How Happy to Be (10 page)

I take a drink. My skin’s not used to thinking this much. I flip the pages of a book of Lucien Freud’s paintings, all these hulking melted bodies, and I go, “Note to self: never agree to pose for a Lucien Freud painting. Not flattering.” Theo’s not an easy laugher, so when you get one, it’s all the more satisfying.

We do a quick past-relationship rundown. I keep the director’s cut to myself and give him the version I’ve been handing out the most lately – the one that goes: “We drifted apart” – and isn’t entirely untrue. Theo McArdle has his own
problems, and she waves hello and steps into my consciousness, some English girl who’s still building those wells in Africa and here’s her picture stuck to his fridge. She’s clean and skinny, and doing a really annoying thing: she’s actually standing in a field of flowers, holding one white bloom to her nose. Sheer rapture at nature’s bounty.

“Well, it doesn’t look like your girlfriend has allergies, so that’s good!” I shout to Theo, who’s in the bathroom.

Theo McArdle calls back, “What?”

I don’t clarify because his voice – smooth then broken by a Maritime yang, the voice of someone good – makes my easy sarcasm, my instinctive contempt for a field of flowers, even nastier. I can feel the lateness of the hour, though there are no clocks in the room.

When Theo comes out of the bathroom, the hair above his forehead is slightly wet, as if he’s just splashed water on his face. And then his leg is next to my leg on the couch and his arm is next to my arm and what will happen? What will happen? Breathe and still, thirty-four years old, that warming of the hips because he’s there and a long time ago we kissed and it was pretty damn good as I recall. Then Theo McArdle leans over and hovers on my neck and I feel the pull of him deep in my stomach, a pull as familiar as –.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I blurt.

End nuzzle.

“Okay,” says Theo McArdle, disentangling.

Theo McArdle’s bathroom contains three products: toothpaste, a sliver of soap, and shaving cream. I would add toilet paper to the list except there are only two squares left,
which I intend to use. I get the pang that parents must get the first time their newborn screams all night: Theo McArdle is imperfect. He does not shop ahead. I feel that gut pull again and of course – it’s not love, it’s menstruation.

I have many things in my bag. I have sunglasses even in February, lipstick, plastic bottle of water, nose drops, Altoids container of grass, matches, lighter, cigarettes, Altoids container of Altoids, Filofax, a photo of my mom in a plastic Tic Tac case, a hairbrush. Are there tampons on this list? Are there tampons on Theo McArdle’s single shelf?

I fold the two squares and of course they’re the tree-hugging one-ply kind and will last me to the foyer before soaking through my skirt. Under the sink is bare except for a bottle of cleanser. Under the radiator is dust. I contemplate asking Theo McArdle if he keeps his toilet paper in some environmentally friendly root cellar, but then he might think I’ve taken a crap, which seems like the groundwork for a mental image that could stifle the possibility of future nuzzling. So I’m going through my wallet wondering if I can fashion a pad out of my old bank statements, feeling a kind of kinship with my Native sisters bundling the leaves but – screw that. All men should have tampons in their bathroom. It’s polite. All women have towels.

“Theo!” I shout, and he comes shuffling to the door.

“Uh … yeah?” he asks in a little boy voice that’s equal parts curious and petrified as to why a woman is beckoning him through a bathroom door (is it just me, or does one vocal note sound almost optimistic, as if to ask, hopefully,
fetish?
).

“Do you have any toilet paper?”

“Oh no, Max, I’m sorry, that’s it.”

New strategy. “Okay, I’ll be blunt. Did the flower sniffer leave any feminine hygiene products behind?”

“Huh?”

Theo McArdle is testing my patience. “Do you have any tampons lying around?”

“Oh …” It doesn’t matter how liberal, how hemp-clad, how sensitive New Age, how crystal enthused, tell a guy you need a tampon and he’ll revert to some sniggering neck-free frat boy.

“Uh … uh … heh … I think I have some paper towel. Would that help?”

“Sure. Can you sew six pieces together and line it with silk?” I say.

“I’ll go to the store,” says Theo, and I feel a little guilty.

“No, no, it’s okay. Paper towel is fine,” and I almost mean it, but I have to admit, I like the idea of Theo McArdle running through the snow on a mission for me.

“Two minutes!” shouts Theo, slamming the front door.

My bum numbs on the toilet. I toss the soap sliver hand to hand. Theo has no magazines in his bathroom. I do the lean and reach for his can of shaving cream, catching up on my product bilingualism: Je me rase, tu te rases …

Nothing to read, nothing to hear. The music in the other room has ended. The faucet doesn’t even drip. I shut my eyes for a second, skirt hiked up around my waist, shaving cream in hand, listening to someone else’s apartment.

Theo’s feet cutting up the front path, snapping the snow, closer and closer, the urgency of a midwife running through the backwoods.

Theo knocks.

“Should I open the door?” he asks.

I attempt a trial reach, but the door is too far and I don’t want to stand up and leave a trail of blood on his floor, another somewhat unromantic image.

“Okay, come in, but it ain’t pretty,” I say.

Theo opens the door a crack and his big red ski jacket backs in, one gloved hand holding a package of Extra Soft Kitteny toilet paper and the other, a box of super-jumbo night pads with wings. When he’s taken about five steps, he opens his hands and releases the goods halfway between us: a hostage negotiation.

“I hope that’s okay. I wasn’t sure what to get –”

“It’s fine. Thanks,” I say. His jacket stands there, back to me, just nervous talking: “I don’t know why the tampons weren’t actually on the shelf, so I got these and then when I was paying, I saw tampons behind the counter with the illicit goods, like condoms, but I’d already paid and –”

“Theo,” I say. “You can leave.”

“Right.” The jacket leaves.

I remove a pad from the box. It is the length of a toy train, the thickness of a phone book. When I’m strapped in, I can’t close my legs.

Funny, I’m not feeling so amorous any more. Theo’s on the couch, two fresh glasses of wine set up in front of him.
With each step toward Theo, the pad makes a sound like two pillows in a dryer.

“I’m gonna head,” I say, and he nods like he guessed as much.

“I hope that wasn’t too weird,” says Theo.

“Weird, yes,” I tell him. “But also kind of lovely.”

In the foyer, he helps me into my jacket. The space is crowded with hooks dangling fleece and mountain-climbing gear and so we are up against each other.

“Good night,” says Theo, and he leans in and kisses me for a while. Deep and familiar, a memory loosed and warm, a kiss in two places at once, present and past.

T
HE EDITOR IS GLOWERING.
THE EXAMINER
RAN THEIR
Ethan Hawke profile two days before the official start of the film festival, screwing us out of our front page for the Entertainment section; somehow they got inside information on when our story would run. Curious.

Still, the Editor won’t kill the piece – this is
Ethan Hawke
, after all – so now I have to barf it out within the hour, and the Editor is literally pacing back and forth in her cubicle, which is two steps one way, two steps back, snorting and puffing the whole time.

There’s a hush over the newsroom these days. Heads bowed, chairs lowered, soundless lips moving into headsets plotting escapes, resumes firing through the fax machine.

I am not as forward thinking. I sit and calculate my severance every few hours, logging time. Until it comes, perhaps inspired by the goodness I dated last night, I will try to be as honest a writer as possible. This could, of course, finally be the thing that gets me fired. But for now, I look upon it as a new civic duty to unshackle the public from its clanging desire to know. I intend to peel away the layers of celebrity white noise and unearth a snotty, pockmarked human being.

So I describe Ethan Hawke as a “pretentious boho weenie.” I alert the world to the fact that his film on Swiss banks is a morally questionable exercise in Oscar-mongering. I put in the Uma stuff, and mention how I tricked him into giving it up by posing as a lesbian organic farmer. I tell the world that he is fat, but I grant him the word
charming
. I say: He’s just a person, deluded and self-important, with occasional patches of kindness.

Hit
Send
. I watch as the Editor reads. I put my feet – shoeless – up on the desk and wait.

Then I see it: A handwritten envelope is sitting on stacks of unopened press kits. That’s right: blue ink with a postage stamp in the corner. You can still get those – who knew? The determined evenness of the round cursive writing on the thin white airmail paper suggests a tracing page of lines once lay beneath.

The warmth of Franny Baumgarten’s one-time touch on this paper travels right up through my hand and directly into my chest, where it burns. Earnestness always makes me suspicious. A trick? A colleague trying to make me feel guilty for failing to appreciate this life? Are people sniggering, plotting, playing?

One cubicle over, I see Hard-Working Debbie dutifully transcribing an interview with a woman who is balding and has started a support group for other unfortunates. Debbie jerks around suddenly, likely because my crumpled publicity still from
Flintstones Part 3
has proven a worthy projectile, dislodging her headphones.

“Debbie,” I ask. “Do you know anything about this? Who put this here?” Debbie’s eyes narrow, her lips pucker like a cat’s ass.

“I don’t know anything about it,” she squeals, and I never knew Debbie had such a piercing voice. Across the aisle, Knee-Socks Steve in Sports looks up from behind his wall of novelty sports paraphernalia – whatever keeps the world at bay, Steve – then quickly ducks down.

“Knee-Socks Steve!” I shout. “Did you put this here? Is it a joke?” He burrows behind an oversized foam football that’s the precise shape of his head.

Marvin is at the fax machine, electronically begging the CBC for a job, and he makes a nervous
shhh
gesture to his lips.

“Shhh yourself, Marvin!” I scream. “THIS ISN’T FUNNY!” I put the letter in my back pocket and throw myself into my puffy coat. The Big Cheese pokes his head out of his office to see about the noise, stretching his arms, working the jaw in a yawn, yellow hair a mane around his face.

I run toward the exit as the Editor gives me a thumbs-up, a close facsimile of approbation. She likes the Ethan Hawke piece. I remain hired.

My second missive comes with the heading, “Evaluate
Your
Drinking.”

Someone has seen fit to double team me this day. Franny Baumgarten isn’t enough disarmament; also, I need this, I need this under my door, soggy under my wet boots. A pointed move because were the glossy green leaflet a casual find from the mailbox, I might think it a generic flyer, an unsolicited piece of junk mail. But it is clearly under my
door because someone put it there to lie in wait like the cat I’ve resisted.

“Would you like to know how
your
drinking compares to
other
Canadians? Take this simple test to find out.”

I remove the Baumgarten letter from my back pocket and lay it on the stack of magazines that’s substituting for a coffee table. The flyer is green and determined. It lies in my lap, unfolded like a triptych menu at some quantity-oriented American restaurant.

What would you do?

I do this: I twist my free, faux fountain pen with
The Daily
written on the side, the one I received in lieu of a Christmas bonus last year. I give it an old-fashioned lick of the nib, which is ballpoint, and bad to lick. I spit and begin the exam.

“What was your drinking like during a typical week in the last year? List roughly how many drinks you have on each day of a typical week and add up the total.”

Monday … Mondays are tough, I think, because Mondays are the first day back at work, so I admit it, I treat myself a little. Let’s say three little V&Ts.

Tuesday … Tuesdays are a good TV night, and a lady must have a beer with good TV. Four beers.

Wednesday … Wednesday you can feel the ground shaking as the weekend lumbers closer. You have to toast the weekend! It’s been so long! Come hither, weekend! C’m along! Three to five.

Thursday … It’s okay to indulge on Thursday because Friday morning is pretty much the weekend, am I wrong? Everyone’s tired Friday, why not me? Five to ten.

Friday … TGIF, sports fans! Five to twelve. In my defence, I try to clarify, writing,
Less numerous when drugs are available
, but the space on the form is too small.

Saturday … How to soften the blow from Friday night: un peu de vin. Five to nine, ‘cause often I’m bagged.

Sunday … Sadness because it’s Sunday. Have a Scotch to welcome the possibility of the upcoming week. Two to three.

Turns out I’m drinking a bit more than my fellow Canadians. According to the pie chart, this consumption of fifteen or more drinks in a week – or thirty, in my case – puts one firmly in the top percentile. Top percentile. Usually a desirable place to be, and yet it’s the darkest colour of the pie, a black, unappetizing little slice. The lightest colour is a healthy apple green, for those 58 per cent in the zero-drinks category.