Claire's Head

Minus Time
(1994)
The Rules of Engagement
(2000)
Claire's Head
(2004)

“Pain, you must be everything to me. Let me find in you all those foreign lands you will not let me visit.”
– Alphonse Daudet,
In the Land of Pain
, trans. Julian Barnes

 

“Now I can do no more … What will become of me?”
– Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland

W
hen the phone rang, Claire was upstairs in her study, drawing the shoreline of Lake Ontario by hand. She liked to test her recall of the intricate patterns of coasts and shores – every inlet and promontory. As she picked up the phone, she noted the time, 3:42 in the afternoon. She was aware of her coordinates: she faced east, the window to her right, south, open just a crack, perhaps four centimetres.

“Is this Claire Barber?” asked an unknown male voice.

“Yes,” she said. “Who's this?”

“My name's Brad,” he said. “Brad Arnarson. I'm a friend of Rachel's. Your sister. I'm calling from New York. I was wondering when you last heard from her.” Claire glanced out the window, mentally spanning the distance from Toronto to New York.

“In March.” It was now Saturday, June 3, 2000. Not only did she not know Brad Arnarson, but she had never heard Rachel mention his name, which was not necessarily significant, since
Rachel, four years older and given to courting mystery when she chose, could be quite reticent about her private life. “We spoke the night of March 14.” The date had stuck. Then again, precision was Claire's forte. “She was in Montreal on a trip and called me from her hotel the night she arrived.”

“I talked to her the night before she left,” Brad Arnarson said. “At least that's where she said she was off to.”

To have heard nothing from Rachel, her oldest sister, in two and a half months was not all that unusual. Claire assumed she had been busy. A writer specializing in medical issues, Rachel freelanced and travelled a lot, often on assignment. In April, Claire had e-mailed her to see how she was doing and when Rachel didn't respond, Claire had not thought too much about it, since Rachel was not always dependable about staying in contact.

“She told me she was in Montreal to interview someone, a doctor, a migraine specialist, for an article.”

“The thing is,” Brad Arnarson went on, “I don't think she's been back to New York. I've called and left messages. I've gone up to her door and knocked. I've asked around in the neighbourhood, in shops, the health food store, the dry cleaner's across the street from her building, and no one's seen her. My place isn't that far away. On 12th Street. I've walked along 9th at night and the only light I've seen lit is one I know she keeps on a timer. I have a set of keys. I could let myself into the apartment, but I thought I should talk to someone else first.”

“You're a close friend?”

“Yeah, pretty close.”

“Did she give you my number?”

“No, first I tried to find your other sister, Allison, but I couldn't.”

“She's listed under her husband's name.”

“You were the first C. Barber.”

Had he been spying on Rachel? Stalking, only Rachel wasn't there to be stalked. Were there reasons to be suspicious of him, for all that his concern seemed genuine?

“I'll call you back. Can you give me your number?” She wrote his home and cellphone numbers on a piece of drawing paper, not yet certain how worried she should be.

The last time she'd spoken to Rachel, Rachel had not sounded well. But then Rachel had been in the grip of a migraine, which Claire had intuited, from the rasp in her voice, before she'd said more than a word. When Rachel's headaches were particularly bad or when, because of them, she was feeling despondent and lonely, she called Claire. How bad, Claire had asked that night. 2.85, Rachel croaked, which was at the high end of their private code, the Barber Pain Scale. It ran from zero to three, broken down, at Claire's suggestion, infinitesimally within that range. Was it the flight, Claire asked, although she was more often the one who suffered migraines while flying. Maybe, Rachel said, maybe flights were beginning to be a trigger for her, too, although they never used to be.

She'd felt the quiver of something before leaving. She'd eaten a sandwich at La Guardia before catching her plane. There'd been a slice of cheese in the sandwich, and dairy
was
a big trigger for her these days. She'd taken the cheese out, but maybe there was some kind of residue. On the flight, feeling a headache
coming on, she'd had a sip of coffee, no more than a sip – she'd been trying to be so careful about such things, about too much caffeine, although sometimes, conversely, a swig of coffee early in the migraine cycle would nip the pain in the bud. This time the caffeine only made things worse. As soon as she got to her hotel room, she'd medicated – a Zomig, two Tylenol 3s – but the drugs didn't seem to be working.

“How long ago was that?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Give them a chance. Perhaps you just need to sleep it off. Or if you can't sleep, try to relax. Breathe deeply. Think of the sea, something calming.”

Claire knew how inane her words sounded, how hard it was to offer comfort. When a migraine came on, the pain swelled, like the sea over a small boat, overwhelming the horizon. It wasn't just in the head, but down one side of the body. All of you felt disturbed, helpless, assaulted.

In the two and a half months since that conversation, it had struck Claire now and again that Rachel hadn't called seeking solace when in pain. Odd, if she'd broken a nasty and persistent bout, that she hadn't let Claire know what had done the trick. Perhaps she'd been feeling so well, so blissfully pain-free, that thoughts of Claire and headaches had fallen by the wayside.

“I have to talk to this neurologist tomorrow,” Rachel had said from Montreal. “About some new migraine research. It seemed like a good idea when I set it up.”

“Maybe the neurologist will be able to help you.”

Phone in hand, Claire padded down the upstairs hall to Stefan's study at the front of the house. He looked up as she entered, away from a computer screen radiant with shifting colours, his chin and neck retracting as he swivelled his chair towards her. “Who was it?”

“A friend of Rachel's. Some guy from New York named Brad. I'm not sure what kind of friend. He hasn't heard from her since just before she left for Montreal to interview some researcher, and I haven't heard from her since the night she arrived there. He doesn't think she's been back to her apartment.”

Stefan picked up the marble that he liked to play with while he worked and circled it in his left palm. “Maybe she went back home and took off again.”

“It's possible.”

“Maybe she was invited to someone's beach house in the Caribbean. Or a yacht. Maybe she's having an adventure and is on a yacht somewhere.”

“It's possible, but not very likely.”

“Have you talked to Allison?” He set the marble down in a little white china dish.

“No, no, I was just about to call her.”