Aftershock Page 19

  Then, as quickly as it had come, the anger rolled away, left me exhausted in its wake. I curled into a ball on my bunk and wished hard for my own disappearance. I could still see the glances between the Germans and Jansen, hear the laughter that was clearly at my expense. He must have already had my money at that point. He’d done exactly what he claimed had been done to him, when I’d met him: stolen from me while I was in the washroom, left me with virtually nothing. My sense of being utterly powerless to undo something catastrophic was achingly familiar.

  I WAS STILL there, trying to breathe, trying not to breathe, trying to reorganize my mental universe, when Chandra backed her way into the dorm a couple hours later, pulling a vacuum cleaner and a cart full of cleaning supplies and linens.

  Oh, hey, hon. I was just looking for you. Nick says the German bloke left this for ya. Chandra pulled an envelope from her jeans pocket, held it out. I felt a brief surge of hope that all my misery was moot, saw with lightning speed the redemptive scenario: Jansen’s father had come through, here he was paying back what he’d taken. But I knew it made no sense, and when I opened the envelope I felt even worse.

  I stared at the matau I’d first seen hanging from the rear-view in Tanga’s truck. Stolen, obviously.

  I need your bed if you’re not staying, yeah?

  I didn’t move, couldn’t speak.

  Aw, love, did your guy go on and leave you without saying?

  Oh god. I shook my head. Not my guy. But he stole my bank card.

  I hated how pathetic I must look. Chandra hesitated.

  And all my cash, I added.

  Oh, hon. She sat down beside me on my bunk, placed a hand on my shoulder. He didn’t break into your locker? She looked behind her at the bank of lockboxes, checking for damage.

  I shook my head. He went into my pack when I was in the shower. I felt my core collapse. I folded in on myself, my shoulders on my knees.

  I’m real sorry, love. Have you cancelled your card?

  Not yet.

  Did you give him your password?

  As she asked, I remembered him coming up behind me in the lobby the day before. I sank even farther.

  I think he saw me punch it in.

  Aw shite, really? Money’s as good as gone, then. Do you want to call the police? No telling what they can do, but good to have a record of it—could be he’s done this before. Do you have any money?

  My head rolled slowly from side to side.

  Is there someone you can call?

  Not really. Still can’t reach my dad. So, that’s great.

  Oh, hon. Let me talk to Nick. Maybe we can let you stay here tonight, and you can pay us later, yeah? And you should cancel your card. He’s already had it since last night.

  As Chandra started downstairs, she said over her shoulder, What about your mother, hon? Can you call her?

  Oh god. That was not likely to go well.

  Tank.

  You gonna float?

  The receptionist at the Whole Soul Healing Clinic wiggled bushy grey eyebrows at her.

  I guess so.

  It’s interesting, he said.

  Well, said Jules. Good.

  Like going away on vacation. To another country, almost.

  Great, said Jules.

  It can even be like going to another planet.

  Jules chuckled, surprising them both.

  Even better, she said.

  This seemed to encourage him, and when Declan arrived a few minutes later, the receptionist, who called himself Darwin, was telling Jules about a client who liked to spend entire consecutive days in the tank.

  He’s, like, approaching enlightenment or something. Talking to god and shit.

  Oh, wow, said Jules, impressed that someone would make such an extreme claim.

  Declan stood behind Darwin and rolled his arm through the air in a wide arc, a playful full-body beckoning. She followed him down a hallway that smelled of wood and chlorine. Sweat trickled down from under her bra.

  Alright, Julie, here’s our wee flotation tank.

  It looked like a sleek sports car without wheels or windows, a gleaming white shell with chrome trim, the underside glowing a futuristic neon blue. Declan pointed out hooks, towels and the shower. He showed her how the lid simply lifted and lowered. There was no latch or anything, no locking in, no locking out. Her chest constricted, forcing her to take a deep breath that sounded like a gasp. Declan peered into her face.

  You okay?

  I think so. I’m just a bit . . .

  She ground the heel of her hand into her solar plexus, its hard knot of anxiety. Declan squeezed her shoulder briefly.

  This will help.

  Jules inhaled deeply, trying to expand and loosen the knot under her palm.

  I just . . . She motioned vaguely towards the tank.

  Yep, it’s all you. You’ll know when it’s over. Then come see me downstairs. Alright?

  Jules gave a slow nod. She didn’t understand why everyone—especially Declan and Drew—seemed intent on helping her. It made her wonder if she seemed like an abandoned kitten that people couldn’t walk by without trying to save.

  Her suspicion must have shown on her face. Declan shook his head, gave a warm half smile. Drew’s real fond of you.

  She shrugged. That wasn’t enough.

  Well, and I got a real soft spot for Drew. After my wife died, I . . . fell apart. For a long, long time. Like, I wound up in the hospital. When I got out, they sent me to a support group, and if I hadn’t met Drew there, I probably wouldn’t be here now. So. Guess I’m trying to keep my karma balanced.

  Jules nodded at the weight of this. She wondered what a “long time” was by his standards.

  Plus, if you gotta know, it’s part of my research.

  She made a face. That didn’t exactly make her feel better.

  I’m just a number to you, eh?

  Declan chuckled. And left her to it.

  JULES TURNED THE lights down low, piled her clothes on a chair, showered, dried only her face (gotta form a wet-dry barrier so the salt doesn’t go in your eyes) and stepped into the tank. She still had scabs and open cuts where the itchiness from the Oxy and the withdrawal had made her scratch and pick herself to bleeding, and they all stung fiercely as the salt water found them, making her wince and stand back up. But she quickly started to itch again; stinging was always better than itching, so she lowered herself back down. It felt the way alcohol felt on a cut—or like mouthwash on rigorously brushed teeth—an antiseptic sting, somehow promising healing. Literally, salt in her wounds. The rash of sores across her lower back and hips, patches on her forearms and fingers. Even her toes. She concentrated on breathing through the burn. As the water settled, shaped itself around her body and held her there, she became still, and now her sores and scabs felt soothed.

  She drifted imperceptibly, utterly calm. Every so often a toe or a pinky would brush smooth fibreglass, and with the slightest pressure she would push off again, lose all sense of space until another digit nudged the other side. Until even that stopped and she was completely immobile

  and her mind slipped

  floating

  in the tank, a memory

  part of a memory

  how can you have part of a memory?

  What makes it complete?

  Or rather, is not all memory incomplete?

  Our imperfect brains

  Imperfect bodies

  Soft rolls of uncontained flesh

  Stressed bones strained ligaments

  Soothed and cooled

  All the molecules, every pore on the surface of her skin, drank in the darkness, the perfect counterpart, perfect antidote to the glare of day. Perfect temperature, the body, the air, the water, each a continuation of the other, the skin vanished, the edge faded, the force field between self and world lost all meaning, dissolved completely.

  The only sensation by which she could measure her awareness of self was the feeling of her lungs expanding, so she t
ook long, deep breaths, her ears underwater

  hear your breathing from the inside

  it rolls like a nighttime ocean

  Chloe, breathing

  Lying in my arms, legs folded over mine,

  hair that smells like baby powder

  I think she’s crying

  I can’t help her

  My baby is dead and I can’t help her

  Jules’s eyes opened, an old reflex for ridding herself of hijacker memories. At least, she thought her eyes had opened, she could feel them blinking, but she could see even less than she could hear, there was no nighttime sky behind this darkness, only an internal space of imagined light, the inner screen of her mind almost palpable in front of her, a private show of her own inner vision. Eyes open or closed, there was no difference.

  She felt no pain. How did she not notice that before? Nothing hurt in here. No muscles knotting or irritated nerves or aching joints. She could feel nothing at all. Which had always been the point of the Oxy, this absence of feeling. But the drug also dulled her thoughts, quieted her reflex to dredge up memories in the ongoing project of seeking perspective on one’s life. It helped her avoid self-awareness at all costs, in fact.

  Here in this chamber of mind, memories squeezed themselves into the darkness, shapeless phantoms that circled her, lay with her, stroked her with breathy ghost fingers.

  She’d been to see Dr. Morrow again the day before, who had again poked around for Jules’s sore spots.

  the baby, the baby

  Fourteen years ago, Lizzie had fundamentally altered everything. Jules’s entire course of existence rerouted by someone who stayed alive for less than eight months. Even now, struggling to inhabit her creaky, ill-maintained, middle-aged rattletrap of a body without the magic pills, coming to terms with a drug habit that had stealthily ensnared her—even now, it all came back to Lizzie.

  the baby died stopped breathing somehow

  the baby died stopped that day, that day

  the babysitter’s voice from the speaker on her desk,

  the terrible words, the blazing sunshine outside

  brown bag lunchers around the fountain

  daytime mums with Humvee strollers

  Thirteen years and still it made her lungs constrict. Crumpling in the weightless dark, Jules pressed both hands to her chest to make sure she was still there.

  She had hung up the phone and lost everything, lost all control, stood in her office and wailed, pitched and staggered, her vision darkening at the edges, until Monica came in and slapped her. Not hard, just enough to shock her, like swatting aside a frantic swarm of flies to see what festered underneath. All emotion had gusted out, left her numb and empty and exhausted. She heard talking but no words, only murmurs, she was crushed beneath a mile of ocean, paralyzed and sinking. Colleagues in their dark suits and fake concern hovered and muttered at the door, but she couldn’t even look up from the carpet. A stain drifted into the middle of her gaze, shaped like a squashed cockroach, a dark spot of blackish brown that could have been coffee, ink or blood, on the floor just in front of her desk. This was the moment she remembered most often, the picture that came into her head as a sort of code word for that day, the dark days that followed, sometimes even for Lizzie herself: sitting on the couch and waiting to be swallowed up, sure she’d never again be able to rise, her eyes fixed immovably on the drab brown carpet of her office floor, the darker brown of that faded stain.

  LOW, TONAL MUSIC started inaudibly and grew, bringing her back to the cushioning darkness of the pod. A soft glow around the edge and a gentle chime let her know her session had ended. Jules pushed open the door of the flotation tank and climbed out.

  Declan’s clinic was more urban spa than medical facility. Low lighting, lush towels, a massaging shower awaited her. She towelled dry and dressed, noticing only as she finished how smoothly her body was moving, how bending over and stretching were actions she completed without awareness. Like a quote unquote normal person.

  Declan sat in an armchair in his office, a file folder of printouts open on his lap, and as Jules approached, he gestured with his pen at a seat across from him.

  Got your medical records already, no problem.

  He’d sent an official request for these a few days ago, when they booked her appointment, but they’d both expected Rod, her primary physician of record, to resist and stall indefinitely. That Rod, or his office, had responded so quickly only made her wonder what he was up to. But wonder at a distance: sitting with Declan in matching blue armchairs, wood floors glowing around them as sun bounced through the fall leaves outside the window, and the smell of good coffee wafting into the room, Rod felt irrelevant.

  Declan studied her face for a long moment, then said that, believe it or not, she already seemed more relaxed.

  Did you like it?

  I don’t know if “like” is the right word.

  Well, it’s meditative, right? Produces theta waves, so your . . . subconscious, I guess, can rise to the surface, mingle with the conscious, more daily stuff. It can get pretty heavy.

  They were locked in eye contact and suddenly it was too much. Jules tore away, looking for somewhere else to land her gaze. A wall of medical books and a large painting of a blossoming iris did not satisfy.

  I guess so, she said. She could hear him flipping through her file.

  Well, you have a lot of injuries, Julie. But they’ve run every test in the book, looks like. No rheumatoid arthritis, nothing like that. So I have to think there’s something else going on. Like a different kind of stress, right? On your whole body—holistic stress. I feel like we should open you up so it can get out.

  Open me up? She spread a protective hand over her breastbone.

  Oh, you know. Declan waved his pen around, gesturing between them. You float and relax, and then we have a little chat. You and me. Alright?

  It sounded a lot like therapy, and her immediate reaction was to resist. But a synaptic branch twitched and she saw in herself the stubborn refusal of her own mother to accept help. For years, not even denying that she had a problem, just not seeing the point in trying to live any other way. It wasn’t a happy life, she admitted slurrily during one of Jules’s infrequent calls home, but happiness was for other people. Jules could try to be happy in her place, she said. Then came the time that Jules had been summoned back from university when a bad fall on her apartment stairs had landed her mother in the hospital, and the clicking of the doctor’s pen as he shook his head over wasted time: her mother had to stop drinking or die.

  As her present started to reframe her past, Jules realized she was out of reasons to say no.

  In the driveway, she rapped on the car window and Drew’s eyes popped open. He stared at the car ceiling while his brain rebooted, slowly rolled his head towards the passenger side, saw Jules and popped the locks. She envied his seeming immunity to the cold.

  They were halfway back to his place before he said:

  So?

  Her head felt loose on her shoulders, bobbing around with the movement of the car. Wind had picked up, quickly, and blew around snow, the sharp-edged gravel kind that clicked when it hit the windshield and cut open exposed skin.

  I go back next week.

  BACK IN THE third-floor sitting room, she watched the bare branches of the Last Tree Standing flail, the longest of its twiggy fingers tapping on the window. She’d been at Drew’s just over three weeks. Funny how your perception of a room alters with the time you spend there. This would always be the place where she retched and writhed and cried while she came off Oxy.

  She paced around, not wanting to sit. She’d spent too much time on that couch, wallowing, sweating into those sheets. She went out to the landing and listened for the TV downstairs. Drew had gone back to the office, and Farzan, she could hear, was where he seemed to spend every day, watching a very loud game of football on the five-foot television screen on the second floor. It was jarring to the point of fascinating to see this thin
little intellectual so obsessively watching the iconic meathead sport, and if Jules had had more tolerance for it, she would have joined him just to enjoy that phenomenon. But football she just could not fathom. Soccer, maybe. But not this.

  She could admit that the flotation tank had been very relaxing, like a full night’s sleep in the middle of the day, but now she just felt cooped up again. Restless. Like there was something she was meant to be doing, but she couldn’t get her shit together enough to figure out what it was.

  She spotted her big leather handbag where she’d left it three weeks ago, slung over the back of a chair. It had been returned to her by the cops with a manila envelope containing her personal items. She’d taken out her wallet, dropped the rest of it into her bag and hadn’t thought about it since.

  She emptied the contents of her purse and the envelope onto the couch, then sat beside the pile and surveyed her life’s minutiae: breath mints, heat patches, expired anti-inflammatories (too hard on her stomach), lipstick she hadn’t worn in months, her cellphone and passport, a couple pens, two USB keys, a folded pile of pink message slips. A load of crap.

  It wasn’t until she noticed she was clutching a small pill container that she realized what she’d been looking for. But the container, small enough to tuck in a pocket and just big enough for six tabs of Oxy, was empty.

  Which is good, she told herself. It’s supposed to be good.

  She unfolded the message slips and swore out loud: David. She’d never called him back. She’d forgotten, in fact, that he’d called.

  She reached for her cellphone; the battery was dead. She untangled the travel charger, went into the bathroom and plugged it into the outlet over the sink. The cord on the charger was maybe two feet long, so she sat on the covered toilet seat. This would have to be a short conversation. She had a dozen new voice mails but ignored them for now, opened David’s contact info and hit Call. Her heart pounded with a sense of impending conflict as she listened to the ringing. She tried not to look at her reflection. Her biggest complaint about the layout of the third floor was the mirror directly in her eye line every time she sat on the toilet. Right in her face. Tucked into the corner of the mirror was a copy of her own mug shot from the day of her arrest. Drew had put it there as a reminder: Whole lot of ugly, honey. Let’s not go back there. She really didn’t want to look at that either.