by Julie Paul
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On good days, they were like one body, Jen, Cody, and Ben, a unified sum of parts. They just worked well together—limbs and brain talked to each other without saying a word. And Cody, his little plum cheeks pressed against Jen’s legs, saying he wanted to marry her? Perfection.
All of that had been relegated to the past, once Carolina-of-the-couch arrived. You couldn’t see Ben anywhere in her face, with its pallid slopes, its poked-in eyes. What salacious whispers had begun the journey from wooing Ruthie, his ex, to this replica of her?
Jen wanted to know that younger Ben, so she could do her own whispering in his ear: Keep it in your pants, honey. Wait for the good wife.
Oh, she was a horrible person. But self-admonishment didn’t really count, did it, if you smiled while you said it?
What little she could get from Ben about the relationship did not satisfy her. Jen could just not make the differences between her and the ex add up. It didn’t compute, that Ben could love her and have loved that woman too; how could he even call it by the same name? But maybe love was like hockey: the game encompassed slow, bumbling circles, and breakaways too, yet it was all still hockey. Ben was just getting a lot better at the game.
Except, with Carolina around, there was no breakaway possible. How do you play the game while piggybacking a sullen, indolent teenager?
Alongside the dream of a wonderful father-daughter bond—something that Ben had been denied despite years of trying to remain connected with Carolina and her mother, who seemed to have moved every year or two, following a trail of mediocre jobs in small towns and foul-weathered cities in the middle of Canada—there had been dreams of freedom; a built-in babysitter, everyone had enthused, when they’d heard the news of her arrival, as if she were a new appliance. Jen and Ben had allowed themselves to dream of long dinners over sumptuous platefuls of local, colourful food instead of Cody’s beige palette, a whole bottle of wine disappearing between them.
That dream had promptly fallen apart: Cody and Carolina did not magically hit it off, and the one time Jen had dashed to the chiropractor, leaving the girl in charge, she’d come home to a crying boy, a bad-tempered girl, and a chocolate-milk-sodden T-shirt in the sink. She yelled at me for spilling! Cody had cried.
It was all Jen could do to not imagine Carolina’s neck between her hands as she rinsed and squeezed the shirt out. But visualizations had power, and she wasn’t ready to be responsible for anything so dark.
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The next day, instead of broaching the subject with Ben—how would that conversation go except your daughter is a vortex of negative energy, and I can’t handle this anymore—Jen decided to get serious. The girl needed guidance; she’d give it.
Mother to invention is necessity: she’d post her lists. She shuddered at the thought of a ratty notice taped to a cupboard door, another above the towel rack in the bathroom, but what else could she do? She’d laminate them, at the very least, use a welcoming font, avoid black ink—or would the prettiness undermine the message? No. It would have to be Arial Black. These rules would not be negotiable.
Kitchen: The blue bowl is off-limits to anyone but Jen.
The bowl was the first gift she’d been given—from an aunt—when she moved out on her own, at eighteen, and the fact that it remained unbroken was a sort of miracle. What else did Jen have from that twilight time between childhood and this grey zone of responsibility and gloom? Nothing.
Sesame seeds, crumbs, flakes, and grains are not dust. They are not to be swept onto the floor as if invisible.
and
The sink is for washing dishes and produce. Please use with frequency, drain the sludgy water after, and clean out the stopper basket. The sink is not a garbage can.
Occasionally Jen herself would slop her leftover cereal or apple core into the sink, but only because it was a cultural habit brought along from her family. She was going to break it for good, right here.
The list-making was meant to help, but it made Jen feel queasy. She wasn’t that anal, was she? She’d always thought of herself as easy-going, and people called her chill, relaxed, laissez-faire. Mostly they said these things on the playground, or at parent-kid get-togethers, when she made it a point to remain calm on the outside even while she was raging within. Luckily, Cody was a good kid, and she’d never had to freak at him in public. Some days she worried he was a little too good; that he should get riled up more, protest, rebel against something.
Were these lists the gateway to a darker version of life? This is your life now, she told herself these days, which never failed to make her teary. She didn’t want a dark life, goddammit. She wanted the old one back. The lists would continue. They were all she had.
Carolina came into the kitchen while Jen was writing out the next item.
Juice is a once-a-day beverage, 8 ounces max. Water is our regular drink of choice.
The girl pulled the mango nectar from the fridge, poured herself a tumblerful, then tucked a box of chocolate-topped cookies under her arm and left the kitchen, leaving the juice bottle on the counter.
“Carolina,” Jen called out. “The juice.”
No response. Headphones or insolence? She was too tired to investigate.
For the first time ever, Jen regretted turning down Ben’s offer to join him and Cody on their hike in Stanley Park to find pine cones for an art project, although he’d invited Carolina to go before he’d asked her.
And she could say nothing. Nothing at all.
Because here was the stumbling block, the clincher, the deal-breaker, if she were to ever suggest a deal, beyond the fact that Ben was desperate to make this father-daughter thing work: Ben and Cody shared no DNA. In every other way they were related—they related. Two peas in an edible pod; so cute together that Jen could just gobble them up. But she could not say anything about this girl in the house; she shared Ben’s blood and Cody didn’t. When they sat side-by-side on the couch, their hair was identical, as if it had come from the same can of squirrel-brown paint.
No, Jen was in no position to say one word. Instead the words grew teeth and began to chomp at her from within, gestating creatures that were all hers. If she didn’t let them out, they might destroy something vital—everyone knew that was how diseases got started. So, who would hear her? Who would offer a sympathetic ear, advice, a partner in whatever crime might be necessary?
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The following morning, while Cody was in the bathtub, the phone rang a song of salvation. It was Adrienne, Jen’s friend on Salt Spring Island. Jen could almost smell the sunlight on the salt-pocked deck railings, the briny front yard ocean, when Adrienne, in her beautiful salvation of a voice, asked, “Are you ready to shoot her yet?”
She knew. Even though she was childless, and had never been forced to share her space with anyone other than her mother-in-law, once a year, out from Toronto to impart urban wisdom and disdain, Adrienne knew what Jen was going through.
Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry, Jen told herself, but it was no use. The tears came anyway, as part of the package.
“Come visit,” Adrienne suggested, in her cashew-latte voice. “We’ll go see Julianna.”
Julianna was an angel reader on the north end of the island. A woman who could see the future in a person by tuning into the beings she saw, or felt, around them. She was Icelandic—the J was a Y in the mouth, and it was all a part of the tradition, the tuning in. In Iceland, the fairies took precedence over roadway projects, as real as indigenous gravesites or wildlife habitat. Jen had visited Julianna with Adrienne once before, but only waited while she got her reading, there to escort Adrienne home in case the news was bad.
It was never bad, though, according to Julianna. She only tuned into the good things, or at least the parts that offered potential.
&nbs
p; Jen needed potential. Were there angels hovering around her, like fruit flies? Sometimes she felt a sort of static halo; maybe Julianna could make it into something useable. Something that might make her stop placing hexes on a certain girl in the house.
As soon as she’d hung up on Adrienne with a promise to attempt a childcare feat of wonder to make the trip possible, a promise that made her heart feel winged, Carolina shuffled into the kitchen.
“My laundry stinks,” she said, through sleep-gummed lips.
The fury that shot through Jen’s blood was as efficient as radioactive dye; scanned, every inch of her would glow.
“Well,” Jen said, pointing at the utility room, “the machine is just behind that door.”
Carolina said nothing. She didn’t even acknowledge that Jen had spoken; she just poured herself a giant mug of coffee, then squirted half a cup of chocolate syrup into it and added the same amount of cream before taking herself and her breakfast into the living room.
How could she do this? It was—
“Mom!” Cody called from the bathroom. “I’m done!”
Jen tried to shake her anger off like a bird shuffling its feathers and found Cody standing in the tub, shivering, a landscape of rich bubbles around his calves. The air was ripe with chemical roses.
“Where’d you get the bubble bath?” Jen asked, although she knew: it was Carolina’s.
“I borrowed a little bit,” he said. He pronounced it borr-e owed, something no one had tried to correct since it was so damned cute.
“Uh huh. Well, let’s get you cleaned off.” Jen sprayed him down with the showerhead, making him shriek because it tickled.
Once he was wrapped in a big towel and in her arms for a quick cuddle, Jen whispered, “Let’s keep the bubbles a secret, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, then ran naked into his room to find some clothes. Jen returned to the kitchen to pour herself another coffee.
The secret didn’t last. Carolina could, apparently, smell Cody’s crime.
“You little shit!” she yelled. “You stole my bubble bath.”
“No,” Cody said. “I only borreowed it.”
Jen found Carolina towering over Cody, seated on his little wooden chair at the art table, crayons and paper at the ready.
“Oh yeah?” she said. “Well, give it back then, if you borreowed it.”
“Carolina,” Jen said. “It’s okay. He just tried a little bit.”
Carolina just looked at Jen and narrowed her eyes. Then she picked up a few of Cody’s crayons. “Can I borrow these?”
Cody nodded.
“Thanks,” she said, and proceeded to snap each crayon into tiny chunks.
“What the hell?” Jen cried.
“It’s eye for an eye,” Carolina said. “I see you haven’t taught him that one yet.”
It was eyes, alright. Cody started bawling and ran to Jen, while Carolina flashed her a scathing look before stomping herself off to her room.
Once she got Cody settled down, with the promise of a brand new sixty-four pack of Crayolas, Jen texted Ben.
Must go to SSI tonight. A. needs help. Ideas on Cody care?
She didn’t wait for a response; she would take Cody to the island if necessary and find a homeschooler to watch him while she let Adrienne save her life.
In a flurry, Jen packed enough clothes for three days, cancelled via email the intro to social media class she was teaching for seniors—a test of their e-savvy—and made a grocery list for Ben that was nearly a complete restocking of the larder. Let him see how much this monster-girl could put away, despite her love of inertia. Could knitting really work up this kind of appetite? Maybe she had worms, or rickets. Carolina hadn’t been outside in over a week.
A text came back.
Hope A. is okay. Ask my mother?
Saint Kathy. Cody would be fine for a little while in the house of Godliness, even if he ended up resuming the morbid prayers about dying in the night at bedtime. And eye for an eye didn’t seem to figure into her messages, luckily—at least none that Jen had heard.
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At Long Harbour, Adrienne stood like a figurehead. The wind rippled her honey hair and seemed to smooth her skin back to teenage tautness so that when Jen first saw her she was both comforted and angry. How dare she look so good? She’d probably just had a roll in the hay with Davis, her steadfast, flexible husband. Jen felt as if she hadn’t slept in days, and she smelled bad: all the rushing to get Cody to Kathy’s and make the last direct ferry had made her sweat.
Adrienne’s face showed only gladness to see her, though, so Jen shelved her anger—she was becoming so good at that, it was scary—and opened up her stinky arms for an island hug.
There were some women who lived the child-free life from whom an outsider might glean a touch of nostalgia, yearning, a coating of sadness, a tendency toward baby talk, all because they wanted kids but never had them. Adrienne was not of this camp. She embraced, embodied, the lifestyle (life had a style? Jen joked), and made it seem so natural that even Jen started to believe that parenting was not for everyone, despite her firm notion that there was nothing in life that could teach selflessness or love with quite the same success. Without Cody, she would still be partying, spending her salary (what salary?) on magazines and shoes and gel nails. Without Cody, she would still think of love as another feather in life’s plumage, when love was, in fact, the bird itself, or at least the wings that would make the whole being fly.
Adrienne would say, calmly, But that’s what we invented planes for, lovie.
Jen was jittery from tea and chocolate, and once she sank back into Adrienne’s embracing plushy car seats, she felt her heart scolding her.
“If that’s bugging you, tell me,” Adrienne said, pointing at the flowering vine in a pot between Jen’s feet. “I can probably prop it up in the back. I just thought I’d pick one up when I was close to the nursery. I needed another passion flower by the back gate.”
“It’s fine,” Jen said. “There could be a rabid pit bull at my feet, and it’d be fine.” Then she started to cry.
“Oh, Jenny,” Adrienne said. “You’re in rough shape, aren’t you?”
The most pressing need was a passion flower for the back gate? Yes, she was.
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After a fine dinner of greens, local mead, and lamb popsicles—over which Jen kept imagining the horror on Cody’s face if she were to suggest popsicles, his favourite food, made of lamb, his favourite animal—she was of no use to anyone, so Jen tucked herself into her wrinkle-free linen cloud and slept the sleep of someone who’d been to war.
She woke to the brrr of coffee beans. Alone, in a room with windows that, once she pulled back their robes of cream velvet, opened outwards to the sea. Adrienne and Jen had once gone to Europe together and done their share of flinging windows open (and flings); she’d most likely insisted that this sort of window be included in the design. There was something beautiful about that movement, Jen admitted, as she released the smooth metal catch and swept her arms apart as if parting the sea itself, or at least opening her heart a little more.
The waves were little and light, matched by lines of cirrus clouds above—as above, so below. How that phrase had entered Jen’s brain—never mind its origin—was a mystery. She loved it when the sky matched her feelings; today it even matched the ocean. Carolina was on the other side of that water—finally far enough away for peace.
She closed the shutters again, then opened them once more. Yes, it felt like a gesture of willingness to receive.
Less than a day on Salt Spring and, already, a full brain switch to Gulf Island speak. That was good—better to start early, because Julianna was going to lay it thickly on her right after lunch.
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> Breakfast: local eggs and bacon, tomatoes from the porch. Davis, generous and subtle, discreetly disappeared after they dined. Morning walk: arbutus and their sinewy limbs, starfish the colour of grape gum. Lunch: salad and salmon and homemade bread from a farm stand. Through it all, Jen had talked, and Adrienne had listened, nodded, laughed, hugged, sworn, reassured, and promised that everything would be alright, that she would hear the same from Julianna.
“You’re not a bad person for feeling this,” Adrienne told her. “You didn’t sign up for it.”
Amen, sister.
After lunch, Davis drove them to Julianna’s place, so they could walk and talk their way back home.
“Welcome, beauties!” Julianna enthused, her wrists doing a sort of rotation to make her hands swirl the air before squishing Adrienne and Jen together in a group embrace.
Once the niceties were out of the way, Julianna led Jen into her reading room, which, ironically, had no books in it at all. In fact, it was a round room, with no windows below the six-foot level, topped by a slanted glass ceiling partially covered by leaves.
“Sit,” Julianna suggested, pointing at a pile of hard-looking cushions covered in faded cotton of various colours, atop an Indian rug. Julianna sat on similar cushions across from Jen, and in between them stood a low desk made of wood on which there was a stack of carbon paper and a couple of pens. Jen hadn’t seen that kind of paper since high school.
Julianna responded to Jen’s thoughts, eerily. “I like to make notes,” she said. “I give a set away and keep the other for my records. Technology, like tape recorders, never seems to work for the angels.”
“I love it,” Jen said. “Back to basics.”
“Okay,” Julianna said. “Just relax and close your eyes. I’ll check in and see who’s here today.”
The room grew quiet, no sounds from outside entering the space at all; Jen felt like she was tucked inside a turtleneck. After a minute she cracked one eye open, in case she’d missed a cue.