Chapter Eighteen
I opened the door to the cabin and my mother was standing on one of the two kitchen chairs, screwing in a lightbulb. She wore
a red headband pushing back a slightly askew silver-grey bob, and a white linen dress belted with a matching red sash. Two
giant suitcases were open on the floor beside my bed. The kitchen floor was covered in grocery bags from Costco. I almost
tripped over her silver Birkenstock sandals. It felt like a visual tableau representing all the ways I felt invaded by her
presence.
“The lights were too harsh, and why does the cat hate me?” Okanagan was sitting on my pillow, normal for that time of day.
His tail was puffed up and he tapped it in a way that did seem put-off. Even his little soft eyes that blinked at me throughout
the day seemed narrowed, staring right at my mother, her Ann Taylor dress swaying in the breeze of the open windows.
“Cats have personalities and dislikes just like humans. Perhaps you’re being overwhelming, interrupting his routine.”
“That cat is just like your father.”
“We do like each other.”
She scoffed, unprepared to retort. She got off the chair, moved it back beside the small table, and put the old lightbulb
in the box for the new one. She then wrote the date and the words Still Good on the box in a marker she pulled from her purse.
“We shouldn’t waste it, even if it is the most annoying type of lightbulb,” she said, placing it in the cupboard under the sink.
I set to work unpacking the grocery bags of wine and soda waters, limes, lettuce, berries, a loaf of bread so dense it was basically a clump of birdseed.
“Mom, I wasn’t expecting you until this evening. I had a whole plan for dinner, I was going to roast us some chicken skewers
and I made some summer salads.”
She pulled the chain for the light fixture. It worked. She was right. The room looked better.
“Isn’t it better without the harsh lighting?”
“I don’t know, seems the same to me.” A lie. It was better.
She looked around for a new target.
“So you invited me here but there is only one bed?”
“The couch pulls out.”
She made a face that only a woman with two degrees and a five-bedroom house in Richmond Hill could make.
“Why don’t you rent your own Airbnb, Mom. There is one down the road right on the lake, looks like a photo from Architectural Digest. We could meet for dinners and then have our own space.”
“Nonsense. I’m not fussy. I shared a room with my sister until I was eighteen years old, and we even shared the phone line
with the neighbouring farm,” she went on. I’d heard this story fifty thousand times. She always pulled out the farm stories
whenever I asked her how much her purse cost or implied she was in any way the fancy lady with fancy tastes that she truly
had become. I wished she could just admit that she liked her life that way. I wasn’t insulting her, it was merely one of my
many ways of pleading with her to be an honest person. I was also a lady who preferred the high-end yogurts and latest tech
gadgets, I just happened to be a millennial who would probably never own a house in the city that employed me. According to
her, I was spoiled, despite her never having given me a cent since I left home, even for university tuition.
She’d said, Women have to save. Where was all that money now?
It was easier to just draw a thick line between her finances and mine, or else I would have gone crazy during the leaner years.
My father helped me when he could, but his employment had been less reliable over the years.
I closed the fridge, which now looked like the inside of my brain: stuffed to the max with various things competing for space.
I started putting away the dry goods while my mom poured some wine. She offered me a glass. I shook my head.
“None for me, thanks.”
“Are you not a drinker anymore?” she asked while adding my glass to hers.
“I was never a drinker. I have a glass every once in a while. It’s just . . . one thirty p.m.?”
“Well, I’m on vacation,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m working five days a week.”
“Is it really working?”
I wished I could be a nicer person to my mother, but it’s like an alien took over my brain every time she spoke. I had to
change that, though, or it was going to be a very long summer until the wedding.
“So,” I said, as I chopped up a cucumber and placed it in a bowl next to an open container of tzatziki on the table. I tore
open some pita and placed it beside me, knowing my mother wouldn’t dare indulge. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here
and what is going on with your house, your boyfriend of many years? Kate told me that he left you.”
“I left him.”
“Why?”
“It was time.”
“But you seemed to really like each other.” As weird as they both were, they appeared to be happily weird in the same ways.
It was hard to imagine them with other people.
The last time I saw them, they were actually starting to look like one another physically.
I ripped off a large piece of pita; it was so soft and perfect.
I tore another piece off before I finished eating the first one, daring her to say something critical.
“Sometimes that isn’t enough.” She popped a cucumber slice in her mouth and stared off out the window. “I don’t wish to discuss
it, actually.”
“OK, well I thought that maybe we could each choose something to do together this weekend, and then I’d like to spend the
rest of the time writing. I’m working on a new screenplay.”
“That sounds fine. I have a grant I’m working on as well.”
It felt like everything we said to each other was akin to moving a chess piece, trying to win.
“I thought you left the university. Weren’t you working for the province?” Last I heard, Kate told me that Charles and my
mother both worked for the Ministry of the Environment in Peterborough.
“I’m independent now.”
“OK,” I said, dipping a cucumber slice in the dip.
“Well, tomorrow I thought we could go swimming. Ben told me where the secret beach is.”
“Sounds lovely,” she said. “For my thing, I think we should go get some Botox. If we do it this weekend, we’ll look lovely
for the wedding.”
“I don’t need Botox.”
“You’ve been furrowing since you were eight years old.”
“Well, I don’t believe in it. I’m only thirty!”
“If you start doing it now, it will help you out later.”
“I did not think you were a Botox kind of woman. You washed your face with Ivory soap and used drugstore moisturizer when we were kids.”
“We were broke when you were kids. I made us an appointment tomorrow at a lovely little place in Bloomfield. We can get pedicures side by side.” This comment made me want to ask my mother if she was dying.
We were not the mother-daughter duo that played out romantic comedy scenes like pedicure dates.
“That actually sounds nice,” I admitted. I glanced at my feet under the table and wriggled my toes. My heels were dry. My
nails unadorned. “My toes are a little rough.”
She appraised them—“That’s an understatement”—and sipped her wine.
By the time dinner rolled around, I was desperate for any activity that didn’t involve directly talking to my mother. I attempted
to get the barbecue working. It looked impressive from the outside, shining stainless steel, big enough to roast two whole
chickens and some vegetables, the kind of barbecue you can just click on. I clicked. Nothing. I tightened everything. I checked
the propane tank. All seemed fine.
The barbecue was between the cabins so that when they had rentals, the tenants could share. Ben’s family’s vision for the
place was for groups like family reunions, where extended families could stay together but have their own space. My mother
and I had been watching other people light up barbecues for our entire lives, assuming it easy. I looked up a video on YouTube
and was watching it loudly when Dave appeared. “That barbecue is tricky,” he warned. “Want help?”
I did not want to be a damsel in distress but I said yes anyway. He had to stand next to me in order to get it going. Our
legs brushed together. My whole body lit up. I touched his arm intentionally, in a gesture of hello. He blushed.
“You just have to hold it down and let the clicks go a bit,” he said. The barbecue started in about three seconds. Hot.
“Oh, I always assumed that sound meant you’re about to blow up the house if you let it go any longer.”
“Ha ha, nope. It’s perfectly safe.”
“I came back last night and you’d put the fire out. I wanted to keep talking.”
“Yeah, sorry. I was super beat.”
Translation: I could tell you still like me, and so I booked it right out of there.
“Got it. You on your way to see your kid?”
“Actually, he’s gone away camping this weekend with his grandpa, up to a fishing camp.”
“Oh, fun for him. But it must be hard to miss a weekend.”
“It really is,” he admitted, looking a bit forlorn. “Julia’s dad is a great influence, though. He’s lucky to have him.”
“We have extra chicken skewers. Want to eat with us? My mother has arrived.”
Dave laughed. “Oh, I know. We had a whole conversation about tree pollen earlier before you got home from work. While I was
carrying her groceries inside for her.”
“Oh god. I’m sorry,” I whispered. “She’s a difficult woman. I am only having her here because I made a promise to my sister.
We don’t get along.”
“Families are hard.”
“I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty good at putting skewers on a barbecue,” I offered. “Takes real skill. Plus I’d love
to have someone else at the table who eats carbs?”
“That does sound a lot better than the frozen pizza I was going to demolish. Did you know that the movie channel is having
a John Waters festival tonight? All the best ones in a row.”
“Oh my god, that’s awesome! The TV in my cabin doesn’t get any real channels.”
“I do share popcorn. Somewhat reluctantly, but you really can’t watch Serial Mom by yourself.”
“True. Or Polyester.”
“Pecker is my true favourite.”