Growing Back

Bec didn’t drown that day. She dove into the shallow end of the pool at Chamberlain Park and hit her head on the bottom. No one but me even noticed. Time did not stand still, I didn’t know time. I certainly didn’t know death. She was down there for maybe three seconds, and then she came back up.

“Ouch,” she said. Our mothers were minding our little sisters, whom we hated.

Our parents had known each other since they were teenagers. Bec’s mother eventually fell into a long bout of various psychoses drugs and doctors were never able to fix. Now she’s morbidly obese, watches a lot of TV, paints pretty flowers in watercolour, and has a devotion to Jennifer Lopez. And sometimes, to me.

Bec and I used to put on plays in her basement while our parents chatted over coffee and layer cake. Her house was depressing, like everyone who lived in it had always been old. Bec and I were shyer than our sisters, but when we performed together we ruled the world. We created it.

Two years ago, Bec hit her head for real. The cause was so mundane you’d gloss over it in the papers. It was a head-on car collision. The concussion she got initially covered up the fact that she lost her short term memory; it left her everything she had before the accident, and pleasant smiles for everything that came after.

end

-Tammy Stone

Alley

He stands with his back to the brick wall at the mouth of the alley. Opposite him is a graffiti stencil of a girl wearing a baseball cap and a bandana. She looks off to the side, askance, as if playfully judging something. It’s almost as if she’s stealing a surreptitious glance at the coffee shop across the street which is what he’s doing now himself.

In the window is a woman. She’s drinking coffee and talking to a man who sits across from her with a hand extended, offered to her. She does not take his hand. She looks upset. He looks concerned but impatient. As if he’s watching a play where he’s guessed the plot and is tediously waiting it out.

He knows these people in the coffee shop window. The woman is his wife and the man is her brother. He hasn’t seen them since Thanksgiving when he excused himself from the table, saying he was going for a smoke in the garage. After he finished his cigarette he’d taken the car out for a drive. That was two months ago.

The woman is in tears now and her brother is holding a napkin in front of her which she ignores. Bored of the scene he steps out of the alley and begins to walk away.

Glancing back he sees the girl in the cap and the bandana spying on him. Askance, as if judging.