Chapter 18
Quiet as a grave, I slip on clean underpants and a dress. A bra, make-up and a wee will only wake Johnny. I leave, closing the door after me with the most polite of clicks.
By the time I’m on the next street over, the phone calls from Johnny are coming every two minutes.
They eventually stop, which somehow feels worse.
I have a lupine hunger from not having breakfast, but the dull cramping of my stomach walls feels like a comfort.
It’s past the point of uncomfortable and right now that somehow feels perfect.
Or is my body having some sort of phantom contractions?
I don’t know where I want to go or what I want to do, until I find my feet walking to a bus stop and my hands hailing the bus to St Leonard’s.
I stand outside the hospital on the footpath, looking through the windows and trying to imagine what this day might have been like had things gone another way.
What if the fates had spared us? A curtain flickers, and I imagine parents inside the ward getting to know their new child, showing it the vastness of London beyond the window, the first of a million new thing-showings.
An oversized pink balloon disappears into the front door and I’ve never been so jealous of an eventual owner of a balloon in my life.
Suddenly, a car pulls up, throwing me out of my daydream.
A woman, heavily pregnant, cradling her massive bump, lifts herself gingerly out of the car, letting out an animalistic yawp that she does not give two shiny shites about.
The man she is with is doing a serious amount of flapping around, grabbing coats and bags.
It’s all so very dramatic in a Richard Curtis movie kind of way, and a few passers-by stop to indulge them with a smile.
She doesn’t notice me, the woman with whom she very nearly might have had something in common.
Would we have talked about our new babies together, in side-by-side beds?
How they’re feeding like champs and sleeping worse than banshees?
Would we have clinked our post-labour mugs of tea in the air in triumph, telling each other it was the best and most-earned cup of tea and slice of toast we’ve ever had?
She disappears through the hospital front door with the man’s hand on the small of her back, as they go to begin their new life together.
‘This is it, Ted. Contractions are five minutes apart. I don’t think this is going to be too long a labour,’ I’d be yelling out to him, agony ripping through me.
‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this,’ he’d say. ‘By the way, I know you said no epidural, but I won’t think any less of you if you do get it.’
‘Well, maybe we’ll go for gas and air,’ I’d suggest.
‘Only if they keep some for me.’ We’d laugh and laugh as we disappear through the doors, letting them swing behind us.
‘I need to speak to whoever looks after the MuchMusic Awards,’ I tell the operator on the TV station switchboard.
I’m out the other end of a frustrating day, sitting opposite the gym on Bathurst Street, people-watching but hoping to spot just one single person.
‘The top person, whoever that is.’
The receptionist takes a theatrical pause. ‘I’ll put you through to Viewer Enquiries.’
After a few rings, someone eager, young-sounding, picks up.
‘Who am I speaking with?’ I demand with as much imperiousness as I can scrape together.
When you’ve heard Francesca talking to her childminder on the phone, it’s pretty easy to summon an air of authority.
Even if she’s just ringing the butchers to sort out that evening’s dinner, Francesca sounds as though she’s running the entire country.
‘Uh, this is Jess …’ says the person who picks up at MuchMusic.
‘Jess, hi. I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I’m looking to get a backstage pass for the awards ceremony tomorrow night, as I want to surprise my boyfriend, who is handing out an award.’
‘Who’s your boyfriend?’ I’ve got Jess on the hook, at the very least.
‘If it’s OK, Jess, I won’t say for now. He’s quite private.
I get that I’m being a bit evasive, I do.
But it’ll be his birthday on the night and I want to surprise him.
We haven’t seen each other in a while, as he has been in Los Angeles.
I know if I ask his family for one, they will just tell him and ruin the surprise. ’
‘What about his agent? Or does he have a manager?’ Jess wants to know.
‘Well, we are kind of keeping this whole thing a secret from a lot of people,’ I say. This is too cryptic for Jess, and instantly I register the drop in temperature in our conversation.
‘I mean, we don’t usually give out backstage passes to anyone who rings up and asks for one,’ Jess starts, not sounding entirely certain.
‘Oh God, I know that! And I wouldn’t expect you to!
Listen, trust me, I totally get the way these things work,’ I tell her.
I’m trying to keep my tone light and conspiratorial, as though I’m talking to the Help but inviting her into this lovely orbit of ours.
‘But I was hoping that you might just be able to do us this one tiny thing. Is there someone else in the office I could talk to about this?’ As we talk, I grab my laptop and google ‘MuchMusic Awards executive producer’ and the name Chris Kasimir appears. ‘Maybe Chris might be able to help me?’
‘No one will be able to help you if we don’t know who the boyfriend is,’ Jess fires back.
‘OK, but if I tell you, you cannot say a word to anyone,’ I say. ‘It’s Ted Levy.’
‘Ted Levy the actor?’ Jess is putting the puzzle pieces together.
‘Yeah,’ I say, feeling a small glow of pride. ‘Like I say, we’re very private about it. You won’t find much about us out in the open.’
Jess, nonetheless, is unmoved. Weirdly underwhelmed, I would go so far as to say.
‘Yeah, I’m not sure this office will be able to help you with that one.’
‘Please,’ my voice says with an urgent little wobble.
‘We had a fight recently, and I just … really want to make it up to him with a big gesture. He gets very nervous ahead of these things, and he thinks I’ll be working in London that night.
I know that you probably don’t believe me, and if I were you I wouldn’t, but I’ve run out of ideas here.
And I wouldn’t normally ask. I know how weird I’m being here. Truly, I do.’
And then, my final card: ‘Do you have a boyfriend, Jess? Or a girlfriend? Would you not do the same for them?’
Somehow, this releases the broom from her arse. ‘Let me see if I can talk to my associate here,’ Jess says.
She puts me on hold, and the prize feels as though it’s definitely in my eyeline. Turns out I’m pretty good at this, I think.
The snap of a receiver snatches me out of my warm, glowy reverie.
‘This is Rob,’ says a person who definitely sounds more senior than Jess. Rob sounds pissed off to even be on the call.
‘Rob, hi. I’m—’
‘We do not offer backstage passes for any of our events to members of the public, and I’m sure you understand this if you are who you say you are,’ Rob says, before hanging up.
‘Well, fuck you anyway, Rob,’ I yell at the disconnect tone.
Naomi is out having lunch dates with guys for the second afternoon in a row and, I won’t lie, I am jealous.
She deserves a little fun, but even though this is a situation of my own doing, it’s making me feel a little restless.
I want to be the one lit by flattering candlelight, making eyes across a table, wearing a dress that will find itself on someone else’s bedroom floor within mere hours.
There I am, lying in my room, staring up at the fucking Harry Potter lampshade, indulging in my secret single behaviour, which has now become secret roommate behaviour, now that I am sort-of single.
I’m just back from a very enlivening dash around Sephora, where I dropped $400 on hair masks, face masks, hair-removal contraptions, fake tan, brow dye, lash extensions and ballet-pink nail polish. All essential, as far as I’m concerned.
The woman in Sephora had recommended a red lip shade. ‘You’re so pale you are actually going to need a red that’s almost blue,’ she explains.
‘But I’ll be wearing this soon,’ I said, showing her the fake tan bottle.
‘Even so.’ She sighs. ‘That will just warm you up a little. Stick to the bluer reds.’
In this new life of mine, I am determined to be fragrant and hairless and poreless and just incidentally, effortlessly, naturally tidy-looking. Post-orgasmic. As though every single cell in my corporeal self just incidentally glistens with youth and allure.
I get myself supine on the bed, slathered from crown to heel with every potion, oil and skin softener in the house, when I hear the door open.
Naomi is walking in, voice raised as though she’s apprehending someone.
A man. I crane my neck to listen and immediately recognize the voice.
I can suddenly hear my heartbeat in my ears. Fuck, fuck, a thousand times fuck.
Ted Levy is in this house. In the room right underneath this one. As the crow flies, he is probably about three metres from me.
‘I don’t fucking CARE,’ Naomi seethes at one point. ‘YOU go talk to her.’ Some mumbling from him, indecipherable, and then she says, ‘You figure it out! What IS this? She’s not even my real mom! WHY do you always do this stuff to me? This is so typical of you!’
Quick as Concorde, I am up from the bed, wiping oils from my thighs, running a wet washcloth across my face to remove the face mask all at the same time.
It’s no use, I’m still all greased, so I jump in the shower to rinse a host of lotions and potions down the drain.
My racing heart has made physical co-ordination somehow trickier.
Still wet and with a trembling hand, I draw on some eyebrows and apply foundation.
In the excitement, I apply winged eyeliner that registers as a touch too dramatic for 2 p.m. in the Toronto suburbs.
It’s still the quickest I’ve ever applied a full face of make-up, about five minutes in all.
I gamble on the wet hair making me look casual as I fly down the stairs in one smooth and speedy motion.
Naomi is out on the porch smoking a cigarette, agitated. Alone.
Please don’t tell me he’s gone. I stifle the impulse to wail.
‘Hi! I thought I heard voices,’ I say, soft as butter.
‘Ugh, well, you probably did,’ she says. She exhales in the manner of the extravagantly stressed.
‘Was it a neighbour or—’
‘Just my step-brother, being an asshole as usual,’ she replies. ‘Anyway, he’s gone now. I won’t bore you with the finer details.’
I feel a defensive pang for Ted. Calling him an asshole! What’s he done to deserve that?
‘Well, if you want to talk about it …’
‘I don’t,’ she snaps, looking me straight in the eye. She is so cold and clearly over talking to me that I worry I’ve somehow been found out.
‘No worries at all,’ I say breezily, heading back into the house. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’
Back in the bedroom, I punch the pillow a dozen times. The adrenaline is wearing off and turning into something nastier. Regret. Frustration. To calm myself, I lie on the bed and let myself have a small fantasy, what could have been.
Ted and I in bed, sweaty and heady from non-stop sex: ‘I have a confession to make,’ he will say, trailing a finger down my side, the part that drives me wild, no matter who is touching it.
‘That day I saw you just out of the shower with no make-up on? I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d never seen in my life. ’
I’ll look at him as if he is crazy. ‘No way. You cannot be serious. I was in absolute bits.’
‘Serious as a heart attack. You were just gorgeous. I really thought, “There’s the girl for me.”’