Here Until August. Josephine Rowe
dressed in peacock green, gliding across the pond-chain of streetlights. Past the soft mounds of cars, long before any traffic came to churn up the night’s pure drift.
Jody saw this, not me. I just heard about it. He’d caught sight of it from our terrarium window when he got out of bed for a glass of water. That same afternoon he went out and found a flea market on St. Laurent and came back with a pair of cross-country skis.
You can ski?
We’ll find out.
Jody had never skied in his life, but neither of us doubted he’d have a knack for it. He picked up a lot of things with a striking nonchalance, drawing on a latent grace he never promised to any particular pursuit with any seriousness. Or maybe it’s agility I’m talking about, not grace. He still ate like a drug fiend. Indiscriminate combinations of overprocessed, microwaveable god-knows-what. A tendency to knife-lick. Didn’t your mother ever … But I could watch him move across a dark room forever.
I championed the skis. I mapped out the trails around the mountain. It wasn’t as generous as wanting him to be happy; I wanted him to not be sorry that he had come. He felt asleep here, he’d said. Dimmed and dense-souled, like on dirty horse tranqs, more ketted than benzoed.
You know you burn up just as much energy treading water as you do swimming towards something?
This was information, not a question. I’ve since looked it up and I know for a fact it isn’t a fact, generally speaking. But it was true enough for Jody.
He said he felt dried out, alligatored by the heating system, left an apple out on the sill to show just how he meant. We watched it shrivel and leather to become a grotesque little face. Accusing.
Late into January, throwing up became my new morning ritual. In the kitchen, quietly so as not to wake Jody. The steel belly of the sink was like an amphitheater, and from within it I listened to the ghost broadcasts from next door.
… a confirmé plus que mille planètes extrasolaires …
Providence. Marie had promised. This wasn’t it. Or it depended on your definition of providence. The blessed piece of scallop shell had long disappeared by then; I turned out all of my pockets but it never tumbled out.
I don’t know how she knew. I didn’t even know know; I was still hoping I was suffering from some kind of virus. But she knew. She saw me out her kitchen window one morning before work, on the balcony, inviting icy air onto my damp face, and she came out still wearing floral dish-washing gloves carrying a thermos, workman’s style. Once her husband’s, I figured. It was roughed up with the scratches and dents of a day laborer, or a fisherman.
English is better for you? Maybe you cannot keep anything in your stomach, but this you will manage. I know; often I can manage nothing else myself.
I wasn’t showing, it was much too soon. Even if I had been, there was so much winter goosedown to disguise it. She’d heard me, then, through our little two-way sink system? Or she could tell just by looking. Maybe you gained that power of insight after seven or eight decades in the world. Maybe life knows life, I thought, feverishly sentimental.
You like it, you just say and I will bring more, she said, placing the thermos in my hands. AYLIFFE in faded black marker down the side.
You knock here, like so, Madame Ayliffe said, rapping at her own kitchen window, startling a small tuxedo cat off the inside sill.
At the metro station I unscrewed the lid and sniffed. It was a kind of hot ginger broth, something lemony and spicy and just a little bit sweet. I drank a dozen tiny sips, standing right there on the platform, and my stomach quietened. I finished it off in a corner of the tiny fluoro-lit staff room on my break, and felt replenished and clear-sighted, as though an ounce of grit had been sluiced from behind my eyes.
That same afternoon I was fired for turning in a wonky swan. Really it wasn’t so much the wonky swan as my “shitty attitude” about the wonky swan, about the towels in general. My general carelessness. The wonky swan was just one example. I had little grounds to argue. I finished out the afternoon, resisting the temptation of petty vengeances; mixing up the hand soaps and hair products, folding towels to resemble labia.
Jody congratulated me when I told him, as though my leaving had been a matter of integrity, my personal choice. He insisted on cooking a celebratory dinner. Something had flicked on in him, and though I knew I wouldn’t keep the meal down, I couldn’t refuse. All he really knew how to cook was fish, he said, promising that when spring came and we could crack the windows and doors, he’d blow the roof off with scampi, jambalaya, gumbo, things that wanted all-day bubbling to stickiness on the stove, reeking up the kitchen. But for now he was keeping it fresh and simple: kingfish puffing steam from a little tinfoil papoose; kipflers and some kind of greens on the side.
I chewed slow and careful. During a long silence, I nodded at the skis. Nobody’s going to want those when spring comes, I warned him once I’d managed to swallow. You’re not going to be able to resell them. You should at least try them out.
I’m going to.
You’ll need to get all the other truck, I told him.
Yup.
Poles and boots. Proper gloves. All that lark.
Truck, he echoed. Lark. Do you speak that way in real life?
This isn’t real life? I asked. Then I realized that if one of us didn’t think so, it probably wasn’t.
Maybe I’ll take them back with me.
What can you do with skis in Louisiana? I tried to sound indifferent, but a slatey, astringent saliva had flooded my mouth. The something-or-other glands, I’d learned in those first weeks of class.
I forced a forkful of the kingfish and another of potato, but the acid in my mouth slurred the flavors of everything, and the textures became repulsive. I gagged, tried to swallow, gagged again, spat into a slice of bread and wadded it up like a napkin. Jody was staring at me.
So many bones, I explained. Like a little pincushion. One stabbed the inside of my cheek, I said, scraping my chair back from the old drafting board we used as a table.
Bones? he asked, prying apart the flakes of his own fish with a knife and fork. Sorry, I thought I got them all. His voice trailed me down the hallway.
In the bathroom I ran water and threw up properly. I rummaged through a drawer, hunting out a mini hotel sewing kit. The jab to the inside of my cheek felt like the first prick of a dental injection. Crazy. Did I think he’d ask to see evidence?
Fucking or Fighting? he asked when I came back to the kitchen.
What? I tongued the tender inside of my cheek.
He pointed his fork at the floorboards, cocked his head. His hair hung with the sad luster of velour. The yelps of the girls downstairs floated up.
Fucking, I answered, but didn’t bother translating the specifics.
What was real life, then? It was out there, Jody’s version of it. Baling wire and a worthy ache in the arms. Kicking animal feed off the bed of a Hilux, or the swamp seeping into your socks, if you were stupid enough to wear socks. His soles like burred wood, sassafras bark.
Why couldn’t I tell him? Because I was a coward; if I told him, he’d decide on something. A direction, he’d pick a direction. But I didn’t know which direction that would be, and I didn’t trust myself not to follow it.
I slept late, woke to strong light, felt stronger myself. I filled the Ayliffe thermos with tea and took it on a walk up Mont Royal. Cross-country skiers slid past, as if on greased rails. When I reached the cross I sat for a while, looking back towards the Plateau for our apartment, but the view didn’t work that way. I took a few mouthfuls of the tea, still hot and oversweet. I had come here to think, but fell into a false, wordless calm, opening the thermos now and then to let the steam breathe up into my face. But I forgot it on the bus coming home. My general carelessness, my carelessness in general.