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they’d ever seen and it looked exactly like her. That afternoon she started sewing a hood. She finished it the following Wednesday. She hasn’t taken it off in seventeen years.
    The Face wasn’t home. The Perfectionist had planned this. She left a message apologizing for missing her and a promise that she’d call as soon as she landed in Vancouver.
    The Perfectionist went on to task #6. She called her other older sister, the Elongating Woman, who was named Donna at birth. On Donna’s eighteenth birthday her boyfriend was the passenger in a Toyota Corolla that was t-boned by a pickup truck. He died on his way to the hospital and for the next three years all Donna could think about was timing. What if he’d stopped for something? What ifthey’d hit a red light? What if he’d gotten into that car ten seconds later? It seemed like such a simple thing, so easy to change, and she started believing she could change it. All she had to do was reach back into time and delay him, so she stretched out her arms.
    She stretched her arms down Queen Street, past people and streetcars. She stretched her arms onto the Gardiner Expressway. She stretched her arms faster than highway traffic. She stretched and stretched and stretched but she was only able to put her arms around the city. She couldn’t reach back in time and she’s never forgiven herself.
    The Elongating Woman answered her phone.
    ‘It’s me,’ the Perfectionist said.
    ‘Don’t go,’ said the Elongating Woman.
    ‘I can’t wait any longer,’ the Perfectionist said. ‘There are limits.’
    ‘I know,’ the Elongating Woman said. ‘I know that.’ The Perfectionist promised to call the moment she landed in Vancouver. She hung up the phone and called her younger sister, the Ticker (task #7).
    The Ticker is a quiet superhero who makes everyone nervous. Her superpower is her amazing potential. Sitting at the edge of parties, responding to inquiries but never starting them, the Ticker is always watching and waiting – as is everybody else.
    Certainly she could do anything she wanted to, but what would that anything be? Brilliant art? Mass crime?World peace or medical school? And will she ever do it? Not even the Ticker knows. She answered her phone on the first ring.
    ‘I’ll miss ya,’ said the Ticker.
    ‘I’ll miss you too,’ said the Perfectionist.
    ‘Perf?’ asked the Ticker. Her voice made the Perfectionist nervous. The Ticker rarely sounded this serious.
    ‘Yes?’ asked the Perfectionist.
    ‘Why am I not working out?’
    ‘You will. I know you will,’ the Perfectionist said. There was a silence.
    ‘Okay,’ the Ticker said.
    ‘I should get going,’ the Perfectionist said.
    ‘I’ll let you go then.’
    ‘Okay.’
    They both hung up.
    The Perfectionist replays this last conversation and worries that she rushed her sister off the phone. She worries about all of them. She puts her finger on the airplane window and draws a circle. Her sisters, the Perfectionist concludes, are perfectly sad. She feels lucky to have escaped the tragedies that happened to them. Then the Perfectionist remembers her wedding. She remembers the six months since. She remembers why she’s flying to Vancouver.

ELEVEN

THE TWO BOXES
    Tom has returned to the toilet on the airplane. He’s in the one on the right. Three people have knocked. He puts his fingers underneath his eyes and pulls down the skin. He studies his eyes, all red rims and dark circles. ‘Raccoon,’ he says. He’s never seen himself look so tired.
    This isn’t true. Tom has seen himself this tired once before, but that tired was so different from this tired. He can remember everything about that tired; the television was still on, the only light in the living room, and it flickered blue like a strobe light.
    The Perfectionist had sat up. She pulled down her shirt. Her hair was messed up (perfectly). She studied him. Shekept her eyes open and kissed him. The kiss lingered. Tom lost track of whose