NATASHA
AUGUST 2001
Natasha barely has time to talk to Greg at Josie’s wedding, what with her maid of honour speech, having to hold up Josie’s hoop skirt while she pees, shaking hands with the guests, many of whom Natasha doesn’t even recognize. Solomon’s family and their new church congregation, probably. When the dance floor opens, Natasha sneaks away from the head table and pulls up a chair beside Greg at the table where Josie has seated him with the partners of the rest of the wedding party, all of whom are already married, one of whom is visibly pregnant.
“Want to dance?” Natasha asks Greg. Rarely does Greg get dressed up. She is so used to seeing him in jeans and T-shirts, clicking away on his laptop, or rain boots and his hooded black windbreaker, tromping around in some forest or marsh. Fish Creek Park is his favourite site for gathering data—he trekked down there regularly and brought home test tubes filled with soil samples and river water. He’d describe the flowers that lined the creek, but never picked them for her, not wanting to disturb the ecosystem.
“I think I’m going to head home,” Greg says, fiddling with his linen napkin. He looks so handsome in his navy jacket. She had once fantasized about what he would wear on their wedding day—a grey, three-piece suit, probably—and the smile that would split his face open as she walked down the aisle towards him. When did she stop having this fantasy?
She lets out a long exhale. He will not stay, even if she begs. Begging will probably make it worse. His parents’ separation has closed something inside of him permanently.
They take a flight of stairs down to the main lobby and go out the front door. Natasha pushes the rotating door and they both squeeze in. Greg kisses her goodbye, but it’s haphazard, like an obligation. She watches him get into a cab. As she turns to head back in, she sees Jason coming out.
“Hey,” he says. “Greg leaving already?”
She nods, as Jason sits on one of the concrete steps that lead up to the hotel doorway. Natasha lifts the A-line skirt of her pink satin gown a little bit to avoid stepping on it and sits beside him.
“I hate weddings,” Jay says. He’s unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt. He smells skunky, like rotting coffee in the heat. He pulls his wallet from his jacket pocket and shows Natasha a picture of his little boy posed in front of a blue-iced birthday cake with a single candle, a blue pointy hat atop his blond curls.
“Cute,” Natasha mutters. Jesus, even Jason has managed to secure a relationship and a kid. She knew about Jason’s little boy, but this photo is like scratching a scab open. She wants to scream. “Angie didn’t come tonight?”
Jason says, “She left me.”
Natasha exhales. “I’m sorry.” Maybe misery does love company, even Jason’s company. She met Angie once before at one of the annual Carey family New Year’s Eve parties. She doesn’t go every year anymore, but the New Year’s Eve right after Josie’s mother had her mastectomy, they all went to be with her. Angie and Jay must have been “on,” then—four years is a long time to be off and on. Maybe they’re off permanently now. Natasha doesn’t blame Angie—Jay isn’t the kind of guy she would choose for her child’s father, not by a long shot. But then, she didn’t have the greatest impression of Angie, either. Natasha tries to remember what Angie looks like, but thinks instead of the first New Year’s Eve that she was dating Greg, standing out on the front steps with Josie’s pregnant cousin, the chain-smoking one with the Princess Diana hair. Whatever happened to that cousin? Her baby would be ten or eleven now.
Jason reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a joint. “Want a hit?”
Seriously? On the night of his sister’s wedding? In public? Do all the passersbys assume he’s smoking a regular cigarette? They probably can’t smell it from the street, too caught up in their own lives.
“I don’t smoke,” Natasha says, as he lights it. She knows all the statistics about marijuana—she’s lectured Abby about it. She’s never smoked a joint in her life, not even in adolescence when her friends experimented—even Josie, once or twice. Solomon probably doesn’t know about that, either.
Jay snickers. “Yeah, I know. But right now, you look like you could use something to take the edge off.”
Her head feels cloudy. Maybe Greg will change his mind and come back. Or maybe when she gets back to the hotel, he’ll be apologetic, and she’ll give him a real hug, and he’ll let himself soften into it instead of bracing himself against her.
No, she tells herself, stop it. You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. “Okay,” she tells Jay. “Hit me.”
Jay laughs. “It’s not blackjack.”
The first two hits make her gag, make her feel dizzy. After a couple more, she leans back on the stairwell, hangs her head back, looks up into the black August sky. Who the hell is she anymore? “Greg is never going to marry me,” she says—to herself?—after what seems like a long silence.
“Greg’s an idiot,” Jason says, and takes a drag. “Seriously. What’s his problem? You should just leave him.”
Maybe it is that simple. She will just leave. She is a star, twinkling in the night, a shooting star, free from anyone, anything. She can release herself from all of this, any time she chooses. “I’m going to,” Natasha says, then. “I’m going to leave him.”
GREG
GREG HAD ALWAYS KNOWN WHAT KIND OF RING NATASHA wanted. Not a traditional, solitaire diamond. A navy blue, oval sapphire surrounded by a halo of smaller diamonds on a white gold band. She’d given Greg a magazine picture of Princess Diana’s engagement ring, which he hadn’t kept. It’d be pretty easy to find another picture of Princess Di’s engagement ring if he ever needed it. Of course, he’d never be able to afford anything close to Diana’s in size. Who was Natasha kidding?
At age seven, Tash had watched Princess Diana’s televised wedding with her mother, a memory she often talked about, one that predated her father’s affair, Abby’s birth. Tash had an out-of-focus photograph of her and her mother poised on the piano bench, a snapshot probably taken by her father, back when it was just the three of them. One year for her birthday, Greg had slipped the photo out of Tash’s album, hoping she wouldn’t notice its absence, and had it duplicated, converted into black and white, and framed. It hadn’t even come out looking very good, what with the poor quality and blurriness of the original photo, and the store’s inability to enlarge the photo very much before it started looking pix-elated. But the present had made Tash cry—in a good way—and, when bragging about how amazing her boyfriend was to friends over the years, she’d referenced the photo as opposed to several other gifts he’d given her. Natasha idealized her mother, which made Greg wary, but he’d never told her that. Whatever happened to that photo?
Tash remembered every momentous date in the history of their relationship—first date, first kiss, the date they became “boyfriend and girlfriend,” the date they lost their virginities to each other, the date they started dating again after that breakup that neither one of them wanted but somehow happened anyway. Who’s fault was that? He can’t remember—Tash said it was his and he felt it was hers, but Tash had the better memory. Tash sometimes announced “anniversaries” with little notes or gifts—a lipstick kiss on the mirror, a smile drawn into the snow on his car window, a Twix bar with one chocolate half for each of them, etc. She probably wanted him to remember these dates, probably felt like the fact that he didn’t meant that the memories weren’t as special to him, or she wasn’t as special to him as he was to her. He made mental notes to write the dates down somewhere each time she left one of these tokens but then he would forget again. No one had a memory like Tash’s anyway. No guy for sure. She often reminded him of other significant dates, too. The first year after they’d split, she’d sent him an email reminder of his mother’s upcoming birthday even though they weren’t together anymore.
Like the photograph, there are other mementos Greg thinks of, at times, wishing he could still have items that probably
got thrown out at some point because no one other than he and Tash would have understood their importance. Silly, seemingly insignificant things, like plastic spoons she’d saved from their first date for frozen yogurt that she kept tucked together (“spooning” she joked) in her jewellery box. His beloved childhood stuffed panda he’d let her keep as collateral when he went to camp that one summer, a vow he wouldn’t fall in love with any other girls. Her ’80s CDs—he had grown so sick of ’80s music while they’d dated, and yet, now, when a song came on the radio from that decade, he would freeze, tense his hands around the steering wheel, or stop in the middle of the mall. He could almost hear her singing along.
He’d ended up with Larkin, and Larkin was the best possible memento, but sometimes he feels like asking Abby whether certain trinkets still exist. Only he doesn’t want to find out they’ve ended up in a trash bag somewhere.
He knows Sylvie knows more about Natasha’s case than he does, since she had access to the files all those years ago. She’s asked him more than once if he wants her to share the details. The last time she offered, he said, “She was seeing someone else, wasn’t she?”
And Sylvie had said, “I will tell you—but you have to be sure you want to know.”
He could tell the answer was yes. Natasha had been seeing someone else. She had moved on.
He told Sylvie no, don’t answer that. Natasha hadn’t told him, so it wasn’t fair for Sylvie to.
Sylvie had said, “Okay,” and gave him a kiss, and got up and started doing the dishes.
Maybe Natasha’s trinkets, and the magic or meaning Tash insisted they held, are out there, somewhere. Like the magic of the photograph, and the magic of that day, Tash and her mommy, Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Tash’s mommy disappeared, Princess Diana and Prince Charles divorced, Princess Diana died. Greg remembers Natasha talking about Princess Di’s car accident, remembers her saying, “Do you think she knew?”
“Knew what?” Greg had asked.
“That she was going to die. When they were pulling her out of the wreckage. She was still conscious, you know, when the paramedics got there, apparently she was still talking, she didn’t go into cardiac arrest until—”
“I don’t want to know!” Greg told her. Accidents and hospitals and needles and all that stuff freaked Greg out.
Prince William had ended up with Diana’s sapphire engagement ring, and when he gave it to Kate in 2010, Greg thought it would have been easier to find one for Natasha if he’d been looking then instead of when Josie got engaged and Tash really laid on the pressure. Yes, he’d actually gone to jewellery stores and enquired about the price of a sapphire, what the hell a carat was, how long a custom ring would take, what kind of payment plan could be procured for a starving graduate student with a girlfriend with expensive and nontraditional tastes.
He’d even thought about how he would propose, if, or when, he actually felt ready to. He had a variety of different scenarios. Surprising her at the door after a long shift at work, when she was least expecting it, having spelled WILL YOU MARRY ME? in red licorice across her kitchen table. Or creating a treasure hunt around the city, leading to the top of the Calgary Tower. At sunset, if he could pull it off.
Only one time had he actually come close to proposing—it had been after she’d dumped him. That night of the snowstorm, the dented rear bumper, picking her up downtown and going back to his place. Lying in bed, his arms wrapped around her, her wet hair tickling his face. He’d almost blurted it out then: I want to marry you.
But he’d stopped himself. Did he really feel this way? After all they’d been through? Or was it just having her in his arms again, how comfortable that felt, how he knew all her grooves and contours, how nicely she fit into his own grooves and contours? Was it just his impulsive unwillingness to let her go all over again? He couldn’t propose now, he thought, not like this. It had to be special. He would have to have a ring. He would have to go back to one of his plans, map it out a little bit. She deserved more than just a reckless blurting in the middle of the night. And he didn’t want to wake her up, anyway. In the morning, he’d see where they were at, tell her he wanted to get back together. That he was sorry. Except, he’d have to figure out how he felt about kids—he knew that was part of the deal for her. Maybe it wasn’t the right time, not quite.
And then, in the morning, she’d been so formal, gathering her things, blushing as she handed him back the T-shirt she’d worn the night before, folded. Like she’d just tried it on in a change room and it hadn’t fit quite right.
Greg had told Sylvie he was going for a swim, a lie he hopes she’ll appreciate. Now, he holds the simple, antique gold band in his left palm. It feels so light, though it is a thicker ring than most. In the light, it looks almost pink. Rose gold, the jeweller had told him. There is no centre stone. He doesn’t know why he’s chosen it—it just seemed like Sylvie to him, the first time he saw it. The band itself is intricately carved, twists that blend into each other and wind their way around, connecting beginning to end and end to beginning. Inside, the band is smooth, an inscription once engraved there now faded by time and use. He cannot make it out. Perhaps it was a love story in only a few lines. I belong to you. You belong to me. Or maybe it was simply an etching from the jeweller, way back when. A serial number, nothing more.
“Thank you,” he says, and looks up, meeting the eye of the jeweller, an older, heavyset woman with a purple cardigan and a warm smile. “It’s perfect,” he adds.
“You’re welcome,” the jeweller says. She plucks the ring from his outstretched palm and tucks it between the velvet folds of the box, closes the lid. “I hope she likes it.”
“Me too,” Greg says. He puts the small box into his jacket pocket.
The jeweller glances out the window of the shop, and Greg’s eyes follow. The rain is coming down heavily now, unrelenting streams against the window. Greg pulls the hood of his jacket up over his hair.
The jeweller raises her eyebrows. “Some people are saying the river’s going to flood. I hope this doesn’t ruin any of your plans!”
Greg offers a half smile. “It won’t.”
NATASHA
June 2002
Happy Father’s Day, Dad! I know we haven’t talked in awhile, but I couldn’t let Father’s Day go by. You’ll see I put Abby’s ultrasound in the card. I’ll let you in on the secret. It’s a girl! Abby doesn’t want to know, but I couldn’t help myself—I took the ultrasound to work and had one of our techs read it for me. I thought, for Father’s Day, you should know that there’s going to be another little girl in your life. And, even though she wasn’t planned, I’m pretty sure there is a bigger plan for her life. Everything happens for a reason. So get excited about it!
Love,
Your first little girl
CAM
YESTERDAY, WHEN CAM STEPPED OUT OF THE SHOWER, Jessica said, “Are you cheating on me again?”
Not really a fair question before 7 a.m. He wasn’t even really awake yet. “What makes you think that?” he’d asked. Normally, when the alarm goes off, Jess rolls over and nudges him, says, “Fifteen more minutes, Baby,” and then goes for her shower, comes back with a towel around her hair and says, “Now it’s really time to get up!” And then he drags himself out of bed and into the shower himself. She won’t kiss him good morning until he’s brushed his teeth.
“I have a feeling,” Jess had replied. She’d gotten up early, before the alarm, showered, dressed in a sheer white blouse, tight grey skirt just above her knees, black pantyhose. Nylons are so sexy. She’d even curled her hair, as though she wanted to look 100% before making such an accusation.
“You just have a feeling?” Cam repeated. That had to be bullshit, right? Did she actually have some real evidence? Had she seen something? He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around his waist. “Seriously? You’re going to just accuse me of cheating on you, out of the blue, because you have a feeling?” His voice kept rising. “You’re sure it’s not the hor
mones?” He tugged the towel tighter around his waist.
Jess looked briefly in the mirror. Was she going to cry? Cam wondered. She turned away before he could tell. “I’m going to work. Then I’m going to my parents’ until I decide what I’m going to do.”
Is Jess’s feeling about Abby? Or about Hillary, the girl he met at Hudsons the night of his friend’s bachelor party? Hillary, as it turned out, just got a summer internship in the office building across the street from his, which made meeting for sex super convenient. When Jess said she was going to stay with her parents, she wasn’t bluffing. She hasn’t come home and she hasn’t answered any of his texts.
Now, he’s in the middle of a breakdown at Abby’s because of the phone call about her sister. Even during their biggest screaming matches, he’d never seen her like this, sobbing into her hands, unable to say anything.
The rain was coming down so hard, Abby couldn’t go pick up Summer. Good—Cam didn’t want Summer around while her mother went batshit. He’d convinced Abby to go take a shower, said he’d stay until the detective phoned her back. Abby kept saying she was sure it was Natasha, she had a feeling. How did he end up like this, surrounded by all these women and all their feelings?
The whole skeleton thing creeped him out. How long had Natasha’s body been lying there, decomposing? Cam had met Abby’s sister only once, when she and his parents had ambushed him with a meeting about child support payments and stuff. Natasha sitting in his kitchen with a budget and some blurry sonogram pictures made it so real, and his parents had nodded solemnly and shot him disappointed glares. His mother had told him to walk Natasha to her car, and she’d slipped him one of the ultrasound photos and said, “Congratulations, by the way.” He’d stared at the snapshot. His child. He was going to have a child. Holy shit.
When Abby comes downstairs, she has a towel wrapped around her hair and is wearing a pair of sweatpants and a thin white T-shirt through which he can see the outline of her bra. He rarely sees her without makeup. Her eyes look bloodshot. She looks like a teenager as she plops down on the couch and releases her wet hair from the towel.
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