Stephanie maneuvered the recycling bin around her compact car, trying not to spill anything in the process. She had amassed an upsetting number of plastic sushi containers and frozen pizza boxes, and  Lee-Lee’s voice was in her head, No wonder the environment’s fucked, we’re all such lazy assholes. After that came a pang of missing her mother, difficult as she was. Lee-Lee, gone. It still seemed impossible.

Once at the curb, Stephanie rearranged the containers so they wouldn’t blow away. She was forcing them into submission when a startling animal body ran by, making a beeline for the entrance of her rented townhouse. She caught a glimpse of hind legs as it disappeared inside, whacking the door into the wall. 

“What the hell was that?” she said out loud to the invisible audience she always felt was watching, or to anyone who was actually watching, such as the neighbours peering out from behind their curtains or from inside their cars. No one was there. She crept up the driveway, adrenaline pumping as her front door creaked to a halt and tapped gently against the rubber stopper. She was going to be late for work. But something was inside, and the landlady, Mrs. Patel, would be upset if she left without attempting to remove it.

She steeled herself as she entered the hallway, suddenly feeling the foreignness of the new construction. It used to be a forest. During the initial tour of the rental, Mrs. Patel had pointed at the clear-cut swaths of land through the sliding glass doors, then rolled her eyes at the mess in the house. The townhomes were only two years old, she had explained, the rest of the neighbourhood was still being built. Dust from the scraped earth was everywhere. It had gathered in tiny dunes along the windowsills; it was probably now coating Stephanie’s lungs in a fine patina, but she avoided thinking about that. 

She pressed her back firmly against the hallway wall of Ship’s Sail, a warm linen shade Mrs. Patel had painted the entire unit with. The name itself was a comforting idea: movement in stationary spaces, each surface prepped for boundless imagination, the dreamy colour of some unknown moon. Was that Mrs. Patel’s intent? She had been pleased when Stephanie disclosed her singleness—no children, no pets, which meant fewer scuffing possibilities. I am very quiet, she had confirmed, and Mrs. Patel nodded like a check mark.

But now the animal had left a dent in the wall from the doorknob. Would Stephanie be held accountable? She silently inched along and passed the bathroom, the overhead fan whirring like an asthmatic lung. She could almost see into the living area. Her heart thumped. What if it was a rabid coyote? What if it was tearing the couch cushions apart with its teeth? She craned her neck. 

It was a deer, standing in the middle of Mrs. Patel’s great room.  

They stared at each other. 

The deer was the size of a tall dog and looked as if it had just woken up with a hangover. It  appeared in need of grooming and a big portion of hay, or whatever it was that deer ate. It had littered small leaves all over Mrs. Patel’s flooring, a mess she would not approve of. Even though it was boxed in by foreign objects—the kitchen set to the left, and the living room set on the right—it had a defiant air, reminding her unnervingly of Lee-Lee. Instead of moving in with her, Lee-Lee had lived her final days in a motel room with a 40 of vodka and any opiates she could get, stubborn to the end. The deer was the same, choosing a trap. How would it get out? Why had it come in? The shadow it cast on the floor was the shape of resistance. 

Stephanie decided to make herself nonthreatening, the way she used to when Lee-Lee was on a rant about some political topic and would fill a room with her fiery outrage. She knew how to condense her energy inward until the torrent was over, and so she did, to give the deer space to leave. The animal must have felt the shift, and leapt with panicked athleticism into the air, grazing its head on the ceiling before landing on the lacquered coffee table. They were both unprepared for the sound this made; the clacking was calamitous. Stephanie covered her ears as the deer jumped to the couch where it floundered, sinking into the sand-coloured cushions before hurling itself back to the floor. It cantered for a minute behind the coffee table, indignant, then snorted and spat.

Stephanie covered her eyes. It was a trick that had strangely worked throughout her childhood, picked up along the way from a three monkeys colouring book she had been fascinated with. She stood very still, melding herself into the wall of Ship’s Sail. She hoped the deer would leave on its own, without her having to call someone (but who, the humane society?). It had to go out the front door, the trajectory from the living area to outside was open. “Leave,” she whispered. “Please leave, please.” She pressed against her eyes harder.  

*

The last time she had seen Lee-Lee alive, she had been looking at Stephanie with something like pity, drunk but calm, cigarette smouldering, fingernails lined with chipped black polish. A huge and terrible silence roared around them, the aftermath of Stephanie saying the things she was never supposed to say. Negligent mother, drunk drug addict, self-absorbed narcissist, among other insults. Every accusation like the crack of a whip.

I loved you the best I could, Lee-Lee said in her trademark growl. 

You did, Stephanie said to cauterize the wounds. You were great. And she gave back into the dynamic of their relationship, which would always be about Lee-Lee’s thoughts and actions, a pattern she could count on. She had hugged her mother’s wilful bones to her own healthy body, kissed her sulky cheek and left for work with an uneasy feeling in her gut. She knew something would happen, that there would be some fall-out from the critique, but she didn’t imagine Lee-Lee gone forever. 

When Stephanie got to the salon, she listened to client confessions and inhaled wafts of ammonia, pretending she was fine, as she always did. And while she was busy staining dead cells vibrant colours, Lee-Lee was overdosing and turning blue. She ate a bagel on her break, drank a coffee, laughed with her colleagues about nothing. She tended to the hair of women who were the same age as Lee-Lee, trimming their split ends and tidying their bangs. She didn’t even call Lee-Lee that night, giving her time to cool off. Instead, she watched a movie with her lackluster boyfriend and snacked on popcorn. 

She couldn’t stand to think about it. The overwhelming shame and guilt of her non-action had prompted her to drop everything—her job, her friends, her boyfriend—and move to a random town just to punish herself. 

*

Stephanie took her hands off her face. The deer was still there, watching her. Its ears were endearing satellites on the side of its head, its snout surrounded by a thin stripe of white fur. It smelled of leaves. Stephanie made a sound, she may have said my, or I, she wasn’t sure, but an apology rose in her throat. The deer cavorted beautifully around the coffee table, galloped down the hallway, out the open door, and onto the suburban street.

Stephanie’s heart began thumping again. “Wow. Okay, wow,” she said to ground herself. A wave of dizziness hit her. She pressed her back into the wall again, willing her heart to calm. The last thing she needed was to have a heart attack. Lee-Lee would make endless fun of her if that happened, wherever she was. Remember when you fucking died because of a deer standing in a room? Her crowing laugh would erupt from the crackle in her voice. Stephanie started to smile at the thought, and her heart slowed a bit. Not today, bitch, she would say cheerfully, and Lee-Lee would cough-laugh in response. 

Suddenly she had a vision of the deer being hit by a car and dying on the street in front of the townhouse, all of it her fault. She rushed outside, but the deer had vanished. The neighbourhood was still. Her blue boxes waited with the rest, stalwart and vaguely criminal, lining the street with evidence that her life along with everyone else’s was overrun with garbage.

She began to cry, quietly at first with her hands covering her mouth, but soon with great wracking sobs that folded her in two, a heaving as blood-red as Lee-Lee’s lipstick. It was agony, as if she were hemorrhaging, as if her lungs would collapse, as if her body was giving birth to a monster through her skin.

Once she could breathe again, she got up and looked around for witnesses. No one, she hoped, had seen her humiliating loss of control. She brushed the gravel from her knees, then went back inside and called work to let them know she was on her way.

*

A week later, Stephanie came home from the grocery store with take-out sushi and a sack full of frozen pepperoni pizzas, plus a heavy bag of salt for the water softener. She was dragging the bag toward the open front door when she sensed the deer run past her, an impression of fur and sinew. She shivered with premonition as she continued to lug the salt past the fledgling maple tree with its bare branches getting ready to bud. 

She wasn’t surprised. Lee-Lee had been haunting her dreams and general waking thoughts. No one gives a shit about what I’m working on now, they still want to eat my youth, fucking vultures, she would slur, tripping over the furniture to pick up her guitar. They search for old pictures of my tits in T-shirts, or my ass in ripped jeans. And Stephanie would reassure her, tell her that her current work was important, her fame was not all in the past. Then she would put her to bed and stay over to make sure she didn’t choke on vomit like all those musicians from the early 70s. 

Lee-Lee would wake up in the morning, a nauseated amnesiac. Why are you here, baby? she would ask with an edge of irritation, not wanting Stephanie to see her shaking hands or hear her throwing up in the bathroom. And Stephanie would make breakfast with groceries she supplied, mainly toast, while Lee-Lee slipped vodka into her coffee from a bottle hidden in the pantry. Then they would meet in that halfway place, Lee-Lee having medicated the withdrawal, and they would have good, albeit one-sided conversations. Conversations about Lee-Lee’s past, about her future, about her art; conversations that Stephanie missed. But the compulsion to drink and do whatever drug she was currently on would build in Lee-Lee, and she would start pacing, a trapped animal. Stephanie would swallow her anger and leave to avoid being trampled, pretending everything was fine. 

She heard a snort, a small one from the great room, as if the deer were waiting for her.  

“Hello?” Stephanie called down the hallway, and both she and the deer were silent. Stephanie edged along the wall and found the deer in the same place as before, littering leaves and dirt on her just-swept laminate. It lowered its ears slightly, as if frowning. 

“Lee-Lee?” Stephanie whispered. The deer tensed, ears back up and alert, then leapt gracefully onto the coffee table. After tapping around for a moment, it bounded to the couch, where it trotted on the spongy cushions making hoof prints on the fabric. It turned in circles several times with a grunting sound. Then it folded its limbs under itself and sat, its body like a large turkey, its legs complicated sticks. A shudder rippled along its fur. 

Stephanie had no idea what to do.

“Lee-Lee?” she said again, and the deer squinted. It probably wasn’t Lee-Lee, who would never settle on a couch in suburbia. Mrs. Patel was going to be upset; the deer had ripped a hole in the couch cushion. It might have urinated as well. Stephanie couldn’t be sure, but she could smell something.  

Stephanie stood against the wall of Ship’s Sail, noting that her front door was still open. She realized the hallway might be a portal of some kind, between inside and outside, between life and death. She understood the deer was connected to this space somehow, that perhaps it wanted to reclaim the dirt that was under Mrs. Patel’s townhouse. 

Stephanie ran through possible courses of action. She could report the deer to Mrs. Patel, but what if Mrs. Patel were to overreact? Stephanie didn’t want the neighbours involved either; they knew Mrs. Patel personally and told her all the goings-on. It would cause a scene and she would somehow be held responsible. And the deer was peaceful. Look at it, just sitting there, like a nonviolent protestor. Like a guest. Or, in all honesty, like it belonged, right there on the couch.

She thought about what Lee-Lee would do. She would have a drink and a cigarette and watch. If the deer did nothing by the end of her smoke, Lee-Lee would get bored and start playing guitar or read the deer some new lyrics she had been working on. Then she would drink some more and try to coerce the deer into drinking with her. She would tell the deer how easy it was to forget meds, how hard it was to maintain anything. She would brush the deer’s coat until it was smooth and beautiful. She would profess love for the deer, her soulmate. Then she would drink even more and have a fight with the deer, who was trying to sabotage her work and wanted her to fail. Then she would pass out only to wake up and kick the deer out in the morning as if she didn’t know who it was. Honey, what’s your name again? she would say. Do you mind leaving?? I need privacy to work on my shit, and I can’t concentrate with you staring at me like that. 

The deer blinked at Stephanie and looked comfortable, even sleepy. Mrs. Patel liked quiet beings. Perhaps she and the deer would get along. The deer might be more impressed with the granite countertops than Stephanie had pretended to be. She had a feeling Mrs. Patel could tell she did not cook and that those expensive countertops were wasted on her. 

Stephanie decided she would treat the deer the way she would any guest who had claim to the great room. Welcome, but with obvious exits. She walked calmly to the back of the room, the deer’s gaze tracking her, and opened the sliding door to the back yard. Then she got out a pot and filled it with water, put it on the floor where it had spit last time. The deer watched with liquid eyes, and Stephanie felt a kind of understanding pass between them, a hesitant familiarity. 
She went back to the front door and pulled the salt in and put a couple tabs on a plate, like a salt lick. Then she dragged the bag to the basement and fed the water softener the rest of the salt. The softener began to make its mysterious filling sounds, working away to filter the sediment, to stop minerals from collecting on pipes. She waited in the basement for some time, wondering if the deer would leave.

When she came back upstairs, the deer was still sitting on the couch. Maybe it needed a break from the outdoors, it needed a room where it could hide, away from the sounds of motors and other stressors. Maybe it had failed at mating or had been left behind by the herd due to mental health issues, and lying on a couch was its version of surrender. It would probably end up getting addicted to frozen pizza, the same as her, and never leave. 

She put away the groceries while the deer watched with its eyes half open, then made a cup of tea. She nodded at the deer and went upstairs to her room. And once she was up there, she got in bed, as there was nowhere else to go. She drank her tea, the warmth of it spreading through her, and she was suddenly tired in a way she had never been before. She was exhausted in the soul, an unstoppable coma fast approaching.  

As her eyelids closed, she thought she heard the deer, downstairs in the kitchen putting a frozen pizza in the oven. Mrs. Patel was energetically showing it the features of the townhouse. Soon they would come upstairs, because the second bedroom was perfect for nesting, wasn’t it? And the third bedroom just right for a studio. The deer would smirk at Stephanie, quoting lyrics: “That business shit is murder, it’s choking us with litter.” It would be wearing a tight black T-shirt and ripped jeans. Mrs. Patel would say, “There’s a surprise at the front door,” in a gravelly voice, her mouth covered in red lipstick. And Stephanie would know it was Lee-Lee’s guitar and amp, along with her battered trunk, and a bottle hidden inside, waiting for her to move them all in.

Laurie Myers-Bishop is a writer who currently resides in Waterloo, ON. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Riddle Fence, Room and Matrix Magazine, among others. Her winning story was featured in the anthology Little Bird Stories Vol. 6 and another was nominated for the 2017 Journey Prize. She currently volunteers as a reader for The Master’s Review and is working on a collection of short stories.

Image by Siska Vrijburg @picture_sis