Flight of Aquavit (3 page)

pretty much since my birth, my mother agreed to

stay overnight in my home. And not just for one

night but for every night of the two weeks leading

up to Christmas. When I first called and asked her

if she’d like to spend Christmas together, as I do

every year out of repetitive obligation, I was truly

18 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

shocked by her reply. My good friend and neigh-

bour, Sereena, was with me at the time and

believed I was about to go into cardiac arrest. You

see, normally, since my father’s death several

years ago, my mother spends Christmas with

either my sister or my brother. Never with me. It

just made sense. Or, if truth be told, I had never

thought about it hard enough to question whether

or not it made sense. I just figured she was more

comfortable with the other choices: my sister,

because mothers and daughters supposedly have

that extra special bond, or my brother because he

has two children to whom she enjoys playing

grandmother. Or is it four? I can never keep track.

The holidays together would be spent eating,

playing cards, eating some more and then, all

involved being sated, Mom would toddle off

home to the farm until next year. Everybody was

happy, right?

I suppose I did sometimes wonder (when I had

absolutely nothing else to do) if she avoided my

house because I am gay. She’s known this fact for

years, she doesn’t like talking about it or hearing

about it, but she knows. Does it make her uncom-

fortable? Is that why she had stayed away?

Yet this year something different was afoot.

She’d said yes. After some blathering and blub-

bering to cover my surprise, I’d hung up, drunk

the half carafe of wine Sereena’d thoughtfully set

before me and called my siblings. My sister,

Joanne, couldn’t have Mother for Christmas

because she was planning to spend the holidays in

Hawaii. My brother, Bill, who lives the next

Anthony Bidulka — 19

province over in Winnipeg, Manitoba, said that he

had made the offer to Mother but she’d refused

with no apparent reason. I’d reached a dead end. I

realized I’d have to swallow my feelings

of…what? I didn’t even know what I felt about

my mother coming to visit. I loved her well

enough. So what was the problem? Was I worried

she’d be bored? Afraid we’d have nothing to talk

about? Anxious that my Christmas would pale in

comparison to my sister’s or brother’s version?

None of those seemed quite right, but they’d do

nicely until I had time to sit down and think about

it. So I hired a house cleaning service, took my dog

Barbra to the groomer, stocked the fridge with

things I barely recognized, like butter and whole

milk, and welcomed my mother into my home.

As I shuffled into the kitchen on that chilly

December morning, I was still more than a little

dazed from the bizarre incident on the outskirts of

the city the night before. The venomous sounding

words that spewed from my cellphone had

echoed in my brain ever since: “Drop the case, Mr.

Quant. Or next time…we’ll catch you.”

First of all there was the matter of the implied

threat. Next time they’ll catch me and what?

Introduce themselves? Trade recipes with me? Kill

me? And then, just for that nice added touch of con-

fusion, was the first part of the message telling me

to drop the case. The problem was, I had no case.

I’d wrapped up my most recent investiga-

tion—a fairly benign matter involving a mis-

20 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

placed and highly cherished curling broom (don’t

ask)—about a week ago and since had been toying

with the idea of taking some days off. I was look-

ing forward to using the free time to properly get

into the Christmas spirit: shopping, decorating,

partying, sleeping.

So what was this idiot talking about? Drop the

case? What case? I’d taken some preliminary

information from Hugh when he’d first called. All

bogus of course, including his phone number. So

now what? Even if I wanted to I couldn’t do what

the bad guys wanted me to. So much for the

caprice part of a private detective’s life. Now I

needed a dose of serenity.

Nuh-uh.

As soon as my bare foot hit the tile floor of the

kitchen, I knew my daily existence had drastically

changed and would remain changed for the next

two weeks. My usual routine is to let out the dog,

prepare her food and mine, set the coffee and

retrieve the
StarPhoenix
from the front walk. I then

let the dog in and finally settle down surrounded

by paper, food, dog and coffee in my pleasant

kitchen nook to quietly welcome the new day. The

first sign that things were different was Barbra.

With my mother having already taken care of her

doggie needs, my gentle five-year-old pepper-

and-salt schnauzer was sitting in one corner of the

kitchen, far enough away from Mom’s busy feet to

keep from being stepped on, with an odd look on

her face. I think she was grinning, waiting in

anticipation for my reaction to the scene in our

usually peaceful home.

Anthony Bidulka — 21

Instead of tranquility there was mini-pandemo-

nium as Mom tried to acclimate herself to a new

kitchen, her indigenous habitat. Most of the sur-

faces were covered with pots and pans and non-

perishables. There were paper Safeway bags and

plastic Superstore bags brimming with groceries

and other items she’d brought from home—obvi-

ously things she suspected I wouldn’t have and

she couldn’t possibly do without. She’d already

brewed a pot of weak coffee and poured me a cup

laced with heavy cream and a heaping teaspoon of

sugar. She’d also somehow found the newspaper

and was now using the Lifestyle section, my

favourite for light early morning reading, to soak

up the fat from a heap of freshly fried bacon. And,

by some mystery, she had perfectly timed my

arrival in the kitchen, as she had most days of my

corpulent childhood, with the cracking of three

eggs into a hot pan, spitting with butter.

Even though it was not quite 8 a.m., my moth-

er was wearing a freshly pressed, robin’s egg blue

housedress under a flowery apron (not mine),

what she calls house shoes (hard leather dress

shoes, always black with a chunky heel) and thick

nylons. Her hair was immovably perfect and her

eyeglasses were magnificently shiny. I, on the

other hand, had barely managed to fasten the belt

around the waist of my bathrobe.

“You seet and I feex more bacon if dat’s not

enough,” she said, her back to me, intuiting my

presence in the room.

I looked at the two pigs worth of bacon sitting

on my newspaper. My mother comes from a gen-

22 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

eration of prairie farmwomen accustomed to cook-

ing meals for men who spent their days plowing

fields, herding cattle and picking rocks. The closest

I come to any of those agrarian activities is select-

ing the perfect head of lettuce—ok, romaine—at

the organic produce store. I fell into a chair, picked

up an unfamiliar coffee cup from an embroidered

place-setting and sipped at its contents. It tasted

something like a hot, mocha milkshake. Barbra

and I exchanged glances. Her lips were definitely

upturned on each side of her face. I began to won-

der. Schnauzers aren’t given to smirking unless

they have very good reason. “Mom, you didn’t

give Barbra people food, did you?”

“Vhat kind peoples food? Vhat you mean?” She

was busy flipping my eggs and I took from her tone

that I was lucky she had answered me at all.

“People food, you know, anything other than

the dog food in the bag in the cupboard I showed

you. If she eats people food she gets sick and

throws up. I wouldn’t want you spending your

first day cleaning that up.” I tried to sound light

and airy about it, but I’m not sure I succeeded,

especially since hot milkshakes just don’t do it for

me first thing in the morning—particularly after

my harrowing experience the night before.

“I haf tree egg here, dat enough? You start

dese, I feex more.”

No matter how many people she is cooking for,

one or twenty-one, I cannot remember even one

occasion seeing my mother actually sitting at a

table to eat. She cooks. While others eat—she

cooks. Long after the meal is done—she cooks.

Anthony Bidulka — 23

When the guests have left and are home in bed—

she’s still cooking. I don’t get it. What happens to

all this food? “Mom, I don’t eat a big breakfast.”

“Not beeg,” she informed me as she slipped

three easy-overs onto a plate along with a nice

splash of boiling butter. All the better to dunk my

toast in. “Tree small egg.” The platter landed on

the table. This was her way of giving me a morn-

ing hug.

“I’m trying to watch what I eat.”

“Vhat’s dat?” she said, already back at the

stove. Hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

“I have high cholesterol.” A lie.

“Ya, okey den. Vhat I feex you? Dere’s ham,

mebbe nice hot porridge?” She reached for the

porridge bag inexplicably within her reach. Where

did that come from? Whose kitchen was this? And

since when was ham a low-cholesterol food?

Porridge I’m not sure about.

I stood up from the table feeling like a stranger

in my own home. An under-dressed stranger.

“You know what? I have to go. I have a meeting

at work.” Another lie. Great. My mother was in

my home less than twenty-four hours and I’d

already lied to her twice. Oh well. Lies are like

peanuts—okay, macadamia nuts—after two it’s

hard to stop. “I have a client coming in. A big

case.” I knew she wouldn’t ask me any questions

about that. I don’t think she really knows what I

do for a living. She loved it when I was a cop. It

was something she could understand. And I think

it gave her certain bragging rights with friends

and neighbours. My decision to leave the police

24 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

force had confused her. She never understood

why I did it. And never asked.

I backed out of the room as if I expected her to

make a run at me with a plate of deep fried prune

dumplings and hash browns. Instead, she said

nothing, just added more butter to the frying pan

and hummed a Ukrainian ditty. I gave Barbra one

more look—that damn dog still making like a

Cheshire cat—and hightailed it for my bedroom.

My office is on Spadina Crescent, just out of

downtown, in an old character house that used to

be called the Professional Womyn’s Centre. A few

years ago a young lawyer, Errall Strane, pur-

chased the property, did some remodelling and in

deference to a piece of history, renamed it the

PWC Building. After renovations, PWC was left

with four office spaces. Errall runs her one-lawyer

practice out of the largest suite on the main floor,

the balance of which is rented to Beverly Chaney,

a psychiatrist. Two smaller offices on the second

floor belong to Alberta Lougheed, a psychic, and

me. Mine is the smallest, but the only one with a

balcony and a view that more than makes up for

its size. From the small deck I can look across

Spadina Crescent into beautiful Riverside Park

and beyond it, the South Saskatchewan River.

I parked in one of the four spots behind the

building, next to Beverly’s sensible sedan and

Errall’s bright blue Miata, and plugged in the car.

Instead of taking the metal staircase that hugs the

rear of the building up to the second floor, I

Anthony Bidulka — 25

braved the temperature of minus twenty degrees

Celsius, circled the building and entered through

the front door.

The reception area is a large space filled with

expensive art chosen by Errall, plants donated by

Beverly, and a colour scheme coordinated by

Alberta’s aural projections. My contribution is a

pencil-holder. A massive circular desk presides

over the room and divides the space in two: a

waiting area for Errall’s clients to the right and