Having a baby is not as hard as people say it is. The idea of a child is easy to get used to, after a while, and the pain of birth is overplayed to the point of cliché in movies and television programs. It is difficult to be alone, but you can count on your body to do most of the work for you. There are other things you need to worry about. Mr. and Mrs. Stephanopolous are both dead, as are my grandparents, and it is difficult to think of my daughter growing up without knowing them. I have a close circle of friends, many of whom also have children. My daughter and I go to a lot of picnics and birthday parties. She is still young enough to sleep with me in the same bed, and I put pillows around the edge of the mattress so she won’t fall in the night, though she hardly moves, she sleeps so soundly.
My friend Helen and I wheel our children around the neighbourhood in their strollers while they nap in the afternoons. We talk about our work. Helen is writing about highly realistic sex dolls.
“They started out as high-end mannequins, but after a while the manufacturer realized that there was probably money to be made from all the special requests, you know, for orifices,” Helen told me recently. “But it’s not just about sex.”
She said that one man, a widower, ordered two dolls—one to look like his dead wife, and another, a teenager, to approximate the daughter he thought they might have had if his wife hadn’t miscarried. The dolls were so lifelike that when he ran errands, the wife doll in the front seat and the daughter doll in the backseat, he had learned to place yellow sticky notes on their foreheads: I am a doll. Before that the wife doll had once slipped out of her seat, slumping over the gearshift, and passersby had called an ambulance to free the woman they thought was dying in the black asphalt swelter of the supermarket parking lot.
I asked if she was serious.
“The paramedics suggested the sticky notes,” Helen said. She shrugged. “People are lonely.”
We walk until our babies start crying. My daughter’s name is Mariana, after both her great-grandmother and grandmother, their names combined. She is old enough now to understand the difference between big and little, bad and good. Her favourite colour is red. She is allergic to penicillin. She is afraid of balloons. She has a doll, a red-nosed clown, and she cries if I take him away from her. I apologize by telling her I love her over and over and over again, by nibbling her ears like a dog. I have learned that there is no such thing as too much love.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the editors of the following publications, in whose pages several of these stories originally appeared in slightly different form:
“The Party” in The Fiddlehead 227 (Fredericton, 2006).
“Strange Pilgrims” in The New Quarterly 109 (Waterloo, 2009).
“The Dead Dad Game” in PRISM International 47.4 (Vancouver, 2009) and The Journey Prize Stories 22 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2010).
“Poses” in 10: Best Canadian Stories (Ottawa: Oberon Press, 2010).
“Hurricane Season” in Grain Magazine 35.4 (Saskatoon, 2008).
“Monkfish” at www.joylandmagazine.com (Toronto, 2009).
“Problem in the Hamburger Room” in Canadian Notes & Queries 82 (Emeryville, 2011).
“Falling in Love” in Room Magazine 30.4 (Vancouver, 2008).
“Tick” in Hart House Review 17 (Toronto, 2008).
I am indebted to my many teachers and mentors, including Donald Hair, Alison Conway, J.M. Zezulka, J. Douglas Kneale, Tim Blackmore, Rosemary Sullivan, Michael Winter, and the indomitable Larry Garber. Thank you for your patience and your guidance.
This book would not have been possible without the generosity and friendship of my University of Toronto creative writing colleagues, especially Joseph William Frank and Daniel Scott Tysdal. Thank you for sharing your talent and your daring.
Thank you to Dan Wells and John Metcalf for making these stories a collection.
Thank you to Brenda Brooks for her wisdom and her fine-toothed comb.
Thank you to Kathleen Doukas for her friendship across years and oceans.
A special thank you to my dad, Ray, for his unflagging support and loose cannon tendencies, and to my family for their faith and encouragement.
Finally, the most important thank you is for Ian. Thank you for believing in me and in this book, and in our life together.
Laura Boudreau was born and raised in Toronto. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s MA in English and Creative Writing program. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including The New Quarterly, Grain, The Fiddlehead, 10: Best Canadian Stories, and The Journey Prize Stories 22. Her freelance journalism has been published in Canada, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
She currently works in the publishing department of a children’s charity, and she lives with her husband in London, England.
Copyright © 2011, Laura Boudreau
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Boudreau, Laura, 1983–
Suitable precautions / Laura Boudreau.
Short stories.
eISBN : 978-1-926-84559-3
I. Title.
PS8603.092675S85 2011 C813’.6 C2011-903436-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through The Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA
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