Page 89

We weave through the footfall of the airport and I wince as the afternoon sun beats down on me, retinas shocked, as we head to the parking garage.

Dad’s trusty three-door makes me feel young. The red banger is shining like it always does – Dad cannot sit still at home and giving Bertie a wash and polish has always been high on his priority list. He takes pride in everything. Cares for everything with so much vigor, it’s honestly admirable in this day and age. My dad is old-school. A classic.

Speaking of which. “Dad, why is there a chest of old drawers hanging out of your trunk?”

Bertie’s small trunk has been rope-tied to keep it closed around a wood chest of drawers that look like they ought to be on a scrap heap.

“Well, I figured if I was driving out to the airport, I could swing by a recycle hub. I picked up these beauties for next to nothing.” We arrive at the car and Dad opens the passenger side for me, then proceeds to manhandle my luggage into the back of the car, on top of the backseats he’s dropped to also fit in the drawers. “All they need is a good sand and stain and they’ll outlive me.”

“Do you need another chest of drawers?” I ask, wondering how in hell I’m going to squeeze into the front seat that’s now so far forward my nose will be pressed to the wind shield the entire drive home.

He looks at me. “Someone will, darling. Waste not, want not.” Then he gestures to the car. “Hop in.”

I do not hop in. Rather, I contort myself like a gymnast into the front seat, my ribcage too squished for me to worry about anything other than breathing for the forty minutes it takes us to hit town.

It’s the same as ever – timber cafés and stores lining the one main street, interspersed by trees and space. Few cars on the road but plenty of people stopping to chat in groups and walking dogs on leads. Dad pips the car horn to almost everyone, calls out greetings through the windows and if I wasn’t squished into the car, I’d say he’s showing me off, like he always has. His pride, despite the reason I’m here, is cherished and crushing all at once.

The sun is poking through the clouds and the lake hasn’t yet frozen, though it looks as if it’s starting to turn on the edges. By December, entire families will be able to skate and play on the thick ice. It’s crazy how this place can feel soothing and pressurized all at once.

I feel less need to perform in New York, amongst millions of people who are fast-paced, doers, competition, high-earners, than I do here, in small-town Canada, where I grew up. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve flown my parents into New York to visit me rather than returning home for more years than I dare count.

Dad is so relaxed here. Happy as he dips his head to everyone he knows on the drive. When he’s in New York, he always looks uncomfortable in his clothes. He fidgets. Yet, I’ve put him in that situation to avoid at all costs coming home and feeling this tightness in my chest that I do now as we get closer to home. To Mom.

“You go on in, I’ll put this chest in the garage,” Dad says when we pull onto the driveway of our modest home.

The lawn is trimmed and the borders perfectly turned. The steps up to the house have been swept and planters are neatly pruned around the door. We have the smallest home on the block but it’s always been immaculate. The door is never locked, so I step inside, hit instantly by the smell of home-baking. I’d stake my life on Mom having made a Schmoo cake. Which means she’s either so disappointed in me, she’s distracting herself (highly likely), or she’s really easy-breezy over this whole marriage-I-never-told-her-about thing (hugely unlikely). As unlikely as my pulse rate ever returning to normal, my breathing calming and the unwelcome lightheadedness I feel dissipating.

I slip off my shoes and, fingers shaky, line them up on the rack with the others, just so, the way Mom does. Then I stare at the precisely set rows of footwear. Even the muddiest, dirtiest of Dad’s outdoor boots have been lined up neatly. I think of the way Jax comes into our condo, his condo, and kicks off his sneakers, nudging them to one side of the hallway, not giving a care as to whether they look neat or not. I’m struck by how different our upbringings must have been. For Jax, someone would have been paid to tidy away his mess. For me, Mom would have swept in and told me firmly to line up my shoes, to take pride in our home. Humble but perfect.

“Well, if it isn’t my married daughter,” Mom says, coming to the doorway from the kitchen, wiping her hands down her baking apron, hair pulled back into a clip, lips painted in her signature peach shade.

“Mom.”

We consider each other for a moment. I feel the pull of her, an urge to be held by her because as much as I’m sorry for the lies, I suddenly need my mom. As my eyes fill and the image of her blurs, I fight the emotion, trying desperately not to show weakness. That’s not what the Jamiesons do.

New York must have made me weak, or everything I’m carrying around has gotten too heavy to control, because a hot tear slides down my cheek.

“I’m really sorry,” I say, voice breaking.

I feel so utterly disappointing, so small and breakable, standing in the hallway of my childhood home. Shame and guilt are gripping me, weighing me down. I’ve messed up and the enormity of my flaws is landing right now. I’ve let my parents down. Let myself down. Twenty-nine-year-old businesswoman me is cancelled by the girl who didn’t win the local beauty competition, or the dance contest at school, who nailed her mathematics paper but didn’t get the biggest part in the theatre production of Romeo and Juliet.

“I’ve made Schmoo cake,” Mom says, turning her back on me and expecting me to follow her into the kitchen.

I take a steady breath, wipe my cheek, and step into the lion’s den.

Mom wordlessly prepares a pot of tea and sets out her finest cups and saucers – left to her by my grandmother – around the kitchen table. Her silence feels more punishing than if she screamed in my face; it always has.

She sets down a flawless Schmoo cake on a presentation stand, and I wonder whether Jax is at home in suburban New York, telling his mom the truth of our PR sham. Whether she’s giving him the stiff-upper-lip treatment, too. Somehow, I don’t think his mom could make him feel this shameful.

“Is it ready, Margot?” Dad asks, coming inside, leaving his footwear outside and immediately washing his hands before coming to sit opposite me at the table.

He asks me in a look how it’s going and I grimace. Not. Good.

Mom takes off her apron, slices and puts cake onto our plates, then sits. All the while, I wonder how Jax would tackle this. How New York me would tackle this.

Head. On. With intention. Feigning bravery until I felt it. It’s suddenly so glaringly obvious that I haven’t been living my own life for twenty-nine years, I’ve been striving to meet Mom’s ideology and the happiest I have felt in a very long time is being with Jax, whose only request is that I let my hair down from time to time. That I step away from work rather than into it. That I pick my head up, smell the proverbial roses and ask myself what I, me, want from life.

This. This grueling, muted chant of shame is not it. So, I channel my inner dragon.