Chapter Twenty-One #2
She said that we reminded her of when she met Charles and how exciting it was to meet someone who could speak her language,
as a fellow scientist. “You’re in the same business, it’s fateful! And he supports you. He seems very excited about this movie
you’ve been writing, with a part for him.”
I interrupted briefly to explain that writers write hundreds of scripts that rarely get made, but it was as though she didn’t
hear me. She kept talking, and I nodded along, staring off out the window, hoping to hear Baby romping around or see Dave’s
headlights coming down the laneway. Only silence.
I got up and went outside, shaking the mason jar filled with cat treats, calling for Okanagan. But even he ignored me. I walked
around to all of his spots—the greenery where he napped in the sun, the cool mud near the horse barn, the tall grasses beside
the pathway to the lake. No signs.
I slept fitfully. Hot even in a top sheet.
When I woke, it was tangled like I’d been fighting with it.
I got up and walked outside, didn’t even look at my phone, pulled toward the lake as though it was reaching out its watery arms for me.
I left my white cotton nightie on the dock and dove in, opening my arms up to the cold and lifting my head to the sky, wishing for clarity.
Why does swimming naked always feel so much better?
I’d grown used to the depth of the lake water, that old tangible existential metaphor, not to mention the unknown weeds tickling my legs as I kicked about.
Try your best, you creepy water vegetables.
I even ventured a few more yards out from the dock than I originally thought I could. While the coldness did ground me, and
the waves and morning birdsong offered a calming distraction, I still felt addled when I climbed ungracefully back on the
dock and blotted my wet skin with my nightie. I remembered Ben’s text: no worries! What would it feel like to not have any worries. I was envious of Ben. We were similarly driven, work-focused, determined
to rise above the fray. But I had yet to see anything truly addle him. My mother’s words from the night before were still
rolling around in my brain like loose change: “I realized too late why it’s important to be with someone who understands what’s
really important to you, and on a practical level, how you want to spend your time. Your father was always jealous of my research.
He didn’t get it. And I can tell, you’re just like me. You don’t want to settle. You could never be one of those wives at
the grocery store in Picton with two kids screaming.
” I walked back through the meadow, picking wildflowers as I went.
What had “not settling” ever gotten me? What does settling even mean?
Ben and Dave weren’t men people settled for; they were both interesting, attractive people with depth, with a sense of humour.
Ben was perhaps more of an extrovert, a charmer.
And Dave was more . . . present in his body, perhaps?
Gripping my fist full of wild bergamot, I realized that I was making a list comparing them, and that wasn’t fair.
And it wouldn’t work. The solution to my dilemma wasn’t about them, it was about me.
Not to mention Finn, Dave’s son. I didn’t want to be a person who pulled focus from his kid.
I remember so clearly the first time I met Charles, how he’d taken Katie and I to get ice cream and I’d refused the sugary bribe, despite being starving.
I spoke only one word to him (hi) and only because my mother had glared at me.
In my kid heart I thought, Oh, you’re the guy that she’d rather be with than us.
I felt heavy driving to camp, relieved that I didn’t have a lot to do that day because my kids were teamed up with the actors
to rehearse. I roamed from group to group, giving advice on rewrites. I watched most of the kids speak wooden dialogue in
a robotic way, rushing through the words, blushing. It reminded me that what we do to make a movie work, even a corny Christmas
movie, took a lot of training, a lot of trial and error. The only group that was quite good, and had a solid script to work
with, was Hailey’s, which featured two of the Heathers arguing while hiding from a bear, having both climbed up a tree. She
used the natural habitat around us to give the film its atmosphere. She used the sounds of the wind in the trees and the true
feelings of discomfort the actors felt climbing the tree. She’d rigged the camera up on a pole and managed to capture both
close-ups and a wide shot. She had them improvise several lines to make them sound more natural. And her written dialogue
was very real and didn’t sound like heightened melodrama. It was truly good. They shot their first drafts on their phones.
Then Ben would spend the afternoon showing them how to edit. I sent Ben a volume of texts about how Hailey’s movie was actually
incredible. That she had a real talent.
I convinced Hailey to let me help her run her lines for the audition. She was good. I think she had a shot, if she was close
to what they were looking for.
“Did you ask your parents for a ride?”
“Elise, they don’t even know, OK? They wouldn’t let me go if they did.”
“Oh.”
“I actually think that I might hitchhike there.”
My stomach dropped.
“Hailey, no.”
“What! My brother and I once hitched to Trenton to go to Walmart for new school clothes.”
“You had your brother with you. Look, I have to go to the city anyway to get some things from my dad’s house. I’ll take you
if your parents agree. Neve said she’d call them.”
Hailey shrugged. But I’d known her long enough now to be able to decipher her no way shrugs from her yes thank you so much shrugs. And it was the latter.
When I got home, Dave and the cat were still gone. I thought he might at least come back briefly before heading off to see
his kid for the weekend. No dice. I was already feeling despondent, then I saw Okanagan’s food bowl was still topped up, and
the ants had gotten to it. I got under the couch blanket and longed for a night by myself. But my mother arrived back, loudly
and verbally as usual, from her daily hike. I realized that my mother never stopped narrating. Even the mundane things she
did, she would tell you about them as she did them, like oh, I guess I’ll add walnuts today. I was beginning to wonder if she was conscious that she did this, because surely she would be annoyed by someone doing the
same thing in her presence. It’s not as though her eccentricities made her aware of others; she seemed to judge everyone else
for being weird and yet never notice her own quirks. She spoke as she was assembling nuts and berries on top of a bowl of
yogurt, moving from simple narration to talking about all the different plants and mushrooms she’d seen on her walk. I interrupted
her monologue. “Mom, have you seen the cat?”
“No,” she said, making a disgusted face, “he’s probably off making kittens. You know that’s why his cheeks are so big, right? And why he pees on the side of the house.”
“You didn’t run him off, did you?”
“Of course not.” One time I’d seen my mother yell at our elderly dog when I was a kid, and since then I hadn’t entirely trusted
her around pets.
“Because the love you have for mushrooms and birds doesn’t extend to mammals, I have observed.”
“Cats are very needy,” she agreed, rolling up the bag of walnuts and fixing it with the blue elastic band that had arrived
around the broccoli. My mother’s disdain for sentient expressions of need always sets me off. Instead of making it a thing,
I decided to excuse myself to wander around the property, shaking the treat jar, looking everywhere for Okanagan. I texted
Ben to say I was worried about him, and he reminded me that the cat didn’t actually belong to the cabins, that he had a home
at the farm up the road. He probably just went home, don’t worry so much. I looked inside the horse barn, this time. No signs.
That night I barely slept again. I took my mother birdwatching the next day at Long Point. She was so distracted by the birds
and the beautiful weather that she didn’t notice I was half present. We waded in the water on the pebble beach. My mother
dove right out, heedless of the warnings about the possible undertow. When we got back, I hung our suits on the line, called
for the cat. There was still no sign of him.
On Sunday afternoon, I heard the sound of Dave’s truck pulling in.
I was watching The Summer I Turned Pretty on my laptop with my earbuds in, occasionally clicking over to my script, staring at a scene I was trying to puzzle out.
I popped one bud out to hear what he was doing.
He went right in the cabin with Baby. Then I heard him checking the horses.
Someone had been popping in to care for them, because when I’d gone in to look, they’d had fresh hay and their stalls were mucked.
I waited to hear his knock on my door. Surely he’d come by. But he didn’t.
This was probably the craziest I’d ever felt. Only I couldn’t express it. Instead, I typed angry texts to Marlon and Kate.
I resented my mother, who was taking a nap so cozily in the bed that was supposed to be mine, in the cabin that was supposed
to be my oasis. Where I couldn’t privately stomp around and express this radiant rage in my chest. What would it be like to
have a parent you trusted to hold even your ugliest emotions? What a balm that would be.
An hour passed and I decided to start dinner. I took out the frozen shrimp, gave it a rinse, and threw it in a sauté pan with
some oil. I turned the burner. Nothing. The stove was out. I slammed the fridge door shut.
“What on earth is wrong with you?”
I’d woken my mother from her nap.
“The stove is out. I’m going to go ask Dave if he can fix it.”
I knocked on his cabin door. Harder than necessary.