Magnified World
Toronto, late 1990s
The first time it happened, I didn’t open the store on time. I found myself standing on the sidewalk outside the locked door at noon, the Queen streetcar going by behind me in a baritone of metal complaints. It was two hours after I was supposed to have opened and I had no memory of anything after going to bed the night before. The brown canvas shoes I had on were pinching my toes. I’d never seen the shoes before in my life and it seemed obvious that I was dreaming. If I was dreaming, my mother would be there like she always had been. But when I let myself in, there was no one.
Then my father was running down the stairs from our apartment on the second floor and I knew I was awake.
“Where have you been?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“What? Where have you been?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
His mouth opened and I knew he was going to ask me again.
I was lying on the floor. I could see that the bottom shelf of the Fortune and Foretelling section was filthy with dust. It took me a moment to realize I had fainted. My mother was the one who fainted. Who used to faint. I’d never fainted before.
My father picked me up—he actually lifted me up onto my feet, which I didn’t realize he was capable of doing. When I wobbled he set me back down again and knelt beside me and all I could think was that it must hurt his knees to be like that. I could see into the collar of his shirt. His chest was that of an old man, an older man than him: a dull red unrelated to the colour of his face, a lattice of grey hair. I didn’t want to look.
“Where were you? Are you sick? Where were you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I don’t remember.”
He seemed to bite down very hard; I could see a tendon in his neck jump. My head ached.
“You don’t remember.”
“I went to bed. After A Bit of Fry & Laurie.” My boyfriend Andrew had come over to the apartment where I lived with my father above the store. He had rented the show at Queen Video and we watched it together after dinner, curled up on the couch. My father walked by in his pyjamas at one point, holding a cup of tea, and said, “That’s a good one. That British humour. Funny stuff .” Near the end of the video, with my father in bed in his room, Andrew started to kiss the back of my neck. He slid his arms around me and ran his spidery hands over my breasts. His lips on my earlobe sent fizzing little darts of pleasure all over. Then the shush of water running came from my father’s washroom, over our shoulders, and we moved apart.
We sat in silence while the credits ran, and then I walked him down to the street. It was completely still, without the slightest trace of wind. Andrew unlocked his bicycle from the drainpipe beside the store.
“I’ve got a tutorial tomorrow at ten and they’re turning in their papers, so I’ll be a hermit for a while,” he said. “I’m sorry. If you really need me, you can call.” He looked down and away, fiddled with his light. He’d felt guilty about working since my mother died, about being away from me.
I tucked my hair behind my ear. “No problem,” I said.
He looked at me again for a moment, kissed me, then got on his bike and pedalled away. I locked up and went back upstairs, where I washed my face and got into bed.
The next thing I knew I was outside the store in blazing daylight. And now I was on the floor beside my father.
“You don’t remember anything after going to bed?” My father’s face had gone oddly flat and the redness had drained away, but all he said was, “I’ll stay in the store until you’re feeling better.”
I went upstairs to my room and closed the door. On the windowsill was a card, just sitting there without an envelope. When I picked it up, it was slightly warm.
I’m so sorry to hear of your loss, it said. With love, Gil.
I didn’t remember putting the card there. I didn’t even remember a Gil—was he a customer? A friend of my father’s? It sounded like an old man’s name. Dozens of cards had arrived after my mother’s funeral, mostly politely worded watery-toned notes from my father’s colleagues at the university. This card looked no different except for the pained and jerky handwriting.
The canvas shoes had straps that pinched at the top of my instep. They fit so badly it felt like they’d been worn in by someone else altogether. I sat down on the edge of my bed and slid my feet out, wincing when the skin pulled away from the fabric. I carried the shoes to the hallway mat. The foyer was open to the kitchen, and through the windows, the light was unbearably bright.
Excerpted from Magnified World by Grace O’Connell Copyright © 2012 by Grace O’Connell. Excerpted by permission of Random House Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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