As they fell asleep, spooned together, he watched her side move up and down as she breathed. In their reflection, Michael imagined that in his wife’s hand, which was curled up under her chin, she supported a mask, and as Lara shifted to find a more comfortable position, he moved with her and watched the space over her hand, where the mask would be. He imagined how it felt, what material it was made of. Rubber, he thought. Something that would wear well, yet be warm and flexible enough to look real. Yes, rubber.
Before he left their room, he couldn’t resist leaning over and kissing Lara on the cheek, watching himself in the mirror as he did, an androgynous figure hunched over her small sleeping form. As his lips touched her warm skin, he could smell her soap, the night crème she used, and Paul Mitchell’s Awapui shampoo. So real.
As he left their room, the visions inside him rose, seeking release, and as he gave them shape, the pressure ebbed, and he realized that it wasn’t Lara’s mask at all: she was the same as she’d always been. It was he who was changing, and though he did not know where it would lead them, he knew that he would no longer try to stop it.
chapter 17
ALTHEA WAS LIVID. SHE had worked every day for the last fourteen days until after midnight, including the weekends, on an advertising pitch that was broad-sided.
It was after eleven o’clock at night. They had just ordered pizza. The office was a frenzy of activity that was accelerating as they came down the home stretch, hyperactive from lack of sleep. The pitch was due at 9:00 the next morning. At 11:30, Rob, Continuum’s vice president, walked in and held up his hands.
“Hold it, hold it, hold it! “ he said. “We got a three-day reprieve.”
The room had fallen silent.
“And we’re going to take a different approach.”
Fuck you, Althea had thought. Her team was already pushed to its limit.
It was the summer after first year of the MBA program. While Celia worked with her father in Europe, Althea returned to Continuum on the promise that she’d get some global marketing experience with a new client.
She should have known it was too good to be true. Less than a week after she started, Rob had asked for her help. She had been reluctant. Preparing a pitch was brutal at the best of times. It had already sucked up two hundred thousand dollars worth of staff time and free creative ideas, with no guarantee they’d get the business. Though if they did win, it would mean an additional million a year for Continuum.
Rob described the new approach, which would keep them working sixteen hours a day for the next three days.
Althea stormed out.
• • •
WEDGED IN STOP-AND-go traffic, her hands gripped her steering wheel. She could hear her engine wheeze, wanting to give out.
“Come on, darlin’, don’t die on me now. Not today, please not today.”
Simone was looking for her, she knew, but she didn’t care. A white Mini with black racing stripes cut in front of her just as the light turned amber. She hit her horn in frustration.
“Where are you people going at this time of night?” But she knew: there was a baseball game. And the rain didn’t help.
Thinking of Rob, fuming, she turned on the radio to CFNY, now called The Edge 102, the new rock station that had started out as an independent and been swallowed up by a corporate conglomerate. Trent Reznor was singing Head like a Hole. “I’d rather die, than give you control,” Trent screamed. Althea turned up the volume. She needed to wake up. She may have left the office, but she still had hours of work to do. Trent’s anguished cries absorbed some of the tension she was feeling. At the stoplight, she checked her cell phone. She had two calls: one from Simone. Another she recognized.
Inching through the traffic, she did a mental work-back to determine when they’d need her input. She glanced at her gas gauge. It read full. She knew that wasn’t right.
• • •
MICHAEL DROPPED OFF STEFAN, Exeter’s new CEO, at the King Edward Hotel on King Street, just east of the financial district. Earlier, the Canadian group had taken their visitors to a Blue Jays baseball game, followed by a late meal at Ruth’s Chris steak house. It was late and Michael wanted to get home. To see Lara and their new baby and more importantly, to continue what he had started a few months before.
Elizabeth Lara Bradshaw-Foster was a serene child, possessing quiet wisdom. Her eyes were silver blue, like Lara’s, with sparse, white blond hair. Since Elizabeth was born, Michael had stopped taking antidepressants.
His fingers tingled as he wove through the traffic. He couldn’t wait to get to his computer. During the meetings that day, his intense note-taking had nothing to do with Exeter’s acquisition strategy. When he had an idea, he had to get it down on paper before it burst and was blown away. Sometimes, he wished he could turn his eyes into his head and see where all of the ideas were coming from. Instead, he listened to the speakers at the meeting and watched their mouths, his mind elsewhere.
The traffic was heavy. To avoid the Don Valley Parkway, which was constantly under construction, he headed north on Jarvis. He pulled in to a Shell station to get gas, waved at the night manager, Milo, who knew him. Milo’s black lab, Coal, worked his shift with him and was curled up outside. Coal was the best-behaved dog Michael had ever seen.
He rummaged around his trunk, looking for his wallet. He retrieved it, and stepped into the gas bay.
• • •
SHE PULLED OFF JARVIS into a Shell station. A short, balding man with an immaculately pressed cotton shirt was outside talking to a customer. A black lab trotted happily behind him. As she filled up, she glanced around at the other cars: a navy blue Golf, an old Saab convertible and a blue Lexus. The owner of the Lexus was rummaging through his trunk. The black lab ran to greet him, winding around his ankles. As he pumped gas, the man stooped to scratch the dog behind the ears.
Althea went to pay. The Lexus driver held the door open for her. A wedding ring glinted in the fluorescent lights. Their eyes met for a moment and he smiled. Green eyes, she thought and her heart flipped. She looked away.
“Hey Milo, you taking any time off this summer?”
“Me? Never! I love my customers too much.”
“You’re a dedicated man, Milo. A rare breed.”
“My wife — she says I’m obsessed. You ready?”
It took a moment for Althea to realize that they were waiting for her. She paid him.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
The Lexus driver looked at her and smiled, a vaguely familiar teasing lilt to his voice.
“Milo’s a hard man to say no to,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve been trying to leave him for years now.”
“You never leave,” Milo said. “You always come back.” The man laughed. Althea took her change and left.
As she approached her car, she noticed a piece of paper sticking out from behind her front tire. It wasn’t there before, so it must have come from the man’s trunk when he was rummaging around. She looked at the man who was still chatting with the clerk. He was using his hands to describe something, and the clerk was laughing. She picked up the paper, which was muddy and wet, and considered waiting until he came out. She looked down quickly. Handwritten notes from margin-to-margin. A diagram that took up the bottom third of the page. Arrows and labels.
Her cell phone rang. She noticed the man was staring at her, smiling. Where did she know him from? Turning away, she answered the call.
“Yes?”
“I just read your most recent story. Where are you?” Althea tucked the soaked page under the windshield wipers of the Lexus and turned to get into her car.
• • •
HE HAD NOTICED THE woman with thick red-gold hair as soon as she got out of her car. She was frowning, her mouth narrow. As he pumped gas, Coal bounded toward him and wound around his legs. He stooped to pet the dog.
“What a rainy mess, huh Coal?”
He and the woman had arrived to pay at the same time and he’d push
ed the door open for her. Their eyes met and he remembered her. The woman on the side of the road almost a year ago. Different hair cut, but he was pretty sure it was her. As the woman’s eyes met his, she looked down and moved toward the cash. Michael fought an impulse to say something to her, and remembered the first time they spoke. That look in her eyes, not so different from now. He tried to break the ice with small talk, thinking that she might remember him.
“Thanks,” she said, looking away.
“Hey Milo, you taking any time off this summer?”
“Me? Never! I love my customers too much.”
“You’re a dedicated man, Milo. A rare breed.”
“My wife, she says I’m obsessed. You ready?” Milo was speaking to the woman, who was distracted, her eyes darting. It took a moment for her to respond. She paid him.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“Milo’s a hard man to say no to,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve been trying to leave him for years now.”
“You never leave. You always come back.” Michael laughed. The woman looked blankly at them, took her change and left.
Lara’s brother, who was going through a divorce and dating again, said that he had found some women so confusing — some expected him to always pay whether or not they made more money than him, but when he offered to open the door for them, it was as if this small gesture could irrevocably diminish their independence. It was confusing, he said. Michael understood. This woman was confusing and he wasn’t even trying to date her. He wondered if she ever smiled and if she did, what would coax it out of her.
He could hear Lara’s voice. What did he want to do? Set her up with his brother-in-law? He wanted to see if she had dimples. That’s all. He wanted to make her laugh.
Milo was asking for twenty-eight dollars and Michael handed over forty. He stooped to pet Coal while he waited for change, talking to Milo, telling some work stories, mimicking Stefan, who was Ralph’s boss, cold and odd. When he looked up again, the woman was looking at him. Maybe she remembers. He smiled at her. She turned away to answer her cell phone. He took his change.
When he looked up again, she was gone.
chapter 18
SOPHIE SAT IN THE shade of her back yard. It was a hot, humid day but there was enough air moving to make it comfortable. Her wrists rested on her knees, and her eyes were closed. She was breathing from the belly. As she breathed, she thought about Althea.
Sophie had given Althea the Ouija board when she was seven and was delighted when Althea began using it every day. She had also given her a lined, hardcover notebook so she could record the messages that came through. Later, Althea had begun to write. Magical tales about bringing her father and brother back, and later, Albert. Stories she would give to Sophie until she got older and she and Sophie began to fight.
Since Althea and Kevin broke up, Althea had immersed herself in school and Sophie had seen her only for a few days at Christmas. The MBA was good for her daughter, Sophie had to admit. Becoming immersed in business was a harmless way to escape. Why shouldn’t she? Men had been doing it for years.
Sophie was not a passive woman, nor timid. Unlike the family she grew up with, she did not believe in organized religion. She left home at seventeen and met Albert shortly after that — about the same time she met Althea’s father. She had been fond of Albert, who had been kind to her during the worst time in her life. From him, she’d learned a lot. He had helped her claim her own power.
As her body relaxed, merging with the air in her lungs, she pictured a white cotton pillow that inflated with her breaths, and each time she breathed in, it got a little bigger, like a parachute reaching toward the sky. She was close, and she knew it. She had been this close once before.
She envisioned the shape of two doors, like the perforation in a box of cereal. The doors opened wide, as if to catch something falling from the sky, which in a way she was. She was exceptionally high now, the doors stretching up, opening. Her body was relaxed, her face slack, her knees comfortable considering her arthritis. When she meditated like this, she was free of her aches and pains. So close. She felt a barrier, as if someone put a thumb on her forehead. She asked the question anyway and was not surprised at the silence that followed. Not today.
That was okay. She’d wait.
Her body slowed gradually. In her mind’s eye, the pillow got smaller, collapsing into itself like a parachute coming to earth. There was a glow in the sky just beyond her reach.
She didn’t get a response to her question, but she knew that response might come from a number of sources — through her dreams, for example, or most likely through her logic. There was a universe out there, bursting with information, but she never underestimated her own will. She had honed it, nurtured it for decades and she believed it was growing each day.
Sophie looked at her watch. She had been sitting under the tree for over four hours. In the old days, she and Albert had met people who were able to meditate for days without food or drink.
She got up, stretched her legs, picked up her towel and thought about Althea. Sophie knew that she’d be calling soon. When she tapped into Althea’s energy earlier, she’d had a weariness about her. This was a good sign.
She knew Althea was seeing someone, someone older. This she didn’t discover during her meditations. She’d seen him drop Althea off just before Christmas. Someone from school, perhaps. Where else would she have time to meet someone? By the look of the car he drove, possibly a professor. That would be an interesting twist, wouldn’t it?
In her kitchen, Sophie consulted a notebook. Inside were pages of lists — shopping, errands, life objectives. Lists. The lists calmed her, like her meditation. Every time she completed a task, she meticulously crossed it off the list. Sometimes, she wrote specific tasks on post-it notes, placing them strategically around the house — on her bedside table, on the front door, on her steering wheel. When the notes were in place, she could relax and do other things. Like ask the universe for more information. Which of course, created more lists.
Althea used to tease her that she was the only retired person she knew who used a day-timer and had threatened to get her a computer. Sophie argued. What did she need the internet for? The answers she wanted couldn’t be found on the internet.
The bound book recorded Sophie’s days, which were often planned weeks in advance. For today’s entry, she had written a single symbol, one that Albert would have been familiar with, and beside the symbol, she had stroked off the entire afternoon and written the word “outside” followed by a question mark and underneath, another task: “check weather.”
She made a pot of tea and set the timer. She looked at the notebook, flipped a few pages, and made a check mark.
chapter 19
IT WAS A FRIDAY night in August, the first weekend she’d had off in weeks, and Althea ordered Vietnamese food for delivery. She removed a McAuslan Pale Ale from the freezer, drinking down half of it in one gulp, the ice crystals melting on her tongue. She added some hot sauce to the pho noodles and sipped the sweet beef broth, her first meal of the day. She opened a second beer, put on Tom Waits’ CD Closing Time, and sunk into her chair-and-a-half, letting the tension of the last few weeks slide off her. Tom sang, his gravely voice a perfect contrast with the slow, bluesy piano. Slow-dancin’ in a cowboy bar kinda music, Kevin used to say. Kevin had given her that particular cd — he was always introducing her to new artists.
When George called the other night, she hadn’t been surprised. He had already left two messages on her cell phone that day. He called her often — while he was traveling for business, as he entertained at his cottage, between classes. At his persistence, she felt her defenses weaken. Her decision to see him that night was instantaneous, impulsive. As she waited for him at her apartment, in exactly the way he asked her to wait, her excitement had grown. She craved the pain, the measure of his voice, and with it, the promise of escape.
He stayed until almost four in the morning. The
next morning, Simone was incensed. Althea didn’t care. Three days later, Rob delivered the pitch document by hand, ten minutes before it was due. Then, for the first time in six weeks, Althea had a weekend to herself.
After getting a third beer, she pulled out an old brown case that once held taped music but which today, only had one use: taped sessions with Michelle.
Her fingers moved over the clear plastic spines as though she was traveling backward in time. She thought about the last time she had seen Michelle, over the Christmas holidays last year. She had asked a number of self-indulgent questions about George.
“Why are you asking this? It said that he’s no good for you in the last card. Let it go, Althea.”
“Just one more card.”
“Okay, it’s your money. The truth about George.”
Althea picked a card.
“The Devil. Michelle’s eyes held a challenge. “You’re obsessed with him.”
Her fingers moved from the most recent tape, further back. She remembered the words Michelle used many times to wrap up a reading: Okay Althea, this is a big one. Close your eyes and on the count of three, pick a card. This is the answer to all of the questions you came here to ask. Althea’s fingers traced the spines one, two, three she mouthed, and picked up a tape. She put the cassette into a portable player, fast-forwarded it randomly and pushed play.
There was white noise, then Michelle’s voice — a voice she knew, butterscotch, humorous, ageless — and her own, sounding much lighter and softer than she imagined herself to be. She was talking about Tori and Kevin. This was the weekend she drove back from Kingston and ran out of gas. Almost a year ago now. Her finger moved toward the stop button, her heart heavy. Her own voice spoke.
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