The Book of Living and Dying (3 page)

“Do you want to see his guitar?” she asked.

He held the guitar with reverence, admiring the finish. “A Fender Strat. It’s beautiful.”

Sarah couldn’t help beaming. “You know it?”

“Know it? It’s vintage. This is a piece of history.” Michael strummed the strings lightly, fingering a few chords before handing it back to her. “I can’t wait to hear you play.”

“You’ll have to wait a while,” she said, placing the guitar gently in its case. “I just started. I’m pretty brutal. I’m better at collecting leaves,” she added, smiling.

“Hey, let me walk you home,” he offered brightly, as if it
were an original idea. “I don’t want your old man to get worried.”

Sarah snapped the guitar case shut. Her “old man.” She’d tell Michael about him some other time.

S
arah lay in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. There’d been a noise outside her bedroom door. A soft sound, like a sigh. Too terrified to move, she listened intently and waited, expecting John to appear beside the bed again. She wanted to turn on the light but was afraid to expose her hand from beneath the safety of the blankets, so she just lay there, begging him silently to stay away, choosing her thoughts carefully so as not to incur his wrath. Who knew what ghosts were capable of? She had no doubt that he could read her mind. Anything that could come back from the dead had to be able to do that. She tried to control her breathing but it was noisy and quick. Loud enough to wake the dead.
No, no, don’t think that.

She glanced at the bottle of aspirin on the milk crate beside her bed. As if on cue, the faint pulse of a headache began to work its way up the back of her neck. Her eyes flickered around the room. If she reached her hand out for the aspirin bottle, would he grab it? She couldn’t take that chance. Her thoughts hopscotched from childhood images of John to demonic ghosts circling her bed. Forcing good
thoughts to the forefront, she attempted to subdue her fear, to trick the ghost into thinking that she wasn’t afraid. Her temples throbbed as the pain crept up to its usual spot across her brow. She squeezed her eyes shut and quickly opened them again, then shot her hand out and plucked the aspirin bottle from the crate. Snapping her hand back under the covers, she waited. Nothing happened. She was okay.

Sarah clicked on the light, swallowed a couple aspirins, then got up and walked over to her dresser. From the bottom drawer she produced an old shoebox and two red plastic binders marked “Photos.” Sitting with one foot tucked beneath her on the bed, she began flipping through one of the binders. She always looked at them in the same order. Chronologically. Except for the photos she kept in the box, the ones of the family before she came along. She kept them separate, because there was something about them that seemed to warrant it. Her father was in all of those early pictures—handsome, several years older than her mother. Holding John as an infant, as a toddler, playing ball with his son. The house neater, well appointed, her mother’s near-frantic expressions of joy. All of this seemed to change when Sarah was born, seven years after John. The atmosphere in the house cooling, a shabbiness settling like frost over everything, her father’s slow migration out of the camera’s view.

Turning the page, Sarah stopped to study a Christmas photo. It showed her and John beaming in front of the tree, the doll she had received that year slumped in a small wooden chair off to one side. John wearing a cowboy outfit, the holster slung low over his hips, hat tilted back. In the background, her mother sat with one arm draped across her knees, hair covered in the requisite kerchief, skin as pale as the soles of her new terrycloth slippers, her gaze trained on
some vanishing point in the distance. And then her father, outside the frame for the most part, only his legs visible from his favourite chair, the accompanying black glass ashtray on its brass stand, the ever-present tumbler of scotch clasped in one hand, poised. The alcohol that had infused every part of their life, tolerated by her mother like an embarrassing relative. Had he ever loved any of them? Always justifying his road warrior lifestyle with some delusion of “hitting it big,” of “landing the big fish,” the perfect opportunity just waiting to be capitalized on, the promise of better things to come. His sudden rushes of exuberance, the attempts at affection, her mother’s refusal, pushing him away in the kitchen:
Leave me alone!
And Sarah’s guilty voyeurism, watching through the kitchen window from her spot among the bergamot. Why wouldn’t she give daddy another chance? But,
no, no, no, eighteen miserable years for what?
And later his dedication to the job turned out to be a front, a pantomime, masking his true desire to be free. Her mother’s silent hatred filling the house, the dishes clattering out accusations in the sink.
Craven.

John was the brave one, with his attempted escape from the joyless carousel of family life until the illness pulled him back in. Sarah felt the familiar ache resonating in her chest, the warm buzz reaching her cheeks as the clouds of grief gathered. Would the hole in her heart ever heal? She had filled it with anything she could find—the cold fist of anger, the liquid drip of sorrow, the anesthetizing patch of drugs and alcohol—but still the hole whistled and gaped, refusing to mend. Tears blurred her vision as she looked at the photos. Their Christmases were more obligations than celebrations, a vestigial ritual upheld by weary parents. It had been worse at the hospital, though.

Donna jumped on her as soon as she entered the classroom. “Where were you last night?” She pursed her lips and popped her gum accusingly, narrowing her black-ringed eyes as she rested her oxblood Doc Martens on top of Sarah’s desk.

Sarah shoved Donna’s feet to the floor. “Do you mind?”

“I know where you were.”

“Is that right?” Sarah dug through her knapsack, checking to see if she’d brought the right books to class. “And how do you know that, super sleuth?”

“Peter told me.”

“Peter?” Sarah feigned composure. That weasel. Of course he’d told her.

“Yeah. He said you and Mortimer were right chummy with each other.”

“Stop calling him that.”

“So Peter was right, then?”

There was no hiding now. “Yeah, Peter was right. Michael walked me home, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?”

“Michael, huh? So now you’re on a first-name basis? That’s how it starts. Did he try to touch you?”

“Who’s the pervert here, Donna?” Sarah snapped. “Get your kicks somewhere else. God, sometimes you’re so weird.”

“I can see you’re still feeling
sensitive
.”

“That’s right.” Sarah stood up, flung her bag onto her shoulder and marched from the room. She wasn’t swallowing any of Donna’s poison today. The last thing she needed was to be interrogated. Donna was such an idiot sometimes, the way she pushed things. She was a wildcard, a loose cannon, always getting Sarah in trouble, or embarrassing her, or getting her kicked out of places she didn’t want to get
kicked out of. She was a liability with her aggressive ways, always going on about something—or nothing. At least it seemed like nothing to Sarah.

The sunlight was blinding as she burst into the alleyway, escaping the sombre atmosphere of the school and the hordes of students crowding to get in. The day was bright and cool. A perfect fall day. A perfect day to skip class. A group of stoners stood smoking in a huddle against the wall. Sarah wondered what it would be like to be stoned that early in the morning. Some kids did it all the time. One guy had even passed out in class once. The school had instated locker inspections immediately after.
Good work,
Sarah thought as she walked past the group, a cloud of smoke hanging over them like a prophecy. One guy waved her over, offering a toke. She shook her head and smiled politely, continued to walk down the alley before dipping through the bushes to the street. She didn’t know where she should go. The Queen’s, maybe. If it was open. She’d never gone there so early before. Walking briskly, she avoided the eyes of adults, afraid they would wonder why she wasn’t in school. Busybodies.

When she reached the Queen’s, Sarah looked through the window into the diner. The row of faded green stools stood empty before the melamine counter, the soda fountains dulled from years of fryer grease and use since the fifties. Wooden booths hugged the wall, individual jukeboxes poised at every table. The black-and-white floor tiles were scuffed in a trail down the middle of the shop past the booths toward the washrooms. The whole place was like a postcard from the past, including the owner who slouched over the counter reading the paper, his swollen belly permanently diapered in a stained white apron. Nick the Prick. He
hated students, even though they gave him most of his business. Sarah wondered briefly what he would look like naked, his soft white skin jiggling like milk-coloured Jello.
Yuck,
she thought as she pushed against the door.

The bell jangled loudly in the morning quiet. Nick didn’t bother to look up from his paper. Taking her usual seat in a booth near the back, Sarah pulled her writing journal and a pen from her knapsack. Nick finally acknowledged her, waddling over, face carved with disdain. He sloshed a glass of water onto the table.

“What do you want?”

“Coffee,” Sarah said. “And, uh … fries.”

Nick shook his head. “Too early for fries.”

“Okay … toast,” Sarah said, “… with jam.”

Nick sauntered to the kitchen and disappeared through the swinging doors. Sarah clicked her pen and began to write. She started writing about Donna, about how mad she was. She would write her anger away, put it down on paper so she could forget about it. Defuse it. That’s what she did with everything. Her feelings about her father and her mother, her yawning emptiness over John. Her terror at seeing him … it … again. She couldn’t actually bring herself to write the word “ghost.” To put it down in ink would make it seem too real. But she
would
write it, she told herself, the same way she had scratched out her entire existence over the years in short spiky letters. The highs and lows of it. The little peaks and valleys of an imperfect life.

After writing several lines about Donna, Sarah found herself thinking about Michael. In fact, she couldn’t
stop
thinking about him. The leisurely walk home, the talk of music and books. The conversation had been easy, with genuine interest on both sides. He had asked lots of ques
tions about her. He seemed to really care. It made her feel surprisingly dizzy and light just to think about him, like the way she felt when she jumped from the cliff at the quarry. The momentary weightlessness as her body lifted up, then descended. The whistle of wind in her ears. The sparkling sheet of blue, rushing up to meet her. She floated there when she thought of him, just above the point of impact. A kind of crystalline suspension. Until she was struck by the horrifying realization that she hadn’t asked a single question about him. How could she have been so stupid? The water rose up as her body hit the surface with a slap, her heart sinking like a stone.

The pain swelled in her head again, sending Sarah digging through her bag for the bottle of aspirin. She found it just as Nick appeared shambling over with the coffee and toast. No jam. Sarah sighed, poked at the flaccid white bread soaked in margarine and pushed the plate to one side. She didn’t feel like toast anyway. The coffee smelled particularly bitter today, too. She diluted it with cream, carefully peeling the aluminum tabs off the creamers and neatly stacking the empty containers next to the abandoned toast. Normally she didn’t take sugar, but this morning she felt she needed it, pouring it straight from the dispenser into her cup. Two more creamers were added and another dose of sugar for good measure. When the coffee met with her approval, Sarah opened the aspirin bottle and rattled four into her hand, checked the dosage on the label and returned one. A quick gulp of water washed the pills down. Reaching for her coffee, Sarah sipped it slowly and considered what she would do with the rest of her day. She wouldn’t allow herself to be spooked, she promised herself that. But it was easy to be brave in the daylight.
Just keep thinking about Michael,
she told herself.

That’s what you should do.
Her mind drifted over his features and came to rest on Donna’s query: “Did he try to touch you?”

No, Donna, he didn’t.
Didn’t try to touch her. Didn’t try to kiss her or even hold her hand, but walked patiently beside her up the sidewalk to her door, waiting calmly at the bottom of the stairs until the key turned in the lock. A smile and a wave. She had waited for something more, her hips pressed against the railing, leaning toward him, her long brown hair tumbling down like a confession. He hadn’t tried anything. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to her in that way? She couldn’t accept this. She knew the effect she had on men.