FOURTEEN

July 2, 2012

11:33 a.m.

Lori-Anne woke feeling groggy. She turned and glanced at the clock. Crap! It was after eleven. She was late for work! No, wait a minute. Since Canada Day, yesterday, had fallen on a Sunday, she didn’t have to work today. Good. Perfect. She was in no shape for that anyway.

She rolled over and closed her eyes. The confrontation with Mathieu came back to her. All its ugliness, all its pain, all its unsolved issues. It was giving her a headache. He was giving her a headache. And that room, Nadia’s bedroom, she had to do something about that. It creeped her out being in there and feeling so much of her daughter. No wonder Mathieu couldn’t let go and move forward.

Lori-Anne bounced out of bed and went to find Mathieu. She’d had enough. Nothing about their situation was healthy. Since he was unwilling to get help, like her mother had said to her, she should do things to help him along and the way she saw it, Nadia’s room wasn’t going to be a shrine another day.

She couldn’t find him, not in his office, not in their daughter’s room, not in the workshop. She finally found a note on the kitchen counter, beside the empty fruit bowl: Gone to Grandpa’s.

Lori-Anne’s shoulders sagged. How could she have forgotten? Poor Grandpa. She should call him. Make sure he was okay. No. Not right now. She needed to stick to her plan, especially since Mathieu was out of the house. He was with his grandfather so Lori-Anne didn’t need to worry that Grandpa was alone. She’d do what she needed to do and then call Grandpa.

She made a pot of coffee, filled the biggest mug she could find and headed up to Nadia’s room. She crossed the threshold and instantly her daughter’s presence wrapped itself around her, like a warm hug. Her legs turned to water and for a moment she second-guessed herself. But instead of leaving, she shut her eyes and waited for the moment to pass. Then she put her cup on the desk, opened the window to let all the bad vibes escape, shoved the stuffed animals off the bed, and stripped it.

She threw the sheets out into the hallway. Next, Lori-Anne attacked the closet. She pulled out a skirt Nadia hadn’t worn in three years. It was purple and too small. She chucked it on the bed.

A white blouse.

Chuck.

Old sweatpants with frayed hems.

Chuck.

Sweatshirts from the dance studio that Nadia didn’t wear.

Chuck.

Skinny jeans that showed way too much.

Chuck.

T-shirts with Justin Bieber on them.

Chuck.

Long-sleeved T-shirts from West 49.

Chuck.

A fall jacket that Nadia had barely worn. Lori-Anne recalled going from store to store at the mall before finding that jacket. Nadia had been thrilled, but then only wore it a few times. Maybe someone at school had made fun of it and Nadia’s feelings had been hurt. Kids could be mean.

Chuck.

She went through the entire closet, throwing everything onto the bed. Some of her things were good enough to donate to the Diabetes Association or the Salvation Army. The real old and worn things were going in the trash.

Next she tackled the dresser. Old undies, socks, pajamas, shorts, and tired-looking T-shirts of different sizes and colours piled up on the bed. There were clothes here from when she was eight or nine, things she couldn’t fit into even if she’d still wanted to wear them. That task had gotten away from them. They kept buying new but never tossed out the old. Today everything was going.

Chuck, chuck, chuck.

Lori-Anne was on a roll. Over an hour had passed and she had a mountain on the bed. She ran down to the garage to grab a few green garbage bags. She put the good stuff into a separate pile and filled three bags, trying to keep the clothes somewhat folded so they wouldn’t look all frumpy later. She got some masking tape and a marker from the kitchen drawer and wrote D.A. on two bags and S.A. on the third and brought them down to the basement. She would call for a pickup date tomorrow. Another two bags she jammed full of clothes labelled as garbage.

When that was done, she looked at what else she could get rid of. Nadia had thirty or forty books on her bookshelves, posters all over her walls, CDs that she hadn’t listened to since ripping them to her iPod.

She went looking for boxes. They usually had a few in the garage. All she found were two filled with Mathieu’s supplies which she emptied and left on his workbench. He could sort that out later. Back in Nadia’s room, she filled the boxes with books. Maybe she could donate them to the library. They were all in great shape. She pulled Kurt Cobain’s poster off the wall, rolled it and squeezed it between books in the box. She did the same with the three Jacob posters.

She stopped and took a breath. She undid her ponytail, ran both hands through her hair, and redid her ponytail. A lose strand bothered her so she did the whole thing again.

Lori-Anne surveyed the room. It didn’t look like a shrine anymore, didn’t feel like one either. It just looked like a room no one lived in. She felt tired. The time on the clock radio told her she’d been at it for two hours. Enough for now. The rest would have to wait. She looked at the boxes but they were heavy and she didn’t feel like carting them down to the garage. She left them where they were, by the half-empty bookcase.

She sat on the edge of the bed and ran the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. When Mathieu came home, he’d freak. She was in so much trouble. She’d let her momentum carry her, acting without thinking. It had seemed like the right thing to do. No, it was the right thing to do. If not for him, then for her. All these months, she’d been unable to come into Nadia’s room, walking by the closed door day after day like it was some forbidden place. In way, it had been. Her denial had kept her out. If she didn’t go in Nadia’s room, then she could pretend that Nadia wasn’t completely gone. In so many ways, she’d been no better than her husband. But no more. Today, finally, her healing could begin.

And she hoped that Mathieu’s could begin too.

She turned, thinking she’d heard the front door open. She waited, holding her breath, steeling herself for the fight that was sure to come. She’d done this for his own good. She needed to remember that.

But she didn’t hear any footsteps coming up the stairs. She exhaled but her breath caught in her throat when she heard a car door slam. She hurried to the window but it was just the neighbour across the street.

She needed to take a shower. She needed a glass of wine. She needed to unwind.

Lori-Anne walked away from the window and stopped. It was gone. Nadia’s aura was gone. Once again, she reasoned that she’d had no other choice, that for them to survive this tragedy, they had to let go of their daughter. But it wasn’t easy and she felt her heart close like a little girl’s hand.