Free Sweet Affliction by Anna Leventhal Page B

Alex once said. As though it was a bad thing. But the best stories are the formulaic ones, the ones where you know what’s going to happen next but you watch anyway, to have that itch rubbed out, to pour full the empty glass in your head.
    The show cuts to commercial. Marcus watches as a bumbling dad forgets his kid’s birthday, accidentally beheads her stuffed teddy, and shrinks her blanky in the wash. When it looks like things are about to go completely off the cliff, he grinningly pulls a bag of cotton-candy-flavoured chips out of a grocery bag. There is a joyous reunion, with hugging and giggles and one well-aimed shining wink at the camera. Marcus stares at the TV, and then at the bag of cotton-candy-flavoured chips beside him. If he needed confirmation, this is it. He is the centre of the universe.
    Marcus opens his phone. It’s two hours later where Abby is so she should be just getting into bed, wearing her long blue cotton nightgown with the lace around the neck. She’ll be reading something, a biography of an old film star maybe. Her face will be damp and sticky with night cream, her skin warm, except for her feet, which even in the July heat will be cool and dry to the touch.
    â€œHi babe,” she says in his ear.
    â€œHey,” he says, sighing more than he intends to.
    â€œGo okay today?”
    â€œYeah, you know how it is. Another day, another dollar.”
    â€œFourteen hours on snowshoes and wish you had pie?” She completes the Dillard quote for him.
    â€œMmm, pie,” he says. “Yeah actually it was good. About a dozen people showed up, including the chair of the cultural studies department. She came and talked to me after, said she thought my work showed promise.”
    They talk more about his presentation, he asks after the kids, who are fine and asleep, and then Abby says she has to go, there’s a segment on CBC’s
Ideas
that she wants to listen to.
    â€œâ€™Night, love,” she says.
    â€œDon’t forget about me.”
    â€œJamais.”
    He rolls over onto his stomach, brushing crumbs from the broadloom comforter. He opens the phone again.
    When Sally answers she sounds less than thrilled to hear him.
    â€œHave you been watching the Moving Day coverage?” she says.
    â€œYeah,” Marcus lies. “Crazy stuff.” He might not have watched this time but he knows the drill, it’s regular as payday.
    â€œSo you saw Alex,” she says. Marcus sits up. “When,” he says, “on TV?”
    â€œYes, on TV.”
    â€œI must have missed that part.”
    â€œUh-huh,” says Sally. “Anyway he’s in detention, me and some others are going to the solidarity demo tonight. You should come.”
    â€œI’m in Alberta,” he says.
    â€œOh, well never mind then.” As though he’s told her he’s at the grocery store.
    â€œSally,” he says.
    â€œYeah?” Something in her voice, some tone beyond generic encouragement makes him go on.
    â€œHow’s your. You know, the…”
    â€œMultiple sclerosis?”
    â€œYeah, sorry.”
    â€œSlowly eating away at my nervous system,” Sally says. A puff of air comes out of Marcus’s nose. “No, sorry,” she says, “I’m a jerk. It’s fine. No new lesions. I’m not a babbling mess yet.”
    â€œNo more so than usual, anyway,” says Marcus, and Sally chuckles.
    â€œRemember that time we dressed up as zombies and tried to get kicked out of the bank?” he says. “Alex was screaming ‘class war,’ but instead of arresting us they just laughed and said we were right?”
    â€œYeah,” she says, distant. “That was nice.”
    â€œWe should do that again sometime.”
    â€œSure.”
    What was it Alex had said when Sally was diagnosed? “It’s pointless to think about people as healthy or sick. There’s only the sick and the