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The day Mr. Song ate steak alone at the kitchen table, was the first time he noticed Adriana's face. Pale, with dark circles under her eyes. She looked haunted. And what cut to his heart, she looked distant. Disdainful of him and his open-arm policy. As if she would have respected him more if he'd taken a more firm and forceful approach. That just wasn't his style—in fact it was so foreign to him that he couldn't even imagine what it would look like. Would he yank her from her bed and cart her off to the doctor? Mr. Song ran his hand through his hair, thinking. He couldn't do that. He had no other choice—it was time to talk to Jazz.

“I don't know what to do,” was all he could think of to say when he called Jazz to meet him at a coffee shop. Jazz sat, spine as straight as a book, in the chair opposite, while he poured her tea.

She gazed at him impassively. He took another stab. “Could you—is there something you could do to help her?” He had never asked anything of Jazz before, and it seemed like a momentous occasion that he was doing so now.

Jazz pulled out her wallet. “I think Adriana needs a night on the town,” was what she said. “I'd like to take her to see Bartholomew Banks at the Westin, but it will cost twenty dollars.” Mr. Song, thinking Bartholomew Banks must be some kind of teen heartthrob, handed her twenty dollars no questions asked, and felt something like relief, to know that Jazz had a plan of some kind.

The barometric pressure of Adriana's life was about to change. She didn't know it at the time, but it was as though an inexorable plough were pushing the trash of her life up against the landfill fence.

Chapter 5

When Adriana woke up in the late morning, there was a red light blinking on her phone. It would be Jazz. They hadn't talked in a couple days because Adriana knew if she called Jazz, it would be the end of the silence that contained what she wasn't yet ready to give up. Depression, with its familiar blue fingers encircling her throat, and a bottle of sleeping pills that she'd bought at the pharmacy, the day she was let go from the fabric store.

Adriana felt like a candle burning down, its singed wick drooping in a cave of wax. If only she could pull the pieces of herself together into a pile, it would be less obvious that she had fallen completely apart. Jazz was still possessed with the notion that Adriana could pull herself out of this funk, with affirmations and will power. Adriana didn't bother to contradict her. It took too much energy, even to entertain the idea.

Adriana's mother watched her, stern as a drill sergeant. A dutiful daughter, Adriana had tried. But weakness had overtaken her.
You are so like your father
, her mother said with scorn.

There was a ceiling fan in Adriana's bedroom. She liked to keep it on, even on cool days, because she liked the feel of air moving on her face. But today her teeth chattered and the sound of the fan's whirring blades terrified her, as she imagined they were an instrument of torture which would descend from the ceiling and drill right through her as she slept. It took a minute for Adriana to remember she could turn the fan off with the flick of a switch. She wobbled out of bed, seasick, ducking under the fan on her way to the wall switch. The whirring blades gently slowed to a stop, and Adriana, exhausted and relieved, fell back into bed.

She pulled a blanket up to her chin and tried to fall asleep. This is what a corpse feels like, she thought. The Egyptian mummies, Tut and his kin, had their arms folded across their chests. Adriana tried it too. She felt as though she'd been laid on a ceremonial slab in order that her brains could be extracted through her nose. The thought made her giggle, a high unnatural sound that frightened her. She was afraid that her father would come home and find her like this, laughing like a mad person.

Adriana dozed, never quite sleeping; then, resigned to the fact that she was awake, folded the bed covers aside neatly, as though turning the pages of a book. The red light on her phone, still blinking, was a beacon of a sort; an urgent pulsing, like the light on a police car. She called Jazz, without listening to the message. The phone rang a few times before Adriana, nonplussed by the thought of the incessant ringing in an empty room, hung up.

Adriana pulled the blanket at the end of her bed around her shoulders. She tried not to think about the bottle of sleeping pills she'd bought at the drugstore and hid in her bedside table, but it was as if they were magnetic and her thoughts were iron filings. To escape them she made her way to the kitchen. It seemed like days since she'd eaten, but her stomach felt iffy so all she had was a cup of tea. She sat at the kitchen table, hunched under her blanket, hollow inside.

There was a sound at the door and Adriana looked up, startled. Jazz had her face mashed against the screen, and was making strangled noises. “Let me in!” she rumbled. Adriana, stomach drawn, got up and unlocked the screen door.

Jazz went straight to the fridge. “I'm hungry, what do you have in here?” Adriana shrugged helplessly. Adriana looked to her like one of those starving children on Oxfam commercials, not just because she was thin, but because of how limp she seemed in the face of life. Jazz wanted to shake her, but there was the chance she'd break.

Instead, Jazz sat down opposite Adriana and thrust an apple at her. “Here,” she said, “I have news I want to share with you,” Jazz said, as grandly as she could with a mouth full of apple. “We've got tickets to a fun evening with Dr. Bartholomew Banks.” Adriana didn't react. Jazz leaned toward her, cupping her hand to her ear. “Who is this Dr. Banks, you ask?” Jazz leaned toward her then and in a confidential tone, said “He's a celebrated spiritualist and psychic who can…” Jazz then put her hand on Adriana's forehead and proclaimed loudly, “HEEEAAAAL the sick. HEEAAALLL, I say.”

Adriana looked down at her hands. A spiritualist? She wasn't even sure what that was. Did Jazz think she was sick?

Jazz put her hands on Adriana's cheeks. “Come on,” she said quietly, “it can't hurt worse than it already does.” She took two tickets from her pocket and waved them at her. “Huh? Huh?” Jazz coaxed. Adriana took a ticket and examined it. “Bartholomew Banks, celebrated spiritualist, psychic, and healer.” Adriana's nose wrinkled, until Jazz punched her in the arm.

Adriana looked at her blankly and handed the ticket back. “No, thank you,” she whispered.

Jazz lost patience. “Listen, Miss Snot Nose, these tickets cost me two hours housecleaning money,” she said. Adriana looked at her, stricken. Jazz had spent her hard-earned money on crap because she thought it would help? A tear trickled down Adriana's nose. Jazz softened. “You really do have a snotty nose,” she said, as Adriana began to bawl. “Come on, bubble gum,” Jazz said quietly, pulling Adriana's head to her cheek.

 

The night of the spiritualist's performance, Jazz came by for Adriana around 6 p.m. They were planning to take Mr. Song's car, Jazz driving and Adriana sitting slumped in the passenger seat. But at the last minute, Mr. Song decided he would prefer to drive them himself. Jazz fixed him with a cool stare. Looking sheepish, Mr. Song said “I'll run a few errands while you're at the… spiritualist,” he said, glancing at his daughter. Adriana sat with her head down, stringy hair hanging.

Adriana had wearily explained to him that Bartholomew Banks was no one she knew, but that he was a spiritualist, and Jazz had tickets. He had nodded sagely, and offered the car, but secretly felt bewildered and perturbed. From the dictionary definition, he gathered that a spiritualist was something like a fortune teller in China, someone who could converse with the souls of the dead. Although he had long since given up his belief in such superstitions, he found himself frequently wishing he could talk to his wife. She had grown pale in his mind, faded to a wisp, especially since the recent troubles with Adriana. But if anyone knew what to do about their daughter, it would be her.

Jazz sat in the passenger seat with Mr. Song on the drive to the hotel where Bartholomew Banks was to perform. Their conversation was stilted. Usually Mr. Song tried harder with Jazz but he didn't want to be distracted while driving. Adriana was no help at all, slumped in the back seat. Her mind was grey and empty, the sounds of her father and Jazz speaking echoing around inside her like the buzzing of a bee.

“Uh, how is your mother doing these days?” Mr. Song asked Jazz, looking straight ahead, as they sat briefly at a four way stop. It was a bit of a throw away question, and he regretted it as soon as he asked. Jazz's mother was a tall, semi-attractive middle-aged woman whom he couldn't have picked out of a crowd. She always looked prim and dour, even when she smiled.

Jazz peered out the window at a homeless guy, bumming change. Sometimes she fantasized that her father was one of these street people. She would look into their face and see her own blue eyes staring back at her. “My mum's just dandy,” she replied, “Just dandy.”

Mr. Song didn't know whether Jazz was being sarcastic or not but suspected she was. He realized with shame that he didn't even remember Jazz's mother's name. She wasn't someone he ever thought about, and he was sure Jazz knew that. Jazz knew a remarkable number of things. It was difficult to keep anything from her.

At the hotel, Jazz told Mr. Song, “We'll be done at 9:30” The ticket actually said 9 p.m. but Jazz didn't want to risk him arriving early. She opened Adriana's car door and pulled her by the hand. “Upsy daisy, butterfly,” Jazz said.

Adriana hadn't been outside the house in days and felt entirely miserable to be arriving at the hotel in what Jazz called her “Depression Era clothes.” In the haze of talk about the spiritualist, she had not registered that everything would take place at the hotel. Somehow she had imagined it being at the Forum, where there was lots of room in the cavernous rink. A thrumming anxiety overcame her and she panicked, eyes wide.

Jazz took her by the elbow. “It's okay, honeycomb. Come with me.” Adriana clung to Jazz's arm as they passed the doorman, who opened the door for them but, it seemed to her, gave them a wide berth. Adriana felt the sting of contagion, as though her depression were spreading, like a cold does, from her mouth and nose.

Jazz was chatting away to Adriana, to distract her from the glances of hotel staff and guests. They got on the elevator to the second floor, and when the door opened, they were facing a woman in a pink skirt and blazer standing beside the doorway of a darkened room. She smiled as Jazz handed her their tickets, and ushered them into the darkened conference room, whose only illumination was thanks to a spotlight on the podium in front of a bank of chairs.

Adriana wanted to sit near the back of the room, but had no energy to put up a fight. Jazz steered her toward the front where a few people were already sitting. Wide-eyed and excited, Jazz hung on to Adriana's arm as she shrunk into her seat. “We're going to talk to the dead!” Jazz thrilled. Adriana felt the blood rush to her face. Jazz whispered loudly, “I've been waiting forever to talk to the dead!”

Adriana turned her head away. So this is what a spiritualist was, someone who talks to dead people? Adriana thought of her conversations with her mother. The last thing she wanted was to talk to her in front of all these people. She turned to Jazz. “I'm leaving,” Adriana said. Jazz looked up at her in disbelief. “Let me get by,” Adriana pleaded weakly.

Jazz held her hand. “Adriana, wait. Do you know why I brought you here?” Adriana couldn't guess, except that perhaps Jazz thought it would help her. “Number one, because it will be a fun time and Lord knows, you could use a little fun. But number two is because I want to talk to my father.” Jazz gulped. Adriana stood beside Jazz, her hands open to the empty air. She felt ashamed. “It's not all about you, you know?” echoed in her head. She'd heard those words many times from Jazz.

Adriana sat down. Jazz was still clutching her arm, her face full of anguish. Adriana figured she was thinking about her Dad, who had gone missing when she was only a toddler. At first, it was presumed he had drowned in a New Brunswick lake where he had gone fishing with a friend. But then he'd been found hanging in a fishing shed from his own belt.

Adriana had rarely heard Jazz talk about her father. He was an absence in her life that cast no shadow, Adriana had thought, partly thanks to Jazz's mother, who was of the opinion that the less her daughter knew about the man who had brought shame to her family, the better. Adriana blinked. Jazz was always so cool, matter of fact, but it occurred to Adriana that maybe her aplomb was an act, protective gear only.

Jazz wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. Adriana felt miles away from her pain, as though she were looking down the wrong end of a telescope. But she sat and waited for Jazz to stop sniffling. Jazz smiled at her, gratefully. “Thanks Addy, for staying. There was no one else I wanted to bring except you.”

Adriana looked down at her hands, which lay lifeless in her lap. The darkness inside her head was impenetrably bleak, as though her skull were lined with lead. For the first time she realized that she was alone inside this darkness, that not even Jazz was able to enter. Only her mother, cold and relentless as a glacier, had found a foothold there.

A short, chubby man wandered into the spotlight. He cleared his throat, waited until a hush settled over the room, and began to read. “There are not many men who have done what Bartholomew Banks, tonight's illustrious guest speaker, has done. He has crossed through the shadows of the Valley of Death to reach out to those who linger at the edges of this Life, waiting for their time to pass into the Great Beyond.” Jazz clutched Adriana's hand, riveted.

“Bartholomew Banks not only speaks to the Dead, he helps them find their way to the Light. I will not take your time to list all of Bartholomew Banks's accomplishments, but would simply like to introduce him as a man gifted beyond our understanding, and courageous and compassionate enough to use this gift for good.”