Coq, page 17
“Melvin would never be caught dead on a scooter and neither would Grant.”
Dad’s curling friends. I roll my eyes. “Melvin’s only in his sixties and Grant’s had so many surgeries he’s pretty much half-scooter. Let’s go.”
Dan signs sixty-three different waivers and then we gather outside to study the park map. Sleeping Beauty’s iconic pink castle looms in the distance. This can’t excite the locals. Not when they have real castles with turrets and towers and moats and gatehouses. Instead, they should have something completely foreign to gawk at: a trailer strung with patio lanterns and a trans-am on the lawn, a brownstone with rich people fighting inside it, a bungalow with a mugshot rooster border in the kitchen.
Emma turns a cartwheel. The older kids ask to separate but Dan and I say no. We’ve made the decision to stay together as a family, at least until I have to leave for my meeting. Our first stop is The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
“Janice would’ve hated this,” Dad says, stepping into the “service” elevator.
This is true. Mom got stuck in an elevator with a dozen of her students on a field trip to the Parliament Buildings. It was her first and last year teaching junior high. They were trapped for only two-and-a-half hours, but that was long enough for her to apply for a transfer back to elementary school. She was well into her fifties before she rode an elevator again.
Dad screams for the entire duration of the ride. The elevator shoots up and down, periodically flinging open its doors to reveal some kind of horror: a possessed doll or tortured ghost, and every single time Emma yells, “Is that all you got, bitch?” to which Dan responds with threats.
This is how our morning continues to unfold. Dad screams, Emma swears, Dan threatens. Mona’s having the time of her life, and the teens experience each attraction with a Swiss neutrality. Space Mountain’s got nothing on Gen Z, on Wes or Joan or Liam, who’ve consumed between them probably a billion Tik-Toks and YouTubes videos of real humans pushing real limits. Yosemite base jumps, Himalayan free climbs, Dominican free dives, Niagara fallers, wing-walkers, Mars rovers. They get off every ride with “meh” expressions.
Dad wants a burger, Emma more stimulation, so we head for a late lunch at the Rainforest Café, which is damp and sour. Once we’ve received our drink order, Dad proposes a toast. It’s three simple words. “To new beginnings.”
I’m fumbling for my glass of muscadet when I see a text from Glen. Also simple and all in lowercase letters:
wall of i love yous. you and me
I raise my glass, though I’m not sure I’m ready to toast new beginnings. We’re here for Janice, not for life without her. Or are we?
“What are we doing here?” I blurt.
“Chicken fingers,” Emma replies. She’s pressing so hard on the red crayon she’s been given to colour with that it snaps in half, loud as a cap gun. I jump.
The teens put down their glasses, assuming the toast is over, and return to their phones. Dan’s looking at me inquisitively and I can’t decide if it’s because he doesn’t know why we’re here either, or doesn’t know why I’m ruining the toast.
“What?” I say. “You don’t want new beginnings. You told me you wanted to move back home with Allison-Jean and live in the basement.”
Emma, now death-gripping a green crayon, pauses. She looks at me, and then at her dad. “Is that true?” she asks, her voice small, split open.
Dan opens his mouth but the glass of Sprite he’s been holding for the toast slips from his hand and crashes to the table. Joan, sitting next to him, grabs both their phones and pushes away from the table. Mona hauls wads of Kleenex from her purse and begins sopping up the mess.
“Dad?” Emma says. “Are you moving back home?” A tear, crystalline and plump, whirls down her cheek.
“I —” Dan explodes from the table and takes off. On cue, the automaton animals lurking in the restaurant’s palm frond décor and canopy ceiling, come alive. They gyrate and flap. They pound their chests and snap their beaks. They growl and hoot.
“Nice one, Mom,” Wes says as Liam gets up and goes after his dad.
“I didn’t mean . . .”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” Joan says. She’s gone around to the other side of the table and has hoisted Emma onto her lap.
“Claudia,” Dad says pleadingly. “She’s only just left him.”
It’s been six months. Mona continues to sop up the Sprite, thieving place settings and cutlery from the adjacent booth.
I turn my gaze to Emma. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to upset you. Your dad just —”
My own father raises his hand to stop me saying anything further, as a pair of servers arrive with appetizers. One of them dumps a basket of cheese sticks in front of me.
“Excuse me,” I say, extricating myself from the table. I follow the path Dan and then Liam took toward the washrooms, and knock on the men’s room door. No answer. I head outside. Dan and Liam are sitting side by side on a rock wall. Above them leans a giant stone mushroom with a red cap. Liam looks both relieved and pissed off to see me. I motion for him to go back inside.
Seeing my brother hunched on the wall, I feel empathy. But I’m surprised that I also feel a sharp barb of resentment. He wasn’t there for me when Glen left. He didn’t offer to take the kids for a sleepover, or to help me change the furnace filters. Never once did he say “It’ll be okay.” Instead, he acted like my failed relationship with Glen, my broken family, was a disease, incurable and fatal. So, I only apologize for one thing. “I shouldn’t have said that in front of Emma.”
Dan wipes his eyes. “I brought it up with Allison-Jean last night,” he says, sniffing. “We have enough money to do a proper renovation. We could even put in a separate entrance and you know what she said? She said, you left a couple of your books in the living room, so I boxed them up. Cindy’ll drop ’em off when you get back. It’s over, Claud. I don’t know why I had it in my head that things could go back to the way they were and if not the way they were, that we could move forward somehow, whatever that looked like, but it’s over. It’s really over.”
“Hope,” I say, patting him on the back. “It gets you through until you realize it’s time to move on. Hope waits until you’re capable, and then nudges you forward.”
“To what?” he asks, flatly.
“To new beginnings.”
thirty-two
I have time to kill before my Petit Vert meeting, so I seek out a health food store and buy some of the CEO-recommended healing balm. The packaging is quaint and clean. I tuck it in my purse and buy a cappuccino at a café that borders a cemetery. Across the street, is a row of elegant sandstone buildings, each with intricate filigree balconies and imposing doors. Offices. Etched into a simple black sign directly across from me: Chalamet Avocats. I choke on my cappuccino foam.
I fix my gaze on the building’s amber oak door just as it swings open and a pair of lawyers, to judge by the way they’re dressed, steps out, he in a smart wine-coloured sport coat, she in a shift dress and perfect black heels. They are lovely and young. I rest by elbows on the table, cradling my mug. Adrenaline zips through me like a flight of swallows.
I’m going in there.
Before I have a chance to talk myself out of such a ridiculous move, I pay my server in cash and cross the street. Only when I’m at the foot of the greyed stairs do I wonder what the hell I’m doing here, the same thought I had in the Rainforest Café, the same thought I’ve had every minute since touching down in Paris.
A man sits behind the reception desk.
“Je m’excuse,” I say.
The man waits for me to continue, but I’ve lost my French. I think he wants to know if I have an appointment. Qui, he says. Who am I here to see? And that’s when I see the photo on the wall, framed beside half a dozen others. I point to Émile Fontaine.
“Ah, Monsieur Fontaine. Il est retraité.”
Retired. “Oui, je sais.” The man stares at me awkwardly, waiting for our exchange to end. “Do you speak English?” I ask.
“A leetle,” he says in that French-man-speaking-English kind of way that’s equal parts sexy and babyish. A linguistic centaur.
I gesture again toward the photograph. “He knew my mother. I was just . . .” my voice trails. What was I wondering? “I was wondering if there’s anyone still working here who knew him.”
An older man with Hitchcock jowls and a portly frame appears from a doorway down the hall. “May I help?” he asks in impeccable English.
The receptionist gestures for me to go. The sign on the portly man’s office door reads Cedric Chalamet.
“Monsieur Fontaine knew my mother. They were pen pals. They met while he was an exchange student in Canada.”
“Is your mother here?” Cedric asks, his eyes wide and as a bright as a billboard.
“She died ten years ago.”
Cedric leans back in his expensive chair, drawing his hands behind his head for support. His office is neat. Books and binders stacked with Egyptian precision. A glass ornament, a pear, sparkles from the credenza lining the back wall, where just beyond, a pigeon roosts.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Cedric says, leaning his large body over his desk. “I never knew your mother, but Émile did speak of a woman in Canada.” He crosses his hands and says, “He never married, Monsieur Fontaine,” and then he removes a pen from his desk drawer, scrawls a phone number on his legal pad, tears off the page, and hands it to me. “Should you need to get in touch,” he says.
“Merci,” I say, rising. I stare at the looping handwriting, the accent over the E in Émile’s name, a checkmark.
Cedric shows me out. I fold the number inside my purse and walk toward the hotel, where I’m scheduled to meet Petit Vert’s sales and marketing manager, Cornelle Ibrahim. A block out, there’s commotion. Cars honk, and pedestrians wielding signs criss-cross the road without so much as a glance in either direction. Another protest. A news van is parked meters from the hotel steps, and just as I try to make my way through the bustling crowd, a tall black man, thick in the shoulders and wearing a tight floral shirt, tugs me to the side.
“Too dangerous,” he says. “I’m Cornelle. You must be Claudia.” He sighs, shakes his head at the flock of demonstrators, and slips on a pair of champagne-coloured sunglasses. “There’s a pub around the corner. We can chat there.”
“Great,” I reply, trying to keep up as Cornelle weaves through the throng of pissed-off drivers, reporters, and protestors. We pass a fire truck with lights spinning, but no obvious emergency. The firefighters lean on the back of the truck, irritated, as if their card game had been interrupted.
“Every day,” Cornelle says, opening the door to an English-style pub with a die-cut sign shaped like a barrel. He gestures for me to go inside. “Always protesting something.”
“I noticed.”
We grab a booth and Cornelle orders a lager.
“Is it always climate related?”
“No,” he says, wiping the table with his sleeve. “But tomorrow there’s a big one. All week that’s what they’ve been preparing for.”
I don’t tell him Joan’s intent on going.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Cornelle explains. “We need robust climate policy, and I support the right to protest, but last week, protestors blocked the exit to the car park and my son missed his fencing class.”
Once our drinks arrive, we get down to business. Cornelle talks about his company’s entrance strategy, the first Petit Vert and how they expanded, the challenges of a small-batch enterprise and rising transportation costs, guerilla marketing. I take notes, ask questions, try to imagine how Petit Vert could be adapted for the Canadian market. I have doubts about the feasibility, at least in the smaller regions.
A game is on TV and Cornelle stops to watch a penalty kick. He cheers with the other patrons when the ball is rocketed into the top left corner of the net. It’s a helluva shot. I’ve seen Joan make that kind and for a second I long to be back home, watching her play. Cornelle is clapping, exchanging commentary with a fan who’s plugged in to the booth across from us, staring down a plate of moules-frites.
“My favourite player.” Cornelle gestures towards the TV, flashes a boyish grin. His teeth are stunning. When he excuses himself to go to the washroom, I check in with Dan. He sends me a photo of Dad and Mona on their scooters. Olaf is in the foreground. I imagine my father mowing him down. Next, Dan sends a picture of Liam and Wes posing with Darth Vader. Both Liam and Wes stand like men: chests proud, chins up, feet wide. But they smile like boys, and a streak of nostalgia zips through me as I remember little Wes. His scrawny shoulders, Pixar pyjamas and twin bed. His big eyes and small fists. The way he could curl himself into a knot and fit on a single couch cushion.
Cornelle returns and glances at his watch. It’s a fine instrument. Gold and intricate. A detail I’ve noticed here: men still wear watches. They keep time close. I instinctively reach for my wrist. The indents from the handcuffs are no longer visible but I can still feel them in my fingertips. I can feel the attachment. Glen.
I flag down the waiter to pay the bill, but Cornelle’s already taken care of it. We exchange business cards and shake hands. Outside, the mob of protestors has thinned. Cornelle hails me a cab and then disappears into the Paris underground.
I watch from the cab window, a plane flying overhead. I can tell from its trajectory, and the sweeping arc its flying, that it’s just left the airport. Some of the passengers will be returning home. In a few days I will be one of them. Perhaps then I will know why I’m here.
thirty-three
Felix and I meet at Le Clown Bar, a “monument historique,” which has been juggling cuisine since the time of steam trains, suffragettes and the Second Boer War. The colour palette is mustard and green, a touch of wine, all muted like an overexposed photo, a circus tent left out too long in the sun. It has a vaudevillian charm and with my red nose, I fit right in.
Felix is seated at a corner table and stands when he sees me. I’m not sure what kind of greeting he expects. A hug? A handshake? La bise? The last time he saw me I was shackled to Glen, so perhaps he’s expecting something radical. I could grab a knife from the table, throw it so it just misses his head and pierces the lithograph hanging behind him. Pull silk scarves from my mouth, a rabbit from my hat. Alas, I have no hat, nor rabbits, just the paper horse nickering in my purse.
As I approach, Felix comes around the table and reaches, cupping my face with an earnest grip and a look of such deep-seated longing that it makes me blush. It’s the first time in my life I feel beheld, like I’m some kind of natural wonder, a masterpiece. I kiss him on the cheek and then glide into my seat. I’m a goddamn glacier.
A server approaches, haggard, as if he’s just come from his day job shovelling coal into a furnace, and yet his recessed eyes and sad curls match the harlequin décor. He’s lean as a tightrope. He presents a wine menu, offers suggestions. Felix eyes me expectantly and I’m struck by the brazenness of this date. How it feels both like a first date and the date to end all dates. A date at the end of the world. The atmosphere is electric and I half-expect the forks to start levitating or for an elephant to stroll in wearing a fancy cap and a saddle.
We choose a Syrah.
“Claudia,” Felix says before the waiter’s even left the table, “I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not since the plane.” He takes my hand. “Maybe even before that. I know I probably shouldn’t have reached out given that . . .” He pauses, clears his throat. Given, Glen, I think.
I glance around the restaurant to see if anyone’s listening. Felix isn’t exactly whispering. The table of men beside us aren’t paying attention, neither is the lone female diner with the grey dreadlocks nestled in the corner. The bartender, polishing a glass, is.
Felix fiddles with his place setting as though each piece is a thought he’s trying to reorganize. “Even after I saw you handcuffed to your ex, which is totally fucked up by the way, I haven’t stopped. In fact, if I’m being honest, that only made me think about you more. Because I saw it. I recognized my feelings for you. In Glen.”
When I was eight years old, I astral-projected. I floated out of my body on a Tuesday night in the kind of high-necked nightgown preferred by Edwardian women and Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s how I learned about consciousness before I knew about consciousness. It’s how I feel now. Like my consciousness has been shot out of a canon and landed here in this three-ring circus. I haven’t been on a proper date in years but I’m certain it’s too early to be discussing feelings. We haven’t even ordered. If this were a classic seven-course French meal, feelings should come around the four-and-a-half mark; between the main course and the salad. The wine hasn’t even arrived to drink the feelings away.
Also, does he not see the awkwardness of comparing his heart to Glen’s? Glen is a Leaver. And what to do about his passion? It’s rising out of him, a tornadic waterspout spitting out of the Aegean Sea. Passion belongs to male figure skaters and renaissance painters. I need someone more concrete. A bricklayer or an engineer. A toll-booth operator. I need practical Cathy to tell me to get out now before Felix locks me in a wooden box and saws me in half.
I’ve left Felix hanging, like an unread snap, but the waiter’s returned with the wine. He asks who will be sampling the Syrah and Felix gestures that it will be me. The waiter pours and I give the glass a little swirl before bringing it to my lips. Lovely. I nod, and the waiter pours. We order, and by the time the waiter’s tucked the menus under his brilliant white shirt, I’ve forgotten my selections.
“I want you,” Felix says.
This is very un-British of him. I’m expecting Hugh Grant in a Hugh Grant movie: self-deprecating, bumbling, nervous hands, a stutter. Notting Hill bullshit. And now the bartender is leaning in, and not under the guise of performing a task. He’s full-on eavesdropping. My phone rings. I frantically dig through my purse, retrieve it, and switch off the ringer without even looking to see who’s called, which I immediately regret. It could be an emergency. Maybe Wes has run off again or Joan’s chained herself to a tree. Heaven forbid the Voltaren’s been lost.
