Chapter 42 Noelle
42 Noelle
In her subsequent texts, Avery gives me more details.
After work, she decided to go to a new food hall downtown for dinner. There are several permanent vendors, plus a rotating selection of guest vendors each weekend. The dumpling stand is one of the latter. She knows it’s the same one because it has the same handwritten sign, even though the woman working there is younger. Her name is Judith, and apparently, the older woman was her mother, who has since passed away. Judith has agreed to speak to us—I’m not sure what Avery told her—once she closes up at 9 p.m.
Since I don’t have to leave quite yet, I decide to finish the episode I’m on, but I’m distracted, and I have to pause and rewind twice because I miss something important.
Then, even though it’s a little early, I head out.
The food hall is nothing like the mall food courts of yore, where you might eat frozen yogurt or fries during a break in your shopping trip. No, it’s much swankier. Many of the seats look like fancy picnic tables, with polished wood tops and benches. Near the entrance, some men dig into delicious-smelling noodles and curries.
It takes me a minute to find Avery. She’s seated in a corner, nursing a bubble tea, which is now mostly ice and tapioca pearls.
“Does this place close at nine?” I ask. “Will we have to leave in a couple of minutes?”
Avery shakes her head. “No, some of the vendors are open until eleven, so we can stay.”
I get my own bubble tea and sit across from her. Though it’s not quiet in here, I swear I can hear the beating of my own heart. I’ve wanted answers for months, and now I’ll get them… maybe?
Avery and I don’t talk much at first. I suspect she’s also deep in thought about what we’re going to find out, what it all means. Then I remember that I didn’t tell her about my day.
“Lunch with my sister went well,” I say.
She perks up. “Madison believed your story?”
“She did, and she caught me up on some of the stuff I don’t remember.”
Avery reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “I’m glad it worked out.”
We lapse into silence again, and I glance around at the clientele. There are a few businesspeople who look like they just left the office. A group of women in their thirties, dressed a little nicer than I am, a couple of them with cocktails in their hands. A middle-aged couple.
My gaze then wanders to the businesses. The ones with permanent storefronts sell things like Thai street food, Korean hot dogs, shawarma, and fried chicken. Next, my eyes land on the small cart in the corner. Like at the night market, I don’t see a clear sign. A young couple is ordering, and as soon as they walk away, I look back at Avery, not wanting anyone to catch me staring.
But a few minutes later, I venture another look, and I see a woman in an apron. As Avery said, she’s definitely not the woman who served us dumplings on June 20.
I return my attention to my bubble tea and phone, scrolling through social media without really seeing anything. Wondering if what I’m about to learn will make it easier to tell Cam, easier for him to believe me.
Shit! Cam! I was supposed to call him.
ME: I’m so sorry. Something came up. I can’t talk tonight, but I’ll see you on Sunday? Your place?
CAM: Sounds good. Want to come over around 2?
ME: That works
Eventually, the woman from the dumpling stand approaches us.
“Come with me,” she says by way of greeting. “Too loud here. I will show you where it’s quieter.” She waits for us to get up, and we follow her behind a pillar, where there’s a small table with three chairs. She’s right: it’s quieter here. Better for a conversation.
I don’t know where to start, especially since I’m not sure what Avery told her, but I introduce myself. “I’m Noelle.”
“Judith.” She nods, businesslike. “I don’t understand why you want to talk to me. If you had some problems with the dumplings last year, I apologize. My mother… she was old, operating this business without a license, and I didn’t even know about it until months later. She was living with my brother—why did it take so long for him to notice?”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, feeling a little awkward. Such insufficient words for the death of a parent.
Judith nods briskly again.
“The dumplings were very good,” Avery says. “We didn’t get food poisoning, don’t worry, but after we ate them, something strange happened to both of us. We started reliving June twentieth over and over.”
Judith doesn’t nod this time. No, she’s very, very still. While there’s an expression of surprise on her face, she doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as she ought to be.
This, I think, is a good sign for us getting some kind of answer.
Avery continues, “We were stuck in a time loop. Every day, June twentieth repeated as though it had never happened before, and we were the only people who could remember the previous versions of it. When we returned to the night market, everything was exactly the same as before, except the dumpling cart wasn’t there. There was no sign of your mother.”
“How did you get out?” Judith asks.
“We don’t know,” I say. “One day, the loop just ended, and it was January. We don’t have any memory of what happened in the regular world during those seven months, but apparently, we existed in it.”
Judith nods once more, as if this all makes some kind of sense. “I did not know my mother was doing… that.”
“She told us that the dumplings would give us what we needed most.”
Judith is silent for a long time. Finally, she says, “My mother could manipulate time.”
I let that sink in. I’d suspected something along those lines, but it’s still a shock to actually hear it out loud.
“Have you been stuck in a time loop before?” I ask.
“No, but a few times when I was a kid, she’d let me relive a good day.”
“Did the rest of the world move on without you? Did you lose the memory of a day that everyone else remembered?”
“Yes. She called it… ah, I don’t know. Conservation of time, or something like that.”
“Were these incidents caused by food?”
“I’m not sure how she made them happen.” Judith sighs. “I’m sorry, I don’t have all the answers you seek, but I believe your story, and I believe my mother was capable of causing it. Also, June twentieth was the summer solstice last year, yes? Her abilities were stronger around the winter and summer solstices—and a few other dates—but I’m not sure of the reason. She could make herself invisible then, which is why you couldn’t find her again.”
It had occurred to me before that it might have something to do with the summer solstice. But I didn’t see how that would help me get out of the loop, so I didn’t think about it much.
“Do you have any idea why she chose us?” Avery asks. “What did she think we’d need most, and how would a time loop have helped us get it?”
“Well, what did the time loop do for you?”
“It allowed me to take risks I never would have taken otherwise,” I answer. “It also helped me better appreciate certain things in life, now that time is moving normally.” I pause. “Was she aware that would happen? What could she have possibly known about me? She’d never seen me before.”
“I’m not sure,” Judith says, “but she did have very strong hunches, and sometimes she knew a lot about a person without being told. One time, she told me not to date a certain man, told me bad things would happen if I did, and then I found her hiding in the bushes on a date. He was furious, and he never called me again. I was mad at her, of course, but I thought she was just an interfering, overprotective mother who wouldn’t let me live my own life.” She chuckles wryly. “A year later, he was in the news. He would scam the women he dated and leave them with nothing. I doubt she had the power to know the details of your lives, but she probably had… a feeling.”
I absorb her words. “You don’t know much about her abilities?”
“No. When I was little, I thought it was something all mothers could do.”
At first, that sounds unbelievable. But when I was a small child, my parents were like all-powerful beings, and it took a while to understand that they were fallible too. I suppose I can see it.
“What day was it when you came out of the loop?” Judith asks.
“January twenty-fourth. Was that the day she died?”
Judith shakes her head. “No. She died on the fifteenth.”
So much for that theory.
“But January twenty-fourth was her wedding anniversary.”
Huh. Interesting.
“I really don’t know why everything happened as it did for you two,” she says. “She got sick in the fall. Even before then… she was ninety. I don’t think she could control her powers as well as she thought she could anymore, and maybe that’s why you were there for so long. My best guess is that January twenty-fourth was a date she preset. A fail-safe, so you wouldn’t repeat the same day forever.”
I think of the strange night when I saw 3:01 a.m. on my alarm clock. Did Judith’s mother try to get us out of the loop that night, but she wasn’t strong enough to do it?
“I doubt she had any ill intent, even if it felt that way. I suspect she only wanted to help you.” Judith pauses. “Though I’ve never been stuck in a time loop, my brother was. I don’t know the details because he won’t talk about it. But I do know that she was able to see what was going on in his reality, and she brought him out when she thought he’d done what he needed to do. He grudgingly admitted that it changed him for the better, but he still resented her for it, and when she came to Canada, he made her promise that she wouldn’t do such things here. Until now, I thought she hadn’t.”
“So you really have no idea,” Avery says, “how she was able to do it? You never asked? If my mother performed magic—”
“Of course I asked. She just wouldn’t tell me, and I knew better than to keep pestering her with questions that might be related to her past.” She looks away. “She lost both of her brothers before I was born. There was a lot of tragedy in her early life, and by not telling us much about it, she felt like she was protecting us. Though, based on something she said once, I believe her mother had similar powers. But if I can do magic, I have no knowledge of it, and no children of my own. I’m not sure how it’s passed down.”
Avery looks like she’s struggling to understand the gaps in Judith’s knowledge. However, it’s not hard for me to wrap my mind around it, based on my experience with my own family. Sometimes, you know that half-truths are all the answers you’ll ever get, and you hold on to them as tightly as you can. I never knew much about my grandparents’ lives in China—and it wasn’t because of the language barrier.
“Thank you for what you’ve told us,” I say.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.” Judith sounds warmer than she did at the beginning. “Now I know why Ma started this.” She gestures at the cart. “It wasn’t just about the food. Aiya! My brother was so mad when he found out.”
“Why did you continue it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Something to do, I guess. I’m retired, no adult children to fuss over.” She smiles at us. “A way of feeling connected to her once she was gone. It’s only a few days a month.”
I can understand using food like that. When I was a teenager, my grandfather taught me how to make beef and broccoli the way it was served at the restaurant where he’d worked. Two years later, he passed away, and there was something comforting in the fact that I could make it exactly like he had.
So I don’t know Judith well, but I feel like I understand her on some level.
“Your lives, they turned out okay?” she asks. “You said you took extra risks?”
I’ll never be a big risk-taker, and that’s fine. But I’d become so afraid of taking any risk, so afraid that one small misstep would be catastrophic, and that wasn’t healthy.
I think back to my conversation with Madison and what she said about our grandparents. For them, at one point in time, a small mistake may well have ended in catastrophe. It might have even been fatal—I don’t know. They didn’t share those memories with us. I’m lucky not to be in that situation, and I don’t have to live like that, but perhaps some tiny part of me carried on the trauma of the generations before me.
In the loop, I was able to let go and try some things I wouldn’t have otherwise done, and I’m happy with the results, except…
“I met a guy while I was in the time loop,” I say. “Every day, my life reset, so he didn’t remember me—aside from his strong feelings of déjà vu. After the loop, I found him again, and we’re together, but… I have to tell him the truth. That I know him from another timeline. I’m not sure he’ll believe me.”
“Hm.” Judith taps her chin. “Maybe Ma’s goal had something to do with romance.” She looks at Avery.
“I broke up with my boyfriend,” Avery says. “Over and over and over.”
Judith turns back to me. “If he’s right for you, he will believe you.”
That’s a starry-eyed notion, one that makes me want to snort, but I hold it in. It also seems at odds with the woman who sounded wary and businesslike at the beginning of our conversation.
But what do I know? I first spoke to her twenty minutes ago, and even people you’ve known for years can surprise you.
“I should head home,” Judith says. “I’m not used to being on my feet for so much of the day. If there’s something else you want to know, you can call me.” She hands us each a business card. “Or come to one of the markets. They’re listed on the website.”
“Thank you,” I say, though I have no intention of eating any of her dumplings, even if she claims to not have her mother’s powers. There are countless other dumpling places in Toronto, and it’s not worth the risk.
When I look over at Avery, I can tell she’s having the same thought.
The next morning, I tell my temporary roommate that I’m cooking dinner for her.
“In exchange for the ziti,” I say as we’re drinking coffee together.
“You don’t need to,” Avery says. “Like I said, you’re letting me stay for free.”
“Just this once, don’t worry. Besides, you’re the one who found the dumpling cart. I owe you for that. I might never have come across it myself.”
She huffs. “We’re friends. We don’t need to keep score.”
True. I frown, worrying that I’m screwing up this friendship thanks to my lack of practice. I don’t want to keep a running tally of who’s done what for whom; I just want Avery to accept that I’ll cook dinner tonight.
When she pats my hand, I take it as a yes.
“Joe’s the last person who cooked for me,” she says. “Except I got food poisoning because he cut raw meat on the same cutting board as the vegetables for the salad.”
“Oh dear. I promise I won’t do that.”
That afternoon, I go to the grocery store and buy ingredients for a recipe I’ve never written down, never tried to change. At home, I begin preparations for my grandfather’s beef and broccoli. It’s the only way I’d eat broccoli as a kid—even when it was loaded down with cheese, I’d decline it. We struggled to communicate with each other at times, but food was a form of connection.
When everything is ready, I serve us each a bowl of jasmine rice, then put the wok in the center of the table and tell Avery to help herself.
“Wow,” she says after a bite. “You’ve been eating ramen when you can cook like this?”
I shrug. I’m uncomfortable with the compliment because I feel like it should be for my grandfather, not me. “I don’t want to cook like this every day.”
“I get it. I don’t want to cook dinner every day either. That’s why I can’t understand people who don’t like leftovers. Leftovers are the best.”
“Agreed.”
We eat in contented silence for a few minutes before we discuss what to do for the evening, eventually deciding to get a trial of a different streaming service for variety. Avery insists on cleaning up afterward, and I retreat to the futon and look at my phone. There’s a text from Madison, telling me that a restaurant we used to like when we were young has closed. I smile. Not because the restaurant has closed—that’s a bummer—but because she’s texting me.
I’m about to put my phone aside, when I get a text from Veronica.
VERONICA: I know this is a long shot, but do you know anyone who’s looking for a place to live? I have a friend who needs a roommate.
“Avery!” I say, and she turns off the tap. “I might have an apartment for you.”
That night, I struggle to sleep. There’s a lot on my mind. Things that have happened… and things that have yet to happen. Tomorrow, I’ll tell Cam the truth, and I’m not sure how it’ll go. I’m glad I have some explanation for him now, but it’s not much of one. I don’t like that I’ll never have all the answers.
I eat leftovers for lunch, and then I head outside, my new scarf wrapped around my neck. It was nice to make something with my hands—and not have it disappear overnight.
Before going to Cam’s, I make a stop at the Filipino restaurant that sold the halo-halo at the night market, and I buy some leche flan. I don’t want to show up empty-handed, and the flan was delicious. I also can’t help thinking of how strongly the scent of cinnamon rolls reminded me of our morning-after. Maybe seeing or tasting the flan will jog Cam’s memory. Doubtful, but it’s worth a shot.
I dawdle from the transit stop to his apartment. I normally have a determined, quick pace, but not today; I’m delaying the inevitable. The hard conversations.
When Cam opens the door for me, I smile. I can’t help it. He looks happy to see me—as always—and his relaxed posture is a contrast to my own. As soon as I take off my winter boots, he kisses me, and the kiss makes me ache with longing.
I wonder if I’ll ever get to do this again.
“You weren’t replying to my texts early in the week,” he says. “I worried that something was wrong, but I’m glad you’re here now.”
“Yes, well, about that.” I pause. “I’m sorry about blowing you off on Friday. Something important came up, which is related to what I have to tell you. Would you mind making some coffee?”
Cam’s mouth briefly turns down, but then he’s smiling again. “Sure thing.”
I’m delaying the inevitable just a little longer. Waiting until I have a mug to hide behind. I think of all the exchanges, all the touches, that have led us to this point, so many things he doesn’t remember.
Once we’re seated on the couch, leche flan on a plate in front of us, coffee on Leaside Brewing coasters, I say, “Okay. Here’s what happened.”