Quiet Time

Copyright © 2022, Katherine Alexandra Harvey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

Vagrant Press is an imprint of
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill St, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

Printed and bound in Canada

Cover image: Inpatient © Iness Rychlik
Editor: Whitney Moran
Cover design: Heather Bryan
Typesetting: Rudi Tusek

Epigraph © Camille Rankine from "Emergency Management,"
first published in The New Yorker, 2020

NB1608

This is a work of fiction. While certain characters are inspired by persons no longer living, and certain events by events which may have happened, the story is a work of the imagination not to be taken as a literal or documentary representation of its subject.

Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

We acknowledge the support of ArtsNL, which last year invested $3.2 million to foster and promote the creation and enjoyment of the arts for the benefit of all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

For Jordy and Emma

Some days I want to spit

me out, the whole mess of me,

but mostly I am good

and quiet.

–Camille Rankine

Chapter 1

I was born with premature tear ducts, so it was impossible for me to cry. When I woke each morning, my eyes were sealed shut, gooey and filled with pus. My mother would wipe them with a warm cloth so I was able to pry them open and see again. I cannot speak to the moments of blindness, but I remember the absence of something.

I was six months old when the doctor told my parents I would need surgery to open the ducts.

“It will be simple and quick,” the doctor stated, matter-of-factly. He had seen this many times, and to him, it was routine. “We just probe the duct to enlarge it.”

The doctor couldn’t possibly fathom the anxiety my parents felt. Their daughter, the perfect one, the one who had survived, how could she be sick?

We arrived at the hospital on the day circled on the calendar. The walls of the waiting room were painted neon green, covered with images of exotic animals. Zebras, elephants, tigers, lions, and giraffes loomed over rows of interconnected vinyl chairs that linked the expectant children. We were all there for the same reason: we were suffering. Some kids were bald from cancer treatment, others coughed weakly as their parents wiped their runny noses. The corner of the room contained a small plastic table with matching chairs, a bookcase filled with colourful storybooks, and scattered toys as if a child had been ripped away mid-play.

I was sitting quietly in my mother’s arms. I had not yet learned to walk or even stand. Had I been free, perhaps I would have crawled around the hospital floor, fitting items into my mouth. My mother gripped me tight.

The nurse, wearing baby-pink scrubs, entered from behind a closed door. “Grace?” she called. Her face was kind, free of lines and wrinkles, as though she were new to the job.

My parents stood, my mother propping me against her left hip, and headed toward the nurse. She held the door open, and I saw an empty hallway ahead. At that moment, lingering on the threshold between sickness and health, my tear ducts opened and I began to cry.

Chapter 2

My mother was a superstitious woman. One of my earliest memories was watching her from the back seat of our burgundy station wagon. We had stopped somewhere on our way home. My father climbed out of the driver’s seat and disappeared. My brother, William, was strapped in next to me. I reached for his hair, snatching a handful of soft white curls, and tugged. He squealed. I giggled. My mother looked over her shoulder. “Doll, leave your brother alone, please.”

She turned around and leaned forward, pulling off her slingbacks and setting her bare feet on the dash. The red nail polish on her toes glistened in the sun as she rotated her ankles.

A loud caw caw caw filled the car. My mother’s gaze followed a single crow that had landed next to us in the parking lot. Softly she began a sing-song:

One for sorrow

Two for joy

Three for a wedding

Four for a boy

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret, never to be told

Eight for a wish

Nine for a kiss

Ten for a surprise, be careful not to miss

Her delicate hand lingered in the air, and with one eye closed, her index finger drew an X through the bird as it drifted overhead.

“We don’t need any more bad luck, children,” she intoned, remaining fixed ahead.

I watched as the crow vanished from sight, heading for its nest in a grove of spruce.

Chapter 3

Once again, I found myself sitting in that tiny beige room. All these rooms are tiny and colourless. The fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered. A stranger sat opposite me, peering eagerly into my face. Behind him was a small window, a collection of grey industrial buildings beyond it. Minimal furniture occupied the space. We sat on knobbly upholstered chairs separated by a cumbersome cherrywood desk. The smell of stale coffee wafted from a pot, percolating on the edge. A brown so deep it was almost black.

How long has that coffee been sitting there? And who in their right mind would drink it?

The thought made my skin itch. My leg began tapping in an attempt to distract me from a barrage of incoherent thoughts. Who is this man? Is he married? Why doesn’t he have a wedding ring? What’s wrong with him? My head hurts. Did I drink any water today? Is it dehydration?

I pulled the elastic out of my hair, releasing a tight ponytail that was collected at the crown of my head. I pressed my fingers into my scalp, massaging it firmly to alleviate the pressure.

I glanced around the room, focusing on a poster. “If you think you’re in hell, keep going.” Is that supposed to be motivational? I stretched my fingers out, the tendons tightening, and squeezed them into a fist.

Open. Close. Open. Close.

“So, Grace, why are you here?” the man asked.

I answered without hesitation, “Because the psychiatrist at the hospital told me I needed to come.”

The man, whose name I had already forgotten, looked at his notepad and scribbled something down. The marker squeaked as it pressed against the paper. My teeth clenched.

The unspoken truth weighed heavily in the room. He knew I had tried to kill myself. It was written on the page in front of him.

A bird landed on the sill outside the window, staring in at me. I stared back. Its eyes, black, vacant, glistening, made the hair on my arms stand on end.

“Well, let’s try and figure out why he sent you here then, shall we?”

The smell of putrid coffee filled my nostrils.

I motioned to the pot. “I’m sorry, can we pour that out?”

Chapter 4

Dear Sunshine,

I’ve made a mess of everything. I’m sad and alone and tired of trying, and you’re not here. But you never really were, were you?

The doctors say there’s something wrong with the way my brain works. They want to analyze my thoughts, study me like a rat in a cage with a cube of cheese at the end of a maze. I told them that maybe, in a previous life, the doctors drilled a hole in my head for the spirits to escape and it never quite healed. They weren’t convinced.

They say they’re going to make me better. The funny thing is, you were the only one who could have fixed me. But you didn’t, did you?

I have to know, why didn’t you care? Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to love another person? Please, tell me what happened that made you this way. Then maybe I’ll be able to understand. I need to understand in order to get better. I need so desperately to get better.

Love,
G

Chapter 5

After my mother left for what she claimed would be the final time, I returned home one evening to find her hosting a welcome back party for one of her new, young friends. The house was packed with people who were laughing and shouting over one another. Empty beer bottles and dirty plates were stacked on the counter. A girl was sitting on the couch, cutting up lines of white powder on an oval mirror she had taken down from my wall. Another guy was rolling a joint, busting the weed by hand.

“Grace, come here,” my mother beckoned. “I want you to meet someone.”

She was elegant and conservative, dressed in black pants and a black blouse that draped off her slender body. Her ankles were exposed, the legs of her pants rolled up. Her feet were bare and flawlessly manicured. I thought of the stinging smell of nail polish remover as, each night, for as long as I could remember, she stripped the red polish from her toes before reapplying a fresh coat.

With arms folded close to her chest, she slowly swayed back and forth, gently shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she often did. She wasn’t drinking. I had never seen her drink.

I walked past the painting of a nude woman, her arms bound behind her back, nipples jutting forward, tied to a flaming stake. Her face was soft, her eyes closed, a cigarette dangling between her lips as her head bowed, seemingly about to light her cigarette on the blaze. I crossed the crowded room, making my way between people, dipping and flattening myself to avoid a collision, approaching my mother and the stranger. He was tall, just over six feet, with dark curls piled on top of his head. He had sharp, high cheekbones that protruded just below his eye sockets. His lips were uneven, the bottom much fuller than the top.

“Where’s my father?” I whispered to my mother.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She flicked her wrist dismissively. “In the city with his new girlfriend, I’d imagine.” She turned to the stranger. “This is my daughter, Grace. The one I was telling you about.”

The young man reached for my hand and shook it, his emerald eyes lingering on my face. “I’m Jack.”

His front teeth were slightly crooked, hugging over one another, the outer edges lifted higher than his canines. His nose seemed ornamental—as if it weren’t meant for breathing or smelling at all—with tiny nostrils and meticulously carved cartilage that curved upward. He was wearing a cornflower blue cashmere sweater and holding the roach of a joint between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’ll let you two get acquainted,” my mother said, as she turned and disappeared through the back door to the patio.

He bent to drop the roach into a half-empty can on the coffee table. It sizzled before dying out. He pointed to the couch, “Join me for a drink?”

Surrounded by a group of unfamiliar people, I sat with Jack as he told me that he and his friend had been on the road for three weeks; they’d driven across the island, taken the ferry, then crossed the border, headed for California.

“Our engine caught fire as we were driving through Arizona.” He smirked, taking a long swig from his beer bottle. “We had to call the fire department to put it out.”

“No way.” I laughed, noticing I was clutching the edge of my sundress. I let go, smoothing it repeatedly. “What did they do?”

“The firemen doused it with some sort of foam,” he replied. “We had a pound of weed in the glovebox. Luckily the cops didn’t show up. We would have been fucked.”

“Was the car okay?”

“No, we had to abandon it and fly home.” He sighed. “We never made it all the way.”

“That’s too bad,” I teased. “How are you going to write your Kerouac-inspired memoir now?”

“Well,” he paused, intertwining his fingers and pressing them into the back of his head, “maybe you could help me with that. I thought you were the writer.”

I titled my head and glanced down, embarrassed for some reason. “I wouldn’t say that. Not yet, anyway.”

He grinned. I liked the way his front teeth overlapped, his confidence in movement and articulation. The way he smelled: sweet, like almonds, with a hint of spruce.

“How old are you?” he asked, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the coffee table.

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

I nodded. “Cool.”

“Let’s do a shot, kid,” he said, pouring the booze into two glasses. A red-haired girl stumbled and nearly fell over, cackling as she caught herself against the bookcase.

Jack handed me a glass and I tossed the whiskey down, turning away from him, trying not to gag. “Smooth,” I said as I retched.

He chuckled, squinting his bloodshot eyes. “You good?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine.” I laid my shot glass on the Bible my mother used for doodling.

“Hey, don’t be so sacrilegious.” He nudged me playfully on the shoulder.

“You believe in that stuff?”

“Fuck no. I know God doesn’t exist,” he declared, his speech slightly slurring. “Science hasn’t been able to prove it.”

“So you think science is the new religion?” I raised an eyebrow, smirking. “How original.”

He allowed his head to fall slightly, shooting me a look. “You’re funny. Your mom said you were smart, but what mother doesn’t think that about her kid?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shifted, pulling a package of flattened cigarettes from his back pocket, offering it in my direction. “I just wasn’t expecting to like you so much, that’s all.”

At four o’clock in the morning, after everyone had gone home, I went looking for my mother. I found her outside on the balcony in the still night. She was staring intently into the dark woods, smoking a cigarette.

I walked up behind her, standing silently for a few moments gazing up at the sky. The moon was yellow, cratered with grey, nearly full. A few days away from completing its cycle.

“I’m going to marry him,” I told her.

Chapter 6

I was raised by artists in an isolated town by the ocean, where garbage collection was just a man riding on the back of a pickup truck and the police looked the other way when the trailer park king sold individual cans of beer to minors on the weekends.

Our house was more than a hundred years old. Secured to a dory by rope, it had been floated across the water from another, smaller community. I was told the water rippled as the boat glided through, pulling the house, its furniture and photographs shifting from side to side as it sailed along. Once settled onshore, it was balanced on a row of logs and hauled by horses to its resting place.