Maggie Helwig - Girls Fall Down

‘That covers a lot of ground.’

‘I’ll make an exception for Evvy. Evvy gets to be in my world.’

‘I really welcome this opportunity for collaboration,’ a woman at the island was saying, but Alex saw that several of the men were looking their way. This was the thing about being with Susie in public, he thought; he had to notice other men noticing her. And of course they did, she was lovely. It made him very aware of himself, a thin, worn, grey-haired man, chewing on a carrot stick.

Susie was drinking fast; she’d finished most of the glass already. ‘If you want to go down the ravine tonight, you should at least lay off the wine,’ he said.

‘You’re right,’ she said, draining the glass and refilling it. ‘That would be the smart thing to do.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Let me tell you about Derek.’ She pushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘Derek was brilliant. Fucking brilliant. A lot of people with schizophrenia are very bright, but Derek was, like, stratospheric. And I… I should have known something was wrong. We were so close, Alex, I should have, I did know, I must have known…’ Her voice wavered and broke and she drank half the glass in one swallow. ‘Fuck that anyway. There’s so many things, there’s too fucking many things I could be angry about.’ She reached for the wine bottle again. She was drinking very fast; she was drinking to get drunk.

‘Derek doesn’t necessarily present as severely delusional,’ she said, stumbling over the sibilants. ‘Sometimes he knows how to play the game. But he’s got this whole fucked system. It’d take me all night to explain it to you, but just as an example, there’s this part of it that’s all about semen. Which most of the time means he’s forbidden to have sex, not that this is difficult in his circumstances, but then at certain times he has to expend the semen, you see, so he ends up spending most of his cheque on hookers. Picture that he shared all of this information with me, and you’ll have some idea what my family life is like. At least that’s how it used to go. It sounds like he’s onto a new phase now.’ She lifted one hand and quickly wiped the corner of her eye. ‘And I’m supposed to stand around in this fucking mansion and care about the fucking university’s fucking problems?’

‘We don’t have to stay, do we?’

‘It’s hereditary, do you know that?’ she went on. ‘Twins. Think about it.’ She took another deep gulp of wine. ‘The risk’s not as bad for fraternals as it is for identicals, but it’s still pretty high. But I’m probably safe now. You don’t often have your first psychotic break in your late thirties. It happens, but not as much. I mean, I’m fucked in every kind of way, but I know I’m not schizophrenic.’

‘Let’s just go,’ said Alex, touching her shoulder. ‘I’ll get our coats.’

‘Right. You do that, then,’ she said, emptying the bottle into her glass, her gestures loose and abrupt. ‘I’ll be waiting right here.’

The living room seemed to have experienced one of those random elevations of mood that sometimes happen after midnight; people were now animated and laughing, with the exception of the anti-Aristotelian woman, who was weeping quietly while a maid tidied away a broken glass. He could smell pot somewhere, but couldn’t quite tell what direction it was coming from. He walked through to the foyer, and down another hallway, past a pink-walled room with an antique writing desk and a vase of forced hyacinths, their sugary scent filling the corridor, and finally found the tired maid who had taken his coat; she sent him on to a closet where he collected it, along with Susie’s quilted jacket.

When he came back into the kitchen Susie was still leaning on the counter with yet another glass of wine, looking small and belligerent as a bearded man in a dark suit hung onto her arm, talking to her intensely. Alex paused in the doorway and she turned to him; he tipped his head towards the exit and she nodded, finished the glass and pushed herself unsteadily off the counter.

‘Suzanne!’ exclaimed the bearded man. ‘Surely you’re not leaving us so soon?’

‘Yes, Douglas,’ said Susie. ‘I am. As a matter of fact, I’ve just discovered that my brother is living in the Don Valley ravine, and my friend and I are going to look for him. So, you know, have fun.’ She pulled Alex into the living room.

‘Douglas wants to screw me,’ she said. ‘That’s the only reason I got invited here. He’s a power broker in the department, too. If I had any ambition at all I’d do it.’

‘Ah,’ said Alex. They reached the foyer, and she pulled on her jacket and fumbled with the buttons, reached for the door handle and then changed her mind.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I know. Hang on a minute.’ She grabbed one of the carved wooden panels on the wall and pulled it open, revealing boots, a tennis racket, an assortment of coats. ‘Okay, no luck here.’

She opened a second panel and found a wall of shelves filled with gardening tools, bottles of antifreeze and a big industrial flashlight. ‘Yes! I knew it!’ She grabbed the flashlight and tucked it under her jacket, a move that did not conceal it even slightly.

‘Susie! What are you doing?’

‘What do you think I’m doing? Stealing a flashlight.’ She giggled suddenly and put a hand over her mouth.

‘They’re going to notice it’s gone, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I don’t give a fuck. This is like, this is like me losing a penny. Screw them.’

‘Are you twelve years old or what?’

‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’ She pushed open the door and they stepped out onto the walkway, a furtive little knot of pot-smoking professors huddled by the side of the house, the branches of the trees creaking in a harsh wind.

‘Susie.’ He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Susie-Sue. Please. Not tonight. Please just let me take you home. We can go first thing tomorrow.’

‘I told you, Alex,’ she said, pulling away from him. ‘I have to do this now. It has to be now.’

‘People are sleeping,’ he said, desperate for some rationale. ‘If we even find him, he’ll probably be asleep.’

‘No problem,’ said Susie. ‘When he’s off his meds, he’s nocturnal.’ She lost her footing on the step at the end of the walkway and caught herself on the wall. ‘Jesus, I didn’t mean to get this drunk. No, that’s not true, I totally did.’

‘Okay, Susie,’ said Alex, throwing up his hands. ‘You win. You always win. We will go down into the ravine and look for your brother under the guidance of the man who’s making great progress on cleaning systems.’

‘Good. Thank you.’

‘Just give me the stolen flashlight, okay?’

She walked ahead of him along the street, but then stopped at the corner, and he caught up and found her looking confused. ‘This way,’ he said, touching her elbow. ‘Up Glen Road.’

‘It’s all twisty here. The streets. I never know where I am.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re just lucky I spend my time wandering around taking pictures of metal structures.’ But she didn’t react; she didn’t remember.

‘I forgot to ask you, that call you got. What was it in the end?’

‘You probably don’t want to know,’ said Alex.

‘No, tell me.’

‘It was an assault. It was horrible. I don’t much want to talk about it.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She squeezed his hand.

‘Somebody got burned up because they thought he was the subway poisoner.’

‘God. God, this is so fucked. I don’t know what’s happening to this city.’

‘Me neither. Adrian thinks we’ve been cursed.’

Susie giggled again. ‘Fuck. What a concept. Who does he blame?’ ‘The government, I suppose. That’s who he always used to blame.’ He detached his hand from hers and stuck it in his coat pocket. Below the road the earth fell away, another valley opening beneath them, sheer and dizzy, into a well of darkness.