“We put her in this program especially to prevent summer learning loss. I’m not sure we should be pulling her out of school on every whim,” says Karen.
“What’s she going to miss, Karen? An hour of exploratory colouring? I think she’ll make that up over the next decade.”
Karen studies the kid banging her spoon around the marble countertop. Everything is a big decision. Every choice they make will impact her life in a thousand ways. What effect will this missed afternoon of daycare have? Will it instil in the kid a spirit of truancy and delinquency? Or a strong sense of familial bonding?
“All right. I’ll call the school and let them know,” she says. “Now, Yvie, come sit here at your place and eat properly.”
The kid wriggles off Joly’s lap and into her own chair at the island. She is excellent with directions.
6
THESE INTERVIEWS. FUCKING hell, these interviews. Yannick’s not even being choosy. He just wants to hire someone, anyone competent, anyone on whom they can offload a massive pile of work. But these interviews are a showcase of staggering incompetence.
Job Candidate Steven is twenty-four, dressed in skinny little pants and a neck scarf instead of a tie. He must be hip. “I’m not really that interested in just the numbers,” he says.
“Oh no?” says Yannick. He and Anosh have five candidates lined up, but Yannick’s going to have to skip out after this one, their third, to go pick up the in-laws. Ordinarily they’d just have rescheduled the final two interviews for a time when both Yannick and Anosh can participate. But they’ve already rescheduled interviews twice, and they’re both impatient as hell to get someone on board. So Anosh has agreed to handle the last two himself. But he isn’t happy about it. Interviewing is a rough way to spend the day. It’s a demoralizing process from start to finish.
“I read a few dozen financial reports a day. But I don’t think that’s what it’s all about,” Job Candidate Steven says.
“What’s it all about then?” asks Yannick.
“Look, I can do the math for just about anything. But I’m looking for more than that. I’m looking for the truth behind the numbers, you know what I mean? And not just behind the numbers, but, like, behind everything.”
“So what? You’re some kind of philosopher?”
Job Candidate Steven grins. “I consider myself a truth seeker.”
Yannick makes a note on the guy’s resume: personality problems. He leafs through the small stack of resumes in front of him: today’s candidates. Their first candidate spent most of the interview asking questions about work-life balance—what time could he expect to get home in the evenings? What about weekends? What about vacation time? Like they’re going to pay someone 200k to take vacations. The second candidate didn’t show up. He called in about half an hour before he was due and said he wasn’t feeling well, some kind of tickle in his throat, but he did, quite heroically, offer to Skype in for an interview. Imagine! Yannick hasn’t taken a sick day in five years. They told the invalid, politely, to fuck off. And now they’ve got this truth seeker.
Truth Seeker Steven is leaning way back in his chair. He’s all confidence and swagger and has no idea what an asshole he’s coming off as. They can’t hire a guy like this. He’ll never do what he’s told. Even if he were capable, which is doubtful, because in the next part of the interview, in which Anosh asks Job Candidate Steven to talk him through a transaction he’s listed on his resume, the guy’s math doesn’t make any sense. There are errors. Miscalculations. A real fucking absence of truth.
“I’m not following your numbers here,” says Anosh. “You seem off by a couple percent.”
This isn’t even the technical skills round. That’s supposed to be the next round, if they ever find anyone decent enough to put through to it. How is this guy going to be able to build a leveraged buyout model or assess risk when he’s fuzzy about the math on his own resume?
“Well those are approximate figures. Give or take.”
“Why would they be approximate figures? Why wouldn’t you know the exact numbers?”
“I think it gives you a good enough idea.”
“Yeah. I guess it does give us a good enough idea,” says Anosh. He looks at Yannick with a kind of pained bewilderment, asks a few more questions, then brings things to a close. “So thanks for coming in, Steven.”
“Sure, sure. And when do I hear back from you guys?”
“Couple of weeks,” says Yannick.
“Great. I’m entertaining a couple other options. So the sooner the better for me.”
Anosh blinks a few times, maybe hoping this small movement will keep his brain from exploding. But the effort seems to paralyze the rest of his body. When Job Candidate Steven extends a hand, it’s Yannick who gives it a shake.
“Jesus Christ,” says Anosh once the truth seeker has left. “We need to talk to the headhunter. She’s gotta be doing something wrong.”
“Yeah, but you know, Bourque was hiring last year. Said it was the same thing. Same bullshit. Know what their headhunter told them? It’s a generational thing. Apparently we’ve all gotta learn how to relate to these Millennials. Their headhunter suggested they take a half-day course about it.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Turns out they’re like a different breed. Bourque’s headhunter said we’re supposed to learn how to understand them. Their needs and feelings.”
Anosh balls up Job Candidate Steven’s resume and whips it into the trash.
“Hang in there, buddy. Maybe you’ll get lucky with the next two,” Yannick says and laughs.
Anosh pelts him with another balled up resume. “You owe me for this, Yan. Making me do this shit by myself. I’m not joking. I’m about to lose my mind here.”
“Yeah, yeah. I owe you.”
“I might kill myself if this keeps up. D’you see that kid’s neck scarf? I mean, what the fuck.”
7
YANNICK FLICKS HIS gaze to the rearview. Yvie’s quiet back there. He doesn’t trust her when she’s quiet. Beside her in the back is Joe, who, as ever, sits silent like a brick, just along for the ride. It’s Adele who commands the conversation. She’s taken the passenger seat—she’s got a bad knee (the left knee this week) and she needs room to stretch out and show off the knee brace.
“It’s chilly in the car, Yannick, how do I turn down the fan?”
“Just adjust the vent there.”
“Where exactly? I don’t see. Hmm. Can you show me?”
His phone buzzes. It’s been buzzing all afternoon. He managed to get in a couple of calls on the ride up here, with just Yvie in the back, but now that he’s got the in-laws aboard, calls are impossible. He’ll have to make up the time at home. But he does check the phone, just to know who’s calling. Andrew, from their investment bank. Must be calling about particulars on the windows deal. They should be making progress soon. They’ve got a meeting with the Westline Windows guys and their respective investment banks next week to discuss possible debt structures for the buyout. He scrolls through the calendar on his phone to double check the time of that meeting, but his eyes must stay on the screen for longer than he thought, because when he looks back up at the road, the car ahead of him has slowed, a lot. He slams the brakes.
“Careful, Yannick!” shouts Adele. “Pay more attention. Please!”
“I’m paying attention.”
“You were checking your phone.”
He sees the cause of the stoppage now: an enormous pothole in the road. Cars are slowing to pass around it. “It’s not the phone. Look at that pothole. It’s these junky Thornhill streets.”
“Our streets? When your streets are death traps.”
“They’re not so bad.”
“Not so bad? They’re terrible. Do you know what I read a few months ago?”
“What did you read a few months ago?”
“I read that the Gardiner is crumbling.”
“They’ve been saying that my whole life.�
� Since Yannick was a kid, he’s been hearing dire warnings about the structural integrity of the Gardiner Expressway. It’ll have to be replaced someday, but so far it’s held up just fine.
“No. No, it’s really crumbling. A piece fell right off it. Hit the trunk of a lady’s car. A Pakistani lady, I think she was. Wasn’t she a Pakistani, Joe? Remember, we saw that photograph?”
“I don’t know, Adele.”
“I think so. Pakistani. Or maybe Indian. This chunk of the Gardiner just fell and hit the trunk of this nice Indian lady’s car. Yannick”—she puts a hand on his arm—“I saw a photograph of the dent it made in the trunk. It was huge. Someone could’ve died.”
“You mean if someone had been in the trunk?”
“Don’t be smart, Yannick.”
Adele’s news reports tend to land a few miles wide of the truth. Somewhere along the transmission process, facts get altered in her head. If the Gardiner Expressway were shedding chunks of itself onto the street below it … well, that would be news. Real news. Maybe it was a freak accident. Or more likely, a small piece of debris fell off a truck cruising along the expressway.
“Daddy.”
“Yes, kiddo?”
“This was serious,” says Adele. “Someone could’ve been killed. Imagine if it had hit a pedestrian and not a car. It could’ve been fatal. It could’ve been a tragedy!”
“Yikes.”
“Yikes is right. I hope that Iranian lady sues the city. She’d better. I sure would.”
“Knock it off, Adele,” says Joe.
She doesn’t knock it off, but she does drop her voice to a whisper. “But sometimes they don’t even know that they’re allowed to sue … . they don’t know their rights … the immigrants, I mean. From … those parts of the world.”
“All right, Adele,” says Joe.
“I’m just saying.”
“Daddy.”
“She seemed like a perfectly nice lady, though.”
“Enough now.”
Adele turns to look at Joe in the back. “I’m just catching Yannick up on what I read. He lives in the city and doesn’t even know these things.”
“We’re all caught up now, Adele,” says Joe. “Thank you.”
Southbound traffic is heavy. It was a breeze coming up here, took him exactly thirty-four minutes from Yvie’s school to Joe and Adele’s house. But there’s construction on the southbound route and squeezing the flow into just three lanes is slowing everything way down.
“Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.” Yvie is reciting his name like she’s practising it for a test. But a quick check in the rearview shows she’s not even looking at him, not aiming for his attention. She’s transfixed by her own fingers, which she’s weaving through each other. She’s saying his name just for the sake of saying it.
The phone buzzes again. Vinegar John this time. Probably calling with another round of already-answered questions. Just seeing the guy’s name on the caller ID kicks up Yannick’s blood pressure.
“Daddy.”
“Yes, kiddo?”
“Daddy.”
“What is it, Yvie?”
“Daddy. Hi.”
Adele turns around to look at her. “Hi, little Yvie love,” she says. “How are you doing back there?”
“Good.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look so good. Your hair is a mess, isn’t it? Doesn’t anyone brush your hair when your Nonna’s not around?”
Just ahead, traffic is crunched to a halt. Yannick pulls out a little to the left, onto the shoulder, for a better look at what they’re dealing with. For the next few kilometres, this ride is going to be a brutal stop-and-go.
YANNICK WORKS THROUGH the evening, on the phone for most of it, at a makeshift workstation he’s created in the kitchen. It’s fine for the first couple of hours—with Joe napping in the guest room, and the women out picking up Yvie’s baptism dress—but now that they’re back and clustering in the kitchen, he can’t work here anymore.
Yvie parades around the island in her new dress. The designer dress. The dress that cost … wait for it … $400! For a child’s dress. That she’ll wear once. Yannick almost lost his mind when he saw that figure show up on his Visa bill. But that’s nothing next to the dress Karen bought herself for this grand event. She went out and found some flowy orange number (“still summery, but also kind of autumn-y, with the orange, don’t you think?”), a few pieces of fabric stitched together, $2000. She’s already modeled it for him. Twice. “See how it billows?” she said as she wafted the dress around her legs. “Don’t you like the billows?” “Of course I do,” he said. “Beautiful billows.” But it’s shit like this that is seriously slowing the approach to five million.
“Oh my god,” says Karen from a stool at the island, watching the kid do a skip-and-twirl on the slippery wood floors. “It’s so cute, it’s perfect.”
“Ooooh, look how beautiful you are, my little lovey,” says Adele, claiming two stools for herself: one to sit on, the other to elevate her leg. “Yannick, look at her. Isn’t your daughter beautiful?”
The kid stands still and looks at the three of them, smiling with that shyness she gets whenever too much attention comes her way. Not that she doesn’t like the attention. And although she’s totally fucking adorable right now, like supremely adorable, in the dress and her shy smile, Yannick doesn’t like feeding into baptism-related attention. He doesn’t like how Karen and Adele have tricked the kid into getting on board by offering her heaps of attention and a fancy dress.
“Sure,” he says. “Sure you are, kiddo. You’re always beautiful.”
“You’re going to be such a pretty little girl at your baptism,” Adele says.
“Yup.” Yvie fingers the lace fringe of her dress.
“It’s a special privilege to become a Catholic, did you know that, Yvie?” says Adele.
“Yup.”
“It means you’ll have a special place in God’s heart.”
“Yup.”
Yannick fights a strong urge to toss Adele out of the house. These religious teachings, especially when delivered in childhood, seep into the brain and rewire the hardware. It can’t be undone. Which is why when Adele started whispering to Karen that she wasn’t getting pregnant because she hadn’t yet baptized Yvie (“Why would God give you a second child when you’re not taking proper care of the first?”), Karen accepted it as plausible. And here they are.
But there’s no point starting an argument about religion. He’ll just let this weekend pass, and hope that God never comes up again for the rest of the kid’s life. Besides, she isn’t even listening to Adele. She’s fixated on that lace fringe.
“And you’ll know exactly what to do at the baptism, because we’ve got the rehearsal tomorrow,” Adele says.
“Can I wear my dress to practise?”
“No, Yvie,” says Karen. “We’ll save the dress.”
“Can I wear my whale socks when I get bap-sized?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Yvie,” says Karen.
“But you like those socks your Nonna got you, don’t you?” says Adele. Then, turning to Karen, to Yannick with a smug grin: “Doesn’t she?”
Yvie drops to the floor, sitting butterfly-style, the soles of her feet together, tracing the giant whales on her socks.
“You’ll be at the rehearsal too, right, Yannick?” says Adele.
He’s moved to the marble counter to mix himself a vodka soda on ice before he gets back to work. “Sure. Six o’clock, right?”
“No, Yannick,” says Karen. “5:30. It got moved to 5:30. I told you that.”
“Right. Okay. 5:30. Should be fine. I’ll be there.”
Adele frowns at him. “Is that already your second drink?”
It’s his third this evening, but his glass always empties out quickly when Adele is visiting. “I’m mixing them light,” he lies.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I gotta finish some work.”
Yannick migrates first to th
e living room, but their voices carry right through. Who decided open concept was a must-have anyway? There are glaring flaws with the concept. He preferred the house as it was when they bought it. With walls. With sound barriers. This redesign is stupid. There’s nowhere to hide. He moves further along, right out into the backyard, where he sits on the patio and drinks his (very strong) vodka soda and, for just a minute, thinks of nothing.
But he can still hear them through the screen door. Adele is still dispensing her thoughts on God, but she’s moved onto a sub-topic: heaven. She’s got the kid interested enough to be asking questions about it.
“Does heaven have whales?”
“Of course, little Yvie lovey. Thousands of whales.”
“Turtles too?”
“Of course turtles.”
Yannick hates the heaven bullshit more than all the rest of it. It’s no good to be taking comfort in an imagined afterlife; it’s dangerous. It’s the kind of thinking that gets people longing for death, daydreaming about it, courting it. Yannick’s got trouble enough battling the defective death drive that seems like it’s coded into his DNA—he doesn’t need to absorb any quack religious ideas that validate it. And he doesn’t want Yvie validating that drive in herself. He wants her to cling to life for as long as she can.
He couldn’t have been clearer with Karen on the religion point before they got married. When he learned that she was a Catholic (half-Catholic, according to her, at least back then), he made sure they had a discussion about religion and kids. He didn’t want to raise kids in any faith. She had no problem with that. She said she hadn’t been to church in years, had no connection to it anymore, no interest in it. Great. A secular upbringing for the would-be kids. But people don’t honour agreements anymore.
It’s hot out again. The heat this year is pushing right to the end of summer. And there’s a haziness in the atmosphere. Smoke from wildfires in the north has made its way over the city, covering it in a grey sheath. He looks at the downtown skyscrapers, spearing upward behind the neighbourhood houses, their tips buried in smoke.
Yannick steadies himself with a swig of his vodka soda. He bites the ice. The sound of it crunching between his teeth overwhelms the voices from the kitchen. He’s on his second cube when his phone buzzes for the thousandth time today. Fucking Vinegar John again.
The Towers of Babylon Page 23