The Waterproof Bible (9 page)

Of the hundreds of boxes in unit #207, only eight were not labelled with someone’s name. These were all in one stack located in the right-hand corner at the front of the room. The box on top was labelled
BIRTHDAYS
. The one below that was labelled
SEX
. The next five were marked
FEARS, CRUSHES, FUTURE PLANS, BODY
and
CHILDHOOD
, respectively. The box at the bottom, the largest box in unit #207, read
FAILURES
.

Stretching her arms over her head, Rebecca grabbed the bottom of the top box in the stack and slid it forward until she could lift it off the stack. She set it on the floor, then removed the boxes marked
SEX, FEARS, CRUSHES, FUTURE PLANS, BODY
and
CHILDHOOD
, leaving the box marked
FAILURES
standing by itself. Picking it up by the edges, Rebecca tipped it sideways, spilling the contents onto the floor. She pushed through the objects with her toe until she uncovered a ring of keys. These keys had belonged Stewart. She carefully picked them up and held them in her hand. She closed her eyes.

She stood by the sink in the kitchen of the house she’d shared with Stewart. In her right hand, she held a kettle, which she was filling with water. She hadn’t gotten dressed yet. The phone rang and Rebecca answered it, keeping the kettle in her hand and cradling the telephone with her shoulder.

“Hello?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stewart?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m on my cellphone.”

“Where?”

“The bathroom,” Stewart replied. “Upstairs.”

Rebecca turned back to the sink and shut off the faucet. She walked through the living room and looked up the staircase. She did not attempt to go up, but continued to hold the kettle in her hand.

“I have to leave,” Stewart said.

“You’ve said that.”

“I do.”

“I know.”

“You work so hard to keep your true feelings from me. Do you know how that feels?”

Rebecca walked back into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove but didn’t turn on the element. She pushed the phone closer to her ear.

“Every single failure you’ve ever had is still with you,” Stewart said.

“Aren’t yours?”

“No. I have to leave.”

“Now?”

“Can you go out for a bit?” Stewart asked.

“How long do you need?”

“An hour,” he said.

Rebecca went out for forty-five minutes. When she came back, Stewart’s clothes were gone. So were his toothbrush and deodorant and razor. There was no note, although his keys were set precisely in the middle of the kitchen table.

Sitting in the armchair in the living room, her coat still on, Rebecca twirled Stewart’s keys in a circle around her index finger. She watched the room get darker and darker. When she finally reached out to turn on a lamp, she changed her mind and went to the door instead. Keeping his keys in her hand, Rebecca drove to E.Z. Self Storage, walked directly to unit #207 and put the keys in the large box marked FAILURES. It was because of this act, and how quickly she performed it, that no one, not even Stewart, ever knew how much pain, grief and sorrow his leaving caused her.

Rebecca set the keys back inside the box marked FAILURES, then began putting all the other objects back. When everything was assembled, she pulled a white piece of paper from the pocket of her jeans. It was on this paper that Rebecca had written her sister’s eulogy, the one focused on the Moving Out memory, which she’d judged useless when those emotions had evaporated. She put it in the box, closed the lid and then restacked the boxes on top in the same order.

Turning, Rebecca looked at the tallest stack in the back row, where the drip continued to land. The stack was almost exactly as tall as she was. Standing on her tiptoes, Rebecca could see the lid sagging on the top box. She tried to open it, but a piece of cardboard came off in her hand. As Rebecca lifted the box off the stack, the bottom sagged. She supported the bottom with her left arm and set the box on the cement floor. It was only then that she noticed the label:
LISA
REYNOLDS
TAYLOR
.

Rebecca crouched down and opened the box. Inside were photographs, letters and journals. Everything was from her sister. All of it was paper. The notes in Lisa’s handwriting were smeared. The photographs had separated from the paper they were printed on. Ticket stubs were unreadable, and pages of books were bloated. Every box in the stack was marked
LISA
REYNOLDS
TAYLOR
, and all of them were waterlogged.

Rebecca looked back at the open box on the floor, continuing to study the ruined objects until she heard Zimmer’s footsteps coming down the hall. Looking over her shoulder, she saw him in the doorway. He carried a red plastic bucket and pulled a large, industrial garbage can on wheels. Stepping into the storage space, Zimmer walked past Rebecca and placed the bucket on top of the Lisa stack. A drop splashed into the empty pail, making a hollow plastic sound. Rebecca pushed her hands under the waterlogged box marked LISA
REYNOLDS
TAYLOR. She stood up. She carried it out of the storage space and dropped it into the garbage can. She and Zimmer leaned over the top, looking down at the letters and papers that had spilled out of the box.

Rebecca went back inside unit #207, took the red
pail off the stack and carried all the boxes out to the hall, dropping them into the garbage can. When she had finished, Rebecca set the bucket on the floor, where it continued to catch the drip. She turned off the light and stepped into the hall.

“It could have been much worse,” Rebecca said.

“But it’s still sad,” Zimmer said.

“It isn’t, Edward,” Rebecca said, surprising herself. Grabbing the door of unit #207, Rebecca closed it. She locked the padlock. Zimmer put his hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. Together, they walked towards the elevator, the plastic wheels of the garbage can squeaking through the empty hallways of E.Z. Self Storage.

Leaving Edward Zimmer to take the water-damaged boxes to the Dumpster, Rebecca drove home and, three blocks from her front door, she felt a pain in her chest. It was severe, but by the time she’d pulled over it was gone. Her hands remained shaky, and she was suddenly quite tired. She felt confident that she could make it home, but her fatigue worsened as she drove.

Having parked her car on a side street behind her house, Rebecca was so tired that she was barely able to unlock her front door, and she fell asleep the moment she reached the couch.

She saw herself sitting at the kitchen table in the Toronto apartment Lisa had shared with Lewis, but whether she was dreaming or remembering was impossible to tell. She was dressed in flannel pyjamas patterned with tiny ducks. They were children’s pyjamas, but they fit Rebecca well. She watched as her sister made breakfast. Lisa put two slices of bread in the toaster. She ground beans and began making coffee. Then Lisa put her hands flat against the counter, keeping her back to Rebecca.

“I’ve decided to forgive you,” Lisa said.

The toast popped. Rebecca watched as Lisa smeared forgiveness onto it. She dumped two heaping spoonfuls of forgiveness into a mug and filled it with coffee. Lisa
carried the toast and the coffee from the counter to the table, setting both in front of Rebecca. She sat across the table and looked at her expectantly.

Rebecca took a tiny bite of the toast. The forgiveness was very bitter and she could hardly swallow. She took a sip of the coffee, which tasted no better.

“All of it?” Rebecca asked.

Lisa nodded.

Rebecca ate more of the toast and drank more of the coffee. The taste of forgiveness filled her mouth and lined the inside of her throat with something sticky and black. It sat heavily in her stomach. When there was nothing but crumbs on her plate and grounds at the bottom of the mug, Rebecca looked up. Lisa stood and stretched out her arms. They embraced. The hug continued, but Lisa began getting thinner and thinner. Before Rebecca understood what was happening, her sister disappeared.

Rebecca woke up. She could still taste the forgiveness in her mouth. She took off her shoes and socks and put her bare feet against the floor. She sat on the edge of the couch for several minutes, staring at the carpet. She was able to recall her sister’s death in two vastly different ways: in one, she thinned until she disappeared; in the other, she died because of a tiny hole in her aorta. Each way seemed equally authentic, but neither made Rebecca sad.

The next morning, Rebecca woke up on the couch with a stiff neck and diagonal lines on her face from the throw pillow she’d slept on. She was already late for work. She showered and dressed quickly. As she stepped into the alley behind her house, en route to her car, Rebecca was surprised to hear a dog barking in her neighbours’ yard. The dog was new, but as if prompted by its bark, she remembered the dream in which Lisa forgave her.

With her keys in her hand, Rebecca wondered how she could have believed, even momentarily, that it had been a memory and not a dream. Still, every detail remained as vivid as if it had actually happened: the feel of the flannel pyjamas, the bitter taste of the coffee and the toast, her sister becoming thinner and thinner until she faded away. Rebecca became very sad, and was then overwhelmed by the feeling that something was missing.

The feeling was so strong, and hit her so suddenly, that she began searching her purse for her keys before realizing they were in her hand. She continued looking, easily finding her wallet and her reading glasses. Still the feeling remained. Then the dog barked again, and Rebecca’s attention turned to how she was going to get to her car.

Her neighbours were the only house on the block that didn’t have a fence between the alley and their yard.
This posed a problem, since Rebecca’s fear of dogs was profound and she had to pass their yard to get to her car. Taking slow steps, she walked down the alley, past her neighbours’ yard. Looking to her right, she saw the dog before the dog saw her. It faced the house and was tied to a tree in the middle of the yard. It had thick muscles where its legs attached to its body, and ripples of skin at the back of its neck.

Sniffing the air, the dog turned and growled. Rebecca’s fear grew. The dog’s natural ability to sense fear was intensified by Rebecca’s natural ability to project her emotions. The dog curled its upper lip and growled again. Rebecca remained still. This had happened before. It happened each and every time she encountered a dog. She knew that her best move was to remain still and assess. Just below the tree the dog was tied to, Rebecca could see several coils of the chain—but the length of the leash was impossible to determine.

Since she did not know whether the dog could reach the alley, Rebecca closed her eyes and pretended she was wearing workboots. The workboots she imagined were tan. They were well worn and steel-toed. Silver lines showed through scuffs at the toe. The lines glinted in the sun as Rebecca lifted her right boot, pulled it back and swung it forward. Boot met dog. The dog’s head snapped back. Its lower jaw went left and its upper jaw went right. It yelped.

Opening her eyes, Rebecca looked down. The dog took a half-step backwards and lowered its head. She walked directly in front of it. She reminded herself that in four steps she would be past it. Her feet felt heavy. She took three confident strides, but on the fourth she
looked down and saw black Italian leather instead of scuffed tan workboots. Her body tensed. The dog’s growl became a loud, angry bark. She heard the chain as the dog begin running towards her. Rebecca looked up. A string of drool hung out of its mouth. Its ears bent back. As its front legs left the ground, it opened its jaws. Squeezing her eyes closed, Rebecca crossed her arms in front of her face.

Rebecca’s fear of dogs stemmed from a very specific moment, when she was eight years old and something had barked in her neighbours’ backyard. It sounded like a dog, but Rebecca couldn’t be sure. She stopped brushing her doll’s hair, sat still and listened. The fence separating her backyard from theirs was six feet tall, much too tall for her to climb. However, her house was in the process of being painted, and the painters had left a ladder leaning against the west side of the house. It was long enough that tipping it backwards would put the end of the ladder against the top of the fence.

Rebecca’s father had warned her and Lisa not to touch any of the painters’ equipment, but when the bark came again, Rebecca became certain it was not the bark of a dog—maybe a tiger, perhaps a wild boar, but definitely something much more extraordinary than an everyday dog. It was something Rebecca had to see. Setting down her doll, she walked up to the ladder. She crawled underneath the bottom step. With her back against the wall of her house, she began to push. It was easier to make the ladder move than she’d expected, although it was also much louder when it fell on the fence.