Coq, page 1
coq
coq
Ali Bryan
© Ali Bryan 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical — including photocopying, recording, taping, or through the use of information storage and retrieval systems — without prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.
Freehand Books acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
Freehand Books
515 – 815 1st Street SW Calgary, Alberta T2P 1N3
www.freehand-books.com
Book orders: UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario M3H 5T8
Telephone: 1-800-565-9523 Fax: 1-800-221-9985
utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca utpdistribution.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Coq / Ali Bryan.
Names: Bryan, Ali, 1978– author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230152694 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230152740 | ISBN 9781990601255 (softcover) | ISBN 9781990601279 (PDF) | ISBN 9781990601262 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8603.r885 C67 2023 | DDC C813/.6—DC23
Edited by Kelsey Attard
Book design by Natalie Olsen
Cover photo © Dream Lover / Stocksy.com
Author photo by @PHOTOPHILCRO
Printed on FSC ® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Friesens
for Big Frat
one
“Joan, you are not wearing that,” I say, staring at her baby pink bandeau top. “It’s not appropriate for a wedding.”
“Joan-é,” she snaps. She swipes gloss that probably contains moondust and truffle oil and placenta across her lips, and then smiles with her mouth closed to conceal her braces. She has Glen’s lips, pouty and bee-stung. She looks eighteen, not thirteen. She takes a selfie and sends it to God knows who. I ignore what looks like the remnants of a hickey on her neck.
I study my own lips and wonder if they’re shrinking. I resemble a hamburger bun.
“Gimme that.” I snatch the lip gloss and apply it in broad strokes. It’s too shiny. I try to rub it off with a Kleenex, but the tissue breaks down.
“It doesn’t just come off,” Joan says. “You have to use this.”
She hands me a special lip-gloss remover that smells like turpentine. I’m not convinced it won’t dissolve my teeth or remove my lips entirely, which might not be a bad thing. I could get mouth replacement surgery. I’m sure I can find a spare mouth in a bin of Mr. Potato Heads in the basement.
Wes half-knocks on the door. He wears a grey suit with suspenders and sneakers, and a pink tie. He is six foot five with a baby face and bayou hair, wild and unwieldy.
“Wes, hon. Why are you still here? You should be at the church. You have to walk Mona down the aisle.”
“I don’t want to walk Mona down the aisle. I barely know her.”
“You know her enough.”
“How come he’s allowed to wear pink?” Joan adjusts her bandeau.
“It’s not the colour I have a problem with, Joan, it’s the size. That’s not even a shirt. It’s not even half a shirt. It looks like you tied one of my running headbands around your chest.”
“You don’t run,” Wes says.
“Are you slut-shaming me?” Joan replies.
“I’m not slut-shaming you, Joan —”
“Joané.”
“Fine, Joané! But half-shirts aren’t acceptable attire for church weddings. What would Grandpa think?”
“Grandpa bought it for me.”
“Well, he obviously didn’t know what he was buying. He probably thought it was a napkin.”
I glance at my phone. It’s twenty to eleven. “We’re going to be late.” I shoo them from the bathroom and tell Joan to get a sweater from my closet. If I tell her to change, we’ll get into a fight. She’ll call me a bad feminist, accuse me of trying to silence her and take away her power. Tomorrow I will hide the bandeau. Or wear it as a mask.
“Can I drive?” Wes asks.
“Not today,” I say. “We’re in a rush. Maybe you can drive home.”
Wes sighs, but doesn’t complain. He hands me the keys. I slip on a pair of ridiculous heels. I’ve managed to coax Joan into a reasonable pair of childlike sandals. She doesn’t put up a fight but I’m certain it has more to do with the blister on her heal from her new soccer cleats than a desire to comply.
We settle into the car. I avoid checking myself in the rear-view mirror and head toward the church. We’re in the middle of a heatwave. Neighbours water their lawns, dogs pant. It’s been a summer of scorchers, sunburns and drought. For my dad, a summer of love.
I pull into the church parking lot next to my brother Dan’s ancient blue Dodge Caravan. There’s no sign of Allison-Jean’s tidy Jetta with the heated seats and low mileage. It’s been almost six months since they separated. He still thinks there’s a chance they’ll get back together despite the fact Allison-Jean now hosts a podcast called In Your Next Life, Lesbian.
“Where’s Uncle Dan?” Wes asks. “He was supposed to meet me in the parking lot.”
“I don’t know, text him.”
There are strangers fanning themselves, crowding the church’s sloping front yard. They must be on Mona’s side because they are all short and homely. One cowers under a golf umbrella to escape the heat.
“Shouldn’t we be in there already?” Joan asks.
“Soon,” I reply, smoothing down my blue dress. I still taste the lip remover. “We’ll go in last.”
I think about my dad pacing in a vestibule. The colour scheme was his idea. Grey made his hair look whiter. He’s proud of his hair. It’s a snow white, not smoker yellow or wizard charcoal like his friends. I’d combed his curls out this morning, adjusted his suspenders, pinned a clump of bulky pink carnations to his lapel. Mona wasn’t fussy, he’d said about the flowers, and about the industrial park buffet where’d they’d booked their reception. He didn’t seem to mind that they’d probably be taking pictures outside of an MMA gym or equipment yard.
A tap on the shoulder. I spin around, startled. Dan stands there, sweating, with twisted suspenders and a prepubescent moustache.
“You look like shit,” I say.
He rubs his face, blinks. “Barely slept. Hann — Harrison — was up all night.”
Hannah, who loved horses and French braids, is now Harrison, lover of anime and biceps. Of mine and Dan’s collective offspring, he was the last one anyone expected to be gender nonconforming. Bets had been on Joan, who went through a suit phase, which I let everyone think was a case of gender dysmorphia when I knew it was actually because I’d let my six-year-old binge-watch the Godfather series. If not Joan, votes went to Emma, Dan and Allison-Jean’s youngest, who at the tender age of four was into muscle shirts, ham radios and top hats.
“Do you have anything?” Dan asked.
“What, like speed? No, sorry, I don’t. Aren’t you supposed to be in there ushering?”
“I got Harrison to do it.”
I nod. Harrison would like that. “Why don’t you go with Wes? He’s supposed to walk Mona down the aisle. Give him some tips or something.” Before he leaves, I shove a breath mint in his mouth.
Joan, who’s been hovering with her shoulders in a perpetual teenage slump, says, “Now can we go in?”
“Put your sweater on.” I speak through clenched teeth. She mimics me, saunters toward the car. Dan and Wes round the back of the church. I glance at the cemetery, where my mom’s headstone rests, and a pang of grief, so acute it leaves me breathless, rips through my body. What would she think of this? Dad remarrying a retired party-planner with a herniated disc and five children, all of them short and in the military?
It’s been almost ten years.
Joan drapes my mother’s green sweater over her shoulders. Of all the sweaters.
“What?” she says. “It was the only one I could find.”
I take her arm and pull her in the direction of the church. We are greeted by two men in Air Force uniforms. The younger one looks at Joan. At all of her. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, before he whisks her down the aisle, “I’m more into Army boys.”
The other pilot, who looks about my age, and is hot in a dad way with salt and pepper hair and a square jaw, reaches for my arm, but just as I’m about to hook on, Harrison swoops in.
“Auntie Claudia,” he says in a voice matching Wes’s. “You look beautiful.” Harrison, one year a boy and already a gentleman. I smile and compliment his bowtie. In his left ear, one of my mom’s diamond earrings sparkles, catching the light bending through the church’s stained-glass windows. He seats me next to Joan in the same pew we sat in for Mom’s funeral.
Harrison winks and returns to his duties. The organ player is twelve and I’m pretty sure is playing an elevator rendition of “Enter Sandman,” which seems appropriate, given that my father looks old and nearly mythical.
“I don’t see why he’s allowed to change his name, and I’m not,” Joan whispers.
“We’ve been through this a thousand times. Harrison identifies as male. His new name affirms that.”
“Well, I identify as French.”
I give her a nudge as my father enters from a door beside the choir benches, accompanied by his friend Harold Pugh and my brother who looks . . . high? OMG, Wes. I search for him at the back of the church, where Mona’s five kids are in formation, looking like they’re planning an attack.
The minister arrives. A woman with big teeth. The one who presided over Mom’s funeral died of Covid last year. The organ player clears his throat and begins to play something military, French. Joané approves, sits up tall. I catch my father’s eye. He’s noticed his late wife’s sweater draped over his granddaughter’s back. My mom’s favourite sweater. His mouth falls open, just enough to see the heartache in the back of his throat, and then he slowly presses his lips together to welcome his new bride.
I shift in my pew to watch the procession and there, in the last row, is Glen looking dapper and tanned. Alone.
two
Wes is stoned. I can tell by his overzealous broadcaster expression. I’m gonna kill him. He towers over my dad and brother. His stance suggests his shoes are too tight but there’s something endearing about his folded hands and drooping corsage. The softness in his shoulders. He’s still my baby. Meanwhile, Dan resembles the Philadelphia Flyers mascot, Gritty. I stare, willing him to look less like a child’s nightmare but he misinterprets my intent and smiles. With his teeth.
Joan whispers, “What’s wrong with Uncle Dan?”
The minister prays and riffs about second chances, mature love, Gerald and Mona. Dad cups Mona’s hands, strokes her knuckles with his thumb with airy precision. Did he do that when he took my mother’s hand in marriage? What had the minister said about love back then when my mom and dad were mere twenty-somethings, optimistic and bright-eyed, with a first-floor apartment and a hand-me-down van? ’Til death did them part.
“He’s hot.” Joan nods at one of Mona’s adult children. The one in the Navy with the eyebrow scar and tight pants.
I whisper, “He’s probably my age.”
“Hot like in a Clint Eastwood way.”
My daughter thinks I’m an octogenarian. I shush her and focus on the ceremony. The minister doesn’t ask if anyone objects to Dad and Mona’s union and I can’t help wonder, if she had, whether my mom might go full on poltergeist. Toss a hymnbook, play a few keys on the organ. Set the alter on fire. I think not. Ghost Janice would more likely be sitting proper in the front row, hoping my dad remembered to take his diabetes medication. That he didn’t forget to wear a belt.
I steal a glance at Glen. It’s been a month since he returned from a year-long trip, in which he cycled from Singapore to Rotterdam with two hundred euros and the burden of his life choices. When Dad invited him to the wedding he had initially declined because he was “still processing his journey.”
I’m still processing the carrot cake I ate for breakfast. My stomach gurgles in fits and spurts and Joan slides away from me as if I’ve farted. I pinch the back of her arm and she stifles a yelp.
Mona’s maid of honour, her eldest granddaughter, hands Mona the vows she’s written. The paper has been wound into a tight scroll and it takes Mona several tries to unravel the page and pull it taut enough to read.
“Gerald,” she squeaks, through orange frosted lips. “The first time we did deep water aquafit —”
Wes starts to laugh.
“I knew you were special.”
“Grandpa does aquafit?” Joan asks.
“The way you moved with such commitment and vigour and spunk and sang along to the music. How you let all the ladies pass when we ran in a circle. You helped me into the hot tub when I tore my meniscus.”
Joan leans in. “I thought he did lane swimming.”
I picture my dad egg-beating to the Neutron Dance.
“The way you leant me your goggles after my cataract surgery.”
“This is getting awfully anatomical,” Harrison whispers from the pew behind us.
A woman coughs and a boy shifts in his seat. Mona’s voice cracks and the church falls into contemplative silence. The beads on Mona’s youthful gown sparkle from the light of a decorative candle and the air feels simultaneously light and warm.
“You made me want to live again,” she continues. “You made me want to feel an inch worm crawl on the back of my hand. You made me want to splash in a puddle, kick a ball, lick the syrup from my plate, wave my hand out the window of a moving car.”
At least he doesn’t make you want to start a hoard, I think.
“You bring me the kind of joy I haven’t felt since I was a child growing up in Petawawa.”
I didn’t know children found joy on army bases.
“Every day that I’m with you, I’m reminded that happiness doesn’t come from the big stuff. It’s not the luxury trips or big screen TVS or season tickets to the Mooseheads. It’s the little things. Sharing a scone, watching the stars. It’s waking up next to you. It’s —”
Mona’s TED Talk is interrupted by Dan’s sobbing. Instead of patting his uncle on the back or taking his arm, Wes shouts in a loud voice, “What do I do?”
Dad intervenes. He hands Dan a handkerchief — probably used — from his pocket and explains to the guests, “His wife just left him for a woman.”
I scan the church for Allison-Jean. She had planned to attend, but her partner was having minor foot surgery and there was a chance she wouldn’t make it. I don’t see her.
The minister urges Mona to continue.
Mona clears her throat, stands tall. “What I’m saying, Gerald, is that you bring me joy and I promise to return it every day, as long as we both shall live.”
I wonder what joy looks like. A parrot? An icicle? A foil balloon? I imagine these items being passed back and forth between Dad and Mona. Joy hot potato.
Dan blows his nose and Mona takes the soiled handkerchief and gives it to my dad, who stuffs into his pocket. He’s forgotten his belt. From the other pocket he retrieves a folded piece of blue paper acquired from my office notepad: Claudia Sinclair, VP Sales & Marketing.
“Mona,” he starts. “When I first saw you at aquafit —”
Wes starts laughing again.
“I was taken by your incredible energy. Your smile, your enthusiasm. The way you responded with the loudest woo-hoo every time the instructor asked how are we doing, team?”
Dan shouts, “Woo-hoo.”
Joan snaps a selfie making either a peace sign or a gang symbol and then asks if Uncle Dan is “having a nervous breakdown.”
I glare at her.
Dad continues. “When you first asked me to see the live remake of Pinocchio, I was so nervous. I didn’t know what to wear or what to order at the concession stand or whether it was okay to put my arm around you. But after I picked you up and you wore those little dangly popcorn earrings and you’d stuffed your purse with bottled water and black licorice and a first-aid kit, I knew we were meant to be together.”
“Why would they need a first-aid kit? Do old people get injured going to the movies?” Joan asks.
It’s getting increasingly hot. I wave the wedding program in front of my face. The ceremony continues. Dad and Mona finish their vows and they kiss like high-schoolers. A military march plays while they sign the registry. The minister presents my dad and Mona to the crowd. With all the juvenile talk about licorice and inch worms, I half-expect them to exit via matching Shriners’ cars. Instead, they link arms and lumber, first down the stairs, and then the aisle, Mona’s train the length of a first marriage dragging behind her.
Wes whoops, Dan whistles, and in the back, I recognize Glen’s sharp methodical clapping. Extended family I don’t know wipe tears from cheeks. The wedding party exits the altar. Dan has forgotten how to walk. His steps are tiny, as if he’s wearing a kimono. I mouth, “What are you doing?” but Wes pushes him forward.
Joan nudges me from behind. “Go, Mom,” she says as the pew across from us begins to empty. But I can’t move. I’m rooted to the church’s sloping floor. “Mom,” she says impatiently. “Go.”
I motion for Joan to go around me. As she passes, her sweater snags on my corsage. Petals sail to the ground. The sweater slides from her shoulders and I catch it mid-air. Unencumbered and now uncovered, she catwalks the church aisle like a Parisian model, a little fuck you mixed with a healthy je ne sais quoi. Plus a little . . . tattoo?
