Rebecca sat on a child-sized chair in the basement of the church. Having hastily excused herself to go to the washroom, Rebecca had come down here instead. She assumed that someone was already looking for her, and knew that it wouldn’t be long before they’d find her. She had not turned on the overhead fluorescents, leaving the glow of her cellphone as her only source of light. Feeling disproportionately gigantic, she moved her phone from her right hand to her left, pressing it firmly against her ear as she eagerly waited to hear her estranged husband’s advice.
“For the time being, let’s forget about why it’s happened,” Stewart finally said. “It’s just happened. You know? Who knows why? These things just happen. Okay?”
This perspective was precisely what she needed to hear. The fact that Stewart never questioned the strange things that commonly happened to Rebecca was the main reason that she’d fallen in love with him. It was certainly why she loved him still. Stewart never doubted her, or made her feel weird. He just listened, then immediately began constructing a way for her to cope.
“So, are all your memories affected?” he asked.
“No. Just that one. Well, no others that I know of.”
“But it’s the one you’re using for the eulogy?”
“Why can’t you use it?”
“Because it doesn’t make me feel anything. I’d feel false and phoney, and people would feel it.”
“So just use another one, then. You’ve got tons of them.”
“But that was the perfect one.”
“What about the party?”
“What party?”
“The one that went wrong. The Derrick Miller party.”
“I don’t think …”
“Try it. I’ll wait.”
“Okay,” Rebecca said.
Setting her phone in her lap, she leaned forward and looked at her shiny black shoes. She closed her eyes. She saw her fifteen-year-old face reflected in the front hall mirror of her parents’ house. Her parents had gone away for the weekend, leaving Rebecca and Lisa alone, which was something that had never happened before. In her right hand was a telephone and on the other end of the line was Derrick Miller.
“I’m thinking of maybe having a party,” Rebecca said, studying her pores in the mirror.
“When?” Derrick asked.
“Tonight.”
“Do it!”
“I don’t know, though.”
“No, do it. Completely.”
“You think?”
“Definitely.”
“Who should I invite?”
“You think?” Rebecca asked. This was more ambitious than her original plan.
“For sure!” Derrick said.
“All right. I’m doing it.”
Rebecca began making calls. Derrick Miller made many more. The first guests arrived at 7:30 p.m., and although Rebecca recognized their faces, she didn’t know their names. They entered her home without taking off their shoes. They opened the refrigerator and moved condiments to the kitchen floor to make room for beer. Sitting on the kitchen counter, they talked amongst themselves. Bottles were opened, caps fell to the linoleum, and Rebecca attempted to laugh in all the right places.
By 9:00 p.m. the party was already a success. Teenagers stood shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen. Music Rebecca had never heard before played on her family’s stereo. No one was using coasters. With a roll of paper towels under her arm, Rebecca travelled from room to room, sopping up spills. The first glass was broken just before ten. Around eleven a painting was knocked off the wall in the living room. Just after midnight people started smoking in the house and a couple disappeared upstairs.
At 1:00 a.m. Rebecca noticed a bottle of peach schnapps on the kitchen counter. Her arms full of empties, she stopped. Derrick Miller was down on all fours, his head completely inside the liquor cabinet.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca asked, her voice high and squeaky.
The beer bottles in her left hand were slipping. Derrick pulled his head out of the liquor cabinet.
“Just don’t,” Rebecca said. Putting her index finger in her mouth, Rebecca began biting her fingernails. She was filled with anxiety. She felt like the party was now beyond her control. These feelings went into the heads of everyone in the kitchen. They went into the head of Derrick Miller, who reached into the liquor cabinet, pulled out a bottle of vodka, then released a short, disdainful laugh. Derrick twisted off the lid. The cap fell to the linoleum and spun. Derrick raised the bottle and saluted her. Lifting it to his mouth, he drank. The guests in the kitchen cheered, and Rebecca’s anxiety increased.
The more distress she felt, the more emboldened her houseguests became. She began biting her right thumbnail as they began laughing louder. Derrick Miller coughed, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and passed the vodka to his right. The partiers cheered. The bottle was passed through the hands of three people, and then it stopped. All laughter ceased. Derrick looked to his right and up. Following his eyes, Rebecca discovered her little sister standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
Twelve-year-old Lisa was supposed to be attending a sleepover at Ruth Montgomery’s house. She’d thought it was going to be just her and Ruth, but when she arrived six other girls were there. Suspecting that the worst aspects of prepubescent girls were about to be displayed, Lisa endured the gossip about older boys and girls not in attendance. But minutes after midnight, fuelled by sugar, overtiredness and the need for approval, the other girls started ganging up on Lisa. They teased her because her nightgown was made of flannel and her hair was messy, whereas theirs looked like it had been ironed. They excluded her, forming a clique in the process, and Lisa suspected that this was the reason she’d been invited in the first place.
Lisa had really wanted to be friends with Ruth, but she’d found Ruth’s friends boring and stupid. Her feelings were hurt but not broken. While they were busy trying to catch glimpses of a scrambled movie on upper cable, Lisa changed into her clothes, packed her things and walked home. Leaving felt like victory, but when she arrived, Lisa was surprised to find her house filled with teenagers. Standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, she pointed her index finger directly at Derrick Miller, a boy she knew to be no good.
“What are you doing in my house?” she said and then, taking a step into the kitchen, she saw her sister. Rebecca looked at the kitchen floor, and Lisa instantly felt her shame. Without looking at anyone in the room, Lisa walked through the kitchen.
Rebecca listened to the basement door open and close. She heard Lisa walk down the steps. The guests laughed. Derrick Miller continued laughing after everyone else had stopped. As the bottle of vodka was passed back to him, every light in the house went out, the stereo slurring to a stop.
Rebecca stepped back, leaned against the wall of the kitchen and held the beer bottles tightly against her chest. She tried to make herself small. She wanted to become invisible. She concentrated on thinking nothing at all.
“What happened?” someone said.
“I don’t know.”
“Lame.”
The refrigerator door opened and bottles clinked in the darkness. The kitchen cleared. The front door opened. In five minutes the house was empty and silent. Rebecca heard a click from the basement. The lights came back on. The record player started playing. She couldn’t believe how loud it was. She set the beer bottles on the kitchen table. Picking up the vodka bottle, Rebecca peeled off the label and put it in her pocket, then she went into the living room and turned off the stereo. When Rebecca returned, Lisa was at the kitchen table with an empty beer case in her hand.
Lisa started collecting bottles. Rebecca joined her. Lisa still wouldn’t look up. Rebecca gathered beer caps and coffee mugs that had served as ashtrays. She swept up broken glass. They opened every window in the house and filled an orange plastic bucket with soap and water. The stains on the carpet, the coffee table in the living room and the linoleum in the kitchen were all scrubbed. They rehung the painting that had been knocked to the floor. They washed the sheets from the master bedroom. They remade the bed. They did all this work without saying a word or making eye contact.
When they were finished, it was four in the morning. They stood shoulder to shoulder at the bottom of the stairs, Rebecca staring at the carpet. Reaching up, Lisa grabbed her older sister’s chin. Rebecca was shocked by her sister’s aggressive gesture as Lisa’s fingernails dug into her cheeks.
“You know, you don’t have to make them like you,” Lisa said.
Rebecca did not know what to say. She had expected to be extorted by her little sister, or at least made fun of. Biting her bottom lip, Rebecca shrugged agreement.
“Just promise me you won’t do anything this stupid again.”
Rebecca didn’t say a word, but her cheeks grew red and shame radiated from her every pore.
“Okay,” Lisa said. She held Rebecca’s face for a second longer, then let go and went to bed. She never told.
Rebecca opened her eyes and looked at the dingy linoleum floor of the church basement.
“Rebecca? Rebecca?” she heard. She turned her head and was momentarily surprised when she did not see Stewart beside her. Looking down, she saw the cellphone, which explained why his voice seemed so tiny and far away.
“I’m here.”
“And?”
“Yeah, that one’s going to work,” Rebecca said. The Derrick Miller memory made her feel tremendous love and respect for Lisa. It reminded her how much joy she felt simply to have known her, let alone been her older sister.
“There you go.”
“Thanks, Stewart.”
“You’re gonna do great.”
“Plus, I think I lost my keys.”
“Don’t worry about that right now. You have a second set.”
“I even have a third.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“Thanks, Stewart.”
“Okay, then. Call me after?”
“Okay,” Stewart said, but Rebecca hung up her phone before he finished, as she didn’t want him to feel how much she missed him.
Going upstairs, Rebecca met a bald uncle coming down.
“Where were you?”
“I got lost.”
“We’ve been waiting.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
Rebecca walked to the front pew, where she sat between her mother and father. She opened a hymn book. She looked down and noticed an ant crawling along the worn hardwood floor. Watching its progress, Rebecca lost track of time until she felt an elbow push into her ribs. Turning to her right, she saw her mother smiling sadly.
“It’s you now.”
“Oh,” Rebecca said. She looked up. From behind the pulpit, Reverend Stevenson stared over his glasses at her, his left eyebrow weirdly magnified by the lens. She stood. The hymn book fell to the floor. The sound echoed through the church. Rebecca bent over and reached for the book, but it slipped from her fingers, falling to the floor a second time.
“Go, just go,” her mother whispered.
Leaving the book on the floor, Rebecca pushed past shifted knees into the aisle. She walked to the casket. She looked down. She stayed like this, looking, until the minister cleared his throat. Startled, Rebecca turned and then walked behind the pulpit. She folded her hands behind her back. She let them fall to her sides. She took a very deep breath, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Rebecca realized that all of her emotions surrounding the Derrick Miller memory had disappeared. The facts remained clear—she could see the teenage girls in tight jeans, Derrick Miller’s long black hair and the vodka bottle on the kitchen floor. But all the emotions had seemingly evaporated. The joy, love and respect she’d felt not twenty minutes earlier were gone.
The church remained silent. Rebecca looked at her hands. She searched for another memory. She remembered several: when Lisa had refused to move into her new bedroom; when she’d gotten into trouble at summer camp; when she’d driven the car at fourteen. But there were no emotions connected to these memories, either. Their absence caused Rebecca to feel a number of different things: surprise, anxiety and even fear. But what she felt most was shame. Two days after Lisa’s death, her love had already weakened.
This shame left Rebecca. It went to everyone sitting in the church. Women felt the shame that radiated from Rebecca and wondered what could possibly have caused it. Men looked up from the floor, anger visible in the corners of their eyes. There was no sound. No one moved. Neither her mother nor her father would look up from the floor as Rebecca stepped from the pulpit. Keeping her head down, she walked to the back of the church and through the doorway, the large wooden doors closing behind her.