Coq, page 5
I hug them both, thank Mona for the comforter.
“Drive safe,” Dan says. “It’s raining.”
I flip on the outside light and they slowly descend the front steps towards Mona’s giant pick-up. Dan watches over my shoulder.
“Are we mean to exclude her?” I ask. “From Paris?
My brother shrugs. “I think she’d feel out of place. Besides, they’re going to Van Gogh.” He towel-dries his hair on one of my hoodies.
“That’s not much of a honeymoon.” I call the restaurant down the street and order pasta for one. “Maybe we can send them away for a few days. Somewhere special. Beyond Van Gogh.”
“There’s that new bed and breakfast close to Oak Island. They love the show.”
It’s a great idea. Mona’s obsessed with the Lagina brothers.
“But I don’t have any money,” Dan adds.
“Whatever, I’ll pay for it. You organize it.”
Joan is already planning the trip to Paris. She comes out of her room with a list of five-star hotels near the Champs.
“Look for a Holiday Inn,” I say. I’m not wasting five stars on my family.
My pasta arrives and I carry it to the couch. Dan is texting Allison-Jean about driving Liam to the dentist. Liam is older than Wes but hasn’t bothered to get his license. Or a job.
Dan says, “It’s cold in here. Can you turn the heat up?”
“It’s August, no.”
My brother rips open the garbage bag in the kitchen and tugs out the comforter. He brings it back to the couch, and spreads it over both sets of our legs. I jab a meatball with my fork. The comforter is so worn, our kneecaps protrude. I can smell Dad.
“Can I have a bite?” Dan waits with his mouth open wide. He looks old and small. The stress of his marriage has left him with dark circles under his eyes, thinning hair and loose clothing. He’s down at least ten pounds.
“You need some new clothes.” I pass him a meatball and we stare at our reflection in the blank tv.
nine
On Tuesday, I work from home because there’s a power outage by the office. This is a mistake, because Dan’s also working from home. From my home. His stuff’s spread over the kitchen table. I’m set up in the living room, my laptop perched on a stack of textbooks that Wes failed to return at the end of last school year.
I’m in the middle of a Zoom meeting, where our ad agency is presenting creative for a new series of web ads, when Glen texts: can we talk?
About what? I text back.
Dan starts his own Zoom call. He’s yelling. I motion for him to go in the other room, but he explains through hand gestures that his laptop’s plugged in. I turn my camera off and go down the hall. By the time the agency is finished its presentation, Glen still hasn’t replied to my last text and it leaves me irritated and curious. I spent years processing our failed relationship. I met some good men. Why then do I care so much that he has something to say? Why have I let him lock his bike to the only sliver of my heart still capable of receiving love? I hate myself.
I set my phone facedown, turn on my computer mic, say the usual post-meeting pleasantries and disconnect.
Dan is shouting projections from the kitchen. Wes’s school emails to say timetables have been posted online. One week till the kids go back. I’ll have to take them shopping for school clothes. Or give them money to go on their own.
Between meetings, Dan and I book Dad and Mona’s getaway. I arrange to have a bottle of champagne in the room. Dan’s managed to book a private Oak Island tour through one of his clients. Mona is ecstatic and we both feel better about leaving her behind. Next, we tackle Paris.
“Should we bring the kids?”
“That’s a lot of kids,” Dan replies, microwaving a Pizza Pop.
“Harrison isn’t exactly a kid.”
“He isn’t coming.” Dan lingers beside the microwave. “He can’t miss school. Too many labs and depending on when we go, midterms.”
“I kinda don’t want to bring the kids.”
Dan’s phone rings. He answers, while transferring his Pizza Pop to the table.
I heat up leftovers. Mom’s funeral bulletin is still on the fridge, faded and curled at the corners. She was their grandma, I think, studying her picture, but I don’t know that Joan remembers and Wes doesn’t even want to go. After reviewing my calendar, I text Dad about the last week in September. It’s soon. Flights will be outrageous. God knows about hotel bookings and whatever else it is we’re planning on doing. What are we planning on doing?
When Dan gets off the phone, we examine our calendars.
“I don’t know if Allison-Jean will let them miss school.” He plucks a dry meatball from my plate.
“Liam doesn’t even go to school.”
“Online he does,” Dan argues.
For grade twelve? Or terrorism? All Liam does is play first-person shooter games. And yet Dan and Allison-Jean are more concerned about whether he eats his broccoli, drinks his whole milk, and takes his vitamins: C, D. AK-47.
“I can’t leave the kids behind,” I say.
“I thought you wanted to go without them.”
“I won’t be able to relax.”
“You never relax.” He says it, rinsing his plate in the sink. “That’s not true.”
“Oh, Claudia.” He rolls his eyes. “Everyone knows you can never just relax and go with the flow.”
“Okay, Yoda. You cancelled Christmas last year because you couldn’t find Turtles.”
“That was Mom’s fault,” he says, shaking his mouse to jumpstart his computer screen.
“There was a global shortage of pecans.”
“And what did Mom always say? You can’t have Christmas without Turtles.”
Dan starts typing, and everything about him looks hard. Concrete shoulders, lead fingers, metal veins. The one on his forehead doesn’t even pulse. I turn away and stare at the fridge. There’s a picture of Dan and me at his wedding. His arm’s around me and I’m sort of hunched, mid-laugh, a glass of champagne dangling dangerously from my hand. Dan’s boutonniere is upside down. In the background, Glen. I have no idea who took the picture or why it’s on my fridge. It’s not even a nice photo. It’s slightly out of focus, grey-tinged and date stamped with ugly alarm clock digits. My right side is cut off.
I consider us both now: middle-aged, alone, a litter of kids and a ribbon of sadness between us. Maybe France will fix us. Maybe we’ll find our old selves or reinvent new ones or simply see the world in a new light. It seems to have worked for Glen.
Dan is hyper-focused on whatever he’s typing. I move the picture to the centre of the fridge so nothing else touches it. His phone chimes. “Allison-Jean says I have to take Liam and Emma to Paris. She can’t single-parent and study.”
Alison-Jean is going to mortuary school. “I thought Cindy was moving in.”
“Cindy doesn’t know how to parent. She doesn’t have any children.”
“So, I guess we’re bringing the kids.”
“Have you talked to Glen?”
We haven’t spoken since he texted asking if we could talk. I phone him. He answers from the car. A siren wails and then fades into the background. I explain the plan.
“You’re taking a family memorial trip to Paris a month after your dad remarries? A bit weird, no?”
“That’s kinda why. The whole wedding thing was almost a sign that it was time to do something so we could all just move on.”
“What’s remarrying, if it’s not moving on?”
“Forward. He’s moving forward,” I say. “You don’t move on. Moving on implies finality. You make it sound like we’re replacing the dishwasher with a new model.”
“But you just said you were going to Paris so you could move on.”
I want to tell him to die in a hole, but he’s right. I said that. “I meant forward.”
There’s a long pause. I hear a truck pass, the pleasing click-click of a turn signal. “You never really move forward.”
Preach, Plato.
“Time is a construct and we’re nothing but energy moving directionless in and out of the light.”
“I’d like to move forward with this conversation. Do you mind if I bring the kids?”
“Will Joan miss evaluations?”
“They’ll be finished by then. The most she’ll miss is a few practices.”
Another long pause. I imagine Glen moving directionless in and out of the traffic lights, lost. If I hold the phone close to my ear, I can tell he’s playing flute music again.
“Are you listening to Zamfir?”
“I could always come to Paris.”
I recoil, as if he’s suggested we make love on a Paris rooftop in matching striped shirts. “Why would you come?”
“I could help with the kids. Take Joan to a PSG game. Entertain Wes. If he’s still into war stuff I can take him to Normandy.”
“Football doesn’t start until October.”
“A training session? I think they’re cheap.”
“And Wes hasn’t picked up a history book since he learned he could play War on his Xbox.”
Cold, street, civil, guerilla.
“I’m trying to be helpful, Claud. You said I was never helpful.”
“I needed help taking the kids to preschool, getting their eyes checked, building the stupid cars they had to design in grade four. Did you ever see what they ended up taking to school? Wes’s car looked like a hot dog on wheels and Joan’s was two-dimensional. For a unit on ‘vehicles that move forward’ she raced a piece of cardboard.”
“Claudia,” Dan interrupts. “You’re yelling. I have to make a call.”
I want to suggest Dan go to his own house, and fix his marriage. Now, before he’s still unpacking it ten years later, a box of junk in the basement overflowing with miscues, missteps. Mistakes. A sarcophagus of emotion.
“Mona’s not even coming,” I say.
“If you change your mind . . .”
“I won’t.”
“When the time comes, I’ll talk to Joan’s coach. In case she does have to miss a game.”
“That would be helpful.”
“But if you did let me come, I would take you to every goddamned romantic corner of the city. Every lover’s bridge, every candlelit alley, archway, balcony, platform. Every rooftop.”
What. The actual. Fuck. When Glen said I went to see the world, but what I saw was myself, did he see himself as Jerry Maguire or Jack Dawson? Or that lovelorn creeper from Love Actually who confessed his feelings to Keira Knightley with a stack of giant recipe cards and a ghetto blaster?
And yet the idea of standing on a Paris rooftop with Glen actually makes me feel like I’m standing on the edge of a roof right now: curious and awakened. Alive.
Enough, now.
ten
Georgia is jogging on the spot by the time I reach the trail-head. “I’m already at ten thousand steps,” she says, checking her watch. She wears running gear as orange as a pylon and cut for a college athlete, of which she is not. She doesn’t care about creases and folds or high-waisted panels. She cares about steps.
She gives me no time to warm up. As soon as my foot touches the pathway, she’s off, as if looking for a new husband. She’s been married three times — proudly — and loves like she runs: reckless and hard. A hundred metres in and twice she’s nearly run me off the trail.
“Why were you late?”
“I was talking to Glen.”
“He cool with the whole Paris thing?”
“He wants to come to the Paris thing.”
Georgia slows and whacks my arm. “The hell for?”
“To help,” I say, making air quotes.
She picks up her pace. We round a bend and take a footbridge in single file. Ahead of us, a single tree has gone rogue, its leaves sharp and yellow in defiance of summer.
“I suppose that wouldn’t be the end of the world if you have to visit a few grocery stores while you’re there.”
I’d forgotten all about Petit Vert. In fact, I’d forgotten about the memorial. The whole reason we’re going. I’m turning Paris into a goddamned fantasy.
“Right” is all I say, dodging a fallen branch.
“Maybe he can watch the kids some night and you can go out dancing.”
“By myself?” How tragic.
“I would,” she counters.
I agree. “You would.”
We run the next leg of the trail in silence. Too many hills. Georgia’s most recent divorce was finalized last winter. She celebrated by hiking Machu Picchu alone and then spent a week immersed with a group of local farmers growing quinoa. At home, she harvests men.
I blurt, “I think Glen wants to get back together.”
“Splendid,” she replies. “I mean, most men hit midlife and they want to leave their wives. That’s very avant-garde of Glen, never mind romantic.” She kicks a rock out of the way. “What more can you want in a man?”
One who never left in the first place.
I change the subject and we spend the next five K discussing everything from bitcoin to Botox. We’re holdouts on both. Liam has supposedly made a few bucks on digital currency but I still don’t fully understand how it works. I never anticipated seeking investment advice from the generation that ate Tide Pods.
We pass an older couple out for a stroll. Birders, on account of the binoculars. Georgia and I nod, before we blow past them.
“That could be you and Glen,” she says.
It could be my dad and mom, if she was still alive. This is exactly how they would have done their seventies: nature walks, sun hats, sandhill cranes. With Mona, it’s a different future. One I’m still trying to figure out, but I suspect will include trips to Las Vegas, shot glass collections and inappropriate T-shirts. Dad always liked gag gifts: passive-aggressive notepads, fanny packs made to look like beer bellies, bathroom putting greens.
An impossible thought strikes me and I stumble as we near the final bend of the trail. Which of those men is my real dad? Canoe man or cruise ship karaoke participant? Man nursing a scotch or man doing the macarena while polishing back a margarita? Pavarotti or Elvis impersonator? Janice or Mona. If mom had a sophisticated French lover, then maybe Dad has a secret penchant for American gameshows and grannies with fake eyelashes. Of course, I’m assuming Émile was sophisticated. A financier or maître d’. But maybe he just repaired shoes.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Georgia asks. She’s accelerating toward the parking lot and I can barely keep up.
I can’t speak by the time we sprint through the gate. A few wobbly steps to orient myself and I hunch over, elbows on my knees. My head spins and it takes me a few minutes to catch my breath.
Georgia’s parked near the trailhead. She pops the trunk of her Lexus, then fishes through layers of real estate signs before uncovering an ancient case of water. “Here,” she says, tossing a bottle in the air. I mouth “Thanks,” unscrew the cap with a trembling hand and take a long sip. From the front seat, she grabs her own bottle, stainless steel, and mixes in a tiny packet of flavour.
“You think it’s possible we can spend an entire marriage, a whole life being someone else?”
“No,” she replies, furiously shaking her head. “Why do you think I’ve been married three times?”
Because you’re shitty at relationships? Work too much? Talk through movies? Have the worst taste in Christmas decorations?
“Because marriage is a construct.”
For fuck’s sake. First time, and now marriage. A distant jackhammer splits the air into pieces.
“This notion that we can only love one person, that we have to pick one and say together until end times doesn’t work for me. I want to be with as many people as I fall in love with and die.”
“Then why even bother getting married? Why not just date whoever?” I feel my heart rate starting to drop and at the same time I notice a dull and persistent ache in my chest.
“Because I do love a wedding,” she replies wistfully.
It’s true. Georgia’s had some spectacular ones.
“And I’m sorry I missed your dad’s,” she adds. “Open house.”
An elderly woman in a beige Corolla pulls into the lot. She inches her way into a parking spot and Georgia and I watch, waiting for her to bump the crumbled concrete marking the edge of the pavement. She comes within inches, but never hits it. The woman slowly unbuckles, swings her legs out of the vehicle like they might be made of plastic or straw, and stands.
“What if you end up alone?”
Another car pulls in.
“Alone implies you’re only qualifying romantic relationships. Whether I have a man or not, I’ll always have you, my nieces, colleagues, friends. Barney.”
I’m not sure she’ll always have Barney. He’s blind and has been on specialized cat food imported from Germany for nearly a decade. His mews are laments.
Another elderly lady joins Straw Legs. This one is wiry and fit with a big mouth and tinted hair. They are happy to see each other. It seems like it might have been a while. After a few minutes of catch-up they select the smaller trail loop and disappear into the woods.
“What is all this?” Georgia waves her hand from my face down to my torso, like a disappointed fairy godmother. “You’re all out of sorts. Is it the wedding? Your dad getting remarried? Your brother? Glen?”
That’s a lot of things. I shrug, as if it’s none of these things. Fuck, and I’m tearing up.
The old couple we passed earlier emerges from the trail, like a pair of great explorers. The man is recording something in a notebook with a voting pencil. I imagine his letters, shaky and slanted. His wife stoops to tie her shoe. A flutter of wings. We all look up and a great blue heron lopes across the sky. It looks out of place. Too heavy. Like it might plummet to the earth at any second. But then it climbs, higher and higher, before coming to a graceful stop atop a power pole.
I smile, shielding my eyes from the sun. When I lower my hand, Georgia is right there, a foot from me. She stares at me, deep and thoughtful. This is why she’s single. She can see past masks and personas, profile pictures and tweets. She can see your shame, your secrets, your naked beating heart. She’s terrifying.
