You Are Not What We Expected

by Sidura Ludwig

  She cried in response. She blew her nose and then whispered, “You know that’s what Mum would have said.”

  But tonight when she called from the office, she was yelling. It sounded to Sol like she’d been yelling even before he answered the phone. “What the hell did you tell her?”

  “Who?”

  “Jessica. What did you tell her, Dad? About Mum. Mum was your saviour? That never happened.”

  “Says who?” Sol’s heart was beating so loudly it muffled the truth inside his head.

  “You lied to her!”

  “I wouldn’t ever lie about your mother!”

  “Are you losing your mind? Do I have to call Dr. Herman?”

  “It’s my story, Hillary,” Sol said. He had never, until now, thought about taking ownership of his story. History.

  “Don’t start with me.”

  “One day, when Jessica asks about you and Daniel, you’ll tell your story. And you’ll remember things you could never have told her before — ”

  “This has nothing to do with me and Daniel!”

  “ — And you’ll watch her listening to you, so you’ll keep talking. I wasn’t lying. Stories always change,” Sol said.

  “We all miss her, Dad. But it doesn’t help imagining her in places she never was.”

  Sol set the portable on the counter and looked around the kitchen. He knew the difference between here and gone. He could tell an empty room when he was in it. Who was she — who was anyone — to tell him what didn’t help?

  Draft Two

  There are train tracks that run behind Jessie’s new house, the payoff for the long backyard, which she’s now too old to even appreciate. She lies awake because of the discomfort in her ankle, a pain that feels like stretching even when she’s trying to relax. And the way it stretches — one fibre pulling on another and then another; how that crawls up her leg like the train rumbling past the back of her house, waking her up in the middle of the night. Is it the train or the ankle? That sound of the wheels ka-klunking over rail joints and Jessie imagining with each klunk the pain in her ankle climbing a ladder, rung by rung, up her leg.

  She hates this house. She can never get comfortable here. Even the couch in front of the TV is off; it’s the same one that was in her basement in the other house on Spring Gate, but in this house it feels stiff. Like it’s holding in its guts because it barely fits in the room, because all these rooms are smaller than what they had before.

  When they agreed to move in, Hillary said, “Hey, there’s a park two blocks away!”

  They were with Zaida Sol for supper, eating Chinese takeout from Cynthia’s, the restaurant on Bathurst Street with the pink sign and fairy lights all year round. Sol said, “You used to love the swings!”

  “Now they make me nauseous,” Jessie told them. Her mother should have known that. Or at least realized that everything about this change in the family has left Jessie feeling dizzy and imbalanced all the time.

  After the dance competition, Jessica was on crutches for the rest of the school year. She had flubbed her tap solo on stage and fell hard, her arms flailing, the stage lights capturing the magenta sequence stripe on her tin soldier costume. Her hat fell forward while she fell back, landing on her ankle twisted beneath her bum. All the other girls in her group drew in their breath in unison, but Jessica remembered Sarah’s face. It looked like she was smiling beneath her hands covering her mouth.

  Sol had been in the audience. Jessica knew that he often described her to his friends as like a deer — not caught in the headlights, but with the graceful movement of one who does not realize she is being watched. Her mother rushed to the stage when she fell, as the other girls began to circle around her while she cried out and clutched her foot. From the audience she heard her grandfather clapping, as if it was all part of the act. He even yelled out, “Encore!”

  Jessica’s dance group went on to win three dance competitions without her. Her friends posted photos, hovering around the trophies, their lips all the same shade of candy apple red. Two of the girls (Sarah was one of them) were allowed to wear fake eyelashes. Their eyes were wider than everyone else’s. Popping.

  Jessica presented her grandfather’s story in her Social Studies class when they were talking about family geneology. She raised her hand and said, “My grandparents’ story is a miracle.” She started from the beginning, not remembering the names of the towns they came from, or that there were other boys with her grandfather in the woods. But before she got to the part where Sol and her grandmother meet again, her teacher told her to stand up in front of the class. She favoured her left side because of the walking cast, shifting her weight to that foot, her damaged leg bent at the knee, toe touching the floor behind her other heel. When she spoke, she didn’t look at the other students directly, but focused on the back wall, the map of medieval England, a faded poster from the version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio.

  There were gasps from her girlfriends when she came to the part about her grandfather recognizing her grandmother on that first date. Ava, who always had greasy hair and whose pants showed her butt crack, started to tear up. Jessica embellished the story. She said that they got engaged that night on a park bench, her grandfather proposing with a twist-tie he found on the ground that he wound to fit her grandmother’s finger perfectly, the ends bent together into the shape of a heart. Ava raised her hand at the end and, with tears running down her face, asked if Jessica’s grandmother had kept the original engagement ring.

  “Yes,” Jessica told her. When Ava cried, her face turned blotchy and accented her acne. “She would let me play with it in her bedroom. I was never allowed to unwind it. But I used to play wedding.”

  That night, Jessica took a twist-tie to bed and bent it back and forth to soften the paper. She tore it near the ends and crumpled the whole tie in her hand. She straightened it out again and then dropped it in her glass of water on her night table. Then she watched her digital clock, starting at 10:10, for five minutes, counting down the seconds, but counting much faster. When the clock reached 10:15, she had actually counted to 720. She lay the wet twist-tie flat to dry, sandwiched between two pieces of Kleenex. Tomorrow, when she wore the ring, Sarah would want to hold it, and Jessica would say no.

  Draft Three

  Dina Samuels was shorter than most of her students. She wore brown leather boots with heels that made her sound like a walking clock. When she arrived in a room, everyone looked up in surprise, expecting someone else. Bigger. Older.

  Dina was wearing the boots when she went out for drinks with her friends after work. Robyn had a way of wearing statement jewellery — necklaces that fell just above her cleavage and rings that snaked up her fingers like silver vines. She straightened her hair into a shiny black bob that curved just below her jaw line. Dina always overslept, her hair thrown back into a loose bun so that it didn’t irritate her face. Robyn had a job in a lab. She had a supervisor who was flying her to Bali for a conference. When Robyn left for the bathroom, Heather (who was studying to be a spin instructor) leaned over and said, “She wasn’t even on the writing team for that paper. Everyone in her office hates her.”

  Dina said, “I heard this story today. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  Heather said, “Yeah?”

  Robyn wasn’t back, so Dina asked, “Do you think anyone would remember you twenty years from now just by your hands?”

  Heather had dry cuticles. She was picking at them, but Dina noticed she stopped at the question.

  “I dunno.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Dina said. “Meeting someone who looked at me like that.”

  “You will. We all will. Right?”

  “This girl. Her grandparents met as kids during the war. And her grandmother — she literally saved this boy from starvation but no one knew. She brought him bread in the woods, every day. And then they
met, almost twenty years later, on a blind date. And he remembered her hands. And they got engaged that night.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  Robyn pulled back her chair. “What’s crazy?”

  “Asking someone you just met to marry you,” Heather said.

  “No.” Dina leaned forward. “That’s not the point.”

  “Why? Who are you asking to marry?” Robyn lifted her wineglass toward the waiter, who nodded from across the room.

  “I’m not. I’m just wondering if you can imagine having that kind of impact. That sort of connection.”

  Robyn said, “Sure.” She reapplied her lipstick without a mirror. The colour of a fresh, deep cut.

  “You don’t get it,” Dina said.

  Robyn shrugged. “But I don’t think you can determine the rest of your life, your happiness, after one evening — connection or no connection.”

  Dina stood up to leave. She was going to start crying and she never let herself cry in front of Robyn.

  “I’m tired,” she said, waving.

  Robyn called out, “You’re too sentimental!” but Dina was already by the door and her face was already wet.

  Draft Four

  Ava needed to believe in romance. There had to be something to look forward to. That, and she wanted to be Jessie’s best friend. Jessie was pretty and thin. And the way she broke her ankle during the competition was just tragic enough that she looked lost, hobbling down the hall at school, in between classes. Her dance friends weren’t offering to carry her books. Ava started with that offer, knowing that Jessie was too vulnerable to say no. Jessie wore real Ugg boots with black tights from Lululemon. Ava wore jeans that were too tight across her belly button, but she did not want to go shopping with her grandmother at Walmart. She had this feeling that carrying Jessie’s books would change the way her clothes fit on her. Walking beside Jessie, she could imagine herself as someone who could lift her leg above her head.

  The day Jessie told the story of her grandparents in Social Studies, Ava cried messy, fat tears and wiped her runny, disgusting nose. Love like that didn’t exist in her family. Not from her mother, who hadn’t sent a postcard, a text message, or even an Instagram post since leaving to figure things out in Las Vegas. Not from her grandmother, who always seemed to be frowning since Ava’s grandfather died years ago. Certainly not from her older brother, Adam, who just stayed in his bedroom. If she did see him, he would yell at her, something like “Why are you always there?” What struck her most about Jessie’s story was the immediacy and gentleness of the love. After class, Ava went over to Jessie’s desk to gather her books. She was hiccupping and trying to breathe deeply. She said to Jessie, “Can I come over later and see the twist-tie?”

  Jessie said, “Don’t be stupid. It’s not the real one. I just mentioned it. You know, for emphasis.”

  Some of the dance girls were crowding around now, leaning in to get Jessie’s attention. But Jessie looked at Ava and cocked her head toward the door. Ava followed and felt them all watching her for once. Like she was finally on stage.

  Ava was the one who told Jessie about the Valentine’s Day contest from that talk show: “Tell Us the Greatest Love Story Never Told.” That was how she finally got invited to Jessie’s house. The girls sat on the floor in Jessie’s bedroom, Jessie with Post-it Notes filled with details spread over a large piece of bristol board. On the top she wrote Love Story in purple marker, with a heart beside it like a period. Ava reached over and took the Post-it with the phrase Park bench at night, kneeling in snow. She said, “I think you should start with this one. Ms. Samuels always says you have to hook the audience.”

  Jessie sat with her bandaged leg elevated on a blue satin throw pillow. “Sarah is so stupid. She came up to me today with her silver medal from the comp on Saturday, and she was like, ‘You can have this for the weekend, if you want.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, last year? I got gold.’ It’s like, you’re either my friend, or you’re not my friend.”

  “Your grandfather’s going to be famous when this story wins. Everyone will want to be your friend.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t think I want to dance anymore anyway.”

  “Someone might even make a movie about this, you know,” Ava said. She sat up straighter. If she’d had a camera right then, she would have started filming. She would win an Oscar on her first try.

  “Yeah!” Jessie sat up too. “I could totally play my grandmother. I so look like her. That’s it, I want to do acting instead of dance. I don’t care about Sarah, or any of them.”

  Ava stuck the Post-it she was still holding at the beginning of the line. The girls giggled while they mixed up all the details, wrote more Post-its of specifics they were missing, filling in the gaps. When they finally typed up the story on Jessie’s iPad, they imagined that cute guy from Degrassi as the lovestruck lead. They couldn’t even picture Zaida Sol on one knee in front of a park bench, shivering.

  Draft Five

  “Darling, stop.”

  Hillary’s father never called her darling.

  She said, “Excuse me?” They were sitting in the kitchen at her parents’ old table. Her mother’s absence was like a faded water stain. In the beginning she’d noticed it all the time. But she recognized that soon she wouldn’t. There would be days when she sat at this table with her dad and Hillary would have to remind herself that her mother used to sit here too.

  Sol reached across the table and put his hand on her arm.

  “I feel like I’m drowning,” she whispered.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You never call me darling.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “That’s like me calling you Father.”

  She watched her father fidget, unroll the sleeves of his button-down denim shirt, stand up to look for something without saying what.

  “It’s cold in here,” he said.

  “Daniel wants joint custody,” Hillary answered. And then, “Dad, please sit.”

  Sol did and leaned in to cover Hillary’s hand with his. “You knew that.”

  “I’m just tired, Dad. He knows I’m tired.”

  “Don’t fight just to fight.”

  Hillary let out a long, loud whine. There were days when she could still trick herself into believing her father was a giant.

  “Hil,” he said. “I’m going to meet with that producer.”

  “Oh, Dad.”

  “It will be good for Jessie. And it’s a good story. People should know.”

  Hillary closed her eyes and bowed her head forward, resting her forehead on her folded hands on the table. Into the wood she whispered, “It’s not real, Dad.”

  He reached over and lay his large palm, his puffy fingers on her head, massaging. Hillary had used mousse that morning so her hair had some body. She had given a presentation at work. She had read somewhere that limp hair made people look tired. Her hair felt stiff and sticky under her father’s fingers, like she was coated in plastic.

  “Every time I tell it, it’s like your mother is right beside me.”

  Hillary turned her head so that she was looking at her father with one eye. “You never even called her darling.”

  He said, “Of course I did! Every day.”

  He wasn’t a giant. He was shrinking and she hadn’t the energy to change it or to question him. So what if he told this story, she asked herself. Who did it hurt for him to tell the world how much he loved his late wife?

  Final Draft

  Sol shook in the studio. His teeth chattered. It was only nerves, but worrying about his nerves made them worse. What if his teeth fell out while he was sitting there talking? Last night, Jessica had told him that Hillary wouldn’t let her come downtown to watch. “But we’re going to record it on our PVR. Ava and I are going to watch it after school. Maybe a whole group of kids from my class.” />
  Ever since then, Sol felt as if his heart was sinking deep into his stomach, the ticking of it echoing in his bowels.

  Sol waited backstage on a folding chair. No one around him had any white or grey hair. Blond, yes. The colour of sunrays behind thin, white clouds. The girls were in tank tops, short skirts with no tights, even in February. Hillary was forever trying to throw a sweater onto Jessie when she wore a tank top. Just last week Sol said, “Oh, leave her alone. She’s not cold.” But now he had the urge to drape everyone he saw in sweaters and blankets, to bring all these strangers around him, close, until he was entirely surrounded by their body heat and the air he breathed in was warm.

  “Are you nervous?” the girl with the clipboard asked. She had tiny shoulders, toned like two tennis balls beneath her skin. She looked about ten years older than Jessie, same straight auburn hair, same narrow nose.

  “Are you a dancer?” Sol asked.

  Her face softened and she broke into a smile, her eyes bright like spotlights. “I am! I mean, I do some shows. You recognize me? I danced once with Cher when she was here. Drake too. I have an audition later today for a Mirvish production.”

  “Sure,” Sol said. “I’ve seen you before.”

  “Awesome! That’s amazing. I’m always telling my folks, you never know. You never know who you’re gonna meet. They’re so worried about me out here. ’Cause this is an internship and I’m constantly auditioning for stuff.”

  The girl touched his arm. “You’re shaking! Oh, don’t worry. She’s a pussycat. She’s gonna make you feel right at home. She’s amazing when she talks to you. It’s like there’s no one else in the room.”

  He told her, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m going to get you a bottle of water or something. You just need to clear your mind.”