4. Paul’s Housewarming Party, June 2011 #2
Sarah found a can of seltzer and hurried outside again, this time finding the back patio mercifully empty.
The evening had grown cool and quiet, settling down into the lush peace that the city sometimes found in the season between spring and summer.
Sitting among Trish’s tiny lights, she felt like she was floating in a sea of stars. She felt like she was drowning.
She took a big sip from the can of seltzer water.
If she could have had Liam back by her side, just for the next hour, she would have been tempted.
She had been an outcast in high school, and the feeling always came back to her at moments like this, whenever she felt like she was a puzzle piece that had ended up in the wrong box, epically unsuited for the environment where she found herself.
But this was fine. She was fine. She would just wait out her drunkenness outside. She’d give herself ten minutes and then she’d be stable enough to make some polite goodbyes. That should be enough time for Paola to forget she existed, hopefully.
The night sky was cloudless, though nearly without stars because of the light pollution from the city.
The ornamental grasses in front of her shuddered left and right like a line of inebriated soldiers.
Paul hadn’t come over to talk to her, she realized.
Not once, even though he threw her concerned looks from time to time.
She could see him inside the house now through a slice of window, circling around Trish, following her orders as he prepared more ice.
He looked happy.
He was no longer part of Sarah’s life, she thought, feeling some of her old teenage melancholy.
He wasn’t her reliable person anymore. Not the way he had been.
He belonged to Trish now. Trish was lucky to get Paul’s kind, trustworthy, hilarious perspective whenever she had a bad day or temporarily hated the world.
And Sarah didn’t have that anymore. She missed him.
She thought about how it had been for them as kids: Aunt Delia, Paul’s mother, arriving like a storm cloud at Sarah’s tiny house and immediately complaining about everything: the food, the portions, the state of disrepair of their yard.
Paul making jokes to lighten the mood, even when he was only eight or nine years old.
Sarah’s mother patiently apologizing for everything in her small voice, trying to ride out the tempest. Paul’s father trying to calm down everyone so his wife and his sister could get along…
without ever acknowledging that all the friction was caused by his wife.
Sarah’s mother Maureen had always been good at making herself small.
Her father had been killed by a drunk driver when Sarah was eight, and after the funeral, her mother had slowly collapsed into herself until sometimes it felt like there was nothing left of her but fear.
Fear of driving at night. Fear of men, hurricanes, and health problems, three things she found equally confounding and unpredictable.
When Sarah hit puberty a year earlier than everyone else and started getting bullied because she was too chubby, too weird, her breasts too big, her hair too curly, Maureen had suggested that Sarah simply try to blend in.
But Sarah had defied her. She had gone the other way. She had worn fishnet stockings and dyed her hair blue, had listened to weird music and written dark poetry. She had left the province for a prestigious university, something that almost no one from her high school did.
But she didn’t feel brave now. She didn’t feel like she fit in with the beautiful people in the beautiful apartment with its ridiculously boring wall art.
She missed all her old friends: her sarcastic friend Marie who had stayed in Newfoundland to work as a nurse; her cool friend Kristie, who had moved to Los Angeles to work in costume design; her best friend Anya, who lived just outside Toronto but was busy with an unexpected pregnancy that had turned into an unexpected marriage; her steady, feminist friend Ellen, who had moved to a suburb outside Ottawa to work in a women’s bookstore.
Sarah had no close friends in the city anymore, and Paul’s presence in her life had kept her from noticing.
She had been able to cling to Paul’s friends, to Paul’s and Liam’s social lives.
Now her reality was coming into sharp focus, and loneliness was at the center of the frame.
The wind picked up just as Ren came out and sat on the bench next to her.
“I’m very drunk,” she warned him.
“Are you?” He smiled. “It may be because Trish has been serving us lighter fluid.”
“I only had one. But I never drink like that. Not strong alcohol. Never, ever. I’ve grown so boring.”
His smile grew. “I forgot how chatty you get when you drink.”
“Chatty?”
“You pontificate,” he said. “You politely pontificate. It’s like hearing your stream of consciousness.”
“Oh God.”
“No, it’s amazing. Because some people are hiding nasty thoughts beneath the surface that come out when they’re drunk, but you’re just hiding more of you.”
She frowned, thinking that her real thoughts were not very nice at the moment. They were about how much she disliked his wife and resented all the happy couples inside the house. She forced herself to look skyward. She could feel Ren leaning back against the wall next to her as he looked up.
“Not many stars,” he observed.
“It’s one thing I miss about Newfoundland. The Milky Way was always visible when I was growing up.”
“I used to go camping outside Montreal as a kid, and the stars were amazing.”
“It’s like missing a piece of your soul when you can’t see them.” She was definitely very drunk to say something like that.
She could feel him watching her. She glanced at him and saw his eyes on her lips, not with intention but like he was lost in thought. Then his gaze went back toward the party, and the moment drifted by like a leaf on the wind, another thing she couldn’t figure out about Ren.
“You know, I didn’t think you were an asshole,” she said, “back in school.”
“But you had contempt for me,” he replied.
“I didn’t have contempt for you.”