I look back at the Getty image of Linda and Ted anew, and it seems somehow different. She is no longer the luckiest girl in the world. Instead, she’s the woman who let it all go. She couldn’t move at a different speed, in the same circle?
‘Who’s Linda Morello?’ says Johnny, a disembodied voice on my shoulder. I hadn’t even heard him come into the room.
There is no proper way to explain that I am looking at a complete stranger in Canada because she used to be the girlfriend of someone a bit famous and a bit attractive.
‘A friend of someone I went to school with,’ I tell him instead.
‘Yeah, what’s she got to do with you?’ he replies.
That has me stumped. ‘I just thought I knew her from somewhere, that’s all.’
‘Oh, OK.’ This appeases him somewhat. ‘It’s going on three a.m., you know,’ he reminds me as he turns for the door. ‘I say this as an ally– sleepwalking through your firstday back at work probably isn’t the best idea you’ll have ever had.’ Johnny went back to work the day after the Meeting in the hospital, a decision I still can’t be sure how I feel about.
Lying to one’s husband doesn’t feel all that great. And yet keeping some sort of secret from him, something that is just mine, sort of does.
As I walk back into the brown-walled office the following morning, there’s Cathy, who has assumed the other seat opposite me while Francesca is on maternity leave. Whoever my temporary replacement was must have been shockingly bad company, because Cathy walks right at me without stopping, enveloping me in a crease-faced hug in one graceful, practised motion.
‘Aw, baby,’ she keens into my ear. ‘Baby, baby.’ After five seconds she breaks away and returns to her desk, where the matter of my ailing heart is, I understand, now in the past. Well, I suppose that’s that dealt with.
Carrie has insisted on meeting me after work, and the fervour of this insistence makes me think that this has less to do with helping me through my first day back at work, and more to do with something else.
‘I have some news to share,’ she affirms before we have even flipped open our drinks menus. ‘I think I might have met someone.’
Usually, this is not a cause for sit-down drinks. Carrie meets Someones all the time, and the Someones rarely turn into Anyones. Then she goes and orders an Old-Fashioned and I know something’s up. The way she says it… it’s different this time.
‘So, there’s a spark there,’ I affirm. Carrie will only countenance follow-up dates once there is sufficient Spark in themix, and I’ve long given up telling her that this five-alarm-fire chemistry she insists on as a baseline requirement sends her on an absolute hiding to nothing.
‘The spark is actually your stomach flip-flopping out of anxiety,’ I’ve previously told her, more than once.
‘Funnily enough, I’m not sure I fancy him all that much. Like, physically. He’s not really my type,’ Carrie says, trying to process her own confusion about this. This has my attention. ‘Like, he’s a bit compact, or something.
‘I don’t know. We’re just… seeing where it goes,’ she adds, shaking her head softly. And that’s how I know that Billy, the new guy, is going to be sticking around for as long as he wants to.
‘He’s just… I don’t know. Kind?’ she ventures. ‘He makes me laugh.’
Something that feels like jealousy sits in my chest, as foreign as someone’s first-ever cigarette.
‘Well, we’ll have to meet him, so, size him up for you,’ I say, trying to sound upbeat.
‘Here’s the thing. He says he can only ever meet one new person a week. He says any more people than that really eats into his social-energy reserves. So it’ll have to be in a while, and we’ll probably have to do it without Johnny.’
‘Oh Jesus, Carrie.’ I bark an unkind laugh. ‘Forever the patron saint of utter fucking weirdos.’
It’s out in the air before I’ve even thought the comment through, and it’s too late to take back now. She tries to laugh it off, but a line has been crossed and I know that whatever happens from here on out with Billy, I’ve slightly stained it.
6
Johnny is working late, which affords me a rare opportunity to indulge in my covert single-girl behaviour. All the stuff I would have happily revelled in pre-marriage: sugar and butter sandwiches (English people wouldnever), a hair mask, Immac on my top lip, lying on the sofa on my tattered Majorca beach towel, moisturizing socks, slathered armpit to ankle in coconut oil. As I am doing all the stuff that makes me look to others as though I was simply born this lovely, I also have time to wander unfettered about the internet and lo, another article about Ted Levy makes my heart do a little falsetto.
Ontario Globe, 19 August 2010
‘The child very much explains the man. As a child, he filled his boots on all things Spielberg and Lucas, developing an interest in the on-screen irreverence of John Belushi. And yet all was not well inside the middle-school gates. ‘I remember being fed worms by the other kids as a kid.’ Levy laughs good-naturedly.
As a way to defend himself from a literal diet of worms, Levy became the class clown, impersonating teachers and pupils and generally beating all around him to the punch.It helped to stave off some of the bullies. By the time he reached York University, Levy had found his tribe, initially teaming up with Josh Aoki and Steve Charmaine, who encouraged him to join the drama society. ‘We had a great time doing what we did, but I definitely wanted to strike out on my own,’ Levy recalls. ‘I had very definite ideas of how I wanted things to go for me.’
I think back to eight-year-old Ted, those big brown eyes filling with terror as another insect looms into view over his head, bigger and bolder kids laughing cruelly around him. I feel a stab of concern for him, lost and scared among his childhood tormentors. Oh, such a huge part of me wants to protect that boy, to smother him in maternal warmth, to tell him that everything will eventually be OK, or even better than OK.
The key in the door makes my heart leap to my throat. I’m too slow off the Majorca towel and Johnny walks in to see the entire unedifying spectacle of what I do when there’s no one around.
