So, yeah – a small part of me had no choice but to hope that the next guy would be so spectacularly awesome, he’d put an end to the serial dating that was torture for all of us.
•••
Just as he started to knock again, I opened the door.
The guy blinked like a startled mole. ‘Oh, hi. I was beginning to think no one was home.’
I gave him my classic once-over.
He was pudgy. His pale skin was sprinkled with freckles. His ears were too small for his head. His hair was reddish brown and thinning. He was wearing a loud multicoloured sweater. Its loose fit did not manage to hide his man-boobs.
‘You must be Rosie,’ he said, bending down to shake her hand. ‘I like your hat.’
Rosie beamed up at him. ‘It’s a crown.’
I love my little sister. I really do. But she made my job very difficult because, like Mom, she’s an optimist, which means she likes all of Mom’s dates, at least in the beginning.
‘And you must be Violet,’ he said to me, holding out his hand. I shook it. His skin was moist and clammy. ‘I’m Dudley,’ he continued. ‘Dudley Wiener.’
Groan. I’d seen enough. I turned away without another word. I walked back up the stairs and into our bedroom, where I threw our clothes and sheets into a laundry bag to take to Phoebe’s house. Then I went into Mom’s room and added her clothes to the bag. When I was done, I lined up all the make-up and perfume on her dresser in precise little lines, tallest to shortest.
This was the tenth guy my mom had dated post-Dad. The tenth guy who wouldn’t be good enough for her. The tenth guy who’d either dump her because she was too clingy, or who’d do something so awful, she’d be forced to dump him. The tenth guy who wouldn’t come close to being The One.
I couldn’t be a bystander any longer. Something had to be done.
4
But first, a little history.
My mom and dad met fourteen years ago, on the set of a TV show called Crime Beaters. It was about a bunch of homicide cops who solved a different murder each week. My dad was the first assistant director, which means he shouted at the crew to hurry up and shoot scenes before they lost their light, or their time, or their money. My mom was the on-set hair person, which means she combed and sprayed and bobby-pinned the actors’ and actresses’ hair in between takes. One day, by accident, she blasted some hair spray right into my dad’s eyes. He started to curse. Mom poured water into his eyes and leaned in really close to him, her big green eyes full of concern. According to my dad, ‘That’s when I knew I was going to marry this woman.’
They tied the knot a year later. Three months after that, I was born. You can do the maths.
When I was five years old, they bought the house just east of Main Street. It was a ‘heritage’ home, which Dad said was just a fancy word for ‘falling apart’. But he was good with his hands, Mom had a great eye for cheap but cool-looking furniture, and together they turned the house into a home. Mom still worked on occasional shoots when she could find good child care for me, and Dad started getting directing gigs, first on Crime Beaters, then on other TV series. When I was almost seven, Rosie was born, and Mom and Dad decided that Mom would put work on hold for a few years.
Two years later, when I was nine going on ten, Dad got a job directing a bunch of episodes for a TV series called Paranormal Pam. It was about a woman who investigated ghost sightings. The twist was that she was a ghost herself.
I remember sitting at dinner with Dad on the weekends (the only time we ate meals with him while he was directing because he worked really long hours), and he would say things like ‘I think this show is going to be a hit. The star – Jennica Valentine – is a real find...
‘Jennica is unbelievably talented. I had my doubts at first – I just figured she was another blonde bimbo – but, no, she’s got substance. And she’s only twenty-four...
‘Jennica said the funniest thing today...’
I guess you could say the clues were there.
•••
One day, Mom decided to surprise Dad by taking us all to the set, so we could have lunch with him. At first, it was sort of like a homecoming for her. Even though Mom had never worked on Paranormal Pam, she knew a lot of the crew. Including Karen.
‘Ingrid! It’s about frigging time you came to visit!’ Karen said, when we entered the hair and make-up trailer. She put me into her chair and started braiding my hair, and, even though I could smell her stale cigarette breath, it was kind of nice.
‘I hope Ian’s treating you well,’ my mom said.
I was gazing into the mirror, and I saw a look pass between Karen and one of the make-up artists.
‘It’s not the same without you here,’ Karen replied.
After Karen finished braiding my hair, Mom took us to find Dad. They’d just broken for lunch, but Dad wasn’t in the lunch tent, and no one answered when we knocked on his trailer door.
We were still standing there when another trailer door opened nearby and a woman with long blonde hair, big boobs, and tonnes of make-up stepped out.
Followed by my dad, who was buckling his belt.
You know that expression ‘the colour drained from his face’? That’s what happened to my dad when he spotted us.
So I might have been only nine, but I knew something big was going down. I didn’t know what, exactly, but I did know that a man shouldn’t be buckling his belt in front of a woman who wasn’t his wife.
‘Ingrid, hi!’ Dad said, forcing a smile. ‘What a nice surprise.’
‘We thought we’d join you for lunch,’ Mom said, her voice a weird monotone. ‘But I can see you’re busy.’
‘No, no, Jennica and I were just going over some line changes, that’s all. Jennica, this is Ingrid, my, um, wife.’
Jennica’s face turned fire engine red. ‘Hi, there! I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘And these are my girls, Violet and Rose,’ Dad continued, trying to act like everything was perfectly normal.
‘What lovely names! I love violets,’ she said to me.
I hid behind my mom.
Jennica’s smile was frozen on her face. ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ she said, then ducked back into her trailer and slammed the door.
Dad turned to us and smiled. ‘Well, troops, shall we eat?’
‘Screw you, Ian,’ my mom said quietly. ‘You will tell me everything when you get home.’ Clutching Rosie to her chest, she grabbed my hand, pulling me so hard I thought my arm would come out of its socket. Dad didn’t try to stop her.
That night, Mom got what she asked for.
He told her everything.
•••
‘Your mother and I are going to live apart for a while,’ Dad announced a week later. He’d taken me on a bike ride to La Casa Gelato. We were sitting outside, and I was working my way through a massive cone of Rocky Road. (Phoebe told me later that my choice of flavours was psychologically significant. Her parents’ profession couldn’t help but rub off on her somewhat.)
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It has nothing to do with you, sweetie. It’s just that sometimes adults... they fall out of love.’
‘You’ve fallen out of love with Mommy?’
‘Not exactly. I still love her. I always will, in a way.’
‘But you love the blonde lady with the boobs better.’
There was a pause. ‘Jennica. Her name is Jennica.’
•••
Two weeks later, Dad moved out of our house and into a furnished apartment in Yaletown. Rosie and I slept over on Wednesdays and every other weekend. This change in our routine didn’t seem to bother Rosie at first; she was only two, and she acted like the whole thing was just a temporary adventure.
As for me, I was having trouble sleeping. I couldn’t help thinking about what had gone on before
Dad buckled his belt, when he and Jennica were alone in the trailer.
As Phoebe said, it was a lot for a kid to process.
Luckily Jennica was never over at his apartment when we were there. But sometimes Dad would plop us in front of the TV and go into his bedroom and close the door and have long talks with her on the phone.
Once, when he was talking to her, I picked up one of his Paranormal Pam scripts, which he’d left lying on the glass-topped coffee table. I randomly flipped it open to a page and read.
INT. JOE’S HOUSE – LIVING ROOM – NIGHT PAM is talking to JOE, a 40-year-old client. They are both gazing at the ghost of a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN dressed in 1920s-style clothes, standing by his mantelpiece.
JOE
I keep seeing her hovering there.
PAM
Does your wife see her?
JOE
Never.
Pam considers this.
PAM
You know, Joe, a woman did die in this house, in 1927.
JOE
How?
PAM
She died of a broken heart. She loved her husband madly, but he was having an affair. One morning, she just didn’t wake up.
She looks at Joe, hard.
PAM
Are you cheating on your wife, Joe?
Joe doesn’t answer, but looks away guiltily.
PAM
I suspect only you can see the ghost because of your guilty conscience. She’s trying to tell you that an affair can cause unbelievable heartache. Do you want to destroy your marriage? Do you?
I could hear Dad in the other room, still talking quietly to Jennica. Rosie was staring at the TV, transfixed. I picked my nose, smeared the bogey on the page I’d just read, and closed the script.
Phoebe would later tell me that this was classic passive-aggressive behaviour.
Whatever. I just knew that, in the moment, it felt pretty good.
•••
At our place, my mom was trying hard not to fall apart. Most nights, Karen or Amanda would come over with a pizza or a frozen lasagna for dinner, and once Rosie and I had gone to bed, they’d talk long into the night. I was glad my mom had her girlfriends because the mood around the house during those first few months pretty much sucked. At least when Karen and Amanda were over, I could escape to Phoebe’s house without feeling guilty.
‘We can’t just sit here and let this happen,’ Phoebe said to me one weekend, while we were holed up in my room. She’d stayed for dinner and witnessed my mom crying over the kitchen sink as she washed the dishes.
‘But what can we do?’ I asked.
Phoebe thought for a moment. ‘I saw this movie with my parents once. Some crazy woman was in love with this guy, but he was in love with someone else. So she made a voodoo doll of his fiancée and started to make the fiancée sick with black magic. It gave me nightmares for months.’ Cathy and Günter took Phoebe to all sorts of movies that were what my mom called ‘age-inappropriate.’
‘Are you suggesting we make a voodoo doll of Jennica?’
‘Precisely. Then we can put a curse on her. Not to kill her, of course. Just to get her away from your dad.’
Phoebe was an excellent ideas person.
So we printed some instructions from the web and got to work. Using scraps of fabric and stuffing, we made a basic doll, about six inches high. When the body of the doll was complete, Phoebe stitched a mouth onto it, and I sewed on two buttons for eyes.
‘We need hair,’ Phoebe said. ‘Jennica’s hair. And we need a personal object that belongs to her.’
The next time I was over at Dad’s, I snuck into his bedroom while he was cooking dinner. It didn’t take me long to find a lipstick that had rolled under the bed. In the bathroom I found a pink hairbrush, filled with long blonde hairs. I pulled the hairs out of the brush and slipped them into a Baggie, along with the lipstick.
After school the next day, Phoebe and I went to her house. We stuck the hair on the doll’s head with some glue, then smeared Jennica’s lipstick on its mouth. We held the doll up to the light, feeling quite proud of our work.
Then we cast the spell. We stuck a bunch of straight pins into the Jennica doll and chanted, ‘May ill fortune befall you! May you be forced to leave this city! May you leave Ian’s life for ever!’ We repeated this process every day for a month.
On the final day, Karen dropped by to see Mom. Phoebe and I were in the kitchen doing homework.
‘Ingrid, I have some interesting news,’ Karen announced, as she pulled out a bottle of wine. ‘Violet, Phoebe. Am-scray.’
We clomped down the stairs to the basement and turned on the TV. Then we tiptoed back up the stairs and listened at the basement door.
‘The show wrapped last week,’ Karen said. ‘Jennica took the first plane back to Los Angeles. Said she couldn’t wait to get out of this rain-drenched town.’
‘Really,’ Mom said, and I could hear a hint of hopefulness creep into her voice.
‘And they screened an episode at the wrap party. What a steaming turd. I’d be shocked if it gets renewed.’
Phoebe and I tiptoed back down the stairs and did a little dance, convinced our curse had worked.
Sure enough, just like Karen had predicted, the network aired only three episodes before cancelling the show. Phoebe and I figured it was only a matter of time before my dad came crawling back home with his tail between his legs. I think my mom figured the same thing because she started taking showers again.
So we were all blindsided when Dad announced that he was moving to L.A. to live with Jennica.
And that he was filing for divorce.
And that Jennica was pregnant with the twins.
•••
That night, my sister wet her bed for the first time. After she fell back to sleep, I took all of my books off the shelf and carefully rearranged them in alphabetical order by author, from Louisa May Alcott to Paul Zindel.
When I was done, I took them all down again and rearranged them in alphabetical order by title, from Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to Wind in the Willows.
It was the first time I’d ever done a weirdly obsessive thing like that. But it wouldn’t be the last.
5
‘Come on, Amanda, you must know some decent single men.’
It was a rainy Saturday morning, and Phoebe and I were talking to Amanda in the knitting shop she owned on Main Street. It was called Wild and Woolly and was just a couple of blocks away from the William Berto School of Hair Design. Mom and Amanda had met when Mom signed up for Amanda’s first-ever ‘Stitch and Bitch’ workshop five years ago. As far as I could tell, this meant a group of women got together in her store after hours and did ten per cent knitting, thirty per cent drinking, and sixty per cent complaining about men. They’d been good friends ever since.
‘If I did, don’t you think I’d have introduced them to your mom by now?’ Amanda answered, as she stocked a shelf with balls of emerald green angora wool. ‘Besides, your mom tells me this new guy is different.’
‘She said that about Paulo, too,’ Phoebe said.
‘And Jonathan, and Alphonse, and Guy,’ I added.
Amanda sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. But maybe she’s right this time.’
‘Please. I’ve met him. He looks like Mole Man.’
‘Who’s Mole Man?’
‘I don’t know, I made it up. But that’s what he looks like – part man, part mole.’
‘And his name is Dudley Wiener,’ Phoebe added.
‘Now, girls. Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ Amanda said, as she headed back to the counter, Phoebe and I trailing behind her. ‘Remember, my boyfriend’s name is Cosmo.’
‘True,’ I replied, ‘but Cosmo is hot.’
‘Totally,’ sighed Phoebe.
Confessi
on: I might be a love cynic, but Amanda and Cosmo were the one couple I rooted for. They’d been seeing each other for almost two years and were perfect for each other, like a right shoe and a left. When I saw them together, my heart did like the Grinch’s when he heard little Cindy Lou Who sing that day... it grew.
‘Cosmo must have some friends,’ I said.
But Amanda just laughed as she tucked a piece of her long red hair behind her ear. ‘He has plenty of friends. And I wouldn’t wish any of them on your mother.’
‘They couldn’t be any worse than Guy. Or that drunk Karen set her up with,’ said Phoebe.
‘Carl,’ I said.
‘True,’ Amanda replied. ‘But they’re still not good enough for your mom. Besides, it’s not all about looks and names, and you know it. Maybe Dudley’s got a great personality.’
‘Highly doubtful,’ I said. ‘But I guess I’ll find out tonight.’
‘Tonight?’ Amanda raised an eyebrow.
‘She’s invited him to dinner.’
‘Wow. That was fast.’
I nodded glumly. Usually we were spared that unique form of torture until after she’d had at least a few dates. And since Mom hadn’t even mentioned her first date with Dudley afterward, I kind of figured it was over before it had ever really started.
Last night, I found out I was wrong.
•••
What happened was this: Mom arrived home shortly after six, carrying a DVD and a take-out bag full of Thai food from Sawasdee, just like she did every Friday night. Rosie placed a blanket in front of the TV, and I arranged the food on top of the blanket while Mom grabbed a cold beer for herself and glasses of milk for Rosie and me. Then Mom popped in the movie, and we all sat down on the blanket and started to eat.
It was the same routine week after week, and I loved it. See, Friday night is the official Gustafson Girls’ Night. It’s the one night of the week that Mom keeps free and clear for me and Rosie. No dates, no company – not even Phoebe or Karen or Amanda. Just the three of us.
My Messed-Up Life Page 3