I put off calling Dad, specifically because Eileen had suggested it. If there was one thing I didn’t need, it was more bad news. I assumed that he would pick up the phone if it was important enough, although I couldn’t remember a single instance of him calling me in the past. When I thought about it, it seemed that our estrangement was directly connected to Mathilda’s death, an event I’d revisited more than once since Eileen’s phone call. One afternoon when I was in my early teens, I’d stumbled on Dad’s stash of girlie magazines in the garden shed and put them to immediate use. After I’d stowed everything away, I stepped out into the backyard and Mathilda rushed me without warning, crossing the yard low and fast. I watched her come, thinking she wanted to play. I just had time to raise a defensive arm before she hit me, pinning me back against the shed. I shouted, in surprise more than anything, waiting for her to recognize me and let go, but she held on tight, her teeth tearing through my sleeve to anchor in the flesh of my arm.
I screamed for help, no longer knowing where I was, or what was happening, jostled from the shame-filled aftermath of furtive self-pleasure into what felt like a panicked struggle for my life. Mathilda leaned on her haunches and shook her head. I pulled back, bellowing in terror. Then, the door to the house flew open and Dad came thundering down the porch.
“Mathilda!”
She let go instantly and loped over to him with her tail flagging, as if abandoning a friendly game of tug-of-war.
“What the hell happened?” Dad shouted. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing,” I said, shocked.
He strode across the lawn, then stopped, going pale. “You’re bleeding.”
On the way to the vet clinic, I kept my wounded arm in an improvised bandage, while Mathilda sat tied up in the back, gazing out the window with interest. The veterinarian, an older man who looked like he’d have been more comfortable handling livestock than family pets, examined her briefly, then sighed and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. “Well, she isn’t rabid,” he said. “It could be some other neurological problem, but really, that’s just guesswork. You say the attack was completely random? Nothing led up to it?”
Dad looked at me.
“What?” I said. “I didn’t touch her!”
Dad sighed.
“Has she ever bitten anyone before?” the vet asked. “Or threatened to bite?”
“Absolutely not,” Dad said.
“Hm.” The vet frowned at Mathilda like a mechanic at a failing automobile. “I’d almost feel better if she had.”
“How do you know if it’s neurological?” Dad asked.
“Honestly? You don’t. I mean there are tests, but I don’t have the resources you need and you’d be looking at quite the expense. At the end of the day, the results wouldn’t be a hundred percent conclusive anyway.” It was hot in the clinic and Mathilda had started to pant. I hung back in a corner of the room, my arm hardly hurting anymore.
“So?” Dad said, leaving the obvious question unspoken.
“She’s a big dog,” the vet said, carefully. “An older dog.”
Mathilda kept sitting nicely, letting the humans talk, not knowing how dire her situation had just become.
Dad turned to me. “Are you sure that you didn’t provoke her?”
I nodded. Unless some glitch in her brain, or in the fabric of time itself, had caused her to skip back to the day when I’d thrown her against the wall as a puppy, I hadn’t done a thing.
On the drive home, Dad didn’t say a word. I sat in the back, where Mathilda had been not long before, remembering how she’d looked when we left her, how she’d stood up, expecting to follow us, but had found herself bound to the veterinarian’s hand. I tried to imagine an alternate future for her, some shred of hope: the vet leading her out the back door of the clinic to an idling truck, the truck taking her out of the city to a sprawling acreage, where a group of friendly dogs would race to greet her. It wasn’t impossible. If some people were secretly cruel to animals, couldn’t others be secretly kind?
Outside the house, Dad killed the engine and pinned me in the rear-view mirror with his eyes. “What were you doing in the shed?”
My face went hot. “What do you mean?”
“You said you’d come out of the shed when it happened. What were you doing in the shed?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
I shook my head, trying very hard not to cry. Eileen stepped out onto the porch, arms folded, features pinched—a soldier’s wife, anticipating the worst.
Dad stared at me for a long time, his face devoid of sympathy or love. Then he looked at his watch and sighed. “Well, she’ll be in the freezer by now.” He got out and walked slowly towards the house, leaving me alone in the back seat of the car.
The alley behind the Chinese grocer was dark, the nearest streetlight burnt out. As I peered up at the lit window on the second floor, I felt like I’d stepped into a magical pocket of private space, like a peep show booth, or a dim confessional. If Kim had come to the window and looked straight down, she wouldn’t have seen me. But it wasn’t Kim that I wanted to see, it was Jasmine. I assumed she was up there, listening to one of Kim’s endless stories, a bottle of tequila on the table between them, something folksy on the stereo.
It had taken me weeks to find them. The night I threw the phone, Kim’s number jostled off redial, erasing my last connection to her. Ever since, I’d been lingering around her favourite haunts: the thrift store, the library, the seawall. I spent entire days in the dog park, scrutinizing every curly-haired woman I saw. It was by chance alone that I eventually saw both Kim and Jasmine sharing a joint on a fire escape behind the Chinese grocer—a vague, half-second glimpse from the window of a passing bus, sharpening in retrospect like a Polaroid photograph. By the time I got off and doubled back, they were gone, but I’d marked the window they’d been standing by. After our last conversation, the desperate affection I’d felt for Kim had morphed into unadulterated hatred. I hated her for forcing her way into my life. I hated her for leaving. I hated her for stealing Jasmine just when she’d finally come back. Something about the way they’d embraced at the university left no doubt that they’d been more than friends. Down in the alley, I felt like I had a video feed from their apartment wired directly to my brain. I saw Kim put her hand over Jasmine’s, claiming her. I watched her place a single pink pill on Jasmine’s tongue. Then Jasmine got up and began to dance—swaying lazily, while Kim sat back with her knees apart, a faint smile playing around her mouth. I groped at my feet and jerked my hand back as a broken bottle sliced my thumb. Sucking at the cut, I reached with my other hand and found what I was looking for: a decent-sized rock. A shadow passed across the window above me, a subtle change in light. With my thumb still in my mouth, I fixed a bead on the window and threw. The rock bounced off the wall and fell to the pavement with a soft clatter. No one came to the window. No one told me to stop. I felt at my feet again, pushing aside old plastic containers and scraps of cardboard, until I’d uncovered a broken chunk of concrete, heavy as a fossilized egg. I turned it over in my hands, feeling it had been deposited there years ago by an invisible accomplice. The concrete fit the grooves of my throwing hand perfectly. I turned my face up to the luminescent rectangle of the window, plotting the concrete’s trajectory from hand to glass and beyond—through the apartment, past Jasmine, into the side of Kim’s head. And at that instant, with that image in my mind, I threw with everything that I had.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Somewhere outside, car doors slammed. Indistinct voices resounded in the parking lot. I approached the curtains warily, as if they’d been draped over the cage of a wild animal. An unfamiliar car was parked directly below my window. The sky hung low and dark, the streetlights glowing softly. Across the way, the pale man sat in a chair, staring at nothing. A polite rapping came at my door and I tensed, then immediately relaxed, assuming police had finally come. My aim at the Chinese’s grocer had been true. Kim’s window hadn’t shattered, but I’d damaged the glass and now I would have to pay. Not just for the window, but for my intent. A charge of attempted murder would not have been unjustified. After weeks of dread, I was almost looking forward to my confession. But when I opened the door, I found the building superintendent, looking as surprised to see me as I was to see her.