The wound got infected. She had to go back in for another three weeks. Her stomach bulged, like she was going to give birth to an alien. ‘Chestburster got lost,’ she joked to the doctor, the newest in a series of specialists. ‘Like in that movie,
Along the way, she misplaced her friends. The old ones didn’t know what to say. Whole relationships fell into the fissures of awkward silence. If the horror show of her injuries didn’t stun them into silence, then she could always talk about the complications from the fecal matter that leaked into her intestinal cavity. It shouldn’t have surprised her, the way conversations veered away. People changed the subject, played down their curiosity, thinking they were doing the right thing, when actually what she needed more than anything was to talk. To spill her guts, as it were.
The new friends were tourists, come to gawk. It was careless, she knows, but oh so horribly easy to let things slip. Sometimes all it took was not returning a phone call. With the more persistent ones, she had to stand them up, repeatedly. They would be baffled, angry, hurt. Some left shouty messages, or worse, sad ones, on her answering machine. Eventually she just unplugged it and threw it away. She suspects it was a relief for them in the end. Being her friend was like going to a tropical island for a little fun in the sun, only to be kidnapped by terrorists. Which was something real she saw a news piece about. She reads a lot about trauma. Survivor’s stories.
Kirby was doing her friends a favor. Sometimes she wishes she had the same options on an exit plan. But she’s stuck in here, a hostage in her head. Can you give yourself Stockholm Syndrome?
‘So how about it, Mom?’ The ice on the lake shifts and cracks musically like windchimes made of broken glass.
‘Oh, honey.’
‘I can pay you back in ten months, max. I figured out a schedule.’
She reaches into her backpack for the folder. She worked up the spreadsheet at a copy shop, in color and with a fancy font that looks like script. Her mother is a designer, after all. Rachel gives it due diligence, reading carefully down the rows as if she’s examining an art portfolio instead of a budget proposal.
‘I’ve paid off most of my credit card from travelling. I’m down to a hundred and fifty a month plus one thousand dollars on my student loan, so it’s totally do-able.’ Her school did not give her a sympathetic leave of absence on her debt. She’s babbling, but she can’t stand the tension. ‘And it’s not that much, really, for a private investigator.’ Normally $75 an hour, but he said he would do it for $300, a day, $1,200 a week. Four grand for the month. She’s budgeted for three months, although the PI says he’ll be able to tell her whether it’s worth pursuing after one. A small price to pay for knowing. For finding the fucker. Especially now that the cops have stopped talking to her. Because apparently it’s not healthy or helpful to take too much interest in your own case.
‘It’s very interesting,’ Rachel says politely as she closes it up and tries to hand it back. But Kirby won’t take it. Her hands are too busy, breaking up sticks. Snap. Her mother sets the folder down on the wall between them. The snow immediately starts soaking into the cardboard.
‘The damp in the house is getting worse,’ Rachel says, closing the subject.
‘That’s your landlord’s problem, Mom.’
‘You know what Buchanan is like,’ she laughs, wryly. ‘He wouldn’t come out if the house was falling down.’
‘Maybe you should try knocking out some walls and see.’ Kirby can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. It’s an internal barometer of putting up with her mother’s crap.
‘And I’m moving my studio space to the kitchen. There’s more light there. I find I need more light these days. Do you think I have Robles’ disease?’
‘I told you to get rid of that medical book. You can’t self-diagnose, Mom.’
‘It seems unlikely. It’s not like I’ve come in to contact with river parasites. It could be Fuchs’ dystrophy, I suppose.’
‘Or you’re just getting older and you need to deal with it,’ Kirby snaps. But her mother looks so sad and lost that she relents. ‘I could come and help you move it. We could go through the basement, find things to sell. I bet some of that stuff is worth a fortune. That old printmaking kit must be worth two thousand dollars on its own. You’d probably make a heap of cash.
‘You could take a couple of months off. Finally finish
