Girls Fall Down (25 page)

‘You're probably going to get head lice,' said the other nurse to Alex.

‘What the hell was up with that bird?' asked the orderly with the pillow. ‘I mean, have we got a big hole in the wall somewhere or what?'

‘There's going to be an inquiry over this one.'

‘Just don't sue us about the lice, okay, Alex?'

His scalp was throbbing when he got home, his head smelling of disinfectant and Polysporin. He felt shaky still, but unable to sit down. He didn't think he wanted to cook himself anything for dinner. Didn't want to stay home at all, really. He'd spoken to his ophthalmologist that morning and it hadn't been very encouraging.

He could have phoned Susie. He thought about phoning Susie, but he found himself instead with his camera on Bloor Street. He'd tell her about the bird sometime. She would like to hear about it. But not now, not quite so soon, not so he looked like he needed her.

He did have to eat something before he started working, so he went into the tiny falafel shop by the movie theatre. An older woman, heavy-set, was sitting in one of the plastic chairs, wearing a deep green velvet head scarf and peeling a mandarin orange, and as he came in she looked up and smiled at him, soft, familiar, as if he were a loved relative, or as if the pigeon had marked him, in some way recognizable only to a few. He smiled back, nervously, and she stretched out half the orange towards him; he shook his head, but she pressed it into his hand, the orange and gold-washed flesh of it shining under the fluorescent light. He broke off a segment and lifted it to his mouth, the juice sharp and sweet, a wordless agreement between strangers in the city.

There was one night when
Dissonance
was in production that a phone call had come in, and Chris had waved Susie into the office to take it. Alex was at one of the tables studying a page layout, and
he watched her, resting her head on one hand as she talked, biting her lip anxiously, twirling her hair around one finger. Chris seemed to get impatient as the call went on and started gesturing for her to hang up, but she shook her head. He spoke again, more sharply – Alex could hear his voice through the glass, though not the words – and she put her hand over the receiver and whispered something back at him, her face pale and tight. It was too long for Alex to keep sitting there; he had to go back into the darkroom.

He had just finished shooting a stat on the process camera when she knocked tentatively on the inner door.

‘It's okay,' he called, switching on the light. ‘You can come in.' She sat down on the stool, her feet pulled up, tucking her knees under her chin.

‘You all right?' he asked.

‘Why wouldn't I be?'

‘I don't know. You tell me.'

She was wearing an oversized white shirt and torn jeans, a jagged metal necklace, army boots. She put her head to one side, her cheek against her knee.

‘Do you think it would be easy to lose your mind?' she said, picking at a flake of nail polish at the corner of her index finger.

He lifted out a sheet of photographic paper and ran it into the developing machine. The room smelled of chemicals and stale marijuana smoke.

‘It could be,' he said.

‘Does it scare you?'

The stat came out of the developer, a little darker than he'd wanted. Maybe he should shoot it again.

He had never thought about losing his mind, not really; he had enough to think about when a small needle of insulin was the only barrier between him and rapid death. ‘Not so much as some things,' he said – and then pre-empting her, because she would have asked, ‘I just mean things in general.'

She nodded. ‘Okay.' He had one of his mixed tapes on in the background, a song from Big Star's last album playing, ragged and needy. ‘If somebody loves you,' she said, and Alex was glad that he was
facing away from her because he could feel the rush of heat in his face, ‘what kind of rights does that give them?'

It took him a while to gather his breath to speak. ‘Probably none,' he said quietly, turning a dial on the machine.

‘Yeah. Maybe that wasn't what I meant.'

‘I have to turn the lights out,' he said, and he pushed the switch, and they were in red-tinged darkness. The flash from the process camera blurred across them and flared out. He reached out a hand in the crimson dark and stroked her hair, and he knew that his fingers were wet with the developing fluid, that she would carry the smell of the darkroom with her for the rest of the night. Her face in red shadow. He thought her eyes were closed, though he couldn't be sure.

He stepped backwards and turned on the light. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Yeah, well. I have to run this through the developer now.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘All right,' and slid down from the stool, turning towards the door.

Laser photocoagulation is performed as an outpatient procedure. Each individual treatment should take less than one hour. Your ophthalmologist will tell you how many treatments your particular condition will require. If you have been diagnosed with proliferative retinopathy, you will probably require two or more treatments at two-week intervals.

You may experience some discomfort during and after the treatment. You will be given anaesthetic drops before treatment, which should minimize the discomfort. If your eyes are still causing you discomfort one week after the treatment, inform your ophthalmologist.

You may experience blurred vision immediately after the treatment. This should go away by itself. DO NOT attempt to drive home after the treatment. You should bring a friend to the clinic who can take you home. If your vision continues to be blurry for several days, inform your ophthalmologist.

‘I have an appointment for Monday morning,' said Alex, putting the pamphlet back in his bag as they walked, after dark, towards
Pottery Road. ‘That in itself is disturbing. I don't like them treating it as an urgent case.'

‘Do you want me to come?'

‘No, I'll be okay. I'll just take a taxi back. But I did want to ask you – if you happen to be free. I wanted to take some photos of you this weekend.' They passed by a man wearing a surgical mask, white gloves on his hands. ‘I know I'm being superstitious. It's not going to make a big difference, not the first series of treatments, only if I have to, only if it comes back. So it's not really that important but – I'd like to do it, if you have the time.'

Susie nodded. ‘I was going to spend tomorrow in the library. But Sunday, if you want.'

‘Late morning? The light's good in the late morning.'

‘Sure. Whenever.'

Under snow-covered trees, they made their way down the hill, past the concrete divider with the black word FEAR on the side. High drifts surrounded the prancing wooden ponies of Fantasy Farms, and the glowing flower man was breathing out clouds of ice crystals, clutching a bouquet of plastic roses to his chest. Into the sketchy dreams of the city's sunken veins, across the Don.

They climbed the steep hill at Bayview, scrambling and sliding up the slope where the brush cover was most scattered, sinking into the snow. By the time they reached the top, snow had clumped in Alex's gloves and the creases of his coat, his boots had filled with a cold layer of it, freezing his ankles. He ran quickly over the railway track, thinking how he hated crossing it, though it was small and narrow and there was clearly no train anywhere nearby; he felt sure, irrationally sure, that an engine would loom up from nowhere and flatten him.

‘Should I wait up here?' he asked, as they reached the sharp downslope, just above Derek's underpass. Across the valley, he could see an array of lights, and above them a soft red glow in the sky, the city's permanent day.

‘Come down a bit further,' said Susie. ‘We'll see how it goes.' She brushed snow from her arms. ‘I'd like to have you in sight, I guess,' she added, almost apologetically.

She went down the slope ahead of him, and stumbled, clinging to a branch, onto the level area; following her, he nearly fell himself, snow down his right side. As he found his footing on the bare ground, he heard the sound of a man crying. Susie stood still. Inside the tent, the sound went on, hiccuping, empty, desolate.

She walked to the tent. ‘Derek,' she said softly. ‘Derek. It's Susie-Paul.'

The crying sound stuttered and died away. Susie waited, squatting down, and slowly Derek crept out of the tent, his face still wet and crumpled. Under the emaciation and dirt and age he seemed somehow young, almost childlike.

‘I'm feeling very sad,' he whispered.

‘I can tell,' said Susie gently.

‘I was thinking about when we were small, and Mom and Dad killed our white horse.'

Susie pinched her lips together. ‘We never had a horse, Derek.'

‘Oh yes,' said Derek, nodding. ‘We did. It was a white horse, and it spoke to us. But they killed it. There was blood all over. You cried and cried. I tried to comfort you.'

‘Okay. Sure. Let's just not get into this now.'

‘They cut its head off. The blood got into your hair. That's why your hair keeps changing colour.'

Susie put a hand to her hair automatically, then shook her head. ‘Derek. We need to talk about a place you can live.'

‘I'm doing very well here.'

‘I don't think so. It's getting really cold. It will get colder in January. I don't want you living in a tent.'

‘You remember that horse. I know you remember. Mom held its mouth shut while Dad cut its head off with an axe. The blood went flying.' Tears began to roll down his face again. ‘Oh. Oh. It used to talk to us. Baby sister. It would take us away to a place where we could be safe together.' His voice broke up into little gasping sobs. ‘You cried and cried.'

Susie covered her face with her hands. Slowly, quietly, Alex moved towards them. Derek rocked back and forth and seemed not to notice him, and he knelt in the frozen mud beside Susie and put
his hand on her shoulder. She looked up, and for a second bent her head to the side so that her cheek touched his fingers.

‘Derek,' she said, her voice steady. ‘I understand that you're sad. My concern right now is the weather. It is too cold to be living outside.'

Derek wiped tears and mucus from his face and took several deep, shaky breaths. ‘Will you introduce me to your friend?' he said.

Susie glanced at Alex and shrugged. ‘Derek, this is Alex Deveney. Alex, Derek Rae.'

He stretched out his hand. Alex slid off his glove and took it, and they shook briefly. Derek's hand was trembling, and it felt wet and clammy and very cold.

‘I don't think you can take proper care of my sister,' he said.

‘No,' said Alex. ‘I don't suppose I can.'

‘I'm a grown woman, Derek. I take care of myself.'

Derek frowned. ‘But you're still very little. You're my baby girl.'

‘Let's talk about this housing problem.'

‘They won't let me come inside,' said Derek. ‘You know that. They never let me come inside. They make me go out.'

‘Well, I'm trying to find a place that won't make you go out.'

He shook his head. ‘They always make me go out. They tell me about the behaviour. They don't understand my parameters.'

‘If you'd take your medication, we wouldn't have so many problems with your parameters.'

Derek scowled and looked sideways, towards the concrete wall, twitching a bit. ‘We've discussed this before. I don't need medication. I have my own self-regulatory system.'

‘Oh yeah. That's why you're starving to death in the snow under a bridge.'

‘Baby girl.' Derek lifted his eyes to Susie, and crept slowly towards her, his voice suddenly dreamy, his tongue moving back and forth across his lower lip. ‘Remember when you were bitten by the snake? I saved your life. I sucked the poison from your blood.'

Susie made a small noise, and Alex put his hand back on her shoulder.

‘You were lying dead on the ground. You were so pale. You had no heartbeat. I picked you up in my arms and sucked the poison from your blood. Don't you remember?'

‘That isn't what happened,' said Susie. She reached up to her shoulder and held on to Alex's hand with her own.

‘I saved your life a hundred times. It was so hard. They kept trying to kill us, but I protected you. I will always protect you if you let me.' He touched her knee with his hand. ‘Mom and Dad put the snake in your bedroom.'

Alex felt Susie's nails through the back of his glove. ‘You know that it didn't happen like that,' she said weakly.

‘They tried to kill you so many times. Then they realized they'd have to kill me first. But I won't let them, baby girl.'

Susie shook her head, exhaling hard.

‘The snake was five feet long and golden, and it sank its teeth into your little thin arm, your poor little arm, while you were sleeping in your innocent bed. The poison went straight to your heart and you died. You died in my arms.'

‘Derek.' Susie pushed herself backwards decisively, and her voice was sharp and businesslike. ‘Forget the damn snake. I never died of snakebite. Let's talk about your medication.'

Derek sat up, his legs going into a nearly convulsive twitch. ‘Susie-Paul, I don't want to hear any more of these dangerous ideas. You know that I regulate my own fluid patterns. I had a buildup of semen this week and I dealt with it by my own measures.'

‘Oh God. Not this again.'

‘It was semen of a particularly thick and corrosive nature. Building up and expressing itself into my penis and interfering with the release of urine. It was quite urgent to find a means to discharge it.' His hands were twining and untwining, his voice getting higher, more anxious.

‘Cut it out, Derek. Drop the subject
now
.' She looked up at Alex.
I'm sorry
, she mouthed.

It's okay
, he mouthed back.