by Terri Favro
He frowned. “Why do you want to stop here?”
“I don’t know. Just wait for me.”
On the sidewalk, I scanned the list of businesses in the old bank building. One caught my eye: White Fin Financial.
At the reception desk, a sixty-something blonde in a crisp white blouse was working at a computer. She looked up at me with a coral-lipped smile, and I saw that she was wearing a necklace with DOTTY spelled out in script. It was her, all right: evil Nurse Dotty from Atomic Mean Time was a grandmotherly secretary in Earth Standard Time.
“May I help you?” she asked in a sweet voice that implied she had no memory of me kneeing her in the chest and pushing her into a freezing cold shower.
“I’m interested in buying a commercial property. Do you handle business mortgages?”
Dotty nodded. “Absolutely. Larry’s got a client with him, but if you can wait a few minutes, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to speak with you.”
“Larry . . . ?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“Kowalchuck,” supplied Dotty.
A familiar instrumental played softly on the sound system; it took me a second to recognize Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra playing “Love’s Theme” — the first dance at my wedding to Kendal back in Atomic Mean Time. I took a seat and flipped through the Shipman’s Corners Examiner. “More layoffs announced at ShipCo Automotive,” read the front page. The local economy was shifting to service sector jobs, some idiotic alderman said reassuringly, as if mopping the floors of fast food restaurants was a reasonable way to fill the void left by the vanishing factory jobs. No wonder the whole town seemed down in the dumps.
As I closed the paper, I felt a presence in front of me and looked up at the Shark, his thinning blond hair plastered into an unconvincing comb-over. He’d kept his aging body trim, but the explosion of red blood vessels on his nose advertised his taste for cocktails. He peered down at me through unfashionable aviator glasses.
“Larry Kowalchuck, pleased to meetcha,” he said, and offered his hand.
I shook it, introducing myself by my real name, but he gave no sign of recognizing me. We went into his office, where he lowered himself into a high-backed Naugahyde chair behind an oak veneer desk.
“Now, what kind of business property would a beautiful lady like you be after?” he asked with a grin. I suddenly felt myself back in the Donato living room, fending off his come-ons. I couldn’t hate him anymore: he’d turned into a cliché of a dirty old man, unaware of how repellant he was.
I smiled. “I’m opening a spa in Shipman’s Corners. Something high-end.”
He leaned across the desk and smiled at me lasciviously. “Spa, eh? How much you looking to borrow?”
Thinking fast, I said, “Five hundred thousand, give or take. Depending on location, of course.”
The Shark gave a low whistle and leaned back in his chair, the vinyl squeaking under him. “Half a mil? You Martha Stewart or something? You could buy and sell most of the businesses on this street for a quarter of that. You’d have to cut and curl a hell of a lot of hair to turn a profit.”
“I wasn’t thinking of just hairstyling. Manicures, pedicures, facials, all that.”
“Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh,” said the Shark, regarding me with open amusement. “Look, up in Toronto you might get women paying top dollar to keep their faces on straight, but here in Shipman’s Corners most of ’em are the do-it-yourselfer types, know what I’m saying?”
I crossed my legs. “Should I take my business elsewhere?”
The Shark raised his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa there, Oprah, don’t get touchy. I’m just trying to tell you how it is. Look, why don’t I close up early and take you out to dinner at Soaring Starling Wine Bar? Or Yumchuck’s Ukrainian Eats, if you like ethnic food? I’d love to discuss your business plan.”
I stood up. “I’ll have to take a rain check, Larry. Duty calls in Toronto. But if you give me your business card, I’ll shoot you an email next time I’m in town and we can do lunch.” I offered my hand for him to shake.
Larry let his eyes walk all over me. To my surprise, he kissed my hand.
“I’ll count the days,” he said, smirking.
When I found Bum Bum watching his coffee cool in a Tim Hortons down the street, he said, “How did it go? Discover anything important?”
I shook my head. “Nothing at all. Let’s go.”
On the way out of town, as we approached the on-ramp to the Queen Elizabeth Way, a sign caught my eye. VICTORIA LAWN CEMETERY.
“Let’s see if we can find the family grave,” I told Bum Bum. “Turn right here.”
He shook his head and left-turned to the on-ramp.
“No matter what we find, you’re going to fall to pieces and it’ll be my job to put you back together again. I’m tired of that, Deb. Just go home and live your life.”
As we passed a sign reading TORONTO 100 KM, I wondered if that’s where home was now.
* * *
In 2004, I decided to find out how Kendal and Sandy — excuse me, “Alex” — were getting along without me. Google told me they were living in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood, an affluent but not filthy rich area on the other side of town from Bum Bum’s west-end condo in hipsterland. One weekend morning, I hung around Withrow Park, a few doors away from the Kendal family’s renovated Victorian. Eventually, John Kendal came out the front door with his twelve-year-old twins, Nelson and Marushka. I already knew their faces and names from a steady stream of media coverage about their lives, given Kendal’s public profile as an environmental lawyer and newly minted Member of Parliament. Some hoped he’d skip over politics altogether and become a diplomat. I suspected Duff knew what he was doing when he told me that if I saved Kendal, I’d save the world.
In faded jeans and a leather bomber jacket, Kendal looked as handsome as ever. My eyes fell to his left hand: normal. The grotesque disfigurement by blowtorch had never happened in E.S.T. The kids were beautiful, of course: leggy and slim, with Kendal’s curly black hair and his wife’s blue eyes. Half black, half Ukrainian — what else would you expect?
Kendal laughed as Nelson and Marushka told him a story about their homeroom teacher, every step of their perfect feet breaking my heart. I followed the three of them to a painfully trendy coffee shop where Kendal ordered an espresso and hot chocolates for the twins. I sat two tables away, trying to look absorbed in my MacBook while I eavesdropped. I learned that Marushka liked mini marshmallows in her hot chocolate and Nelson was late handing in a history project on Louis Riel because he hadn’t done the required research. Read the graphic novel, kid, I felt like telling him.
Once, while the kids were squabbling over Pokémon cards, I noticed Kendal’s attention wandering. His eyes skipped around the inside of the coffee shop until they met mine. He offered me that half-smile I knew well. Thinking he’d recognized me, my heart picked up speed: I wondered if he’d come over to my table and look down at me with a Do we know each other? Or better yet, I’ve been looking for you all my life.
Then I saw his eyes climb over me to the pretty young woman sitting at the table behind me, her notebook open — a CBC reporter who had interviewed him numerous times, I learned from the conversation that ensued between them. He hadn’t offered me a smile of recognition, just the look famous men give middle-aged women who recognize them in coffee shops.
Sitting in the cozy café with its piped-in jazz and fair trade coffee, observing Kendal’s perfect life and healthy kids, felt like tearing the scab off a not-quite-healed wound. I couldn’t stop picking away at it, almost enjoying the hurt of scratching at tender spots. This could have been my life, I thought. I resented the kids for being normal. I hated Kendal for being happy. Because neither word could describe me.
What a monster I am.
I went back only once more to the Kendals’ neighbourhood, hoping to cat
ch sight of the woman I’d known as Sandy. I knocked on the front door, not knowing what I would say to her if she answered.
When it opened, I found myself face to face with a tall black man in his seventies wearing a Maple Leafs sweatshirt. Grey-haired, bearded and fit-looking, like someone you’d see on a sailboat in a retirement planning ad, he was the kind of guy you’d invite over for a beer. The lopsided smile, the angular nose, the almond shape of his eyes — he was an older version of Kendal.
But not my Kendal. I was facing Dave Kendal, who in E.S.T. obviously had not died in an industrial accident at ShipCo when his son was a kid.
Dave was smiling when he opened the door but when our eyes met, his expression changed from welcoming to puzzled.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
I stared at him, this aged man who did not live to see his thirtieth birthday in Atomic Mean Time standing before me in the glow of good health. That’s when it occurred to me that the whole Tagger thing might actually have been bullshit. That I’d simply been sacrificed to give Dave Kendal a lifetime to play a role he didn’t get to play in Atomic Mean Time: raising a future world leader. Did he know that I’d given up my identity for him? That I’d been forced to give up his son? That his grandkids should have come from me, not that backstabbing bitch, Sandy?
“Help me? Only if you can give me back my life,” I said.
Inside the house, a familiar woman’s voice called, “Dave, who’s at the door?”
It was Bea Kendal. She and Dave must have been babysitting the grandkids for the weekend while Kendal and Sandy enjoyed some alone time. Sweet.
Dave called to his wife, “It’s no one, hon.”
“Then why are you still talking to them?”
From the depths of the hallway, she walked briskly to the door. She’d aged well. Grey hair, stylishly cut. A strong, trim figure — lots of yoga and boot camp, no doubt. None of the worry lines I remembered: this was a woman with a comfortable life, a devoted husband, and a loving son who was expected to become Canada’s first black prime minister. None of the tragedies of the old time had touched her. No young widowhood. No door-to-door job in a hateful little town. No child whisked off by the authorities to an industrial school — which, let’s face it, was just another name for slavery.
She stood at the door beside her handsome, undead husband and looked steadily at me. She knew me. More precisely, she remembered me. I opened my mouth to say something that would make her call me by name, but before I could think of anything, she gently moved in front of her husband. Shielding him.
I could see her struggling to choose the right words to push me out of the life I’d been robbed of. Although, in fairness, it was the Trespasser who’d set me up. Presumably for some higher purpose, saving-the-world-wise.
“Please don’t trouble us again. Goodbye,” she said.
Her eyes never left mine as she closed the heavy wood door in my face.
CRAZY LADY ISLAND
October 2011, E.S.T.
I arrive by seaplane carrying Dad’s belated birthday present in a hockey bag — my old telescope. Waiting for me with Linda by the dock, Dad politely introduces himself, as if we are business colleagues meeting at a conference for the first time. He’s a little stooped, but still tall. A handsome guy, considering his age. The old ladies in long-term care must be all over him. Unusual for a man to outlive his wife by so many years; poor Mom died suddenly of cardiac arrest, listening to the CBC Radio News in her kitchen. She was not quite seventy.
“Carlo Biondi. And you are?” he says, giving my hand a firm shake as the pilot hoists my luggage out of the plane. At least his grip is strong, even if his mind isn’t.
“Her name is Debbie,” Linda explains before I have a chance to answer.
“Oh, of course, of course. One of Maddy’s cousins from the old country,” he says to Linda, before turning to me again. “And you are?”
Linda has aged into a fleshier version of Mom: thick hair the colour of steel, her face a worried road map, but her underlying prettiness lingers. We sit together at the wooden table in her big kitchen, watching Dad meticulously unwrap the gift I’ve brought for him.
“Wonderful,” he says, pulling out the telescope. “Orion. Big Dipper.”
“That’s right, Dad,” I say. “You and I used to look at the stars together. Remember?”
Dad smiles and shakes his head, no. “Sure, sure,” he answers.
When I comment on Dad’s condition to Linda, she slides her eyes toward him as if telling me, talk to him, not about him — but then goes on to speak on his behalf. She tells me Dad is in a program to help stimulate his brain cells. Not a cure, of course, but exercise and music therapy have been proven to preserve cognitive function, even in people with advanced forms of dementia. The point is stimulation is good for Dad’s quality of life. For — as Linda puts it — his soul.
“I hope Crazy Lady Island is good for my soul, too,” I comment, pouring another cup of rooibos tea — they sure drink a lot of it in Linda’s house. I miss my chai but it’s too mainstream for her. Vodka martinis — forget it.
Linda sighs. “I really wish you’d stop using that stupid name. ‘Crazy Lady Island.’ What’s wrong with plain old Gabriola?”
“Crazy Lady is more fun,” I tell her. And more accurate: Bum Bum coined the name when I told him about Linda’s health regime and dietary habits.
“An Italian-Canadian woman who’s given up coffee, bread, wine, cheese, pasta, gelato, chocolate, salt, olive oil, leather and sex. Her entire birthright, going back to the days of Marco Polo. Your sister is one crazy lady,” he observed.
Hence, Crazy Lady Island.
Mind you, I’m not sure about the sex. I’m making assumptions, based on the absence of anyone I can positively identify as Linda’s partner, male or female. Of course, Linda would have said the same of me, until I told her about running out on Darren. I needed some type of explanation for suddenly turning up on her doorstep; it was less exhausting to tell the truth than to concoct a believable lie. I told her about the trip in the RV, without explaining that Darren was her own lost child: that would have been too weird. I just said that we’d had a falling out — my fault, not his, of course — and after a few days at the Finlandia Hotel near Wawa, I’d headed for Thunder Bay; from there, I took a plane to Vancouver, then a seaplane to Gabriola.
“Sounds like a lot of jumping around just to get out of someone’s bed,” observed Linda.
* * *
My sister’s house is like a sensory deprivation tank. I have spent three gluten-free, caffeine-free, meat-free, alcohol-free, sex-free months in her spare room.
We go for hikes and kayaking together. Visit Dad three times a week in Nanaimo. I start taking yoga classes at Linda’s friend Jasmine’s house, the only one I’ve met on the island who seems like a possible partner for my sister.
One evening, Jasmine comes over with a bouquet from her wildflower garden, a platter of homemade California rolls and a couple of joints. Linda and her friends don’t indulge in alcohol or tobacco, but smoking pot is perfectly okay. I find that strange but remind myself that it’s not my house. As we lounge around the kitchen table with the inevitable tea and a smouldering doobie, Jasmine casts our astrological charts. I give her my date and time of birth, and she says, “Sun in Libra. Moon in Gemini. Sagittarius rising. Whoa.”
I frown at her. “What do you mean, ‘whoa’?”
“As in, interesting, imaginative, creative,” she says. “But whoa, I sure wouldn’t want to be in love with you. You’re a little inconstant, perhaps? Restless? Unpredictable?”
Linda snorts. “That’s putting it mildly. She was a troublemaker from the get-go. Boys, booze, drugs, sex, you name it. She ran away from home when she was thirteen. My parents pretended she was dead. Even put up a headstone in the cemetery so our grandparents would accept that she was gone. Debbi
e and I didn’t meet up again until she tracked me down in New York, just before she turned the train wreck of her life into material for her comic book.”
I’m stunned. “Is that the story you concocted to make sense of my existence? That Mom and Dad faked my death? Come on. Even when you got sent away after you got knocked up, they didn’t concoct some story to hide the truth.”
Linda gives me a lethal look as she sucks on the doobie.
“Fuck you,” she suggests sweetly.
Jasmine is starting to look uncomfortable. I’m grateful when she tries to change the subject. “What were you doing in New York, Linda?”
“I was honing my craft. Finding my musical voice. Of course, all that ended when Mom died and someone had to step up to the plate to look after Dad. Whom Debbie never bothers to visit, unless it suits her.” After a long toke, she adds, “Good thing one of us decided to act like a grown-up.”
Linda pretends not to notice that I’ve started to cry. Jasmine reaches out, trying to take my hand as I stumble out of my chair.
“Excuse me,” I mumble, and return to the spare room where I shake out my bedclothes, turn jacket pockets inside out and scrape the bottoms of purses and backpacks with my fingers, searching for stray lorazepam. No luck. A Joni Mitchell song drifts out of the kitchen. Oh fuck me, these aging hippies don’t know when to give it a fucking rest.
Quivering with anger and lorazepam withdrawal, I lie down on the bed and grip my Lady of Lourdes medal in my fist.
I wake the next morning, fully dressed, with a raging hunger. All that second-hand pot smoke. When I go into the kitchen, Linda is there, improbably brewing coffee and scrambling eggs. Making something that I like, for a change. An apology, of sorts. Unbefuckinglievable.