The Journey Prize Stories 28 (5 page)

It is easy to stop. This is what she has discovered.

Easy to stop answering email. Easy to come and go from the paperwork at the office, bring nothing and leave nothing behind. Move through the cream and steel lobby, the wax museum of co-workers. So easy to heave off all things. So easy. So easy to write back to Mallory's best friend Jared,
Stop emailing me. I'm not Mallory and you never went out of your way to get to know me
, and delete his responding email without reading it. All things are contracts, not covenants. Easy to say nothing. Easy to stop acknowledging, and then reading, invitations. Easy to not move in relation to others. To amputate herself from gatherings. Mallory, who was a gathering.

The ultimate test of strength, the trainer had said at the introductory weightlifting class, is to be able to hold up your own weight. Hold yourself aloft. The trainer, a woman in her late fifties, made of thick rope and cantilevered joints, veins exposed. Laura watched her, amazed. Mallory had been the one who exercised, duct-taped an uncle's caving headlamp to her bike before buying the proper gear. Her gear was always left piled by the front door for Laura to throw into the laundry room. Now when Laura opens their front door, she still smells Mallory's sharp sweat, almost reaches for the pile of wet gear.

The automated reminder call for the weightlifting class from the community centre had popped up on their landline voicemail a week after Mallory moved out. Laura hadn't known Mallory had signed up for a weightlifting class. She hadn't known Mallory had any interest in refining her cyclist
body, her tendons already violin-tuned.
This message is for Mallory Lee Rhymer
, a voice had recited.
This is a reminder
.

Laura had gone to the class. She'd told herself it was to try something new, but really she had thought Mallory might be there. At the class, a woman in her seventies told them she was there for her osteoporosis. “Turns out my bones aren't what they used to be!” she said cheerfully and the whole group burst into laughter.

The woman at the next locker looks over at Laura. “Good workout?”

“Yeah.”

“You were working hard in there.”

It had never occurred to Laura that someone could be watching her. But, of course. What else would people do, while lying around grunting? “Thanks.”

“How long've you been lifting?”

“Not too long. Couple months, I guess.”

“You're pretty solid.”

“I think I'm getting there.”

Small talk is a way to keep moving. Small talk is a kind of humming. Laura never understood this before—she always wondered at the uselessness of it. For her, cocktail parties and grocery store aisle conversations were exercises in failed lip reading. Mallory had mocked this affectionately: “You just don't understand people at all, do you?” Now she understands.

“I'm George, by the way.”

“George?”

“It's short for a name so horrible and ugly I refuse to inflict it on others.”

“Georgephine?”

“Oh my god! Nobody's ever guessed before.” Laura laughs, zipping up her jeans.

George's hair is shaved close. When she bends to untie and slip off her sneakers, Laura sees that the back of her head is surprisingly flat.
Like a zombie head
, Laura thinks to herself.

“I'm Mallory,” Laura says.

George glances up. “Hi, Mallory. Long day?”

“Pretty average.”

George nods at her shoes.

“Just a long day at work,” Laura says. “Passport office.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“It is what it is.” Laura shrugs and George nods. “The work is not letting people drive you nuts.”

“Well, I'm a teacher. When we aren't on strike, we're arguing about going on strike.

George strips quickly. A body that has lifted weights for years. She's probably in her mid-fifties. Something Laura's father told her once—you can tell someone's age by the backs of their hands.

“You're here all the time now, eh?”

“Pretty much every day,” Laura says.

George nods, drifting toward the shower, pulling on her flip-flops. “It can get pretty addictive, once you get into it. Nothing better.”

Laura drives home, hair damp from her shower, her shoulders and arms injected with honey endorphins. The cyclists
pass her, brilliant fish in a parallel stream, their safety jackets smeared across her wet windshield.

At home, it takes an instant to reactivate her Facebook profile. The grid of friends' faces, her truncated history. And then, there is Mallory's face. She's cut her hair short, scooped up around her ears and piled boyishly onto one side, and there is another woman's face in the photo. Their eyes and cheekbones are matching and bright.

Don't click on her. Don't do it. Internet law.

What's on your mind?
the status box asks her.

She types in:
The person you most want to see will become the person you least want to see
.

She presses post and logs out.

She's getting stronger. A hinged thing. Flesh firm around her joints, her shoulders suddenly, one day, blade-like.

Laura has watched her body in the mirrored wall in the gym, watched her body change. Her neck plunges into her collarbone. When she turns and looks at her back in her bedroom mirror, it is a raised plateau. Her outside layer has peeled away. She remembers those anatomical models from high school biology class, human puzzles, their removable spleens.

The men at the gym now call her
bro
. One day, a shrug-nod and then, coolly,
hey, bro
. The luck of broad shoulders. Her new bro status pleases her in spite of herself. She moves the pin in the weights to one hundred and twenty pounds. Mid-lift, she looks at her right arm, the new tough packet resting there. When she felt the new muscle for the first time, her
mind flooded with worry:
a lump
. Her mind looks for reasons to panic everywhere. No, this is what she's been working for—this hardness. Beside her, a man strains on the piece of equipment dubbed the birthing machine. Weights attach to pads placed against the inside of each thigh. He squeezes and releases.
Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
. Laura ties her shoelace to conceal her smirk.

The woman, possibly a dancer, who balances on the exercise bench every night. One arm extended. A weight at the end of her arm, muscle a perfect arc, a soft band. Laura watches. The pure control of motionlessness.