She turns to me, the light from the window hiding her expression. “Ni hao?”
That Mandarin greeting means she’s not with me in the present but back in the past where I can’t follow her. I do my best to keep bright. I only know a few words but they’re enough to answer her. “Hen hao, ni ne?”
My mom has been in Canada for over thirty years but still speaks English with an accent. When I was younger, I didn’t notice—it was Mom’s voice, no more and no less—but how she speaks, the up and down of her tones, has become more pronounced over the last year. The doctor says it’s my imagination, but I think it’s because she’s back in China so often in her thoughts. Her earlier life there is a mystery to me. She rarely spoke of it, wanting always to look to the now and the future. She even refused to speak Mandarin to me at home, insisting it was better to fit in and accept where we are rather than where we’d been.
“The past is dead,” she would tell me when I asked. “It can’t be changed. Leave it in memory.”
I’m prepared for another frustrating visit where I do my best to pretend I understand what she’s saying, but then Mom switches to English. I’m wrong. She’s having a good day.
“You changed your hair,” she says.
I’ve had the same short hair for years but I touch my head like it’s a new style I’m unsure about. “Do you like it?”
Mom reaches out a gnarled hand and gestures for me to come closer. When I do, she runs her palm over my head with a disapproving snort. “You look like a boy. Why stand out like this?”
Standing out is one of Mom’s bugbears, probably from when she first came to Canada and had to assimilate. Her modus operandi was always to choose the middle way. Being too different and not blending in with the crowd makes you an outsider, which draws negative attention and its close companion, criticism. She hammered this into me all my life. I was a solid B-plus student all through school.
“I always had long hair when I was younger,” she says. “Everyone did and it was also the style your father liked best.”
Even though he’s been dead for a decade, hearing about Dad still brings tears to my eyes. “That’s how you met.” Apparently there were so few women with black hair long enough to stream out in a banner that it stopped my dad dead in his tracks. “Then she smiled at me,” he’d say, telling the story. “That’s all it took. I was a goner.”
“Asked me for a date, right there on Bloor Street,” Mom continues.
When I was younger, at this point in the story, Dad would interrupt, faux-aggrieved, to point out that Mom hadn’t told him she lived an hour outside the city. “I never would have offered to drive her home had I known,” he’d say jokingly, scooping her up in a bear hug that made her squeal and laugh every time. I haven’t heard her laugh like that since his death.
I’m feeling fragile and decide that self-care means not having to hear about my parents’ perfect, fairy-tale love. I treasure the story, I do, but right now, I can’t.
Instead, I turn the conversation to what she had for lunch (ham sandwiches) and how she’s sleeping (better now that she has that lavender sachet I brought last time).
Eventually she starts looking out the window and I can tell from her face she’s drifting from me, so I pick up the Asian celebrity magazine on her coffee table. It’s something I brought her a couple weeks ago, with one of China’s top action-movie stars, Sam Yao, in a tuxedo on the cover, flaunting his admirable bone structure and perfectly tousled black hair. His smoldering eyes taunt me with promises of passion and adventure that will never come true for someone as ordinary as me.
A glutton for punishment, I flip to the feature story, a fluff piece about how he enjoys, oh my gosh, stop the presses, travel and his work. I scan the article, each mention of unimaginable luxury and public adoration pricking like a thorn, then toss the magazine away, sitting in silence with Mom until it’s time for me to go.
Two
The next day is terrible. Nope. Harrowing, hideous, horrid, and hateful.
My, there are a lot of negative H words. I wonder why that is? It’s heinously horrendous.
Here’s another: You better hold it together and handle your shit because you need the money. A two for one.
Todd punishes me for calling in sick yesterday by ripping my proposal to shreds in front of the rest of the team, then tells Brent to take it over and do it right. The other men don’t seem to notice but Kathy, the admin assistant, gives me a pitying pout.
I ignore her look, put on a neutral face, and pretend it doesn’t bother me. It’s better to keep my head down than to protest; experience has taught me the only consequence of reminding Todd he signed off on that proposal two days ago will be negative. For me.
The day drags and I finally leave at seven after the office empties. According to my new task list—I’ve gone back to basics with a pen and paper—I should go to the gym and do the laundry I didn’t do yesterday. Instead I drop off my bag, pull out my sneakers, and start an aimless walk around the neighborhood. The summer sun hasn’t yet dropped behind the horizon, so I decide it’s safe enough to go on the running trail built along the train tracks near my place. It’s busy and I wind around a kid learning to inline skate and dodge a group of Serious Cyclist Dudes in bright jerseys and black shorts. Apparently the Tour de France has made a detour through Toronto—how nice.
I try to relax but the toxic mess in my brain infiltrates my body and I stare hard at a man strolling by with gigantic silver earphones. His face is so punchable that my hand curls into a fist.
The lawyer told me I need to get proof about Todd’s behavior, but how? Even if I could outwit him, not only is he a vice president, but his dad is golf buddies with the CEO. And Garnet Brothers Investments isn’t the most feminist organization out there. I bet even a dick pic would only get a “Boys will be boys,” and Todd’s smart enough to not say or do anything that I can call out specifically. Standing too close? Feeling uncomfortable? I was reading into the situation, end of story. The pay is also better than anywhere else I’ve looked so I’m stuck. Between Mom’s private room and saving for the new home, I’ve burned through all the cash I’d managed to put away.
I stop abruptly, causing a runner to shout “Hey” and shoot me a dirty look as they swerve to miss me. The walk should have calmed me—nature, outside, exercise, all that—but I want to scream. I’ll go to bed. A solid night’s sleep will get rid of this itchiness inside my skin.
By the time I reach my street, I’m almost in a daze as worry circulates through my brain. Mom. Work. Mom. Money. Work. Todd.
As I wonder what it would be like to walk and walk and keep walking forever, a glossy black SUV pulls up close enough to make me jump to the side. This is not the kind of car that usually comes by my street, which tops out at a Lexus owned by the dentist five doors down. I automatically take three safe steps back to put me out of snatching range and am off the sidewalk and on the grass staring warily when the car door opens.
“Grace Reed?” A very familiar face peers out and I gawk.
It’s familiar because, except for her long, lustrous tresses—like a shampoo ad or Agatha Wu strolling down Bloor Street on her way to meet her romantic destiny—this woman is my doppelg?nger. We have the same face shape with a pointy chin and similar rounded dark eyes, except I know mine are shadowed with fatigue and hers are simply elegantly shadowed. Her skin is dewy and fresh. I may look dewy, but I certainly do not look fresh.
“Wow,” I say, peering at her. “I have to know, are you a bartender on the Danforth? People are always telling me my double works in some bar in the East End.”