The Quarantine Review, Issue 9

Sheeza Sarfraz, J.J. Dupuis, Sheeza Sarfraz, J.J. Dupuis

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781459749443
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

The ninth issue of a digital journal created to alleviate the malaise of social distancing with exceptional writing and artwork.

The Quarantine Review celebrates literature and art, connecting readers through reflections on the human condition — our lived experiences, afflictions, and dreams. As we face a pandemic with profound implications, the essays within offer a variety of perspectives on the current predicament, encouraging readers to reflect on the world we knew before and contemplate how society can be reshaped once we emerge. Through The Quarantine Review, Dupuis and Sarfraz hope to give voice to the swirling emotions inside each of us during this unprecedented moment, to create a circuit of empathy between the reader, the work itself, and the wider world beyond the walls of our homes.

This issue includes writing from Jowita Bydlowska, Yuan Changming, Teresa Douglas, Hollay Ghadery, Eleni Gouliaras, Vera Hadzic, Kevin Heslop, Carol Lipszyc, Monty Reid, Deryck N. Robertson, Lynn Tait, Myna Wallin, Matthew Walsh, and Katie Welch, with art by Shannon Kennedy.

THE LONG READ

Ghostrider

Jowita Bydlowska

I lose my job at “Simple Cooking.” I am called into Amanda’s office and she tells me how maybe trade magazines are not for me, or maybe this place is not for me, or maybe I could try again, at a smaller agency. She is, as always, dressed in something light and shapeless from Babaton or Vaginelle, this one is an artificial silk beige bag that drapes over her round shoulders and that hides her curves; her blonde hair is in a bun, she has Bambi eyes, cupid lips gunshot with collagen.

After getting fired, I walk out with my box—like in the movies, I am given a box to pack my toys from the desk, a few kinetic puzzles they gave us to stimulate our minds—and I sit on a bench in a park and cry. I call Victor and he says to come over. I say no. I don’t want to sleep with him. It would not change anything.

Suit yourself, he says.

I want you to just hold me, I say in my head. What I don’t want is Victor’s dick, but with Victor there is no holding without the dick so it’s better to avoid that situation altogether.

You are unemployed, I say out-loud to a crow that is poking around the bench where I sit. The bird pokes once, twice at the Rubik’s cube in my box that I put on the ground. A sob rocks me, followed by a wave of shame, followed by sudden need to be away from the world so I go home and look up “ordering groceries online” and put on pyjamas and go to bed.

I can’t fall asleep so I call my son and leave a message on his voice mail asking him not to worry about calling back and I say that things are going well. I can’t tell him I’ve just lost my job, which pays for his tuition, which is one-third of what I make in a year.

I don’t want him to end up like me. I finished school with a massive debt that caused a small nervous breakdown in my early 20s that I only came out of to take care of a baby I had with a former professor who didn’t leave his wife for me.

I don’t want my son to have to have debt, to have to answer calls from creditors threatening him, to have to drink himself into stupidity, have sex with the wrong people, have babies before he turns 21.

I miss my son terribly. It’s his first year at college and without him the house is just a box to store me in with a new pair of Birkenstocks I never wear, a yoga mat I never use, and a fridge full of organic food I don’t believe in but buy because I aspire to be like every other woman over 40.

I am not her. I am a woman who naturally wears heels and who smokes and who never does yoga and who can spend weekends having sex or watching obscure French movies in bed as a form of exercise. My new guy, James, has been instrumental in that endeavour and he brings joy, wanting to fuck whenever and wherever—which distracts me from obsessing over Victor—but I am too sad now. I can feel desperation seeping in. Because of this, I don’t want to see James, who’s perpetually optimistic. I stay inside gathering dust like my unused yoga mat.

For my Sad Vacation, I put on the Birkenstocks and I wear them when I leave the apartment to walk up and down the stairs for exercise. It all feels like a penance.

I don’t know why I answer the call from Anna—I’ve been ignoring the phone during my self-imposed banishment but when she calls I’m weakened from crying, from missing my son, from all the bad television, from looking up “Best Copywriter Practices,” sleeping, and ignoring James’ insistent texts.

Anna lives out West and she doesn’t know my everyday life so I tell her about it honestly. I say, honestly, that I am a loser, that I lost my job, that I miss my son, that I miss my ex and that I am infatuated with someone who is probably bad for me, and that I have not left the house in weeks and that I am starting to convince myself a solution to all of this is to die.

Holy shit, wow. Die. You’re coming here, Anna says in a flat tone as if me coming there was a part of the program she knew about and I didn’t.

I am?

We’ll go on hikes. And to the springs. And the water falls. You’ll love it here. Just book your ticket. I’ll cover everything else.

Since I don’t know what I’m doing with my life it’s nice to hear that somebody has some kind of plan for me so I say yes even though I am going broke and have to put the tickets on my credit card.

Anna picks me up at the airport and she’s tall and blonde and glowing. She laughs and hugs me and grabs my bag and I follow her. The airport is small and it’s hard to take it seriously; it doesn’t even have a restaurant.

In the car, Anna and I talk about my job and she tells me not to worry, I will find something.

We both graduated with an MFA in creative writing. Since then Anna has written three novels and I have written zero novels.

Yes, I’ll find something, I say even though I can’t feel it. I’m numb from my weeks indoors. Feral.

So what else is going on?

I tell Anna about James, about all the great sex I had been having till just recently and she says she’s jealous. I don’t know if that means she and her husband don’t fuck any more, I don’t ask. Oh, but at least you’ve someone to come home to, I say and regret it immediately. I sound bitter and old.

I’m sorry, she says.

It’s okay, it’s not that bad, I say. I think about how I threw out the yoga mat before I left. It felt somehow symbolic. I’m still wearing the horrid sandals, I’m getting used to them.

When we get to Fernie, I feel claustrophobic—the mountains surrounding the town seem to be closing in on us.

Anna says she felt that way too but you get used to it, once you start to explore. She’s been hiking all summer long and she will take me on a hike the day after tomorrow. She points to one particular mountain, whose tip is a rocky wall where at dusk you can see a shadow that looks like a person on a horse with another person walking beside it. The mountain is called Hosmer, the locals call it Ghostrider, after a legend about an Indigenous princess.

Anna and I spend the day talking and walking around downtown that is a cross between a Western film and a spa. We shop for groceries and Anna tells me small-town gossip that mostly involves women being mean to each other. But she also says that generally, everyone is nice and it shows—she says hello to at least a dozen people on our walk.

In the evening, I meet her young son and her parents and everyone is friendly and open and they all ask me about my trip, about the three planes I took, and if I feel tired. I don’t feel tired. I go to bed early, with a book, intending to cry but once I lie down I feel at peace.

I dream of nothing but I wake up with grief sitting deep inside my chest.

I need a distraction. I send a text to James and over the next 48 hours we rebuild our relationship, specifically the sexting part of it. My phone fills up with various digital odes to dick and pussy, personal and whatever GIFs we can find online.

Two days later, Anna prepares for our big hike. She packs water and sandwiches and tells me to wear my hiking boots. I don’t own hiking boots but I brought a pair of black high-top sneakers, which should suffice. She has done the hike before and says it’s a little treacherous but nothing to be worried about.

Just remember to bring bear spray, her husband says and I look to him to see if he’s joking but he’s not. He arrived last night with their daughter who is pretty with a cloud of blonde curls like Anna’s. She’s making pancakes and occasionally quotes tips from a book called Survival Guide for Hikers, which I try not to pick up and leaf through so I don’t pick it up and leaf through. I try to remember if my son was that independent at her age—10—and no, definitely not. I used to brush his teeth until he was 11.

This is from the Hunting chapter. Animal bones can be used as weapons. Use the urine of females to attract prey.

Ruby, says the husband, Nick. Nick is handsome in a nerdy way and he looks at Anna in the way that tells me that they do fuck. Anna says she’s got the spray and she glances up from her backpack as she turns to him to give him a kiss.

She looks at me, Ready?

I nod in a way I hope looks enthusiastic. I don’t say I haven’t slept much—sexting—because I don’t want to sound like a wimp, but I am a little shaky. Still, I feel better than I have in weeks—being in a new place makes my troubling situation seem like a foggy dream, not quite real.

I don’t think about it as we drive up to the place where we will start our hike, and we talk about men, again; she asks about Victor and why we broke up and I tell her I have no idea. I have no idea because I have no idea. We were good together. We talked about getting married. We discussed what kind of dog to get. We ran around IKEA with a camera, pretending we were shooting a music video. We spent Christmas together—my first one without my son who went to visit his father—and it was lovely; we went out for Chinese and gave each other too many gifts. Then, in February, we had one big fight—he couldn’t make love to me, he said he was too depressed, I left in the middle of the night—and then he went away on business and when he came back we were strangers. We’ve hooked up twice since then but there were no more declarations, I had been demoted to a fuck friend. At the same time, he kept my love notes on his fridge and pinned to a corkboard behind his computer, a portrait he took of me, next to a picture of Brigitte Bardot, and ticket stubs.

Why do you keep this stuff?

He said, Because you’re my soulmate, and it was such a ridiculous thing to say—although we had said it before, during our romance and then it was not ridiculous at all—that I laughed and he laughed, too, and we sat on the couch awkwardly, silently, till I got up and left to use the washroom.

I have not been able to explain any of what happened to myself so I can’t explain it to others. I just say he broke up with me because he found somebody else. Everybody is satisfied with that. But it’s not what I tell Anna because she gets nuance and we’ve been friends for two decades so I tell her about our fight and how I don’t understand.

You seemed so happy, she says, her voice hopeful. As if that would fix anything, telling me that we were. We were.

I liked myself in that relationship.

Do you think that maybe you’ll get back—

I’m just reading stuff on the Internet. I can’t afford therapy. Closure, closure, closure. I just want closure. Closure is bullshit.

But we still want it. It’s okay to want it.

I’m fine, enough time has passed, I say even though I always think about him. Now it’s just a dull ache, an occasional spike of panic and feel...