Losing It (14 page)

One extraordinary heave and he squeezed the half-hooked corset past his hips and to the floor. His panties and pantyhose came halfway, then he ripped them the rest of the way. He tore his trousers off the hanger, stuffed his legs in. Pushed himself into a shirt.

“There in a second!” he said and excitedly gathered up the torn slip and corset, and from the wastebasket the black lace bra that he hadn’t tried on. He knelt to shove them under the bed, but there was no under the bed. The bed was mounted on a wooden box, solid to the floor.

Into the closet. Doors pulled shut. He fought some socks onto his feet, for propriety, pushed the Scotch bottle into the courtesy bar cabinet.

He reeked of alcohol.

“Bob?” came the voice. Timid and uncertain. A different Sienna Chu.

“Yep!” he said and stole into the bathroom, hurriedly yanked the plastic wrapper off the top of the complimentary mouthwash bottle. In his haste he mistakenly swallowed half a mouthful then spat it out uncontrollably, all over the mirror and sink. He washed his mouth out quickly with water. Nothing on his trousers and shirt, thank God.

“Sorry!” he said as he opened the door. “I was just … on the
phone with Windower, the conference organizer. Did you go to the events this evening?”

She was wearing the micro-skirt from earlier, the same tight black top. But she looked, somehow, more vulnerable and thus absolutely magnificent. She dipped her eyes as she walked past him. “I couldn’t think very well,” she said in a little voice.

He looked behind him at the room in sudden terror that he might have left something incriminating out in the open. But it looked very innocent: the chair turned sideways by the phone table, the pillows propped on the bed where his books and papers were spread, evidence of serious and legitimate pursuits. Her poems too were on the bed. “I’ve been reading some of your work again,” he said. “It’s extraordinary. I can’t say it often enough -”

“Bob,” she said, turning to him, owning the centre of the room. Her eyes were darkly luminous. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so confused about everything.”

“What?” he asked, and took her hands because it seemed like the thing to do. She responded immediately, held him behind his neck and kissed him deeply.

She backed away, pushed her hands through her hair and stepped to the window. “What am I doing?” she said.

“It’s all right,” he said softly and walked towards her. But she didn’t want him to approach her. She wanted to talk it out.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“These last weeks,” she said, not looking at him. Her face was badly flushed. “I’ve been trying so hard to keep myself from doing that.”

“That’s all right.”

“I kept telling myself,
he’s my professor, he’s off limits, he’s a friend at most
!”

“I’ve felt it too,” he said.

But it was as if she hadn’t heard.
“He’s married!”
she said.
“He’s got a kid!
Although you never talked about that. And we never
did
anything, it was just talk. But wonderful, wonderful talk, and I thank you for that.”

“Oh, Sienna,” he said, stepping forward.

“No,” she said, motioning him back.

“Sit down,” he said quietly. There wasn’t much choice, either the bed or the chair by the phone. She took the chair. He carefully moved his papers and sat on the bed. “Sienna,” he said.

“I have just been torn up about this,” she said. “I’m not –”

“Sienna,” he said again. “There’s so much –”

“– the kind of person who –”

“– I have to say. It has been ripping at my –”

“We need to be -”

“Yes,” he said.

They both stopped talking. She looked at him with such need and want. A child, yes, but a woman too, far beyond him, he knew it in his blood. Still, an innocent, not the seductress his overworked imagination had conjured during his lecture.

“Yes,” he said again.

“Oh, Bob,” she said. She wanted him to come over, to bridge the distance. It was as clear as if she’d commanded him out loud. They understood!

“Yes.”

But he didn’t move. Something inside him knew. It wasn’t for him to move. How did he know that?

“I want to say this first,” she said. Clear-eyed now. She was the stronger. He’d always known that. “I have always treasured our conversations. They have meant so much to me. I don’t want to lose that. No matter what happens.”

“We won’t lose that,” he said in a soft, gentle voice, in precisely the right words and way, now that she’d given him the clue. That’s what maturity gets you, he thought. She was about to offer herself – she might not even know it, but he knew it, and he knew enough to stay back on the bed, to appear the reluctant one, Mr. Responsible. He felt a speech coming on. “Sometimes,” he said confidingly, “souls – if you believe in that sort of thing – just connect, naturally, on myriad different levels. You recognize it in a glance across a crowded room, a first touch of the hand, an innocent remark. What is it? I don’t think anybody really knows, and a lot of people ignore it, they stop looking for it.” He paused. He felt strangely dizzy, caught up in his own words, perhaps, in anticipation. He took a deep, clearing breath. He felt deeply conscious of the fact that he was still wearing the portable vagina. “That knowledge withers,” he continued. “It can be best that way. If you can dull yourself, just focus on the day-to-day, much better than being open to the ravages of an extraordinary love.”

Tears were now welling in her eyes. “Oh, I knew -” she began to say.

“Shhhh.” She was going to throw herself at him. He could almost count it down. He stood, not swiftly, not slowly, not as a motion towards her but towards the bathroom. The floor was not as steady as it should have been. “There’s a great, great deal more we need to talk about,” he said humbly, and he held up his finger, a simple gesture of restraint. “Back in a moment.” Then he stepped heavily into the bathroom, locked the door as silently as he could, flicked the switch, recoiled from the nauseating brightness. He breathed deeply, steadied himself, undid his trousers deliberately, not rushing, unhooked the vagina and looked to see where he might hide the thing. He didn’t want to
feel anxious, yet the room was slowly spinning. Then – and it was cruelly sudden and unexpected, overwhelming – he began to empty his stomach, as quietly as he could, into the toilet. He tried to be silent, to be neat and controlled, but the heaving was riotous, unruly, rude. Everything had to go, not just the Scotch but the filet mignon and mushrooms and red wine, the other drinks from earlier in the day, even parts of lunch and breakfast. He could taste certain undigested bits as they rushed past the wrong way. His body was left in a cold, trembling sweat.

Ages later there was a little voice at the bathroom door. “Bob? Are you all right? Professor Sterling?”

“Ghnihhr
,” Bob said. He wheezed a couple of times, ran warm water in the sink, and wiped his face in the dark with a cloth.

“Can I help?”

“No,” Bob said weakly. “No. I’m sorry.” He ran more water.

Still later came a click of the door and she was gone. Bob cleaned himself up, took off everything, wandered out of the bathroom and fell back into bed. He meant to call her right away. In his mind he was up and dialling the number. The phone was ringing in his ear. “Sienna,” he was saying. “I’m sorry.” In his mind. But his body stayed on the bed and he slept, badly, the rest of the night.

10

J
ulia’s head was splitting. Little cracks were spreading along the base in the back, and one major rift gaped down the front between her eyebrows to the bridge of her nose, a ragged wound of pure pain that nonetheless left her free to sit, very still, by the telephone and talk to the executive director at Fallowfields. Mrs. Watkins was breathless with concern and apology – Fallowfields had never had a patient go missing before, not from the secure wing. But there was positive news: the police had interviewed a bus driver who had picked up Mrs. Carmichael close to Fallowfields and had let her off near the park at Hog’s Back Falls at 2:49 p.m. A dozen off-duty Fallowfields staff were that instant helping police personnel search the park, and Mrs. Watkins was expecting to hear good news any moment.

“Hog’s Back Falls!” Julia said. “My God, she’s fallen in the water!”

“We cannot assume the worst, Mrs. Sterling,” Mrs. Watkins said gravely.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Julia said when she got off the phone. Donny was in the den playing with Matthew, who
hadn’t been changed in hours and should have been cranky with starvation but seemed entranced with his new friend. All the things to do at once, faster than at once, lined up in Julia’s mind: change and feed Matthew, feed herself, take some pain pills, drive to Hog’s Back, find her mother’s dead body in the freezing, violent water.

They were in the van in under six minutes. Donny drove. There was no question about whether he wanted to continue to be part of this domestic drama, it was simply the way it had to be. With her head like this Julia couldn’t drive. She could have called for a cab; she could have called any one of a dozen friends scattered in different parts of the city; she could have spent half an hour or more trying to arrange a babysitter. But Donny was the nearest and quickest help and she had switched into vital-efficiency mode. Her mother might be dying. Any extra minute could be the difference.

She closed her eyes and held her temples in the van, gently rubbed the base of her skull, the top, and along the sides. More food might have helped, but the fault was hers, she’d left things too long. Matthew was quiet in the back in his baby seat. Donny was talking but his voice sounded like elevator music, something that didn’t need to be paid attention to. He was naming people from Brookfield and what had become of them. Some Julia recognized, most she couldn’t or didn’t want to remember.

“You could go faster,” she said without opening her eyes. As soon as she said it he speeded up drastically. “Just don’t get us killed,” she said and he instantly slowed down again.

“Do you remember Ray Jenkins? You won’t believe this. He sold his little Internet company for three hundred million dollars. Can you believe that? Just before the crash. Where did I hear that? I ran into someone a month or two ago. Oh yeah, Willy Leach. Do you remember Willy? …”

Fading in and out. A gentle voice, just by itself it seemed to be mending some of the lesser cracks in her skull. Despite herself she thought of Ray Jenkins, with his scientific calculator in his shirt pocket, the bad acne and greasy hair, the way he couldn’t look any girl in the eye. At least not Julia. There’d been a whole squadron of Ray Jenkinses who would start to sweat when Julia walked by. She used to take slight pleasure in their discomfort. Mostly they were annoying, not worth thinking about.

Donny had been like that too. She was beginning to remember him: a shy, thin, nervous boy behind her, all elbows and ears. Now here he was driving her to Hog’s Back, where they were going to find her mother’s body face down in the shallows below the falls, her legs drifting lifelessly, her eyes open and tortured, little bits of reed and river filth in her hair.

Police cars huddled at the entrance to the park, their doors open, lights flashing. No ambulances. Julia’s heart sank then rose again. No ambulances meant she hadn’t yet been found, but also that she wasn’t dead yet. There was still hope.

“I’ll carry Matthew,” Donny said but Julia countermanded him. It would have taken extra energy to explain, so she didn’t. But she
had
to carry Matthew herself. Julia had a front-loading strap-on baby carrier that she hadn’t used for Matthew since he was much younger, but she fit him in now, wrapped her coat around him.

“Want to see!” Matthew said but Julia said
“No!”
in her new way that Matthew seemed to understand really did mean no: no way, absolutely not, impossible. You are not going to see your grandmother’s twisted, bloated, drowned body caught in the mud and rocks.

“I’m the mother!” Julia announced when she walked up to the nearest officer, then corrected herself. “She’s my mother!” she said. “I mean I’m the daughter. It’s my mother who’s lost.”

“We’re not sure, ma’am, that she’s actually here,” the officer said. He was enormous, his holster, boots, and truncheon bar gleaming black in the headlights, his bulletproof vest a duller, heavier black. “We’re cordoning and searching the trails and the surrounding bush,” he said. “They feed into the river, but we don’t think she’s there. We’ve already had a team go up and back and the view is pretty open for the most part.” He had a fat head and small, dark eyes, and either didn’t know what he was talking about or was trying to spare her feelings: she knew exactly where they were going to find her mother. She knew too, suddenly, with a certainty that seemed to swell from her cells and tissue, that she would be the one to find her, that it would be gruesome and inevitable.

“If you’d like to stay here, ma’am, I’m in radio contact with all the search teams,” the officer said.

“No,” Julia said without hesitation. “I have to do this.” She thought, but didn’t add, that otherwise they might be there all night. This was her duty. It was unavoidable, just as she had to carry Matthew, which was part of her punishment. She took the flashlight that Donny silently offered and strode down the trail that led directly to the falls, which she could hear roaring somewhere in the black. That’s where her mother would have gone, the quickest route to disaster. The ground was muddy and wet. With Matthew on her front she felt pregnant again, heavy and earthbound. Every step sank into the dirt. The light from her flashlight carved dim tunnels out of the night, which wasn’t as black as it could have been, she thought, would have seemed greyish without the artificial light to keep their eyes from fully adjusting. She could see other beams in the woods, could hear the teams calling for her mother. Behind her, Donny was scanning his flashlight back and forth, checking the bushes which loomed so suddenly in the blank light.