George picks up after the first ring.
“George! Check out the online edition of the Gazette.”
“Hi, Princess, I’m on a super-slow, borrowed PC, it’s a super long story. Let me just disconnect chat … et voila. What am I looking for?”
“Oh, you’ll know when you see it.” My iron hisses and sputters. It’s almost out of water. “I’ve got to get back to ironing.”
I hang up. I’m still excited, but I know George well enough to know right away something’s bothering him.
I probably shouldn’t tell him I saw his niece walking down Bank Street yesterday with a tall mess of kid I’ve seen on the streets. Ottawa is so staid and predictable that even the panhandlers have their regular spots. This kid looks out of place wherever he goes. I don’t think he’s from here. I always see him in different corners and doorways: by the canal, on Sussex Drive, sometimes even on Wellington near Parliament Hill. He has a lost look in his eyes. Like he doesn’t know how he wound up here. Or how to get out.
I’ve asked myself the same question.
A new parcel. That’s what I need to focus on right now. Extreme ironing. Escape ironing. Elegant irony. I slide the box cutter through brown paper, unwrap four dirty white shirts for the hamper toss. A copy of my dad’s new business card is stapled to a letter printed in his favourite font. On his lawyer firm’s stationary.
DEAR LUCY,
Here is my new business card.
The partners chose blue this year.
Keep working hard.
Love,
DAD.
For my dad, it’s a thoughtful note. We’ve made progress. I affix it to my fridge with a flower magnet my mom gave me once.
I shine my iron’s handle with the hem of my favourite concert T-shirt — from a Björk show George went to in Toronto. It takes a minute and a half for my iron to beep ready. I set my digital egg timer to thirty seconds. I need to keep training. I grab a shirt.
I’ve improved on my mother’s and grandmother’s lackadaisical method (sleeve, flip, sleeve, flip, cigarette drag, collar, back, sides, cigarette drag, button placket). My technique is about speed: I stack shirt sleeve on top of shirt sleeve for one hard press, fling fabric into air, swoop over back, sides, button placket, leaving the collar for last. I’m so fast I can iron without scorching.
Extreme ironing was George’s idea. A joke about spicing up my after-work life.
“If you have to do your dad’s ironing at least be feminist about it.” George gesticulated comically to the sky. “Get out of your gloomy apartment and go iron those shirts on top of Mount Everest.” I think he heard about it through someone in his badminton club. I read up about it online — at work, when I was supposed to be compiling press clippings on illegal striped bass fishing.
I started training about four months ago. Just about the time the antidepressants started kicking in. The Montreal subway was my first E.I. event, but I plan to do more. I will target urban jungles: New York, Paris, London, Tokyo. All dangerous now that stealth and strange baggage can get you arrested as a terrorist suspect.
It makes me feel a little like a spy, and less like a Canadian federal civil servant.
At least I don’t come home from work and lie on the sofa in my pajamas crying anymore.
The day my mom died of a sudden heart attack I was at work in my cubicle on the thirteenth floor of a government office tower on Kent Street. National headquarters of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Communications branch, Maritime division. Playing solitaire on my computer. I left at five, walking straight home to my downtown apartment. My dad called me at 5:35 with the news, having calculated the time difference between Winnipeg and Ottawa. He’d waited for me to finish my day at work. My job “on the Hill” has always been important to him.
My dad used his calm, reassuring tax lawyer’s voice. I paced my reaction, maintaining control long enough to arrange a flight, read my credit card number over the phone, pack. At that point, feeling the electrical storm coming, I shakily called a cab and got the earlier red-eye to Winnipeg. The flight wasn’t full. The seat next to me was empty. I buckled in, watched the video-projected safety demonstration, and then felt the whites of my eyes melt, begin draining. Once I lost control there was no getting it back. The stewardesses gave me sympathetic looks, Kleenex, and glasses of water.
That night a stream of tears fell out of the passenger windows of a Boeing 737. Freezing in midair, they dropped twenty thousand feet onto the fields below. Farmers from Ontario to Manitoba complained of crop damage. Mysterious hail.
Winnipeg was a blurry ride in my dad’s silver Cadillac from airport to home, from home to church, from church to cemetery, from cemetery to home. My brother Tim, a travel and culture reporter, had flown in from Belarus for the funeral. There was a sodden, sullen family talk. My grandmother had coughed through years of frailty, but her emphysema-riddled lungs continued to rasp until she was ninety-six. My mom surrendered. Exhausted at sixty. I realized I was the only woman left in my immediate family.
I decided I wanted to stay at home, in the house I’d grown up in. Yet home was my mother in the kitchen, laundry room, basement, garden, always working, puttering and chatting. When I moved away, my mother wrote me long letters, with updates on all the neighbours, bugs in the garden, choices for new wallpaper or paint, the trips her co-workers were taking. She enjoyed her job. Her close friendships lasted over forty years. She was unedited, spontaneous, and kind. The notes of encouragement she wrote to me spanned decades of lunch boxes, sleepover pillowcases, piano recital music, college care packages — each decorated with little flourishes and illustrations she drew in the margins. I kept each one, pressed flat and safe in the pages of my favourite novels.
Now our house at the edge of town, sprawling with years of additions and hapless renovation, was moist and empty.
Tim seemed to expect room service. Mom had turned Tim’s old bedroom into a computer room shortly after he left, so he stayed in the guest room, used my shampoo, and waited for coffee to be made. We didn’t have a chance to talk. He left the day after the funeral without making the bed, flinging himself farther into Eastern Europe to write for U.S. magazines about Latvian flower boxes and the resurgence of traditional Ukrainian embroidery patterns.
Tim’s eyes had been misty, wistful. He’d been away for a long time. Physically and mentally.
I slept on the rec-room couch until my tear ducts became infected. I couldn’t stand to stay in my old room. My mom’s vacuum was still in there. Her duster and her caddy of cleansers and shammies left on the bed. She died on cleaning day. The day before laundry day. My dad quickly ran out of clean shirts.
Spending my evenings ironing my dad’s shirts reminds me of being six, of silently staring at my grandmother hunched over her built-in wooden board in the old farmhouse kitchen. She smoked with one hand and ironed tablecloths and tea towels with the other.
Feeling a hot iron spit and steam in my hand reminds me of being eight, of learning multiplication tables while safely tucked away at the orange study carrel in my parents’ basement, right beside my mom’s oversized yellow padded ironing board. That’s where my mom, a dental hygienist, used to hum old show tunes while she ironed her pink and blue cotton uniforms, my dad’s shirts, my dresses, tops, and pants. The sensation of fresh, pressed clothing always felt comforting against my skin. It wouldn’t have been my first choice in hobbies, but it’s what I have left. Somehow it connects me to her. I don’t ever remember her ironing anything for Tim. He liked the rumpled look. Still does.
The smell of hot cotton and polyester, the surging hiss of steam, the sound of the iron clicking against buttons belongs to me.
I smile, place another shirt on a hanger, watch Barnacle paw at his squeak toy. The phone rings.
“Hi, George.” I know who it is before he says anything.
“Dear God! Not only did you leave your apartment, you left the city. That was you in Montreal, you secretive little thing. Ne
xt time you need to bring me along though.”
“Of course. This was just an initial little experiment.” I smile and press the steam button on my iron for dramatic effect. “So, brunch Sunday?”
“Actually Lucy, I’m on a budget these days. Why don’t I whip you up an omelette and a pot of coffee here? It’ll be fun. Twice as relaxing, sixty percent less expensive, and a hundred percent less crowded.”
“Sounds lovely. Can I bring anything for you and Randall?”
George pauses. “It’s just me now, hon.”
“Oh.” I peer at the level indicator on my iron. I never liked Randall. “I’m so sorry. Sounds like we have some catching up to do.”
“That’s the understatement of the century.” I can tell George is faking chipper. His voice is half its usual booming volume. “I’ll see ya over here at our usual time, okay? Just bring your lovely self.”
I hang up the phone, pick up my long-necked silver watering can, and add more water to my iron. I finish my dad’s shirts and decide to stay up late ironing all my bedding.
I’m worried about George. And his niece.
I grab another pillowcase, sweep my iron across the wrinkles, and daydream of home.
My dad wouldn’t let me stay in Winnipeg. We had an embarrassing — for both of us — showdown in my mom’s kitchen, a week and a half after the funeral. He was already back to work. Five business days after my mom died he had excused himself from a small luncheon of crustless sandwiches thoughtfully prepared by my mom’s lady friends and descended into the basement. Moments later I looked out the front window to see my dad throwing his big leather briefcases into the backseat of the Cadillac. He got into the driver’s seat, reversed the car into the tree-lined street, and sped away without looking up at the house. I had my hand up, ready to wave like Mom always did. I put it down and sunk into the back of the good floral chesterfield and stayed there, becoming a bulbous orange flower, part of the house’s pattern. I thought I was the only one who could keep our home tidy the way Mom liked it. I would make sure nobody took Mom’s needlepoint pictures down from the living room walls. I would read her romance novels, keep the dust off her extensive library of family photos.
When Dad came home and saw me wiping down the kitchen table, he said, “You’re too smart to be doing that, Lucy.”
Later that evening when he saw me reaching for a Kleenex, he said, “Snap out of it, Lucy.”
The next morning he sniffed at the bacon and perfectly timed over-easy eggs I’d spent almost an hour trying to figure out how to make and reached into the cupboard for a box of cereal.
I launched Mom’s dog-eared copy of The Joy of Cooking at him. It bounced off his shoulder with less impact than I’d hoped.
“I want to help you!” I had forgotten my voice had volume. That I could yell. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” My dad’s shouts were dramatic, instinctive. Pure lawyer. “You’re not your mother!”
I looked at my dad, at his narrow age-stooped shoulders and rounded belly. The red ceramic light fixture above the kitchen table swung gently back and forth, and when he sat down, the top of his bald head shone. I stared at him, realizing he could get all the support he needed from the Rotary Club, but that his good work shirt was wrinkled.
That night my dad and I ordered pizza — half pepperoni (for him) half vegetarian (for me) — and we sat down and talked about my career “on the Hill.”
“You have a future in Ottawa.” My dad gave me one of his serious lawyer looks. He was making a case. “You have a really good job.”
“But I don’t really know anyone there.” I shrugged. “Except George.”
My dad sighed. I hate those steamroller sighs. I flew back to Ottawa, taking some of my mom’s needlepoint and photos with me. And a bundle of my dad’s shirts. He relented on that. I do a better job than the drycleaners. And it soothes me. It’s the only thing I can do to smooth over absence. We’ve been sending packages back and forth ever since. In ten months not a single parcel has gone missing in the mail.
My freshly pressed purple pillowcases and patterned duvet cover are folded on the table. I’m working on the fitted sheet when the phone rings again.
“Hello?” I’m expecting a telemarketer. Or an Ipsos-Reid pollster.
“Hello, Lucy, It’s Dad.”
I tip my silver can, spilling water on Simone. Dad rarely calls.
“Hi, Dad, how are you? Did you get that last package of shirts?”
“Yes, I did, thank you.” Dad pauses. I fidget with the steam setting on my iron.
“Lucy, I’m calling because I’m selling the house. It’s too big for me. I’d like to move into a nice condo by the river.”
He doesn’t say it, but he is also wriggling out from underneath our laundry business. I turn my iron off, sit down on the hardwood floor, and hug my legs. My jeans bunch uncomfortably under my knees and I let go.
“Lucy?”
“Okay.” I lie flat. Feel the solid hardwood floor support my spine. Barnie rubs his furry soft head under my chin. I listen to him purr.
“It’s fine, Dad, I’ve been expecting this.”
“Obviously I’ll have to get rid of some of our things. This is a large house. It’s too big for one person. Is there anything you need, that you would like me to send to Ottawa for you?”
“Can you send me Mom’s ironing board?” I run my hand over and over the top of Barnie’s head, imagining the basement, the living room, the kitchen, the bedrooms of our house. In my mind I walk down the hallways and up the stairs, opening and closing doors, fighting to remember every detail, to archive our home in my memory. Between Dad, Tim, and myself, only I will remember the place under the stairs where we used to keep the fake Christmas tree, what Mom’s rocking chair looked like, the exact number of steps from the sunken living room to the kitchen. The house is a museum of my Mom and the museum is closing.
I wonder how many times I’ve walked this same route to work. It’s cold this morning, but I’m in no hurry. My mom would have said I’m delaying the inevitable. I stop for a coffee and the barista grabs a large cup for me, writes “double non-fat latte” on it as soon as she sees me. I’m guilty of always ordering the same thing. I wait in line to pay. Expressionless faces. Suits and overcoats. Clicking BlackBerry smartphones. I turn to see the tall, thin kid by the door, shivering, counting small change. Lhia’s friend. He checks each of his pockets — the kangaroo of his hoodie, the stuffed ones in his leather jacket, the torn and patched ones of his army pants. Then he checks again.
“I’ll pay for his coffee, too,” I say to the barista at the cash register. I nod in the kid’s direction. He’s so busy counting he doesn’t look up. I hand the barista a twenty-dollar bill. “And a sandwich. Whatever he wants.” When my latte is ready I slip out the side door. I’ve never done anything like this before. Best to remain anonymous. Stay hidden. Make it clandestine. Still, I’m happy the rest of the way to work. Then I step into my cubicle and the grim walls begin to close in.
It’s a week later and well after 9:00 p.m. by the time I leave the office. At some point during the day we’d had the season’s first dusting of snow. November snow is usually exciting. I hadn’t even looked out the window to see it. I shuffle through the sidewalk slush, aware of every crunching step. The streets of downtown Ottawa are so deserted I expect a giant lizard to spring from the top of the Quickie Mart. Or a doorfront gargoyle to begin melting ice with hot exhalations at the foot of a crumbling apartment. I am four mugs of coffee and a twelve-hour workday beyond the threshold of surprise. Even staring intently at the glittering snow feels hallucinogenic. A taxi glides by, slows past me then speeds up, fishtailing. I don’t need a ride. And I have nothing left to iron. I walk faster, resolving to find something. Then I stop. There was Dad’s part of the agreement. Then there was mine.
My fingers are almost too raw with cold to flick my lighter. I huddle over a large grate in the empty parking lot behind th
e CIBC. From my briefcase I pull the final version of the press release I wrote then revised twenty-three times over the course of the day and set it alight. For every level of hierarchy it advanced there were new changes that had to be approved and reworded by communications specialists at the P.M.O. By the time it was finished, not a single word of the original I wrote remained. Now, buttressed by multidirectional winds, the curled black remnants of it float in a spiral of centrifugal force before falling down and through grate gaps into permanent darkness.
It’s the perfect final edit. But I’m not ready to go home yet. I kneel down on top of the grate and shiver. Then something moves in the shadows behind a parked truck. I think of who might be out at this time of night, in this type of weather. Only someone who had to be.
“I know you’re there,” I say into the wind.
I see a face in the dim. A tall figure emerges from the shadows. It’s that kid. He’s carrying an old duffel bag. Probably everything he owns. Even in the cold air he smells of cheap alcohol and dirty laundry.
“Who are you?” He eyes me warily, as though he’s never seen me before. I must look like everyone else. Like any other suit.
“I’m Lucy,” I say.
“What were you burning?” He peers down into the grate.
“My work.” I stare at the empty black space below the grate and think of our house in Winnipeg. My mom. I’m still homesick and grieving. But I have George. And ironing. “It didn’t mean anything. I want to do something real.”
The kid starts to walk away. I wonder if he’s homesick, too. I stand up, brush myself off. He circles back.
“How did you figure that out?” He’s standing a little closer this time, studying me.
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