by Carol Mason
I pick up a barbeque salmon roll with my chopsticks and dip it in soya sauce and wasabi. ‘Once I leave my present job and get a real one, with some real money coming in, well, I could always do it in my spare time… Maybe try to get a business plan together.’ Not that I’d know how to start writing a business plan. ‘For now though guys, I just need a job.’
‘I’ll do your make-up for you if you get an interview, make you look good,’ Jessica offers.
‘Thanks,’ I tell her, wondering if that’s a vague insult. I’d like to think my CV matters more than my lipstick. But then again, her lipstick mattered more than her CV, and now she’s one of Vancouver’s star businesswomen. So there you go. What do I know?
‘You’ll never pull off working full-time and launching Write Strategies on the side,’ Richard tells me; which is the sort of honest, common-sense thing that Jonathan would have said. ‘How much spare time did you have when you worked in your last ad job, Angie?’
‘Yes but back then I had a husband to occupy myself with on weekends. Remember? Anyway, can we not talk about this, anymore?’ I plead. ‘Can’t we talk about somebody else’s problems for a change?’
So we stop talking about it. But it seems nobody else has got problems. So we settle for just eating. Between us, we polish off a bin-load of raw fish, Jessica discarding all the rice off the fingers of nigri sushi because rice is carb and carbs are evil.
‘So this is the guy you were crazy over,’ Richard scrutinises the pic of Georgios, looking very handsome, on my digital camera.
‘I wasn’t crazy over him!’ I take a glug of the delicious Napa Valley chardonnay. ‘We just hit it off like long lost friends.’ I muse on how convinced I was that Jonathan had sent him. It seems so absurd now.
‘I like your thumb ring.’ Jessica watches me twiddle with it.
I look down at my thumb. ‘It’s the meander, the Greek symbol for long life. Or, as I read the other day on the Internet—‘the flow of life, eternal life, eternal love.’
Jessica looks glazed-over.
We’re saved by the arrival of Emma, their ten-year-old. Emma, comes into the kitchen from the basement where she’s watching DVDs with her friend—they’re having a sleepover. ‘Hi Emma,’ I greet her. Emma walks over to the table in her tiny denim skirt, her long, twig-like legs and silky blonde hair make her look effortlessly model-like. She stands beside Richard’s chair. Richard puts his arm around her, pulls her into him. ‘Say hello to Angela,’ he tells her.
In a motherly gesture, she pushes back the straggly bit of chestnut hair that’s flopped onto his brow. Then she turns and meets my eyes, and says a shy ‘hello.’ Then she seems suddenly embarrassed, like she’s accomplished something that was challenging for her, and flits off to the fridge. ‘Mom, can we have some ice-cream?’
I love her. I love her because she’s a little girl yet I can already see the gorgeous woman she’s going to be, the tender mother she’s going to be. I love her because I’ve glimpsed the little weakness in her, that she’ll soon grow out of, and I hope that one day she might think of me as an aunt.
Jessica swings her gaze over her shoulder at her daughter who is irrefutably her living image. Their small, heart-shaped faces are, sweetly, carbon copies. Same almond-shaped eyes, neither fully green, nor blue. Same un-plucked, light brown eyebrows, high cheekbones, and slightly-on-the-thin-side lips that act like curly picture frames for teeth that are almost as white as the tips of Jessica’s gel nails.
‘No Ems. You’ve had pie already.’ Jessica looks at me excitedly. ‘Can you see the colour in her hair? I did her a strawberry rinse, although it’s mostly washed out already.’
I scrutinise Emma’s head. ‘Not really.’
Both Emma and Jessica look at me like I clearly have some missing brain cells. Maybe aunt status is going to take some working at.
‘Please can I have ice-cream?’ Emma flicks her hair over her shoulder; a habit picked up from her mother.
‘No Emma!’ Jessica is so dramatic in her reply. ‘I’ve told you the answer to that once.’
Oh, go on, I think.
‘Oh, pleeeeee-ase!’ Emma wines. ‘It was hours ago when I ate pie!’
‘It was only pie,’ I say, gently, to Jessica, while looking for Emma’s approval.
‘Do you want to be fat?’ Jessica hurls at her, as though fat is worse than being what Jessica herself is—a bit of a dumbo—oh, I’m being cruel.
I feel like saying, Look, it’s mothers like you who wind up with anorexic daughters. Do you really want to give her a screwed-up attitude towards food? I would never be like that with my daughter. Then I look at Emma and think, why did Jonathan and I wait five years because we wanted to have a life before we had a family? Why didn’t we just have a baby right away, when we could have?
Richard sends me a look of exasperation, which I can’t help but share. I’ve always despaired how Jessica seems to think that the airbrushed ‘magazine’ caricatures of womanly perfection are what we all should try to be. Back in the days when I was convinced that her brain was the size of the black on a black-eyed pea, it was very easy to be disparaging, as though putting her down somehow built me up. Making her seem even more of an intellectual blip made me feel like I had a head swollen to bursting point with top-tier brains. But now that Goddess Girl has gone to Internet glory and Powder Power is one of BC’s hippest new non-profit support services for underprivileged women—and I don’t even have a job—it’s hard for me to be smug. Still though, sometimes you just want to say,
‘Christ, Jessica, give her some fucking ice-cream!’
Ah-ha! Seems I don’t have to! Richard does it for me.
Emma giggles when she hears her dad swear, and sends me a look of collusive approval. I’m surprised he did it. It’s very un-Richard.
‘Richard!’ Jessica glares at him. ‘There’s no point in you saying yes to everything I say no to. Or you might as well just go and be a one parent family!’ She looks at me for sympathy and I try to put on the right face for her, but my reaction isn’t fast enough. Her eyes have that moment of truth in them that says well why would I ever expect you to side with me?
I often think that without Jonathan or Richard between us, Jessica and I would happily drop the other one from a Boeing 747 with the bum parachute. Our secret incompatibility is the one constant that has existed all these years. It’s the only very strong thing we have in common.
Richard gets up, walks over to the kitchen cabinets, pulls out two bowls, plucks the carton of Ben & Jerry’s out of the fridge and spoons two good-sized dollops into each bowl—something, again, a bit rebellious that I wouldn’t have imagined him doing.
‘Thanks Pops!’ Emma snatches the bowls off him and skips back out the way she came.
Jessica stands up, walks through the kitchen door, slams it.
Richard and I are left looking at one another.
Now I feel bad for her.
~ * * * ~
‘I’m applying for a job,’ I tell Sherrie on the phone. This time next week I’m due back at work and if anything has got me off my ass, that thought has. ‘I was on Jervais Ladner’s website. They’re looking for a senior account director. It’s packaged goods, minimum five years… It was practically written for me.’
‘Are they big?’
‘They’re better than big. Practically every hip billboard campaign or TV commercial out there is JL’s. They’re the top advertising agency in Vancouver and number two in the entire country.’ Just saying the words I bloat with pride, that same feeling I had whenever I used to tell people that I worked in one of Canada’s leading advertising agencies. And look what happened to all that. But I can’t let one bad experience scar me for life. ‘I’m sure it’ll be the same bullshit all over again, but the money will solve a lot of my problems, Sherrie. Oh, the money will be sweet! I so want out of this apartment! If I am to live in high-rise hell, I want it to be a brand new building, with new air. I want it to be in a sane location, a nice
family neighbourhood, not party land. I don’t want to see gay men snogging in the lift—I’ve nothing against gay men snogging, but I just don’t need to see anyone eating someone else’s face off whenever I step out of my door. I want trees outside my window, not concrete and windows and other people’s lives. I want grass, mountains, ocean. Isn’t that the whole point of living in Vancouver? Because we’re supposed to have the best quality of life here than anywhere else in the world?’
There’s a long pause. ‘Oh? Sorry? You’re finished? I thought you were on a long rant. I was about to go put my laundry in and come back on the spin cycle.’
‘Oh, Sherrie, I’ve given it a lot of thought. I actually think I’m ready for the ad. agency business again.’ To convince them, you must first, yourself, believe.
‘Angela, darling, any time you want my controversial opinion on the topic, just ask.’
Eighteen
Boxes. There are boxes everywhere I look in this apartment. I’ve got to somehow unpack my life.
Before I moved from the house I should have just had a big yard sale and got rid of stuff. Instead I hauled it with me—mad, really, when I was exchanging a four-bedroom house for a place about the size of our former laundry room. I think I was just too muddled to be able to work out what was junk and what I needed to keep, so it was safer to just keep it all.
Opening up boxes now as I kneel on the floor with a cup of tea beside me, it’s pretty obvious what my state of mind was at the time. Shoes thrown in with a watering can and a pair of pasta tongs. Mail bunged in the bread basket. The visa bill I kicked up a big stink over when they charged me interest after I claimed I’d never received it. Ah! My cosy pink dressing gown! I thought I was never going to see that again. And last but not least, my one red ladybird slipper, a little bit squashed. I put it on with its mate that I’m wearing, and I start feeling more like ‘me’ again.
I notice how everything is mostly my stuff, because Jonathan’s I did clear out—an exercise in self-therapy. I’m pleased I did. Moving his things here would have felt like taking him somewhere he didn’t belong, because I was too selfish to leave him where he would have most liked to be left.
I did let go, didn’t I? The realisation strikes me afresh again, as though Jonathan has just given a word of praise in my ear.
I get a few bin bags and start separating junk from stuff I can give to the charity shop, and stuff I’ll decide about later. I’m not far through it when my phone rings.
‘How up would you be for going on a blind date?’
I plonk down on top of the bag. ‘Ohhhh…. not up, Sherrie. In fact, down. Very very down. So down, my chin’s polishing the floor.’
‘Pessimist.’
‘But I’ve only ever been on one blind date. Remember? The town planner? Roger. About six or eight months ago?’ His easy demeanour and his laugh flood my mind. For a second I wonder if I still have his number and if I should call him.
She laughs. ‘This one’s different. I know him—and you trust me—so I’m your screening process. He’s a good guy. His name is Sam. For Samaratin.’
‘Don’t kid me.’
‘I’m not.’
I scowl, not sure if she’s serious. I stuff the phone under my chin and continue bunging things in the bags—one bag for the charity shop, one that’s for the bin. ‘Go on then. Give me his bio.’
‘Well, he’s a tiny bit older than you. He’s not a real player type or anything, just a down-to-earth guy with a sense of humour. He runs, just like Jonathan used to do. He’s in sales. He has a dog called Madison.’
‘I hate him already.’
‘You won’t! I promise you. Okay, so he’s not a rugged Greek, or a gorgeous married Irishman who’s trying to get a bit of action on the side.’
The gorgeous married Irishman’s face floods up in my mind’s eye and I hold it there for a moment or two. I’ve not thought of him since I was on the plane home. But then I thought about him for the whole ten hours, so my mind could use a change of scenery now. I still wholeheartedly believe that he was not trying to get something on the side. He never even attempted it. And clearly I saw that he must have made up with his wife.
‘How did you meet him?’ I force Sean’s face out of my mind. Have to try really hard once it’s arrived, though, really hard—and the accompanying disappointment.
She hesitates. ‘Speed dating.’
‘Good God, it gets worse.’
‘No! I went out with him on a proper date—you know—the night I came to meet you at the airport. When I told him I was a cotton trader he looked at me like I was very glamorous. That is, until I said I travel about eighty percent of the year. That kinda killed it for him. I gotta stop using that line Angie. I gotta invent some other career. I think I’m gonna start saying I’m a nurse.’ She draws breath. ‘Everybody loves nurses, because there’s something both kinky and caring about them. And kinky and caring is a real edgy combination. They start thinking you’re gonna whip them then wipe up their blood. Anyway, I’ve set you up for Wednesday night. You’re gonna meet at Artigiano’s. So you won’t feel out of your depth. It’s just coffee. It’s just Wednesday night.’
I’ve forgotten which bag is which now, and have to think where to stuff a decrepit pink sweatshirt that got bleach on it.
‘Earth to Angie. Is there anybody out there?’
‘Oh sorry… Erm…. Well, if I go—and it’s a big if at this juncture– how will I recognise him?’ Anything to shut her up.
‘You will. And he’ll spot you. I’ve told him all about you.’
‘Thanks. That’s sure to mean he’ll show up. I’m such a great catch.’
When we hang up, I realise that the next box I have to unpack is one whose contents I’m all too familiar with: the only one I bothered marking Private.
Stuffed beside his blue shirt, is Jonathan’s well worn sandals with the toe prints on the leather sole. On top of the shirt is a little brown envelope containing Jonathan’s wedding ring and his Tag watch—both of which were taken from his body after the accident. The watch miraculously hasn’t a scratch on it. Its pointers are frozen at eight o’clock. I often wonder if that was the exact moment when his life ended.
I make a nest of my hand and place the jewellery in it. It’s still a weird feeling holding something that was removed from his dead body. With each subtle movement of my hand, the watch shifts about, jingling against the ring. I was with him when he bought it. He’d coveted a Tag for ages. I’d catch him lost in gazing at it and would think you love that watch almost as much as you love me! But he’d worked hard enough for it. Soon after he died, I found it and held it to my cheek. I was convinced the stainless steel was warm, as though he’d just taken it off.
I put it to my face now.
Of course. I didn’t expect it would be.
What was I ever thinking shoving them in an envelope? What I’m going to do is buy a little velvet jewellery bag and store them in there, so I can keep them safe. I put them back in the envelope and put the envelope on the floor for now.
The sandals and T-shirt though, I’m not sure what to do with. The shirt doesn’t smell of him any more. It really only reminds me of the last time he was alive because he wore it to run in that morning. The sandals are different. They’ve got sweat marks on them, outlining his foot, identifying him and proving he lived. They feel very precious. I run my fingers over the rounded indentations where his toes were, put it to my nose. It smells of leather more than sweaty feet. There’s no point in giving them to the charity shop. I can’t see anybody wanting to wear somebody else’s old shoes. Besides, I’d feel I was passing on bad karma.
Chuck them, Angie! I can almost hear him saying.
So on an impulse I put them in the bag that’s for the bin.
~ * * * ~
I get the call on Tuesday, asking me if I can come in for an interview Friday at four p.m.. That was fast. What a time though! Hard to feel the interviewer is taking you seriously when you know h
e’s sat there thinking what he’s going to do with his weekend.
It quickly dawns on me that I’ve nothing to wear for it. All my old work clothes are about two sizes too big, and if they weren’t they wouldn’t be in fashion, and that just wouldn’t do, not for a power job with a top agency. The good thing is, though, I go for a latte to Artigiano’s and while I’m sat there devouring back copies of Marketing magazine, to try to educate myself on what’s happened in the ad world since I left it, I see inspiration on legs. A girl a bit like me. She’s wearing a charcoal business suit, a light enough material for a warm day like this, but interesting in the quite un-summery colour choice. It’s lean-fitting and plain, almost masculine. And she’s teamed it with a simple pink and white shirt, wide open at the neck. But it’s all set off by about the sexiest pair of black shoes I’ve ever seen: probably three inches high, with a thick, triangular heel, and a cheeky peep toe showing her French pedicure. I throw back my coffee, roll up my mags, and hurry like a man on a mission to the mall.
