Pageboy, page 3
At bath time, I’d line up all of my various companions along the side of the tub and plead for my mother to be a judge for their diving competition. My arm in the air, holding Batman by the feet, I’d release him, and Bruce Wayne would enter the water, hopefully producing only a subtle splash to impress the judge.
“A seven!” my mom would say after my action figure had plunged into the depths.
“An eight!” After Peter Pan successfully slipped into the water.
“Yay!” I’d cheer, always secretly hoping Peter would win.
“Okay, hon, I’ve got to put supper on.”
“One more! Please, Mom, please!”
“Okay, one more.”
And I’d drop another.
When a winner was decided, I’d stand the figure proudly on the side of the tub as my mom hummed the Olympics theme, sometimes she would even light a match and hold it up like a torch.
The bath was also where I played out my rescue fantasies. I loved Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and was positively enamored with the daughter, Amy Szalinski. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, her beauty, a sweetness in her voice, I loved how she cared for her younger brother.
In the bathtub, I was Russ Jr., the smoldering boy next door, rescuing Amy from drowning in the backyard-turned-oversize-jungle. Me as Russ Jr., panicked, but managing to maintain composure. Head under the water, I’d search, back up, flip around, under again, not giving up until I had rescued the one I love. Eventually getting her to safety, I would perform mouth-to-mouth on my hand, desperate for her to wake up. And only when she did could I let go. I did it, I’d think as I’d imagine myself flashing Russ Jr.’s signature half smile, that look I saw in his eyes.
My mom loved being a public school teacher, and she was an incredible one. She taught French for twenty-five years and English for eight, and I can’t tell you the number of people who have said to me, “Madame Philpotts was the best teacher I ever had.” Early on, I would help my mom set up her classroom at the end of the summer. Sticky tack-on posters. The months laid out, cutouts of the sun, clouds, snow. Janvier, février, mars, avril. I loved trips to the laminator, the smell of it, the way it wrapped something up, keeping it safe. The empty halls of the school were eerie, uncanny. Wandering through them had an unearthly quality, as if floating.
What was it like to spend your whole day in rooms stuffed with thirty elementary school students and then have to come home, make dinner, and judge your kid’s fake diving competition? She’d been on her feet all day and now was crouched on the cold tile floor, I’m sure desperate for a comfy seat, warm food, and a cold beer, none of which were going to magically appear before her. These are important moments to remember. They aren’t small.
On Saturdays, my mom would gather snacks and beverages and we’d settle together in the large beige chair that worked as a love seat. Turning on the television to CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), we’d prepare ourselves for Hockey Night in Canada. A Pepsi in my hand and an Alexander Keith’s for my mom, we cheered and hollered with a large bag of ketchup chips wedged in between. The Toronto Maple Leafs was our team.
My mother let me exist as me in many ways when I was young, when it was just us. It was on picture days, the rare church visit, weddings, recitals, Christmas parties, other special occasions when it wasn’t just the two of us, that I had to wear a dress. A barrette in my hair with a baby-blue butterfly. I wanted to tear it out, taking my hair with it. I’d throw a fit, a feeling of betrayal spreading through me, as my mom tried to dress me. The sensation of tights squeezing my legs exacerbated all the discomforts that I couldn’t yet put words to.
I didn’t grow out of this “phase” when I was supposed to, and my mom’s distaste for what I wore and whom I befriended grew. Masculine clothes and boys as friends should have been over, that whole tomboy thing—a label that never felt quite right to me, but it was what everyone called me so eventually it was what I called myself—a hazy memory. I should be turning into a young lady, my mother’s idea of one at least.
“I just want what’s best for you … I want to protect you … I don’t want you to have a hard life.” These sentiments would slide over me. What was best meant fitting neatly into our society’s expectations. Staying inside the lines. The perfect heroine’s journey preemptively and unknowingly written for me.
How would her family, friends, soccer parents, fellow teachers, and neighbors feel? Had she done something wrong? What if it was a sin? And whether it was conscious or not—If I had to conform, why shouldn’t you have to?
I wonder about the magnitude of what my mom was unable to do and explore. How these confines affected her. Amid all of the untangling that’s led me to me, no matter the difficulties or moments of distance, I’ve never doubted my mother’s love for me. How lucky I am for that.
When I was little, my mom would take me out to Peggy’s Cove, about a forty-five-minute drive from Halifax. Climbing on the rocks, I’d pretend I was off in a distant land searching for treasure and mystical beings. I would examine the tide pools, looking for the life inside. My mom and I would talk on fake walkie-talkies, our fists held to our face. Click. Over. Click. Over.
Making sure to avoid the dark, wet boulders, we’d explore for ages, spotting little creatures scurrying under the rocks. When the waves were large it was positively thrilling. They’d smash against the shore with magnificent force, rising high and reaching toward the famous lighthouse, moments turned to postcards.
We’d end up at the parking lot outside of the restaurant that sits overlooking the cove. Seagulls circled above, waiting to pounce on scraps next to tourist buses. My mom loved the gingerbread there, so sometimes I got to have a treat.
Peggy’s Cove afternoons with my mom are some of my best childhood memories. The ruggedness, that intense, unforgiving beauty. How present my mother and I were in each other’s company. Our limbs stretching and reaching, feet searching for a spot to land, the salty, brisk chill of the Atlantic.
I love you. Over. Click.
I love you, too. Over. Click.
It is so sad that all the static had to get in the way as I aged. A dark rock on which to slip, suddenly appearing and taking us both down. That pure connection that went beyond appearance and expectations, both of us free in the moment—these are the memories I revisit.
In the winter, I looked forward to snow days. The suspense, sitting on the edge of my mom’s bed next to the radio, wishing desperately, dreaming of snow forts and snowmen. I would close my eyes, listening to the CBC radio host recite a list of school cancellations, to the soothing voice.
Snow day mornings were absolute heaven. My mom and I had a ritual. I would sit in a purple plastic sled and she would pull me through the snow. The destination? Tim Hortons. Marching along, crunch, crunch, her boots sinking, everything covered in white, icicles like spears.
“I’ll have a medium with double cream and just a pinch of sugar, not very much, thanks,” I would mouth my mom’s order at Tims in the mornings on the way to school while she leaned her head out the car window, neck reaching for the drive-thru speaker. For me, I liked the hot chocolate.
The sound of the little sled brushing the snow underneath, the steady glide through the barren landscape, offered tranquility, a sense of togetherness. Shut your eyes and you’re flying through the universe.
5
ROUGHHOUSING
When the Mont-Blanc detonated, a gas fireball of coal, oil, cargo, ship parts, and humans catapulted two miles into the sky. Topping a thousand pounds, a piece of the Mont-Blanc’s anchor was found nearly two and a half miles away. The anchor site is on the cusp of the Regatta Point Walkway at the corner of Anchor Drive and Spinnaker Drive, a two-minute walk from where I grew up with my father.
I was under two when my parents divorced. They had been together for ten years, married for about eight of those, when my father first moved out into an apartment in downtown Halifax, where he lived until we moved to Spinnaker Drive when I was six. Mostly with my mother after the separation, I visited my father every other weekend or so. A thrilling vacation, the apartment building, directly across the street from the Halifax Harbour, had a pool … A POOL! You technically were not allowed to jump or dive, but we would in secret. One of us on the lookout for “cranky Cram,” as my dad referred to the building supervisor.
The view of what the Mi’kmaq named K’jipuktuk, or “Great Harbour,” is now blocked by condos. But at five years old I could look out and study the boats and ships, my tiny brain struggling to deduce how objects that massive were smoothly gliding along the surface, how the masses of steel weren’t just swallowed up. I’d watch them slowly make their way toward the Atlantic, floating beyond Georges Island. Named after a British king and smack-dab in the middle of the harbor, it was occupied by the British military in 1750. The island’s fort became one of the most important naval bases for the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The intricate underground tunnel system sounded like something out of The Goonies. People spoke of ghosts, apparitions loitering, a result of executions, deaths in the prison camp and in the quarantine station on the island. Going to sleep, I selfishly prayed the ghosts couldn’t swim.
My dad had recently started a graphic design business with a friend, Eric Wood. The Page & Wood office was inside the Brewery Market, a sprawling heritage building constructed in the 1800s out of granite and ironstone. Just a short walk from the apartment down Lower Water Street, it was mostly known for the farmers market every Saturday. In existence since 1983, the farmers market is where I’ve spent countless Saturday mornings weaving through the crowds, collecting produce, eating fresh cinnamon buns, listening to the fiddle echo through the main hall.
At the beginning, the office was quite small. My dad had a large, slanted white desk where he would brainstorm and sketch. At one point he got one of those golf-putting practice machines that shoots the ball back to you. Putting next to his desk, I’d make up stories—me, a cool professional golfer in one of those crisp collared shirts. Eighteenth hole, a putt for an eagle to win. I liked how men held the club with their hands, the way they adjusted their fingers, wiggled their feet, how they craned their wide necks to face the hole and looked back to the ball focused, then a steady, slight swing. I was flexible with the mulligans.
My dad, Dennis, was spending time with a woman named Linda, who would eventually become my stepmother. Linda and Dennis met when they worked in the same office. I think of my mother now, her husband leaving her for someone else. She was alone, taking care of the child and working full-time as a teacher. Then, I’d return all giddy and insensitive with stories about swimming, blabbering away about the new lady and her waterbed, no grasp of the hurt, the resentment. How that must have pierced her heart.
“It takes two,” my mother says. “I had a role, too.”
I’ve always found it strange that my mother and father had a baby. Me. Their relationship was already in trouble by the time I came along. I suppose gratitude is the course of action, but if I was not born, I’d have no perception of what I’d be missing, nor would anyone else miss me. This would suit me just fine. We are all micro specks, almost nothing in the grand scheme.
Linda lived in Clayton Park, an area in Halifax approximately a fifteen-minute drive from my father’s. She had a condo in an apartment complex. Two stories, the kitchen, dining area, and living room on one floor and the pair of bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. Linda already had children from her previous marriage: Scott and Ashley. Scott was three and a half years older than me, Ashley another three years older than him. Their father was a teacher like my mom.
Scott and Ashley’s room was rad. A wooden white bunk bed, Scott on the top, Ashley on the bottom. When I slept over, a small futon was rolled out on the floor. I was jealous of the top bunk, but my time would come. They had a TV in their room with a Nintendo, the original one that launched in 1985. Scott and I would play Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt for hours, staining the controllers with our ketchup chip–laced fingers.
Linda’s room contained the aforementioned waterbed, still the only one I have ever witnessed in the flesh. My father and I would visit, Linda would make supper, typically I was off with Scott. My stepmom’s “thing,” shall we say, is cooking. She worked as a food stylist part-time, primping and prodding produce and meat, preparing the perfect turkey for a TV commercial or photo shoot. For one job, she had to make an exorbitant amount of ice cream, but it had to be fake so it would not melt. The breakfast table, island, and dining table were covered with a multitude of experiments and concoctions. What a cruel joke, fake ice cream.
The 1996 movie Two If by Sea, starring Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary, was set in New England but filmed in the towns Chester and Lunenburg, along the south shore of Nova Scotia. Linda styled a decadent dinner for a scene. Her work appearing in a Hollywood film had me buzzing, my heart aflutter for Sandra Bullock, my eight-year-old self not comprehending that I once again had a crush. Twenty years later I would have dinner with my friend Catherine Keener and Sandra at the famous Craig’s in Beverly Hills. Sandra looked so cool, in jeans and a hip rocker T. She was nice, funny, and grounded, just as my eight-year-old self had imagined. Oh, these strange roads we travel.
Despite her supposed knack for cooking, I could not handle Linda’s meals, incapable of digesting them. My father, stepbrother, and stepsister seemed to have no problem, enthusiastically moaning and complimenting. It felt as fake as the ice cream.
I hated food that wasn’t simple. My mom’s free time was minimal, she didn’t have space in the day to put together lavish meals, with new tastes and smells. She was then teaching French at two or three schools on the outskirts of the city. Harrietsfield Elementary, William King Elementary, and Sambro Elementary, my favorite one. A small school, it is not far from Sambro Island’s looming lighthouse, which is supposedly haunted. Legend has it that a Scot named Alexander Alexander (often referred to as Double Alexander) was stationed there, and when he left the island to buy supplies, he not only didn’t retrieve the goods but also began a two-week drinking binge and then took his own life. People say Double Alex’s ghost can be heard walking, screwing with the lights, and flushing toilets.
I wanted what my mother made, meat and potatoes, noodles with butter and steamed veggies. Linda’s stir-fries hit my gag reflex, a sweetness I wasn’t used to. Drinking copious amounts of milk, I’d be reprimanded for not eating. I’d chew and chew and chew and chew, as if I’d lost my ability to swallow, the muscle memory abruptly vanishing. As a toddler, I’d be left alone at the table when the others were done with a timer counting down. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. I had to eat it all before that screeching bell. This elongated chomping persisted as I aged, even her homemade pizza, a revelation that it wasn’t just about flavor and aroma.
When I was six, we all moved in together. Dennis, Linda, Scott, Ashley, and I stood in the concrete foundation of the new development on Spinnaker Drive, surrounded by high, foreboding gray walls. Looking up, just sky, the treetops lining what would become the rear of the house, a small forest tucked up the hill from the back patio.
The tall, thin town house had four floors. A den and half bath in the basement. Living room, kitchen, and dining area on the second floor. On the third, my bedroom squeezed next to Scott’s, a bathroom in the middle of the hall, with Dennis and Linda at the front of the house, their windows looking out to what the Mi’kmaq named Waygwalteech, meaning “salt water all the way up.” A narrow section of Halifax Harbour, it outlines the west side of the Halifax Peninsula. Or, as it was renamed, the Northwest Arm.
My stepsister, Ashley, being the oldest, got the coolest room. The one on the top floor, a small attic space with a low, slanted ceiling. It would become my room when I returned from Toronto in my late teens, after grade eleven, to take an entire year off acting so that I could complete my final year of school in Halifax.
Directly across the street is Melville Cove, a small body of water that jets off the Arm and separates Regatta Point Walkway from the Armdale Yacht Club, which incidentally is also on an island with a centuries-old, supposedly haunted brick-and-iron prison where hundreds of people died, predominantly prisoners of war. Adjacent to the prison, on the sliver of a peninsula, Deadman’s Island, there are almost two hundred unmarked graves of Americans who died in captivity during the War of 1812. A plaque reads:
Go view the graves which prisoners fill
Go count them on the rising hill
No monumental marble shows
Whose silent dust does there repose
I was obsessed with my new room. I was the first to leave a mark, a tiny stain on the wall waiting to be washed off. The color was my choice, and thankfully I was at an age where I could say what I actually wanted, versus putting on the dress for my birthday but not quite knowing why, like it was Halloween or something. I chose a dark blue, close to the deep shade of my stepbrother’s. I tacked posters of Patrick Roy, Michael Jordan, and Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block up on the wall. The bunk bed from Linda’s old place, mine now. With both options available to me, I would switch. Sometimes top, sometimes bottom.
When Dennis and Linda moved in together, my time was split between households. Two weeks with my father, the first to the sixteenth of every month, and two weeks with my mother from the sixteenth to the first. Scott and Ashley did the same with their dad. At my dad’s, my stepbrother and I played street hockey or “floor hockey” virtually every day after school, a game we invented in the small upstairs hallway where doors were goals, our hands the hockey sticks, the perfect snap of the wrist torpedoing the ball, jetting out a shin to make a sweet save.
