Definitely Thriving

Chapter 1

One

A nun’s cell: this is what Clemence had been expecting.

She’d signed the lease on the basis of blurry photos with resolution so low it was hard to make out the details.

A studio flat with a meagre kitchen comprising a mini fridge and a hot plate all at the top of a tumbling-down house off Roncesvalles Avenue in a neighbourhood described as “in transition.” She’d have her own bathroom, at least, though the bathtub had no shower, but she has visions of washing her hair in that tub, pouring tepid water over her head from a chipped ceramic jug.

She even has the jug, one of the few things she has brought with along from her old life, packed in a box in her best friend Jillian’s cherry-red Audi suv.

Jillian’s car is parked down on the street, and Clemence can see it from the window, that one small window she’d noted when she’d first seen the ad.

Mostly insufficient for natural light, not to mention ventilation.

Because why live in an attic that wasn’t fusty and stale?

It’s the spirit of the thing, and Clemence has become intent upon spirit, intent upon making deliberate and meaningful choices, coming—as she is—off the tail end of nearly a decade during which little meant much or was deliberate at all.

But the balcony—Clemence had not been forewarned.

The ad had given no hint, and the photos must have been taken at the worst time of day, conveying nothing of how the room would be filled with light filtered through French doors, the white walls adorned with prism rainbows, and how the balcony itself was tucked into the ripe boughs of a maple.

“It feels like a treehouse,” says Jillian, who’d been put off by the squalor at first, but is starting to come around.

“You’ll be living in a treehouse.” And Clemence considers this, its precedent, as her heart sinks.

The Berenstain Bears, and Swiss Family Robinson.

No, a treehouse isn’t in keeping with the spirit of the thing at all.

This attic is far from the one she had in mind, and perhaps it’s not too late to flag the mistake, to turn around and run.

But where would Clemence go? She has been staying in the spare room at her friend Naomi’s condo in Liberty Village, but Naomi’s parents are flying in from Japan tonight.

And Naomi is the only person Clemence knows in the city with a spare room, because most people’s apartments and condos are too small for such things, and everyone who owns an actual house has filled their extra rooms with children.

Which is why it had been so hard to find the listing in the first place.

A basic furnished room, Clemence had supposed, quite naively, would be easy to come by.

She wasn’t asking for much, certainly for nothing like luxury or comfort.

But it turned out that all these big, old houses—places where, decades before, working men and maiden aunts were able to make their lives in modest rented rooms—were being converted back into single-family dwellings.

On this very street, three houses each feature a dumpster out front, evidence of this societal shift occurring before her eyes.

And Clemence wonders how long this house will remain a holdout—Mrs. Yeung, the landlady, could easily sell and pocket two million, or maybe less because the place needs work, but the building has good bones.

Clemence can feel it. The maple tree outside is swaying in the breeze, but the house is solid, as it has been for well over a century.

“I thought you were a man,” Mrs. Yeung had declared upon greeting Clemence on the porch that afternoon. “Your name. It’s a man’s name.” She said, “I don’t usually rent rooms to women. Too much drama.”

And this is another reason why Clemence has to stay, why she isn’t going to flee down the stairs and out the door, away from the balcony and all that gorgeous light, not a ray of which she deserves.

Clemence doesn’t want to live up to Mrs. Yeung’s worst expectations.

The spirit of the thing also is to prove—to her landlady, to everyone—that she is not like all those other female characters, that she herself is a sensible person.

Becoming, finally, is the point of this exercise.

Jillian is walking around now, peering at the nearly right angle where the wall and ceiling meet. “It’s really not so bad,” she says. The whole way up the stairs, they’d been overwhelmed by the smell of other people’s meals, mixed with the cloying scent of lemon cleaner. “It’s not bad at all.”

“I know,” says Clemence, disappointed.

And Jillian hears it in her tone, turns her attention back to her friend, comes over to put an arm around her shoulders.

They stare out the French doors together, out to where the tree is lush and verdant in all its June glory.

“I don’t understand why you’re punishing yourself,” Jillian tells her. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Clemence says, “Well, a little bit.” She doesn’t want to be pandered to. She needs to know that she’s strong enough to take it.

“Yeah, okay,” Jillian says. “But don’t drag it out forever. You don’t need to be a martyr, I mean. How does that help anyone?”

“I’m not a martyr,” says Clemence. “It’s more like a shift, a journey. I’m thinking of it as research.”

“For, like, My Year of Living Grimly?”

Clemence says, “I’m going to have to think of a better title, but I’ve certainly got time.”

Six weeks have passed since Clemence’s marriage exploded, or, more accurately, since Clemence exploded her marriage, accidentally on purpose, by being discovered by her husband, Toad, in bed with Larry and Lisa, the couple next door with a fondness for tanning beds and leopard print.

And afterward, a normal person, a good person, would have been able to explain to Toad that it had been a mistake, a one-time thing, except it had been happening for months.

Clemence had even orchestrated Toad’s discovery, timing it right down to the minute she knew she’d hear his key in the door.

A good person, afterward, would also have been able to promise her husband, “It’s not you, it’s me.

” To tell him she’d just been looking for something different, something to spice up their lukewarm love life …

except Toad was the problem in its entirety.

Clemence hadn’t even liked being in bed with Larry and Lisa, which in its physicality was basically overwhelming and confusing, like having sex with an octopus, but sex with Toad was so much worse.

And maybe she had always known. This is the part she feels guiltiest about.

Clemence still remembers the first time she’d gone out with Toad, walking down the street, arm in arm, listening to his grating voice, and thinking, At some point I’m going to have to find a way to get out of this.

But she never did, because it was easier not to, because their bodies fit, because Toad was tall enough for her to lay her head against his chest when he wrapped his arms around her, and she’d listen to his heartbeat, her fondness for its solid consistency more than making up for the fact that he never made hers leap at all. Or so she thought. She hoped.

Clemence wrote for wedding magazines, and being one half of a couple had been the goal for as long as she could remember, and maybe this could be enough to build a life upon—certainly others had done more with less—and Clemence crossed her fingers and kept hoping as things progressed, as she moved into his place, and they got married, and bought a house, the years adding up.

Through all of this, Clemence feeling as though she was playing a part, and she wondered if maybe everyone felt like this in love, but nobody had the nerve to admit it.

Everything changed on that evening last July, almost a year ago now, when Toad arrived home after work, the slam of the door and slap, one, two, of his shoes hitting the wall as he shook them off, the same sounds he brought home every single day.

And Clemence did what she always did, which was brace herself to be in his presence—Toad was petty, boring, and small-minded, but so benignly that she couldn’t even be mad about it—and then she realized that she would be listening for these sounds and bracing for the rest of her life.

Which could turn out to be a long time, if she was lucky, something she hadn’t properly understood when she got married at age twenty-five, a point up to which she’d basically been measuring time in four-year increments.

Getting married had simply been the next step, and it would have been unnatural to resist her life unfolding in that direction, to not go with the flow.

But the flow was untenable, she’d finally realized, and now how was she supposed to bring that to Toad’s attention?

He really had no idea. Toad had spent their marriage quite sure that everybody’s wife was periodically reticent and hostile; supposing it went with the territory, which meant he permitted Clemence her space, and she liked it that way, or so she thought—until she started actually fighting with him and he didn’t notice.

“Do you realize that I haven’t said a word to you in three days?” she asked him one evening, finally cracking under the strain. He didn’t see her. He never listened to her. Sometimes she’d look for her reflection in the mirror just to confirm that she existed.

“I thought it seemed quiet,” Toad answered, not looking up from his phone.