2. Tess
Tess
“ H ow did your first day go, sweetie?”
The familiar warmth of my mom’s voice drifts through my phone. I close my eyes for a moment, imagining we’re having this conversation over our usual mugs of mint hot chocolate instead of hundreds of miles apart.
“Pretty good,” I answer. “Well, as good as it could have, considering I was a literal stranger showing up at people’s doors.”
She tuts. “I bet they all loved you.”
“I think they’d love me more if I spoke better French.”
I lean my hip against the kitchen counter and stare through the glass doors out onto the tiny balcony of the short-term rental unit. Shel is plucking at her acoustic guitar, a frustrated pout on her face as she tries to follow along with a YouTube video.
I feel a twinge deep in my chest, the trusty old Mom Guilt digging its claws in yet again.
She deserves proper lessons. There was no sense getting her a guitar for her birthday if I couldn’t afford a teacher to go along with it, but she’d been asking all year, and I thought we could find some kind of community program at the library back home.
I couldn’t have foreseen moving us deep into the mountains of rural Québec. I haven’t even checked if they have a library out here, never mind one big enough to host accessibly priced guitar lessons for ten year-olds.
“You’ll pick it up,” Mom assures me. “You were always good at French in school.”
“That was in a classroom,” I remind her, “in Ontario. It’s like a whole other language out here.”
“Well, French aside, how were the clients?”
I turn away from the window before Shel can look up and catch me staring at her. I’d probably earn myself a glare. She’s already sprouting with the first thorns of teenage sass now that she’s hit double digits.
Ten years old.
From the moment she was born, every parent I knew told me the years would go by fast, that if I even blinked, the baby in my arms would be heading off to school.
I didn’t see how that was possible when it felt like every tiny breath she took contained the whole expanse of the universe, but they were right. I blinked, and here we are.
I wander deeper into the two-bedroom condo, with its bland grey furniture and generic, mass-produced art on the walls. I got a good deal considering its neither ski season nor the height of summer, but the vacation rental in Saint-Jovite is still way more expensive than I can afford.
I try to be grateful we at least have a roof over our heads after the original long-term apartment I had lined up for us fell through just days before we showed up in Québec with all our stuff.
“The clients are…eclectic,” I answer.
That’s one way to describe the range of farms I visited yesterday. Back home in Guelph, I was mostly working at riding schools and big boarder barns. My clients were pretty much all well-off middle-aged women who owned horses as a hobby, either for themselves or their kids.
I had a few of those yesterday too, but I also put a set of shoes on a draft horse owned by an ninety year-old man named Philippe who invited me to the upcoming funeral of his recently deceased barn cat, trimmed the hooves of four alpacas for a woman who asked if I’d accept a blueberry pie as partial payment, and nearly missed an appointment for a sweet family and their equally sweet Shetland pony when the GPS on my phone seemed to think their farm was on the edge of a cliff.
Turned out it was at the bottom of the cliff and the road to get there just doesn’t exist on any known map.
Then, of course, there was the donkey fiasco at La Grange Rouge.
I grin at the memory as my mom titters away with some more assurances that everyone loved me and I’m doing a great job.
The Other Butch, as I’ve been referring to her in my head, definitely did not love me, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to be anything but amused.
She is a client—an important one, at that; they have about ten horses on that farm—and yet, I still find myself snorting when I picture the look on her face when I handed the donkey to her.
Maybe I’m just so relieved there’s another visibly queer person around that I can’t be bothered by a bad first impression.
When I researched the Mont-Tremblant area before the move, I learned there’s plenty of tourism and a thriving local arts scene, especially within a little picturesque town called La Cloche, so it’s not like I expected to be the first gender non-conforming woman anyone here has ever seen, but every ping on my gaydar still feels like a reassurance that maybe, just maybe, we can find a place for us out here.
Not just an apartment, but a place. For me and for Shel. A place to finally live life on our own terms.
“So how goes the house hunt?” Mom asks, like she can sense what road my thoughts have turned down.
“Ugh, terrible,” I say with a groan, letting myself collapse down onto the grey, scratchy sofa in the living room.
“It’s like every spare property around here is a vacation rental.
There are hardly any long-term lets, and the few I’ve managed to find are either way too pricey or way too sketchy.
I promised Shel she’d have her own room, so we need at least a two-bedroom.
I don’t mind if we have to go way out in the countryside.
I’d prefer it, actually, but that means we’d be renting a whole house, which is hard to find and even harder to afford.
I just…I didn’t think it would be this hard. ”
“Honey, you’ll find something,” she coos. “You haven’t even been there for two weeks.”
I lean forward to prop my elbow on my knee and rest my forehead on my palm.
“I know, I know,” I say. “It’s just that I’ve only got this place for a month. I could renew for another, but it’s so expensive, and they’d need to know by the end of next week anyway. It’s really getting down to the wire, Mom, and I just…”
I clamp my mouth shut and rub at my temples. Complaining isn’t doing any good, and Shel could walk in at any second.
I can’t let her hear how worried I am about housing. She’s already been so strong throughout the moving process. She needs me to be strong too.
“It’s just what, honey?”
I can picture how my mom would look, leaning across our old kitchen table to slide our hot chocolate mugs out of the way and clap her hand over my shoulder, her green eyes shining with gentle encouragement.
I squeeze my own eyes shut and hold onto that image.
“It’s just that every time something goes wrong here, I can’t help wondering if I’ve made a huge mistake.”
There’s a moment of silence. I listen to her breathing through the receiver, and for a second, I wonder if she’s going to tell me I’m right.
“You’re taking a chance, honey,” she says instead. “A big, brave chance to build a beautiful life for you and your daughter. I’m proud of you, and whatever happens, we’ll figure it out.”
Four months ago, that’s exactly what the thought of this new job felt like: a chance—and a desperately needed one at that.
The combination of a land developer offering my parents a huge chunk of change for their property and my boss offering me a shot at taking over his old friend’s business out here in Québec lined up within weeks of each other.
It looked perfect on paper. My dad could finally start his long-postponed retirement, my parents could afford to downsize to a townhouse more suitable for getting older, and I could start running my own business instead of working under someone else in an area already oversaturated with farriers.
It was exactly the push I needed to finally get me and Shel into our own place, to make something for us instead of leaning so much on my parents’ generosity and waking up every day just to stare at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom and be reminded of how different teenage me thought my life would turn out.
I can’t say all of that to my mom, though. She already feels guilty enough about selling the house, no matter how many times I tell her moving out was for the best.
I’ve probably said too much as it is.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “I know we will. It’s just stressful getting everything set up, but I’m sure in a few weeks, it will all feel much better.”
I force as much conviction as I can into my words, but they still sound hollow.
“You know what you should do?” Mom asks. “You should take Shel out for a drive today. Do some exploring. It’s Saturday. Everything can wait for an afternoon. You should take her over to that little artist town you told me about.”
I purse my lips. Sacrificing an afternoon’s worth of trawling property listings doesn’t sound like the smart move, but then again, I’ve already burned my eyeballs staring at my screen all morning doing exactly that.
“Tess,” Mom chides, clucking her tongue like she can see the doubt on my face. “I am ordering you to take my grandchild out for a drive in the sunshine, and I will text her to make sure you’ve done it.”
I chuckle. “You know her phone is supposed to be just for emergencies.”
“Well, consider this an emergency, then,” she shoots back. “It would be a crime to waste a day like this. It is sunny there too, right?’
I glance out at the cloudless azure sky through the window and consider lying, but instead, I go with the truth.
“It’s gorgeous. You’re right. We should get out there.”
We wrap up our call, and I pad over to the sliding glass door to check on Shel.
She’s still grimacing, but her hands are working over the fret board, her tiny fingers stretching out to find the chords.
Some of her choppy brown hair is falling into her face, the tips of it dyed dark pink with the pack of Manic Panic I relented and let her toss in our basket at the drug store the day we arrived in Saint-Jovite.
I figured if I was making her start at a new school this year, the least I could do is let her have the hair she wanted on her first day of fifth grade.