by Leesa Dean
“I’ve never had anaesthesia,” Vic says. “What’s it like?”
“Oh God,” Erika groans, remembering her first time. “It can really fuck you up. We might have to take a taxi home. Some people can’t even walk afterwards. The first time I got put under, I didn’t even know what I was anymore.”
“You didn’t know what you were?”
“Nope. I was totally out of my mind. I felt like a thing, an object. I completely lost my sense of self.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“It’s not so bad. Anthropologically, it’s quite interesting. I know a girl who argued with a fire hydrant after she got her tonsils out.”
Vic orders another drink. “Maybe I could fist-fight a cloud.”
“Ooh,” Erika says. “Living on the edge!” She orders another drink as well, but asks for a tequila and soda.
The night before, trolling photos on Facebook, Erika had been furious. How easily Vic made the decision to not call, to banish her to that place where single people go when their friends have babies. She considered texting in the middle of the night, something like Just kidding about tomorrow. Fuck off. She considered standing him up so he’d sit at the bar alone and remember what loneliness felt like.
Erika drinks her tequila and soda fast, not caring that she’s ruining her chances of actually finishing her blog post after she leaves Vic. That restaurant, her blog, she suddenly realizes—neither actually matter. She could say anything and it would mean nothing either way.
“I’m sorry we haven’t seen each other lately,” Vic says.
Erika finishes her drink and orders another one. While Moira cuts a slice of lime, Erika studies her best friend. He’s changed so much over the years, but she wonders if she’s changed at all. When he looks at her, does he still see twentysomething Erika? The same girl who hated doing dishes and slept with too many bartenders? Possibly. Most of the time, she still feels like she’s twenty-two.
“You ditched me,” she says once Moira moves onto other customers. “I never in a million years thought that you, of all people, would ditch me.”
“That’s not—” he begins to say, stopping before true because he knows she’s right. He tentatively reaches an arm across her shoulders. His arms, she notices, have lost the pudgy layer she used to find so comforting. She imagines him picking up Lou, the blue-eyed child she hasn’t seen in so long, bouncing him toward the ceiling the way fathers do. Just last week, Lou took his first supported steps. Before long, he’d be walking. She only knew these things from the internet.
“You’re my best friend,” Vic says.
Erika leans against him and closes her eyes. So many times he’s had his arm around her—summers at Parc Jean-Drapeau where their favourite bands played while fireworks lit up the sky, times they drank too much and needed each other to walk, and the day Erika didn’t get a job she really, really wanted. Vic had taken the afternoon off work so he’d be there to celebrate when the call came—they were both certain Erika would get the position. She had freelance experience. She knew the magazine’s editor. The job opening came at a time when Montreal had begun to seem unsustainable but neither she nor Vic wanted to leave. The only jobs available to them as anglophones were telemarketing, handing out promotional flyers, correcting film subtitles, or delivering drugs by bicycle in the McGill ghetto. “This is it,” she told Vic. “It’s my turn for a big break.”
When the phone rang, Erika straightened her skirt, as if the person on the phone would be able to see her. “I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It was a very close competition.” Vic held Erika for hours while she cried—his arm must have fallen asleep. Text messages kept arriving, announcing themselves with a buzz, but he didn’t even look. Not until Erika stopped crying. The next day, Vic woke Erika up and said it was time for them to go back to Toronto. “I don’t want to live in a place where people are too stupid to hire the smartest girl in town,” he said.
“Vic,” Erika says, recognizing the current of alcohol in her words. “We’re drifting. I can’t go another six months without you. Promise we’ll never do this again.”
She nuzzles closer to him and feels him tense.
“I have to tell you something,” he says.
It takes Vic a moment to collect his thoughts. While she waits, Erika thinks about their second year of intense friendship. They’d become roommates by that point, inseparable. One night after dinner, he said those same words: I have to tell you something. She’d been standing at the ironing board, smoothing the wrinkles out of her waitressing uniform. “Sit,” Vic had said, motioning to a spot beside him on the sofa. He took a deep breath and said, “I’d like to be your boyfriend.” She didn’t say anything as he slid a piece of paper across the table—a list of reasons why she should give him a chance. Most of them she already knew: good cook, not a broke-ass bum, knows how to fix a limited array of things but would be willing to expand that skill set. Some of them were one of a kind, like his knowledge of Morse code, which he swore might come in handy, maybe, if they were ever to be marooned together. The last reason is the one she comes back to constantly—I WOULD WRITE YOU THE BEST LOVE SONGS.
At the time, a relationship with Vic wasn’t what she wanted. She loved him as a friend, but her body didn’t long for him. The idea of them in bed together just seemed wrong, and the idea of potentially ruining their friendship by trying didn’t seem worth the trouble. How did she even respond to him? She couldn’t remember.
Over the years, he’d cooked for her anyway. Shared living costs, fixed her computer, taught her a thing or two in Morse code when they had nothing better to do. And he did write her a few love songs, mostly on summer nights when they dragged the futon mattress to the deck because it was too hot to sleep. He weaved tales of her skill in tackling moth infestations, how she only sang Elvis in the shower, how beautiful she looked in her nightgown and moccasins. Once, watching him strum a song that existed just for her, only in that moment, she almost kissed him.
“There’s a reason I haven’t been in touch,” Vic tells her. “It has to do with Marie-Eve. She thinks there’s something going on between us.”
Erika tries to imagine being with Vic, their mouths against each other, lying in bed together. Now it doesn’t seem so unfathomable.
“It’s kind of a bad situation,” Vic continues. “Just before Christmas, she found a note I wrote you and got really upset. It was an old note. One I never gave you. I guess I used it as a bookmark.”
She wonders if it’s the same note he’d slid across the table all those years ago—no. He said it’s one he never gave her. She would give anything to know what he’d written.
“Did you tell her that?”
“I did.”
“But she wasn’t willing to listen. Didn’t want to trust you.”
“No,” Vic says. “But I think enough time has passed that we can start seeing each other again. Or at least by the time we get back from New Brunswick.”
Listen to this guy, she thinks. There’s an expression for this kind of behaviour—pussy-whipped. “Oh, that’s great,” she says. “I’ll just put my life on hold until you and Marie-Eve get your shit together.” She checks her watch to avoid Vic’s crestfallen face. “Looks like you’re going to be late for the dentist if we don’t leave now.”
“I’m sorry,” Vic says.
“I just wish you’d stand up for what you believe. That’s what you used to do.”
Vic finishes the last of his pint and they walk out of the bar together, into the cold afternoon sun. It had been Ontario’s harshest winter in over a hundred years, and by January, Lake Superior had begun to freeze over. Erika checked the Weather Network every day, obsessed by the eerie satellite images of ice meeting the waves, until the entire lake froze over in February.
“What’s she putting in the garden?” Erika asks Vic to fill the silence.
“All kinds of stuff. Beans, kale, carrots, beets, some lettuce. Not arugula, though. It never works. We
’ve tried, but it’s always gone to seed by the time we arrive.”
In the beginning, Vic hadn’t been sure about Marie-Eve. Erika was the one who convinced him to give her a chance. Even after they moved in together, Vic asked Erika to meet him at the Ship one night after Marie-Eve went to bed. He’d already been drinking. “I’m still not sure,” he’d told Erika. “It’s been three years. Shouldn’t I know by now if she’s the one?”
“Live with her a few more months,” Erika had suggested. “If it’s not working, leave. But you need to try.”
“Do you love her?” Erika asks.
Vic stops walking and looks at her, squinting from the bright afternoon sun streaming through the web of streetcar wires overhead. We really are drifting, she thinks. I can’t read his face at all anymore.
“Are you serious?”
Erika looks away. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes,” he finally says. “Of course I love her.”
THEY ARRIVE AT the dentist’s office five minutes late. In the waiting room, a girl draws fake tattoos on her arm with a blue pen. “I want a snake,” she tells her mother. “A snake and a rose.”
“When you’re sixteen,” the mother says.
Erika hasn’t been to the dentist since grad school—freelancing and short-term contracts mean no insurance. She runs her tongue over her teeth and wonders how much it would cost to get them cleaned. Vic stands beside her, asking the receptionist questions, and it occurs to Erika that she’s never brought someone to the dentist before. This is how most people live, she realizes. They have partners.
“You’re only getting a mould today,” she hears the receptionist tell Vic.
“What do you mean?” he asks, bewildered.
“No anaesthesia. Not until the next appointment. It’s a two-part process.”
Vic looks at Erika and laughs. “So I can leave by myself after the appointment?”
The receptionist shoots him a quizzical look. “Of course.”
Erika knows Vic expects her to leave, but she stays with him anyways. She looks over his shoulder as he scrolls through pictures on his phone and notices most of them are of his family—Lou and Marie-Eve at Cherry Beach, Marie-Eve cross-country skiing with Lou on her back. There’s a candid shot of Vic passed out on the couch with Lou, mouth hanging open, head turned to the side while Lou stares into the camera, wide awake. With each photo, a growing certainty instills itself in Erika. I want this, she suddenly realizes. I want that kind of life.
Before long, the dentist calls Vic’s name. He gives Erika a quick kiss on the cheek before leaving and says “Thank you.” She watches him take his winter coat and head down the corridor to where the dentist will map the contours of his mouth in order to fix whatever damage needs fixing. Instead of going home, Erika remains seated in the waiting room. The teenager with the pen tattoo is called and the mother leaves, asking her daughter to text when she’s done. Now Erika is alone with the receptionist who makes reminder phone calls to the next day’s patients. When she’s done, she smiles at Erika.
“Your husband won’t be much longer,” she says.
“Thank you,” Erika responds, not bothering to correct the receptionist.
“He’s a very kind man, your husband. Every time he comes for an appointment, he makes people laugh.”
It’s true, Erika thinks. Even in Montreal, he had the world laughing—friends, colleagues, random store clerks, even the ones who didn’t speak much English. People love Vic, Erika realizes. Everybody loves him.
“Fifteen years ago,” Erika explains to the receptionist, “he told me I should date him because he knows Morse code. Can you believe it? What a proposition.”
The receptionist laughs, and before long, the two women are having a full-on conversation about their beloved husbands—where they work, how they met, which of their habits drive them crazy, and how they plan to spend their summer vacations. This is absurd, Erika thinks. I shouldn’t be doing this. But as she speaks, she feels something. This could’ve been my life, she realizes. He’s loved me longer than Marie-Eve.
“We’re going to New Brunswick in July,” Erika tells the receptionist, amazed at how easily she can envision their garden, thriving and wild, the arugula blowing seeds into the wind. “We go every summer.”
“Do you have any children?” the receptionist asks.
“Not yet,” Erika says. She hesitates and then goes for it. “But I’m expecting.”
“Oh!” the receptionist cries. “I thought you might be, but it’s so rude to ask! It’s your first? You must be over the moon!”
Erika starts to respond but the tears come before she can finish the sentence. She sits in the empty waiting room with her hands over her face, feeling the mascara run.
“Oh,” the receptionist says, changing her tone. She takes off her headset and abandons her post so she can comfort Erika, mother to mother. She puts her arms around Erika and gives her the small hug of a kind stranger. “Having a baby is overwhelming,” she says. “You are going to experience so many emotions over the next few months, but you’ll get through it. And you’re so lucky to have a wonderful husband who will be with you every step of the way,” she says, motioning to Vic who has now arrived back in the waiting room.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
CHELSEA STOOD AT HER WINDOW, watching the city’s colours change. The sky was all gunmetal clouds, a bruised aura over the horizon. Out front, a river of rain charged over a storm grate and flooded Almon Street. Everything in Halifax was at a standstill—stores had closed early, airlines cancelled flights, and everyone stayed inside, watching the drama unfold through rain-streaked windows.
The downpour reminded her of Mexico, the night she and Marco trekked through the jungle, lashing at vines, Chelsea a nervous wreck with all the glowing eyes and rustling trees. It was Marco’s idea to sneak into the Palenque ruins. At dawn, before tourists flooded the site, they’d watch the sun rise through a film of early morning fog. As soon as they arrived, though, rain started to fall hard and fast. They dashed through the ruins and took shelter in the nearest temple. “Ha!” Marco laughed, wringing the water from his shirt. “Los dioses son muy divertidos!” The plaque over the door said TEMPLE OF THE SUN.
He would have been excited about Hurricane Juan. Chelsea imagined him swinging her around the apartment in a kind of rain dance, chanting, “La tormenta! La tormenta!” If only he were there instead of down south, working on a cargo ship. “Just a little longer,” he told Chelsea each time the contract was extended. She couldn’t exactly say no. They needed the money.
Three weeks had passed since his last call, which came from a noisy café in a Colombian port town. “Mi estrella,” Marco said, mouth close to the receiver. “Eres mi media naranja—you are the other half of my orange.” She knew what he meant, but she felt like the forgotten half, dried and shrivelled on the counter. Since July, she’d been waiting. It was almost October. The week before, when she’d gone to her doctor’s appointment alone, the grainy ultrasound showed everything—fingers and toes, the shape of the face. Every time Marco called she wanted to tell him the news, but there was always too much noise in the background. Eventually, she decided to wait and tell him in person. That way, there would be no mistaking his reaction.
FROM THE THIRD-FLOOR window, Patrick surveyed the graveyard of broken umbrellas on Almon Street. Crows, he thought. Dead crows with metal bones. Debris floated over the storm gutters—waterlogged shopping bags, mulched leaves, a wind chime from someone’s porch. The whole city had shut down for Hurricane Juan, which led Orchestrata, Patrick’s favourite band from LA, to cancel their show. At that exact moment, Patrick was supposed to be projecting his art, specifically designed for Orchestrata’s new album using an elaborate system of colour-sound agreements, onto a space right in front of Gleb Templeton, the band’s singer. Instead, he was trapped inside, held hostage by the storm like everyone else in Halifax.
Just before midnight,
the city’s north end lost power. Patrick lit a candle, a vigil for his lost opportunity. A marmalade glow emanated from the wick. He heard the second-floor neighbour banging open cupboards and visualized her face, often marked by a bewildered expression. Using the candle, he lit a cigarette and watched the exhale rise toward the ceiling. If his mother knew he was smoking inside, she’d be so mad. He promised he wouldn’t, not ever, but certain circumstances called for bending the rules.
Out in the street, a patio chair flew into a parked car. Patrick felt a rush of excitement. That’d be on the tape. He was recording the storm for Das Wetter, a project he’d been working on since the spring. In the front yard, wind hammered at an oak tree. Eventually, the roots began to lift under the sidewalk. The sound it made! Splitting concrete, the tear of roots and earth! Patrick barely had time to move before the trunk crashed against the house, sending a branch straight through his window. He shielded his face as the glass exploded into his living room. The storm howled through, soaking everything in its path, including the artwork he’d created for Orchestrata.
Patrick navigated the glass minefield to gather the wet prints. He carried them to the hallway where he laid each one flat, lamenting the blurred lines and ruined colours. The phone rang, but he didn’t bother answering. Soon after, he heard the back door slam on the ground floor—his mother would be up the fire escape in less than a minute. He put on his shoes and ran outside, taking two steps at a time. When their paths intercepted, his mother stared at him, face marked with worry.
“What?” he asked.
She touched the side of his face and held out her hand—blood.
LOUISE STOOD IN front of her son, shining a flashlight on his lacerated face. “Patrick!” she cried, reaching to touch the dark-red stream coming from his forehead. He dodged her hand. The tree hit him, she thought. He might have a concussion. A brain injury. He might hemorrhage in the night.
“I’m fine,” Patrick muttered. “It’s just a cut from the glass.”