Three Years with the Rat (4 page)

There was a quiet moment. My sister and I hadn't shared a completely private conversation since we were teenagers. She eyed me cautiously from a few feet away, as though she was trying to make a decision. Her hair was long and messy and pinned with a peacock feather, and she wore dark mascara that accentuated the green of her eyes. Layers were her style these days: scarf, tank top, cardigan, necklaces upon necklaces, rolled-up jeans, small black shoes.

“Aren't you hot?” I asked.

“Aren't you ashamed?” Her nervous grin started to emerge.

“Of what?”

“Dropping out. Again.”

“Oh,” I said. “No. I'm getting used to it.”

“Three strikes and you're out.”

“Or third time's a charm. I was done with Vancouver, anyway.”

Her eyes got bigger. “So does that mean the vagabond is going to stick around?”

I shrugged. “Thought I might find a place here, work, think about what the fuck I'm doing with my life.”

Her grin was wide now. She stepped forward as if she was going to hug me. Then she hammered my shoulder with her fist. She stung the bone and I winced.

“That's great!” she said. “I'm glad your little bullshit Kerouac phase is over.”

“Don't give me too much credit,” I told her. “You at least need aspirations to have a phase.”

She showed me around the apartment, described her plans for the space, how she would paint, where the furniture would go. John and the friends steadily came up and down the building's stairs and stacked boxes in the living room. Waves of tiredness came over me and passed. Grace looked a little older but happy enough.

“What are you going to do with the second bedroom?” I asked her. After my dorm life, it was hard to imagine what people would do with so much room.

“We've got some ideas,” she said.

Before she could say more, there was a crash on the stairs. Grace flinched and ran to the front door.

“Jesus Christ, be careful with that!” she shouted down the stairs.

I came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. Steve and Lee had been carrying an enormous mirror with a comforter wrapped around it. Steve was at the top of the steps and fumbling to get a grip on the blanket. He looked confused and apologetic. And while Lee's face was half-hidden behind the mirror, she was clearly irritated with my sister's outburst.

“Just lost my grip on it,” Steve said. “Sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” Grace backpedalled. “You were only helping.”

“What the hell's the hold-up?” Brian cackled from the bottom of the stairs.

They took the mirror into the second bedroom and set it in the corner. Grace removed the blanket and searched around the frame for damage. There was a small crack along the bottom edge of the frame but the glass was intact.

“I didn't mean to snap at you, Steve,” she said. She bit at her thumb again.

Lee gave a small nod.

Brian popped his head into the door frame and poked a thumb in the direction of the living room. “Trouble's here.”

A woman's voice, unfamiliar and deep, said, “Shut up, Brian. Sorry I'm late, Grace.”

Everyone else went to greet the new friend. I was tired so I stayed where I was, crouched near the mirror. In its reflection my eyes were ringed with red and my clean shave was almost gone. I yawned, scratched the back of my head, slapped my cheeks. I was fading.

“I hear you're the deadbeat brother,” the new voice said.

And that was how I met Nicole: curled up near the mirror while she stood in the doorway. She was long, slender, and nearly as tall as me. Her hair was naturally bright orange, a colour I would never call
red
, and it framed the smooth skin of her cheekbones. She wore a high-necked sleeveless navy dress that stopped above her lovely knees and hugged her hips and waist. The belt of her dress and her shoes were bright white and she wore a white kerchief around her neck. Her eyes, hazel-coloured and almond-shaped, were narrowed and amused. She wore red lipstick and only a hint of a smile.

Brian poked his head into the door frame and said, “Trouble, meet Danger.”

I don't remember much of unpacking the rest of the van, only that it was uninteresting work.

I vaguely remember dinner at one of the sushi restaurants below, seven of us piled into a space meant for four. My cheeks burned from the hot sake and from Nicole's bare leg pressed against mine. There was laughter and enthusiastic discussion about bands I'd never heard of. There was Nicole's hushed voice in my ear and my best attempt at charming replies. There was John's calm face and Grace's careful scrutiny as she watched Nicole and me. At some point, I learned that Grace and Lee and Nicole had all been roommates
until a year or so ago, when Nicole moved out. Lee was the last one left in the old place now that Grace lived with John.

I have a memory of sitting on boxes in the new apartment. The stereo was the first thing they set up. Lee was in charge of song selection, and Steve sang along in harmony with the music she chose. It was strange to watch this giant, awkward man-boy suddenly look confident and unselfconscious. Brian played the photographer and the lush at the same time. For a while Grace sat on John's lap and wrapped her frame inside his brawny arms. Somehow the beer was already in the refrigerator and cold, and then it was in my hands. Somehow Nicole was never very far from me but never looking directly at me.

I remember cornering Grace. My eyes were glassy and my words were wet.

“So, science,” I shouted at her over the stereo.

“What about it?” She was hanging halfway out the window and smoking a joint.

“What was wrong with philosophy and…the other subject?”

She took a deep drag and leaned toward me. “The truth is, I had a vision.”

I grinned. “Drug-induced religious awakening. I expected more from you.”

I thought we were having fun but her loose smile was gone and she looked serious, even a little unhinged, as in her bad years.

“Listen,” she said. “I saw an opportunity to do something big, something I couldn't do if I kept fucking around in the humanities. And so I changed my field. John was part of it, too, so I convinced him to come with me. We're in the same lab, now.”

“Doing what, though?”

Grace said something but I didn't hear it because Nicole caught my eye. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap and her smooth legs were crossed. A long white shoe dangled from her toes.

I turned back to my sister. “What? What do you do?”

“Play with rats,” John said.

I laughed. “Sounds like world-changing shit.”

Lee had chosen a noisy song, a hoarse voice shouting over the clanging guitars, and she was nodding along with the beat.
I'll find my oblivion in the place where the water meets the trees.

“I know this one!” I told Lee, and again to Grace. “You put this song on the CD for me.”

“At least you've learned something this year,” she said and smiled.

The alcohol and tiredness were a muscular mix. I don't remember when I started holding Nicole's hand, only that it was discreet at first and then open.

“Your sister has been a good friend,” she said. She ran her fingers over the contours of my knuckles and it felt incredible. “She really stuck up for me when it counted. We're not so close anymore but I still worry. Please keep an eye on her, for you and for me.”

“You don't mean right now, though.” I slid toward her, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her body, and failed to hold in my smile. “I mean, I'm a little busy at the moment.”

Her eyes were stunning, amused but vaguely disinterested, like a cat's. “And don't tell her I said this.”

Lee noticed Nicole and me, laughed, and choked on her beer. “If what Grace told me is true, I'm not sure who I should be worried for.”

I think Brian was in worse shape than me. I remember his lips and teeth were stained darkly from the wine he drank, and he had a spatter of red drops on his shirt. His smile was ghastly and hilarious.

I don't know when people started to leave, or whether I said goodbye to them. I'd been running my thumb along the ridges of Nicole's slim hands and when I looked up, the room was empty. I offered to walk Nicole home and she didn't refuse.

I imagine John gave me another hug and Grace gave me a sisterly warning about her old roommate. I have no memory of either, though.

The walk home was fragmented: night air that was almost as hot as the day; walking arm in arm with Nicole, a solution to my staggering; pulling her close, inhaling her scent, blurting, “You smell like oranges”; Nicole hushing me, her wet red lips brushing against my ear; the firm skin and sweet taste of her neck.

I slept until the afternoon of the next day, long after Nicole had left for work. Her basement apartment, later
our
apartment and now just
my
apartment, had hardwood floors, seven-foot ceilings, and small windows high in the walls. The bed was firm and the room was cool. She left me a key on the night table, the same key I still use. Her cell phone number was written on a slip of paper curled through the key ring. I folded the pillow over my face and breathed in oranges, all the while thinking that the world was good and anything was possible.

IT
'
S NIGHT WHEN
I get back from the hospital, my back full of stitches, and everything is waiting for me in the basement apartment, just as I'd left it: the six wooden panels leaning against the ragged old couch, the large burlap sack and dozen or so tiny pouches of dirt sitting at the edge of the kitchen. Buddy the rat's transparent cage is on the kitchen counter and his pink nose is poking out of a white plastic tube inside of it. Next to the cage is the miniature wooden box with its odd rubberized hole on one side. And on the kitchen tiles, where I threw them upon returning from John's apartment, are the blue notebook and John's note.

I don't know where to start. There's no beer in the fridge, only a few jars and plastic containers of condiments. In the cupboard I find half a bottle of a scotch-whisky blend. I rinse out a small glass and check the freezer for ice cubes but both trays are empty. I close my eyes and listen to the uncorking of the bottle, the way it resonates like my chest when I have the wind knocked out of me. I pour two fingers, add some water, and pick the notebook off the black and white tiles.

I sit on the couch, careful not to lean against my stitches, and look at the notebook. It is blue and hardbound and about one hundred pages thick, the cover adorned with a generic pre-printed white label that says
LAB NOTES.
I open it and find dense, nearly inscrutable algebra that fills every page to which I turn. I compare the handwriting to John's note: from the long ascenders and descenders, from the teardrop bow of the small g, I am sure it is his. The scotch won't mix well with the painkillers from the hospital but I take a mouthful anyway.

I told the nurses and the doctors that I'd fallen from a ladder and got sliced by metal siding on the way down. I doubt they believed me but at least they didn't phone the police.

I continue to flip through the book and find that it's all the same algebra, long strings of equations. I'm unsure whether the letters in the formulae are variables or constants but the equations don't ever seem to get solved or even substantially shortened. In the margins are hurriedly written notes with more cryptic initialisms, like “LJx,” or just “B.” The inside of the front cover has a familiar number written in various motifs:

Key fob then

4-2510- then

2510#- then

2510

The notebook poses more questions than it answers. I am about to give up on it when I flip back to the very first page and notice a single line of text.

The street where I grew up led to a dead end
, it says.

I put the book down, John's note slipped inside it, and finish the scotch. In the kitchen I pour myself another large glass and tap Buddy's cage. He comes out of the plastic tube, rears up on his
hind legs, and puts his nose up to the wire lid to sniff me. He is black from his shoulder blades to his nose as well as along his spine, and the rest of his fur is white. His front paws are tiny and pink and look like human hands with long thin nails.

“Hey, man,” I say to him. He looks at me.

I pry the lid off the cage, gently pick him up, and scratch his ears with my fingertip. He stands on my forearm without complaint and watches as I pick up my scotch. I swirl the drink along the lip of the glass, take a sip, and swish it in my mouth. I hold it in front of Buddy as an offering but he only sniffs it and turns around on my arm.

There is no food in the crook of the cage's wire lid but I have filled the water bottle and slotted the drinking nozzle through the bars. I remember John feeding hard little cylinders to the rats but I have no idea what the pellets actually were. I consider my current options, pasta or toast, and put a slice of bread in the toaster oven. The sight of food reminds me that I haven't eaten since the mashed potatoes so I drop in another slice for myself. I raise my arms to stretch and I can feel the medical tape pull at my skin.

While the bread is toasting, I put Buddy on the top of the miniature box. He would fit comfortably inside. I'm overtaken by a powerful yawn, but when I check my phone it isn't even ten o'clock yet. My legs ache as if I've been up for days. By now the liquor is warming my head and making a film over my eyes.

And then I hear a scrabbling sound and look to the box in time to see Buddy's tail disappear into the rubber hole. My heart begins to race.

“You little shit,” I whisper. “You didn't.”

I'm not putting my hand into the box to retrieve him. The toaster oven pings. I butter my slice, decide to butter Buddy's, too. I break his piece up and drop it onto the bedding inside the cage. Then I check the refrigerator, find half a head of iceberg lettuce,
tear a leaf off, and put it in the cage. I know very little about what rats eat but I doubt toast and lettuce will kill him.

But the box might. I am absolutely not putting my hand into it to retrieve him. I push at the slat with the rubber hole, hoping it will slide, but nothing happens. Then I wipe off the butter knife and use it to pry along one of the edges of the box. I hear a snap and the panel with the rubberized hole detaches. As expected, the inside of the box is lined with mirrors. But Buddy isn't inside. I check the counter, the floor, the corners of the room, the box again. Buddy is gone.

A laugh comes out of me, mean and hard, and I push the box away from me in disgust. I curse their disappearances, Buddy's a few minutes ago, John's last year, Grace's almost two years, now. I can see my reflection inside the box: bearded, worn, unkempt. It would feel satisfying to smash the box to pieces with the hammer. I seriously consider it for a moment.

Instead I empty the scotch bottle into my glass, turn out the lights, and grab the blue lab notebook on my way to the bedroom. I carry the toast in my mouth. I use my toes to pull off my socks and I slip out of my jeans. In bed, I swallow down my meal in a few bites and wipe the crumbs off the comforter. I lie on my side to avoid the stitches and rub at my eyes to clear away the glaze.

Skimming through the lab notebook doesn't help my anger. It could be some code, but none of John's “phrases” in the formulae seem to repeat, as I'd expect to see for words like
the
or
it.

The street where I grew up led to a dead end.

MOIJX­+NEW-­T*HHV­XI/NR­RX+NY­UWIFM­WVH-H­IDQBQ­W*ZMX­RWLDI­YG/RR­P+HLR­L-KS*­XESR/­UCO=Q­RZE+U­ACRJB­GATWJ­=QG-C­ACYGD­*LK/M­VSM+S­KFH-V­DCJWQ­ZV*HY­X/TUK­PQPHH­D+FA-­JRIL*­PHS/Y­SMFVF­USF
²
…

I first met John over the holidays, a year and a half before I moved to the city. By then I was on my way to flunking out for the second time at the same university (ultimately the same university where I flunked out a third time). Coming home from Vancouver on a cheap flight was a great excuse to miss exams I didn't care about.

Grace rejected the idea of family dinner at first, but not as fiercely as usual. It was hardly a struggle to convince her, actually. And when I answered the door at my mother's house and found her standing next to John, I understood why: she was happy.

The two of them must have been dating for a year by then, but standing near them as they took off their coats, I could feel the air thrumming with energy. Grace caught his glance and laughed spontaneously,
hah.
She reached out to lean on him as she took off her boots. Meanwhile John was this giant, smiling, calm presence, and best of all to me, he didn't turn to greet me until his interaction with Grace was complete. Then he shook my hand firmly, radiated a gentle authority, and made me feel that anything I had to say was welcome.

That Christmas dinner had the least conflict I'd observed in my family for ten years. Once or twice it got shaky, Grace's patience was tested, but John managed to absorb all the tension in the room. He just sat in my father's old chair at the table and nodded, listened, invited my mother and me to open up. My mother ate up his attention, and if I'm being honest, so did I. And when my sister smiled at him, it wasn't with that sad resigned smile, but warm and whole and enthusiastic about the future. Things weren't perfect for Grace, but they were better than they'd been in a long time, and I couldn't help giving John some of the credit.

And then it's morning in my bedroom. Grey-white light is coming in through the window and I know it will be a shitty day outside. I don't know what day it is, though, so I crawl off the bed and dig my phone from the pocket of my jeans. Monday, nine-thirty a.m. I have slept almost twelve hours and I'm thirty minutes late for work.

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” I say aloud.

I throw on the same jeans, different socks, and a light sweater over my T-shirt. The sweater makes it a work outfit. On top of this I put John's black jacket. My mouth is hot and acrid so I quickly brush my teeth but there is no time to look at my hair. I am out the door.

As I prepare to run down to Queen Street, something catches my eye: the landlord or somebody else has removed the persimmon tree from the ground. All that remains is a dark, grassless bump in the soil. I will miss the tree. It makes me think of Buddy's disappearance but I've already locked the door and I need to go. I run.

I'm sweating when I get to work. I can feel one of my bosses watching me through the many plates of glass in our office, and soon I hear the heels of his shoes clacking along the hardwood. He corners me while I'm hanging John's jacket in the closet and his cheery voice makes it clear that his wife, my other boss, has sent him to talk to me.

“Do you have anything pressing this morning?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Just those emails to Ottawa, but they can wait.”

“Why don't we grab a coffee?” His upbeat tone indicates something heavy is coming.

I look over his shoulder. His wife is in her office and wearing a pinched expression on her face. We make eye contact for a moment. Then she looks down her long nose and through her glasses to the computer screen. I turn to her husband and nod. The sweat on my back irritates the skin around my stitches and my guts are screaming from last night's scotch.

We leave the office and walk in silence past the makeshift art galleries and nonprofits that fill the rest of the building. I will miss this workplace, its wide hallways and head-to-toe wood. The coffee shop is at the front of the building and is mostly empty this time of day. My boss points me to a table and orders for us. I sit. There is a plant on the other side of the glass, something hardy and flowerless, and its pot is full of bent cigarette butts. People hustle through the intersection, their outfits split evenly between semi-formal office wear and very tight denim and plaid.

My boss sets a porcelain cup of café Americano in front of me, a little milk drizzled in it, and a latte next to himself. He is the type to remember what kind of coffee other people drink.

“So.” He's speaking in that voice he uses when his wife isn't around, like a frank father. “You're not making it easy for me here.”

“I know,” I tell him. “I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry it reflects badly on you. She shouldn't punish you for it.”

“We know you're good at your job. She gives you a hard time because she knows you're capable. We also know you're going through something, something that started just a few months after you joined the team. But I can only guess, because you haven't said anything.”

He pauses. I'm supposed to start speaking, here. I don't. He continues.

“It's hard to be empathic when you don't tell us what's going on. Are you all right?”

“I'm all right,” I say. He meant
empathetic
, not
empathic.

“Is it drugs?”

I look at his sincere face and I can't help but smile a little. “It's not drugs.”

“What is it, then?”