Radium Girl: Stories

About This Book

Radium Girl is a collection full of dark wonder that explores the boundaries of love, death, loneliness and justice. In these twelve deft stories, Sofi Papamarko introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Margie and Lu, teenaged conjoined twins; Rosie who cruises funerals; Pete the predatory magician; the subconscious mind of Marie Curie; Elda the Radium Girl and many more. With pitch-perfect writing, Papamarko shows us how human beings cope, break and triumph in the face of often unbearable circumstances.

Praise for Radium Girl

"The stories in Radium Girl are majestic, thought-provoking worlds unto themselves, full of wit, humour, big ideas and superlative writing. If there’s any justice in the world, Sofi Papamarko’s brilliant creations will find a wide, dare I say viral, audience not only amongst aficionados of the short story form, but readers of all stripes."

– Andrew David MacDonald, author of When We Were Vikings

"So many of these stories lingered with me, whispering in my ear long after I’d finished reading them. They unsettled and alarmed me. Some characters in Radium Girl are trapped in unbearable circumstances. Others say or do upsetting things, or think disturbing thoughts. But Sofi Papamarko has an enormous heart, so she manages – skillfully, tenderly, magically, and with fierce humour – to reveal the deep, yearning humanity in everyone within these pages."

– Jessica Westhead, author of Worry and Things Not to Do

Sofi Papamarko is a brilliant observer of her world.

– Dennis Bock, author of Going Home Again and The Ash Garden

A Buckrider Book

Table of Contents

Cover

About This Book

Praise for Radium Girl

Title Page

Contents

Margie & Lu

The Pollinators

Everyone You Love Is Dead

White Cake

Tiny Girls

Controlled Burn

Ark

Something to Cry About

Underwater Calisthenics

In Heaven, Everything Is Fine

Five Full-Colour Dreams of a Young Marie Curie

Radium Girl

Acknowledgements

Notes

About the Author

Copyright

Margie & Lu

Lu

We were born the day the Challenger space shuttle exploded. Things have only gone downhill from there.

I don’t say I because we are unequivocally a we. We have always been a we and we always will be. My twin sister and I took our first breaths seconds apart. We’ve been told we’ll die minutes apart. And we’ll do absolutely everything together, all of that time in between.

My sister’s name is Margaret. She also goes by Margie or Marg, if you want to save yourself a couple of syllables. We’re very close, Margie and me. You might even say we’re attached at the hip.

That’s not technically true. We have two hips, just like you. Two hips, two legs, two feet, ten toes. It’s above the waist where things get a little more complicated. Surgeons tell us we have four lungs – albeit one of mine is slightly underdeveloped and leaves me wheezy on hot, humid days. Two spines. Two hearts. One shared digestive tract, snaking its way through both of our torsos. We share most vital and reproductive organs, actually. So no, we’re not attached at the hip, clever as that idiom may be in our case. We’re attached at the chest cavity. Dicephalic parapagus twins. We’re conjoined twins, using the most basic terminology.

My name is Luna. Our mother says I was named after Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where she went on a high school trip once, but I like to tell people I was named for the moon. It fits. If Margie is the sun, I am her pale reflection. Her shadow. People get pulled into Margie’s glorious, gregarious orbit every single day. I am the only one who has no choice in the matter.

Our internal wiring is too intertwined for us to ever be separated; we will never lead separate lives. I’ve long given up hope that we ever will. But not a day goes by when I don’t wish things were profoundly different. Margie, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind our lot in life one bit. She actually enjoys all of the fuss and attention of being my very close neighbour. She knows it makes her extra special. She knows it makes her worthier of attention.

I don’t go for attention. I’m not fond of fuss. All I want is a little peace and quiet. Is that too much to ask? All I want is a seat in a plush library with shelves upon shelves of leather-bound first editions that smell like paper and rot and the passage of time and the gift of perfect, expansive silence. Silence so vast and encompassing, it’s practically a solid object.

Would you laugh at me if I told you that loneliness is a luxury?

Margie

Some people spend their whole lives trying to get famous. My sister and I, we were born famous.

The Saint John Telegraph-Journal was the first coverage we got. Rare Conjoined Twin Girls Born in Bathurst. There’s a photo of us in an incubator, all veiny and purple, with the little yellow hats and booties Mum knitted for us while she was pregnant. We were front-page news and the talk of New Brunswick! We’d have been the biggest news story of the day, too, if that stupid space shuttle hadn’t exploded.

It only took a day or two before my sister and I became world-famous. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian. They all wrote about us. All of them! They still do, sometimes, on our birthday. Mum saves all of our newspaper and magazine clippings in a giant scrapbook. We still take it out and read the clips sometimes.

There was this piece that came out in the Toronto Star not long after our tenth birthday that I really like. It was a couple of years after Mum moved us to Toronto permanently to be closer to the very best doctors in the country, not to mention all of the university hospitals that wanted to study us. We ended up moving into an apartment on Bathurst Street in Toronto, which I think our mum did on purpose to help us feel less homesick. We would still be the Bathurst twins! Anyway, I like to read this one section of the article out loud over and over and over until Luna gets pissed off and tells me to give it a rest:

The Bathurst Twins, despite sharing corporeal real estate, are two very distinct young ladies. Margie (Margaret) Provencher is an enchanting creature – lovely and wild, wilful and loud. This ebullient extrovert, head piled high with chestnut curls reminiscent of a young Mary Pickford, loves to sing, dance and mug for the camera. Her delicate upturned nose lends an air of aristocracy, despite the fact that the twins were born to a single mother in rural New Brunswick. Indeed, one can’t help but think that bedimpled little Margie could have starred in commercials or even made it big in Hollywood had the circumstances of her birth and life been different. It’s impossible not to be charmed by this pretty little dynamo.

Luna is the shy one. Quiet and introspective, her forte is language. Both girls are fluently bilingual, but Lu has already taught herself Latin and is presently dabbling in Italian, Spanish and Mandarin. I ask her to conjugate Latin verbs for me. She does so effortlessly and in a tone that announces her utter boredom. Lu is moon-faced and her skull is slightly misshapen. Looking at her is like looking at the lovely Margie’s reflection in a funhouse mirror. She probably has much to say, but allows her sister to do most of the talking.

Lu

I hate that article. Hated that interview, too. That reporter was about a hundred years old, kept touching us on the arms and thighs and leaned in to kiss us at the end – like holy shit! Landed square on Margie’s lips, the sad old pervert. I turned my head away, but I knew it wasn’t my lips he wanted. His beard was yellow and his nails were too and he smelled like he’d been marinating in Scotch and old cigarette butts for decades.

Margie

There’s a photo of us, too. We’re blowing out the candles on our birthday cake (Black Forest cake from Safeway, my favourite, I really do remember it). My eyes are wide and dark. Luna’s cheeks are all puffed out and her eyes are scrunched shut. We’re both wearing polka-dotted paper party hats with those pinching elastic strings around our chins. There are a few headless people in the background wearing hospital scrubs. Mum’s on the far left, saying something frozen in time.

I remember exactly what I wished for. Every year, when I blow out the candles on our birthday cake, I wish for the exact same thing. I want a boyfriend. I’ve wanted a boyfriend since I was like six and I wish for one every year. I wonder how many birthdays it will take? How many candles? How many flames do I have to extinguish before I finally get to fall in love? I’ve never even kissed a boy before and I’m already so old.

Below the photo, in italics: Margaret and Luna Provencher celebrate their tenth birthday at Sick Kids Hospital, surrounded by their medical team.

I don’t know what Luna wished for on that birthday or any birthday. We never tell each other what we wish for. If we did, our wishes might never come true.

Lu

I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about our – look, I really hesitate to call it a condition. Our situation, let’s say. Condition makes it sound like we’re old and frail and piss ourselves every hour. It’s nothing like that. We’re young and strong and healthy. We’re capable and mostly independent. We’re only seventeen.

Two years before we were born, an article about conjoined twins was published in a medical journal. I found a microfiche in the Toronto Reference Library when I was supposed to be doing another research project. One line from that article has stuck with me ever since: Two people never being able to obtain privacy – to bathe, excrete, copulate, or eat – defies imagination.

I found the sentiment … odd. Margie and I are different people, sure, but we share this body. Why should we be shy about bathing or taking a shit? It’s our body! Are you embarrassed taking a bath alone with your own body? Do you feel strange peeing while you’re in the same room as your body? No? Well, same.

Eating, too, is a breeze. We take turns these days for the sake of efficiency and also, in the words of Margie, to watch our waistline. Margie lets me have breakfast, because I love oatmeal with fruit and I can enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee while I read the Globe and Mail. Margie takes lunch, which is fine by me – I read philosophy tomes while she mows down on a sandwich and apple and chats with her friends in the cafeteria. At dinnertime, we alternate and negotiate, depending on what Mum has prepared. Margie takes one for the team whenever pork is involved. Brussels sprouts and peas are all mine. Lasagna night? We take turns. For both ethical and environmental reasons, I have seriously been considering veganism. Margie rolls her eyes and says, That’ll sure be fun!

Copulate.

Margie is convinced she’s going to meet someone. She’s dreamt up a magical, understanding prince of a man who will fall in love with both of us at the same time. One wedding, two sets of vows. That would be awfully convenient, I say. He’d be living the dream! Threesomes every night!

Margie tells me to shut my idiot mouth. She doesn’t see me pull a face because we aren’t able to directly look at each other, except when