See You Soon

My sister’s boyfriend called and asked if she was with me. She wasn’t. She lived in Nova Scotia with him, and I lived in Vancouver. 
            Wrong ocean, I said. He didn’t laugh. He hadn’t seen her in a week, and he couldn’t get a hold of her. This was actually pretty normal for her, but he was a new boyfriend and wasn’t used to it yet. Don’t worry, I said, she’ll turn up. He didn’t find this reassuring. 
            What if she doesn’t, he said. I wasn’t even sure how he got my phone number. 
            Okay, I said, I’ll give her a call. 

I called her twice and on the second time left a message. An hour later, I texted her to say it was embarrassing that I had to do this; try desperately to get a hold of her when she'd done this before, and I knew she was fine, but couldn’t she just text me back anyway? Or better yet, text her boyfriend. I knew this is what she wanted; that once she got it, she’d reappear as if it had never happened. I put my phone down and got ready to walk the dog. It was cold outside for the first time that year and I had to dig around in my closet to free my good fall coat and gloves. Then the dog's collar was nowhere to be found. She waited patiently by the door for me, pouting. The week before, she'd been attacked by an otter near the Seawall, and she still had stitches in her little snout. The collar turned out to be right where it always was, by the back door with the leash. 

We went out into the afternoon fog, and although I usually left my phone at home for these outings, I shoved it in my pocket just in case. Everything was perfect outside — the wet green grass, the changing leaves, the mist. The dog, a duck toller, the exact same shade as the leaves, my coat the exact same shade as the grass. She wasn’t my dog; she was my boyfriend’s. Well, by then, ex-boyfriend’s. We had lived together, the dog, my boyfriend and I, until he dumped me for being, quote, “closed off and cold,” but he’d left the dog with me, saying I should have her for the first few months so I wouldn’t feel so alone. Which isn’t something, I wanted to tell him, that someone who is closed off and cold would even appreciate. She is a beautiful dog, and not too difficult to take care of, but in fact she makes me feel even more alone, a constant silky-furred reminder that someone who once loved me doesn’t love me anymore. 

The first time my sister ran away the weather was exactly like this. We were young, I ten and her eight, and we were supposed to go to our father's new apartment for the first time after the divorce. Our mother had to work, so she'd sent us with handfuls of change to the bus stop. On our way, we had to pass a park, and while my back was turned, my sister ran off into the long stretch of forest and disappeared. I called for her and clambered through the underbrush for a while, looking for her, but she was gone. I took the bus to our father's alone and told him tearfully what happened, and on our way back to the park to find her, a neighbour called my father to say she'd turned up back at our mom’s. When we got there to pick her up, she was grinning from ear to ear. You came and found me, she said. Of course we did, our father said. We love you. 

While the dog relieved herself, I checked my phone. Nothing from my sister; four new texts from her boyfriend. He was very concerned about her disappearance. Had called all her friends, found  ex-boyfriends online. They all say the same thing, he said, that she’ll turn up. But this is crazy, isn’t it?

I thought about calling my mother, but I didn't want to worry her, and who was to say the boyfriend hadn't already gotten to her? I was starting to get a bit paranoid myself. I scoured the news in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Then PEI. Then Ontario. By the time I got to Manitoba, the dog was pulling impatiently on her leash. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Nothing. 

My sister and I always did everything together growing up, everything around the same time. This probably should have bothered me more, as the elder sister, but I found it nice to have a companion in development. We first dated boys at the same time; we had our first kisses in ascending rows at the movie theatre. She got a proper boyfriend before I did, and that was when she really became a flight risk. He was the only one she ever ran away with and not from. After the last day of classes before winter break, they got in his car and drove from where we lived in Calgary up to Jasper on the Icefields Parkway. They might have gotten more time undiscovered had they not skidded on black ice and crashed the car.

After that, it was boyfriend, escape, boyfriend, escape, one after the other, regardless of what the boyfriend was really like. One would be kind and understanding, the next chaotic and exciting, the next cruel, the next kind again. It didn’t matter. She was good at starting over, good at making up. The runaways didn’t always lead to breakups — actually they sometimes led to brief periods of increased closeness. Discussions of engagement, cohabitation. The breakups came later, a slow unravelling of fights and threats. What, I wondered, was she doing to make these people love her so much that they’d take her back? Maybe this is what my ex-boyfriend meant by cold and unfeeling. Maybe he wanted dramatics, some display of manic passion. Maybe the running made them love her more. She did always turn up, in the end. It was silly of me to worry now. But there was always a chance this was the time something went wrong. I imagined her, out of money, nowhere to go. Strange town, strange men. Hitchhiking up some frozen highway. She was so good at getting people to love her — she was charming and sweet and laughed at anyone’s joke who’d laugh back at hers. But that didn’t mean she was safe. 

When the dog and I got home I put on water for pasta and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop. I'd never tell my sister this, but I kept a log of all the places she'd gone, with whom, and for what reasons she gave. There was no discernable pattern, no intense shift in mental state. It was never the outcome of a manic state; she never got into trouble or ran out of money; if it was drugs, she kept them a secret. She was always lucid and level-headed when I found her or when she let herself back into the apartment of whatever man she'd up and disappeared on. When we asked her why she'd gone, she'd always say, I just felt like it, or am I not allowed to take a vacation? She’d act like it was crazy of me to even look for her, but I knew it’s what she wanted, because she always did come home with me and on the way, she always eventually asked me, was he worried about me, and I’d always say yes, even if he hadn’t been. 

I had an email in my inbox. It was from her. There was no body of the email, just the subject line: I am in big river can you come get me??? 

I tried to call her, but she didn’t pick up, so I called her boyfriend again. He said he'd buy the plane tickets now, and we'd meet in the middle. I wondered what kind of person he was that he could drop everything and buy a plane ticket. The same kind of person as me, I guess. The pot of water was boiling over, but I couldn't eat, so I dumped it out. I texted the neighbour girl to see if she could look in on the dog. I could have asked my ex-boyfriend, but I didn’t want to see him. 

He never really gave me any clear examples of my coldness, but he was a man who appreciated physical affection. Just as my sister didn’t believe her partners loved her if they weren’t worried about her whereabouts, weren’t willing to drop everything to find her (and they often weren’t), I don’t think he believed that I loved him if we weren’t having sex often enough, or if I didn’t greet him with a kiss like a dog at the door every night. And maybe we weren’t having enough sex; maybe I wasn’t kissing him enough. But there was no distance far enough that I could go to keep my sister from running again; there was perhaps no level of affection I could have given him to make him believe me. All I had been good for, then, was proof, over and over. But I loved them — both of them — and so I gave it.  

The next day we met at the Saskatoon airport; her boyfriend rented a car. He was handsome enough, but maybe a little too neurotic and uptight for her. He asked me why I thought she’d done this, and I told him all about how she’d done it before and would probably keep doing it. It was just her way. Probably it had something to do with our parents’ divorce, or some other horrible cliché. But I also told him this time felt different. Something about the email, so brief, none of the usual playfulness, the come-and-get-me childishness. We had a short back and forth -- I told her we were coming, where to meet us. She said okay. We drove the two hours north to Big River and stopped at the Tim's. He sat across from me in a booth and ate a sour cream glazed doughnut so slowly that it made me nauseous. He kept asking me why she would do this, offering up psychoanalysis in a way that made me almost angry, like he knew something about her I didn’t. I emailed my sister back: here, at the Tim’s. And we waited. 

And we waited. The cafe closed, and we went out into the parking lot. While the car warmed up, we watched as the employees dumped trays of old doughnuts into the dumpsters. It was colder in Big River than in Vancouver; it was starting to snow. What if she doesn’t turn up, her boyfriend asked me again. I don’t know, I said. He pulled a duty-free mickey of vodka out of his duffle bag, and we poured it into our already lukewarm French Vanillas. We sat in the parking lot for a while, just in case. We finished the mickey. He kept asking me about her, about the times she'd done this before. It's just for attention, I told him. She just wants you to prove to her you care about her. I was drunk. I care for her, he said. So do I, I said, but it’ll never be enough. Were your childhoods that bad, he asked. I didn’t know how to answer him. I’d tried very hard to make her life good. I’d never run like that; I could never. I wondered if she’d come for me if I did. I wondered if my ex-boyfriend would have. If he’d have gotten the dog in the car and come looking for me, or if he’d have seen it as a heartless leave-taking. It’ll never be enough, I said again. I can’t live like that, he said. Who can, I said. 

Suddenly I was very warm. Maybe it was the vodka. Maybe I was angry. What can we do, he said. She wants to run, I said, let her run. She wants to be followed, he said. We're enabling her, I said. We were huddled close to each other, neither of us wearing suitable coats. The heat in the car was on, and the windows were steamed up. He was handsome, not her type of handsome, and probably too nice for her. The other boyfriends hadn't gone after her. Some of them had called me, but none had gone after her. That was always me. Is it evil if I leave her now, he said. It’s honest, I said. But you’re the only one who’s ever come after her with me. It’s the right thing to do, he said, I just can’t keep doing it. I can, I said. I have to. We were touching; I hadn't noticed before that we were touching, hands on each other's arms, that shivering kind of urgent gentle touch. No, you don’t, he said. You’re right, we’re enabling her. We were touching. He was handsome. I was drunk. I got on top of him, our bodies pressed together behind the steering wheel. I helped him fumble with his zipper. We didn't kiss. With each panting breath, the windows fogged more. He was handsome. I was drunk. Maybe I was angry. 

The hotel was dingy but empty. We got a double queen room and got into our separate beds. We didn’t talk about it; we knew we’d never speak of it. Everything in me pulsed. I’d forgotten how it felt — that heat, that touch. How could she run from that? But I’d been avoiding it my whole life — there was always her to think about, always some obligation that meant when the men I loved ran, or threatened to run, I never went after them. I don't think either of us slept. I could hear him, the way his breath didn't ease into rest. My sister and I used to share a bedroom like that, with beds parallel to each other. This was before the divorce. Before we moved to the coast with our mother and her new husband and got our own bedrooms. We'd stay up talking, eyes toward the darkness on the ceiling, and when she fell asleep, I’d stay up listening to her breathing, making sure she was still there. 

In the morning, there was an email: actually back home now. see you soon.