Come See About Me (20 page)

With the phone
calls out of the way it’s just me and Armstrong again. I feed him, replace his
wheel and then drift lazily into that space between consciousness and dreams
where Bastien finds me. His arms slide lovingly around me on the couch and keep
me warm. He knows I’m still his, that what happened on Sunday night was just
loneliness and hunger. I’ll never really be anyone else’s. He was the one.

When I feel him
with me this way I don’t want to wake up. I spend the night on the couch beside
him and awake to the screeching of a cat in heat early the next morning. I
stumble up to bed and try to fall back to sleep, but can’t. Instead I lie in
the bath for over an hour and then plug away at one of the six remaining undone
art kits, a kangaroo with her baby peeking out of her pouch. There are actually
well over a hundred engraving boards left but most of the leftovers are now
repeats, and although the activity is more calming than useful in the first
place, I can’t bring myself to duplicate my efforts.

I swallow more
ibuprofen and scrape away the darkness until my board gleams silver. Then I
look in on Armstrong and contemplate working on
Johnny Yang
. I haven’t
been able to bring myself to look at it since Sunday. The memory of that night
needs to fade further before I forgive myself entirely.

In the end I
throw myself into cleaning the house. I dust, mop, vacuum, sweep and scrub
every inch of the house that I can reach. I wipe down surfaces with a product
that purports to be environmentally friendly. Armstrong, as though sensing my
restlessness, wakes up earlier than usual, allowing me to give his cage the
most thorough cleaning it’s ever had. I give Armstrong a sand bath, then rifle
through the kitchen cupboards and polish silver that Abigail has probably
forgotten she owns. All of this is better than lending my brain power to guilty
thinking, but it means I don’t feel fresh when my planned dinner with Deirdre
and Marta approaches.

Once I’ve
showered, blow dried my hair and taken another dose of ibuprofen, I slip on my
running shoes and set off for the neighbor’s house, feeling as though I should
have something in my arms to offer, even though Deirdre told me I didn’t need
to bring anything. It’s Deirdre who welcomes me into the house and says that
Marta’s still at work but that I should come sit in the kitchen while she
finishes dinner. As I follow her, she jokes that, “One of the disadvantages of
working from home is that I’m usually the one making dinner preparations—not
that I mind, but Marta’s a superior cook.” Marta has mentioned in the past that
Deirdre formally retired last year but still does bookkeeping for several small
businesses.

“I’m sure
whatever you’re making will be great,” I say as I hover around the counter. “Is
there anything I can do?”

Deirdre motions
to a chair. “Sit yourself down. I’m cheating here anyway—making
capellini with sauce we bought at the Jubilee Fruit Market.”

I take a seat at
the kitchen table. A shapely yellow vase in the center of the circular glass
table shows off a bouquet of blue hydrangeas. When I was living at home, my
mother, who loves anything pretty that grows in the ground, ceaselessly pointed
out flowers and plants to me along with their proper names.

“It’s really
nice of you to have me over,” I say.

Deirdre, who is
now standing at the oven and stirring a pot of pasta sauce, swivels to glance
back at me. “Are you feeling more like yourself today?”

My lips snap
into the briefest of smiles. It’s been so long since I felt like myself that
the old me is practically mythical. “My mouth is still a bit achy,” I tell her.
“But not as bad as yesterday.”

We talk about
the weather growing colder, the racket the cat in heat caused this morning, and
then theater, because Deirdre happens to mention that she was “a stage actress
for a few years in another lifetime.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that
a friend of mine is starring in a play in Toronto, but Liam’s not really my
friend, not really anyone to me.

Soon Marta comes
home and sets the table in the dining room. The capellini in creamy mushroom
sauce is delicious, and suitably mushy, and I drink wine for the first time in
months. Because I haven’t eaten much lately it doesn’t take many sips to loosen
my tongue. I begin babbling about
The Handmaid’s Tale:
Offred, Moira,
Nick and The Commander, the narrowness of life as a handmaid, the idea that a
fertile woman’s duty is to produce babies.

“And there are
people who believe that now,” Marta says. “People who think a woman’s place is
in the home and that they shouldn’t have the same right that men do, to have
sex without facing a pregnancy.”

I nod, again
thanking God and modern science for allowing me to make mistakes without paying
for them in the same way that women before me did. “Who was it that said ‘if
men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament?’” I ask.

“Florynce
Kennedy,” Deirdre replies. “The great civil rights activist and feminist. She
didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her. Just kept fighting the good
fight, kicking down barriers. I have a book with a section on her if you want
to have a look at it after dinner—she’s one of a kind.”

Following the
meal, the three of us sit in the Victorian style living room drinking more wine
and then lattes. Because I’ve finished
The Handmaid’s Tale,
Marta
reveals her favorite part of the book. It’s not what I would have imagined but
it makes me smile. Then, as promised, Deirdre places a book about feminism in
my hands and points to a photograph of an African American woman in a cowboy
hat and pink sunglasses. She’s flipping the bird and grinning at the camera and
I automatically smile back. One glance at Florynce’s picture and I can tell
she’s fierce. Without people like that, nothing would ever change.

I don’t realize
I’ve expressed myself out loud until Deirdre says, “When I was in school we
were more or less taught that the nail that sticks out gets knocked down.” She
gives a toss of her head. “The sixties revolution didn’t seem to reach the
small Ontario town I grew up in. You were more or less expected to take a
certain path. I don’t know what I would’ve done without people like Florynce
demonstrating that I didn’t have to do what was expected of me.”

Marta reaches
for Deirdre’s hand, folding it into her own. “Deirdre’s been an example for
lots of people herself over the years,” she says proudly.

Deirdre allows
herself only a half-smile and I can see she’s the type of person who is better
at giving a compliment than receiving one. Regardless, Marta and Deirdre look
so happy together on their living room couch that it makes me ache for what
I’ve lost. Bastien would like them too, I think. And he’d admire the rebellious
spirit of Florynce Kennedy and want seconds of creamy mushroom capellini.

“I wish you two
could have met my boyfriend,” I blurt out. “I think you would have liked him.”

“Oh, I’m sure of
it,” Deirdre agrees.

Marta expands on
Deirdre’s thought: “After all, we like you.”

“Les amis de mes
amis sont mes amis,” Deirdre declares.

It’s been a few
years since I took French, but it’s an easy phrase so I translate: “The friends
of my friends are my friends.”

“It’s not always
true, of course, but it very often is,” Deirdre says, her face childlike in its
openness. “So what was he like—your boyfriend?”

A worry line
pops up between Marta’s eyes. Maybe she’s scared that this is a question I
don’t want to answer. I’ve been alone with my memories of Bastien for a long
time. That solitude was what I wanted, but now I find that I also want to share.
I tell them about Bastien’s artistic skills, his beautiful smile, generous
nature and sophisticated taste in music. I even describe the night we later
came to refer to as our first date at the movies and how I anxiously confided
my feelings for him, afraid they wouldn’t be reciprocated.

Then I tell
Marta and Deirdre about running into Bastien at the zombie walk in Toronto and
how we’d gone to high school together in Burnaby—how full of regret I felt for
robbing us of more time together by not falling for him sooner, and about the
work I’ve been doing on his unfinished graphic novel. I say that I know most
people probably don’t believe that a relationship you start at eighteen will
last but that now that he’s gone I’m sure we would have grown old together if
we’d had the chance.

“I do believe
sometimes you just know,” Marta agrees.

“And so”—I cross
my legs as I hunch down in my chair—“did you two know?”

Marta laughs and
steals a look at Deirdre. “Not at all. We actually annoyed each other in the
beginning.”

“No!” I protest
in surprise. Marta and Deirdre seem as though they were made for each other,
like they could finish each other’s sentences while clasping hands on their
sophisticated old couch for the next twenty years without having a single
argument.

Deirdre’s
unclaimed hand motions to Marta. “We had a friend in common, but after our
paths had crossed a few times she was worried about inviting us both along to
dinners and things because we always seemed to end up in a heated debate in the
corner of the room.”

“And what would
you argue about?” I pry because for the life of me I still can’t envision them
fighting over anything that matters.

Marta
volunteers, “I used to be much more conservative.” She arches her eyebrow and
sighs in regret. “Or so I thought. I was a late bloomer and it turned out I
didn’t really know who I was. But back then—this was sixteen years ago—I was
dating a man named Steven, who my conservative parents adored, and I used to be
of the opinion that people who appeared to require help in any way only needed
to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

What Marta’s
saying reminds me of that book
That Secret
, which sold millions of
copies by claiming that all people need to do to achieve happiness is think
positively. “So you don’t believe that anymore?” I venture.

“No, I think
that we need to fund more social programs that strive to eradicate poverty,
that support gender, racial and other types of equality and treat mental
health. Socially we got many things wrong in the past and once your eyes have
been opened, you begin to see those things—and their unfortunate
legacy—everywhere. It’s impossible to close your eyes to them.”

I don’t know
enough about social issues to add anything, but I don’t disagree. I wonder what
Marta and Deidre would have to say about psychopathic children who throw stones
at geese and bully other kids at school with a ferocity that people over thirty
claim to be shocked by. Would social programs help those kids? What’s gone
wrong in their lives to leave them soulless?

I’m a little
drunk and inarticulate from the wine and the issues are so complex and
disagreeable that I shrink from them. My own life, simple as it may be in
comparison, is overwhelming enough.

“Oh dear, I’ve
started to rant,” Marta says apologetically.

“At your past
self, amongst other things,” Deirdre notes with a twinkle in her eyes.

“Yes, I know.”
Amusement dances at the edges of Marta’s voice.

The person I was
nine and a half months ago is already a different version of myself and I
wonder, as I listen to the two women who feel more like wise aunts than ever,
whether the Leah I am now will also feel alien to me someday. I don’t want that
to happen—I don’t want to leave Bastien that far behind.

“You look tired,
Leah,” Deirdre observes.

More from the
wine than anything else. “I am a little.”

“Maybe we should
call it a night,” Marta says.

I volunteer to
help with the clean-up first but Deirdre and Marta tell me there’s no need,
that they’re just going to toss everything into the dishwasher. I never use the
dishwasher at Abigail’s. It feels wasteful for one person. In truth, I’d sort
of forgotten about dishwashers as an option. No matter how often my thoughts
are of Bastien, obviously I think like a lone person now.

I thank my
neighbors for inviting me and return to Abigail’s couch, hoping Bastien will
find me there again. Instead I fall into a deep sleep where whatever dreams I
have become a mystery the moment I awaken, again, to the sound of a cat’s
fevered meows.

This is the direct opposite of
letting Sunday night go but I do it anyway—I head for the Starbucks up by Whole
Foods (Wi-Fi!) with my laptop the next day and Google Liam and
Six West
.
The top search result is the show’s official website. There’s a photo gallery,
cast list and a preview of the most recent episode, which won’t play for me
because I’m in the wrong part of the world. I click on the cast list and spot a
head shot of Liam next to his character’s name—Aidan Walsh. His real name is
cited in italics:
Liam Kellehan.

It’s bizarre to
learn his last name in this covert manner. I can’t help but think that Liam
would feel like I’m spying on him. However, that doesn’t stop me from moving on
to an article in the
Evening Herald
entitled “Liam Kellehan decamps to
Canada to leave relationship woes behind him.”

Six West
star Liam Kellehan is set to quit Irish shores, at least temporarily, for a
Toronto stage production of Philadelphia, Here I Come. The Dublin actor has
been the focus of multiple sex scandals in recent months, the first being
fiancée Natalie O’Mahoney’s affair with fellow Six West actor Shane Delaney,
and the second Kellehan’s subsequent involvement with yet another Six West
co-star, Isabelle Fitzgerald. Kellehan, who narrowly avoided assault charges
against a battered and bruised Delaney, has repeatedly declined to comment on
his latest tryst with Becca McNamara, the explicit details of which were leaked
to the press by McNamara herself.