Simple Recipes Page 10

  When her helicopter pilot fell asleep beside her, Thea made the decision not to wake him. She held on to him, her fingers tracing patterns across his chest and down his leg, then over onto her own bare skin. In the morning, she heard her mother climbing out of bed. She heard the shower come on. With her heart in her throat, she listened to her mothers approaching footsteps, Thea pictured what it would look like, her sixteen-year-old body tangled up with this hairy man. She closed her eyes. The bedroom door swung open. Her mother took a half-step into the room, Thea’s heart was deafening. There was a long silence. Then her mother closed the door, Thea listened to her mother s silent retreat down the hallway, and the firm click of her mothers door closing.

  She was overcome by joy and disappointment. See, she wanted to cry, Ilove him absolutely. It is possible, and I do. I do. She didn’t move. She lay in bed, already missing her mother. Her helicopter pilot, sound asleep and snoring, didn’t wake for hours.

  Pregnancy never frightened her, even when she packed her suitcase, the same one that had seen her through summer camp and three weeks in Germany. She left her parents’ house, the sad, faded carpet and the basement television, and booked herself into a home for unwed mothers.

  Her helicopter pilot carried her suitcase. He was melancholy. He talked about looking down from the helicopter into the white-out snow, looking for a glimpse, a colorful jacket, a tarp, a single thread of smoke. And when they spotted it, he zeroed in, the helicopter swaying above the ground like a damaged bird, the missing persons looking skyward, arms lifted. Thea lay in his arms and thought of all the growing she would have to do to keep him happy. She was so young, after all, and now this baby was coming. Life was running away with her. Months ago, she was fumbling through trigonometry, sines and cosines, now she was reading up on baby s first month, she was watching videos ofunderwater births, midwives, breathing. Some of the other girls in the home had ultrasounds of their babies. Thea held them up to the light, and studied them. This baby was just like her. Coming out of this blurriness, waiting to come out sharp and resolute.

  On the day of her ultrasound, Thea waited at the clinic for him to come. He was very late. She did the ultrasound without him. Her baby wrapped its legs around the umbilical cord, and bobbed like a deep-sea diver. She sat on the steps of the clinic afterward, the photo on her knee, untouched. A strong wind might come and blow it free. When it started to rain, she walked home. There were no messages for her taped to the door. She phoned his number, fingers sliding over the rotary dial, but no one picked up. Thea scanned the papers for stories of hikers lost in the mountains. She willed one up there, waiting in silent desperation with his tarp, his fire dissipating into air. Her soon-to-be husband wavering above, tuttuttut of the choppers.

  One day, she stepped out to stretch her legs. On her return she found a note from him, and a gift. A silver-plated bracelet, something that wouldn’t cost more than thirty dollars, the kind of thing you rushed to the mall to get before you hurried to catch a plane on your way out of the city. She held the note to her chest and tried not to miss him. But she remembered everything he had ever said. Every word.

  Years later, when Josephine is almost fully grown and Harold has moved into the apartment on the seventeenth floor, Thea will be taken aback by her life. She’ll look at her daughter and Harold, her strange and wayward family, and be overcome with fear. She’ll think that this is the trouble with having too much. She cannot bear the thought of losing one thing.

  One day, Harold will collapse in the living room. Even as she is terrified, even as she catches him in her arms, some part of Thea will be relieved. She will think that if Harold survives this, they will have paid a debt — a debt to unhappiness, a nod to tragedy. In the hospital, she will think, Just one decade of happiness. Please, whoever you are} just one.

  Standing by his hospital bed, Josie will hold Harolds hand, “You were really scared there, weren’t you?” shell ask,

  Thea will nod, afraid to speak.

  “You really love him, don’t you?”

  How Josie will remind Thea of herself— those probing questions, that youthful wisdom. She will steal a look at her daughter. “Absolutely.”

  “It’s funny. You hardly know him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s only been a year. How did you get so attached?”

  Her daughter will leave her at a loss for words. That night, Thea will drive through the dark Vancouver streets, out to Trout Lake, where Harold once rode his bike as a boy. Out to Rupert Street, and the house for unwed mothers. She will see the ski runs on Mount Seymour all lit up, and in the foreground, the rows and rows of houses. Late at night, she will park her car in front of the apartment. Fumbling for her keys she will catch a glimpse of a car she recognizes. Inside the car will be Josie. The boy will be reclined against the driver-side door. Josie, pressed up against him, her hands on his neck. Thea will feel her heart stop. She will step off the sidewalk, into the bushes. From behind the row of trees, she will stand and watch them.

  Thea will remember holding Josie for the first time. Josie was red and scrawny, with a full head of thick, brown hair. One eye was open just a crack. Her hair was tousled and wet. Thea had hugged the bundle to her chest, weeping, not because she saw Josie’s father in Josie’s sad, scrunched-up face. But because Thea realized that in all her mistakes, in all the failures and missteps, she had finally managed to do something supremely well. Before that moment, she had never understood it was truly possible. Thea will stand on the grass, leaning against a tree. Inside the car, Josie will slip her T-shirt off. Thea will stare up at the rooftops. She will rest for a while standing there. Then she will catch her breath and head inside.

  Josephine

  It was a clear night. Josephine and her mother sat on the balcony drinking fruit punch, looking out over the expanse of houses and industrial docks. They could see as far as the sulphur hills and the double strand of lights along the Lions Gate Bridge. Inside the apartment, Harold watched Jeopardy!, shouting out the answers.

  Josie sipped her punch. She had never been afraid of heights. Even as a child, she used to come out here and pitch forward over the railing, her legs lifting high off the ground. The sensation made her dizzy, as if her stomach were plunging straight out of the soles of her feet.

  Inside, Harold called out, “What is Alsace and Lorraine?” Josie’s mother got up, nudged the door open, and slipped inside.

  Josie kept her back to them. There was a stiff breeze coming from the west, so she folded her legs together and hugged them to her chest. In Social Studies, she’d learned about Alsace and Lorraine, too. Those little provinces in France. But now Harold had quieted down, and Josie could picture them sitting arm-in-arm on the fold-out sofa. She knew they never got any privacy. This was a one-bedroom apartment, and her mom and Harold slept on the couch. Josie slept in the bedroom. When it was just the two of them, before Harold moved in, her mom used to knock softly on the door. She would push the door open, her face creased and pale, her dark hair swinging loose. Josie would pull aside the covers and her mom would clamber in beside her. Even though Josie was fully grown, seventeen years old, she liked sleeping beside her mom. She liked her mom’s clean, antiseptic smell. Even though Josie had gotten used to Harold, and she called him “old man,” and they yukked it up in front of the same TV programs, she missed the way things were before.

  She’d stopped counting the times she’d lain in bed, listening through the walls while her mom had sex with him. Josie even put a pillow over her head to drown it out. She reprimanded herself for listening, called herself a freak, and a loser. Once, she even burst into tears. She flirted with the idea of running into the living room, yelling, “Cut it out!” and then slamming her bedroom door behind her. It infuriated her because she was supposed to be the one with boyfriends, the one illicitly sneaking them home. Josie had a boyfriend, but she suspected that her mom cared more about Harold than Josie cared about Bradley. It was her mom who was
the girlish one, the one who daydreamed and doodled and preened in the bathroom. And Josie just sulked on the couch, flipping channels, boring herself to death with television.

  She propped her legs up on the balcony railing. Still, she loved Bradley enough. She planned to run away with him. He had asked her, last week. He wanted to be an actor. There was work, he told her, in Toronto. She saw him in a new light then, as someone whose dreams could make her happy. In this apartment, Josie thought she might drown. Her mom tried so hard but it wasn’t the same. Now that Harold was here, it would never be the same again.

  When Josie was young, she wanted to be a diver. She loved their stretched limbs and taut bodies, their arms cutting the water. Part of her wanted to just dive off this balcony, her body in perfect position while the highrise fell away behind her. Through the backdrop of this city, on and on and on, not caring at all if the water ever came.

  The worst thing her mother ever did to Josie was hold her under burning water. She didn’t argue that she deserved it. In hindsight, Josie thought she was lucky her mom hadn’t lost her temper and smacked her good. The thing was, Josie had only been trying to help.

  She had taken the silver-plated bracelet, the one her father, the helicopter pilot, had given her mother, and tied it to the balcony. Her plan was simple. She was sending a message, the same way people used telegraphs, carrier pigeons, or prayer flags. When her father searched the mountains, he might see the chain fluttering from the post. It might catch his eye like a dry spark. At dinner time, she and her mother would see his helicopter hovering outside the patio window, his eyes searching through the glass for them.

  She looped a long piece of thread though one end and knotted the thread to a post on the balcony. The bracelet lay flat, but when a gust of wind came, it shook very gently.

  Josie left it there while she went to school. She was in grade four. All day she thought of it, a glinting that would stop him, out of the corner of his eye, make him stop in his tracks and look up. When she came home in the afternoon, the piece of thread had come loose from the balcony. The bracelet was gone.

  That night, when her mom realized the bracelet was missing, she walked in on Josie in the bath. She held the empty box out. “Sweetheart,” she said, “where is Mommy’s bracelet?”

  Josie dipped her hands into the bathwater. She lowered her eyes. “I lost it.”

  “Where?”

  Josie looked up at her mother. She gave her most innocent smile. “I dropped it,” she said, shrugging. “Off the balcony.”

  Her mom wrenched the hot-water tap on, shower spurting, steam filling the room. The water was burning. Her mom started crying. “You terrible girl!” she said. “You had no right. It was the only thing I ever had.” The water burned her skin, it scalded her right to the bone. Josie screamed hysterically. Her mom wrenched the other tap and the water turned freezing cold. Then she pulled Josie out. Josie’s skin was raw. “I’m sorry,” her mom whispered, all her rage gone. She repeated it over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Josie wished she could go back, retrace her steps, have the bracelet in her hands again before all this happened. For the first time, she looked at her mother in a new light, full of love and hate and incomprehension. Her mom applied an ointment to Josie’s skin and kissed the air so her lips wouldn’t hurt her. They slept beside one another that night, and no matter how Josie moved, her mom kept her arms tight around her, and Josie couldn’t pry herself loose.

  Josie admitted to herself that she didn’t really love Bradley. She liked him well enough. She liked the way they held hands and walked through the empty schoolyard. It made her chest burn with warmth, as if from exertion. He called her by her full name, Josephine. She thought it made her seem more important than she really was.

  When Josie was a little girl, she had worried that her mother would abandon her. A common fear, she later learned. A sign of the child’s first awareness of the encroaching world. She remembered lying on the couch, asking her mother, “Will you always take care of me?” and her mother nodding fervently, “Yes, I always will.”

  Now, Harold had made her mother’s eyes young again. It convinced Josie of what she knew deep down, that she wasn’t meant to be here any longer. She recognized a hardness in herself, razor sharp, wanting to be set loose. It wasn’t Toronto so much as the fact that she needed to be gone. Whether she went with this boy or on her own, it didn’t matter so long as she left here. Last night, she’d struggled with a note to her mom. She’d tried saying it in different ways, but no matter what she wrote she ended up sounding trite.

  Before she left, Josie went into the cabinets and took out the plastic bottle of Aspirin. Under the cotton wadding was a roll of bills, her mom’s emergency money, in case of earthquakes or disasters. Josie pocketed it, knowing her mother meant it for her. What did they call it back then? Pin money. The words made Josie smile.

  She was leaving them something in return — the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the balcony. Years to themselves. A missing child. She loved her mother to death, but that wasn’t the kind of thing she could write in a note. They wouldn’t believe her anyway. They would never understand how much thought Josie had put into this, how much she missed them already. On a scrap of paper, she wrote that she would call soon.

  When Harold walked into the kitchen and saw the money in her hands and the rucksack on the floor, he guessed everything. He said, “If you do this, you’re going to break your mother’s heart.”

  “She’ll recover.” She and Harold stood facing each other, like cowboys in a Western, hands loose at their sides. Josie didn’t know whether to fight or run. Replacing the cap on the plastic bottle, she said, “I tried to tell her. You heard me trying.”

  Harold stared down at the linoleum floor, down at his worn slippers. “I heard you.” When he said this, he gazed at her steadily and Josie had a glimpse of Harold as a young boy. Stubborn, relentless in his own patient way. He surprised hen “Better leave now, before she gets home.”

  She was running late. She swung her rucksack up. The weight pulled her back and she had to grasp the walls for support. Harold opened the door for her, and Josie turned to him quickly, planting a kiss on his cheek. Then she took the elevator down seventeen floors, and walked calmly through the glass entrance. She started to run. She was holding her coat in her right hand. The grass was wet and her coat dragged along the grass. Josie imagined that the sound of her coat in the grass was her mother running behind her. She was pulling at Josie’s arms and legs, and begging her not to go. And Josie didn’t know what to tell her, so they just kept running like that, across parking lots and front lawns. She was sweating, and the rucksack bounced painfully against her shoulders. Her friend, the boy with the dark hair and brown eyes, was holding the passenger door open for her. Sliding in, Josie pictured herself falling out of the sky, the bag in her arms, highrise blurred in the backdrop.

  In the end, Josie will not marry the boy with the dark hair and the brown eyes. She will move on from him and from a dozen other men and women. A decade later, when Thea’s hair is fully white and Harold has put on too much weight, she will go home once more and sleep in her old bedroom. But it won’t be for long. Soon shell be on the move again because something in her can’t rest, something inside her fights it tooth and nail. Over the years, Josie will ask herself, What are you running away from? Each time, she will answer the question differently. Because I can is the answer she likes best. Josie will tell people that she has always been a free spirit. Some men will think she is asking them, obliquely, to pin her down, to give her a reason to stay. They will ask her, “Don’t you want a family?” and she’ll laugh at them, say, “I already have one.” She leaves these ones faster than the rest.

  When standing on high landings — balconies, suspension bridges, look-outs — she still has the compulsion to jump. She believes in her own recklessness. It is the only faith she has.

  When she is very old and she has set foot in most of the co
untries in the world, Josie will tell her friends that her father was a boy who jumped from a roof and her mother was a woman who fell from a helicopter. They will know she is lying but she will never tell them how, or which details of the story are true. Until she dies, she will wonder about her real father and the twists and turns that have marked his life. She tries to imagine his helicopter, the people he has saved, or more importantly, the ones he has lost. All her life, Josie will wonder how she bypassed love when it was the very reason for, the root, of her disappearance. When people ask, she will say that her favorite country is one that has not yet been discovered.

  A Map of the City

  In the years after I left home, I used to glimpse my parents in unexpected places. I would see the two of them in the Safeway, my mother standing patiently by while my father weighed oranges in his hands, feeling for signs of imperfection. I would see them on the opposite sidewalk, blurred and old, traffic streaming between us. During these sightings, I never felt the urge to join them. I only wanted to remain where I was and watch while they negotiated their way through the aisles, their bodies slow with old age.

  of course, it was never them. By this time, my father had returned from Indonesia and my mother was living alone in an apartment outside of the city. I had not seen my parents side by side in almost a decade. It would be some other couple, vague and kindly looking, who would catch my eye, remind me of things I thought I had long forgotten.