me, Isaac. It takes everything I have and then

there's nothing else left, nothing to keep me going. My daughters are better than me

they're stronger they're just, better than me. They're better without me.

A blond nurse comes in and stands at the bed and says, oh sorry I can come back

and Isaac says yes, please and I say no, no it's fine and while she checks his blood pressure, she keeps looking up at me. The nurse makes some joke as she pumps about

giving him scented markers so people can sign the cast on his left arm and neither of us

laugh. She peels back the Velcro and says, okay, then just have to get the Doc to sign

off that your pressure's lowered and you're good to go, shouldn't be more than an hour and I say, you know what? I'm going to go now-

Suzie-

-yeah I've gotta go actually.

Suzie wait-

Do you really want to or not, Isaac? Do you really want me to go with you or is it just talk? Do you really want me? The nurse looks at him with a craned neck this Page 234 of 239 nosy nurse, and he gives us both the slow nod. She smiles at me and I grab my purse and as I walk out into the hallway, I say, when you're finished I'll be at the Pickle Barrel.

You want to leave we leave tonight. Page 235 of 239

42: Astra

...there is always traffic now...

Yes, Lilly. Yes I understand.

My Doctor said, okay I'm going to start the discharge process and he sets up an outpatient meeting. He took Lilly into the hallway and I see her eyes and that doctor's the white of them and Lilly didn't blink not once wide eyed open. They came back the doctor held my hand and I hugged him. He smelled like coffee and he held onto my shoulders and he looked over my face and said, we'll get it right I promise you. He flicked a card into my hand and said here's my home number. Anytime.

Lilly and I took a maroon taxi home slow drive and the driver talked to us about bad time of day for traffic and damn construction on St. Clair have to take a detour. We didn't say anything about.

We walked up the stairs and I knew she thought maybe you were there but I knew that you weren't there. Next to a tumbler on the coffee table, two bank cards and some documents. There was a note written on the back of a receipt for ricotta cheese, eggs and maple syrup, $11.13. The note didn't explain.

It's been over a year now. Sometimes I try to talk about you but Lilly says, no please we don't say her name again. I know she thinks she might one day see you on the subway or sit next to you in a coffee shop but I know you aren't there anymore. You are not lost anymore because you are with my father in the fractured found but your streets will Page 236 of 239 never cross your maps and worlds are crafted in different languages.

Lil is still in Toronto at a culinary school she loves the root vegetables and in love with a man named Lewis he owns a funeral home. They live together in an apartment above a computer store and their kitchen is bright green and copper pots hanging above an island and they have a tabby cat. Lewis always rubs Lil's back he brings her flowers wears a suit even when he watches the news and he reminds her not to swear.

Catherine has been sending me the yellow envelopes of money you send to her with no return address. She sends them with letters written on flower stationary to say things about the water heater or God damn that stupid new Tim Horton's down the street there is always traffic now with the drive thru. She rented our apartment to a man who makes bagels and muffins on the night shift and plays Charlie Parker music too loud too early in the morning or it's too late. Lilly and Catherine don't speak and I don't need to ask why.

Lilly calls me at least three times a day what are you doing today Astra how is your day going what did you do all day when are you coming to visit again. Though she was nervous did you pack your passport don't forget to chew gum when you take off are you sure I mean are you sure you're okay sis? Lilly let me take a plane by myself and I moved back to Halifax. Jerry picked me up at the airport he is doing much better now.

I do things by myself now but I never forget my phone that's for Lilly's sake. Page 237 of 239

Eleven months and even the winters here I love every day for different reasons. I rent a

room in Jelenik and Aggie's house: do you remember the ballet lessons? He still wears

his green shirts and though her face is older but her eyes are still bright. The walls in

my bedroom are purple and I have plants and maple bookshelves they look like the ones

from Nan Han's house. I buy my books from a used bookstore on Granville I like

philosophy.

On Monday and Wednesday afternoons I meet with a women's group in a Catholic

Church rectory where we sit on plastic chairs and the carpet is bright blue with aqua

diamonds and a woman who wears bright dresses runs the meetings is a good listener

and when she holds my hand I feel clean oxygen rhythm through my blood.

On Tuesdays I play the xylophone in a band with a man named Irving who plays the

steel drums and Eva she is the singer. We play in Eva's garage and sometimes she

makes rhubarb pie. On Thursdays I help Aggie iron I like the steam and we drink

peppermint tea it's cool and hot. Every night, I help her cook a big meal I am excellent

with spices. In the evening Jelenik plays his violin and Aggie and I dance and the man

downstairs doesn't complain, mom, because he is nearly deaf and because I take his trash

to the kerb and once a month I make him Lilly's eggplant parmesan.

Every-day-things are necessary, but I also go on day vacations to places I can get to by

the Acadian bus. Out of the ordinary things are necessary in their own way. There's a yoga studio in Truro a teacher there named Felice, a soap store in Fredericton a diner in

Oromocto I like their cheese fries and I go to these places by myself. Every few months, Page 238 of 239

I take a plane to go to see Lilly and Lewis. Next month I'm going to Ireland with Aggie we've rented a flat for the month. It's in a building on Joyce Street across from a pub called The Dog's Bullocks. I can already feel the green.

I travel places in my sleep now mom, where I have feelings I cannot touch. My ears breathe in-flux and I fall through a whole I am some-how or am I in part a voice in mimic of the in-seam of repair. And when I wake in my bed again I've forgotten. Most times I remember only that in order to survive, I must continue to try and remember.

You couldn't give me a sound mind mom, because you didn't have one to give: there was no still within your noise I know, no way to recover your cure. Memory of repair was impossible without. Yes I understand the anomalous strength in this defeat.

Good-bye to you, Suzie Q.

I opened my hands fully. I wanted to touch with my fingers the hush only my soul can hold. This line between complete peace and utter devastation is so thin but well, let me take on the circle instead.

Now, I can hear a sound I couldn't before; one that's becoming familiar; sound, the air like a boiling kettle, a pitching silence, a deafening maybe perhaps of all-sounds or no- sounds boiling over together. I've decided that if noise does not recover, still will erect a protest. Page 239 of 239

I am an ear-splitting instrument of truth but I don't think I'm the music; don't think I can make harmony not just me. When I choose to sing out from the place inside that's what I can describe as I mean its closest I guess to a chorus, you could say like a chorus, no matter how discordant the notes may seem, the notes move I make them move and there you go: music. My human ears are deaf to its pitch how does it sound.

Who am I talking to?

You. You with these pages in your hands it's a question how does it sound. The music it's an aberrant echo at of that chorus right I know. So why do I bother, then: trying to get the sound right. I wonder and sometimes I forget the chorus completely. But this is a collaboration. It's your turn to play. Sharp or flat if it's a half note or minor this is a song so in whatever key you know it will do what's the chorus can you help me remember. What's your sound.