Alix Ohlin - Inside

When he asked to be released from his rotation, the request was granted immediately. What he wanted most was to get away from all the understanding looks and forgiving glances. Another fragile southerner, the community seemed to think. They’d never expected him to last long, and didn’t condemn him for wanting to leave. If only someone had blamed him, he might have been able to stay.

He returned to Montreal in August, and the city was turgid with heat, empty of people. His apartment felt like it belonged to someone else. Several times he picked up the phone to call Martine but always put it down again. Though he was due a vacation, he reported to work anyway, knowing how much he needed that structure and company to get through the days. He’d always been like this in difficult times, working weekends even when he didn’t have to, sculpting his hours to make everything else fit neatly into place.

On Sunday evening he went for a long run on the mountain, the familiar, muffled beat of the tam-tam drums by the Cartier monument matching the rhythm of his pulse. After the cold nights of Iqaluit the dense, humid air felt good against his skin, his muscles unclenching as he sweated out the poisons inside.

He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he fell into a dreamless, blanketing state and woke at dawn feeling like he’d been deep underwater. At six thirty the phone rang, and he raced to answer it.

“You’re nothing,” a woman’s voice said on the other line. It wasn’t Martine.

“Who is this?”

She was crying in rhythmic sobs and wheezes. “You were supposed to help.”

“Please, who is this?”

“I hope you lose somebody you love.”

“Fiona,” he said.

“You’re nothing,” she said again, and hung up.

He stood in the living room in his underwear, still holding the phone in his hand, the early-morning sun bright behind the curtains, birds chirping outside. He thought of nothing except Thomasie Reeves: his chapped lips, his red windbreaker, his face as it must have looked when he stepped out onto the highway, firm and unblinking, into the brilliance of those headlights, massive as planets, barreling toward him in the pale Arctic night.

The dial tone sang, then switched to a higher beep. Mitch was happy. He was satisfied that someone hated him as much as he deserved, and was willing to tell him so. At least there was one person in the world who told the truth.

Montreal, 1996

GRACE HAD JUST come back from work when the buzzer to her apartment rang. For a second her pulse quickened; she had the brief, impossible thought that it was Tug. Maybe he had come to explain what had happened. To thank her. She’d told him her last name, so it wouldn’t have been hard to track her down. She tucked her hair behind her ears, straightened her sweater, felt herself flush. All this in the few seconds before a crackling sound came through the speaker, and she realized it wasn’t him.

“Dr. Tomlinson,” said a female voice, “it’s Annie. I’m coming up.”

There were footsteps on the stairs and Grace watched Annie Hardwick climb the last few steps unsteadily, clutching the rail, her pale face turned upward. Wearing a puffy ski jacket that dwarfed her thin frame, she was hunched under the weight of her backpack.

“I took a cab here,” she said, panting, when she reached the top step. “I didn’t know where else to go. I need to lie down for a few hours. I can’t go home, my mom will see the bleeding and she knows it’s not my usual time.”

“Jesus,” Grace said, letting her in.

The girl was shivering. Underneath the ski jacket she wore her school uniform, a short skirt and tights and a cotton sweater over a button-down shirt. Her long hair was pulled back in a wide navy headband. Grace took her coat, led her to the couch — where she lay down, obedient, fragile — and spread a blanket over her.

“All the women in my family are very regular, my mom says,” Annie said. “Set a clock by them. And the two of us cycle together because we live together, so she’ll definitely notice that something’s up.”

“What happened?”

“I went to the doctor,” she said. “Your address is listed, so I came here. I told my mom I was eating dinner at a friend’s house and I’d be home by nine.”

Her legs contracted under the blanket, her knees moving up toward her chin, and she started to cry, without moving to wipe her tears away. “It’s too bad because I sort of wish I could just go to bed,” she said in a soft, distant undertone. “I mean, I wish I had my mom.”

Grace sat down on the couch and put the girl’s head in her lap and stroked her long hair until she quieted, then slept.

An hour later, Annie woke up and seemed more alert. She went into the bathroom and came out a few minutes later and asked if there was anything to eat. Grace made her a bowl of soup and she sat on the couch and ate it, slurping like a child. Then she handed Grace her empty bowl, smiled, and readjusted her headband. “I like your apartment,” she said. “It’s small, but it’s nice.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“A little.”

“Do you want me to call your parents to come pick you up?”

“No. I’ll take a cab in a little while, okay? Listen, I’m really sorry I just showed up here, but I didn’t know where else to go. I can pay you, like, for an extra session or something.”

Her parents had taught her to pave her way with money. When Grace said nothing, she blushed. “I’m sorry.”

She lay back down on the couch, more languorously this time, and began to ramble, talking more freely than she ever had in Grace’s office about her parents, their financial problems and arguments, their general cluelessness about anything to do with her life. She said she felt sorry for them, for how stressed out they were about everything, and that they deserved a better daughter.

“It’s like with Ollie,” she said. “Some of my friends, they don’t understand how I could be with him, because he’s not always that nice to me. He always acts really nice around teachers and parents, so they all think he’s like the perfect kid even though it’s just an act. And he flirts with other girls and maybe even hooks up with them for all I know. My friends think I’m like this victim, or whatever. But what they don’t understand is that I need to be with somebody like that, somebody who’s like me. Ollie and I have to be together because we can’t go around hurting nice, normal people. I haven’t told him about the other stuff, but I don’t have to feel as bad about that as I would with a nice guy.”

“What other stuff?”

“Oh, just stuff,” Annie said dreamily. “Sometimes I meet people.”

“It sounds to me like you might be putting yourself in danger,” Grace said. “Which is a bad idea.”

“No kidding,” Annie said. “I mean, obviously.”

She fell asleep again, and when Grace woke her at eight thirty she sat up immediately, her forehead crinkled in worry. “Am I late?” she said. “Shit.”

Using the phone in the kitchen, she called a cab. Then she said, “Thank you for your help,” her tone blatantly impersonal, her eyes fixed on a spot just over Grace’s left shoulder. For a moment, she seemed to consider shaking her hand, but then she turned abruptly and left, her steps tumbling heavily down the stairs.

Grace poured herself a glass of wine and told herself she had just made a terrible mistake. Now, even more than before, she was colluding with Annie, part of her secret. She thought about calling Annie’s parents right away, but something stopped her. The girl had cried and rambled so openly, had shown such trust in her. In trouble and pain, she came to her door, and what could Grace do but let her in?