Said friends stood around the table like soldiers awaiting orders. One of my old high school classmates held up a foil pan. “I brought lasagna. Your mom said it was your favourite.”
I nodded, too embarrassed to fake a smile. I couldn’t even cheer myself up by thinking what a funny story this would make to tell Kevin later. I hadn’t told him many details about my past, but one only needed to spend a day or two around Mom to realize she lacked basic social skills and all sense of propriety. Though Kevin wouldn’t have admitted it, I was pretty certain he wondered sometimes how he’d ended up with a girlfriend with such a nutty family. At least, thank god, it looked as though my mother hadn’t invited Kevin’s parents to the party.
Mom was rooting through a cardboard box from home that she’d apparently snuck in earlier. She lifted up her coffee maker trium-phantly. “Excuse me,” she said, accosting a passing employee. “Do you have an extension cord? I need to plug my coffee maker in.”
He looked at her blankly. “Coffee maker?”
“Yes. For the birthday party?” she answered, as if he were slow. “The birthday girl is right over there. Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Um, I guess so,” the kid said awkwardly.
While he went off, presumably in search of the requested item, Mom continued unpacking. Out came paper napkins, utensils, salad tongs, a homemade cheesecake. “Oh, darn it, I forgot the knife,” she muttered. “I wonder if . . .”
“They might have one here? I don’t think so,” I said sharply.
“It’s probably in the car. I’ll be right back,” Mom said in a singsong voice, oblivious to my pain.
By this time, a crowd was forming, peering through the trees at where we were sitting. When Mom returned, she brought a whiff of pot smoke with her. I cringed.
“Mom,” I hissed. “You’re stoned.”
“Oh, honey, don’t be so proper. I’m celebrating! It’s your birthday, after all.”
“Birthday party,” I corrected, once again at a loss for words. “My birthday was six days ago.”
She put her arm around me and looked at the table happily. By this time, my friends had succumbed to the weirdness and were gamely loading up their plates with lasagna and wilted Caesar salad. I prayed for them to eat quickly.
“Isn’t this wonderful? It’s just like when you were a little kid.”
“How so?” I asked, genuinely confused.
She gestured at the fake Christmas trees surrounding us, some of them nude and some fully decorated. “The trees, of course! It’s like we’re in the middle of the forest!”
I looked at her blankly, but she was busy pulling a bottle of wine from the paper bag in her purse. She unscrewed the cap and started pouring wine out for my friends.
“Mom!” I whispered furiously. “We can’t have that here.”
“Oh, bother,” she responded, waving her hand dismissively. “I’m sure they won’t mind.”
I threw mine back in two gulps, and she refilled it. Right on cue, an employee came bustling over to us.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no way we can allow you to have alcohol here, ma’am. I’ll have to ask all of you to empty your glasses.”
Chastened, we dutifully dumped our glasses into an empty plant pot, while our audience of shoppers exchanged knowing glances. And then, to my utter dismay, I saw a familiar face making its way through the crowd toward our table.
“Goodness me, sorry I’m so late. I think your mother sent me to the wrong garden centre across town . . . Never mind, I see the festivities are well under way. Happy birthday, dear.”
I blanched. Dressed in trousers and a jaunty scarf, smiling broadly before me, was Kevin’s mother.
All at once, my embarrassment was replaced by anger. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to orchestrate my life to look normal, because my mother would always ruin it for me. Every time her world collided with that of anyone else in my life, disaster struck. Memories ticked through my mind: Mom coming to the door to greet a kindergarten friend, topless with a joint in her hand. Mom pressing a note into my hand that asked my father, whom I was going to meet in California for the first time in my memory, to send me home with a form of birth control that wasn’t available in Canada. Mom offering a fourteen-year-old friend of mine vodka at our house party, then telling her it was high time she lost her virginity. Mom landing on my doorstep in the middle of dinner with Jason’s parents, crying over a fight with Sam. And then the worst—a Christmas Day in high school. After spending the morning with Mom, I’d gone over to celebrate with Jason’s family. As we were eating dinner, the doorbell rang, and there stood my mother. I cringed at her showing up uninvited, but Jason’s parents graciously invited her in. She then proceeded to give each family member stoned descriptions of each of their astrological signs, and then, horror of horrors, asked my boyfriend’s sister if she was into pot. “I just wanted to connect with you,” she said to me, when I exploded at her later.
I pulled out a chair for Kevin’s mother and sat down beside her. “Thank you for coming. My mother . . . she has some very creative ideas when it comes to parties. You should have seen my sixth birthday,” I added with forced cheer.
She smiled back at me. “Indeed. Well, good for her. The world needs more creative types.”
Mom bustled over. “I’m so glad you made it!” she said, giving Kevin’s mother a hug. I prayed she didn’t know what pot smoke smelled like. “Isn’t this just the best party—?”
“Mom,” I interrupted, eager to separate them. “Maybe we could do the cake now?”
“Oh, yes, the cake . . .”
She flitted off to find some matches, and then there was the “Happy Birthday to You” song to be gotten through and the candles to be blown out. My friends provided scattered applause. I wolfed down my cake, thankful this would soon be over.
“Well, this has been nice,” I said when I had finished, standing. “But we should really—”
“Honey, I have one last surprise for you,” Mom said excitedly, and I tried not to cry. “I’m just going to have to blindfold you for a minute.”
There was no point in resisting. I let her tie a scarf around my eyes and take my hand.
“You’re going to love this,” she promised, leading me through the store to god knows where.
I could picture Kevin’s mother and my friends trailing behind me, a store full of shoppers exchanging confused glances.
“Here,” she said finally, stopping. “Are you ready?”
“Mm.”
My hand was placed on something warm and furry. What the hell?
Mom whipped off my blindfold just as her camera flashed in my face. I stared. Before me was a nativity set-up, complete with hay bales, fake wise men and a plastic baby Jesus in the cradle. The difference was that this one had several live animals, including the goat who was currently nuzzling his nose into my crotch. A Christmas-themed petting zoo.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mom said, clapping her hands gleefully. “Real animals. Just like when you were little. Remember, sweetie? How you used to love chasing the rabbits and deer?”
As I looked at her hopeful face, my humiliation morphed once again into a crawling guilt. Why couldn’t I just accept my mother for who she was? She truly thought she was connecting with me by trying to bring me back to my childhood. She didn’t have a decent home to hold a party in, even if she’d wanted to—she still lived at Spruce Acres, a.k.a. hard-luck central for crackheads and former wilderness dwellers. In two weeks, I would return to my life in Europe, and god only knew when we’d even see each other again.
Kevin’s mother moved to my side and placed her hand on my arm. “Isn’t this lovely,” she said quietly. “What a wonderful idea, Michelle.”
I patted her hand gratefully. At least I had her and all her normalcy. And Kevin, of course. They were both willing to accept my crazy mother, and neither of them pried into my past. Kevin was talking a lot about marriage lately. He was a sensible choice for me, I knew,
a healthy choice. He reminded me a bit of Mike the bachelor—a good, decent man. And though I wasn’t exactly sure if Kevin was right for me, I couldn’t think of a single reason he was wrong for me.
Chapter 16
2008
Vancouver
On my first night in my new home, I sat on the sofa with boxes piled around me, feeling nothing less than ecstatic. The constant suffocation, the urge to hide my truth and the certainty that I was failing at everything I tried to do was lifting, just as surely as fog being burned off by the sun. For the first time in nearly a decade, I felt happiness was no longer an impossibility. I reflected on how complex leaving an unhealthy relationship was, with its many reverberations and expected losses, and yet how it also resulted in such relief. The only issues to deal with now were my own—which, admittedly, were still plenty.
I gazed at Avery sleeping peacefully in the new bed I’d bought him at IKEA. I couldn’t afford it, of course, but I was certain my ship would come in soon. Yesterday Arnold had sent my manuscript out to twelve editors. I’d scanned down his email to the list of publishers to which he’d submitted: Random House, Doubleday, HarperCollins, Penguin, Scribner—my dream list. At least one of them would love it. All I had to do was stretch my money to last until the book was bought and the first book advance payment came in. I figured if I was careful, I should be able to make ends meet, but just for insurance, I let my local modelling agency know I was open to taking bookings. There wasn’t much work in Vancouver for a more “mature” model of thirty-eight, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
I spent the next few weeks distracting myself by setting up my new home and touring playgrounds with Avery. My days were an almost bipolar roller-coaster ride of his toddler emotions, forcing me to keep my own mood even. I thought about Mom, who’d never had the chance to be anything but a single parent. That wasn’t me; Avery’s father was involved in his life, so my child would never go hungry. Rather, I was a solo mother, caught in the in-between of going it alone and being relieved of my duties for half of every week. I never cried when I thought about Mom. Crying was my doorway into a black hole of fear, so instead I chose resentment. She hadn’t been the mother I needed, and then she had left me when I needed her most. It was so typical of her.
Each morning I opened my email with renewed hope, and day after day, I heard nothing from Arnold. I could have contacted him any time for an update, but I was afraid to. As I went to bed each night with no news, the flower of hope I’d harvested wilted a little more. I knew my chances of finding a publisher for my book were slipping away. A lump of fear took up residence in my stomach; it was so massive that I couldn’t smile, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I lost weight, obsessively checked the balance of my dwindling bank account and spent my nights tossing and turning.
And then, five weeks after Arnold had submitted my manuscript, I finally got an email from him. I could find a summary of his submission report attached, he wrote. He’d heard back from everyone, and they’d all passed. He was sorry it hadn’t worked out and wished me all the best in my future endeavours.
Terror swept through me. My rent was due in a week, and after I paid it, I would have less than six hundred dollars to my name.
One morning when I was nine years old and living in the Yukon with my grandparents, Papa Dick and I set out for town. It was so cold that my grandfather had decided even the sled dogs should stay inside the tipi. But we were desperate for supplies, and the weather hadn’t broken for days, so off we went. Dressed in five layers of clothing, I was so cold and my legs were so stiff I could barely walk across the frozen lake. About a quarter of the way across the lake, it started to snow. As it swirled around us in a thickening cloud, Papa Dick took my hand and began to lead me back home. My grandfather could handle anything, so if we were turning back, I knew it was serious. The snow was falling so heavily and the wind blowing so hard that I couldn’t see the shore anymore. And then Papa Dick’s hand slipped from mine. In an instant, he was swallowed by the whiteness. I called for him, but the howling wind whipped the words from my mouth. I walked forward and stopped, looking down at my footprints. They filled in immediately with snow. I stood still, uncertain which way to turn and as cold from fear as from the weather. The way I felt then was exactly the way I felt now. The difference was that then, I was almost certain of rescue.
And yet it all made sense to me. I’d always known this moment was coming, and in a strange way, it was almost a relief that it was finally here, because now I could stop worrying about it. My mind drifted back thirteen years, to a time in my life when my behaviour and morals had been at their lowest point. Karma will get me. Someday I will pay for this, I used to think.
Now that all seemed like a distant dream. I was as far from the person who’d acted that way as I was from the child of the wilderness I’d once been. All the same, it seemed that today, my payback had arrived.
1995
Cannes & Florence
Where am I? Here. I am here, right here.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, trying to orient myself. A hotel room, small but high-end; blue toile wallpaper; my clothing tossed across a desk at the end of the bed. An empty bottle of champagne sitting upright on the floor. And Kevin, my husband of two years, sleeping beside me.
Shit. I was in Cannes, France, for a modelling job. Kevin had flown in from Germany to join me last night, one of a series of desperate attempts he’d made over the past six months to save our marriage. What he didn’t know was that he’d already been replaced by someone else and tucked into my brain file of really annoying things I have to deal with soon. There was nothing about Kevin I didn’t loathe. That he brought me flowers and wrote me loving postcards just made me want to run farther away from him, though six months had passed, and I’d failed to do that.
I glanced at the clock beside my bed. It was five thirty, and my call time was six o’clock. I showered, shaved my legs and blow-dried my hair upside down. Flipping my head back, I admired my jutting hip bones in the mirror. The stress of leading a double life was good for my figure. A year ago, I’d had clients calling my bookers to complain about my hefty-ish thighs, and now I could barely eat enough to keep myself in a size two. One more day on this job, and then I was off to Cape Town for another catalogue, and then Paris. I’d never been busier.
The bathroom door was pushed open, and Kevin stood in front of me in a pair of boxer shorts. I automatically pulled the towel around myself.
“Hi,” I said, forcing a smile. “I have to get going. You going to do the tourist thing today? I should be done around four.”
“Sure.” His voice sounded funny.
“What’s up?” I asked, rubbing moisturizer on my face.
“Nothing. Hey, someone called while you were in the shower.”
“Oh. Someone from the photo team?”
“No.”
Nausea washed over me. No, it couldn’t be. Chris didn’t even know where I was right now. I’d lied and told him I had a job in some nondescript German burg, so he wouldn’t ask to join me here. And when it came to Kevin, I’d been excruciatingly careful to never reveal my affair. It simply wasn’t possible he’d found out.
“Well, who was it?”
“He said his name was Chris.”
“Chris?” I replied breezily. “That’s weird. I don’t know anyone named Chris.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Unless—oh, hey, it must have been my booker in Zurich. He probably has a job for me. Listen, I have to fly.” I pecked Kevin on the cheek and darted out of the bathroom to get dressed.
The morning was torture. Makeup, hair, two locations, four outfit changes. The famous view of Promenade de la Croisette stretched behind me as I slipped into my lifestyle-modelling persona: casually strolling down the street, checking something in my purse, glancing back over my shoulder at an unseen friend. Same standard-issue stuff I’d been doing for more than a decade.
The second I could get awa
y, I slipped into a phone booth and inserted my phone card. A minute later, I hung up the phone with shaking hands. Chris from my agency in Zurich had not called me. That meant that if my Chris actually had tracked me down, my secret was out to both him and Kevin. I felt almost giddy with nerves. Was this it? After half a year, was my double life about to come crashing down on me?
I lit a cigarette with shaking hands and dialled Chris’s number. The first six men I’d cheated on Kevin with had been flings, mostly drunken one-nighters. I’d justified them by telling myself that leaving Kevin would break his heart, that I wasn’t emotionally attached to these other men, that Kevin had brought it on himself. But then Chris came along; I met him at an Oktoberfest party and fell hard. I knew I had to leave Kevin, but I also knew that giving up the security and normalcy he represented to me would be like letting go of a life raft in a stormy sea. So instead I did the worst thing possible, playing both men as if they were my one and only.
“Yes?” Chris said into the phone, jerking me back to the present.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Baby!” he said happily, and I knew I was off the hook.
“You didn’t call me this morning, did you? At my hotel?”
“Me? No, why?”
“No reason. Just . . . missing you.”
Ten minutes later, I hung up the phone. I was relieved, but the question niggled at me: How had Kevin found out Chris’s name?
Even though Kevin had messed up, I had to admit that he hadn’t been the one to break our deal—I had. On the day he proposed to me, he’d taken me on a picnic near a remote lake and told me he’d brought me there in honour of my childhood. He wanted me to know I could trust him, that if I ever wanted to talk about it, he was there for me. I accepted his proposal and his custom-made engagement ring. The next day, the watch he’d given me a few months before stopped working. I took it off my wrist and shook it in frustration, knowing the timing was just a little too serendipitous. But that didn’t stop me from pushing stubbornly forward.
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