“Yes.”
“This new role of the woman, the failed writer who murders someone—I’m not sure this is going to work out well for you.”
Rose felt the room recede, as if her hearing had shut down. She can’t mean me, she thought. But it was done, the arrow had entered her. In the armchair beside her, Minky’s claws flexed open and then dug into the fabric. Meryl’s face reddened.
“But that’s not how I see her, as a failed writer,” said Meryl almost in a whisper. “To me she’s a character I love.”
Rose’s thoughts ran backward, all the way to the spa, and to their first dinner. Meryl’s penetrating questions. The talk about advances and broken contracts.
“It’s not the role that’s the problem so much as your approach to it,” Sybil said. “You’ll do what you do, which will serve the work well. But don’t be surprised if certain relationships suffer in the process.”
“It’s always a little hard on my family,” said Meryl quietly. She was gazing down at her hand and would not look at Rose.
“Besides them,” said Sybil.
Rose’s original plan had been to go to the movie, and then after for drinks at the star-worthy Shangri-la, where the fireplace ran the full length of the bar. They would talk about the movie, and how Darlene Love’s amazing voice had been stolen without credit for the hit record “She’s a Rebel.” They’d marvel at how arbitrary it could be, success or failure. A writer and an actress, talking.
It’s too late to just walk out, Rose thought.
A passerby on Ossington peered into the storefront window without seeing the three women. Sybil began to clear away the tea.
“Remember what happened when you played that Australian woman accused of killing her baby,” she asked. “The dingo movie?”
Meryl put her face in her hands. “She said I made her look coarse, and she hated the clothes they made me wear. But it’s a movie, I kept telling her. It’s fiction.”
“Well, there’s no such thing as pure invention,” said Sybil mildly. “I’ll be right back, I have a little something I want to give you.”
They were left alone in bruised silence. Meryl came over to Rose and took her hand, made her meet her eyes.
“That’s not how I see you, Rose. Please believe me. This has nothing to do with my work.”
“How do you know? It’s all fair game. I’ve done it too.”
Rose remembered a newspaper story she had written in her twenties, about a woman who lived with thirty-six rescue cats, and was fighting an eviction. She had shared tea and home-made butter tarts with Rose, who then made ruthless fun of her (and her zodiac coffee mugs) in print. Months later they found themselves in the same lineup at No Frills. The woman glared at Rose, left her groceries behind, and stalked out of the store. Rose went home, reread her story, and saw what she had done. Felt deeply chastened, and never forgot the lesson.
“But I would never decapitate anyone,” Rose said. “I think.” Meryl laughed and then teared up with relief.
“I agree. I can just Google that part.”
Outside, some snow had begun to fall, absentmindedly, like drifting thoughts. Sybil slipped back into the room and handed them two Ziploc bags. Rose opened hers: a pair of blue foam toe-spreaders. Meryl’s were glittery. The actress thanked her effusively and Sybil went over to the chair with the sleeping cat.
“Minky, down you get, it’s time for bed.” She blew out the tea lights and turned to the two women with the cat in her arms.
“Don’t forget what I said about the feet. And if you go right now, you’ll still make your movie.”
Mister Softee
Rose’s mother was ninety-four, so it was expected—but still. Your only mother, poof, gone. Eric called from Philadelphia and sent flowers. Her stepson, Ryan, was on holiday in Thailand, and her daughter had just started a new job in Hong Kong. Ceri offered to fly home for the funeral, but Rose forbade her.
“It’ll just be the caregivers and me anyway,” she said, holding her phone flat on her hand like a canapé and talking into it, to avoid the keyboard. “Nobody else is left.”
This came at the end of a year of dogged self-improvement for Rose—Spanish lessons, Zumba at the gym, the meditation app. She’d cut back on the wine, lost a little weight. And every day she did some research for her next novel, even though her publisher had declared bankruptcy. The Flo-Q copy-writing contracts she could do handily on the side and was grateful for. It felt good to finish something and get paid.
Her mother’s death should have been another ending, and in certain ways it was, of course. But it also felt like the beginning of a new unmothered self, someone she didn’t yet recognize.
It was September. The air felt cooler, like a silk lining, and the traffic had a new self-important urgency as everyone retreated indoors to school and jobs. Two days after her mother died she took her laptop to Starbucks, dropping into the safety of the screen. The pale guy with the thin head and his devices spread widely around him was there as usual. A number of her friends had sent condolences on Facebook. Should one “like” a death, though? In the afternoon, she drove down to Cherry Beach, a miraculously condo-free stretch of the waterfront that still resembled the shoreline of a lake. She felt a little truant doing this, but the funeral wasn’t for another four days and all the arrangements had been made. The visitation room at Oak Ridges Manor, her mother’s last home, was booked. The casket had been chosen.
The man at the funeral home who dealt with her was the owner’s son. As he sat across from her in his ill-fitting suit, she had had an urge to shock him. To kiss him on the mouth. In the lee of her mother’s death she kept being ambushed by strange impulses like this.
The parking lot at Cherry Beach was empty except for the usual chip truck, and something new, a Mr. Softee. On the side of the white van was a cartoon of a waffle-patterned man with a curl of soft ice cream on his head, like a plump white turd. And instead of the usual clown-calliope tunes, this Mr. Softee was broadcasting slow, lugubrious music. Something classical. Behind the counter was an older man with close-cropped silvery hair, wearing a black apron and a gray fedora. Familiar-looking.
As Rose walked past the truck on her way to the water’s edge, Mr. Softee caught her eye, smiled, and gave a little ceremonial bow. She pretended not to have seen.
A few die-hard sunbathers lay on the beach. Cyclists rode along the already leaf-strewn bike path. Across the channel, where the sailboats slipped in and out of the harbor, were the islands, Toronto’s peaceful archipelago. Cherry Beach reminded Rose of her childhood home, a brick house on a cul-de-sac with a view of the billowing and sometimes fiery smokestacks of the steel plants across the bay. Going down to the lake still made her curious about the world on the opposite shore, and whatever she was missing.
In the parking lot stood a Plexiglas-enclosed sign describing the city’s plans for developing Cherry Beach. She wanted to vandalize the sign, because the place worked perfectly as it was. On weekends families came down to Cherry Beach with their coolers and lit fires in the rusted BBQ grills set back under the trees. This well-used place, tattooed with footpaths, would soon be ruined by streetlights, chain-link fences, and a glass Visitor Centre.
The sun had a low glare so Rose went back to the car to fetch her hat.
“Miss,” a deep voice came as she crossed the lot. “Can I interest you in a complimentary cone? I’m trying something new.”
It was Mr. Softee. Rose went up to the counter, where a ukulele with mother-of-pearl details hung beside the wooden menu board. The specialty of the day was something called the Cone of Perpetual Longing, made with “fresh Mission figs, coconut ice cream, spearmint leaves, and Okanagan black cherries.” Kind of upscale for an ice cream truck, Rose thought. But she was hungry, she realized. She kept forgetting to eat lunch.
“Sure, thanks.”
Mr. Softee bowed over the freezer, carving away at a well of ice cream with his comma-shaped scoop. He packed two balls into a waffle
cone lined with thin white discs.
“What are those?”
“Communion wafers. If that’s acceptable.”
He piled the fruit on top, wrapped the cone in brown paper, and handed it down to Rose. He was old but handsome, with two deep furrows beside his nose.
She tasted it. Intense—more tart than sweet. And those quickly dissolving, tongue-friendly wafers. The ice cream began to melt and run down into the crevices of her fingers as she ate. “This is incredible.”
“But I’m still not sure about the name,” Mr. Softee said. His voice was a bass rumble. “Finding the right name can take years.”
“What other flavors do you have?”
Mr. Softee tapped the board behind him.
“I’m partial to the Twist of Fate myself. Butterscotch ripple coated in bitter dark chocolate with a misting of Jack Daniel’s, and a shard of broken glass on top, to keep you on your toes.”
“Really? Broken glass?”
“Not for the young ones, obviously.”
She saw that he wore a pendant around his neck made from two fused hearts, like overlapping Stars of David. A cool wind was coming off the lake now. Rose pulled a fleece jacket out of her pack.
“September,” said Mr. Softee, casting an appreciative eye over the lingering sunbathers. “And a full moon tomorrow.” Using a pair of tongs he adjusted a row of leathery-looking wieners as they revolved in their metal trenches.
“What brings you to Cherry Beach?” he asked. “Day off?”
“Sort of.” She shaded her eyes to watch the lone windsurfer in a wet suit. He was fighting to stay upright on the choppy little waves close to shore.
“My mother died last week, so…” Rose hurried on. “I mean, it’s basically okay, she was old. Ninety-four. But there’s still stuff to do.”
Mr. Softee doffed his fedora and placed it over his aproned heart. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Please accept my condolences. I hope it was a peaceful passage for her.”
“I think it was. I hope so.” Rose zipped up her jacket and felt the tears beginning. “No one was there, actually.”
“I’m going to make a little fennel tea,” Mr. Softee said. “Please have some with me.” He swung open the back door of the truck and invited Rose to perch on the top step as he plugged in the kettle.
“A month ago she had minor surgery for a skin thing, and never quite bounced back,” Rose said. “Then she developed some fluid in the lungs.” She wasn’t sure how detailed she ought to get with Mr. Softee. “Which tends to happen with the elderly, especially when they’re bed-ridden. So, some edema’s normal.” Why am I sounding like a paramedic? Rose thought. I’m talking about my mother. The brainy woman with a math degree and old-fashioned lavender sachets in her underwear drawer.
“Did you have a chance to speak with her before she left?” Mr. Softee asked gently. “Did you say what you wanted to say?”
“Yeah, pretty well. I visited her every day. We had a sort of code between us.”
“But did you make your feelings clear?”
Rose thought about that for a moment. “I did, when she went in for her operation. I said ‘I love you,’ right into her ear so I knew she heard. But I waited until she was almost under.”
“And was she able to express herself to you?”
“Well, sort of. But she was the farthest thing from sentimental. A prairie woman.”
“I still miss my mother,” mused Mr. Softee. “When the light changes like this in September, I always think about her. She died on the fourteenth.”
“What was she like?”
He brandished a hand, as if conducting.
“Oh, very dramatic. Lots of weeping, lots of laughter. What they would probably call bipolar today.”
“And your father?”
He sighed and adjusted the wieners in their troughs. “A dim figure. He died when I was nine. He had beautiful suits though. We’re a family of tailors. Sitting in the darkness of a closet with his shoes all around and the drapery of his pants beside my ears was the closest I ever came to him, I think.”
The windsurfer was now standing up on his board, leaning back, pulling and tugging on the transparent sail as it bellied in the breeze and sent him skimming across the waves, like a plane on a runway.
“Why don’t we move further down the beach where it’s still sunny?” said Mr. Softee. “Hold on.”
He shut the door. There was an old-fashioned school desk in one corner, with a notebook open on it beside a chubby fountain pen.
Mr. Softee got into the cab of the truck and switched on the PA system. The almost-inaudible opening bars of something somber began. A few moments later Rose recognized it—Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3. The saddest song in the world.
Through the back window she could see a woman under one of the big oak trees, bending over to lift a cooler out of her car trunk. As the volume of the music grew, the woman turned her head toward its turgid swell, put the cooler down, and buried her face in her hands, weeping.
“Occasionally I will play my own little Casio tunes over the PA,” Mr. Softee said, “but I like the power of this Gorecki. It’s so tidal, so inevitable. It feels like an infection moving up through the body, towards the heart.” He smiled.
As they made their way across the wind-scribbled beach, she studied Mr. Softee’s shelf of toppings: the classic multicolored sprinkles, a bowl of waxy-looking chocolate chips, some broken walnuts. There was also a jar of black tea leaves with curls of dried orange rind.
Tea and oranges.
Rose looked at Mr. Softee again. Yes, it was him. The man who sang “Suzanne,” about the woman who gets you on her wavelength, and serves you tea and oranges. But Rose said nothing. If the famous and globally revered Leonard Cohen wanted to run a soft-ice-cream truck at Cherry Beach in Toronto, in the off-season, that was his business.
On a lower shelf were the sundae toppings. They included “The Phil Spector” (bourbon, gunpowder, and Manischewitz wine) and something called “Holy Smoke.”
“That one costs extra, but it’s worth it,” said Leonard. “It’s a shot of liquid nitrogen. When you pour a little on the ice cream it freezes the surface so hard you can’t bite into it. So you just have to look at it and worship it without devouring it.” He busied himself at the counter, then handed a dish to Rose. “Tell me what you think of this.”
The cardboard boat held three scoops of peach ice cream inside two parentheses of sliced mango. At one end, where the mango slices met, was the pale glistening knob of a peeled lychee nut.
“It’s called the Delta,” murmured Leonard. “It’s best if you simply bury your face in it without reservation.”
The lychee nut was slippery as a pebble under water. Rose popped it in her mouth.
“I never tire of it myself,” he said.
“It’s delicious. Thank you, Leonard.”
“Ah. Yes.” He looked a bit saddened at this outing. “And you are?”
“Rose. Rose McEwan.” They shook hands.
“You were performing until recently, right?” Rose said.
“Yes, yes I was.” He changed the music to some more upbeat tunes. “Until this opportunity involving ice cream came up.”
“I saw your last show, in Toronto. I loved it. And Sharon Robinson was so amazing.”
“Yes, I’ve been blessed with the support of many wonderful musicians and technicians.”
“That must feel so great,” Rose said foolishly.
“It does,” he said. “It’s very humbling. But to offer an audience a performance that isn’t false or indifferent, to do it again and again? That I haven’t mastered. If I repeat my performance exactly, night after night, I find it works very well for the audiences. If not always for me. Whereas ice cream.…” He shrugged. “Ice cream never disappoints. The expression of people receiving their cones is still deeply gratifying to me.”
In the distance Rose could see a young woman walking barefoot across the beach, almost marching, her one
long braid flipping about like a slim fish. She wore black capris, a yolk-yellow sweatshirt with the words “Camp Sunshine” stenciled across the front, and carried a pair of blue Crocs in one hand.
“Shell’s back.” He watched her approach with a soft expression in his eyes.
The woman, perhaps twenty or twenty-two, eyed Rose warily as she climbed into the truck.
“Shell, this is Rose. She has just enjoyed the Delta.”
“Yeah, it’s a big seller,” said Shell, a no-nonsense girl with sturdy calves and pale, evaluating blue eyes.
“Shell was a counselor at the same summer camp where I once worked, long ago. I knew her grandmother as well. And now she works with me,” said Mr. Softee, placing her Crocs on a rubber mat.
“Our whole family more or less ran the place,” said Shell, warming just a shade now that Mr. Softee had alluded to their history. She pointed to her T-shirt. “Camp Sunshine.”
Leonard took an oven-mitt tea cozy off a small iron teapot and poured cups of fennel tea for the two women.
“The fact is, my adult life was set in motion by Shell’s grandmother when she taught me three chords on the ukulele,” he said. “And a finger-picking pattern for ‘Blue Moon.’ I still use it onstage.”
“Did,” Shell corrected him.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Here, I’ll show you,” he said. He took down the ukulele and plucked the strings.
“A’s flat,” Shell said.
He twisted a peg and strummed a chord.
“Yes?”
“Good.”
Mr. Softee bent over it and cocked his head. The instrument looked childlike against his body. His left hand found the chords as they sang “Blue Moon” together, sweetly.
“I used to play the ukulele at camp too,” Rose piped up. “Songs like ‘Deep Purple’ and ‘Sloop John B.’”
“My guitar playing is really an example of a ukulele player working on a slightly bigger scale,” Mr. Softee said with a chuckle.
“I like instruments that sound like toys,” said feisty Shell.
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