frozen river
The next day I booked a ticket home. I told Dill and Minnie: Dill in the Marjorie kitchen, Minnie on the phone. I texted Faith, who replied immediately, asking to see me before I flew.
Toronto felt special in the days after I knew I was leaving, and I went walking to see all the places I’d grown fond of. It had only been nine months, but I felt like I’d lived so long and would never know another city in the same way. I smiled at the people I passed, trying to be airy. Sometimes they smiled back.
Faith and I met to say goodbye on a Saturday morning. The heavens battered my face as I walked towards our favourite cafe on Bloor. Toronto was very different in the winter, for the lack of people, the abandoned patios and the first snow clinging to the gutters like icing sugar. It began quietly to rain ice as I reached College and Bathurst, not cold enough for the real thing, and I tried to enjoy it.
I thought about all the things I wouldn’t do before I left—one last ride on the subway, one last Jamaican patty wrapped in coconut bread, one last visit to Dufferin Mall or Dollarama. I wouldn’t go to the gallery and see Emily Carr again; I wouldn’t lie on the High Park grass, the greenest I had ever seen. I would go to Tim Horton’s at the airport and get a sun-dried-tomato bagel with cream cheese, because that was easy. Dill had insisted I try one, and I was finally getting back my appetite, something small but helpful alongside the grief.
There was no one else in the cafe when I arrived, it being early and rainy and cold. I had my period, and needed to sit down, so I ordered a coffee and a white roll filled with a slice of round meat and some white cheese, and sat where I could see the door. There was no data on my phone and I couldn’t see any newspapers or magazines, so I just waited, and when the coffee came I concentrated on just the drinking of it—each sip—so I wouldn’t wonder what I would say to Faith when she arrived, and so I could make the most of my second last day in this city. The roll was soft and chewy and the cheese tasted like body, which I liked. I felt the mushed-up bread and animal and off milk travel down my throat when I swallowed, into the rest of me to be processed some more, digested.
I didn’t realise Faith was there until she was standing behind the other chair. I hadn’t seen her come through the door and to have her close so suddenly pumped my heart.
‘Hi,’ she said, and pulled out the chair. She began unwrapping a very long scarf from where it was circled around her, and when she had finished, her thin neck bare, she hung it on the back of her seat. The scarf was many colours, but mostly blue. I could see slivers of ice melting along the wool.
After she sat down she smiled, so warmly I almost swooned. I had missed her so much and now I was leaving and she would go on living her life without me and I without her. It felt almost dangerous to be here with her for such a short time, as if it might permanently damage me to remind myself of how good she was. I felt damaged already, though, and pleasure hadn’t happened since Hetty had died. I needed some pleasure. Faith’s face reminded me of that.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ I asked, preparing to get up and order her one, to get away from her for a second to gather myself.
She shook her head.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘What would you like, then?’
She shook her head again, and leaned towards me, just a small amount, so I could smell her chamomile hair. ‘I would like to go back to my house with you.’
We had sex as soon as Faith had closed the door, up against it, both of us coming quickly and heavily. The blood between my legs didn’t matter at all. Like trees filled with water from the sky we shook, and then Faith took off all of my clothes very slowly but didn’t touch my skin, and we walked to her bedroom, laid down a towel, and pulled the lilac covers up around us. I asked Faith to be naked with me, and when I let myself look at her beneath the covers I saw how delicate she was, how her stomach was just waiting there, and I started to cry and Faith moved to hold me, the whole of me, until I stopped. When I looked at her after I had finished, there were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, too, and her mascara had painted two lines down either side of her face. She coughed and then gulped, as if the tears were complicated.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, with a wobbly voice.
I started to shake my head but stopped myself. Hetty was gone. I could let Faith tell me what she felt.
‘It’s okay,’ I replied, pushing back some of her hair that had fallen forward across one eye. ‘I’m sorry too.’
It was difficult to say goodbye that night, at Faith’s low white gate that was falling in on itself. Nothing was actually difficult, compared with losing Hetty, but it was as difficult as it could be without being anything at all.
I stepped my way back to Marjorie and imagined my pupils adjusting as the sky darkened. I felt the loneliness I used to feel at this time of night back in Melbourne, as if everyone in the world was quiet now, and nothing could change that. It felt good to have a feeling that wasn’t related to Hetty, and then she was back inside me and I was sad again, turning the corner of Queen and Spadina, looking through the window of McDonald’s at people biting at hamburgers and pulling at fries.
Our street was quiet. I was cold despite all my layers and walked quickly, to get to the house and up to the bedroom and the bed, where I would lie down and curl into a ball.
Ahead of me there was something standing. It didn’t seem like a person, and the air was thick with dark, so I couldn’t see properly. As I neared the thing, I blinked and saw that it was Hetty. From three metres away I could see her, dressed in her Silverchair T-shirt and pyjama pants. She was holding out her arms as if she wanted us to hug, and she wasn’t smiling but her face was round and calm.
‘Hetty,’ I said, loud enough for her to hear.
She didn’t move.
‘Hetty.’
I stepped towards her, very slowly, trying to make sure my heart slowed down too, from a race to a gallop. She was there, and then I took another step and she was gone, and then I blinked and she was definitely gone, and there was nothing on the ground where she had been, no Silverchair T-shirt or puddle of the outer layers of her. Nothing at all, and I felt my heart start to beat as it normally did, as if I’d never even seen her.
I walked up the steps to Marjorie and unlocked the door, turning once more to see if she was there again on the road so I could go back to her, but she wasn’t and I couldn’t. That was the last time I ever saw her, and I rubbed my shoulders until the skin hurt on that verandah before I entered: rubbed them for her and for me. It was the beginning of an ending.
Inside, it was warm.