This is an excerpt from a novel, as yet unnamed--a drawer novel.
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Every morning I awake to an annoying beep beep beep, the mating call of heavy-duty trucks backing up. Construction crews are widening the Gardiner Expressway directly beside my bedroom window and most mornings, the noise is almost constant. The intellectual portion of my brain, pea-sized though it may be, tells me the noise is constant not because each truck is always backing up, with no forward motion, but because there are so many trucks, one is always backing up. The emotional 99.9 per cent of my brain screams, “For God’s sake, go forward! Forward!”
That’s what I’ve done. Or what I’m trying hard to do. Go forward, young (middle-aged?) woman. I’ve cast my cares behind me and like so many of my countrymen, those brave Newfie souls who have gone ahead, I’ve moved to Toronto. Granted, I took the roundabout route with stopovers both grand (Tehran, Paris, London, Niagara Falls) and mediocre (Kingston, Niagara Falls), but all roads lead to Toronto, even those under eternal re-construction. Strictly speaking, I moved to Etobicoke; the city wasn’t gobbled up by the Mega-City for a few weeks after my move. My condo is on the dividing line; if I could golf from my 10th floor window, if I could golf at all, that is, I could probably whack the ball across the Humber River mouth into Toronto. It’s that close, as close as I’ve ever come to the real thing.
I moved here with no great expectations. I’ve learned not to entertain dreams of satisfaction; that way, I’ll not be terribly disappointed.
My friend Merri regularly drives to Toronto and hangs around in the numerous trendy cafes on quirky Queen Street or in yuppie Yorkville, hoping to spot movie celebrities. This is not my wet dream, though Toronto is a star spotter’s heaven. I’ve been here only a month and already I’ve passed Colm Wilkinson, the fabulous former Phantom of the Opera, soon to be Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, jogging along the Humber Shores footpath. Colm didn’t stop to say, “Hi.” Did I walk up and request his autograph? Not. My own tiny share of celebrity taught me to maintain the privacy of public figures. Being mobbed by six-year-olds shouting, “Look, Mommy, there’s the Candy the Cat lady!” ain’t that different from being ogled by twenty-somethings who aren’t quite sure if you’re really Tom Cruise or just another scheming lookalike. Is it?
I suspect Merri may visit Toronto more frequently now that I’m living here and I strongly suspect I may not be the main attraction. Whatever. Ogling superstars is a small price to pay for congenial company. And God knows, I’ll need company.
My shrink would say I’ve cut myself off from everyone and everything, that I’m deliberately creating isolation, and I suppose he wouldn’t be too far off the mark. I’ve chopped Ronaldo, that invading microbe, that flesh-eating bacterium, out of my life and until the healing is complete, I can’t risk re-infection from the people who were our friends, his friends. (Did I mention I’m bitter?) Even Merri, who is no friend of Ronaldo, doesn’t know where I’ve gone. Before I contact her, I want to learn the neighbourhood. I don’t want to appear too pathetic.
Yesterday I hauled my ass out of my secure, pristine, marble-and-fresh-flowers condo building for a long jaunt along Lakeshore Road. Talk about culture shock. It reminded me of my decade-plus life with Ronaldo. (Everything does.) Though you know the foundation is rotting, if it’s out of sight, you can almost forget. If you don’t dwell on the peeling paint, if you turn your back on the missing roof tiles, you can convince yourself the structure isn’t crumbling. Past the parade of run-down motels and seedy façades I trudged, noting the construction signs that promised to eventually eliminate the motel-strip’s grimy grimness and install more, secure, pristine condos and waterfront parks. I want to replace the grimness in my everyday life, too, but I’m not sure the panacea is more lah-di-dah condos, more refuges for Hong Kong refugees, more crashpads for overworked litigators and stock market wizards. I’m searching for green grass and leafy trees, yes, yes, but I’m realistic enough to realize that even the most beautiful park is home to a grimy hobo or two. Into every sunny Paradise, a little rain must fall or the green grass stops growing.
Here I am, an escapee from Ronaldo’s torture chambers, still enslaved with memories. I’m the elephant, who being trained to the strength of an enormous steel rope, doesn’t try to break the substituted silken thread. I drive along the Gardiner, my convertible top down, hair blowing free and tangled in a light summer breeze, and without warning, Ronaldo strikes! I see us, a newly minted, shiny golden couple, driving his old Chevy outside Ottawa. The Rideau Canal meets and follows us as we weave through the city, tired to exhaustion, singing nonsense songs to keep awake.
“Moon,” I say. “Sing a song with the word ‘moon’.”
“Blue moon,” he croons in his semi-Italian accent, one hand lazily twirling the steering wheel, the other stroking my hair, “I saw you standing alone. Your turn.”
“My sweetheart’s the man in the moooon,” I mock, the last word sung with my head skyward, like a baying wolf. He laughs and I reach over and cover his hand. My sweetheart’s the man in the car.
Flashbacks like this can scuttle a recovery. They come, uninvited, unwanted, whenever I least expect them, whenever I am powerless to resist, whenever I think I’m making some headway. I sit at my computer, writing a descriptive scene, and wham! It’s midnight and Ronaldo and I are watering the fresh new sod behind our fresh new house. He’s wielding his hose, I’m wielding mine, we’re almost finished and I turn my hose on the back of his neck and we are tearing our clothes off, falling in the wet grass, making love on the cool ground and the tree toads are singing— and I’m sitting at my computer and my face is as wet as it was that night.
Sure, my marriage is over, but I’m healthy and good at what I do or at least the critics say so and the thousands of people who paid good money for Candy, the Cat and St. Joseph’s Fire can’t all be deluded.
God, we women are dumb. Before the doctors have removed the bandages from her bashed head, the woman has forgiven the man who put her in the hospital. Why? Heredity. We humans, and women particularly, are pre-programmed to forget the Alamo. Some minuscule speck of genetic material grabs us in the solar plexus, spikes us through the heart, invades our unsuspecting medulla oblongatas and we forget how bad it was. How else can you explain the survival of the institution of marriage? How else can you justify families of more than one child?
You can’t go home, I told myself aloud. You can’t start smoking again. Home is where you feel safe and your lungs are better off without the smoke. For Christ’s sake, Ellie, this isn’t a rehearsal; this is opening night. No more second fiddle. You have the starring role. So, your marriage is kaput. So, you sent Travis back to his wife. Go forward, not back. Forward. Stop your snivelling, you stupid little bitch, and get out on that stage!
