11. Anime Chic
Anime Chic
Theo’s mom dropped the pizza box on the table with smug satisfaction. “Who’s the best?”
“Are there mushrooms?”
She huffed. “No, you giant baby, there are no mushrooms.”
“Then you are.” He opened it and sucked in a long breath. There was nothing in the world as enticing as the spicy smell of cheese-infused Italian sausage. Another box sat on the counter, ready to be put in the fridge and consumed cold the next morning.
Breakfast pizza: a time honoured tradition.
The apartment he’d shared with his mom and aunt was about an hour from campus: subway, streetcar, then a jaunt through a park while avoiding yoga classes or torrid hand-jobs, depending on the time of day.
The building used to be a Victorian-style house but was split into three different apartments.
It still felt house-y though, with creaky wooden floors, fancy carved moulding, and a fireplace they never used.
His aunt Liana followed her nose to the pizza.
She had the same chestnut brown hair, dark eyes, and heart-shaped face as his mom, so people always assumed they were twins.
Every time it happened, Liana would put on a fake smile and say through gritted teeth that, no, they weren’t twins.
She was, in fact, five years younger. It gave his mom endless joy, not because it implied she appeared younger than she was, but because it pissed her sister off so much.
Liana slopped a piece of pizza on her plate and picked off the toppings. She liked to eat the dough first because she was an actual insane person. “How was your first month? Are classes okay? How is my favourite nephew? Tell me everything.”
She’d been calling Dae her favourite nephew since she finagled him into helping her repair the stage in the bar, earning him a place in her heart forever.
“First month went by fast, classes are interesting, and Dae is fine.”
“Fine?” She cocked her head, the topping-less crust hovering in her hand just before her mouth. “What’s that tone?”
“There’s no tone.”
“There’s a tone,” his mom agreed. “And since when do you end at fine? You usually give us more updates about Dae than you do about yourself.” She slipped into her terrible impression of him, which was just a lowered voice and hunched shoulders.
“Dae answered a question in class without panicking, Dae made a new friend in his language lab, Dae gave his opinion about a Real Housewife without having to be asked.”
“It was about The Voice. Stop mixing up your life with mine.”
She giggled like he’d caught her hoarding dirty magazines. “They’re just so dramatic.”
His aunt would not be deterred. “So what’s the issue with Dae, then?”
“There’s no issue. We’re fine.” He took out his phone and waved it at his mom. “Don’t you want to see my schedule?”
“Oh, yes! Let’s see if I know any of the professors.
” He would’ve pointed out that it had been over twenty years since she’d graduated from U of T, but he knew it was a losing battle.
“Ohh news writing and reporting!” She used the salt shaker as a microphone.
“This has been Theodore Walker reporting live from his mom’s kitchen.
Back to you, Barb.” She gave herself an indulgent laugh, then aggressively poked at his phone.
“It died. Theo, it’s dead.” She pretended to sob. “Gone from this world far too soon.”
It was truly a wonder where Theo got his dramatics from. “It’s just asleep.”
“Well, wake it up. It’s the middle of the day.” She laughed again, and his aunt groaned.
“Marie, leave the dad jokes to the dads.”
“Well, like most dad-things, I have to do it myself.” Silence hit the room like someone muted them. His mom’s shoulders dropped, and she rubbed her face. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, Theo, I promised I’d never badmouth him.”
He shrugged, trying his best to pretend like he hadn’t been plunged into a glacier. “You deserve to.”
“No.” She picked at her pizza, sounding miserable. “Not to you.”
Theo was never sure exactly how he felt in the rare instances when his mom’s bitterness leaked out.
He knew, intellectually, that she had every right.
It was perfectly fair for her to be the hero and for his dad to be the villain.
But hearts weren’t as rational as brains, emotions weren’t as simple as facts, and his dad was still his dad.
He wasn’t a bad guy; he just wasn’t a good guy.
He didn’t leave Theo’s mom for another woman or anything.
He just didn’t want to be a husband or father.
It would’ve been more convenient if he’d figured that out before becoming both, but then Theo wouldn’t exist, so in the end, he supposed it worked out for him.
His aunt recovered first, nudging his knee under the table. “Did you see who’s going on tour this summer?”
“Yes.” The word was a breath of both relief and excitement. The band who had ignited his love of music, the one little Theo had snuck out of the back room of the bar to watch, was doing a reunion tour. “We have to go.”
“Obviously. And this time, you can walk in through the front door.”
His mom clicked her tongue. “Don’t remind me that you took my son to a bar, Liana.”
His aunt snickered. “Repeatedly.” She shrugged at his mom’s glare. “What? Once he caught the music bug, there was no keeping him away!”
“Ugh.” His mom shook his not-dead-just-asleep phone between them. “Say the magic words. I still want to see your schedule.”
He put in his password and the lock-screen lit up: him, Dae, Caleb, and Jason in their Golden Girls costumes.
His mom let out a cheesy sigh. “I never get tired of seeing this one.”
Theo wasn’t loving how perfectly he was able to pull off Blanche’s coif.
If he had a nickel for every time he wished he’d gotten his mom’s hair instead of his dad’s, he’d at least have enough to buy a coffee from a gas station.
“I want to change my hair. The colour is a bit too old-lady, don’t you think? ”
His mom gasped. “No! I love the dirty blonde.”
“See? I hate that. Sounds like I don’t shower.”
“Looks like you don’t shower too.” Liana ruffled his hair, which only she was allowed to do. “I say red. Go full Archie.”
“Hard pass.”
“Then go pastel. Pink. Anime-chic.” She’d been joking, but when he didn’t shoot her down, she jumped up. “I’ll get the dye!”
“Liana.” His mom stood up with her. “Don’t pressure my son into looking like a cartoon!”
He watched as they bickered, feeling his muscles relax.
His dad left them before Theo could form memories, so he never knew what it was like to live with both parents.
But having his aunt live with them felt like something better.
Any time his mom got tipsy, she would tell him how broken she’d been after the divorce, how incapable she was of taking care of him, how Liana saved them both just by being there.
Sure, it meant he was raised in the back room of a bar and his mom was often so exhausted after her nursing shifts that Theo was the one tucking her into bed, but he grew up loved, and he knew not everyone was so lucky.
When Theo decided to go to university, they’d discussed Liana moving out, but it didn’t feel right. She had her own space in the apartment to live her life. And plus, his mom still needed her. In a way, she was still a bit broken.
Liana jangled her car keys. “Are we doing this?”
He nodded, and she dodged past his mom out the door.
“Buy the organic kind! Don’t burn my son’s scalp with your nonsense!” His mom walked back to him, half annoyed, half amused, then ran her hands through his hair. “Let me appreciate it one last time.”
It took twenty minutes for his aunt to return with four different boxes of dye. She told her sister to wait so they could have a big reveal, then made Theo change into an old t-shirt.
“You okay?” She wiped the dye off his forehead with a damp towel, leaning over him as he sat on the edge of the bathtub. It was an ancient, iron, claw-footed monstrosity that they’d been talking about replacing since Theo was toddler.
“Yeah, it tingles, but not in a bad way.” Even with the window open, the smell of the bleach was overpowering, like he was trapped in a room with fifty indoor pools.
It was the furthest thing from organic, but, like so many of his activities with his aunt through the years, he promised not to tell his mom.
“Theo.” She put the towel down and leaned against the sink. “What’s different?”
He couldn’t play dumb. Past experience had taught him that when Aunt Liana’s gut felt something was off, there was no escaping her scarily perceptive attention.
“It’s not a huge deal.” His shrug felt forced even to him. “Dae and I had a weird week, that’s all.”
“Weird how?”
He sighed and leaned back, forgetting there wasn’t a back to his ‘seat’ and having to throw his legs out to rebalance himself. His aunt just watched him like an anthropologist collecting data.
“He and Jacinda are having some issues, but it’s fine because I fixed it.”
She shook her head at the ceiling as if asking for strength. “Of course you did.” When she brought her stare back to him, there was something sad underneath the frustration. “At any point did it occur to you to just…not?”
“Not what? Help?” The chemicals were starting to get to him, fuzzing his brain.
“What was the issue?”
“He needs to choose her more.”
“Choose her over what?” When he didn’t respond, she nodded in that fake ‘a-ha’ way people did when they already knew the answer to the question they were asking. “Over you.”
“Not necessarily.” Yes. Over him. He hadn’t wanted to admit it during his talks with either of them, but wasn’t that what it came down to?
Dae didn’t have many commitments outside of school, and Jason and Caleb didn’t need him the way Theo did.
They weren’t the ones demanding his time, pretending it was for his sake, when really…
“I just need to give them some space.”
She digested this, her eyes burrowing into his. “Dae told you this? That he needs space?”
“He agreed that he should focus on his girlfriend.”