Maggie Helwig - Girls Fall Down

Two of the smaller restaurants along College had posted handwritten signs in the windows, announcing themselves to be Closed on Account of Illness. Whether this was the illness of the proprietors, or whether they were entrenching against the illness of the city, he wasn’t sure.

He was late. She’d probably go ahead without him.

End up with nothing.

He rode the streetcar up Bathurst, noticing that the gold foil star was sagging a bit now as the helium leaked slowly away. He didn’t look out the window, not wanting to know how much he was unable to see. As he got off the car at the Bathurst station, he saw the word FEAR spray-painted in big black letters on the concrete wall. He entered the station and caught the subway going east.

As he arrived at the house he checked his watch – it was past ten-thirty. But when he went inside the front door, he saw that the door to her apartment, at the foot of the stairs, wasn’t actually closed. Slightly ajar, it swung open further at his knock.

‘Alex?’ she called down the stairs.

‘Yeah, it’s me.’

‘Are you okay? Come on up.’

She was sitting at her desk chair, lacing her boots, but she stood up when he came in.

‘How are you? I tried to phone.’

Alex moved away from her, slumping down on her futon couch, and fought back another irrational spasm of anger. He twitched his shoulders in a tight shrug. ‘They cauterized the blood vessels, I guess. I can’t really, you know, it’s too early to say if it’s affected my vision. It’s just the first round anyway. I have to go back.’

‘How are you feeling, though?’

‘It hurts. I’d rather not talk about it.’ He realized that he was still holding the balloon, and stretched his hand towards her. ‘Here. This is for you.’

Susie took hold of the string and wrapped it loosely around the back of her chair. ‘Wow. Mafia balloon,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Thanks.’ The star didn’t pull the string taut anymore, but hovered softly a few feet below the ceiling.

‘I was just going to see Derek.’

‘Yeah. I know. I got your message.’

‘I don’t have to go right now necessarily.’ She played absently with the string of the balloon. ‘I talked to this guy, this psychiatric social worker, he’s going to come with me and see him next week, if he’s got my okay maybe Derek’ll talk to him.’

And suddenly he couldn’t bear any of it, the hunger and the damage, the constant covert search for signs of other men in her life, the moment when she would leave him this time. He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Good. Great. You won’t be needing me anymore, then.’

She pushed her hair back and looked at him, frowning. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh, nothing. Never mind. It’s probably just as well.’

‘Alex.’ She sat down on the couch beside him, and he edged away.

‘I said it’s okay. Look, I was convenient. I’m aware of that, and if you’ve got some other guy to take over, that’s fine. I can’t really do this any longer anyway.’

Susie lifted one hand to her mouth and began to chew on the edge of her thumb. ‘Okay, I don’t get this. Where is this coming from all of a sudden?’

‘Oh, come on.’ He stretched out his legs and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘We both know where I stand. I mean, you never bothered to call me for thirteen years, did you? You called Adrian and not me, for God’s sake.’

‘This is bullshit.’ She twisted her thumb between her teeth. ‘In case your memory doesn’t extend back a full three weeks, I did call you, how the hell else would you even be here?’

‘Yeah. Eventually. You did.’ He didn’t know why he didn’t stop, but he couldn’t, the rush of it, high and reckless. ‘Your brother was missing and you wanted somebody to be your, your good luck charm or whatever. And apparently you didn’t happen to have any other admirers around at that point, or, or your husband, whoever the hell he was – ’

‘His name’s Nick McCawley,’ said Susie fiercely, biting off a strip of nail. ‘He works at Legal Aid. Why don’t you give him a call, collect a few more stories you can throw in my face?’

‘That’s not my fucking point!’ He didn’t mean to shout, but it happened, a stab of pain in his head. ‘I’m trying to tell you, I can’t do it again, Susie-Paul, I can’t go through this again.’ He put his hands up to his eyes and rubbed them. ‘For God’s sake. Of course I want you. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, probably everybody wants you. But it costs me too much. It costs me too fucking much to hold your hand until you feel like going away. I can’t give up everything else just to be a marginal player in the dramatic life of Suzanne Rae.’

She stood up then, without saying a word, picked up her coat and walked past him to the stairs and left, closing the door hard behind her, and suddenly he was alone in her apartment, half-panicked by what he had just accomplished. He couldn’t stay here without her, that was ridiculous, he had to – oh Christ, he had to follow her again. He ran down the stairs and out into the street.

She was far ahead of him, a distant little figure under the street-lights. He had to keep running, his camera bag thudding awkwardly against his hip, to catch up with her, and for a minute he thought that he wouldn’t, that he’d have to stop and lose sight of her. In the darkness she kept receding, a small shadow in the shadows, and by the time he reached her he felt such relief that he almost didn’t expect her to be angry.

‘Get lost,’ she snapped. He tried to touch her shoulder, but she shook him off, still walking.

‘Susie, cut it out,’ said Alex, struggling for breath. ‘I wasn’t making fun of your life. I’ve seen what you go through with Derek, I know it’s real, and I know the breakup with Chris must have hurt you in its own way, but Jesus, it nearly killed me, and you never even noticed.’

‘That is not true.’

‘Okay. You did. You noticed that I was someone who would just hang around and be in love with you forever and never ask too much of you. But I,’ he tried to catch his breath; she was so much smaller than him but she was moving fast, ‘I have a chronic illness, okay? I don’t like to say that, but it’s true. The first night we went down into the ravine, I nearly had a hypo episode, and then my sugar went up way too high, and I had something close to a hemorrhage from the stress, I had serious damage to the blood vessels in my eyes, I’m, I’m, I’m losing my sight for fuck’s sake, you can’t do this to me!’

She didn’t stop walking, but she slowed down a bit. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Well, what was I going to say?’

‘I’m sorry, then. About that, I’m sorry. But about everything else, you’re just wrong.’

‘I am not.’

‘Do you really believe – God, Alex, do you think I could ever…’ she moved her hands in the air as if she were trying to shape a sentence. ‘Alex, I’m sorry about what happened back then. I fucked up. I treated you badly, I know I did. But you have no idea. You have no idea what it took to call you, what it – Alex, you , you are not, you have never been marginal. You can’t believe that. You can’t really believe that.’

‘It’s actually not very hard, all things considered.’

‘No. No, you just want to think that.’

‘Fuck that, Susie-Paul.’

‘You do. You don’t want to think that I was confused too. You don’t want to think that you mattered. That’s too hard. You just want to live in this pretend world where you aren’t responsible for anything.’

‘ I’m not responsible? You left. You just left . You never even sent me a fucking postcard.’