The Categorical Universe of Candice Phee (5 page)

I say it was my first invitation, but that is not strictly true. I was once invited to a birthday party when I was six, but I remember nothing about it. According to Mum I refused to speak and spent the whole time sitting under a tree, mumbling to worms. I was
not
the life and soul of the party, though it's possible the worms enjoyed my company. I cannot say with any certainty. What is clear, however, is that after that everybody human gave me up as a hopeless case.

So I was excited by Douglas's invitation and scared I would ignore his parents and talk to invertebrates (unlikely, I admit, since invertebrates are rarely invited to afternoon teas).

“Is it okay with your mum and dad?” I asked.

“They are
not
my mum and dad,” snarled Douglas. His mouth twisted in a fashion reminiscent of a snarly creature—a vicious dog, for example—so I feel justified in describing him so. “They are facsimiles of my real mother and father, who are in another dimension.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. It's difficult to know what to say in these circumstances, so I hummed for a few seconds. “Do
they
know
they are facsimiles?” I added after I ran out of hums.

“They think I am mad,” said Douglas. “I tried to explain the situation to them logically. That I had arrived from another dimension and that, due to some law of the multiverse that conserves matter, their son is now in my universe, living with
my
parents. I told them my
real
mother was a quantum physicist and my
real
father a famous experimental musician. They refused to believe me.”

“Fancy that,” I said.

“They took me to the hospital. Some idiot in a white coat, hearing that I had fallen from a tree, pronounced that I was suffering from loss of memory caused by a blow to the head. It is unscientific and, frankly, insufferable.”

I hummed a bit more.

“What do your facsimile parents do?” I asked. This seemed safe ground.

“The female is a postie and the male is a nurse,” snarled Douglas. I was impressed with his snarling. It was really very good.

I have never known a quantum physicist. I'm not sure what they do, but it doesn't seem to have much impact on the world. A postie, however, is different. Useful. She delivers letters and parcels. This is definitely a good thing. Without posties, pen pal Denille couldn't read my letters. Without posties we would constantly check our mailboxes and be constantly disappointed. The world would be a sadder place.

I was tempted to point this out to Douglas Benson from Another Dimension, but felt it wasn't the right time. I believed that we would certainly disagree on the respective merits of posties as compared to quantum physicists.

I am not qualified to talk about experimental musicians, so I kept quiet on that subject as well.

“So is it okay with your facsimile parents?” I asked.

“Is what okay?”

“Me coming to tea.”

“Oh, they
love
the idea,” said Douglas in a bitter tone of voice. He was an unhappy boy. Bitter tones of voice and excessive snarling are, to my mind, clear evidence of this. “They think it's a sign my mental health is improving. You know, having friends.”

I felt their optimism might be dashed once they met me, but again I kept my own counsel.

“I will talk to my mother,” I said. “She's not a facsimile. At least, not as far as I am aware.”

I talked to my mother.

First, I had to tap gently on her bedroom door. When I come home from school, the house is generally quiet and Mum's bedroom door is generally closed. Sometimes I don't see her until the morning when she makes me breakfast. Sometimes I think she might be an endangered
species. Conservationists could get very excited and talk in hushed tones when they spot her.

I rarely intrude when she is in her room, but this was an emergency and she had told me I could knock if there was an emergency. There was no immediate response. I was thinking about knocking again when I heard a faint “Come in.”

I opened the door gingerly, since even the squeak of a rusty hinge can cause Mum pain. The bedroom was dark and smelled of something that had spent a long time out of the sunshine.

I waited a few moments to allow my eyes to adjust. Mum was sitting up in bed, a lumpy shadow among other lumpy shadows. I tiptoed over.

“Mum?” I whispered.

“Yes, Pumpkin?” she replied in a voice soaked in weariness.

“I have been invited to afternoon tea tomorrow by a friend from school. Can I go, please?”

The lumpy shadow sat up straighter. A shadow that was probably a hand rubbed at a shadow that was probably her eyes.

“A friend, Pumpkin? That's brilliant. Who is she?”

Her voice was tired, but tinged with excitement. Mum has spent considerable time hoping I would find a friend who would invite me to afternoon tea. As the years passed I think she gave up all hope. I believe this has contributed
to the weight of sadness she carries and, naturally, I have felt guilty.

“The she is a he, Mum,” I replied. “Douglas Benson from Another Dimension. He is incredibly strange as well.”

“You are
not
strange, Pumpkin.”

I didn't say anything. We have had these conversations many times. Mum insists I am not strange. I know I am. There is little point in arguing about this. Especially if it makes Mum unhappy, which it does for reasons I haven't yet worked out.

“Okay,” I said. “Can I go?”

“I will need to ring his mother,” she said.

I had the phone in my hand already. I also had the number that Douglas had given me on a sheet of paper. I pride myself on being well organized. I held out both the phone and the sheet of paper.

“Make me a cup of tea, Pumpkin,” she said as she took them. “I'll ring her and then come out to the kitchen.”

“You should be aware that she is his facsimile mother,” I said. “I leave it to you to decide on the correct form of address under these circumstances.”

I left to make the tea, which is something I enjoy doing.

Rich Uncle Brian says newborn babies look like bulldogs.

Most of the time, I know what he means. The hanging jowls and lolling heads. But Sky was different. Her cheeks were rounded and covered with soft down. When I ran my hand along her cheek it was like stroking a peach, faintly warm and the texture of satin. She smelled of powder and milk and her. I would bury my nose in her neck and fill my nostrils. I inhaled her while she made snuffling noises.

Sky was my sister, and I first saw her when I was five. When I think back to that time, I picture it in snapshots. Separate images connected by blanks, like white, empty spaces in a photograph album. Only occasionally do they spool together to form a story.

I remember looking up at Mum in the kitchen. She was doing something with flour, and her hands were dusty so she couldn't touch me. But she was smiling, and one white hand rested on the swell of her stomach.

I remember Mum and Dad talking about the new baby and the changes ahead. They tried to make me feel comfortable about what was going to happen, but they needn't
have bothered. I was excited, not because I knew what to expect (I was five. You don't know what to expect at five. You don't know what to expect at twelve. Maybe you never know what to expect), but because our household was alive with happiness. It bubbled and made us glow. The sun was brighter then, the grass greener, the clouds whiter.

So maybe Sky
did
look like a bulldog and it's only my memory that has re-formed her. I don't think so, however. I have photographs and though they sometimes lie, I do not believe so in this case. Not in this case.

I remember nothing of Mum going into labor. I cannot remember Dad driving to the hospital. My first sight of Sky, though, is vivid still. A tiny arm poked out from a tiny blanket. It was fleshy and rounded and ended in a clump of perfect fingers. It was hard to believe that a fingernail could be so small yet so beautifully finished.

Mum sat up in a bed so white it glared. It was as if she was partly buried in a snowdrift. Her hair was wet and stuck to her head. One dark tendril curled against a pale cheek. She held something small and pink against her chest. The baby, too, had a lick of dark, wet hair that clung to her skin. I remember thinking that this small thing was a part of my mum, chipped off in some way. The hair was the connection.

“Say hello to your sister, Pumpkin,” said Mum. Her voice was smiling, but I couldn't take my eyes from the baby. I didn't say hello. I simply stared.

Dad leaned in. He put his index finger against the baby's fist. Her fingers curled and then clamped down. She clutched his finger as if her life was anchored to it. It was then that my heart first lurched and something powerful was born within me. Such a tiny thing. Such a tiny, perfect thing.

“Do you want to hold her, Candice?” said Dad.

I shook my head.

“It's okay,” he added. “We'll help you. You won't drop her.”

I stared.

Dad leaned in again.

“Frances,” he said. “Meet your big sister, Candice.”

Mum shifted her grip and turned the baby's face toward me. The baby's eyelids were partly closed, her lips an exaggerated bow, impossible eyelashes against impossible skin. And then she opened her eyes and looked straight into mine.

I was told afterward that newborn babies cannot focus properly, that it is something they learn later. I do not believe it. She looked into my eyes and saw something there. Hers were a pale blue, though other colors shifted within them. I felt I was staring into someone who had no end, that the mind behind the gaze went on forever. I was staring into the sky and I knew that was her name. Frances was a label, but Sky was who she was. Who she will always be.

Rich Uncle Brian lived in a large house with eight bedrooms that no one else ever stayed in. He was alone. Mum, Dad, Sky, and I lived in a small house with only two bedrooms. It is where we live still.

Mum and Dad put a crib in their bedroom and Sky slept there for her first six months. She woke at least three times a night because she was hungry. Sometimes she woke when she wasn't hungry and Dad walked her round and round the house, her head peeping over his shoulder. He jogged a little as he walked, so her head bounced slightly. He murmured to her. I followed him.

Whenever Sky woke, I woke. Occasionally, I would wake slightly before she did, or maybe it would be more accurate to say slightly before she cried. Perhaps we always woke at the same time. But I knew when I glanced at my bedside clock and saw it was 12:30 or 2:55 or 4:13 that she was awake.

I'd climb out of bed and go into Mum and Dad's room, just as Sky was starting to sniffle and cry. At first, Mum or Dad took me back to bed, but it was never any use. Even when they forced me to stay in my room, I couldn't sleep until she'd drifted off. After a while they stopped trying to keep me out of the room. I watched when Mum breast-fed her. I followed behind Dad when he took Sky on her jiggly tour of the house. I helped with the changing duties. I became good at cleaning her tiny bottom and fitting it with a fresh diaper.

Sky smiled whenever she saw me. She smiled even when she was too young to smile, when I was told it was merely wind contorting her face. She smiled.

“Pumpkin, aren't you tired?” said Mum one morning over cereal.

“No, Mummy,” I said.

“It's just that all of us are having broken sleep, sweetie. Why don't you leave Frances to us and get a decent night's rest?”

“I just wake up,” I said. “Whenever she wakes, I do. And I can't go back to sleep then, Mummy. I just can't. So do you know what I think we should do?” I talked a lot more then. I didn't even wait for Mum to reply. “I think we should put Sky's crib in my room. She should sleep with me. That way Daddy might get more sleep. He told me he's nearly fallen asleep when he's been driving and that is bad. I'll wake you up when Sky wakes up, so it'll be the same as now, except I'll get to sleep in the same room as her. Please, Mummy? Please?”

Mum and Dad exchanged a look, but didn't say anything. And another two months went by before they moved Sky's crib into my room.

She died four weeks later.

It would be good in a way—a literary way, I suppose—to say all the details of that evening have been fixed permanently in my memory. Or, given that I had a special bond with Sky, to say I had some warning about what
would happen when I fell asleep on the fourteenth of June, two days before my sixth birthday. But it wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all.

Mum read me a book as always. She kissed me on the forehead and told me to sleep well and to make sure the bedbugs didn't bite. Dad tickled me on my side. Then they both went to Sky's crib and bent over her sleeping form. My night-light cast a pale red glow over the scene.

I think I remember that Mum's and Dad's hands felt toward each other and their fingers entwined as they watched their youngest daughter. But maybe that is just memory playing tricks. Memory does that. And I was tired. My eyes were heavy and closing even then. The room was hazy somehow, as if I were seeing underwater. Then, nothing.