by Mark Sampson
“Look, I need to get out of here,” I told him when I came back, all fresh-faced and flushed. “What are you doing right now? Are you allowed to leave?”
“I can leave,” he said. “I’ve been here since, like, six this morning. But Sharpe, listen, don’t you want to …” He was maybe going to say, Don’t you want to talk about what just happened? But I could tell that he could tell that, no, I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to listen. I felt covered in the cold mud of shame over saying something so horrifying about those ODS executives, so philosophically inconsistent, on live TV. To talk about it right now would be to relive the whole thing.
Just then two CBC interns, a couple of skirted go-getters, walked by in the hall. They must have caught my bumbling performance on a monitor somewhere, because they both turned and tossed me a glare of appalled incredulity as they passed. One of the girls even made to stop, perhaps to say something rude to me, but her friend pulled her away. “Okay,” Raj said. “Let’s … let’s just get you out of here.”
“Great,” I replied. “I say we head to Cabbagetown. I need to be on my own turf. I’ll take you to my local for a drink or six.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Out on Front Street, the afternoon had turned to evening. We had rolled our clocks back over the weekend, and the abrupt onset of twilight was still jarring, seeming to swallow the entire city like an ominous premonition. We hailed a Beck. I told the cabbie, “Parliament and Carlton,” and we soon joined the rush-hour traffic battling to get out of downtown. The Beck felt less like an escape pod and more like a tumbrel, and I imagined impoverished serfs pelting me with fruit as I was taken away to a final, grisly end.
Raj and I sat in silence as we made our glacial progression. I leaned back against the seat with closed eyes and pinched my nose, my mind churning with a thousand regrets. To break the quiet, Raj opted for idle chit-chat.
“Say, Sharpe.”
I looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Do you still make that killer cocktail of yours?”
“What, the Bloody Joseph?”
“Yeah.”
“I do. I had three of them earlier today.”
He laughed. “That drink is off the chain, man. You gotta make me one of those again.”
“I meant to have a fourth, but ran out of time.” I harrumphed. “Maybe that’s why I was so off my game today.” Of course, I knew that wasn’t true. One final Collins’ worth of that fierce concoction — infused with brawny Jameson as a substitute for effeminate vodka — would not have put me in a better frame of mind. I knew damn well what had lay at the root of my distraction. A vision of her, holding up our daughter and speaking those words to me — you don’t really seem all that plugged in to what’s happening in your own house — flooded my mind.
“I’ll have to have you over,” I said to Raj. “Just not for a little while.”
We arrived in Cabbagetown and the cab deposited us at an Irish pub called Stout. This early in the evening we were able to nab a spot near the enormous fireplace, finding leather club chairs to sink into and a low table in front of us. Raj seemed impressed by the aura of the place: the tastefully exposed brick; the warm mahogany woodwork; the beige piano in the corner; the separate menu for craft beer. I borrowed his cellphone — I don’t do cellphones — and he helped me send a text to Grace: Hi, it’s Philip. At Stout with friend Raj. Back later. Soon, a young, attractive waitress came by — “Hello, Professor, great to see you again,” she said with authentic enthusiasm — and we ordered a couple of pints from the cask. When they came, Raj and I cheered each other and then I downed nearly half of mine in a single gulp, dribbling a bit onto the top of my Payless when I returned the glass to the table. The waitress was right on it, coming by with a napkin so I could wipe up, then took it away with a sunny “No problem” when I finished.
“You know,” I said after she was out of earshot, “that was the first time today a woman has been kind to me.”
Raj laughed. “Oh really?”
“Yeah.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose once more. “I had a terrible fight with Grace before I left the house today.”
“Dude.”
“That’s why I was such a mess on camera.”
“Dude, look.” And he gave my knee a manly shake. “Try not to worry about it, okay? Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”
I looked at him. “Are you kidding? Raj, this is a huge blow to me intellectually. I mean, I’m supposed to be a leading expert on Immanuel Kant. I’m supposed to know what it means to talk about the categorical imperative, about universal law — law that applies to everyone in every circumstance. What I said was the worst example of the hypothetical imperative I can imagine. This idea that we would imprison certain people and then think up a reason why, and do it out of spite. Do you know what I mean?” He didn’t seem to, but he let me continue. So I talked about these ideas as we ordered food and more pints. Talked about them as we ate and drank. Was still talking about them long after the waitress had cleared away our plates and we ordered yet more pints.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said to him, “to go on like this.”
“It’s okay.”
“Tell me what’s new in your world. Where are you living these days?”
“I’m back on the Danforth,” he grinned. “Rented myself a sweet little place out near Donlands. Big kitchen; open porch at ground level out front. You should come out and see it sometime.”
“I’d like that. And will you be at the CBC long term, do you think?”
He chortled. “Fuck no. Is anyone? More budget cuts are coming and I’ll be gone. I’ll go freelance for a while until I can figure out what to do next.”
Ah, the peripatetic life of a confirmed free spirit. I marvelled again at how Raj’s unbridled existence seemed to infuse him with a youthfulness that had long abandoned me. Over the next two pints he told me about various “gigs” he’d had prior to taking this latest contract with our alleged public broadcaster: the trip to Asia to film a documentary about Japanese whiskey-making; a sojourn to Alabama for some corporate videos and the after-hours run-in with bona fide members of the KKK; the Guelph start-up that paid him obscene amounts of money to film some CollegeHumor knock-offs, only to fold a month later. Through it all, Raj seemed fearless in the face of not knowing where his next paycheque would come from. And as I vicariously lived through his adventures, I felt the slightest pang of remorse that I was now safely institutionalized — institutionalized, perhaps, in more ways than one.
“And have you seen Henry around much?” I asked him during a lull.
Raj gave a derisive snort. “No. That guy got married. Now I never see him. Kind of like you.”
“Hey now!”
“Just kidding. It pisses me off, is all. Henry used to be such a good journalist, you know. One of the best in the city. I mean, he did that killer interview with you for the Star when your book on Islam came out.”
“This is true.”
“And now what’s he doing? Nothing. Fucking corporate communications. What can I say about that guy? Henry got fat and boring and, now, fucking married. I don’t even recognize him anymore. He’s well on his way to moving to the suburbs and becoming one of these lobotomized Stepford husbands who, like, helps his wife around the house and talks to his kids and shit. I mean, I can’t relate to someone like that.”
“No, obviously,” I said with shifty eyes. I chuckled at his clever term, since I knew the type well. Grace was always inviting her friends over — a cheery cabal of cocksure feminists with their affably dull Stepford husbands in tow — for brunch. I remained engaged in their table banter only because these men found so many interesting ways to be uninteresting. Thankfully, Grace did not insist I comport to their behaviour. She was just grateful if I still blew below the legal limit by the cantaloupe course.
Wait.
Brunch. Brunch! Brunch! Brunch! That’s what we were doing on Sunday. We were hosting yet another brunch, and had invited my literary agent over in the hopes that she might look at Grace’s new children’s book. Of course. This fact re-emerged in my mind, as solid as a cinder block.
Raj looked at me queerly. “You’re having a whole conversation over there, aren’t you — all by yourself.”
“Sorry, I have to go,” I said. “Let’s get the bill. I have to go.”
Out on Parliament Street, Raj and I hugged and then parted company — he walking northward to Castle Frank Station, and me hoofing my way home. I didn’t know then that he had pulled out his phone to check Facebook as he went, and, when he did, saw something there that twisted his face into a rictus of panic. He told me later that he had thought of doubling back to find me, or at least calling out my name down the street. I probably wouldn’t have heard him anyway, caught up as I was in the mental airstreams of my triumph, a parallax of pure, sweet recollection.
I got back to 4 Metcalfe Street to find it dark, the little stained-glass window above our door like an extinguished lamp, the eaves above it pregnant with shadows. Grace and the girls had clearly gone to bed. What hour was it, anyway? I wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge absently. Moved to the dining-room table, took a quick flip through the day’s papers. Then I staggered upstairs to our bedroom, ready to face my fate. But stepping in to the faint light of a street lamp coming through our curtained window, I could see Grace was asleep on her side of the bed, her back turned to me. I was suddenly awash in guilt. As penance, I didn’t even bother to go brush my teeth in the ensuite. Just stripped my clothes off and onto the floor, then crawled in next to her.
Tuesday, November 3
I must confess I don’t really get the Facebook. Sorry — Facebook. Grace corrects me every time, grinning impishly at my occasional inclusion of the definite article as evidence of my fuddyduddiness and outoftouchitude. Yes, I have a Facebook account and yes, I have “friends.” Mind you, I don’t as a policy accept friend requests from strangers, current students, former students who have not yet graduated, any of my colleagues in the Philosophy department, or fellow authors whose books I’ve hated. I don’t quite grasp how all the notifications work, and I only visit the site a couple times a week. This, according to Grace, makes me anti-social. She has 1,382 “friends.” I have 46.
Which made what happened in the morning all the more baffling. I wish I could say I awoke feeling ebullient and ready to put the previous day’s unpleasantness behind me, only to be dragged into the muck by what I discovered when I checked my email. But this was not true. I awoke feeling like a shithead, and had my shitheadedness confirmed when I staggered up to my office desk, turned on my laptop, and discovered I had received eighty-seven notifications from Facebook in the last fourteen hours. This, I figured, was roughly the same number I had received in total since joining the social network in 2009.
I hunkered down and started scrolling. My inbox was flooded with names I didn’t recognize, strangers commenting on a post added by one of my “friends” in which my name had been tagged. I clicked through to the post and saw that it was — of course — a YouTube clip of yesterday’s appearance on Power Today. There were so many comments that Facebook could not display them all; could not even say how many there were. The “see previous comments” link taunted me but I refused to click on it. The ones I could see were bad enough:
Jake, that’s NOT what I said. I’m no fan of Sneed but at the end of the day, Sharpe still shouldn’t have …
Well put, Paul! This kind of language is such a big part of our culture now. I hope U of T shows some backbone and takes him to task about …
Ha! “Sharpesplaining” — love it! It’s great to see that pompous ass finally getting what he …
And one that cut me straight to the gills:
Did anyone else notice that HE WAS THE ONLY ONE NOT WEARING A POPPY!
I slapped the laptop shut.
Wandering downstairs, I felt the gravitational pull of my waiting family and girded myself for a flurry of opprobrium from Grace. But to my surprise, she rushed right over when I emerged in our kitchen to give me a hug, her chest pressing into mine, her mouth at my neck. As we held each other for an abnormally long time, I looked over to see the girls at the breakfast table: Simone was watching us over her toast, her head tilted with a kind of placid fascination; Naomi, meanwhile, sat obliviously spooning Frosted Flakes into her mouth and eyeing up a colouring book splayed out before her.
“It’s really bad,” Grace said as she let me go.
“Yeah, I get that sense. I just checked Facebook.”
“Oh, Philip, how could you say something like that on TV?”
I threw my hands up. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Hopefully this will all blow over in a day or so.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Grace —”
“No, seriously, come with me.” She was about to lead me over to the little alcove workspace she kept off our book-lined living room, but then paused in front of the girls. “Simone, you have ten minutes to be out the door. That includes teeth-brushing. And, Naomi, sweetie, don’t hold your spoon with a fist, okay. Hold it like a pencil.”
With this quick dispatch of motherwork done, we went to her busy little desk and she manoeuvred herself into the wheeled chair. This was where my wife, the indefatigable Grace Daly, wrote her monthly column, called The Motherlode, for a glossy women’s magazine. A popular missive about the trials and ecstasies of full-time mommyhood in the twenty-first century, the column created a certain mythos around Grace as a walk-on-water parent and did much to extend what she straight-facedly referred to as her “personal brand.” I liked her pieces well enough, but was often (and silently) struck by what she elided rather than included in them. I felt she didn’t always, for example, pay proper due to her wealthy North Toronto parents who provided her multiple levels of encouragement and support and helped to get her where she was. As for me? My own contributions to child-rearing, not to mention my tenured U of T gig that financed this whole operation, made virtually no appearances in the column at all. Anyway. We had experimented with having Grace upstairs in her own office when we first moved into 4 Metcalfe Street, but she soon preferred to have her workplace here, close to the epicentre of the domestic action. On one wall of the alcove, she had hung a framed copy of the epithalamium I had written her — my sole foray into poesy, which I was embarrassed by, but which she nonetheless cherished. Atop her desk sat piles of notes, stacks of magazines, a bright mauve teapot, and a small wireless printer. On the desk’s corner rested the manuscript for her as-yet-unsold new children’s book, which despite taking nearly two years to write was only about 15,000 words long. And, in the middle of it all, was Grace’s own laptop, her chief conduit into a world populated by friends and supporters, but also enemies, frenemies, and near strangers. Yes, unlike me, Grace was fully immersed into the world of social media, a tool to connect with her cadre of fellow authors, stay-at-home moms, and other allies. But it could also, I found, bring out the worst in her. She might lose large portions of a day engrossed in a flame war over some esoteric sliver of the women’s movement, and she spent a lot of time lurking on the Facebook walls and blogs of women she vehemently disagreed with. This had led her to tape up a second note over her desk, a flash card of Sartrean parody that read HELL IS OTHER FEMINISTS. She says she keeps it there ironically, but I know it’s something she sometimes believes.
She opened the laptop and went to Facebook. At the sight of her navigation bar’s beckoning red bubbles, I could tell she, too, had several notifications waiting for her. She scrolled through her newsfeed and sure enough, there was picture after picture of me, with Facebook’s Greek chorus chiming in under each.
“Look, I told you I’ve already seen a lot of this,” I said.
“Yeah, and what about this?” She opened a new tab and went to Twitter, a site I can’t even begin to comprehend. There we found a relentless stream of censure, with the two words of my name smooshed together and placed behind the tic-tac-toe sign.
“Grace, I don’t want to look at that.”
“Or this?” She went to YouTube and found the Power Today clip: 748 comments underneath it. “Or this?” She went to cbc.ca/news and there was my picture above the scroll.
“Oh, for Christsake, boys,” I grumbled at the screen, my PEI accent returning in a burst. “Slow news day or wot?”
She wheeled back around to face me. “You have to do something about this.”
“Like what?”
“Well, we all know Cheryl Sneed is a troll, but you could start by apologizing to her publicly.”
“Apologize to her?” I said. “She’s the one who drew those comments out of me. Anyone who watches that clip can see it.”
“Philip, are you serious? Do you honestly think —” But just then her eyes flashed to something behind me and she was up and out of her chair. “Simone Beauvoir Daly, it is November — you are not wearing that.”
I turned to see that my stepdaughter — in the process of going upstairs to brush her teeth — had also changed into a fuchsia tank top, its skimpy straps revealing the tiny nubs of her shoulders. She and Grace began squabbling about this wardrobe choice, which carried them back upstairs.
I returned to the kitchen, tousled Naomi’s hair on the way to my cupboard, then got out the tin shaker and Jameson to start my own breakfast. I noticed Naomi had now abandoned her Frosted Flakes and had taken up a crayon. “What are you colouring, sweetie?” I asked as I went to my bar fridge to dig out the necessary accoutrements.
“Dine-soars,” she replied without looking up.
Ice cubes: check. I cracked about half out of the tray, and they clanged noisily into the tin. Tomato juice: check. Horseradish: check. Tabasco sauce: check. I looked back at her. “Can I see?” She held up the book to reveal a not-to-proportion T. Rex and triceratops now bludgeoned with crayon. “Another Vermeer in the making,” I declared, then pulled open my vegetable crisper. Took out the celery, then scrounged. Scrounged. Scrounged some more, moving aside torn and empty produce bags. Oh crap.