The Big Dream Page 3

  “She still has the same job. And we’ve talked since then. We talk all the time.”

  Colleen silently tugged her tunic over her knees, over and over. It wasn’t long enough not to flick right back up over bare round knees. Flick up, tug down, flick up –

  “Stop that.”

  “It doesn’t fit,” Colleen said without stopping. “I’m going to get in trouble on uniform day for showing my panties on the stairs. They’ll think I’m like those hiked-up whores who do it on purpose.”

  “It’s just because you’re tall, though . . . right?”

  “Right. But the VP is an asshole.”

  “I am the king,” Jake announced. The kids had re-appeared in front of the garage without Theo noticing. Jake was standing on the underseat rack of the stroller, his head between the handlebars. “I am the master of everybody.”

  “Jake, you can be king with your feet on the ground, please. And where’s your toque? We can’t buy another if it’s lost – they’re not for sale in summer.”

  Marley’s tiny fat hands waved like a conductor’s.

  “Marley is my slave. I am in charge. I am the king.”

  “Jake, really. Down, now.”

  Jake stood perfectly still and screamed, “You aren’t the king. Where’s Mommy?” He began to bounce on the rack, bending and straightening his knees, not actually jumping, though the whole contraption jiggled. Marley tossed her head as if to see what disaster had befallen her. Her navy eyes were humungous.

  “Mommy’s on her way from work right now and she’ll be so mad to see you jumping on your sister’s stroller.”

  A bark of laughter from Colleen.

  Marley began to punch the air, loudly cooing, “Ohmmy ohmmy ohmmy!”

  Startled by the noise, Jake jerked backwards, fell, heaved up and grabbed the stroller to push it full-tilt back into the bushes.

  Colleen nodded slowly, as though her chin were weighted. “They say divorce is always hardest on the children.”

  Theo jolted to his feet, conscious even as he did of how awkwardly similar his motion was to the six-year-old’s a moment ago. “We’re not getting divorced, we’re working through this. What did Joe tell you, anyway?” Theo wasn’t actually sure he was right about the divorce, and less sure he could convince Colleen, who was quite capable of eavesdropping on his sad drunk conversations with Joe. Or just reading his mind.

  A breeze lifted snarls of ginger curls around her shoulders. “He said it’s a trial separation. And that I shouldn’t ask about it.”

  “And how are you doing on that?”

  “Yeah, Joe accidentally put the hydro bill into a recycling bin instead of a mailbox yesterday. I don’t obey him on principle. Am I getting dinner tonight?”

  Theo willed his ribcage to expand with air, then contract to press out all the frustration and tension and rage. He’d been doing Rae’s yoga DVDs after the kids were asleep, but by then he was so exhausted he might not quite have had it right.

  “There’s, yeah, some scalloped turnips in the fridge, just microwave’em. And tofu steaks from the weekend, if you want. The kids will probably just want the turnips, but give them the tofu if they ask.”

  Colleen put her face on her knees. “The kids will want scalloped turnips?”

  “It’s a free meal, Colleen.”

  She raised her head, suddenly bright and interested. “Are we going to argue?”

  “What?”

  “You sounded . . . exasperated. If I’m mean, will you be mean back?”

  “I wasn’t being mean, I just didn’t want you to – ”

  “Yeah yeah yeah. Better than Joe, just sitting there like a lump of – ”

  “That’s why you threw the shoe? Because your father is an insufficient debater?”

  “He didn’t even make a sound when it hit him. That’s how I know it didn’t hurt.”

  “That’s not a way to know. Especially with Joe.”

  “She’s not coming, you know. This is a joke.”

  He sighed, and then tried to make the sigh into a yoga breath. “You can’t make me angry, and you can’t make me think Rae won’t come. People get held up at work. Buses get stuck. Those are reasonable explanations. And there are others.”

  “Not for why she wouldn’t have called and used two 3-cent cellphone minutes to tell you that.”

  “There might be something wrong with the – ”

  “There isn’t. Just for argument’s sake say there isn’t.”

  “Fine. But how do you explain why she’d ask me to dinner and then not come?”

  “Cruelty?”

  “Separation doesn’t mean Rae hates me. Even divorce wouldn’t mean that.”

  “Doesn’t have to have hate involved. Might not even be about you, or anyone. Some people are just naturally cruel.”

  “Rae is not cruel,” he said fast and involuntarily, words expelled like the whoosh of breath that would have come out had Colleen punched him in the stomach.

  “No?”

  “Marley, sit down. It won’t work if you do that.”

  The children were at the backyard gate, almost behind the porch. Marley was flopped forward over her chair-bar, with Jake in front of her, a long stick in his right hand, drawn up as if to stab. But of course he would not do that. Theo gathered himself to speak sharply, to take the stick away, to parent.

  Without turning her eyes from Marley and Jake, Colleen murmured, “Do you think I’m cruel?”

  Theo froze half-standing, in a kind of pre-modern hunch. “Cruel?”

  “Because I threw a shoe at my father, who is basically a nice person that just doesn’t know what the hell is going on? Should I just have let him be, in his ignorance?”

  Theo felt his shoulders relax, let himself sink back onto the step. He suddenly knew what to say. “I do think you should have let him be. Because the punishment didn’t educate him, did it? There should only be punishment when it has the capacity to reform. Otherwise it’s just energy wasted, pain – cruelty. Joe learned nothing about your wish for privacy from that shoe, so nothing was gained. You were cruel.”

  Colleen seemed to slip backwards without actually moving, shrink into herself. But then she said, “So you’ll learn nothing, then, if Rae stands you up tonight?”

  “Colleen, I told you, she’ll – ”

  “There is no lesson she could teach you, that she could be hoping to teach you, by not showing up tonight?”

  He gave her his gaze again, though he was starting to suspect he shouldn’t. “What could I learn, from that?”

  She wiggled her whole body, a wave from ankles to ears. “Oh, you know, that she doesn’t love you, that you shouldn’t be married to her.”

  He ignored the soap-operatic tone, the high-schooler’s conception of marriage as a poker-hand that can be won or lost once and never replayed. He concentrated on she doesn’t love you, tried to hear it as a statement, and then to believe it.

  It didn’t take – he just pictured his wife bent over a tortoise skeleton at the ROM, then her pacing the living room with Marley in her arms and graham cracker crumbs down both their sweaters. Then Rae with her head thrown back at orgasm, mouth open pink, dark hair strewn on an orange-juice stained pillow.

  “Maybe I got the date wrong. Or she did.” He was pleased to hear ease in his voice, dreamy absent-mindedness, and assurance.

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  He choked on air.

  She gazed at him, the green of her eyes greyer than her father’s, more muted, although not dull. Like a camouflaged python. “It’s your turn to talk.”

  “That’s not a rule that’s strictly observed.”

  “I’m observing it.”

  “So . . . are you ok with that?”

  “Well, I wasn’t raped or anything.”

  “I’m just not certain what you want me to do with this information, Colleen.”

  “Do? Does anyone do anything with information? It’s just for knowing.”

  �
�Some information, yes, requires a reaction.”

  “So what could be the reaction I want? What could I want you to do?”

  “I can’t tell you what you want.”

  “I’m not asking that. I didn’t know I could want anything. I’m asking you to give me a list of options and I’ll choose.”

  “Well . . .” He knew he was being baited, but Jake was at the hedge unfastening Marley from her stroller, his best meal all week had been turnips, and his wife was a) in her Post-it feathered cubical, b) in her snug bachelor apartment, eating spaghetti out of a tin and thinking of the lesson she had taught him, c) fucking a stranger or, at least, a stranger to Theo, or d) something he couldn’t ever imagine.

  The worst part was that he knew d) was correct and no matter what course the future took, he would never know what Raeanne had been doing at six that evening. At least Colleen was there, with her ugly dress high on her straight narrow thigh, which was parallel his Zellers jeans. He loved her because she was there, speaking to him, passing the time. This had always been his undoing.

  “Well, Colleen, if you don’t see any options, there probably aren’t any. Really.”

  “That’s how it works?”

  “In this case. It’s not like a menu, the lemonade or the boilermaker. These are internal choices, about what you want.”

  “Boilermaker?”

  “It’s a drink, a beer and a shot . . . It doesn’t matter, you’re too young to drink.”

  “I am?”

  “Oh, god, what part of teenager class did you miss? You don’t tell your dad’s friends this stuff.”

  She nodded as though taking notes on the customs of foreign tribes.

  “. . . .unless you are seeking some sort of reaction from them, which you claim you can’t even imagine.”

  “But you choose your reaction. So how should I know what you’ll do?”

  “So you told me about losing your virginity . . . to see what I’d do?”

  For the first time that afternoon answers didn’t bounce out of her throat the moment he stopped speaking. She flicked the skirt up, down, up. Finally, with the whisper of a smile on her chapstick lips, she said, “More or less.”

  Theo let the silence slide on. The children had laid themselves down on the grass, side by side, either sleeping or pretending to sleep, probably not dead. He didn’t know how Jake had wrestled Marley out of the stroller, got her lying supine in the grass, high blades nearly covering her pink arms and legs. Jake himself was facedown in the green, apparently taking no questions.

  It was nearly seven o’clock by the thin silver hands of his watch.

  “Dolly . . .”

  Colleen smiled more broadly in answer, a half nod.

  Theo turned his head to the west, where his wife would come from, and to the pink hot beams of the setting sun. He wondered what she would see if she came walking down the street right now. Or whenever she finally did.

  To: All onsite employees; all temporary employees;

  all telecommute staff

  CC: Belinda Martin

  From: Human Resources Administration

  Re: Personnel change

  Tuesday 3:06 p.m.

  This is to inform all staff that Mai-Nam Stephens has left

  the Technical Support team to pursue other endeavours;

  we wish her all the best. Please be assured that all calls

  to the support team or emails to support@dream.com will

  continue to receive a quick and helpful response.

  Please feel free to contact anyone in Human Resources if you have any questions or concerns.

  COMPLIMENTARY YOGA

  THE BIRTHDAY COFFEE BREAK for Suyin is awful – Grig jams the coffee maker, forgets the English words to “Happy Birthday,” and no one eats anything. All the customer service reps show up because she’s supervisor, but they leave almost right away. Suyin just says, “Ah, thank you so much, guys” and goes back to her office. Grig was so happy to pull Suyin in the birthday-duties draw – he needs to make up for his shitty performance evaluation, plus she’s got such a hot little ass – and now it’s just a wasted forty dollars on Cinnabon. He ends up giving them all to Wayne, the big black guy who sits in the call-station beside his.

  “Why people don’t like Cinnabons, Wayne?”

  “Everyone likes Cinnabons. But most CSRs are single chicks, dude, and they’re not gonna risk getting fat with this shit.” Wayne carefully sharpies WAYNE on each box.

  “I hate fat chicks.” Grig thinks for a moment. “Suyin has no boyfriend?”

  Wayne shoves the boxes into the crowded staff fridge and tries to smash it shut. A magnet shaped like a sushi roll falls on the floor. “Someone fuck a tightass like that? Not likely.” The fridge finally seals, but they hear something thump, then crash, within.

  At home, Grig bothers Mariska like her younger brother, which people sometimes mistake him for. Usually people think they’re at least from the same country. But they aren’t, and they speak only English at home because Mariska says a good Ukrainian doesn’t speak Russian even though she totally can. If he even starts a conversation with zdrastvuite, she talks all day about what a putz Yushchenko is.

  “Do you worry about being fatso?” he asks her from the open bathroom doorway.

  “No!” She is wringing water out of her pink sweater, her long pink nails delicately splayed. “You tell me I should?”

  “No!” Grig looks at her ass, feels her glare, looks away. “Canadian girls worry.”

  Mariska hangs her sweater on the clothesline between their faces. “Canadian girls are fat – they should worry.”

  “Some girls are not fat and still they worry to keep the fat away . . . .” Grig knows he said something a Canadian would laugh at, but Mariska’s English is even worse than his.

  Mariska squeezes a pink lace thong until the whole thing disappears in her palm, then flips it over the line. “Grig, you think I am fatso!!”

  “No! I think you are skinny girl. How do you do that, is what I want to know?”

  Mariska’s nearly invisible eyebrows twist and scrunch.

  “What you eat? To be so . . .” He makes the hourglass gesture. She has a bra in her hand now, tightly squeezing. Grig puts his hands down. “. . . beautiful.”

  “I eat normal food, but not like cow. You see me, I don’t hide nowhere – breakfast is the yoghurt and the Corn Pops. Lunch – ” she pronounces it lunk; Grig wonders if he does this, too “ – at work is sometime chicken, sometime shrimp. At home, maybe potato in coat – in jacket? I like potatoes anyhow . . . .”

  Grig realizes that this is one of the things Mariska could talk about for hours, and he’s not actually learning what he wanted to know.

  “So you eat normal food like everybodies . . . .”

  “Like you, Grig. I eat what you eat, don’t I? We have same fridge, same stove.”

  “I – ” Grig throws his hands down across his small soft body. “I do not look like you. So what you do – exercises?”

  Mariska laughs, rough and breathy, with her mouth wide and tongue peeking, reminding him that he once found her hot. That feeling is gone now. He knows her too well, knows the ease with which he could have her, since she’s had everyone. That makes her unfuckable.

  “Grig, we not all have the perfect English for the cushion desk jobs! Some of us have to run fast with heavy trays so the managers don’t yell and the customers don’t pinch asses. Jack Astor’s is exercise gym, all right.”

  “Oh.” Grig nods. Marishka knows nothing that applies to Suyin, it seems.

  “But the womens who come to the restaurant . . .” she walks into the hall, not looking back to see if he follows “. . . they worry about skinny. They don’t eat bread, don’t eat croutons, talk talk talk about the yoga. They put their mats under the table to trip me.”

  “Mats?” he asks, trailing her to the front door.

  Mariska rolls her eyes; she was like a sister he couldn’t yell at or shove. “Skinny r
ich bitches are lazy, but still they must exercise, so they do exercises lying down. Is like exercise nap, to get stretchy. For princesses, for rich girls.”

  “Stretchy?”

  “Yah. If you using my computer to Google, take your shoes off in my room.”

  What he wants happens in the worst way possible. Suyin sends him an email – no mass-mail, addressed only to him – but it’s “feedback.” His call logs are bad. He’s had lot of hang-ups, lot of escalations, lots of confusion. “I be right back in the queue-up” is listed as off-script dialogue that the subscribers to Dream Parent couldn’t comprehend.

  He has to go see her. Just the two of them in her tiny office that is glass on two sides, so all the CSRs know Grig and Suyin are alone together. Suyin sits facing the glass corner and motions for Grig to sit on the opposite side of a table so narrow they could kiss across it without standing up. But the table is scattered with goldenrod complaint forms, Suyin’s face is red, and it’s clear there will be no kiss. Maybe not clear through the window though – maybe everyone thinks they’ve got something hot going on.

  “I think you know . . . probably know . . . why I . . . Don’t you?” She sounds nervous – that he is so close?

  The thing to do is be cool. “I have a few problems, I know, Suyin.” He has practiced pronouncing her name, gets it perfect: soo-YIN. “I must do better.”

  “Yes, exactly.” She brightens and finally looks at him. “We need to go over some things.”

  He says nothing, because she has spoken too fast and he was looking at her chest. She is wearing a soft minty sweater with a tiny V-neck – too small to even show a hint of a breast. Wayne is a little right, she is tight-assed, a bit frigid in her clothes.

  When he returns his gaze to her face, Grig realizes she has said more things and he doesn’t know what they are. He says, “I do better.”

  “Yeees. You must be more patient with customers. When you interrupt, you not only miss info, it costs you the customer’s trust. People don’t like being cut off.”

  “I must get the call-times down, yes? And many who call, they are old lonelies, talking and talking, pointless.”