Chapter Two
Big Rock Lake, 1990
Rose didn’t know that eleven weeks after Quentin left Big Rock Lake to return to New York, I’d spent the night in this hospital. The abortion clinic.
I wanted children. But one day, not now. Having children was not something Quentin and I had discussed, but I could imagine his reaction if I told him I was pregnant, and it would not be positive. I wasn’t willing to risk losing him, so by myself I made the choice between him and our baby.
A meeting with a counsellor to discuss my options was a prerequisite for the surgery. I talked about being young, and unmarried, and having plans for graduate school. That was easier than admitting my real fear that my boyfriend of not quite four months would leave me.
‘Have you spoken to anyone else?’ The woman was middle-aged, kind, and a mother herself I guessed. ‘Your parents, a close friend, your partner?’
‘Bobby–my father is dead, and I–I haven’t told anyone else, no.’ That was an odd thing for me to have said. Suggesting that if Bobby had been alive I might have told him? Never.
‘And that’s fine. It’s entirely your decision. Your body, your choice.’ She gave me a booklet and some leaflets. She told me exactly what to expect. She organized everything, including a ride home with a volunteer driver.
I thought I handled the situation well. I was deeply grateful that I lived in a time and a place of legal terminations. I had no last moment regrets, and felt only relief, no guilt at all, after it was over. The volunteer driver was an older woman in a chunky knit sweater who pulled the car to the side of the road when I started crying and gathered me in her arms in a tight hug. She said nothing. I don’t remember her face, her car—only her sweater and that hug. I spent the following two days in bed crying, but that was simply a reaction to physical pain.
As soon as my body had healed enough, I dealt with contraception. No more risks. No more unplanned pregnancies. I was an adult woman, making adult choices. The single after-effect I acknowledged was an increased sense of insecurity, which manifested as recklessness. I had chosen Quentin over a child; I had to prove to myself that had been the right choice; I had to make sure I didn’t lose Quentin. When we were together, he got all my attention. When we were apart, I barely thought about anything else. My marks, unsurprisingly, plummeted. I was let go from my waitressing job for missing too many shifts. I ignored the few provisional offers I received to graduate programs, knowing I wouldn’t meet the conditions. My roommates teased me at first, then grew concerned. Finally, Larissa and Sally staged an intervention and said Quentin was no longer welcome to stay—that even if I didn’t care about final exams, they did.
—from Lies I Told My Sister by Louise Ells. Published by Latitude 46. © 2024 by Louise Ells. Used with permission of Latitude 46 Publishing.
Lies I Told My Sister by Louise Ells (Latitude 46, 2024).
About Lies I Told My Sister:
After a nine-month estrangement, sisters Lily and Rose, are reunited in a hospital emergency room when the younger sister’s husband has been badly injured in a car crash. While waiting for updates, they reminisce about their childhood memories in an effort to unearth the family tragedy - the death of their older sister Tansy. Lily and Rose begin to unravel the lies of omission that pulled them even farther apart.
Lies I Told My Sister is an exploration of how our community of loved ones can both buoy us up or tear us down. How innocently kept secrets can cause profound chasms.
Author Louise Ells.
About Louise Ells:
Louise Ells was born and raised in northeastern Ontario. After years of travel, she moved to Cambridge and earned her PhD in Creative Writing. She was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2017, and published her short story collection, Notes Towards Recovery (Latitude 46) in 2019. Louise teaches at universities and colleges in England and Canada and currently lives just north of Toronto, where she can often be found in her library surrounded by books and snuggled up with her cats.