Pictures of Sam. Illustration by Ben Clarkson.

Now

The power went out. The television emitted an electric squelch before the picture vanished into darkness. In that moment Sam saw his reflection seated neat to his sister in the TV glass. Their image was bathed in the blackness of the blank screen, obscuring their features and the fine details of the room around them. She wasn’t more than a head shorter than him these days. Sam ran his tongue along the outline of his missing tooth and rolled his neck back until he was facing the ceiling. He could hear the sound of light rain outside. Clara broke the silence,

“Maybe an electric converter exploded.”

“That sounds about right. Must be pouring somewhere.”

Sam turned to look at her, reaching out and mussing her hair. Between his fingers and her ruffled bangs he could see that static expression on her face, and then suddenly the power was back on. The TV sputtered back to life in the middle of a commercial break. Clara emitted a “phew” with so much enunciation Sam could see the speech bubble above her head. Sam smiled and then relaxed his mouth without looking away from her.

“Have you seen any movies lately? That you liked?”

“No,” Clara’s responded curtly but her eyes were soon staring actively up at the ceiling. “Yeah I did. I saw one with Ola.”

“What was it called?”

“He’s wearing a different tie.”

“What?”

“The man in the show. Before they left the police station he was wearing a blue tie. Now he’s wearing a brown tie.” Clara was laughing quietly and picking at her dress. “I wonder why?”

Sam ended up making some spaghetti in the kitchen while Clara sat and watched Looney Toons. He’d been back home now for about a month and a half. The whole experience was far less claustrophobic than he had imagined once, but every single bit as strange. A year ago he had put his mom’s blue clay ash tray through one of the big living room windows. The summer before that he had set fire to the garage by accident, passed out on painkillers with a cigarette in his mouth. Every room had a ghost of some kind or another hidden amongst the clutter. A game of I Spy. And yet, being home was good. A comforting oasis.

Then Sam was in the kitchen making dinner, thinking it was nice to be around Clara. She’d grown a whole lot since he last felt like himself. He stood there, lost in thought, spooning spaghetti and meat sauce onto plates like gobs of brain lobe. Clara was diagnosed with Aspergers when she was nine and Sam was eighteen. She was a little puzzle he wasn’t much good at, maybe even he had gotten worse these eight years later. And not that little anymore. She looked more like their mom than ever before, which was unsettling. Dressing like a teenage girl, too. It seemed somewhat obscene, but of course Sam didn’t know how he’d like her to dress like instead. Old overalls.

“Dinner’s ready, geek.”

“You’re a dickhead Sam… Thank you for making spaghetti. It looks nutritious.”

Flashes of attitude and humour that bubbled up occasionally from underneath Clara’s unstirring surface bewildered Sam. Difficult to decipher or reconcile or simply ignore. Whenever she made him laugh, really laugh, he’d start to get overwhelmed. She once described her mom’s friend Don as a Korean David Caruso, another time she dropped a book she was carrying and said ‘fuck a duck!’ Both times Sam had been a lot closer to laughing and then crying than laughing until he cried.

And yet, a question was still hanging in the space between them, bound and gagged. How normal are you these days? Where do you fit on that spectrum? What do people see when they take you in? Of course, that question was there for him, too. More so. Inescapable. Are you normal now?

Then

It was along time ago. So far back Sam could hardly recall it. It was back before he got his tooth knocked out. He was having an episode and ended up driving all the way back to his mom’s house. He was drunk and hadn’t changed his clothes in a couple days. It was 1:23 a.m. and he was feeling like he was in some kind of zone. Each traffic light he hit turned yellow just as he crossed the threshold. The breeze from out the window felt like a cool hand across his face. A couple times he closed his eyes tight and let his right foot get heavy on the gas. Good energy. Tapped in. Sam listened carefully to the music snaking out of his car stereo. In his mind’s eye he could see the CD spinning furiously under the scraping gaze of the disc player’s laser. Faster and faster until it began to wobble off its axis. He passed by the spot Vera Variety used to be before it closed down some years ago and discovered a few mysterious tears crawling down his face. He felt on fire.

As he pulled into the driveway, Sam noticed the absence of his mother’s car. It was entirely possible Clara was gone, too. Maybe they’d gone up to Uncle Stephen’s cottage for the weekend. If that was the case he’d drive up there next. Sam got out of the car and went around to the back, but the door was locked. Rage built up in his jaw. He was wasting too much time. He was missing his window. He managed to track down a spare key inside a false rock by the old swing set. Another good omen. He let himself in. He was still crying.

“Clara! Clara wake up! Clara where are you? I know you’re here! Clara where the fuck are you? Come down! I need you to come out right now!” Sam didn’t wait for a response, he ran down the hallway to Clara’s room. He forced the door open so hard it probably would have concussed her had she been on her way out. It gave a sharp smack against the wall and knocked something off of her dresser. Clara was sitting upright under her sheets in the dark. Sam dragged her out by the wrist in her pajamas to the kitchen table and sat her down. They stared at each other for a long moment while he caught his breath.

Sam arranged the water pitcher, the box of salt and the pint glass in a line in between himself and his sister. It was very important that the salt went in the glass first. Sam told her so. He poured it carefully out from the box and then examined his work. Not enough, needs more. When he was satisfied he filled the rest of the glass with water up until it teetered on the brim before stirring it around with his index finger.

“You have to drink this.” She didn’t respond. Clara had wet pajama bottoms. “You have to drink this Clara. They’re poisoning you and I’m going to fix it. You have to trust me, you have to drink this.”

Still nothing.

Sam slammed his firsts down on the kitchen table, spilling more salt water. She drank. She drank glass after glass after glass until she threw up bile from her parched throat onto the floor, and then he made her drink more. Later, a nurse at the hospital would explain to their mother what salt poisoning was. She would be there for three days.

Pictures of Sam

Clara drew this one when she was visiting Sam at the CAMH facility. Clara had trouble with perspective and straight lines, but her drawings were vibrant and astonishingly true to life. This one is no different. The room around Sam is captured in perfect detail. The messy sheets on the bed, the geometric pattern of the tiled floor and two beams of dusty light shooting in from the window on the left. In the picture Sam is sitting restlessly, his weight shifted to one side. He is captured in the midst of a conversation, mouth open, palms outstretched. His mouth is puffy and the gap in his teeth is rendered in thick pencil. His tattoo sleeve is visible, peeking out under his shirt at his wrist and neck. His shoes are untied and his hair is a mess.

In another one, Sam is playing guitar barefoot and cross-legged in the backyard. His hair is buzz cut. There is a coffee mug on the ground beside him. He’s wearing his glasses and there’s an open song book in front of him. He looks heavier than the picture from CAMH. The guitar has a Black Flag sticker on its worn body, left over from long ago. Sam is smiling in this picture, his eyes downcast at the song book at his feet. Behind him looms the decrepit swing set from Clara’s youth.

There is another picture that does not live in the same stack. It is hidden elsewhere. Sam is staring out of it, across a kitchen table. He looks thin and his posture is slumped. Sam bares an empty expression and a tongue lolling out of his mouth. In it, he is shirtless and his tattoo is in full view. A zen garden. His hands are placed in front of him symmetrically. On his left and right, stacked on the table almost to the top of the page, are glasses of water. Water glass pyramids. Inside each glass is the texture of a snowstorm. No two are completely alike.

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of Robin Evans’s story — the full version will appear in the Spring 2012 issue of The Fiddlehead. We’re happy to be partnering with both of them to present you with this sample of Robin’s work.

I take the bus to Doctor Patel’s. Usually, I get off a few stops early and walk the rest of the way. I use the time to figure out something to talk about. She’s supposed to be helping me get my life together but the more we see each other, the harder it is to come up with anything decent.

Patel’s not a real doctor, she’s a PhD. She sits in a basement office on West 6th and talks to people like me while hugging Peruvian-style pillows to her chest.

She says, let’s talk about you.

Mom drops off groceries at my new apartment. Two bottles of red wine, canned snails and other pantry leftovers. Dented cans of soup, dryer sheets. The essentials. “This whole situation with Ryan is like a crazy flashback.” Mom talks for a long time.

She eases into it with long silences, then finishes with a rush of words that scatter like confetti. Our age-old family saga, the day Dad left her. A defining moment, a story told so often, she knows exactly where to pause for effect and when to laugh at herself.

But she still can’t say his name. “Your father.” “That man.” Nothing more than that in thirty years. He’s become a faceless ghost-man with an afro and a polyester suit. How did he ever manage to move away, get married and have another kid, when she has him so frozen in place? The last card he sent had a picture of him with his car. A Taurus. He was bald and kind of small-town mall fat with saggy eye pouches. Nothing special, no great loss.

I have no problem saying Ryan’s name. And because he’s the only Ryan I know, when I say it, I’m not fooling anyone, it’s all about him.

I let Patel know, despite what she may have heard, Ryan is a good guy.

“I’ve not heard anything, Lily” she says. “From what you say it sounds like you were very happy.”

Her monotone takes some getting used to. It’s like she’s heard everything a thousand times before. But then she looks at you and it’s a different story. She’ll eat you up when she looks at you, bad news and all.

That’s the trouble with talking about it. People love every minute but act like they’re doing you a favour. Like listening takes so much out of them. Frown, nod, here have a Kleenex, maybe that’ll get you bawling. The worse off you are, the better. Lost jobs, dead relatives, cancer, all of it works. But heartbreak creates a special kind of feeding frenzy. Better just to keep your mouth shut.

“A person shouldn’t have to buy more than three spatulas in one lifetime.” It’s not one of my most inspired openers but Patel takes the bait and leads me in a safe, familiar direction. New life, self determination, reinvention, assimilation.

“How are you settling in to your new apartment?”

“Love it.”

“And the neighbourhood, you feel safe?”

“Funny story, I walked up to Hastings yesterday and on the way back this guy’s sitting in his truck getting a blow job. Parked right in front of my building. I had to walk past them doing it. And there was this stupid tricycle on the sidewalk right there, like they used it as a stepladder to get into the truck.”

Patel’s eyes light up whenever I mention sex. She compensates by making her voice go even flatter.

“Did you tell Ryan?”

Sneaky Patel. I’m not supposed to be talking to Ryan. I agreed to stop leaving messages.

“I just went home and got drunk.”

Patel senses I’m holding back. Her nose scrunches up a little as she thinks this. It’s the most unattractive she can make herself look and she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. I throw her a crumb.

“I realized something. I don’t look in the mirror. Can’t even tell you what my hair looks like. What does my hair look like?” I pull on a tight curl, stretch it out until it’s almost straight, then let it bounce back.

“You look fine.”

“Yeah, well, I sat next to this woman on the bus, she was at least eighty. Her hair was just a big cotton puff. And her make up was nuts.” I shake my hands in the air on either side of my head in the universal hand sign for crazy. “How’s my make up anyway? Can you see it in this light?”

“You look fine. About the woman on the bus?”

“Yeah. I don’t think she’s looked in the mirror for twenty years, maybe fifty. I thought, okay, I can do that.”

“The mirror isn’t so hard. It’s looking yourself in the eye that’s the big test. What so awful about you that you can’t look yourself in the eye?”

I know the answer. The egg timer on the back shelf goes off. Time’s up.

“Oh, you know, bad hair day,” I say finally, breaking through Patel’s silence.

I stand up and when I stretch, my fingers push at the low ceiling. The tile wobbles like it might fall on top of me.

“One day, when you’re ready.” Patel extends her hand.

Today is a bad session. We have not made progress. When I give her what she wants, I get a mama-bear hug, a squeeze, a “chin up” tilt of the head that says she knows best and I’m right to trust her. On days when I fend for myself I get a handshake before she settles herself back on the couch to wait for the next fixer-upper.

Read the Spring 2012 issue of The Fiddlehead for the rest of Robin’s prizewinning story!

However, Niedzviecki’s short-paced narration too often meanders back into the exhausted clichés of the last decade: “Peter usually stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and a muffin. In class they had talked about the corporation as a tool of patriarchal cyborg capitalism.” In “Special Topic: Terrorism,” he repeatedly draws attention to the fact that in the abundance-of-information age, everyone’s a kind of hypocrite, but the message is ultimately lost in the insufferable exchanges of characters who can’t seem to think for themselves.

From God’s unappreciated assistant in “Doing God’s Work” to the repressed mortgage broker from “Real Estate,” Niedzviecki’s characters are weighed down by deferred redemption. God’s assistant plans and prepares his revenge, the broker calls a mysterious man about a mysterious girl, but the ends of both stories are withheld, almost as if with a shrug. Still, Niedzviecki’s wit, at the peak of its subtlety, has echoes of early Bret Easton Ellis: “Next year [Peter] would graduate. He’d never had a girlfriend. He was thinking vaguely about a career in law enforcement.”

Creative Commons photo by flickr user ecstaticist.

“It has been some time now that I have wanted to speak to you about the youth gang. Since July there has been much conjecture about how the youth gang started, and when, and where, and what exactly the youth gang is, and who belongs to it, and whether its members wear ‘colours,’ and which weaponry they carry, and how to best protect ourselves—Kevlar vs. chainmail, house alarms vs. hounds, landmines vs. prayer— and whether the youth gang represents a simple gap in generational understanding, or a malevolent shudder in the collective morality of humankind, or the death of love, or a mirror, or a warning, or the end.

“But here we are, October, with no real progress or understanding to speak of. Three months of terror have passed and still the youth gang holds us in its clutches. And while we continue to ask how, when, where, even what, no one in our close-knit multicultural community, in which not a soul wants for anything and everybody knows your name, has ever asked why we have a youth gang. And before you go throwing your hands up in despair, Mrs. Heinz-Mercer, and muttering to one another, Sheikh al-Shabazz and Mother, about who the heck does this woman up there think she is, I pose a further question, one that requires serious introspection, analysis, and honesty. Consider: Who created the youth gang if not all of us?

“Grumble, fine! Sometimes the truth is difficult to hear. Although to those, Father Power and Rabbi Berkowitz, preparing to storm out in a huff, hold on. I am willing to acknowledge—okay, confess—something you’ve no doubt been waiting for. (Though have you never considered that I’ve wanted to say it, too, but merely lacked the courage, or the impetus? And sure, maybe yesterday’s tar-and-feathering of the entire security force at the factory outlet mall has provided exactly that.) A solution begins, I think, with each of us accepting responsibility. In that spirit, let me be the first to do so.

“Listen to me now: the youth gang is largely, if not entirely, my fault. Had I not founded the youth group, no youth gang would have ever mutated out of it. It is that simple. And I’m sorry.

“Thanks, Sardarji, nice to see you sitting back down— you, too, Nakamura-san. So there it is, what I’ve wanted to get off my chest since the BuskerFest swarming back in July. Mea culpa. But fault me not for good intentions! Honestly, I believed it was the right thing—following consensus, reached at a town-hall gathering very much like this one, to get the youth off our streets.

“But now I wonder: were the youth ever on our streets? Prior to the first youth-group meeting at the recreation centre, weren’t they mostly in our basements with computers? And also, technically, this subdivision doesn’t even have streets. There’s an abundance of crescents, courts, and cul-de-sacs, two wide and beautiful tree-lined boulevards, a trail, a path, and I for one live on a place, and there are other places and drives and avenues and ways and passes and even roads—but streets? No. Not one.

“So we had a logistical or at least semantic problem from the get-go. But, people, streets or no streets, it’s insignificant now, when every night our chimneys are being stuffed with fertilizer and the word PWNED burned into our lawns with bleach. What matters is how to stop the menace—the menace of the youth gang. And to do this we need to come together. Now, I know that several of you (Mestre Appleton-Bannerjee, the Honourable G. A. Sabatini, Comptroller Choi, others) have booked the Hall tonight at 8:00 for capoeira practice, so I’ll do my best to be brief. And I’m sure the members of our local roda would appreciate it if everyone helps stack the chairs on their way out. Thanks!

“I’ll add, too, that what follows is not meant as an affront to the Nguyen-Orloffs, whose Reading Instead program happens weekdays from 3:30 to 6 p.m. in the Bookmobile. I see a lot of confused faces. Really? No one knows about this? You’ve never wondered about the repurposed RV up on blocks in the cemetery parking lot? Well, it’s a fine, fine initiative, with as many as six kids diverted, or at least temporarily distracted, from joining the youth gang. As you may have noticed, an empty salsa jar is making the rounds for donations. Please give generously, and now you know what they’ve been up to, let’s give Minh and Jack a round of applause for their efforts.

“Great. Now—Mother, stop muttering—everyone, please listen: in times of communal confusion, truth gets lost amid the clatter of voices—each straining to be heard, each deaf to one another. (You and your research fellows heard me, Dr. O’Connor; no need for the eyebrow raising.) This is how gossip becomes mythology. Much of what you think you know about the youth gang—that they sleep in caves underground and eat small dogs—is spurious and absurd. Remember the

hysteria about the youth gang recruiting babies from the natal ward at Jewish General? In truth only one baby was approached before the youth gang realized they could make their own babies, babies born into the youth gang and as such members for life—though this is perhaps equally worrying, for different reasons.

“Rumours cloud judgment and preclude reason. Please allow me to detail an accurate history of how the youth gang formed and evolved, and explain where they are now in their organization. I’ll conclude with a potential course of what I’m calling ‘proaction,’ contrasted with a picture of what the future may hold for our community if things continue on their current trajectory (i.e., more incidents like the urine-balloon bombing at last Sunday’s Fall Harvest Festival.)

“Here’s how it all began, last June, at the rec centre. About 15 minutes into the first youth-group meeting, through diversionary tactics and trickery, the youth locked me in the supply closet and, commandeering a staple gun, affixed the head lifeguard, Florian Henderson—hi, Florian—to a spinal board by his trunks. That led to a handful of youths unleashing a skunk into the retirement home next door, while another faction spray-painted a lurid mural of male genitalia, mid-climax, in the library parkade; still others stormed CROG FM and, holding the hosts at bay with gardening tools, broadcast a burping contest for the entirety of Rick and Tina’s Commuter Hour.

“Sure, there had been signs of dissent. The youth group was no happy commune, all smiles and sunshine—actually, if anything disorients the youth, it’s sunshine. When I first herded them out of their basements into the Youth Group paddy wagon, generously donated by Captain N’diaye’s 32nd Precinct, they staggered like so many pubescent moles into the light of midday summer, blinded and lost. For a moment my heart leapt at the sight of them, so vulnerable and confused— that is, until I discovered a note (I’m a try-hard fatty) affixed to my back with chewing gum. Oh, that’s just great—laugh it up, Mother. Everything’s so hilarious to you, isn’t it?

“Since June I have dropped 17 pounds, most of it over those traumatic four days locked in the rec-centre supply closet, subsisting entirely on powdered sports-drink concentrate and unpopped popcorn kernels. Through a ventilation shaft I listened to the youth, over a succession of daily ping-pong tournaments, morph from group to gang. By the time I was rescued by the centre’s long-time caretaker, Donato DiFruscia (who promptly fled for the ‘old country’), the youth, in a horde of all-over print hoodies, were descending upon BuskerFest— an episode the talented singer-songwriters whose CDRs were stolen, recorded over with flatulence, and promptly returned, will never forget.

“I don’t think I need to detail the humiliating months that have followed: the toilet paperings, the drive-by Slurpeeings, the teabaggings, the hijackings of decency and Segways. We have learned things. If, for example, a flaming paper bag appears at your front door, get the hose. A sign announcing ‘Free Beer’ accompanied by a series of chalked arrows leading to an alleyway is best ignored. For those duped out of their RSP savings by the space tourism/all-you-can-eat surf ’n’ turf scam, my heart goes out to you.

“But enough, I say: enough! Enough shame and terror. Enough peeking out at the world through our mail slots and doggie doors. Enough flights of journalistic fancy such as—with due respect, Karen—Miss Behaviour’s op-ed of September 12, ‘Anyone Know a Good Exorcist?’ Enough tribunals and sanctions, which only waste community picnic funds. Enough vigilante posses prowling the neighbourhood in backcatcher masks with rolls of quarters in their fists—yes, Mme. et M. Letourneau, I’m looking at you. Enough booby-trapping the woods. People, the youth gang don’t even go into the woods; they abhor nature and distrust trees.

“Let’s admit our complicity. We put the youth in tennis lessons, and what was once a forehand buggwhip is now a tire iron smashed through the windows of Fetisov’s Ceramics Boutique. We paid for the karate classes that equipped the youth with the very roundhouse kicks used to destroy, to use a convenient example, the entire back stock of Fetisov’s Ceramics Boutique. How worrisome, then—for all of us, not just you, Mr. Fetisov!—that the video games we bought the youth teach strategies for storming buildings with assault rifles and gunning down rooftop snipers. Thank God for our community’s strident firearms laws—at least for now.

“Friends, neighbours: how can our creation also be our enemy? The youth gang comprises our sons and daughters, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, our paperboys and girls; these kids used to bag our groceries and flip our burgers, rip our tickets at the movie theatre, and, sometimes, even fill the classrooms of our schools. (Where are they now, you ask? God knows. They may even be in this room— it’s impossible to tell, since the hide-and-seek we encouraged has made them so adept at subterfuge.) My point is this: as its architects, aren’t we also part of the youth gang? In this war against the youth gang, whom are we fighting, essentially, if not ourselves?

“Quiet, please. I’m not finished. So what then, some of you ask, if not a punitive response? I suggest talks, dialogue, tolerance, patience, understanding. I have faxed one of the youth gang’s representatives, and she seems willing to negotiate— though who knows for what, and under which terms. But a lull in hostilities is the first step to reconciliation and, perhaps, even a truce. What does the youth gang want, besides crafting scenes of prurient orgy with our garden gnomes and sailing looted futons down the river? Does anyone know? This was a rhetorical question, Mother; please put down your hand. You are a thousand years old. There is no way you have any idea.

“People, we have one week until Halloween—that means Devil’s Night will be upon us in only six days. Does this worry anyone except me? Oh, wow, everyone? I’ve got a whole page here of ‘worst-case scenarios,’ but maybe—right, I’ll skip it. Okay. I hope we can turn anxiety into action—or proaction, as I mentioned earlier. And quickly. If I can broker talks, everyone here needs to participate, albeit, of course, calmly, without shrieking or finger-pointing or the petulant feet-stomping that certain also-rans in last spring’s 5k Jog for the Cure seem to think passes for sportsmanship. And, please, people, no spitting. This has never, ever been okay. Do you hear me? Ever.

“I thank you for your time. Let us do the right thing, let us extend the olive branch—and be prepared that we might be handed roadkill in return. We must persevere. The youth gang is our doing. It is all of our faults. And it is up to us, as those responsible, to work with the youth, to show them the way out of their misdeeds, toward a new path. And as for what this path might be…”

The speaker trailed off. Looking out over the crowd, she flipped through her notes. The room was silent. Everyone waited for her to conclude, to provide definitive and clear instructions. The air had gone brittle with expectation. But instead of saying anything, with shaking hands the speaker plucked from behind the lectern a bottle of Vitamin Water, which she tipped back and drank—the entire thing, rapidly, in a single, open-throated gulp.

Drawing from her own experiences working in an office, Rosenblum creates characters who, despite their canned lunches and obligatory office parties, are anything but dull. Anyone who has ever worked inside the partial walls of a cubicle, ignoring the constant hum of a computer, while counting the minutes until lunch, will easily relate.

There is Clint, a contract employee, slurring his words as the result of an infected wisdom tooth he can’t afford to have pulled. There’s Andrea, the new hire, who is “straight out of school” and “as jittery as a jailbreak.” And among the most memorable are Mark and Sanjeet, the company’s CEO and COO, who are likely to blame for the company’s demise.

Rosenblum has crafted a reputation as a Canadian writer to watch for, especially after her 2008 collection of short stories, Once, earned her the Metcalf-Rooke Award. The Big Dream only accelerates this expectation. Each short story is rich with memorable dialogue, capturing the empty banter, complaints, and flirtations that often fill the halls of an office. Rosenblum’s natural dialogue and descriptive prose result in a collection that successfully depicts the complex balancing act between home and work that so often define the lives of office workers who struggle to stay afloat inside and outside of their cubicles.

Dear Katie,

I woke up with a lingering vision of my Aunt Agnes’s swollen feet propped on her filthy coffee table. They looked like two puff pastries stuffed into once pastel blue slippers, now the colour of a graying robin’s egg. Aunt Agnes smoked like a tire yard on fire. When I was a child it seemed she ate nothing but bridge mix. She drank sherry from a highball glass. We kids were offered warm tap water in Styrofoam cups that she rewashed and used only when we came around, the rims worried with eight-year-old teeth. This was my introduction to single living.

I left Tom a few hours ago. I’ve been thinking of you and your apartment in the city. I know you say it’s too expensive and your neighbours are always yelling obscenities through the floor, but I’ve been dreaming of moving in with you. Going to the market to buy an apple, just for myself. When I’m standing at the Fiesta Farms with a bag of apples—because Tom eats one a day, every day, cut into quarters—I dream about that single apple. I rip into the plastic bag with a finger and isolate one, hold it like a bowling ball, and lift my curled hand above all the other groceries in the cart. I see it as clearly as I saw my Aunt Agnes’s feet this morning. At first, I couldn’t picture anything but her feet, not until I willed my eyes up to see her face, the lines gathering around her lips like a tightly pulled seam. Cigarette held in her puckered lips.

Yesterday at work, I was holding a white ceramic bowl hot from the microwave. It was balanced in both of my hands like I was holding somebody’s head still and with love. I was staring at my computer screen, at an Excel file stacked heavily with numbers and letters. I didn’t want to look down into the warm bowl because I feared that it might be filled with blood. I glanced down at it. I knew there would be no blood in it, and I was right. Lentil soup. But every time I lifted the spoon, I had that thought. The soup even changed in flavour. Like metal, similar to the taste that erupts when you pull the tip of your tongue from away from a frozen, metal surface.

I threw the soup away and shrugged it off. I had a deadline to meet. You know how Sherry gets, sucking in her teeth and orbiting around your cubicle in those ugly black turtlenecks, pretending to look distracted, eyes burrowing holes into your head. She still talks about you, like you’re friends or something. Asks how you’re doing all by yourself in the big city. I say you’ve gone off with a biker. She always believes me for a second, cause she doesn’t really get sarcasm. I say you’re great, starring in a play, etc. All those things that you do. It’s amazing, Katie. I’m so proud of you. Sherry smiles, but I can tell she’s jealous of you, and jealous of me for being your friend, and staying in touch even after you quit.

There’s a new girl at work whose entire family was killed. I do not think suffering ennobles. But I watch her when she smiles. It’s like she knows something I can’t. She spends all day looking at the horoscopes.

Last night I slept at the office. I stayed behind to work on something and told Sherry I’d lock up and I just never left. I slept on the scratchy paisley couch in the break room and ate everyone’s leftover lunches for dinner. I snooped in Sherry’s desk drawers. You won’t believe what I found in them. I’ll tell you when I get to your place. I hope it’s okay to stay with you. I just can’t go home, you know. Not even to get my things. My things weigh me down. Do you know what I bought last week? Stuff off the TV. Tom will be so mad when he gets the Visa bill.

I called Tom from the office and said I was staying over. He thought I’d gone mad or that I was lying, that I was really having an affair—but I took a photo on my phone and it showed him where I was. He said I must be going really crazy this time and that he was on his way to get me. I told him not to. I wasn’t surprised when I saw his face on the intercom video screen, his time-delayed voice of concern begging me to buzz him in. I had no choice really, I had to tell him it was over. IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT, I said, pressing the talk button on the intercom. GO HOME. He just kept saying LET ME IN, over and over, until I turned away, went back to the break room and turned up the volume on the TV. I watched the cooking channel and feel asleep. When I woke up, a half hour ago, he was gone. It’s dawn now and the sun is coming up over the industrial park. I can see the early bird cars on the highway curling around the overpass. I’m going to have to hide under my desk soon when the cleaners come. That, or act like nothing is weird. I just came in really early. I’m a keener. You know.

Love, Mary

Dear Katie,

Remember when we were 12, and we used to read all the dirty parts from Judy Blume’s Forever into a tape recorder so we could listen to them later in bed? How did we even come up with that? Then you’d talk about wanting to be a star on Broadway in New York City, and I was going to be the next Judy Blume. Seems ridiculous now, doesn’t it?

There’s still that sign above the photocopier that Tom made when we all worked together. The one that reads, “Flaubert never wasted a word. Why waste a sheet of paper?” Underneath it I scrawled “Oh, and no need to talk down to us, either,” I added a smiley face too. It was funny when I wrote it. I can’t even tell you how much that sign bugs me now. It’s a daily reminder that I once graduated with an English degree. That I was the first one in my family to graduate from college, and that 13 years later it still doesn’t mean shit. My brothers make $85,000 a year in jobs they only needed trade school for. I make $27,000 a year take-home. That sign reminds me that Tom started out as my employee, and then got promoted, and promoted and then headhunted out of here. And I’m still here. Middle-Management Mary. Sherry got drunk at the Christmas party and said I won’t ever get promoted because James thinks I’m just going to end up getting pregnant again soon. Jesus, Katie, sometimes those family photographs up in everyone’s cubicle are enough to make me want to weep.

I had to fire a girl in customer service a few weeks ago. I could tell she thought she was so much better than me, than this whole office. She had a streak of blue in her blonde hair. She wore Fluevog shoes, so I know she has rich parents, right? She published a book of poetry on the internet. An e-book. Whatever. We logged her internet hours and you wouldn’t believe how little work she did. I said, we don’t pay you to chat. I’m sure they’ll hire her back as our Social Media Manager or some bullshit in a few months, especially since she has great tits, but until then, I got to fire her and I tell you something, firing people used to make me cry. I cried every time. Not this time. I felt energized. Take your smug little scarf you wear in 30 degree weather, your third generation granny boots, your pop culture blah blah blog, and go back to your mother’s basement suite in Brantford, little one.

I didn’t say that, of course.

It’s almost noon, and I just bought my train ticket. Thanks for the invitation to your opening night. I will definitely be there. I’m just waiting for pay day.

Love, M

Dear Katie,

I’m so glad we connected on Facebook. Your photos are so awesome: I love the one with you smoking under the bridge wearing that evening gown. I gave up smoking years ago when I was pregnant with Maggie. I started again when she died, but I only smoked until the funeral. I just didn’t enjoy it anymore anyway. Or anything else, really. Has it been three years already? It still seems like yesterday. That week you let me sleep on your couch was so important to me. I know you know that. I remember how glad I was when Tom came to get me, though. Back when I still loved him. I know you say you’re lonely sometimes, and you’re tired of never finding the right guy, but you have no idea how lucky you are. I’d rather have a gay best friend and a book club and three day benders (great photo of you singing shirtless karaoke!) than the same night every night, that thick silence of two people who have given in to growing old. Tom started playing golf. Do I even need to expand?

Love, M

Dear Katie,

Thanks for letting me stay for at least a little while. I totally understand that it’s not a great time for me to move in. I get it. Maybe I can get a place in your building? And don’t worry, you know how clean I am. I won’t leave a trace! We can run your lines together. I can help you with your costumes. Really, I can’t wait to just sit still in a café and watch people. I used to love doing that I went to U of T. Remember that place in Kensington Market? I still dream I’m there sometimes. Is it still there, Moon-something? I can’t believe my two most incessant daydreams involve buying myself an apple, and watching people while drinking a cup of really good coffee. I am so sick of Tim Hortons I could cry some mornings.

Love, M

Dear Katie,

I’m not sure what to tell you. I came in to work this morning, after a terrible sleep at the Comfort Inn across the highway the office and security was waiting to greet me at the door. Apparently Sherry caught on to my expense account scheme. I may have skimmed a few dollars here and there, but seriously, no promotions ever? I only took what I was worth. It’s bullshit. I can’t even tell you how mad I am. I’m slamming on the keys here in the Comfort Inn business centre. I’ll be out of here today, Katie. I hope you don’t mind that I arrive a bit early. Tom wants me to come home, I know. Lena told him where I am and he’s been sitting in the van in the parking lot for an hour now. I can see him from across the little window, he’s been going to my room and knocking, I suppose. I guess that’s love, right? Or craziness. I’m not sure how I’ll get my stuff. Maybe I’ll just show up with nothing? I’m afraid to see him.

When I see Tom in person, I know I won’t stand my guard. He’s just so safe. I’ll walk towards him because I’ll have no control over my body. Bodies crave security. It’s like when you’re freezing to death and you just go on autopilot doing things to get warm, like shivering. Your body tricks you. My body will open the van door, and slide into the front seat, and he’ll say, “How about a pizza, my best girl?” and then I’ll be 68, in a matching recliner next to his, and we’ll be watching some awards show. You’ll be getting a lifetime achievement award, and I’ll be getting him a beer from the cooler between us. And that will be my whole life.

Love, M

But Goodison surprises her readers, delving beneath this facade into the uncomfortable struggles of everyday life on the island, from class divisions to unjust gender relations. Young boys selling flowers dream of driving off in limousines to escape abusive home lives, while darker-skinned Jamaicans work as domestic helpers for the “brown” or fair-skinned upper class. A wife is shunned by her husband after she returns from a trip to New York, clad in flashier clothes and decidedly more confident, while a strong businesswoman encounters a married former lover who simultaneously worships and disrespects her when he invites her to be his mistress.

The collection’s most striking element is Goodison’s use of language. Unlike the works of Zora Neale Hurston or Joel Chandler Harris, whose uses of dialect are jarring and broad, Goodison employs it subtly—a change of syntax here, an idiom there. But while her dialect is minimal, it is nonetheless immersive, enveloping the reader in the joys and injustices of her native land.

In clear prose, Perdue skillfully relays characters both chock-full of emotion and, often, the architects of their own demise by way of impulsive reactions. “He recognizes that he can’t help messing it up sometimes just so he can put it back together again,” says one broken man, before taking a drill to his own toothache and later dying on the street as he brings a Christmas tree home to his girlfriend.

It’s a wickedly funny representation of bad things happening to decent people. A father buckling under stress shuts his dog in the barbecue and watches with horror when his daughter unknowingly goes for the starter. Two parents, determined to forge a connection to their teenage son, tape two joints to his birthday card as he’s busy lighting his restaurant workplace on fire. But there is always just enough hope. In one story, Leslie, after learning a neighbour has been murdered, spirals undone, ends her affair, and releases a kite into the sky—a symbol, she says, of a murdered man fluttering an elegant wave good-bye. The descriptions are occasionally overwrought (do hearts really explode?), but it’s barely noticeable amid humour so grim and delicious.