Читать книгу The Restoration of Emily - Kim Moritsugu - Страница 5

My first fun appointment of the fun-filled day ahead is at 9:30 a.m., to see a specialist about some sharp pains I’ve had for months in my right arm. When my GP diagnosed the problem as an ordinary affliction with the prosaic name “frozen shoulder,” I was tempted to go on ignoring the jabs of hurt, avoid using the arm for anything strenuous, and wait for time’s healing power (and/or my body’s ever more glacially paced self-healing capabilities) to make the problem go away. But the pain has become worse instead of better, has begun to wake me at night, and is making me crankier than my normal, pain-free, non-sleep-deprived cranky self. Hence the visit to the rheumatologist, about whose curative abilities I am skeptical, since, in my experience, competence is rare.

My suspicions are not allayed when the doctor turns out to be markedly younger than I am. In her late thirties, I’d guess, from the bags under her eyes, the faded bloom of youth on her skin. She addresses me by my first name, Emily (better that than the sort of formality I’ve disliked since childhood), introduces herself as Joan rather than as Dr. Anything, and takes my history.

She expresses no surprise upon hearing my birth year, does not exclaim that I look younger than my age, a line I have become accustomed to and, I’m afraid, quite fond of, from my regular doctor, a wrinkled woman in her sixties who I fear is losing her memory and mind, because I am, have been since I turned forty. Though how funny is it (not) that I never think my GP feeble when she declares my blood pressure that of a young woman or tells me I’m lucky I inherited the skin gene from my father’s side and not my mother’s, because fair complexions go old so fast, look at hers.

Dr. Joan asks my occupation, and when I tell her, says, “An architect? Have you designed anything famous?”

I have an urge to lay claim to a set of Mies van der Rohe skyscrapers downtown, or to a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Michigan, or to the Red House in Kent. My anti-authoritarian impulse — because she didn’t say I looked young? Sheesh — is to jolt her, to disturb her calm the way the occasional obstreperous client does mine. But I hold back, and when her polite smile seems to invite more detail, I say, “I restore old houses.”

She shares that she lives in a loft-style condo in the meat packing district, an area filled with arty boutiques and funky restaurants built within smelling range of abattoirs. She has no affinity for old houses, in other words. Good. We are both relieved to return to the matter at hand. At arm. She says, “You’ve had pain in your shoulder how long?”

“Six months.”

“Show me where.”

I point to the outside of my bicep.

She frowns. “Have you taken any anti-inflammatory drugs? What about physiotherapy?”

I tell her that the drugs didn’t work and that I did physio for three months but saw little improvement. Which is why I’m here. That and because my fourteen-year-old son, Jesse, has start­ed to do a maddening but accurate imitation of me clutching my arm and wincing whenever I ask him to help me execute a routine action I can no longer accomplish painlessly, like opening a door or reaching a bowl down from a shelf.

In the examining room, I don a tasteful but still humiliating blue striped hospital gown so that Dr. Joan can run a knitting needle up the sole of my foot (my foot curls like a snail), and tap me hard on each knee with a hammer. My legs jerk out in turn and I suppress curses at this treatment, at the indignity of my body’s involuntary responses. “Reflexes seem fine,” she says, and holds her hands up in front of her, palms facing me. “Push on my hands with yours. Now pull. Hard.”

She barks out more instructions to move my arms up, down, to the side, this way, that way, behind my head, behind my back. She speaks fast, moves fast, shows impatience if I don’t understand or fail to obey immediately. I wonder if she treats all her patients so brusquely, and if the elderly man with the cane whom I saw in the waiting room will be subjected to this attitude. Why is she like this? What has annoyed her? Isn’t she too young to be burned out by the frustrations of treating recalcitrant patients? Hell, at her age, I still worked in a big architectural firm and dealt with office politics on top of a slate of difficult clients. I also developed a twitch in my eye and sleeping problems. Maybe she isn’t too young to be fed up.

When she sees how little mobility I have in my right arm, she says, “That’s a frozen shoulder, all right. Common in perimenopausal women. Are you doing stretching exercises for this at home?”

I have been stretching, though not as often as I should. When I admit this, Dr. Joan says, “You must do the exercises. I’ll give you a cortisone shot today, but you’re not going to get better unless you aggressively exercise that arm. Do that and your shoulder might be fully functional in a year. Don’t, and you won’t be able to unhook your bra with your right hand for two years. Got it?”

What I’ve got is a need to tell her to fuck off and drop the condescending tone. But I say, “I’ll sure try!” in the tone of a character from a Mickey Rooney–Judy Garland musical. Sure that Dr. Joan won’t recognize the reference or the sarcasm.

She prepares the needle, inserts the syringe into the vial of cortisone. “This may increase the pain over the next few days, but an over-the-counter pain reliever will help you manage as needed.”

If my life were a movie, Dr. Joan would prescribe me prescription painkillers that I would become addicted to over the next year until I screwed up the drawings for a project and caused the accidental death of a labourer on a contractor’s renovation crew. I would then be led off to rehab, if not also to jail for criminal negligence. With my career and life in ruins, my custody of Jesse would be handed over to my ex-husband, Henry, who would make him come live in New York, where Jesse would get lost in the big-city shuffle and not realize his promise as, as, well, as whatever it is he will become. All signs currently point to unemployed disc jockey, but if he lived with Henry, he wouldn’t even become that.

Dr. Joan swabs my shoulder, I look away, she pricks me with the needle. I grimace, not at the sting of the needle’s penetration, but at the drag when she pushes down on the syringe, when the tip stays under my skin and too slowly deposits its load. I want to bat the needle away, pull it out, make it leave. I want to expel it like I used to — in the dim past, when I was still having sex — want to expel a penis that had ejaculated inside me and lay there afterwards, heavy and still and unwanted. Or like a tampon. Out, out, damned anything and everything.

When I arrive home after the cortisone shot, my across-the-street neighbour, Vera, is in her front garden in full gardening garb, rubber clogs, wide-brimmed hat, and all, kneeling on a garden mat. Like all the lots in our downtown neighbourhood, on our narrow street, hers is on the small side, but over the five decades she has lived here, she has transformed the fenced-in plot into a lovely English garden, a profusion of colourful flowers.

Since Vera’s husband died five years ago, she’s forged on alone, filled her days gardening, walking, doing volunteer work at a hospital, and hosting family get-togethers on holidays for her far-flung adult children and her grandchildren. I admire her bravery and pluck, and she’s a good neighbour, so when she halloos me, I go over to make social pleasantries of the sort I generally try to avoid.

A minute into our chat, she says, “Remember that real estate agent I told you about a while back, the one who was pestering me about listing my house? He came around to see me again today. His clients have their hearts set on moving into the area, and he wanted to know if I’d thought any further about selling.”

“Have you?” I don’t want Vera to move away — I like having a pillar of the block nearby, a reliable source of neighbourhood memory, someone who can recall the year that the hundred-year-old elm tree that once graced my property fell down and crushed two cars parked on the street, someone who refers to the twenty-year-old maple planted in its place as a sapling.

“I hadn’t, not seriously,” she says, “not until he showed up today with a bouquet of flowers.”

I gesture to her garden. “That was a bit of coal to Newcastle, wasn’t it?” One of my mother’s old expressions, that one, that I wouldn’t use with anyone but Vera.

“I suppose so, but he meant well. And he brought me spring flowers — tulips, which made me think about how long and cold the winter will be.”

“The winter will be long and cold, but moving away — and where, to a condo? — would be such a radical step. You’d have no garden then. And I’d have no nice neighbour to call when the power is out or I’ve lost my keys.”

“I’d miss you too, dear,” she says, a little perfunctorily. “But every so often, radical steps need to be taken in life, don’t you find? Why, twenty years ago, when I started menopause, I was hit so hard with the hot flashes and the insomnia and the night sweats and the mood swings that I had to develop a whole new daily routine to cope. I had to change everything!” She eyes my sallow skin and slouched posture. “You must be about menopausal age now. Has yours started yet?”

I stand up straight. “Not yet.” Except, possibly, for the mood swings.

“Well, good luck with it when it comes. Menopause will make moving house look like a piece of cake.”

Yeah, I can’t wait.

I go inside my house and spend an hour at my office desk doing paperwork. I would like to stay put and eat my usual salad for lunch, have my usual nap, but at twelve-thirty I force myself to put on my architect attire (dressy daytime version) and drive off to a luncheon at the home of a client named Suzanne.

The full-scale restoration of Suzanne’s Queen Anne Revival house in midtown was completed a few weeks ago, Suzanne is still speaking to me, and she has invited me and her socialite/charity volunteer friends over to lunch to celebrate. My lack of keenness to attend is due to my nap longings, my disinclination to small talk, and because Suzanne is a young (early thirties), sophisticated, wealthy, and unfailingly nice woman who has so far proven herself incapable of an honest or discouraging word. Throughout our working relationship, from her mouth came a string of platitudes and graciously worded comments that were awe-inspiring in their consistency and in their apparent — because who can talk like that all the time and mean it? — falsity. Our professional time together was smooth and stress-free, but I don’t trust her sincerity for a second. I’m waiting for the real Suzanne to emerge, when she decides that the ground floor flow is off, or the stair riser height too high.

I’ll endure this lunch in order to maintain good customer relations in the hope of future referrals. Also because the other guests are potential clients, the food will be precious and tasty, and my interior designer friend and collaborator Danny will be there, to deflect attention from me and rightfully take praise for the way the house now looks — classy, elegant, and accessible. Like Suzanne, except for the accessible part. She moves in the rather restricted circles in which she met her husband, a junior scion of a wealthy family whose surname is known even to allergic-to-society me. A surname Suzanne has, of course, taken as her own.

I ring the bell and am admitted by Suzanne’s eldest child, a tow-headed girl of about age five, name of Tory, dressed in a balletic getup, complete with dollar-store tiara on her head. Tory is louder in voice and plumper of body than I imagine stick-thin, perfect-complexioned, artfully highlighted blonde Suzanne would like her to be, though I am impugning Suzanne to say so. She has never given me any indication of dissatisfaction with Tory’s look and attitude, has always spoken to her and of her in loving and affectionate tones. Maybe she’ll slip up today.

Within my immediate view on entry is an arty and lavish flower arrangement — sent on in advance, I’m sure, by Danny, who knows how and when to spend money to prevent a client from falling prey to a nasty bout of cognitive dissonance over the size of the decorating bill. The flowers are displayed on a massive round mahogany table positioned in the expanded, light-filled (courtesy of new window wells cut into the exterior brick wall) centre hall, created by eliminating an old closet and a powder room. Never mind that the table, sourced by Danny from England for thousands of dollars, is of a style and period that predates the house by about a hundred years. Or that a warren-like collection of cupboards and closets around the front door was the standard in houses of the time. My clients tend to go for a beautifully restored exterior (with new windows) and an interior designed for modern practicality, with maybe one room decked out in wide plank wood flooring and refreshed wainscotting out of respect to the house’s origins. Authentic my restorations are not. If they were, I’d have no clients.

Suzanne floats into the hall, says to Tory, “Thank you for answering the door, sweetie-pie. Did you say hello to Mrs. Harada and offer to take her coat?” Before Tory can answer or I can object to being called Mrs., Suzanne’s face lights up with joy — there is no other word to describe how happy she looks — at the sight of my tired face and hunched right shoulder, the side of which I am gripping with my left hand in the belief that touching the sore spot will make it better.

“I’m so glad you came,” she says, all sweet breath and breathily sweet, and I am struck anew by how pretty she is, how small her head, how shiny her hair, how slim her shoulders, how perfect her clothes: a silk sweater in the season’s “it” colour, a necklace made of small, shiny precious stones, and black pants cut short to reveal tanned slim ankles and small feet clad in fashionable shoes.

My arm stops aching for a second, and I understand why the junior scion married her — because I want to, too.

I hand her the hostess gift I’ve brought — a jar of fleur de sel — and as she thanks me prettily, the doorbell rings again. Suzanne excuses herself to open it and greets the next arrival, a woman styled like her, only with long chestnut-coloured hair instead of blonde. Suzanne’s face lights up, the picture of pleasure once more, she says, “I’m so glad you came,” in the same joyful way she said the same words to me, and the spell is broken. How could I have forgotten? She is a robot, programmed to be pleasing.

I move toward the kitchen, from where I can hear Danny giving a guided tour, speaking in full voice about the marble this, the cherry that. On the way, I nod at little Tory, who lurks in a corner of the hall, tiara askew. She sticks out her tongue at me — atta girl — I return the gesture, and I head for Danny, a roomful of fake smiles, and two hours of bullshit.

When I was in my mid-thirties, and suffused with the arrogance of youth, I thought women aged fifty were anachronisms from another era. At a time when I was not fabulous, but still believed I could be, my opinion of women that age was that they talked too slowly, told too-long stories, and were too hung up on social conventions like table manners, the wearing of slips, and thank-you notes.

If you’d asked me then to describe a fifty-year-old woman, I would have started with a no-nonsense, short hairstyle, in an undyed shade of gray, the end result of a roller set. Someone that age would wear a blouse and slacks and pumps and pantyhose and use those antiquated words to describe her clothes. She would not ever have smoked pot (and she would call it marijuana) and not know Jim Morrison from Jimi Hendrix, but she would know how to dance, could be counted upon at a wedding to take to the floor and jive away — looking graceful, if dated — with the husband for whom she cooked, cleaned, and ironed.

That was the image I had, but now I’m the anachronism, because somehow, over the course of Jesse’s fourteen and three-quarters years of life, the woman I’ve described has become seventy, and the woman of fifty, surprise, surprise, is me. I’m too tired to dance, good at avoiding housework, and I’m working what I’ll call a classic — and someone else might term staid — fashion look rather than paying heed to any current ludicrous trend. This fifty-year-old dyes her hair and wears it long and sometimes wishes she knew where to score a joint — a safe, not-too-strong one. (I’d like a hit of relaxation, not hallucination.) I swear like a longshoreman (and I know what a longshoreman is), I brought up my child the way I wanted, and I’m unmarried, since taking care of a man was never part of my deal.

My foremothers — or, I should say, older sisters — didn’t fight the feminist fight so that I could do a man’s laundry or heat and serve him dinner when he comes home late from work and tries to delegate evening child care to me, my full-time job notwithstanding. No. What I am, at fifty, is the single mother of a dear and sometimes difficult teenage boy; I’m an independent, self-sufficient, strong woman who answers to no one, who race-walks to her own rhythm track.

That’s except for the times when I miss my turnoff because I’ve put my driving brain on autopilot and forgotten where I’m going. Or when I leave a pot on the stove to boil and forget about it and burn blackened broccoli marks onto the pot’s surface and worry that next time I might burn down the house. I am woman, hear me roar, except when I fuck up.

We are eight for lunch chez Suzanne, eight seated around a large dining table dressed in linen, china, crystal, and platters of designer salads that are passed around so that we can help ourselves using Suzanne’s antique sterling silver serving utensils.

I’m holding a platter of wild rice salad, made with apricots, roasted almonds, and mint, when the woman on my left says, “So Suzanne tells me your father is a famous artist.”

“Was. He’s dead. And he wasn’t that famous. His fifteen minutes happened in the sixties. Were you even alive then?”

She laughs because I’m so funny. Or bizarre. “I love Japanese art,” she says. “And Japanese ceramics. I collect Japanese dishes. They’re so delicate and beautiful.”

I fork some food into my mouth so that I won’t say anything too raw to her, like that I have no time for people who think their fascination with Asian culture is in any way relevant to me. Go be all Zen/samurai/tea ceremony somewhere I’m not, honey. When I’m done chewing, I say, “My father’s parents were Japanese, but he was Canadian — born and raised in Vancouver. His art is considered Canadian.” And the massive, organically shaped sculptures he’s known for aren’t delicate at all.

She says, “Is it true that Japanese children are taught at a young age how to handle dishes carefully?”

Is it true that she’s obtuse? “I wouldn’t know,” I say, and either the edge that has crept into my voice or her inability to reconcile my responses to her boxed-in ideas shuts her up.

Silence may reign in my vicinity, but Danny holds up his end of the table conversation with aplomb — he exclaims over every little thing and makes entertaining insider foodie talk about a funky downtown restaurant that serves Maritime-style lobster rolls, but only on Tuesdays, and off the menu. At one point, he even moderates a panel discussion about china patterns.

When the topic of private schools comes up — all the women either have kids in private school or expect to enroll them in the near future — I tune out and try to estimate what time I’ll make it home, if I can still fit in my afternoon nap, if a good dessert will be served, or if I will eat my usual square of Belgian chocolate with my two o’clock cup of tea, though at this rate I’ll be lucky to be home in time to put the kettle on before three. And in so musing, I miss the first part of a new conversational thread.

Danny says, “To be forever twenty-nine is such a cliché. That’s why my inner age is a far more original, believable, and attractively mature thirty-six.”

Danny is in his early forties but has kept himself up and could pass for thirty-six, or thirty-eight, anyway. But how old one looks does not appear to be what we’re talking about.

The chestnut-haired woman says, “I still feel like I’m eighteen. I’m surprised every time I look in the mirror and see someone older. I read teen magazines in the supermarket checkout line, for goodness’ sake.”

Another woman says, “I’m stuck at twenty-seven, my age when I got married. I still consider myself a newlywed, and it’s been five years.”

Suzanne asks the guest on my right how old she feels, which means my turn is coming, in about thirty seconds, when I’ll be expected to say something interesting and self-revelatory about this subject because Suzanne’s social graces require her to include everyone, even the old bag.

The problem is that I feel forty, maybe forty-one — I often inadvertently describe people in their forties as being my age, having failed to internalize that I’ve passed the milestone/millstone that is fifty. I am the oldest person in the room but in denial about it, which is such a tired, leftover attitude from a previous generation of women who acted coy about aging that I can’t admit to having it.

So I say, when asked, “Hey, I’m fifty, but sitting here with you lot, I feel more like sixty.” I cannot explain where the pretentious “you lot” came from, nor do I quite understand why that sour, strident tone coloured my voice, why I am so fed up with everything and everyone. What I can see is that my utterance has cast a pall over the company’s hitherto smiling faces.

Danny jumps into the gap, says, “You know what I feel like? A piece of that delectable-looking cheesecake I saw waiting for us in the butler’s pantry. May I help you clear, Suzanne?” The look he shoots me when his words set the women in motion up and away from the table tells me I can thank him later, but I’m not finished, have become dangerously out of sorts.

In the kitchen, Suzanne tells us to leave everything on the marble counters. “My girl will tidy up later,” she says, and I bite.

“Your girl?” My voice sounds awful, rheumy and thick with emotion.

“The nanny,” Suzanne says. “She’s upstairs with the kids right now.”

“Surely if she’s old enough to be looking after your children, she’s old enough to be referred to as a woman.”

There is a pause before Suzanne wrinkles her small, straight nose, smiles, and says, “You sound just like my mom. Your generation got all caught up with the semantics of feminism, but my friends and I are so past that now.”

Behind her, where only I can see him, Danny licks his index finger, and racks up a tally point in the air for Suzanne.

After a piece of pumpkin cheesecake (humble pie for me) and a drawn-out cup of coffee poured from a goddamned silver coffee pot, Danny and I say effusive thanks, make our escape, and before we get into our cars, walk around the block and talk while he smokes a cigarette.

He says, “What happened to you back there? Demonic possession?”

I inhale a drift of his cigarette smoke, which still smells tempting, sixteen years after I quit. “I don’t know. My arm hurts.”

“Your arm hurts?”

“I had a cortisone shot today for this frozen shoulder ailment I have. Maybe sudden rage is a side effect. Though that wouldn’t explain why I almost told the doctor to fuck off before she gave me the shot. Or why I had a huge fight on the phone with the cable installer on the Burrows house last week. A red-faced, furious, shaky-voiced fight. Totally brought on by the idiotic, know-nothing kid I spoke to, by the way.”

Danny butts out his cigarette on the sidewalk. “Kevin’s been angry a lot lately, too. Maybe there’s a rage virus going around.” Kevin is Danny’s life partner, a lawyer ten years older than he.

I say, “I don’t know what was worse: when Suzanne compared me to her mother, or when she said” — I mimic her little girl voice — “My friends are so past feminism, you know?”

“Look at it this way: you cracked her veneer for once. That’s some feat, right there.”

“Thanks for not attributing my behaviour to hormones, and for not saying maybe Kevin and I are turning into old farts.”

“Come on, now. Fifty’s not old, it’s the new — ”

“Please don’t.”

He pauses to light another cigarette. “So did Suzanne’s place look fabulous or what? I went over this morning and dressed it.”

“It did look fabulous. You’re a design genius and a social genius. I predict you’ll net at least two new clients from today’s lunch. Unlike me, whose reputation as the blunt bitch architect will only be enhanced.”

“You jazzed up the proceedings, though. Nothing like a little tension to make an event more talkworthy.”

I might as well have pushed back the chairs, rolled up the rug, and started to jive. Or maybe Charleston.

By the time I arrive home, the dull ache in my shot-up arm has turned into a searing, stabbing pain that made me gasp all the way there. I manage a one-handed car exit and house entry, find and swallow some extra-strength ibuprofen, and stagger to my desk to check my messages and emails over the sound of the whimpering noises my gasps have turned into. One of the messages is from my friend Sylvia, who has coerced me into agreeing to help chaperone a dance at Jesse’s school this evening.

Sylvia’s son Ben and Jesse are both out of town, an opportunity Sylvia suggested we seize, in their absence, to put in a volunteer stint at Westdale Collegiate. Ben is at a soccer tournament. Jesse is off on one of his quarterly weekend jaunts to New York, where he’ll be treated to courtside basketball tickets and trendy restaurant meals by his dad in exchange for being cordial to his stepmother, Henry’s second wife, a thirtysomething ex-journalist named (shudder with me, now) Bryony, who’s trying to use her fecundity (two squalling kids so far, born a year apart) to keep Henry committed. Normally, I take Jesse’s periodic absences as welcome solo time and have a quiet evening in, but not tonight, thanks to Sylvia.

Her message says she’ll pick me up at seven and to call back only if that’s not okay. I call her back. “I’m not sure I can make it tonight.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

I tell her about the shot in the arm, the pain, and the gasping and whimpering, but she won’t have any of it.

She says, “Have you taken serious painkillers?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“Did you wash them down with a glass of wine?”

“No.”

“Drink a glass of wine, let the drugs take effect, soak in a hot bath, eat a light dinner, and be at your door ready to go at seven. I’ll honk.”

I’m too pain-addled to argue.

At seven, I slide into Sylvia’s car and into her not-unpleasant scent of perfume and powder.

“Feeling better?” she says.

“If you call a state of chemically induced relaxation better, yeah. I hope there won’t be any heavy lifting required tonight. Or fast thinking.”

“There won’t be. The most we’ll have to do is take a few tickets and patrol the back halls on the lookout for clandestine cocaine snorting and underage sex.”

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Because it’ll be educational and we’ll collect evidence from which we can extrapolate information about how our own children behave in similar circumstances.”

“But Jesse has no interest in this sort of occasion.”The dear child of my antisocial heart has so far avoided hanging out with girls and appears to care only for rap music, basketball, and computer games.

“That’s what Ben was like six months ago, but when I drove him to the bus this morning, he complained at length about the school’s stupidity and lack of foresight in scheduling a dance for the same weekend as his soccer tournament.”

“Did he really use the phrase ‘lack of foresight’?”

“I think his exact words were ‘the administration sucks.’The point is that by observing the boys’ peer group at play, we can better understand their world and be better parents to their sensitive souls.”

“Uh-huh.” Not long ago, Jesse was a child who gave me wonderful, long-lasting, heartfelt hugs, and walked hand in hand with me in public, and kissed me goodbye in front of his friends. He was an affectionate, loving sweetheart, the light in the window at the end of a long day.

Now, when he speaks to me, it’s to ask for food or if I want to hear a good line from a rap song, a line that cleverly rhymes with pussy, ho, or gun. Or it’s to tell me to stop nagging him about his homework, because he’ll do it when he feels like it and not before. There are still moments when he relates, of his own volition, a heartwarming anecdote about his daily life — like that some girls got into a fight after school and five police cars came, or that one of his friends got drunk on malt liquor in the park, threw up, and caught the barf in his hands. But the sweet, sensitive mama’s boy I cherished seems to be slipping away.

Sylvia pulls down the visor and checks her lipstick in the mirror. “If all else fails, we can have some vicarious fun at this dance, relive a moment or two from our youth.”

I throw her a suspicious look. “Is Mr. Sutherland going to be there?” Mr. Sutherland is a tall, single, said-to-be-straight English and drama teacher at Westdale, a man toward whom Sylvia has on more than one occasion professed lustful feelings. He does nothing for me.

She flips up the visor. “Maybe.”

“And does Ed know you’ve gone out flirting for the night?”

“Ed’s home supervising Kira and a friend on their sleepover, while I put in some helpful volunteer hours at Westdale. And anyway, if it’s just a little flirting, what’s there to know?”

This is one of the many things I value Sylvia for: her ability to provide me with timely reminders about how pointless couplehood can be.

She says, “It wouldn’t hurt you to flirt now and then. Even better, you could actually try to meet someone new and consider dating. Say the word and I’ll find someone to set you up with.”

This is what I don’t value Sylvia for: her desire to pair me up, to convert me to her two-by-two ranks. Why can’t she accept that I’m content with my single lot in life, with the one-person dwelling I’ve built to my own particular and peculiar specifications? Why can’t the coupled-off leave us solo acts alone to live out our solitary, tea-soaked existences? I do not need to be saved.

I say, “You have me confused with someone who doesn’t want to die alone.”

“All I’m suggesting is that you open your eyes to the opportunities around you.” She laughs. “Except for the Mr. Sutherland opportunity. He’s mine.”

The vice-principal at Westdale in charge of discipline, a stocky, short-haired, tie-wearing, shirt-tucked-in man of about fifty-five named Mr. Harkness, refers to females as ladies, whether he’s talking about Sylvia and me, as in, “Thank you so much, ladies, for coming in tonight and helping out,” or addressing the girls attending the dance:“Would you ladies form an orderly line to the right, please?” He doesn’t leer or make suggestive comments to us or to the scantily clad girls, I’ll give him that. But the gleeful gleam in his eye when he picks out for ejection a grade nine boy who, from the smell of him, must have poured one bottle of beer over his head while drinking another, is the gleam of someone who gets off on exercising authority. A type I can’t stand.

“Zero tolerance is our policy here at Westdale,” he says, after the boy’s parents have been called to come pick him up, an incident report written, a suspension promised. Sylvia and I nudge each other at this, though our thoughts probably do not match. The “thank god that wasn’t my son” parts may, but I’m not sure she’d be as quick as I am to classify Harkness as a power-mad asshole.

I position myself at the other end of the ticket-taking table from him, at the hand-stamping station, and try to act cool. I do not display on my face the shock I feel when a boy I know from Jesse’s year, a thin, nerdy kid who always excelled at academics, shows up with his arm draped around a hot-bodied girl dressed like a debauched pop star. I do not tell the boys that they look cute but vulnerable in their pressed khakis and polo shirts or silly and poser-like in their gangster wear. I do not hold my nose at the strong smell of musk-noted aftershaves in the air.

Most of the kids I know seem to appreciate the impersonal treatment, to tacitly agree that, under the circumstances, better to disavow previous acquaintance and avoid acknowledgement of how often I’ve car-pooled them over the years. Except for Spencer McKay. Spencer sidles up to the table with a posse of two girls and three boys, looks me in the eye, and in the ringing voice he used to spellbinding effect in last year’s school production of Romeo and Juliet (he played Mercutio), says, “Hey, Emily. How you doing?”

I take his ticket, check his face, see no obvious signs of inebriation. Spencer is a year older than Jesse and has never been a close friend, but they worked on class projects together in the split grades in elementary school, played on the same teams, and attended each other’s birthday parties before they became too old for such things.

“I’m fine,” I say, evenly. “How are you?”

“Ready to party.” He shoots his crew a knowing grin and leads them into the gym.

At my elbow, Sylvia mutters, “There goes trouble.”

“You think? He looked sober to me.”

“Yeah, but you know Spencer. If he can’t find a ruckus, he’ll cause one.”

An hour later, the incoming traffic has slowed to a trickle. So when Mr. Harkness says, “Would either of you ladies like to take a break from ticket-taking and do a girls’ washroom check?” I say yes right away. I need to pop another painkiller: my arm ache is sharpening, the previous pill wearing off.

I’d also like to escape from the sight that is Sylvia’s crush-object Mr. Sutherland. His long hair is tied in a ponytail, his denim shirt is rolled up at the sleeves to expose his hairy forearms, and two buttons are undone to show off his hairy neck. He has emerged from his post inside the gym and sits perched on the edge of the admission table, ready to pontificate. Any minute now, he will start quoting Shakespeare, and I will gag.

I signal my departure to an oblivious Sylvia and set off down the hall for the women’s staff washroom, where I use the facilities, wash my hands, take a pill. When I emerge, I hear voices coming from the adjacent girls’ washroom. Does my chaperone role really require me to stick my head in there and act officious and supervisory? Maybe I could wait out in the hall and nod at the exiting girls when they appear, pretend not to notice the cloud of cigarette smoke that surrounds them or to see the telltale outline of miniature liquor bottles through the thin fabric of their tiny purses.

The loud voices have turned into low-volume murmurings in the short time I’ve stood there, but no one has come out. I’d better do my duty, get it over with. I push open the swinging door with my bad shoulder — ouch — and walk into a tableau in which Spencer, surrounded by four girls, enacts a drug deal. At the moment I open the door, Spencer’s right hand, holding a clear plastic bag of pot, is extended toward a girl I have also known since Jesse was little, a tough cookie named Jill. Spencer’s left hand grasps the bills she presses into his palm.

I stare for a second, a girl in a pink top says, “Oh, shit,” I step back out, and I let the door close on the scene. My impulse is to walk away, fast, and blink away the image. But when I turn to do so, I spot Harkness strolling toward me from the other end of the corridor. I turn back, open the door again, slip inside.

In a strained whisper, I say, “Harkness is coming. Girls, out now. Spencer, take cover. Hide. Go!”

A thought snail-paces its way across my tired, drugged brain that I’m not supposed to be abetting feckless youth, I’m supposed to be the responsible, policing parent here. But it’s too late to change my approach now.

I hold open the washroom door and half-push, half-follow the girls out. They run straight into Harkness, who holds out his hand like a policeman directing traffic. Jill is in front, at the point of the birds-in-flight V formation the girls have formed, her face hardened into a defiant but impassive expression that I wouldn’t have had the guts to wear when I was her age.

“Can I help you?” Jill says. Sounding in the air is a warning that if Harkness dares to harass Jill, her lawyer father will be all over the school administration the next day, weekend or not.

Harkness falters. “Where are you ladies coming from?”

Jill relaxes — there’s no threat here. I wouldn’t put it past her to yawn. “Where do you think?” Understood: moron. “We were in the girls’ washroom. And I hope you’re not going to ask what we were doing in there, because it’s personal.”

The girl in pink emits a stoned-sounding giggle and earns a punishing over-the-shoulder glare from Jill for the eruption.

Harkness looks at me. I make a nonsensical thumbs-up sign from my post at the washroom door, rub my now-throbbing arm, and will Spencer not to choose this moment to come out of hiding.

“Carry on, then, ladies,” Harkness says. “Enjoy what remains of the dance. And stay sober, please.”

Jill grunts, flips her hair, and leads her friends down the hall with the swagger of a teen movie bad girl who bests the doofus vice-principal daily. Mocking bursts of laughter float our way from the now out-of-danger pack.

Harkness watches them go. “I don’t like that girl’s attitude,” he says.

“I don’t know. Seems to me like she’s got serious leadership potential.”

He turns to see if I too am lipping him off and notices my door-barring stance for the first time. “Is anyone else in there?”

“I’ll go check.” I slip through the door again and almost trip over Spencer, not hiding but sitting on the floor, his back to the wall. He flashes me a peace sign and a grin, I mime to him to wait three minutes then leave, and I return to the hall, where I escort Harkness back to the gym doors without blowing Spencer’s cover or angering Harkness further.

A new pair of volunteer moms are sitting at the admission table, and Sylvia stands, leaning, against the wall, ready to go. “You two were gone a while,” she says, when Harkness has entered the gym, probably in search of couples dancing too close that he can separate. “Did you have fun back there?”

“Don’t make me sick.” I grip my arm, which is aching in rhythmic pulses now. “What happened to Mr. Sutherland?”

“He’s back inside. And our shift has ended anyway. I’ll go to the washroom, then we’ll leave, okay? But I’ll be quick, unlike some people.”

I find my jacket, put it on, sling my purse over my shoulder, and am headed for outside and some fresh air, when Spencer saunters into the foyer, walks over to me, and stands too close.

“Hey, Emily. Thanks for covering my ass.” He fixes his hooded eyes on mine. He’s never suffered from a lack of confidence, this kid.

I already regret having saved him from Harkness, but I’ll never be old enough to betray my youthful self and play narc. I can’t be bothered to chide him now, to issue some Mother-Knows-Best admonition about what he should or shouldn’t be up to in his spare time. His own private spare time. “Good night, Spencer.”

I step away, but he comes after me and places a friendly hand on my back, as if we are familiars. “No really. I appreciate what you did. Props, man.” He tilts his head to one side and forms his hand into a fist, offers it to me. And in the same way that it’s impossible to refuse a handshake or a hello kiss without seeming rude, I raise my own fist and brush knuckles with him, though the movement hurts my arm and my hand.

Sylvia bustles out, Spencer melts off, and Sylvia says, “What’s he up to? I thought I saw him coming out of the girls’ washroom when I went down the hall.”

“He’s slippery, all right, but he’s not our concern. Let’s go home.”

When I go to bed on this fun night, the capper of my fun day, I lie awake longer than usual. I can find no reclining position that does not pain me, and there’s the racing mind to contend with, the recriminatory thoughts to air — I should have walked away; Jesse will not be happy when he hears about this; Spencer is a devil, why did I protect him? To distract myself, I try to visualize the design for a bed that would allow people with sore arms to sleep standing up. I almost have it worked out when I remember that Dr. Joan gave me a task to do when I came home from her office, a task I should have performed this morning.

I get up, shuffle into Jesse’s room, turn on the light, grab a pencil off his desk. On a wall in his bathroom, we’ve been charting his growth — the latest mark, made four months ago, in June, has him at five feet, eleven and a half inches. With pencil in hand, I reach up to a blank section of the wall and draw a line at the highest point my right arm can touch, a full four inches lower than where I can touch with my left.

“Make a mark on the wall when you get home,” Dr. Joan said, “do your exercises several times daily, see if your reach improves, and check in with me again in three months. Do you understand?”

Yes, I understand. I also understand that according to the writing on this wall, Jesse’s still on the incline of life, but I’ve already crested the mountain and am making my slow, hobbled way down the decline. I get it. And now I’d like to get some sleep.