I can’t bearit.
Forty-five minutes and one panicky transaction later, I’m scribbling a note to Sam as I race out the door.Gone back to Canada. Eat the cookies.
—
I catch the last flight of the day from New York to Toronto with minutes to spare.
Dad is understandably very surprised when I phone home to tell him not to lock the door, and when my taxi pulls up in the driveway around midnight, both my parents are waiting in the front hall, my dad in a navy house coat, my mom in a peach fleece.
They take the news I lost my job with surprising calm.
“And you flew all the way here to tell us that?” Dad jokes, disengaging the suitcase from my hand.
Mom and I both watch in silence from the foot of the stairs as he carries itup.
I start to crack a joke. She raises an eyebrow likenice-try-I’m-your-mother.
There’s no fooling her; she’s already gleaned everything she needs to know with one look atme.
She sighs, then flicks off the light switch. “We’ll discuss it in the morning.”
I thought maybe I’d have a message waiting from Connor when I released my phone from airplane mode, but there is nothing, and when I wake up in my childhood bed and there is still nothing, I start to worry that yesterday when he saidforget ithe meantforget about you andme.
At the breakfast table Mom is not interested in any of my dramatics. When I tell her my life is ruined, she scrapes her butter knife across a piece of toast and tells meyou must not have had a very good life then.There are plenty of jobs in NewYork, she reasons, and if I don’t want to live there anymore then it’s about time I moved home anyway.
Dad is equally philosophical. He admits he never really understoodthat tech stuff,and recommends I speak to Dan, who can probably get me a job with the town. If nothing else, the school holidays are only another month away, and the day camps are hiring. No, he doesn’t think thirty is too old to be a camp counselor.
“In fact,” he says, “they’d probably value your experience.”
“She can’t do that, Carl,” Mom says. “We’re just about to do up Annie’s bedroom.”
I’m outraged by this. “What?No.”
“You don’t live here anymore,” she says, unable to comprehend my objection. “You don’t need a bedroom.”
What is very clear is that neither of them know Shannon and I aren’t on speaking terms. She hasn’t told them. I’m not even sure they knew Dan crashed our girls’ weekend. It’s a total black hole of information, and I can’t go fishing for the details without alerting them that something isup.
Shannon is aware I’m in town, that I know at least. Mom informs me she’s working all weekend—something about a big open house—but that she’s promised to come by for dinner sometime in the week. Sometime meaning never.
—
I’m allowed the weekend to wallow, and I spend most of it mad at Andy, furious every time I think about how I trusted him and how horrible it felt to have the rug pulled out from under me like that.
When it dawns on me that that’s exactly what I did to Connor, I feel even worse. When I remember it’s also more or less what I did to Shannon at her engagement party, I hit rockbottom on the self-pity, turning any resentment I felt at Andy in on myself.
But by Monday, my time is up. Mom is totally unimpressed with my intention to lie on the sofa for the rest of my life, telling me pragmatically that if I’m going to be here, I might as well get my appointments done. She’s appalled to learn I don’t have a doctor or a dentist of my own in New York—what, don’t they have them there?—and am still registered at my home practice.
“Well then, for heaven’s sake, call Dr. Lang,” she tells me. “She’ll probably see you this morning.”
In fact, I have to wait. The receptionist regretfully tells me when I phone that Dr. Lang doesn’t see patients on Mondays, but that she’ll squeeze me in tomorrow at 3p.m.I tell her this suits me fine. It’s not like I have anything else todo.
Now that I’m on a roll, I decide to keep going—I book in to see the dentist in the morning, and then for a haircut over lunch. I relay my progress back to my mother.
“And then you can drop in and see your sister,” she concludes for me. “She lives just behind the doctor’s office.”
I agree, promising her I’ll text Shannon, knowing all the while that I won’t.
—
