Authors: Anthony Bidulka
pretty much since my birth, my mother agreed to
stay overnight in my home. And not just for one
night but for every night of the two weeks leading
up to Christmas. When I first called and asked her
if she’d like to spend Christmas together, as I do
every year out of repetitive obligation, I was truly
18 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
shocked by her reply. My good friend and neigh-
bour, Sereena, was with me at the time and
believed I was about to go into cardiac arrest. You
see, normally, since my father’s death several
years ago, my mother spends Christmas with
either my sister or my brother. Never with me. It
just made sense. Or, if truth be told, I had never
thought about it hard enough to question whether
or not it made sense. I just figured she was more
comfortable with the other choices: my sister,
because mothers and daughters supposedly have
that extra special bond, or my brother because he
has two children to whom she enjoys playing
grandmother. Or is it four? I can never keep track.
The holidays together would be spent eating,
playing cards, eating some more and then, all
involved being sated, Mom would toddle off
home to the farm until next year. Everybody was
happy, right?
I suppose I did sometimes wonder (when I had
absolutely nothing else to do) if she avoided my
house because I am gay. She’s known this fact for
years, she doesn’t like talking about it or hearing
about it, but she knows. Does it make her uncom-
fortable? Is that why she had stayed away?
Yet this year something different was afoot.
She’d said yes. After some blathering and blub-
bering to cover my surprise, I’d hung up, drunk
the half carafe of wine Sereena’d thoughtfully set
before me and called my siblings. My sister,
Joanne, couldn’t have Mother for Christmas
because she was planning to spend the holidays in
Hawaii. My brother, Bill, who lives the next
Anthony Bidulka — 19
province over in Winnipeg, Manitoba, said that he
had made the offer to Mother but she’d refused
with no apparent reason. I’d reached a dead end. I
realized I’d have to swallow my feelings
of…what? I didn’t even know what I felt about
my mother coming to visit. I loved her well
enough. So what was the problem? Was I worried
she’d be bored? Afraid we’d have nothing to talk
about? Anxious that my Christmas would pale in
comparison to my sister’s or brother’s version?
None of those seemed quite right, but they’d do
nicely until I had time to sit down and think about
it. So I hired a house cleaning service, took my dog
Barbra to the groomer, stocked the fridge with
things I barely recognized, like butter and whole
milk, and welcomed my mother into my home.
As I shuffled into the kitchen on that chilly
December morning, I was still more than a little
dazed from the bizarre incident on the outskirts of
the city the night before. The venomous sounding
words that spewed from my cellphone had
echoed in my brain ever since: “Drop the case, Mr.
Quant. Or next time…we’ll catch you.”
First of all there was the matter of the implied
threat. Next time they’ll catch me and what?
Introduce themselves? Trade recipes with me? Kill
me? And then, just for that nice added touch of con-
fusion, was the first part of the message telling me
to drop the case. The problem was, I had no case.
I’d wrapped up my most recent investiga-
tion—a fairly benign matter involving a mis-
20 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
placed and highly cherished curling broom (don’t
ask)—about a week ago and since had been toying
with the idea of taking some days off. I was look-
ing forward to using the free time to properly get
into the Christmas spirit: shopping, decorating,
partying, sleeping.
So what was this idiot talking about? Drop the
case? What case? I’d taken some preliminary
information from Hugh when he’d first called. All
bogus of course, including his phone number. So
now what? Even if I wanted to I couldn’t do what
the bad guys wanted me to. So much for the
caprice part of a private detective’s life. Now I
needed a dose of serenity.
Nuh-uh.
As soon as my bare foot hit the tile floor of the
kitchen, I knew my daily existence had drastically
changed and would remain changed for the next
two weeks. My usual routine is to let out the dog,
prepare her food and mine, set the coffee and
retrieve the
StarPhoenix
from the front walk. I then
let the dog in and finally settle down surrounded
by paper, food, dog and coffee in my pleasant
kitchen nook to quietly welcome the new day. The
first sign that things were different was Barbra.
With my mother having already taken care of her
doggie needs, my gentle five-year-old pepper-
and-salt schnauzer was sitting in one corner of the
kitchen, far enough away from Mom’s busy feet to
keep from being stepped on, with an odd look on
her face. I think she was grinning, waiting in
anticipation for my reaction to the scene in our
usually peaceful home.
Anthony Bidulka — 21
Instead of tranquility there was mini-pandemo-
nium as Mom tried to acclimate herself to a new
kitchen, her indigenous habitat. Most of the sur-
faces were covered with pots and pans and non-
perishables. There were paper Safeway bags and
plastic Superstore bags brimming with groceries
and other items she’d brought from home—obvi-
ously things she suspected I wouldn’t have and
she couldn’t possibly do without. She’d already
brewed a pot of weak coffee and poured me a cup
laced with heavy cream and a heaping teaspoon of
sugar. She’d also somehow found the newspaper
and was now using the Lifestyle section, my
favourite for light early morning reading, to soak
up the fat from a heap of freshly fried bacon. And,
by some mystery, she had perfectly timed my
arrival in the kitchen, as she had most days of my
corpulent childhood, with the cracking of three
eggs into a hot pan, spitting with butter.
Even though it was not quite 8 a.m., my moth-
er was wearing a freshly pressed, robin’s egg blue
housedress under a flowery apron (not mine),
what she calls house shoes (hard leather dress
shoes, always black with a chunky heel) and thick
nylons. Her hair was immovably perfect and her
eyeglasses were magnificently shiny. I, on the
other hand, had barely managed to fasten the belt
around the waist of my bathrobe.
“You seet and I feex more bacon if dat’s not
enough,” she said, her back to me, intuiting my
presence in the room.
I looked at the two pigs worth of bacon sitting
on my newspaper. My mother comes from a gen-
22 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
eration of prairie farmwomen accustomed to cook-
ing meals for men who spent their days plowing
fields, herding cattle and picking rocks. The closest
I come to any of those agrarian activities is select-
ing the perfect head of lettuce—ok, romaine—at
the organic produce store. I fell into a chair, picked
up an unfamiliar coffee cup from an embroidered
place-setting and sipped at its contents. It tasted
something like a hot, mocha milkshake. Barbra
and I exchanged glances. Her lips were definitely
upturned on each side of her face. I began to won-
der. Schnauzers aren’t given to smirking unless
they have very good reason. “Mom, you didn’t
give Barbra people food, did you?”
“Vhat kind peoples food? Vhat you mean?” She
was busy flipping my eggs and I took from her tone
that I was lucky she had answered me at all.
“People food, you know, anything other than
the dog food in the bag in the cupboard I showed
you. If she eats people food she gets sick and
throws up. I wouldn’t want you spending your
first day cleaning that up.” I tried to sound light
and airy about it, but I’m not sure I succeeded,
especially since hot milkshakes just don’t do it for
me first thing in the morning—particularly after
my harrowing experience the night before.
“I haf tree egg here, dat enough? You start
dese, I feex more.”
No matter how many people she is cooking for,
one or twenty-one, I cannot remember even one
occasion seeing my mother actually sitting at a
table to eat. She cooks. While others eat—she
cooks. Long after the meal is done—she cooks.
Anthony Bidulka — 23
When the guests have left and are home in bed—
she’s still cooking. I don’t get it. What happens to
all this food? “Mom, I don’t eat a big breakfast.”
“Not beeg,” she informed me as she slipped
three easy-overs onto a plate along with a nice
splash of boiling butter. All the better to dunk my
toast in. “Tree small egg.” The platter landed on
the table. This was her way of giving me a morn-
ing hug.
“I’m trying to watch what I eat.”
“Vhat’s dat?” she said, already back at the
stove. Hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
“I have high cholesterol.” A lie.
“Ya, okey den. Vhat I feex you? Dere’s ham,
mebbe nice hot porridge?” She reached for the
porridge bag inexplicably within her reach. Where
did that come from? Whose kitchen was this? And
since when was ham a low-cholesterol food?
Porridge I’m not sure about.
I stood up from the table feeling like a stranger
in my own home. An under-dressed stranger.
“You know what? I have to go. I have a meeting
at work.” Another lie. Great. My mother was in
my home less than twenty-four hours and I’d
already lied to her twice. Oh well. Lies are like
peanuts—okay, macadamia nuts—after two it’s
hard to stop. “I have a client coming in. A big
case.” I knew she wouldn’t ask me any questions
about that. I don’t think she really knows what I
do for a living. She loved it when I was a cop. It
was something she could understand. And I think
it gave her certain bragging rights with friends
and neighbours. My decision to leave the police
24 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
force had confused her. She never understood
why I did it. And never asked.
I backed out of the room as if I expected her to
make a run at me with a plate of deep fried prune
dumplings and hash browns. Instead, she said
nothing, just added more butter to the frying pan
and hummed a Ukrainian ditty. I gave Barbra one
more look—that damn dog still making like a
Cheshire cat—and hightailed it for my bedroom.
My office is on Spadina Crescent, just out of
downtown, in an old character house that used to
be called the Professional Womyn’s Centre. A few
years ago a young lawyer, Errall Strane, pur-
chased the property, did some remodelling and in
deference to a piece of history, renamed it the
PWC Building. After renovations, PWC was left
with four office spaces. Errall runs her one-lawyer
practice out of the largest suite on the main floor,
the balance of which is rented to Beverly Chaney,
a psychiatrist. Two smaller offices on the second
floor belong to Alberta Lougheed, a psychic, and
me. Mine is the smallest, but the only one with a
balcony and a view that more than makes up for
its size. From the small deck I can look across
Spadina Crescent into beautiful Riverside Park
and beyond it, the South Saskatchewan River.
I parked in one of the four spots behind the
building, next to Beverly’s sensible sedan and
Errall’s bright blue Miata, and plugged in the car.
Instead of taking the metal staircase that hugs the
rear of the building up to the second floor, I
Anthony Bidulka — 25
braved the temperature of minus twenty degrees
Celsius, circled the building and entered through
the front door.
The reception area is a large space filled with
expensive art chosen by Errall, plants donated by
Beverly, and a colour scheme coordinated by
Alberta’s aural projections. My contribution is a
pencil-holder. A massive circular desk presides
over the room and divides the space in two: a
waiting area for Errall’s clients to the right and