What other dealbreakers are there? I think back to Ruthie, the dog-groomer and semi-professional orgy-organizer.
‘How do you feel about overnight guests?’
‘Um, that’s cool.’
‘OK, I’m really glad you said that. I’m part of a community, you know, that likes… free love. Polyamory.’ He’s drawing a blank. ‘Swinging.’
‘Swinging?’ Jesse says. Is his confusion a Jesse thing or a Canada thing?
‘Like, group sex. It’s definitely something I like to tap into wherever I am.’ The second the words leave my mouth, I fret that he will bring this information back to Naomi. Something in his clean and orderly demeanour tells me he won’t. Besides, his eyes are bugging. God love him, he’s never said the words ‘group sex’ out loud in his life.
He nods slowly, taking it all in, before faltering slightly. ‘You know what, I’ll have to get back to you. A couple of other parties have told me they are interested. I’ll email you in a couple of days.’
I am not like other sixteen-year-olds, who slam doors, space out squeezing their spots in front ofHome and Awayand play records in their bedrooms until the walls rattle. My mother and I are actually OK in each other’s company, mainly because we are like two people who found themselves washed ashore together after the years-long stormthat was my father. Now that she is on her own, she is a calmer person and a calmer mother.
One day, on the way home from school, I find a man’s tie in the glove compartment of the car, in among the mints and maps and cans of hairspray. ‘That’s your dad’s,’ she says with absolute conviction, and I think no more of it.
A few weeks later, the discovery of a bottle of massage oil in the sitting room elicits nothing but irritation from her. ‘Stop looking into it so much,’ she says. ‘Jesus, can a woman not look after herself a bit around here?’
Eventually, she comes clean about her and Patrick, my father’s old boss. ‘We’re just having a bit of fun, seeing where this takes us.’ She winks at me as though we’re friends. She is physically unable to keep the good news to herself in any case. She loves being in love, and she has the bloom of a June rose about her. The bloom is lovely to see. Though we’ve not said as much, we don’t want to return to a living situation where there are even cross words.
It’s not long before Patrick arrives at Hiroshima, smarmy all the way up and down and suitcases in hand. The vibe shift is instant, and overpowering. Within weeks, our delicate, exquisite equilibrium is ruptured.
‘Why can’t he just live somewhere else?’ I plead. ‘We’re better off on our own, the two of us.’
‘Just as well you don’t get a say, then,’ she says pointedly. She is pulling away from me, from our cosy kinship, and I am feeling displaced. Less like a daughter, more like a lodger.
The feeling like a spare prick ramps up even more on the night before my Leaving Cert exams; the first night I hear them screaming blue thunder at each other during an argument. A glass shattering against the wall, then completesilence. I cannot believe we are back here, already, after managing to get through the first time, and the following morning I tell her as much.
‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she says, exhaling a perfect arrow of blue smoke in my direction. She is the only person who can make smoking in the kitchen of a three-bed semi look even remotely glamorous. The bloom is gone from her skin.
‘Please let’s get rid of him,’ I say. ‘Let’s not go back to this.’
She knows I know that she has shat the bed. ‘What’s it to you? Sure you’ll be in college soon, doing your own thing,’ she reasons.
She taps her cigarette ash in a way that makes me think there’s more to say.
‘Actually, Patrick says he will happily pay for your college accommodation, to save you a commute to wherever you are going.’
‘You’re kicking me out?’
‘Where in the last five minutes have I mentioned anything about kicking you out? This is to make your life easier. Good Lord, why couldn’t I have had one of those children that was actually grateful for things?’
The truth of it catches in my throat. ‘No, you’re choosing Patrick over me.’
‘Esther, must youalwaysbe this dramatic? Jesus,’ she says between deep drags. ‘You’d honestly do anyone’s head in.’
22
I wake in Elizabeth’s room to another new Ted Levy article. I pull the bed covers over my head and start to read, my breath causing the screen to lightly steam up.
Vancouver Star, June 2012
The Canadian actor Ted Levy has been forced to respond to claims that his next movieRacist Marjoriewill be ‘sexist’, ‘sizeist’ and ‘ageist’, or, as he calls it, ‘all the isms’.
As casting for the controversial comedy was announced this week, Levy has been subjected to a fierce backlash. Insiders are calling Levy’s latest vanity project a ‘curious career move’. Levy responded to the comments by noting that the low-budget production, due to shoot later this year, will be aimed at a ‘small but perfectly formed audience’.
‘The real fans don’t care about knee-jerk reactions,’ Levy told theVancouver Starthis week. ‘They see it for what it is, which is satire in which people like Marjorie are never the target, and never the punchline.
