Sime shrugged, incomprehension written all over his face now. ‘Which means?’
She laughed. ‘It means that I might recommend prescribing you SSRIs.’
‘Of course, why didn’t I think of that?’
This time her smile was wry. She said, patiently, ‘Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. That would increase serotonin levels and elevate your mood.’
Sime sighed now. ‘In other words, an antidepressant.’
She shook her head. ‘Not just any antidepressant. In fact, most popular antidepressants would probably only make your condition worse. I think this could help.’
Sime was unaccountably disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. But another pill just didn’t seem like any kind of a solution to his problem.
II
The apartment seemed colder and emptier since his return. Even just a few days away had robbed it of its sense of being lived in. It smelled stale. Dirty dishes were piled up in the kitchen. There had been no chance to wash them before leaving. Or to empty the garbage. Something in the kitchen bin smelled like it was a long way past its sell-by. Unwashed laundry spilled over from the wicker basket in the bedroom. The bed was unmade, as it always was. Clothes lay on the floor where he had dropped them. Dust gathered in drifts along every surface in every room. Things he had almost stopped seeing. All classic symptoms of a mind kidnapped by de pression.
He sat that night in the living room with the television on. But he wasn’t watching it. He was cold, but somehow it didn’t occur to him to switch on the heating.
He remembered the advice of a lecturer at the academy. Sometimes you can think too much and do too little. And he looked around the apartment and saw the result of thinking too much and doing nothing at all. It was as if somewhere, somehow, he had just given up on life, become paralysed by inertia. He didn’t want this, any of it. And yet it was all he had. He was desperate to sleep, but not for the sake of sleeping. He wanted to escape. To be someone else in another place and time. He glanced at his ancestor’s painting on the wall. That bleak, dark landscape. And he wished he could just step into it.
The pills they had prescribed were on the shelf above the sink in the bathroom. It was almost time to take them. But he was afraid of going to bed now, in case he still wouldn’t sleep. The doctor had said they would take time. But he couldn’t face another sleepless night.
He stood up, fuelled by a sudden desire to take back his life. Right here, right now.
He spent the next hour gathering clothes from the floor and stuffing them into the washing machine. While it went through its wash cycle he filled the dishwasher and set it going, then sprayed all the work surfaces in the kitchen with disinfectant before washing them down. He took the garbage down to the disposal unit in the basement. And it was while there that he remembered Marie-Ange’s words to him on Entry Island. When he had asked her about her things she had said, I don’t want the stuff. Why don’t you just chuck it all in the trash?
He took the elevator back to the apartment fired with renewed determination, and in the bedroom threw open the doors to their built-in wardrobe. There were the clothes she’d left, hanging on the rail, shoes on the rack beneath them. T-shirts and underwear folded neatly on shelves. Things he remembered her wearing. He reached in to lift out one of her T-shirts and hold it to his face. Though it was clean, somehow it still smelled of her. That distinctive perfume she wore. What was it? Jardins de Bagatelle. He had no idea where he had pulled that name from, but the fragrance would be for ever associated with her. And he felt that sense of loss again, like a physical pain in his chest.
Almost in a fury he hurried into the kitchen to retrieve a large black bin bag and went back to the bedroom. He swept all the clothes off the rail and stuffed them into the bag. Followed by her tees and panties and bras, a nightdress, all of her shoes. He had to get a second bag, and a third. And then he dragged them to the elevator and down to the basement. He hesitated only briefly before emptying the bags down the recyclable chute. Au revoir, Marie-Ange.
On the return trip in the elevator he saw himself in the mirror and couldn’t stop the tears from welling in his eyes. He could have been a father by now. He swore at his reflection.
Back in the apartment he was determined not to be diverted by negative emotions. He wiped his face dry and stripped the bed, shoving his dirty linen and used towels into a large laundry bag which he took down to his car. He drove across the bridge to an all-night laundry in Rue Ontario Est and left his washing there to be collected the next day. When he got home he found clean sheets in the laundry closet and made his bed up fresh.