Coq, page 2
For frig’s sake. There’s a lily climbing up between her shoulder blades. Her middle name. Mom’s favorite flower. The church continues to empty until I’m alone and the flame from the only candle goes out.
three
Wes and Joan head to the reception buffet in a “cousins’ car” driven by Harrison. I congratulate Dad and Mona before slipping into the cemetery with its lumpy plots and sprawling oak trees. Clumps of faded plastic flowers are nestled against grave markers and a crew of pigeons wanders the grounds.
Mom’s headstone is simple, granite, bevelled. Fresh lilies matching Joan’s tattoo fan from the base of her headstone. I run my finger along their coarse stems, trace my mother’s name. I haven’t been here for months and yet I feel like I’m always here, liaising with the dead to understand the living.
I fish a pair of glasses from the thick grass near the base of the stone. They are black and masculine.
“You found them.”
I turn to find Glen behind me, presumably blind, in his wedding suit and cycling shoes. A yellow helmet dangles from his wrist.
“You left the lilies?” I ask.
He nods, accepts the glasses and polishes the lenses with his shirt cuffs.
“They’re pretty,” I say, admiring their delicate filaments.
“I used to grow them,” he says. “After she died. Joan loved them. She used to shove her face into the flowers. Grandma lilies, she called them. That’s why the tip of her nose was always orange.”
“Joané,” I correct.
“Oh God,” he replies. “What’s up with that?”
We share a laugh. “Did you know she had a tattoo?”
“Not until yesterday. Aren’t there rules about tattooing minors?”
“Apparently not in Nova Scotia.”
“Claudia —” he starts.
I wait for him to continue but he pauses, mouth open, as if the words are caught in the back of his throat. Odd, given that Glen has always had something to say. About the way I cut the tomatoes, or organized the cupboards, or parked the car. How I paid more attention to the kids, or laughed too loud at parties. The way I was. The way I wasn’t.
“What?” I reply.
His eyes flicker. “I think I made a mistake.”
I glance down at his fluorescent cycling shoes.
“We all do. That’s what they neglect to tell you when you’re born. That you’ll make all the mistakes. You’ll fall in love with the wrong people, pursue the wrong career, live in the wrong place, abuse your body, shatter your heart, ignore your inner voice, and then you get hit by a banana boat.” I throw an arm toward my mom’s headstone.
“Uh,” Glen fumbles. “I meant that I’d made a mistake biking to the church. I didn’t realize how far the reception was.”
“Didn’t you just bike from Asia to Europe?”
“Not in a single afternoon.”
“Where’s your bike?”
He gestures toward the church parking lot.
“Fine.” I crouch in front of the headstone and whisper to my mom, “I miss you.” I will never stop missing her. I pluck a lily from its stem and twirl it between my fingers. Glen extends a hand. I accept his help because I rage-ran fifteen K yesterday and my quads feel like cannonballs.
He takes the flower and says, “Here,” tenderly tucking it behind my ear.
I simultaneously think fuck off and do it again. In the car, I set the flower on the dash while Glen maneuvers his stupid bike into the trunk.
“Are we dropping it off at your place or taking it to the reception?”
“As long as you don’t mind driving me home, I’d prefer to drop it off. That way I can change my shoes.”
I nod. He sits with his helmet on his lap and I notice his hands look middle-aged and mottled. Like mine. I can barely remember his younger hands. Just that they were there cradling Wes in the infant bathtub, fixing the front steps, playing with my hair and then they were gone and that’s how the last decade has felt. Down a set of hands. Handless.
I pull up to his tidy wood-and-slate townhouse with the astro-turf lawn and blast the air conditioning.
“You can come in,” he says, through the open trunk where he’s trying to remove his bike.
How long does it take to change a pair of shoes?
“What for?”
“I dunno.” He shrugs. “We can have a drink? Before the reception? I don’t think Barry’s All-U-Can-Eat has the best selection in wines.”
I turn off the engine and grab my purse. It would be nice to freshen up in a real bathroom and I would like a glass of wine. It’s my job at the reception to welcome Mona into the family and I haven’t prepared a thing.
I haven’t been in Glen’s house since before his road-trip and even then, mostly stuck to the driveway or foyer, usually to drop off Joan’s forgotten backpack or cleats or Wes’s Cineplex uniform. The house is spotless.
I hoist myself up onto a futuristic stool at the kitchen island and check my phone.
A text from Wes: Do we have to be there for pictures? Harrison said there’s pictures.
I remind him they aren’t doing formal family pictures as Glen slides a glass of white wine in my direction.
“Pinot Grigio. That okay?”
I take a sip and study his fridge.
“Whose baby?” I ask, pointing to the jointless bald blob.
“Kara’s.”
“She sent you a picture of her baby?”
I think of his ex. The woman he’d moved on with so quickly after our split, eliminating any chance for us to reconcile. I remember her long legs and white teeth. The way she perfectly braided Joan’s hair or tied Wes’s skates. The goddamned notes I’d find in the kids’ lunch bags. You got this! Be kind! Know your strength. God, she was awful. God, she was good. I’m glad she has a baby.
“Who’s the father?”
“A guy she met on a plane to New Zealand.”
People still meet people on planes? Gross. I take a drink. “Did you and she ever think about having kids?” I know it’s none of my business, but Glen and I are an ancient thing. A landline.
“We tried.”
He doesn’t elaborate. He pours himself a glass of whiskey and I imagine a scenario where my kids have half-siblings. I’m relieved they don’t. Glen opens a bag of chips. I take a handful and eat them one at a time. We talk about the coming school year. Indoor shoes, bus fees, soccer evaluations. He tops off my glass and then leans on the island.
I shrug. “My track record would suggest, yes.” I wink. “Yours too.”
“Back at the cemetery,” he starts. “When you said we fall in love with all the wrong people. Did you mean that?” He fiddles with his glass. The ice cubes clink.
“I don’t know that wrong is the right word. Relationships aren’t binary.”
I think of Harrison. “No, they’re not.”
“I think we just fall in love. We’re human, we’re flawed. Relationships are just messy.” He pushes off the island. “Right and wrong don’t exist.”
I wonder if this is how he justifies moving in with Kara so soon after our split. When our first kiss and the nights we made our children were still remembered by their calendar dates and not a single Christmas tree ornament had broken. Our relationship had been that precious, that new. That right.
That wrong.
“We should go,” I say, downing the last of my wine.
He clears the glasses and I go to the bathroom to fix my makeup. I look okay. I notice an empty box of Just for Men hair dye in the trash, and in the bath tub, pomegranate body wash. After all these years, he’s still using it. I blush at a sudden memory of going down on him in the shower. Of getting pressed up against the tile, which was cool, despite the steam and want.
“I’ll meet you in the car,” I shout, but Glen’s at the door, ready to go in his regular shoes.
“You look great, by the way,” he says as we get into my car.
I shift into reverse. “I know.”
four
I make a bad traffic decision and consequently have to crawl through a construction zone. We’re late for the reception. Dad and Mona are already seated at the head table with the mishmash wedding party. Glen disappears to a corner table. Dan stands to pull out my seat. Somehow, I’ve ended up with a wheelie chair. I look to my brother for an explanation, but he is coming down and useless, shoes off and eyes fixed on his empty plate.
The crank is missing from the office chair I’ve been assigned so when I wheel myself in, the table comes above my chest.
“Wes, fix my chair,” I whisper. He’s watching TikTok videos on his phone under the table.
I ask one of Mona’s sons wearing a beret for help, but he doesn’t hear. This must be the one who had half his face blown off in Afghanistan. The side I can’t see. He rearranges his flatware, adjusts his water glass with a melted hand.
Another of Mona’s sons approaches the podium. He welcomes everyone to the reception, points out the washrooms and escape routes, outlines the rules for the buffet. Before inviting the head table to get started, he bows and says grace.
Mona’s Saturday Night Fever shoes prevent her from getting her own meal, so Dad does it for her. He’s selected things that can’t be eaten with a fork as if it was a Jeopardy category: chicken wings, wontons, roasted corn on the cob, buns. She accepts with childlike fervor, clapping her hands.
I cut in front of Joan and take a bun. I filled up on chips at Glen’s. I shuffle from chafing dish to chafing dish in search of something light. Joan dips out of line and joins Wes at the dessert station. They fill bowls of soft-serve to overflowing. Their cousins join them, adding sprinkles and sauces and chopped allergies. Allison-Jean would never let this happen. She’d have given each kid a vegetable quota.
Joan puts a maraschino cherry on her tongue and takes a selfie.
“Delete that,” I whisper as I pass, stopping the bun from rolling off my plate.
The head table looks like the Last Supper before a lockdown. Someone in Mona’s family dissects a crab leg with the intensity of a medical examiner while my dad playfully feeds Mona a spoonful of peas. Peas.
Peas.
I watch Mona chew. She must have borrowed Joan’s military-grade lip gloss because her mouth remains perfectly orange and frosted, except for the bits of green. When a pea falls down her dress, I have the sudden urge to be single for the rest of my life. I set my dinner-for-one on the table and cross my heart.
By the time I’ve finished my bun, my shoulders already ache from trying to reach my cutlery. Beside me, Dan has a plate consisting of nothing but eggrolls. Another thing Allison-Jean would never have allowed. He tears open a packet of plum sauce with his teeth and pipes his eggrolls in zigzags. “Oh my God, Dan, just friggin’ dip them like a normal human being.”
“She’ll be here in twenty minutes,” he says, tearing open another packet.
I’m assuming he means Allison-Jean.
“You’ll be fine,” I encourage, uncertain he will. “Just remember we’re here for Dad. Keep it about him.”
He licks a blot of plum sauce from this pinkie. People return to the buffet for seconds and this is my cue to welcome Mona into the family. I snake my way to the podium, bend the mic toward my face.
“A few months ago . . .” I wait for the clatter to settle. “I picked my dad up from the curling club and there was something different about him. He told me he that he had met someone at the pool earlier that day and when I asked him to tell me about her, he simply said, ‘She’s Mona.’ That’s all he said. ‘She’s Mona.’”
A light chuckle travels the room.
“I thought about that for days. How that’s all he needed to say. That a name could be enough. That everything I needed to know about Mona could be inferred from that simple phrase: She’s Mona. And then I met Mona.”
“Uh oh,” someone hollers from the back. Mona’s sons snort, my dad hoots, Dan drops an eggroll on the floor. Old people jokes zip around like rumours there’s a sale on Voltaren. Mona loves the attention. She laughs an outrageous laugh and slaps the table. She stands and my dad salutes her. A Russian salute? I try to reign the audience back in, but someone starts clinking his glass with a knife. Dan’s crying again. Wes dips onion rings in his ice cream.
The glass clinking grows in volume until Dad plants an R. Kelly kiss on Mona’s lips. I clear my throat in a joking manner to make them stop even though I very much want them to stop, because, fuck. I’m sure I saw a pea roll onto the floor.
“As I was saying, and as you just saw —” I gesture toward the couple. “Mona doesn’t need any further introduction. She’s the life of the party, a warm and generous grandma and a loving partner to my dad.” My voice catches. Emotion gathers in the back of my throat like a choir behind a curtain, threatening to belt out a tune at the exact wrong moment. Threatening to weep. “On behalf of my brother and myself,” I croak, “would you join me in raising your glass to officially welcome Mona to the family.”
I swallow, lift my trembling hand, and gaze at the guests. She’s gone ten years and all I can think of is how I want to call my mom and tell her about the wedding. About Mona’s cleavage, the handwritten vows, and the fact that the soya sauce tastes off. The terrible crepe paper decorations. My hunch that Harold Pugh has had a stroke. And this. This moment of seeing strangers, distant friends, and family members raising a glass to her replacement.
“To Mona,” I squeak.
I shoot my wine, bury the glass inside the podium atop someone else’s speech, and make a beeline for the bathroom. There’s no one inside. I lock the door and slump down on the toilet seat. What am I doing? I rub my temples and search my purse for Wes’s confiscated vape. I’d smoke anything right now.
“Mom?”
“Joan?”
“Can I come in?”
I slide open the deadbolt and wave Joan in. She’s wrapped in Mom’s sweater.
“Your mascara’s running.” She tucks her hand in her sleeve and dabs my cheek. “I thought you were happy for Grandpa?” she says.
“I’m very happy,” I say. “Sometimes I just think about my mom.” The toilet automatically flushes.
Joan nods. “Maybe we can do something special, you know, to like . . . honour her. That’s what Libby’s family does every year on the anniversary of her dad’s death.”
I remember Libby’s dad. His emaciated body. His ashen skin and wooden cane.
“They take a trip to one of his favorite places.”
We intended to do that. Some type of family tradition to mark Mom’s passing, but it never worked out. Someone always had a soccer game, a conference call, a tee time. We carried on because of and in spite of our grief. We remembered her privately. Me at the bird sanctuary, Dan at the cemetery, Dad parked and idling across the street from their old house.
I pat Joan’s hand. Her nails are ten inches long and shaped like claws. “I’ll think about it,” I say, mustering a smile. “Thanks.”
She slips out of the stall and I take a moment to wipe my nose.
“Can I have a glass of champagne?” she asks.
“Absolutely not.”
The lineup for the dessert station bends around the restaurant and I return to my seat at the head table with minimal fanfare or notice. Somehow my seat seems to have deflated another six inches so the table comes up to my neck. A bowl of partially melted ice cream is set at my place with a vanilla wafer sticking out of it like a cocktail pin. Glen.
I look up and he watches me from the corner table, an unfamiliar baby on his lap. Is this a thing? Is he courting me at my dad’s wedding? I eat the wafer as one of Mona’s bereted sons welcomes my dad into their family. As he finishes his speech, a bagpiper appears suddenly and plays a reel. People sing along. Mona is the loudest. I tap my foot to the music. Someone’s refilled my wine and I down it brazenly.
Restaurant staff clear tables with rubber bins and a trolley. Chairs are dragged to the side where the DJ — a friend of Wes’s — has set up a table. Multicoloured spotlights line the perimeter of the “dancefloor” to give the place a “club feel” per Mona’s request. Next, we’ll hit the Neverland Ranch for the afterparty.
The DJ plays “Sexual Healing.” I search for Wes, who curated the playlist, but he’s fled to the parking lot with the rest of the teenagers to watch desperate CrossFitters flip tires in the alley. I can see them through the back door.
Allison-Jean congratulates my dad and Mona who are still seated at the head table. She looks happy with her short hair, crystals and burlap dress. A ripple of sadness passes through my chest when I remember Dan’s frantic call. She doesn’t want me anymore. How gutting and small to be unwanted. How barbaric. How human.
“Do you want to dance?”
I spin around to object, but a beautiful man in a pinstriped suit stands there with a presumptuous outstretched hand. He’s caught me off guard and knows it. He smirk-smiles and I take his hand with the boldness of a Mona or Joané. Nothing says romance like dancing to “Sexual Healing” at your elderly father’s wedding while your kids spy at you from the back door.
“Bjorn,” the man says, moving his pelvis in hypnotic circles.
I try to create space, but Bjorn wants to make precious furniture together. He presses his allen key into my hip. I dance away, but he tugs me back in with a touch of violence, his goatee grazing my cheek. He smells like a rum-soaked forest, and I am here for it. Heat courses through my body. Too much heat. I spin away to recover at the edge of a circle where someone is twerking. My dad. Joan probably taught him. People cheer him on.
Outside the human boma, Bjorn stalks. He wants to build a bedroom set. In a different lifetime, I’d have brought the screws. Before Bjorn can make his next move, Dan materializes out of nowhere like a Scooby Doo villain and pushes me into the circle, where Dad and Mona are performing a geriatric version of the Humpty dance.
I keep right on going, and fall into the burnt and capable arms of Mona’s disfigured son. He invites me into a synchronized step-touch. He dances with conviction. He dances like nobody’s watching. Or perhaps like everyone’s watching, footloose and totally present. I make it to the next chorus and plan my exit. There’s a hole in the circle between Harrison and Mona’s granddaughter. When the route is clear, I shimmy through and out the front door.
