Aftershock Read online

  Her own mother had barely batted an eye when Jules left home, university bound on a combination of scholarships and student loans. Good for you, dear, was the reaction, curdled by the unspoken undertones of, Fine, leave me here to suffer by myself. Jules, already packed, standing by the apartment door, looked at her mother’s glassy eyes, the flicker of the television the brightest light in the heavily curtained room, and knew what she was working to escape. High school had been about eyes on the prize: university would save her from her powdered-milk childhood, make her life anything but what it had been, make it clean and bright and easy. Not just for her, but also for her mother, and later, as it turned out, for her children. Her child. And it had done—chronic pain aside—and here she was. And Chloe fighting against all the benefits of Jules’s decades of relentless work was nonsensical, not to mention hurtful. It was like she wanted to start from scratch. What did she think the world would offer her?

  Two days before Chloe was due to fly out, Jules had found her sprawled on her belly on the living room floor, poring over a guidebook for New Zealand. Her knees were bent up so Jules could see the rips in her jeans. Her socked feet kicked idly, massive headphones hugged her ears. Jules flashed on an image, that shorn bleached head trying to ask directions in the slums of god knew where, and felt a rush of vertigo, had to sit on the couch to steady herself. She watched her only daughter and tried not to panic.

  How much money do you have? She wasn’t sure Chloe would even hear her, but she looked up right away and pulled the headphones off. Jules could hear Bob Dylan playing.

  Chloe chewed on her lip and squinted at her mother, deliberating.

  Just under four grand.

  It was paltry, for a year, and they both knew it. The school had refunded half the tuition they’d paid. The first semester residence fees, another seven grand, were just a writeoff. At least she wouldn’t have to cough up for the second semester. Jules let the silence ride while a tinny Dylan asked his unquantifiable questions about roads and seas.

  She knew Chloe would never ask her for money for her trip, would never ask for help of any kind. At four, she had been self-sufficient enough to refuse help tying her shoes, even if it took her twenty minutes. She’d taught herself to read, to ride a bike, to skate. The set of her jaw was an unspoken mantra: I don’t need you.

  In a moment of stubborn cruelty she couldn’t seem to suppress, Jules decided she wouldn’t offer money. Chloe would have to ask. Instead, she offered to drive her to the airport. She remembered now the slump of Chloe’s shoulders at the meagre olive branch, the pointed way she replaced her headphones to end the conversation.

  JULES LEANED BACK on the hotel bed, her topped-up Scotch propped on her stomach, her neck cradled in her travel-size memory foam neck pillow. A couple of hours of flipping between reality disaster shows, weight loss shows and news, a nap, an Oprah rerun, a couple more glasses of Scotch, another forty of Oxy and a cab ride later, she was knocking on the door of Drew’s west Toronto house.

  Drew bellowed her name as he opened the door, his massive mouth gaping from his gigantic head. Sometimes he was such an odd mix of frat boy and drag queen. He moved, in his orange plaid smoking jacket and purple ascot, with a grace that denied his three hundred pounds and sixty-odd years. He held both of Jules’s hands, kissed her on each cheek. He took her coat, then stood back to examine her outfit. She had struggled into her new olive-green suit, with its wrap-around silk jacket and pants that swirled at her ankles. She was a little worried that she wasn’t tall enough to pull it off. The saleslady had assured her it was a designer original, and that it was slimming; she thought she looked as short and squat as ever. The pressure of the waistband on her midriff was a constant reprimand about how much she drank and how little she exercised. But Drew was thumbing the drape of her sleeve and nodding. He’d sent her to the store where she’d bought it, told her it was time to leave Reitmans to the plebs, honey. Which was a bit harsh, she dressed better than that, although not by much. What professional success she had was clearly not based on her fashion sense. Jules wondered for the twentieth time why she was wearing it. She felt the jacket bunching around her waist and yanked it down.

  Drew name-dropped the up-and-coming designer. How chic.

  It should be for what I paid. I hate all clothes.

  I hear you, sweetheart. Well, you look stunning. No Rod?

  She shrugged uncomfortably at the compliment and twisted her mouth at the question. Emergency at work. Obviously.

  Obviously. Text message? He led her through a vault-ceilinged foyer into a huge living room where a young man in black was already seated.

  What else? Jules rolled her eyes, accepted a glass of red. Rod cancelling due to a work emergency was not just common, it was predictable. There were protocols. A text message tonight, flowers sent by secretary tomorrow. The message had come in the cab on the way over. She raised her glass to Drew’s and sipped. The wine was smoky and excellent.

  And this is Farzan.

  He turned to the man sitting on the mauve leather couch, as muted and intense as Drew was garish and genial. He was probably half Drew’s age, compact and neat with sharp, dark eyes. Drew sat beside him on the couch and held his hand, just in case there was any doubt that this was his new lover. Jules perched on the edge of a velvet armchair, angled straight-on in deference to her neck. Farzan nodded and smiled and said hello. Drew beamed at him. Well, hi there, Jules said, and drained her wine. She was happy to see Drew with someone again. It had been almost five years since Mikhail died. Drew motioned to the bottle on the sideboard. Grateful, she got up to refill her glass.

  Technically her boss, Drew was also her closest friend. One of her only friends. They’d known each other for years now, since he’d come on board at work, but fostering new friendships was not something she had done in earnest for a very long time and had never done easily. As she sat there in her Scotch-Oxy-wine-imbued daze, watching Drew fawn over Farzan, who was watching her silently top up her buzz, she remembered why. Even with the ones she loved, socializing could be excruciating.

  She’d said as much to her shrink last week, that the rewards weren’t worth the work. Dr. Morrow had in turn suggested that her lack of interest in others said more about her than it did about them.

  She turned her wineglass in her hand, watched the liquid legs ripple the inside of the glass. Yeah. Might need to change shrinks.

  But Drew was definitely one of the good ones. One of the best, even. Jules had trouble, sometimes, being in the world, interfacing with people. She knew that putting too much out there would bite you in the ass. Professional was not a problem. Meeting with colleagues, dealing with the partners, clients, fine. But the monthly cocktail parties always threw her into a long and repetitive loop. She knew she had to go; she dreaded it for days. She didn’t know how to talk to those people. Every conversation felt contrived and hollow yet left her uneasy she had revealed too much or seemed too drunk, worried her subordinates were shooting looks behind her back, her superiors shaking their heads as she turned away.

  But Drew would circulate among data miners and sales folk, an ambassador of jokes and generosity, changing the current of the room with every move he made, laughter and appreciation rippling in his wake. And for some reason, at one of these events a few years ago, Drew had homed in on Jules and in his effortless way asked how it was going. Jules had felt caught, not knowing if he was looking for a small-talk answer, which she was incapable of, or a real conversation, which filled her with a whole other world of anxiety. Do you really want to know? she’d asked him. And he’d laughed, whole body rocking back as he tipped up his head and said she could get back to him but in the meantime she looked like she could use a drink. He threw a trunkish arm around her shoulder and led her to the bar.

  SO, DREW SAID finally, and she looked up from her wine to see his hand resting on Farzan’s knee. She’s gone.

  Gone and gone. She is officially David’s problem. Jules raised her glass
again, this time to her daughter and her absent ex. Along with his new spawn. Hope he doesn’t fuck it up, she tried to joke, wondering if it was possible to fuck up worse than she had herself. Bolstered by the conversational burst, she braved ahead. Just the three of us, I guess?

  Drew and Farzan exchanged grins.

  Actually, no. I invited another friend.

  Jules could see where this was going. Drew did not like Rod.

  The doorbell rang.

  Right on time! Drew was moving across the living room and into the foyer before Jules could say anything more.

  To Farzan, she said, He’s very sweet, but, as she poured them more wine.

  It’s only dinner, Farzan said in a suede-textured voice that would have worked well on the radio. I think you’ll like him.

  You just met me.

  True. Just something about him. And he nodded in agreement with his own words. It wasn’t lost on Jules that it must be something about her too.

  Drew returned with a stocky, fair-haired man he introduced as Declan, who acknowledged Jules and Farzan with barely a nod, then flopped into an armchair as he commanded Drew:

  A drink, sir. Required for civilized conversation.

  Jules knew right away that Drew had misfired completely on this one. With his perfectly symmetrical acorn face, Declan was far too at ease with his Irish charm to ever have anything in common with someone as bitter and neurotic as Jules. If she even cared, which of course she didn’t.

  He took the glass of wine Drew handed him and proceeded to describe the traffic altercation he’d had on the way there. One of those stories in which the storyteller is unquestionably Doing The Right Thing, stopping to let an old lady cross the street, and provoking an Over The Top reaction of crass fury from the driver behind him, a reaction exponentially inflated when the Right-Thing-Doer repeated the Good Deed on the following block. Again, not at a crosswalk, again, holding up the growing line of cars behind, this time for a Mum With Kids. Declan got out of his chair to imitate the apelike strut of the Young Thug who had finally abandoned his Muscle Car to stalk up to the morally pristine driver, call him an asshole and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing stopping in the fucking middle of the fucking road. At which point the Mum shot the Young Thug a dirty look and rushed her children down the sidewalk while the Right-Thing-Doer only smiled, pointed out that he wasn’t the one who’d left his car parked in the middle of the street and drove off with a wave.

  Drew and Farzan laughed loudly and drank; Jules smiled politely and drank. Declan noticed and shrugged at her, suddenly humble, like he knew he was a bit much. So she told him, I would have yelled at you too if you’d stopped in front of me like that.

  Drew and Farzan laughed even louder, and Declan said, Well, you I would be scared of. Then she did laugh, to her own surprise, right from the belly, head tilted back.

  At dinner, with only the four of them at a table that easily sat twelve, Jules found herself directly across from Declan. There was no empty chair, no fifth-place setting. Drew had never expected Rod to show up. Well. Neither had she.

  Drew and Rod had first met at the obligatory corporate Christmas party the previous year. Rod thought Drew was too flamboyant. He would never admit it, but his discomfort around gay men in general was obvious. He called them homosexuals, for starters. And Drew found Rod annoying, said he tried too hard. Until he’d had a few drinks, at which point, Jules could only agree, he became intolerably pompous. Either way, boring, Drew said. But he could also be very sweet, and she’d found his oddness a good match to her own, his awkwardness easy to be around. And he was patient with her. Which, after five years of post-David celibacy (and a year and a half of peri-David abstinence), felt like her only chance at any kind of intimacy. She’d cringed when she’d explained this to Rod, hearing the language of her then therapist taking over her words, her thoughts, her self-understanding, and unable to stop it. She had emotional boundaries they would have to negotiate together if they were to navigate the maze towards physical closeness. And Rod, on this their third date, had nodded and kissed her and said good night. And then sent flowers to her at work the following day. Which made her think, I’m forty-five years old, and here’s this not totally repulsive, reasonably successful man, a doctor for chrissake, who says he likes me and wants to be with me, what exactly do I think I’m waiting for? A few weeks later they did start sleeping together, and he turned out to be as shy and patient in bed as out.

  He wasn’t especially handsome, with hair like rough black hay and shirts that were not just out of style but lacking it completely, but he was single and appeared emotionally and financially stable, and she knew that many women, of many ages, would see him as a “catch.” But his social skills were a bit off, so it made a kind of sense to her that she would be someone he was interested in. She was impatient and sharp-tongued and knew that some found her abrasive. The first time he had asked her out, she had asked him why. He hadn’t even looked surprised at the question but had said she was “pretty smart” (which offended her because she was very smart and didn’t need him to tell her so) and funny, which she supposed she could be in an acerbic, cutting sort of way. She’d been under the impression that Rod had no sense of humour, though, so that seemed inadequate as a selling point. But he also said he found her attractive, which wasn’t something she’d heard in a long time, and it made her curious enough about this odd, skinny man to see where it would go.

  After that first romp, which had been easy and pleasant and not odd at all (both a disappointment and a relief), as he lay beside her on his black silk sheets (okay, maybe a bit odd), he’d murmured sleepily that it was nice to be able to let down his guard. Jules, who felt rather attached to her guard, had stroked his hand and said nothing. She knew he was actually speaking of loneliness, and that was something she understood.

  So maybe their relationship lacked a certain fire, maybe he worked a lot of long hours and had to skip the occasional dinner party (not that Jules tried to go to many), and maybe she sometimes missed what he was saying because she had completely tuned out while he was talking. Were any of these things really that much to complain about? At least she wasn’t alone.

  Except that now, two years later, here she was at a dinner party and she was alone, because Rod had to work, as usual, or maybe he just said that because he didn’t like one of her only friends. But either way, here she was. Having dinner with a loud-laughing Irish guy with a sadness in his eyes that unsettled her deeply. Who kept looking at her sideways. Who smoked while she ate.

  Arrivals.

  There she is, Davey. Oh my Lord—she’s practically bald!

  Amanda’s voice sliced through the bustle of the terminal. People turned to look as I leaned against the weight of my duffle and navigated the crowd. You’d think none of them had seen a girl with a buzz cut before. A woman in heels caught my eye and looked me up and down with aggressive distaste. I snarled at her. She looked away quickly.

  When I dropped my bag at their feet with a bodily thud, Amanda, five feet tall and muscled like a marathon runner, shocked me with a brisk embrace. I’d always thought she hated me, but she said, Honey, look how gorgeous you are, as David beamed at me, scooped me into a tight bear hug. He felt smaller than I remembered, or maybe I’d never realized how short he really was. His faint smell of old books. I squeezed him back, surprised at my own rush of emotion, how hard it was to let go.

  Amanda laughed, a warm chuckle that sounded out of character. I pulled back, embarrassed and ready to scowl at her. But she wasn’t laughing at me, she wasn’t looking at me at all. I followed her eyes down to the small face that peered up at me from behind David’s legs, waiting like a feral kitten to see if I was friend or foe. Well, I was waiting to see too. Dark curls, cherub cheeks. Just way too fucking cute. Easy to hate.

  This is your big sister, Char. Chlo.

  I blinked in surprise. I’d asked to be called Chlo years ago, but my family customarily either forgot or refused. />
  C’mere, David said, and reached down for the small hand that was hooked through a belt loop at his hip, trying to draw the kid out from hiding. But she wasn’t having any of it and retreated farther behind him.

  She’s no fool, I said. David laughed, and Amanda bent down to scoop up the child, who then buried her head in her mother’s shoulder.

  Are you being shy? Amanda asked her redundantly, and David mussed her hair.

  THEY TOOK ME to their house in the suburbs of Christchurch. Amanda drove. I sat in the back seat with Char, who stared at me from her car seat. She had a floppy plush dog half her own size on her lap, and together they watched me, my very own panel of judges.

  This is Spot, she told me, which was a dumb name for a plain beige dog, but whatever. He’s my dog, she added.

  Yeah, I said. I gave them a polite smile and turned away to stare out the window. When I glanced back a few moments later, she was sound asleep, which I considered perfect. I’m not much of a kid person.

  As we passed through downtown, David catalogued the earthquake damage of the preceding year. The spire had come off the cathedral. The city’s tallest structure, a hotel, had been badly shaken, then collapsed, along with a third of the city’s buildings. I tried and failed to imagine the city “before,” when structures stood firmly and roads ran smoothly. I couldn’t picture anything but the wreckage before us.

  We were really lucky, David said. Our neighbourhood was totally flooded, a lot of people we know lost their homes. We just had to fix three picture frames and tear up the driveway.

  Don’t forget the water damage, said Amanda.

  I didn’t forget. He turned back to me. We also had some water damage. His eyes went to Char and his whole face softened. He smiled at me and I knew this was a moment when I was supposed to admire his other child, feel affection, smile warmly back at him, but I just didn’t have it in me, and what played across my face was grimace at best. David turned back around, but I knew I’d hurt him.