The Petty Details of So-And-So's Life (24 page)

“Well, I'm all ears,” she said, hands on hips.

He completely clammed up then.

“I give up, Blue. You don't want to talk to me? Don't talk, then. You sort whatever it is out yourself,” she said, slamming the door.

Emma held a cup of coffee in her hand and knocked on Ruthie's door. Ruthie looked like she'd been sleepwalking through a minefield, and listlessly gestured for Emma to come in.

“I came to tell you that I'm going home for a while—just till the beginning of next term,” Emma said, sitting down on the end of Ruthie's bed. She knew she had to drop the course and forgo the credit, go home and get her guts back.

“What happened?” Ruthie asked with concern.

Emma didn't really know how to explain it. “Apparently I got a little carried away,” she sighed. “Thought I was on to something—still think I was on to something—but managed to piss everyone off in the process.”

“That doesn't sound irreparable,” Ruthie said.

“It was a bit more dramatic than that. I really can't go back,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes welling up with tears.

“It'll be okay,” said Ruthie, putting her hand on Emma's forearm. “I'm sorry. I thought it was all going so well.” Ruthie looked down and picked at a thread on the quilt on her bed. “It won't be the same without you here.”

“I'll be back in the fall.”

“Well, I'll still miss you.”

“I'll miss you, too,” Emma nodded. Ruthie clambered out of bed and started rummaging through her dresser drawer. “What are you looking for?”

“I want to give you something.”

“What for?”

“So you'll remember me.”

“I'm not going to forget you,” Emma laughed.

“So you'll keep me with you then,” Ruthie continued, throwing receipts and hair clips and dreadlocks on the floor.

“Hey, I thought your hair was real!” Emma said, startled.

“Extensions,” said Ruthie. “Here,” she said, holding out a brass turtle.

Emma smiled.

“My ma gave it to me when I came to Canada.”

“Ruthie, I can't accept this. Not if your mother gave it to you.”

“Well, I don't have a hell of a lot else that matters,” Ruthie said. “I want you to have it.”

Emma rubbed the turtle's back. Rolled the cool, smooth brass between her fingers. “Does it have any special meaning?”

“We had a big tortoise in the garden when I was growing up in Guyana. My ma loved that thing. Told us it was almost eighty years old. She could tell by the rings on its back. My uncle said that was crap, but I still believed she could tell its age.”

Emma told Ruthie to hang on a second. She was going to give her something too—something she'd carried with her for most of her life—the only thing she possessed that was as significant as Ruthie's gift. But it wasn't where she remembered leaving it. It wasn't inside her winter
boots. It must be in the pocket of one of her pairs of pants, she thought. She started with the clothes on the floor, and then moved through the pants in her closet, flinging them off hangers and into the pile of clothes on the floor. Twenty pockets turned inside out and still nothing.

“It must be here somewhere,” she mumbled to herself, collapsing onto the bed to think. And then she remembered having taken the dinosaur tooth to the dig one day with the intention of showing Professor Rocker. He'd been surly and uninviting that day, something about a rejected grant application, so she'd kept the tooth to herself. But in keeping it to herself it seems she might have lost it. She wasn't ready to give up hope entirely, but she wondered if the last of the dinosaurs had become extinct.

The only other meaningful thing she possessed was the scrapbook of wild imaginings. She was a little reticent to part with it, but the words were indelibly etched in her brain—she didn't need a hard copy any more. She worried that it wasn't entirely hers to give, though Blue had gone without any mention of it. Wherever he had gone, he didn't seem to need it.

“But this is such a big part of your history,” Ruthie said.

“I'm not interested in imagining any more lives for myself,” Emma sighed.

It wasn't the easiest journey she'd ever made. It was humiliating to have to go back home—to have to return to the place she'd spent so much energy on trying to escape. It didn't begin at all well with Elaine saying, “Emma, you look ill. Have you started going grey?”

Emma's back arched immediately, and she was sure her hair was standing on end. “It wasn't exactly Club Med, Mum!” she threw back.

“Have you been irresponsible?” Elaine asked.

“What kind of question is that?” Emma barked. And then it occurred to her that Elaine might be attributing her ashen pallor to morning sickness. What could be further from the truth? She wasn't sure anything could grow inside her. It was barren ground for the miles you could stretch her intestines. “I had to come home, Mum, and it's not what you're thinking. I needed a break. It's like I told you. I had a big fight with my professor and he suggested I'd better drop the course.” That wasn't exactly the truth, but it was a hell of a lot less humiliating.

“But that doesn't sound fair,” Elaine remarked.

“It's not a question of fair, Mum. Listen—can we just forget it?”

Despite the rocky beginning, Elaine put an arm around Emma's shoulder and said, “Well, whatever happened, I'm sure you made the right decision. It'll be all right.” Elaine's words hit Emma in some soft spot, despite herself.

That night, Emma stared at the plate of lasagna in amazement. “What happened, Mum? Did you discover your mothering instinct while I was away?”

Elaine had never been a good cook, never even remotely interested. It was all sardines and fish fingers and mashed potatoes when they were growing up, and occasionally Elaine's most experimental dish, her guess-what's-in-it meatloaf, which contained one tinned item from the cupboard—it could have been tuna, or cranberry sauce, or cream of mushroom soup—it really was anyone's guess.

“Don't be mean,” Elaine called from the kitchen. “I've always tried my best. It hasn't been easy.”

“I know, Mum.”

“And besides,” she said, entering with the Parmesan cheese, “I've missed you two.”

“You're kidding,” Emma couldn't help saying.

“No, I'm not kidding. What kind of mother would I be if I didn't miss you?”

Emma looked at her mother as if for the first time. Something was different. Elaine had had her ears pierced, but that was only part of it. And then she identified the change: her mother looked happy.

Emma's room really hadn't altered much since she was a child. It had only been painted that once long ago and it was looking more like a flat soufflé now than the perky custard it once resembled. The closet was full of unfashionable shoes that Elaine obviously hadn't had the heart to part with. Fond memories? wondered Emma. Dancing shoes?

Emma spent much of the first night dreaming about Elaine's lasagna—diving through the rich, alternating layers of comfort, devouring them as if she hadn't eaten in months. Comfort like the feeling of chocolate melting in your mouth in a warm river of hot tea.

She awoke sweating under a woollen blanket on the hottest day on record. Elaine came in without knocking and sat down on the end of her bed. “How did you sleep?” she asked her.

“Good,” Emma nodded. “What time is it? Don't you have to go to work?”

“I quit,” her mother said, smiling.

“You quit?” Emma asked, aghast. “But, Mum—how the hell are you going to support yourself?”

“I have other means.”

“Like what? Lottery winnings? Did Dad suddenly start sending alimony or something?”

Elaine smiled, but mostly to herself, Cheshire catlike.

“What's going on, Mum?”

“There's a man in my life,” she said with a shy smile.

“A what?”

“You heard me, Emma. Don't act so shocked.”

“But what kind of man?”

“A very attractive intelligent man.”

“And he's supporting you or something?”

“He's very kindly offered to help me while I try my hand at writing,” she replied coyly.

“You're going to be a writer?”

“It's what I always wanted to be.”

“I didn't know that.”

“I know it might surprise you to hear this, Emma, but before I was a mother, before I was a wife, I was a person with dreams of my own.”

“And you gave them all up for this?”

“I hadn't intended to.”

“So why did you then?”

“Because somebody needed to make money, Emma. Your father couldn't hold a job.”

“But why did you marry him in the first place?”

“I was in love.”

“But why?”

“Because he was different. Because he was a dreamer.”

“But I thought that's what you hated about him.”

“Yes and no. It was exhilarating at first, particularly when our dreams were shared. But you know, you need a balance. You can't just keep floating on air. His dreams never amounted to anything, they were totally unrealistic, but for some reason he couldn't see that. In the end I felt like he'd manipulated me into supporting his flaky, far-fetched endeavours and given me very little but broken promises in return.”

“So you felt cheated.”

She nodded. “But ironically, he was the one who acted as if he'd been. He was always telling me I had no imagination, no vision.”

Emma just about choked on her saliva.

“What's wrong?”

“It's just those words. I thought I had found something on the dig this summer, something of real importance, but my professor didn't even want to pursue it. He wasn't curious at all. And so we had this fight—and I said
exactly
those words to him.” Emma felt sick and put her head to her knees.

“You must have heard your father say them before.”

“But I wasn't copying him. I believed it.”

“It's okay, Emma.”

“But it's not! I don't want to turn out like him.”

“You're not going to turn out like him.”

“But I already sound just like him.”

“The words maybe, Emma, but not necessarily what they mean. You're imaginative and you're passionate, but you're doing something with your life. Your father was all talk and no action.”

Emma paused to take it all in but it was too much from too many directions. Elaine stood up and straightened her skirt. “I'm going to the market. Is there anything you need?”

Emma shook her head and lay back down in her bed. “What's this new guy's name?” she asked as Elaine was just about to go.

“You don't need to know,” her mother said.

“What do you mean I don't need to know?”

“You're never going to meet him.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because he lives in Ottawa, and he's married.”

“You're kidding. Oh, Mum. You're somebody's mistress?”

“It's not like that,” she sighed.

“It sure sounds like that.”

“His name is Richard,” Elaine said, closing the door behind her.

Easy enough for Elaine to move on, Emma thought. She'd only been married to Oliver, she wasn't cursed with shared blood. It didn't matter if Emma never saw her father again, she'd forgo the opportunity if it were ever presented. He was right there inside her, genes and all, he was inescapable, even if she moved to Johannesburg and had a facelift and became an anti-Apartheid activist and married a man from Soweto, he would always be there inside her, chronic, like an illness.

That night at dinner, Elaine asked Emma what she was planning on doing with herself for the rest of the summer. Emma said she might just go to sleep until September, but Elaine, for whom the memory of Oliver pulling the covers over his head for weeks at a time was still so acute, told her she might want to get herself a job, keep herself occupied rather than allow herself to get depressed.

Emma didn't have much of a history of employment. She'd been fired from every summer job she'd had. The one time she waitressed, she was fired for not wearing her shoes properly. She shuffled her way on squashed leather heels to clear tables where women wearing pantyhose in hues with names like Perfect Pearl and Crown Jewel lunched on little bits of green with dressing on the side and recorded calories ingested in little black notebooks with gold and silver pens.

Despite feeling she was inherently unemployable though, Emma knew she'd have to bite the bullet and get a job. She'd have to put herself to use. She'd have to prove to herself that she could hold a job, and tame the Oliver within.

It took Emma about a week to leave her mother's house, and when she finally did, she insisted on taking a taxi. She sat in the back seat and locked the doors on either side of her. She was feeling decidedly paranoid. The streets seemed totally unfamiliar, and she worried that the man behind the wheel was bent and determined on driving off the escarpment and down into the depths of some strange city. But what place could be stranger than Niagara Falls? Everyone's a stranger here, Emma thought. The people who live here disappear: they are pushed aside by the millions who pour through on their own quests for romance and wonder.