On my streetcar ride home, I wore my sunglasses and sat in the back, my hood drawn down low over my face.
I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
They were all Julia’s friends and not long afterwards, I heard she and Marwa had some kind of falling out. Of course, Marcus’s loyalty was to Marwa, and my tie-in was with Marcus. Marcus had no shortage of people in his life. He was perfectly okay to move on.
I never saw them again.
My first date with Marcus happened in September. In December, I let him dress me up as a masked, half-naked forest god in his ROM gala fundraiser event. At Marcus’s New Year’s Eve party, I met his best friend Marwa, and found myself in a threesome with his ex-boyfriend Fang. Then on Valentine’s Day, we broke up. Five months. Marwa told me later that five months was the longest Marcus had ever been in a relationship. At the time, it was also mine.
A few years after that, I was riding the subway. Across from me was some guy wearing headphones, in a toque and a bomber jacket. We made eye contact and he looked away, the way any stranger might. Except I thought it might’ve been Mitz. If I knew for sure it was him, I would’ve said something. But the funny thing was, I wasn’t sure. Two stops later, he gathered his stuff and got up. He glanced back just as the doors opened. I was sure in that second he thought he recognized me. But then he was gone. I wanted to shout; I wanted to leap up and run after him. But I didn’t move. The doors had closed. Today, if I were to bump into Julia or Reginald or Madison or Claire, I honestly couldn’t be sure if I’d recognize any of them. I no longer had any clear memory of how they looked.
But what remained crystal clear for me was that for one night, we were each other’s best friends and soul-mates. That it had been glorious. For nine hours, we were a family. We loved each other. We were in love with each other. We were shameless, united and full of brazen wonder. Then it was over. When I met Marcus, that was the world he lived in.
And as far as I could tell, Marcus was still living in that world.
Sunday night Skype date with Karen.
Bob’s wife had returned to Manitoulin.
She’d written to Bob first, saying she wanted a second chance, that she was better now, that she’d been clean over twelve months. She said she wanted to be the mother to her two girls that she couldn’t be before.
Her name was Elsie.
Two weeks later, she showed up at Karen’s work. She was pretty and soft-spoken, wearing just a bit of make-up. She asked if they could meet for coffee. The next day, they sat down at the Kagawong Main Street Café, an old school house on the hill on Highway 540. She kept thanking Karen for taking care of her kids. In the end, they talked for two hours. After that, they agreed to meet again.
“We have a lot in common,” Karen said. “She could’ve been me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, in a different time and place, I could’ve been her.”
I didn’t know what to say. But this time, Karen wasn’t asking for advice. She just wanted to let me know. “And how are you and David doing?” she asked.
“We got into a big fight last month.”
“What about?”
I hesitated. “A lot of things.”
“Are you guys okay?”
“I think so. We’re working on it. We’re talking it through.”
“These things take time.”
“Look, Karen.” I set aside my unfinished bowl of ice cream. “You didn’t tell me Bob’s wife was still in the picture.”
Karen sighed and gazed somewhere past the computer screen. Eventually she drew a breath. “Bob told me. She’d left him and the girls three years ago. He went to pick up Zephyr and Sky from hockey practice one day. When he got home, she was gone. It was early in the fall. Dinner was on the table, the girls’ favourite: spaghetti and meatballs. There were fresh cut flowers. But she was just gone. He called everywhere, but no one knew anything. He was about to file a missing persons report but then he found a letter saying how sorry she was. He hasn’t heard from her since. He told me.”
“What? She left just like that?”
“Bob says she had a past. It caught up to her.”
“Where’s she been all this time?”
“Away. On the road. Figuring things out. She told me Bob was the best thing that ever happened to her. He was good to her. But she wasn’t ready for anyone to be good to her. She needed some time to figure things out.”
“Three fucking years?”
“Don’t be angry with her.”
“Really?”
“She’s a decent person, Daniel. Bad things happen to decent people. Elsie, she’s put herself through rehab and counselling, and done an awful lot of soul-searching.”
“How can you be defending her?”
“Because,” Karen whispered, “she’s what they need.”
“She’s what who needs?”
“Zephyr and Sky, the girls. They need a mom.” Her lips were trembling. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “They need their mom.”
“Oh. Karen.” If I could’ve reached through the computer screen, I would’ve held her. “I’m so sorry.” All I could do was cradle my laptop in my arms. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah. You’d be too, if you met her.”
I tried to imagine the kind of woman who’d leave her loving husband and small children. I tried to imagine the kind of woman who’d come back.
“You should see Bob,” Karen said. “He’s a mess. He’s worse than me. The girls have no idea. We haven’t told them yet. I spotted her once, across the schoolyard watching them. But she’s been keeping her distance. She’s been really respectful. Elsie said it herself, they probably wouldn’t even recognize her if they did meet her.”
“And what does Bob think of this?”
“A lot of things. For a while, he wasn’t even ready to meet her. He’s having a hard time saying what he feels. He’s like Liam that way.”
“So how does he feel?”
“He says he doesn’t know. But I know he wants to get back together with her. I know he wants her back. He won’t admit it yet, not even to himself. But I can see it. I watch him when he sleeps. I can see it in his face.”
“You know this?”
Karen nodded. “Did I ever tell you, Gracie used to be her dog?”
I shook my head.
“Elsie really wanted a puppy. She picked her out from the litter.”
“Didn’t he save that dog’s life?”
“He did, two years ago. Bob says it was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. He and the girls were in the back-country. Somehow a bear cub ended up in their campsite. Of course, mama bear was right behind it. He got Zephyr and Sky into the canoe first. By then the mama bear had Gracie pinned down; she was also on top of the pack with the bear spray. Bob went back and fought her off with a paddle. But then she turned and charged. He says he remembers seeing his own blood in that bear’s teeth. He finally got his hands on the bear spray. After that, Zephyr was the one who called 911. He had to get forty stitches in his head and arm.”
“Oh my god.”
“The girls saw it all happen right in front of them. He could’ve died. But Gracie’s alive because of it.”
“Shit.”
“That family, they’ve been through a lot.”
“What happened to the bear?”
“She and the cub took off. She was just protecting her baby. That’s what mama bears do.”
Obviously, I thought to myself, not all mothers were mama bears. “What,” I asked, “are you going to do?”
Karen looked away, her eyes wide open. “The right thing.”
“Fuck.”
“You’re telling me.” The tears were coming again, and she wiped at her cheeks with the back of one hand. “And I thought I’d finally found him, y’know?” She shook her head. “For a moment there, I thought I’d finally found my guy.”
“Karen, you deserve better than this. You deserve so much. You d
eserve the world.”
“I do, don’t I?” Karen said, laughing. “Look, after this, I’m not so sure I can stay on the Island anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t be here. Not with Liam and Bob here, not seeing the girls at the Centre every day. I can’t be here. Elsie’s asked me to stay, but I can’t.”
“Okay.”
“I think I might go north.”
“Why north?”
“It won’t be right away. I’ll finish out my year. But there are a lot of teaching gigs up north. They need teachers.”
“Your old schoolmate Derrick, wasn’t he from North Bay?”
“Yeah. But I was thinking, farther north.”
Something in Karen’s tone alerted me. “How much farther?”
“I have a friend who works in Fort Albany. I thought I could start looking around there. Maybe Nunavut.”
I straightened. “Nunavut?”
“Hey, world.” Karen’s eyes sparkled. “Here I come.”
I wanted to protest. I wanted to shout. Why couldn’t Karen move back to Toronto? Why did she have to move so far away?
“Or,” Karen said, “I could try moving back to Toronto maybe. I don’t know. Daniel, what do you think?”
“Come to Toronto.” I drew a shaky breath. “Karen, come to Toronto. You know this city. You have friends here, you have family. You’ll be close to Anne. There’s so much we can do here. It won’t be like the way it was before, but we can make it work. You told me once we’ve barely scratched the surface of this ridiculous city. Karen, come back to Toronto. You have every reason to come back.”
I was standing on my feet, holding my laptop in my hands. I had no idea how much I’d missed Karen until this moment. My heart was pounding in my chest. “Karen Fobister?”
“Yes?”
“I’m your guy. I’ll always be your guy.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah. I promise.”
On the last day of October, crowded into a booth at Sneaky Dee’s, Pat, Nadia, Luke, Ai Chang and I ordered another pitcher and a second plate of nachos with extra guac on the side. Tegan and Sara’s newest album played on the sound system: off-kilter, grief-stricken and dark. Anne had introduced it to David who had introduced it to me. There were moments when the twins sounded out of tune.
“Ma thinks,” Luke said, “there’s a Sicilian curse on our family.”
“Your ma,” Ai Chang said, “thinks you’ll be cursed if a broom touches you.”
“Your ma believes in curses?” Nadia asked.
“They say if someone’s sweeping and they brush your feet,” Luke said, picking at a jalapeño pepper, “you’ll stay single the rest of your life. But that’s only if you’re already single.”
Pat put down his beer. “Who says that?”
“Italians.” Luke tossed invisible pizza dough in the air. “Hey, we have a lot of superstitions about sex and love.”
“So what’s this family curse?” I asked.
“That every man she marries will drop dead,” Ai Chang said.
Pat’s eyes widened. “Whoa.”
“But she just got married again,” Nadia said, “to her fourth husband.”
“Yes she did,” Luke said, “and now it’s been five months, and she’s starting to get worried.”
“Why would she marry someone,” I asked, “if she really believed that marrying them was going to kill them?”
“Hold on, look,” Pat said. “Everyone’s going to drop dead at some point. That’s life. Each one of us is going to die one day. Did you guys ever think about that?”
“Yeah.” Ai Chang made a face and regarded him sidelong. “Sure. I think about that all the time.”
Pat jabbed the tabletop. “The point is, life is short. We make the best of what we have in the time that we’ve got. I figure, Luke, that’s what your ma is doing.”
“Does Nicoli know about the curse?” Nadia asked.
“Yeah,” Ai Chang said, “did she even tell him?”
“Oh, he knows about the curse, alright,” Luke said. “You might even say he’s the one who’s responsible.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “You’re all talking like this is real.”
“My grandmother,” Luke said, “was advised by a high-ranking Church official to take a vow of silence to break the curse.”
Ai Chang turned to Luke. “But your nonna, I’ve heard her talk.”
”Yeah, but did you notice it’s only after sundown? Except she thinks the family’s cursed because she had a child out of wedlock with a Canadian soldier. She blames herself for a mortar shell blowing up the old parish priest. She also blames herself for her first daughter running off with a mago and for her second daughter being a lesbian.”
“A what?” I asked.
“Oh, Dan,” Pat said, “that’s when a woman does, you know.” Surreptitiously, he wagged his tongue at me between two fingers.
“A mago,” Luke said, “is a male witch. Except at the time, he was in disguise, and Ma thought she was eloping with a Romani prince.”
Nadia rested her arms on the table. “A prince?”
Luke looked us all in the eye. “This boy comes through the village and claims his father’s king of the gypsies. He’s dark and handsome. All the girls swoon over him, but it’s Ma’s hand he asks for in marriage. Of course, nonna and nonno don’t approve of this at all. But Ma’s smitten and she runs off with this guy on the night of the full moon. So then Nicoli Badalamenti, who’s passionately in love with her, chases after the two, riding on horseback for three days and three nights. Except by the time he catches up to them, some ceremony’s already been performed. Nicoli challenges the outcome and defeats the mago in a kind of ritual contest. After that, the union’s reversed.” Luke leaned forward and whispered: “But it led to the curse. Henceforth any marriage in their families would be followed by death.”
“Harsh,” Ai Chang said.
“Totally,” Pat said.
I looked at the others. “Seriously?”
“That’s why Ma left Sicily,” Luke said. “She thought that by crossing an ocean she could escape the curse.” He shook his head.
“And you believe all this?”
“Hey.” Luke shrugged. “I just heard all this from my eighty-four-year-old Sicilian grandfather who’s half-blind and half-deaf.” The fresh pitcher arrived and he refilled all our glasses. “Nonno always liked to tell a good tale. You can believe it if you want. He’s also hinted there’s stolen Nazi gold buried some place on the farm. But that, my handsome little devils and wicked angels, is a whole ‘nother story.”
A while back, we’d all agreed to show up at Sneaky Dee’s tonight either as a devil or an angel. It was fun to see what costumes people assembled. The plan was to head out later to the Halloween block party on Church Street.
“Is your whole family Catholic?” Nadia asked.
“Absolutely,” Luke said. “We’re Sicilian. Except the De Luca family, we’ve always had a bit of a shady reputation.” He winked at her. “If y’know what I mean.”
“So it seems,” Nadia said.
Luke raised his glass. “Salute! Happy Halloween.”
We all toasted, mindful of our plastic pitchforks, haloes and tails. I thought of Michele Moretti who’d died of a heart attack, and Tony Gallucci who’d died of a drug overdose. Neither Luke nor David ever had a chance to get to know their fathers. At least Pat, Liam and I got to know ours.
“Maybe,” Nadia said, “this mago meant ‘the little death.’”
“What’s that?” Ai Chang asked.
Nadia sipped from her pint. “La petite mort. That brief feeling of melancholy or euphoria you experience after an orgasm, a sense of loss or transcendence.”
“Holy shit,” Pat said. “I get that all the time.”
Luke turned to Nadia. “The little death?”
“She means,” Ai Chang said, “the afterglow.”
“These kinds of foretel
lings,” Nadia said, “needn’t always be taken literally.”
Ai Chang leaned into Luke. “La petite mort, signore. Perhaps that is the curse that has haunted your famiglia all these years.”
‘What, that we have a lot of sex?” Luke said.
Then Ai Chang spoke into his ear in rapid-fire Italian, ending with something that sounded like a question, and Luke Moretti actually blushed. Ai Chang sat back and smiled, while he downed half his pint.
“You’re not going to share that with us,” I said, “are you?”
Ai Chang shook her head.
“Something’s different about you,” Pat said. “Did you do something? Your face looks different.”
“She finally got her braces off,” Luke said, knuckling the foam from his lips. “Show them.” Now it was Ai Chang’s turn to blush.
Pat knocked his glass against mine. “Well, on Thanksgiving, our grandpa announced he and his lady friend Betty are getting engaged.”
“Your grandpa?” Ai Chang said.
“They’ve been dating over two years. He says at their age there’s no time to waste; who knows when you might keel over and kick the bucket.”
“He said that?” Nadia asked.
“His exact words.”
“Good for him,” Luke said. “There’s never time to waste. Like I always say, ya gotta grab life by the balls.”
“You should meet him,” Pat said to Nadia. “Maybe you can come up to Sudbury for Christmas.”
Nadia glanced at me. “I’ll think about it.”
Luke raised his pint. “Here’s to great sex, and a whole goddamn lifetime of little deaths.”
We all knocked glasses.
“Hey, I have another announcement,” Pat said, wrapping his arm around Nadia. “Three Dog Run has found a new manager.” I looked at Nadia in surprise. But Pat continued: “His name’s Marcus Wittenbrink Jr. He’s the guy who helped us cut our first demo tape. He’s super connected and totally cool. Right now, he’s on tour out west, but when he comes back we are kicking into high gear. Dan here knows him, don’t you, Dan?”
All eyes turned toward me.
“Daniel?” Luke said.
“Who’s Marcus?” Ai Chang asked.
“Oh.” I stared at her. Then I stared at Pat. “Just my ex-boyfriend.”
Tales from the Bottom of My Sole Page 28