by Carol Mason
The pretty, poor girl who doesn’t know what she’s got coming, smiles at me. I smile back. My heart’s hammering so fast I’m sure she must hear it. I reach out a shaky arm and press the G button. The doors slowly close, eventually cutting off our phoney expressions. The elevator pings when we reach the bottom. The black concierge smiles at me and says ‘have a nice day.’
I pass through the revolving doors, out into the fresh air and late afternoon sunshine. I’m shaking. But it’s a good shaking.
Have a nice day, he said.
Yeah. I think I will.
Twenty
There are three of us ‘new volunteers’ and the same number of Team Coordinators, in the tiny, airless, white-walled room on the second floor of the Epilepsy Canada building. There’s Kye, an extremely ‘Brad Pitt’, twenty-something Physical-Education teacher who watched a kid take a seizure after a game of football. ‘I stood there with about ten other kids, and watched him thrash around and turn blue,’ he tells us, twiddling his pen. ‘I thought he was going to die. We all did. A few of his team-mates started crying… I didn’t know what to do.’ He quickly catches my eye then looks around the table at the rest of the group. ‘I think our schools need to know more about epilepsy. I’d like to help in some way.’
Rhonda goes next. Rhonda is a twenty-four-year-old black, epileptic law student who said she’d like to get involved in mentoring young people with the disability. ‘I had it growing up, but I was lucky coz I grew out of it. But you never forget what it was like living with it… everybody else was fit and healthy, then there was you…’ She knits her brows, as though she’s perplexed. ‘I used to take about three grand mals a week. They couldn’t control it with meds. My seizures were all everybody focused on, because it was hard not to. Your family… your friends… you feel like you’re not the same as them. That you can’t achieve what they will.’ She sniggers. ‘I was out to prove them all wrong. I said, I’m going to show them.’ She shrugs. ‘But that’s just me. Not every kid with epilepsy is going to be like me, are they?’
Then there’s moi. About ten pairs of eyes focus on me when it’s my turn to address the room and tell the Team, and the other volunteers, why I have come here.
‘My name is Angela Chapman,’ I start out. ‘I don’t have epilepsy.’
‘Hello Angela Chapman,’ one of the older Team members says, jokingly. There are a few titters. This lightens me. ‘My background is in major advertising agencies managing brand development for such clients as Kraft Canada, and Yves Veggie Cuisine, to name two. But my present role is as Principal of Write Strategies…’ here goes the bullshit… ‘a company that provides writing consultancy services to corporate clients in Vancouver…’ I don’t mention that I’ve just done something either brave or very mad and quit the only crappy bit of employment I had, and am now in fact entirely jobless, given that Write Strategies—this company I’m supposedly the boss of—hasn’t earned me a bean, because, really, it doesn’t quite exist. But so far they look like they’re buying it. ‘I coach business executives of all levels to more effectively communicate on the page—everything from internal emails to reports, speeches and presentations.’
A-hem. Clear throat.
It sounds so cold, after what they’ve all said. I’ve told a few white lies, but somehow I have their attention.
‘The reason I am here,’ I take a steadying breath, relieved by how easy it feels to stand up and talk in front of people, when I’d imagined I might have lost the knack. ‘…is because two years ago, my husband took an epileptic seizure at the wheel of his car, and was killed.’
I pause to measure reactions. I know from experience what they usually are. Instead of the unqualified sympathy you’d get if you said they’d died any other way, there’s often that sharp edge of blame that arrives in the eyes. You can see the thoughts running riot (thoughts that any one of us might have, only because it’s them having them and not you, and it’s about your husband and not theirs, it immediately puts your back up). The exasperation: He’s lucky he didn’t kill somebody! What on earth was he doing driving in the first place? The fear: I might be at risk from somebody like that! And then the blame: It’s your fault. Why did you let him drive? As though by being wives we become mothers to our husbands and great protectors of the world.
I don’t see any of that here though. Crystal Rae, the well-dressed fifty-something Executive Director of the Society, and one of Vancouver’s prominent businesswomen in the telecommunications industry, watches me with a mix of sympathy and expectation.
‘The fact is,’ I tell them, feeling suddenly confident—I should be; with all the research I’ve done on epilepsy since Jonathan died, I’m a walking, talking expert—‘We the great general public know very little about epilepsy, don’t we?’ I look at the very hot-looking young PE teacher who is still twiddling with his pen, which distracts me a bit so I try to focus on the others instead. ‘People think that a seizure means falling to the ground and thrashing around. My husband had just started having petit mal seizures. Neither one of us knew what they were at the time. Sometimes, I couldn’t even tell if he was in one or not, because he would just seem to drift off. They would present themselves as brief infrequent absences, where it seems as though the brain just decided it needed a little time-out, and consciousness went away. Just for a moment or two. But moments were all it took to cost him his life.’
Crystal nods. Just the other day, she was telling me that one of their members takes about two hundred petit-mal seizures a day, putting her in an almost permanent state of seizure. Her condition has never responded to medication.
‘But I suppose what really brings me here… is that shortly after Jonathan died I heard an ad for Epilepsy Canada on the radio. I realised it was the first ad I’d ever heard on epilepsy, yet I was all too familiar with the ones for the Cancer Society, or Raise the Roof, or MADD, or Worksafe, or a whole host of other ‘causes’ we’ve all heard of. Some of their advertisements were really clever; I could remember them for a long while after. Because they’d done something quite smart. They had succeeded in making their cause a brand.’
I pause here, to watch that point sink in. ‘But, until this day, I’d never seen or heard a Public Service Announcement for epilepsy.’ I glance around at all the faces hooked on me. ‘I wondered why.’
There’s a moment where nobody speaks, and I fear I might have hit them with too much reality. Then Crystal gets up to push open a window. It’s a good move; it is warm in here. But the thing seems stuck. ‘Here,’ Kye the fit young PE teacher, scrapes back his chair and comes to her rescue. ‘Let me.’ With a certain manly assurance he pushes at the frame, and I notice his fit arms, and how tall and lean and striking he is.
Crystal blanches and looks oddly flattered. ‘There, that’s better,’ she says, and quickly glances at me. ‘I think we can all breathe now.’
For some reason, a few people laugh.
‘Incidentally,’ Crystal sits back down. ‘The ad you did hear on the radio… Do you remember what it said?’
I quickly glance at the faces that are all upon me. ‘No,’ I tell her honestly. ‘I don’t remember what it said. But then again I only heard it once and it was quite a long time ago.’
But did it leave even a blur of an impression? No. In fact, I remember thinking it sucked. But I’m not going to tell them that. Well, not unless I’m really pressed. Then I probably won’t use the word suck.
Another twitter of—what?—amusement again? passes around the advisory board. Rhonda and Kye smile at me, like I’ve just done a good job.
Progress.
‘So what you’re leading to telling us,’ Crystal looks at me, her expression a little unreadable. ‘Is that you think you could be doing far better advertising for us than we’re doing ourselves.’
I glance at Kye who is studying me, interestedly.
I tap the end of my pen on my note pad. Its sound, and my tension, is swallowed with the distant scream of an ambulance
siren coming through the window, along with the nice breeze that I can thankfully feel on the back of my neck.
‘I think there are two issues here that have to be addressed. One is exposure. The other is creative strategy.’ I glance at the senior members again.
‘Nicely dodged,’ Crystal says.
One of the older men on the Team either coughs or laughs. Seems this group finds all sorts of unusual things entertaining.
Shit. I probably did come off too strong. As I walk out, I am betting they may never want to see me again.
~ * * * ~
I’ve not cycled the Stanley Park seawall in over two years. After Jonathan died, I couldn’t do it because it was something he and I often did on Sundays. Without him, I couldn’t have cycled around that wall any easier than if you’d hacked off my legs.
This Sunday, though, I’m pleased for the chance to get out with Sherrie. The wall’s teaming with walkers, dogs, bikers, roller-bladers, runners, carts and horses full of tourists. At Second Beach, after biking for about forty minutes, Sherrie and I flop onto the grass and devour a Nestle chocolate ice-cream—which sort of defeats the point of exercising.
The sun bleaches down on us as the sweat on my back dries. I look at the water twinkling away beyond the pale sand that’s strewn with tree-logs with people sitting on them. Yes, if I didn’t live here, I’d miss this feeling of living in the most chilled-out city in the world.
‘I’m thinking of leaving my job,’ Sherrie tells me, suddenly, after we’ve scoffed our ice-cream.
‘Your job?’ I look at her hair in its up-knot, pieces of it sticking to her neck. ‘You love your job!’
‘I did. I mean, I do. It’s just that I’m loving it less now as I’m getting older. All the travel…it’s been the best and yet the worst part of the job…’ She sighs hard, looks reflective. ‘I mean, hell, Angie, last year, there were only two months out of twelve where I didn’t have to fly somewhere. And it’s not like I even get to go business class! I’m going on long hauls, forced to sit there communing with my own kneecaps for eighteen hours… I get there and…’ she flings her hands up in frustration, ‘I get off one plane and get on another. Remember when I was in China for a week? I only got to see five buyers! Because I spent most of my time on tiny planes, getting from one middle-of-nowhere cotton mill to the next. It was exhausting.’
‘But I thought that’s what you lived for… all the travelling to exotic places. All the friends you’ve made around the world.’
‘Well I always vowed that if I was gonna travel a lot, I was gonna have fun and not bitch about having no stability, because I hate people who constantly complain about situations that they can change—a bit like you did for years.’ She smiles, looks reflective again. ‘In a weird way, I wouldn’t have wanted to change it. Not then. But I do now.’
‘Really?’ Maybe she really is serious.
‘It was all a big adventure, but now it’s become predictable, empty… I’m forty-five soon, Angie. I don’t wanna be single when I’m fifty, and I’m never gonna have a serious relationship with anybody when I’m never here! When I’ve got clients or suppliers phoning me across time zones at three in the morning, when I’m always crabby and jet-lagged….’
‘You’re never crabby!’
‘Not in front of you. But at home, alone, in front of me—whoah boy!—I’m crabby! It’s not that I’m afraid of being old and alone. It’s just that I’d like to have somebody to share some stage of my life with. For the longest time meeting exotic men felt fulfilling and fun, even if they were seven-feet-three or three-feet-seven and didn’t speak my language, and had strange customs that would never have been accepted in the western world. But I’ve done single for as long as I know, and it’s been a blast, Ange. But I’m ready for a change.’ She licks chocolate off her thumb, looks me directly in the eyes. ‘Actually,’ she grimaces, ‘I’m moving to Toronto.’
‘You’re…!’ I scour her face to see if this is just another of her jokes. ‘So you’re more than thinking of leaving your job! You’ve basically decided all this!’
‘Basically… yeah.’
‘But what’s in Toronto that’s not here?’
‘More men. More jobs.’
‘But there’s men here!’
‘There’s not. I’ve been through them all. I can’t wait for a whole new crop to be born and grow up. I mean, I’ve thought about it, but even if I start robbing the cradle, that puts me sexually out of commission until at least their voice breaks. I couldn’t do squeaky voices, or wet dreams, or no facial hair!’
‘But it feels so drastic Sher! Packing up and moving to godforsaken Toronto.’ (I add that particular adjective for dramatic effect; it’s not godforsaken at all, but anything to plant a seed of doubt in her head…). ‘Why can’t you change jobs within the company, get one where you don’t have to travel, and stay here?’
‘I could. I could switch from being a trader and move into shipping, or some other function. Yee that’s exciting! Shipping! Whoo-ee! My dream job.’ She pulls a face. ‘Not! No, if I’m changing jobs, I’m changing everything. A whole new start somewhere else.’ She nudges me playfully. ‘But I’ve had a cool idea.’ She takes my hand between both of hers. ‘You could come with me, given that you’ve just quit your job too. We could have a whole new start together.’
‘What?’ I laugh, claiming my hand back. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘I’m perfectly serious. I’m gonna sell my condo, buy a small place out there. You could move in with me, don’t pay anything until you find a job, and then when you get on your feet again, we’ll take it from there.’
Toronto is where Jonathan and I met when I first came to Canada and I didn’t have a bean to live on, and I ate macaroni cheese every night and made all my telephone calls from payphones so I didn’t have to actually own a phone myself. I can see memories of the first flush of love breaking out all over that city—every corner, every crevice, we were there, throwing ourselves at that city, falling in love. Toronto is where Jonathan’s family live, who I never particularly got on with, who I rarely hear from any more. How could I move there and not call them? And how could I sit at their dinner table if Jonathan wasn’t there? Besides, Toronto is freezing in the winter, and stifling in the summer. ‘I’m not sure Toronto’s for me again Sherrie. It’d feel like a backwards step. It’s not where I want to be.’
‘What have you got here, Ange? Nothing. If you were in Toronto you’d be five hours closer to your mother.’
I shake my head. ‘I could see us becoming like an old married couple. Or a couple of lesbians. All we’d need would be the cat. We’d take turns making dinner. We’d probably even go on holidays together.’
‘I’m good at oral sex.’
‘Ergh!’
She looks serious for a moment. ‘Okay, forget the oral sex. Would it be so bad, you and I sharing a place? Say we never happened to find men and we only had each other. Would that be so terrible?’
I glare at her. ‘Yes! Terrible’s putting it mildly!’
She laughs. ‘I’m going to try real hard not to take that personally.’
I shake my head at her. She can’t leave! Not when I love her so much. ‘Well, I just want you to know something, Sherrie. If I were going to turn lesbian, it’d be for you honey, it’d be you all the way.’
‘Well, hun, the feeling is mutual.’
She stands up and picks her bike off the ground. ‘Let’s go, before my ass seizes up and I can’t get back on this thing again.’ She swings a leg over her seat, looks at me still sitting there on the grass. ‘Promise me you’ll think about it.’
I get up and dust off my bum and the backs of my legs. ‘I’ll think,’ I tell her.
But I’ve already thought.
~ * * * ~
‘So?’ I say to my mother
‘So what?’
‘You know what. Have you been yet?’
‘To the toilet?’
‘Not to the bloody toilet!
To the doctor’s!’
‘I’ve been. So there. Are you proud of me? He ran some blood tests. And he increased my beautiful pretty pills. And he said that my blue cardigan matched my eyes. Now can we say no more on this?’
‘So what does he think it can be?’
‘I think if he knew that he’d have not ran tests.’
I tut. ‘When will you get the results?’
‘In a couple of weeks.’
‘A couple of weeks? Have you had any more dizziness? Any more fainting?’
She groans. ‘Ring back when you want to talk about the weather.’
And then what does she do? She hangs up on me!
~ * * * ~
Given that I am now effectively unemployed I make a small and desperate step in the right direction. There’s an unpacked box that’s marked ‘office’ and somewhere inside it, I believe, are my business cards, the ones I had printed for Write Strategies before Jonathan died. All I have to do is find them.
There’s also a load of other crap in here too: old CVs, a box of printer paper, an outdated telephone directory, old birthday cards sent to me from Jonathan—I quickly read these, forcing myself not to dwell on his writing or to think that he would have touched this card with his own hands, or to think that the last time I read it he’d have been alive. Then there’s something I don’t recognise: a thick, dark grey ring-binder with a black spine. The cover reads:
Write Strategies.
A Business Plan
(prepared by Jonathan Chapman, for Angela Chapman)
~ * * * ~
I fan through pages and tabulated sections: Background, Overview, Description, Market Analysis, Marketing Plan…
He’d told me a million times to get off my backside and write a business plan. He’d obviously given up on me, and decided to write one himself. He must have been going to surprise me with it.
When I was packing to move, I must have been so distracted that I didn’t even notice it.
