by Kate Hilton
Marla comes in with a chair, sets it down, and heads out again. “Melanie,” I say. “Why don’t you help Marla with the chairs?”
“Oh,” says Melanie. “Of course.” She practically runs out the door after Marla, and returns moments later with two chairs, one balanced over her shoulder.
“Thank you, dear,” says Marla, coming in behind Melanie. She arranges the four chairs in a circle, and we all take our seats.
“Mr. Crawford,” I say. “I understand from Councillor Wozniak that you have concerns about the development that weren’t raised at the public consultations. I look forward to hearing those concerns. But I wondered if you could help me understand why we are only learning about them now.”
“Everyone knows that public meetings are a sham,” says Jim. “Protests are one thing. There’s safety in numbers. But they use those meetings to collect information about dissidents. Before you know it, you’re on a watch list and being searched at the airport.”
“Jim has a lot of experience in these matters,” says Marla.
“Right,” I say. “Well, I’m happy to receive your valuable input personally, then.”
“As you know, Avery, this building—a home to artists for the past fifteen years—is being destroyed.”
My research indicates that the only artists working here up until four years ago, when the city refurbished the building, were teenaged kids with spray cans, but I nod. “The city recognizes the contribution that artists make to our community, Mr. Crawford. I can assure you that the preservation of studio space has been a foremost consideration in the design of the new complex.”
“Space, yes,” says Jim. “But what kind of space?”
“Clean, safe, well-ventilated, bright, rent-controlled space,” I say. “Space designed with reference to the highest international standards for artists’ studios.”
“Standards,” says Jim, using air quotes around the word, “are politically negotiated crumbs that self-serving overlords dole out to the ignorant public. Roger Wozniak understands that.”
“Are there other kinds of overlords?” I say, thinking, The only standards Roger Wozniak cares about are allowable emissions for SUVs.
“I beg your pardon?” says Jim.
“I understand that you have raised a specific issue about noise,” I say. “Can you tell me more about that?”
“Yes,” he says. “ArtCo, the Artists’ Cooperative Council, of which I am the president and Marla is the secretary, learned recently that our downstairs neighbour in the new building will be a women’s shelter.”
“That is correct,” I say.
“I’m a feminist, naturally,” says Jim. “So I wouldn’t want my comments to be taken out of context.”
“Naturally,” I say.
“We on the council were in favour of the idea of sharing space with abused women initially,” says Jim.
“That was also the mayor’s understanding,” I say.
“But now we learn that children will be living in the shelter as well. And so the situation is quite a different one from what was contemplated when we first discussed it.”
“It is quite normal for women escaping domestic violence to take their children with them,” I say.
“We understand that,” says Marla.
“I bloody well didn’t understand it,” says Jim. “People should say what they mean and mean what they say. This is sharp dealing.”
“I don’t think the mayor would appreciate that characterization of the negotiations,” I say.
“If the shoe fits,” says Jim.
“Mr. Crawford,” I say, “Our interest here, as it has been from the beginning of these discussions, is in finding a sensible solution that works for all the parties involved. The issue you now raise is one that frankly didn’t occur to anyone up until now. So we are trying to understand your objection and deal with it. There is no ulterior motive.”
“The mayor wants his big shiny legacy at any cost. I’d call that an ulterior motive,” says Jim Crawford.
Marla puts a hand on Jim’s knee. “Jim,” she says, “let’s remember the rent-controlled studios.”
“There’s no point in a rent-controlled studio if you can’t produce art in it,” he says.
“Hang on,” I say. “You obviously believe that you won’t be able to work with children downstairs. Why is that?”
“Do you have children, Avery?” asks Jim.
“No,” I say.
“Neither do I. And that is my choice. I choose to focus on my work without distraction. I should not be forced to cope with the consequences of other people’s choices in my own studio.”
I consider this a fair description of my own job: being forced to cope with the consequences of other people’s choices. And as I’m trying to find a diplomatic way to say this to Jim Crawford, Melanie raises her hand.
“You don’t need to raise your hand,” says Jim. “We believe in free and unfettered speech here.”
“I was wondering about the soundproofing measures in the building,” says Melanie. “Have we explored increasing the soundproofing? That might be a simple solution to the problem. Maybe we could recommend that to the mayor?” This last question is directed at me.
“Excellent! That’s the kind of action we need more of in politics,” says Jim. “Less talking, more doing.”
“Thank you for that suggestion, Melanie,” I say. “Mr. Crawford, you have my word that I’ll look into this issue and see what can be done to reassure you that the spaces in the new building will be at least as agreeable as the ones you have currently.”
“I prefer what she said,” says Jim.
“I understand,” I say. “But I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. Let me study the problem and I’ll get back to you with a proposal.”
“Mealy-mouthed double talk. I expected no better,” says Jim.
“Thank you for taking the time to see us,” I say. “We’ll be in touch as quickly as we can.”
Marla sees us out. She says, in a low voice, “The other artists here are looking forward to the new studios. We appreciate your efforts. It’s just that Jim can be a bit of a bully, you know. It’s always best to humour him.”
We climb into the car, and as soon as the door closes, Melanie says, “Did I say something wrong? Isn’t soundproofing a simple way to solve the problem?”
“It would be if it didn’t add between $500,000 and $800,000 to the cost of the build, and if I weren’t currently trying to cut $3 million from the total project cost.”
“Oh,” says Melanie.
“Melanie,” I say, “It’s great to have you, and I’m sure there are many useful things that you can contribute to our office. Shadowing me at meetings is a terrific way to learn. But that’s what I need to you to be: a shadow. Watch and learn. And please don’t make any suggestions unless you’ve cleared them with me first.”
“Got it,” she says. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I soften. Peter’s right. Melanie isn’t so bad. I should lighten up on her, I know.
“Don’t sweat it,” I say. “You’re learning.”
“I can’t wait to see Mayor Haines in action,” says Melanie. “He’s amazing.”
“He is,” I say. “But he’s also incredibly busy. I hope you won’t feel disappointed in your experience with us if you don’t have a lot of direct access to him. You’ll be working most closely with me and with members of my staff.”
Melanie looks surprised. “But Mayor Haines, I mean Peter, said that we’d have a chance to chat at the end of each day.”
My jaw tightens. “I’m sure he’d like to do that in theory,” I say. “He’s very supportive of young people. But the reality of his job is that he isn’t often in a position to spend that kind of time with one staff member, even with me. And I’m his chief of staff.” I place no emphasis on “chief of staff.” I congratulate myself for this.
“I totally get it,” says Melanie. “So should I mention
the soundproofing issue to Peter when I meet with him? Or is that something that you want to raise with him?”
God, I think. I want to punch Peter in the face. Not Melanie, really. It’s not her fault that she’s hopelessly young and inexperienced. In fairness to her, she’s much more focused than I was at her age. I was wandering around Europe, finding myself, yet another project that didn’t pan out as expected.
I feel myself aging in real time.
You are a mentor, I think. This is a teachable moment. “Let me ask you,” I say. “Given what you’ve learned today, how should we handle the situation?”
Melanie looks genuinely puzzled. “I think I should mention the soundproofing issue to Peter when I meet with him this afternoon,” she says.
“Right,” I say. And I crank up the volume on the radio, and drive.
{CHAPTER 8}
July and December 1997, and May 1989
The train station in Rome was a sweltering human stew, garnished with fashionable shoes and handbags. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find Tara and Jenny, and in the end they found me, tackling me in a clumsy group hug with backpacks.
“You’re here!” I said. I clung to them. It had been so long since I’d seen someone from home, and we had a whole precious month planned, two weeks in Italy and two in Greece. “What do you want to do first? Do you want me to take you to the hotel?”
“Please,” said Tara. “I’m dying to dump these bags.”
“Food,” said Jenny. “I’m starving.”
“There’s a spot you’ll love, right near the hotel,” I said.
“Lead on,” said Tara. “I need to keep moving or I’ll fall over. I barely slept on the plane.”
“Is it too early to start drinking?” said Jenny.
“Not in Italy,” I said.
“Picture!” said Tara.
“Now?” I asked. There were people everywhere, streaming past us on all sides.
“Yes,” said Tara. “Now.”
We asked another tourist to take the photo, and we returned the favour, and then we set off for the hotel. In six blocks, we almost died twice. A Fiat swerved at the last moment, and the driver swore at us. Five minutes later a moped did the same, but the driver raised the visor on his helmet and blew us a kiss. “That’s Italy for you,” I said.
Our room had three single, extremely hard, beds but it was cheap and convenient, and breakfast was included. It had a partial view of a courtyard festooned with laundry lines. I sprawled out on my bed while the others unpacked and filled me in on cultural and other developments from home.
“It works like this,” said Tara. “You give me the name of a celebrity.”
“Dead or alive?” I asked.
“Either,” said Tara.
“River Phoenix,” I said.
“River Phoenix was in The Mosquito Coast with Martha Plimpton, who was in Parenthood with Steve Martin, who was in Planes, Trains and Automobiles with Kevin Bacon.”
“Kevin Bacon was not in Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” I said. “That was Ethan’s favourite movie. I must have seen it twenty times.”
“He’s totally in it,” said Jenny. “He races Steve Martin for a taxi.”
“It’s an awesome drinking game,” said Tara.
“We’ll play it tonight,” I said.
“We need to do some wedding planning,” said Tara.
“Tonight?” I said.
“What have we been doing for the last six months?” said Jenny.
“Macro-level planning,” said Tara. “Now we move into the micro-level.”
“What’s the macro-level?” I asked.
“Date, venue, dress, guest list, menu, music,” said Tara.
“Bridesmaids,” said Jenny.
“Bridesmaids,” said Tara. “I have the best ones.” She grabbed each of us by the hand and squeezed.
“No crying!” said Jenny.
“Has there been a lot of that?” I asked.
“You could say,” said Jenny.
Tara laughed. “It’s true,” she said. “Everyone is so nice to you when you get married. It’s overwhelming. There’s so much love.”
Jenny and I exchanged a glance. “And what’s the micro-level?” I asked.
“Gift registry, invitations, cake, honeymoon,” said Tara, counting them off on her fingers.
“Sounds urgent,” I said. “We’d better get to it immediately.”
“Okay, fine,” said Tara. “Maybe it could wait until tomorrow.”
“Maybe you could take a few weeks off, and focus on honeymoon research,” I said. “Ethan would love Italy.”
“They’ve narrowed it down to the Caribbean,” said Jenny. “Europe is too cold after Christmas.”
“Thank goodness she has you,” I said. “I’m the weak link in the bridesmaid chain.”
“Laugh all you like,” said Tara. “You’ll see when you get married.”
“Not on the horizon,” I said.
“Not in this lifetime,” said Jenny.
“Don’t say that,” said Tara. “You can’t say that. You’ll meet the right person and you’ll change your mind. You guys are romantics at heart.”
“You’re projecting,” said Jenny.
“And you’re revisionist historians,” said Tara.
She wasn’t entirely wrong. We’d all been hopeless romantics at one time. What girls aren’t? We had gobbled down love stories all summer long, a new stack each week from the library in town. We loved Jo March and her Friedrich, and Anne Shirley and her Gilbert. And we were fascinated, most of all, by our parents’ love stories.
We made the grown-ups at Berry Point tell us over and over again how they’d met and fallen in love. We tried to reconcile the young couples in the stories with the adults we knew. And as the summers passed, and we grew up, we came to understand that love stories didn’t end happily all the time, or possibly ever.
Don and Greta’s story was the most romantic one of all: Cinderella and My Fair Lady all wrapped up into one real-life version. Greta had been a single mom on a scholarship, working her way through university. Jenny’s father had left shortly after she was born and moved back to Europe. Greta didn’t know his address.
When Jenny was a baby, Greta worked the evening shift at the library, because the old lady in the apartment next door could watch Jenny then. Don, who was a professor, liked visiting the library late at night because he was less likely to run into his students. He was divorced, and had a son in California, who he missed a lot. One night, Don was looking for a book in the stacks, and Greta had that very book on her cart for reshelving! It was Fate, said Greta. Don asked Greta out for breakfast, and within a year they were married. Don treated Jenny like his own daughter, and they became the family they were destined to be.
Except that Don was chilly and boring, and Greta was lonely. And when Peter moved to town, Don didn’t need his new family anymore. And he left Greta and Jenny high and dry, as my mother said, and Greta had to sue him to make ends meet.
And there were Tara’s parents, Kerry and Bill, who had met each other at summer camp when they were teenagers. They were the leads in the camp play, and they had to kiss each other onstage. Kerry was nervous, so Bill took her into the woods to practise where no one could see them. They liked kissing each other so much that they had never stopped, Kerry said.
Except that we rarely saw Bill kiss Kerry, and when he did, it was on the cheek. Kerry liked organic gardening and yoga, and Bill liked cars and golf. Bill ran an advertising agency in the city, and often he had to attend events on the weekends. So Kerry spent most of the summer at the cottage by herself. Neither of them seemed to mind. “Bill gets underfoot when he’s here,” Kerry would say.
My parents were different. They’d met on a blind date in university, where my dad was studying law and my mom was studying French history and literature. Until he met my mom, Dad had only had appetizers, and never hors d’oeuvres. Mom said that she’d never met anyone who made her l
augh so much. You had to be careful not to burst into a room, or you might find them kissing each other. It was gross, but also nice.
And then Dad died and broke Mom’s heart.
So we had our reasons for caution, Jenny and I.
“You’ll love the bridesmaids’ dresses,” Tara said. “Won’t she, Jenny?”
Jenny sighed. “Yes,” she said. “Ladies, I am not going to starve to death in a city that is essentially a giant restaurant. That would be a little too ironic, even for me.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.” I’d learned enough about Rome in my travels to avoid restaurants on the main squares, as well as those that had English on the menu. I’d borrowed a Rick Steves guide from an Australian, who’d stolen it from a hostel in Portugal, and found a trattoria in an alleyway nearby that had reasonable prices, delicious pasta, and a lot of backpacking patrons flipping through the pages of Rick Steves guides.
“Seriously, Avery,” said Tara as we walked. “You want to get married someday, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a long way from that right now.”
I did want to get married someday, at least theoretically. And I was happy for Tara, and for my brother, Ethan. I was. But it was a lot to take in. At the end of our trip, Tara would return home to finish her micro-level wedding preparations, and start her certificate program in public relations. And Jenny would go home and volunteer at the museum, and do research for one of her art history professors, and work on her applications for graduate school. And I would do a term at University College London until I had to return home in December to squeeze into my bridesmaid’s dress and into a final, structured, required term at the University of Toronto so that I could graduate and . . . that was the problem, of course. I had no idea, and I preferred not to think about it.
“So,” I said, linking arms with Tara, “are you excited?”
“So excited,” said Tara. “I’m getting nervous about the day, though. I hate being the centre of attention.” Coming from almost any other bride on the planet, this would have been a bald-faced lie, but I knew it was true. Tara had always blushed furiously at her own birthday parties and tried to make other people blow out the candles on her cake.