Play Dead

by Rory Say

Miss Raymon rang the doorbell and stood freezing on the steps. Half a minute later, she rang again. Then she knocked. There was no sound she could hear from inside the narrow townhouse, no light she was able to glimpse through the curtained windows. This irritated rather than concerned Miss Raymon, who had not wreaked havoc on her bad hip by trekking nine blocks through the Christmas crowds and the cold only to be stood up by these two brats and their lush of a mother, for whom she—Miss Raymon—was always going out on the barest limb to help.
     So she let herself in, using the spare key, and found the twins in her charge lying dead on the living room furniture.
     Unlucky for them, Miss Raymon was nobody’s fool.
     “You expect me to fall for this crap?” she said, glaring into the room. “Where’s your mother?”
     Simon lay prone on the couch, his head buried beneath cushions. A few feet away, his sister was more convincingly sprawled sideways across the coffee table, magazines and coasters scattered about, one arm slack halfway to the floor.
     “Have it your way.” Miss Raymon kicked off her boots and lumbered down the hall.
     In the kitchen she scanned the countertops for a note but found only smeared plates and food left out that belonged in the fridge. A carton of milk sat warm on the table. How long had they been left alone? And why? Why would Avril go out early without calling ahead? Even at her worst she was better than that.
     Unable to support herself a moment longer, Miss Raymon went to the table and eased her bulk into a chair. Tiredness spilled through her. As she waited for her various pains to lessen, her ragged breathing made a soft scraping noise she was forced to listen to. She felt old and heavy, thoroughly worn down. Often in the evenings she thought of herself in this way, as some old and heavy battered object which had moved great distances through the world.
     She was always moving. She was always going odd places and handing out favors. Take Avril. A year now since her first meeting, almost as long since Miss Raymon agreed to sponsor. And for what good? A few rocky months of midnight phone calls, then relapse, wagon, relapse, wagon, then to hell with the wagon. A New Year’s resolution case, in retrospect. Never serious. And the twins, for Christ’s sake. Miss Raymon’s heart in these matters always went out to the kids.
     So here she found herself, wheezing in someone else’s ruined kitchen two days shy of Christmas.
     When was enough enough? When did one have to admit to oneself that all of one’s help had already been given and that there was simply no changing certain people, no matter how often you drove them to job interviews or reasoned with employers over the phone; no matter how many fives you lent them—or tens, or fifties, knowing full well that, despite ardent assurances, compensation was anything but likely, and knowing also that these bills you could barely afford to part with might not really be intended for a grocery store—no matter how many times you trudged nine blocks through the elements with your sore feet and screaming hip in order to facilitate the latest bender by minding their six-year-old twins?
     She would speak to Avril. Enough had been enough for far too long. She would wait in this shameful kitchen until Avril returned and demand that she sit down and—
     A sound came from the living room. Or had she imagined it? Miss Raymon found her mouth filled with stale gingerbread, her hand in a store-bought plastic carton open on the table. Brown flakes dusted her coat, which for some reason she had yet to take off.
     “Simon?” she called, spraying crumbs out in front of her. She swallowed dryly and began to cough. “Samantha?”
     A firecracker squealed from somewhere out the kitchen window, followed by another. Nothing in the house moved.
     Miss Raymon tried to stand but had to sit back down, overcome by dizziness. Christ, this place. This woman. She cursed Avril as she waited another moment, then rose again, slowly this time, keeping one hand on the table until she felt sure of her legs.
     There had been movement in the living room after all. One of the cushions had fallen from the couch, partially revealing Simon’s head, his light brown hair unwashed and awry. As Miss Raymon stood watching in the doorway, Samantha’s legs began stretching out.
     “Hah!” Miss Raymon barked in triumph. “You two thought you could fool me, but I know dead when I see it.”
     The young girl rolled on her stomach and looked up with sleepy disinterest at the old woman. Their eyes met and then fell away as Samantha looked about the room, plainly surprised by where she found herself. She reached over and prodded her brother, who stirred slowly to life.
     “Game’s up,” said Miss Raymon.
     Both twins regarded her as though she spoke some strange language, their tired faces hauntedly pale. They looked like a pair of children starved of light and water. Simon yawned gigantically.
     “Is it Christmas yet?” his sister asked.
     For some reason the question made Miss Raymon’s thoughts go blank. She was still standing with only her head in the room, but now she went to the oval-backed armchair across from the couch and sank down.
     “Get off the table,” she said to Samantha.
     “Did you bring us presents?” Simon sat erect on the couch, suddenly alert. “Mom said you would.”
     “What?” Miss Raymon winced at a sharp pain in her chest, something new, something different. She spoke louder to keep it buried. “Do I look like Santa Claus?” she said. “Don’t answer that.”
     The twins exchanged a sorrowful look.
     “You don’t even have a chimney.”
     “But Mom said—”
     “I’m sure she did,” Miss Raymon snapped. “I’m sure she said all sorts of things. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a few things to say myself to that mother of yours.”
     That pain in her chest again. Her heart stung with each intake of breath. She began massaging her chest, then allowed her hands to search the deep pockets of her overcoat, feeling receipts, wrappers, lint, change, unknowable morsels of junk she’d at one time felt compelled to keep. She had no idea what she wanted until she took it out and presented it to the twins, an unwrapped candy cane given to her by one of the shrill carolers outside her building. She’d kept the curled end in her mouth for most of the walk over, but it was only lightly diminished and still retained most of its red stripes. Simon took it greedily.
     “You’ll get presents if you’ve been good,” said Miss Raymon. “Day after tomorrow.”
     She had more to say but kept quiet. There was something wrong inside of her. It felt as if a rough hand were testing the ripeness of her heart, over and over, tightly squeezing and releasing. All she needed was to sit quietly for a while.
     “What’s wrong with you?” Samantha said.
     Miss Raymon tried to smile.
     “You don’t look good.”
     “You look scary,” said Simon.
     “I’m only tired after that walk,” said Miss Raymon. Her breath came in that sharp wheeze again, the sound of ice being scraped from a window. “Just need to rest a moment. Go and get me some water.”
     Simon slid from the couch and left the room. Samantha followed. 
     Alone with her thoughts, Miss Raymon tried to resign herself. Either the pain would pass or it wouldn’t. She told herself it would, but she wondered what would happen if it worsened. What would she tell the twins if her heart began to explode in front of them?
     When they returned, she took the glass from Simon and drank it down with some difficulty. Maybe it helped. Her eyes clenched shut as she willed the pain to diminish.
     “I’ll go see if Mom’s awake.”
     It was Samantha who’d spoken. Opening her eyes, Miss Raymon could see through the doorway as the young girl took the stairs on all fours. She turned to Simon.
     “Where’d your sister say she was going?”
     The boy looked confused by the question.
     “Is your mother here?”
     “She’s asleep.”
     “Asleep?”
     Simon nodded helpfully. “She’s been asleep forever,” he said. “She must be really tired.”
     Miss Raymon looked straight ahead of her, at the mess on the coffee table.
     “How long’s she been asleep?” she asked.
     Simon had to think about this. He’d begun sucking the candy cane he’d been given. “I don’t know,” he said. “Since yesterday or the day before. She went to sleep on the floor and we had to put her to bed.”
     Just then Samantha reappeared.
     “I think she’s sleeping until Christmas,” she said.
     At some point Miss Raymon had gotten to her feet.
     “I’d better go up and see that she’s all right,” she said, and stayed where she was.
     “Why?” said Simon. “What’s wrong with her?”
     “Who said anything was wrong with her?” 
     “I’m hungry,” said Samantha. “Did you come over to make us dinner?”
     “Yes,” Miss Raymon said quickly. “Now why don’t you both go and wait in the kitchen? I’ll be back down in just a minute.”
     “She must be really tired,” said Simon.
     Ignoring this, Miss Raymon went calmly out to the front hall. The twins passed by behind her as she mounted the stairs. It was dark, and yet she moved easily, all her pains now forgotten.
     At the top landing she found a light on in one of the three upper rooms. She had never entered Avril’s bedroom before. There was the smell of long-unwashed bedding, of sheets stained by many nights of sweat. There were clothes on the floor and on the cluttered dresser. There were little plastic bottles next to the upturned lamp on the bedside table, as well as an amber capsule of pills. And there was Avril. She lay on her back covered to the chin, her face pointed at the ceiling. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was parted. Miss Raymon could see at once that she was dead.
     Sometimes the body knows ahead of the mind what to do. Calmly, Miss Raymon went to the side table and collected all the little bottles and the pills and hid them in her coat pockets. As she stood looking down at the face in the bed, some certain part of her recognized, even then, that she beheld the shape of a great failing born wholly of herself. There came no real surprise with this knowledge, only a tide of shame that sent blood from her head and caused her to sit for a while at the edge of the mattress. She began to speak but found nothing to say.
     By the time she went down to the kitchen, the twins had gone back to sleep. It was almost late. Simon sat at the table with his cheek resting on a plate of crumbs, while Samantha was slouched in her chair, head sunk between shoulders. Miss Raymon took the one vacant seat and allowed her own eyes to rest. Then, after a time, she shook each child gently by the shoulder and asked them both what they wanted to eat.

Rory Say is a Canadian writer of short fiction from Victoria, BC. Work of his has recently appeared in The New Quarterly, Air/Light, Uncharted, and Short Fiction: The Visual Literary Journal. A chapbook collection of his stories, titled The Marksman, was recently published by Red Bird Chapbooks. Read more by visiting his website: rorysay.com.