Three Years with the Rat (20 page)

THERE WAS NO BLOW
-
UP
, no defining moment, just a few more scattered arguments and then nothing at all. One morning I awoke on the couch again and realized Nicole hadn't come home the previous night. I wasn't sure if she had been home the night before that, either.

Her things began to disappear. I got back to the apartment after work each day and something new had vanished: clothes, shoes, make-up, books. One day the nice pots and pans were gone. Another day it was the bookshelf, then the night table and alarm clock, then the art from the walls. One afternoon she took her pillow. It's amazing how sad a bed looks with only one pillow on it.

We had each other's telephone numbers. We didn't use them.

One day it simply stopped. I found her key in the mailbox. When I entered the basement, many of her things were still there: couch, cutlery, bed, linens, and an assortment of books scattered about the apartment. She had successfully removed me from her life but had left her own removal incomplete. I considered throwing out her belongings, buying new furniture, maybe even
a houseplant. Then I started sleeping in the bed again and leafing through the books. I lived with the remnants of her.

John called me at work one afternoon. I'd been ignoring him since the attack on Thornton, uninterested in his extremes or his empty promises. It wouldn't have surprised me to see the police show up at my door. So when he called my work, I told him flatly that I was busy and would get in touch when it was convenient. The next day, my bosses left me a note that John had called while I was on lunch. Without Nicole at home, I'd found myself working longer hours and this had proved a boon for my employers. They likely tied this new-found motivation to my “mugging” and the black eye I'd received, and so they were suddenly forgiving about things like personal calls to the office.

I didn't return his calls.

A few days later Lee showed up at the office. She reminisced with my bosses, went for coffee with them downstairs, and when the social call was finished, she came to my desk. She wore no denim, had wrapped her coarse hair tightly into a bun, and looked nothing at all like she did in her free time.

She planted one hand on my desk, previously her desk, leaned in and spoke quietly. “Scruffy, are you ignoring John?”

“Hi, Lee.”

“C'mon. Don't you think you're going to hurt his feelings? The big guy loves you.”

I leaned back and shrugged.

“Let's try this again,” she said. “You're the soft guy, the fixer. He needs you. You're his shoulder to lean on.”

“He's been leaning a little too hard,” I told her.

She smiled and stood up straight. Her posture was as professional as her outfit. “I get it. He hasn't made it easy to be his friend this year. But when was the last time you saw him happy? Big man's practically manic over some sort of breakthrough at work. Wants to celebrate.”

“I don't know, Lee.”

“Don't worry. Nicole won't be there.” The look on my face must have been obvious because she laughed. “She and I lived together for years. You think I wouldn't know what's up with you two?”

That night a blizzard hit, grinding the city to a halt, and over the next day the temperature sank and turned the snow into a sheen of hard, slippery ice. The weekend came and against my better judgement I trudged through the streets to Shifty's. I looked through the window and saw John, Lee, Steve, and Brian sharing a couple of pitchers. John noticed me through the window and rushed between the tables to greet me at the entrance. He hugged me hard, lifted me off my feet.

“Hey, buddy,” he said.

It was a nice greeting from everyone at the table, equal parts cheer for John and sympathy for my breakup. John acted like a true master of ceremonies and ensured that everyone was engaged in the conversation. Even Steve put aside his morose attitude and got involved. Of course everyone could see how thin John had become, how his teeth pushed against the skin around his mouth. But it seemed that the gang was eager to find him back to his old self, even if they had to ignore details that suggested otherwise.

The beer went to my head. I caught myself smiling in conversation and felt immediately annoyed at my good spirits.

“So what's this big news?” I asked John. They were the first words I'd spoken to him all night.

He beamed, a skeleton with a sheet of skin pulled over it. “It's complicated.”

“Just for once, John, why don't you try? I'm not a fucking idiot.”

My tone must have caught the ears of the others, but they didn't speak up.

John's face stiffened. He said, “I got Grace's project up and working again. I just needed to try a technique I had abandoned.”

It wasn't a complete surprise. “The rats. Subjective whatever. And Buddy?”

This made him smile again. “He's a star. A hero for science.”

“Is he all right, though?”

I didn't get an answer. A large group of people had entered the restaurant and John's attention shifted to them. The server led the group to the same area as us and as they approached our table, they all went silent. They were young men and women, mostly unkempt, not particularly stylish or consistent in their dress.

“Holy shit. John?” One of their group stepped forward. He was spindly and his voice was a little unsteady but he seemed more confident than the rest. “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea the friggin' trouble you've caused?”

“Hey, just ease down there, eh?” Brian said.

John's face was frozen and unreadable. “I suppose there was a risk of this happening. Hi, Will.”

The group's spokesperson, Will, kept weaving forward and back as if he'd been drinking. “Where the hell have you been for three months?”

Suddenly their group made sense to me: they were graduate students.

John said, “It's none of your business, Will. This is why I've been avoiding places like Shifty's.”

Some of the grad students frowned and shook their heads, and others muttered to one another.

Will, though, was bold in his disgust. “Do you think this is funny? Trivial? Not only does our supervisor have to deal with you disappearing, but you take the rats out of the lab? Some of them had friggin' telemetry devices in them. She's
still
knee deep in crap! She could lose her job. Have you gone insane?”

John stood up slowly and his body looked wide but hollow. His hands were tucked into fists and I couldn't help remembering what had happened in the school parking lot.

“You better sort this mess out
right now
,” Will said quietly. He didn't back away but clearly John's physical presence diminished him a little.

John stepped around the table and toward the students. He looked coiled tight and ready to spring, and they could see it.

“You've been unbelievably selfish,” Will said, his voice faltering.

“You're right,” John said finally. He sounded calm but not apologetic. He took another step forward. “I
have
acted selfishly. And I'll have to pay for it. Now leave us alone.”

Will involuntarily took a half-step back, then looked at the scared group of students around him and mustered his courage. He said, “Grace was a bad influence on you. She was the lab's biggest mistake.”

I was on my feet. I resisted the urge to strangle that little bastard and instead looked to one of the others, a young woman with a ponytail.

“Take your friend away,” I told her. “Right now.”

She pulled on Will's sleeve and it broke his attention from the scene. He backed off and they all made their way to the back of the restaurant instead. For a moment, nothing happened at our table. John and I still stood. Lee, Steve, and Brian watched from their seats.

And then John let out a sigh and said, “Excuse me for a moment. I need to use the washroom.”

I sat down again.

“He lied to us about the lab,” Lee said.

“Dude's had it rough this year,” Brian said.

“I'm not really good with these kinds of situations,” Steve told us. “I should've known better,” Lee said. “Just look how skinny he is now. What are we gonna do?”

In the end there was no point in wondering. John never came back to the table. I checked the washroom and the grad students' table at the back but there was no sign of him. He'd left Shifty's without even bothering to take his coat. We went to his apartment but the lights were off upstairs and we couldn't get inside. We tried his phone but he didn't answer. There was no sign of John for a week.

Then one evening my cell phone rang.

“I need to see you,” he said.

I skipped my prepackaged dinner and went straight to his house. The front door to his building was wedged open with a rock and he was inside the apartment, sitting calmly on the couch.

He looked different. His hair was cropped short and his T-shirt and pants looked new. They were tight on his diminished body. Layers and layers of warm clothes were piled next to him, and he was wearing heavy winter boots. His eyes were so sunken that his brow cast a shadow over them, but there was resolve and focus on his face.

His right forearm was heavily bandaged.

“I wanted to say thank you and goodbye before I go,” he said.

He gestured to a seat and I took it but sat on the edge.

“Go where?” I asked. “Where are you going in this state? Where the hell have you been? What happened to your arm?”

“I've been getting things ready,” he said.

“Ready for what, goddamn it?”

He took a moment, then said it slowly. “I'm going to find Grace.”

I shot out of my seat and paced the room. I wrapped my arms around myself to prevent them from lashing out at the wall or throwing small objects.

“If Grace wanted to be found,” I said, “she would have left a fucking address or some way to get in touch. But she didn't. She wanted to leave us behind, like we were pieces of garbage to be discarded. Just like her clothes, her degree, and the rest of her life. Remember?”

“Maybe she didn't have a choice,” he said.

“And maybe you're wrong!” The frustration was so powerful that I actually laughed, one hard note. “I can't do this anymore. What do you know? Yeah, yeah, you two were in love. Wow, you lived together for a few months. But she was
my
sister. Mine, not yours. I knew her my whole life. How long did you know her, John? Jesus Christ. You don't get to be the only one who's grieving.”

Something hot and angry pressed against the inside of my throat. I could feel a headache coming on.

John stood up and faced me. He put out his thin arms and rested his hands on my shoulders, his manner peaceful. He said, “All right, maybe I need to think about this a little more, figure out a next step. You're right. Would you mind giving me a day or two to consider what you've said?”

I wiped my face with my sleeve. “You're going to leave and not tell me. I'm so tired of people leaving without saying goodbye.”

“I won't. I just want some time to evaluate my options.”

“I'm going to call you tonight.”

“Checking in,” he said. “Sure. Now please go.”

My body was numb all over when I walked out the door. I took the streetcar to my house. I waited. I called John and he did not pick up. Hours passed, then a day. I made my way back to the apartment
but the front door was locked and the lights in his windows were out. I buzzed for the better part of an hour and no one answered. My hands wouldn't work anymore in the cold and so I left. He had lied to me again.

That was the last time I saw him.

THE LIGHTS WERE ON
in the basement apartment when I got home, but at first I couldn't see Nicole. I found her in the washroom. She sat on the counter, feet in the sink with the faucet running, hot water splashing from ankles to toes. She was wearing a very small sheer dress and brushing her teeth. Her legs were folded up, bare and smooth, and I could practically see the rest of her through the fabric.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I'm cold,” she said through a mouth full of toothpaste. She kicked her feet lightly in the sink and splashed water onto the counter.

“You're only wearing a nightgown.”

“I prefer
negligee
.” She smiled. “ ‘Nightgown' is thoroughly too frumpy a word.”

She spun her feet out of the sink and pointed them at me. She made a face that was pleading and joking at the same time. I folded the towel around her feet and rubbed them dry.

“In any case,” I said, “it's not exactly a good fit for the season. Why wear it now?”

She rinsed her mouth and gave me another look.

“
Oh
,” I said. I lifted her up with one arm under her knees and the other arm around the small of her back. Then I carried her to bed.

She nuzzled into my neck. “You smell like beer.”

“And you smell like oranges,” I said.

A few hours later Nicole shook me until I awoke. Nothing made any sense at first.

“Don't you hear that?” she whispered into my ear. We held our breaths and listened until finally there was a hard knocking against our bedroom window. “You see? It was coming from the living room first.”

I scanned the room for a weapon and some clothes. It was too dark to make anything out.

“Who's there?” I shouted.

“Let me in.” The voice was muffled on the other side of the glass but unmistakably Grace.

“Jesus Christ. Go to the front door.”

I switched on the night-table light and handed Nicole the first clothes I could find. She was hiding under the blankets and still wired with fear. I found my own clothes and went out into the living room. Grace's outline was on the window of the front door.

I unlocked the deadbolt and hissed, “What are you doing?”

Grace was bundled in her parka and was carrying a small backpack. She stepped inside and took off her hood. Her hair was tangled and oily.

“I need to borrow your car,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” I told her. “It's the middle of the goddamned night. Couldn't you have called?”

“Why can't I borrow the car?” she asked.

I raised my voice. “Because you took it without asking, at Mom's house. Remember?”

“You're making a mistake. Do you remember the nail?” She looked
me in the eyes. Then she walked off into the night as if she hadn't just scared the shit out of us.

I curled up behind Nicole and let my breathing settle again. Just before I drifted off, Nicole roused me. “What's ‘the nail'?”

I thought of that day when we were kids, the vivid image of the rusty nail pushing through Grace's shoe, my obliviousness to her suffering, my foolish behaviour, all that shame I had carried, and I told Nicole, “I don't know. Something from when we were kids, I guess.”

She pushed her warm, soft body against me and said, “She's getting worse. You should call John.”

But I didn't.

The next afternoon, Grace called from the Yorkdale shopping mall, the northern edge of town, looking to be picked up. She sounded near the point of exhaustion. She was standing in the parking lot near the highway when I arrived, and her appearance was shocking. Gone were most of her bohemian layers of shawls and fabric, replaced with a thin shirt and trousers. Her hair had been chopped down to a bob with short bangs. There seemed to be strands of grey in her hair. She had no winter coat and wore only canvas shoes.

I brought her back to the basement apartment. There, Nicole greeted us cautiously and helped me get Grace onto the couch, where she fell asleep at once.

“You need to call somebody,” Nicole told me.

“I tried John but—”

“No, someone who can actually help.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who's the expert in this situation?”

“You can't handle this alone.”

In the end I called my father. He listened as I explained the last few months leading up to that day.

“What the hell do you want me to do about it?” he asked.

I said, “Maybe she could come stay with you for a little while.”

“Christ, son. She's never listened to me once in her goddamned life and I don't expect her to start now. Take her to somebody who can help. What do you think I am, a shrink?”

No, Dad, I think you're a shitty father.
“I have to go.”

Nicole stayed with me and made a simple dinner with what was in the house. Grace roused herself from the couch as Nicole was plating our meals.

“You look young,” she said to me. Her skin was puffy and pale. “When is it?”

“What? It's seven o'clock.”

“What's the date?”

“It's the fifteenth,” I said.

“December? 2006?”

Nicole put two plates down on the table. “Grace, are you all right?”

“You stay out of this,” Grace snapped.

“Hey,” I said. “You can just stop that bullshit right now. Sit down.” She listened, and Nicole brought her a plate. It was hardly out of Nicole's hands before Grace tore into the food. I had never seen her eat with such enthusiasm.

Through a mouthful she said, “You wouldn't believe the things I've seen.”

“I've seen the side of the highway before,” I told her. “What the hell were you doing out there?”

“Hitchhiking.”

“And what happened to your parka? You could have frozen.”

She chewed her food and ignored me. Nicole took her own plate to the living room and ate there. I watched my sister clean her plate, fill it again from the pan, and finish her second serving.

“You need to come with me,” she said. “For your own good.”

“What are you talking about? Come with you where?”

“You have to trust me. You wouldn't believe it unless you saw it for yourself.”

I cleared the table and did the dishes. Grace didn't stir from her seat. As I was drying my hands there was a knock at the door. I found John standing on our doorstep.

“Why the hell are you here?” Grace said.

“I can't imagine it's for the pleasant company,” Nicole said.

“Mind your own business,” Grace told her.

“You're in my house,” Nicole said. “That makes it my business.”

“Let's go home, Grace,” John said.

Grace turned from them and pleaded to me. “Come with me. Show me it isn't inevitable.”

“You're unstable,” Nicole said. “You need help.”

“You don't know a fucking thing!” Grace turned her head and shouted. “God, you're unbelievable. Never have I seen someone give so little and get so much in return. Why do you get to live out the rest of your meaningless, ignorant life in such bliss?”

Then she looked back to me and bared her teeth in a horrid, pleading smile. “Come on, little brother. Prove yourself wrong. Help yourself. You just have to trust me.”

I didn't recognize the person standing in front of me, not her smile or her closely cropped hair or her sudden appeals. I said, “Grace, I'm not going anywhere. Nicole's right. You do need help.”

She looked devastated, flattened. She moved John out of the way and opened the apartment door. “Fuck you both, then. I should have known you couldn't help but choose her, when it came down to it.”

“Please take her to the hospital,” Nicole said to John.

I took a few steps toward Grace. She was shivering. “Please just take it easy, O.K.? I'll come see you tomorrow.”

“It won't be tomorrow,” she said.

John had taken a taxi to the apartment. He walked Grace to the cab and they drove off. Nicole came up behind me and put her arms around my waist.

We lived. We worked. We nested as the cold weather made walking around the city unpleasant.

I called John to keep updated. He told me she was sleeping well, feeling better after a few days of rest. Her doctor had made her an appointment with a psychiatrist in three weeks. I visited the apartment a few times to see her and, unlike John, I wouldn't have said she was feeling better. She looked sedated and almost never spoke.

And then one afternoon John called me at work. I stepped out of the office to avoid my bosses.

“Everything O.K.?” I asked.

“Yeah, I'm not sure,” John said. “Grace is gone.”

“Oh, for the— I thought you were watching her.” I went back into the office and grabbed my pea coat and toque.

John's voice was deep and defensive. “I was. One minute she was in the living room, and the next minute she was gone. Things were under control.”

I rushed down the stairs and outside. “Clearly they weren't, John. Goddamn it.”

I started at Union Station to see if she was taking a train or bus out of town. John tried their neighbourhood and left the city to continue the search. There was no sign of Grace. Nicole insisted we file a missing person's report, and a day later I met with a short and strong-looking policewoman with her hair tied into a bun on the back of her head. She didn't know how to smile, only smirk, and she propped her hands on the top edge of her heavy belt. Her uniform
was dark blue with flaps on the shoulders and her pistol was huge and black in its holster. Her badge read
Officer 2510.

“You mind if I ask you a few questions about Grace?” Instead of taking off her military boots at the front door of the apartment, she wiped them on the mat and wore them inside. I don't remember much else about the interview.

We lived. We worked. In turn, Nicole tried to distract, amuse, and comfort me.

The holidays started a few days after Grace disappeared and John went home to Oshawa. I wasn't in a rush to leave Nicole or the city and so I worked some overtime at the office, sending out last-minute grant applications to the government and organizing my bosses' travel for the upcoming months. The distraction was nice. With the extra money, I bought Nicole a fancy set of pots and pans. During the nights, I would dream there was someone banging on the bedroom window and wake up looking for Grace.

Just before the new year, I locked up the office for the day and wandered downstairs to the coffee shop. The barista and I were probably the only two people in the building. I took a seat near the window and watched the pigeons sift through cigarette butts and chewing gum for scraps of food. Looking up Spadina, past Queen and even to the coloured signs of Chinatown, the city felt wide and empty.

And then suddenly it didn't. I could feel her eyes on me before I could find them. She was remarkably close and seemed to come from nowhere. She looked as if she'd borrowed clothes from people living on the streets. She had a toque pulled down to her eyebrows and a scab on her chin but there was no doubt it was Grace.

I ran outside and hugged her. She smelled like rotten food.

“Don't touch me,” she said, and when I didn't listen she pushed me away.

She didn't seem to care when I called John, didn't move from where she was standing.

“Get her to the apartment,” John said over the phone. “Get her some clean clothes, some coffee, maybe. I can be in town in an hour. We'll take her to the hospital then.”

I flagged a taxi and asked him to drive to Grace's apartment. The sour tang of her body was so bad that the driver wanted no part of our fare. I offered him more money and cursed at him and eventually he drove.

The cab left us on Bloor Street. Grace walked a few storefronts east and dug in a frozen planter's pot until she found her keys in the soil.