She of the Mountains (10 page)

This will be the last winter I spend in Edmonton.

While he shovelled his parents' driveway, refusing to wear the toque his dad had given him because it would mess up his hair.

This will be the last winter I spend in Edmonton.

While he waited for a bus that he had most likely missed and anticipated waiting another thirty minutes for the next one.

This will be the last winter I spend in Edmonton.

While he sat on his hands in her parents' car, desperate for heat, knowing that neither his hands nor the car would ever be truly warm again for the next six months.

This was his attempt at what his mom called
manifestation
, a technique he resorted to out of desperation. Edmonton's cold grip felt inescapable as he watched his friends and peers already buying property or cars or starting their full-time jobs or their master's degrees at the University of Alberta. He didn't know what came next for him, but he knew whatever it was, it began with a departure.

He entered Toronto for the first time on the packed airport shuttle. It was a grand but intimidating welcome, the city guarded by billboards, skyscrapers, and glass condos. He couldn't figure out if the city was trying to keep its inhabitants in or keep visitors out or both. Looking through the window, he felt himself disappear into what he saw—the endless concrete and the traffic.

It was this feeling of forgetting himself, or rather the version of himself that had never fully adapted to Edmonton, and the possibility of creating a new and better version of himself, that cemented his decision to move to Toronto a month later.

Convincing her to move wasn't difficult. She shared his frustration with living in a city where there was only one street, one bar, and one theatre where you would inevitably run into the one person you didn't want to see. She couldn't move right away because of her work contract but promised to join him as soon as she could.

He signed the lease for a decently priced bachelor on Huntley Street with the hope that the large balcony, which was half the size of the unit, would have space for a small swing where she could read and rock, facing the sunset. He furnished the apartment minimally, not just because he knew this place would be temporary.

In his parents' home, the furniture and accessories were the real inhabitants, a vase or frame or chair compulsively planted in every corner, as though there was an underlying fear of empty space. He suspected it had to do with his mom's obsession with not appearing poor, every piece declaring their family's financial respectability. He felt a sympathetic suffocation for their house and told himself that he would always place importance on function first, that his future homes would be built around needs, his needs, versus appearance. He bought a futon that acted as a couch by day, a bookshelf that was also used as a workstation, and a coffee table where he ate all of his meals. The
sole decorative presence was the sheer silver curtains, which let in just enough daylight and reminded him of her large collection of silver earrings.

Three months later, when she walked into the apartment, now their apartment, for the first time, he watched her face carefully, hoping she would approve of the choices he had made.

I love it.

But?

I really love it. It's perfect. But …

He laughed.

We can't sleep on a futon. We are adults. We need a bed.

A bed seemed to him a luxurious purchase. As he assisted her with the assembly of the headboard, he tried to ignore the futon behind them, now reassigned to play solely the role of couch. He was convinced the decision was less about adulthood, comfort, and her supposed back pains, and more about a personal grudge she had against the futon. Whenever they watched a movie, she would wriggle around on it for minutes, tackling different poses before settling with a loud sigh. But he was so happy to have her around all the time that he would have been delighted to throw the futon over the balcony if she so desired.

He loved seeing her toothbrush leaning on his, like miniature
figurines of themselves with clear, bristled faces. It pleased him to know that, from nine to five, while their physical bodies were functioning in distant cubicles, acquiring money to pay their bills, their toothbrushes stayed still and close in that steel cup. It didn't matter that the cup itself was filthy at the bottom from the dried-up water because they were in it together.

The toothbrush feeling, however, was sometimes interrupted by the dishes feeling or the laundry feeling.

I thought it was your turn?

                     
I thought it was your night?

Together they were learning not to underestimate the catastrophic power of a stack of soiled plates and cutlery or a basket of unsorted, clean socks and unfolded towels.

Under the strain of the necessary, everyday duties, they regressed, reverted.

She became a woman who was born in Tanzania and later banished from her home country. A woman who fell in love with a solemn and graceful man who sometimes preferred his solitude to her efforts to captivate with her daily account of a compilation of facts acquired from
People
magazine,
The View
, and word of mouth. A woman whose bustling bordered on comedy and who was therefore easily dismissed. A woman whose response to friction, or to her own sadness, was to walk away, shut the door, hole up.

He became a woman who was the second youngest daughter but the most responsible and therefore overloaded with tasks from her parents and siblings. A woman whose idea of loving was rooted in a quiet sense of duty, even when the request was unreasonable. A woman who often said
yes
either out of a sense of karmic obligation or a genuine inability to say
no
. A woman whose kindness and generosity were unmatchable and therefore caused a perpetual resentment which, at times, was volcanic, her love bursting out as lava.

He always knew when he was transforming into his mother because all of his surroundings would be covered by a pungent red hue. Then he would brew and stew until a faint smoke emerged from his nostrils.

I don't want to come home to this mess. I don't,
he said.
It's disgusting.

She would grow quiet, like her mother, her waters freezing over until completely solid. He wondered how she could ice him out.

Aren't you going to say something? Or are you just going to sit there?

She wondered how he could be so scalding. Each of their temperatures only intensified in response to the other. In the first months of living together, one of them would somehow find a means to moderate the other. She used reason:

I do all the cooking, right? Doesn't it make sense for you to do all the dishes?

He used shame:

Since when do you cook? We eat out almost every night.

But it never felt like a victory, the melting of ice, the extinguishing of fire.

It was by accident (and by chance), in a disagreement about something minor that neither of them would remember in a week, that he blurted the timeless and truest coming-of-age phrase:
I don't want to be my mother
.

They paused.

Neither do I
, she responded.

This realization dispelled the argument, their attentions now elsewhere, brainstorming about how they could have conflict in their own way, instead of merely performing behaviours they had observed in their respective childhood homes.

When you are mean, where is that coming from?

                     
I never want to be mean, especially not to you.

When you shut down, I get more agitated.

                     
I need time to think before I engage.

What if you think aloud? Tell me what is going on inside you.

                     
What if we took a ten-minute break instead?

Ten minutes is an eternity when I am hurt.

                     
But you know I would never want to deliberately hurt you, right?

They decided that the key lay in the window of time between each of their transformations. The person who had not yet turned would somehow have to find a way to cross the dividing lines unseen, get close enough in emotional proximity to shake the other with the crucial reminder:
We are on the same team!

Other variations included:

This is me, remember? Remember me?

or

I don't want to fight about _____, I love you.

These worked every time.

It had started again.

SCENE ONE

(
Setting: Nightclub, outside patio—stranger approaches one of his friends
)

Stranger 1:
Is he your friend?

Friend 1:
Yes.

Stranger 1:
Is he single?

Friend 1:
No, that's his partner.
(points at her)

Stranger 1:
Ha! No way, she's just his fag hag.

SCENE TWO

(Setting: Their workplace—two of her co-workers having lunch in the lunch room, third co-worker at microwave, overhearing)

Co-worker 1:
He is trying to pass for straight now. I kind of feel sorry for him.

Co-worker 2:
I actually feel sorry for her. I don't think she knows.

Co-worker 1:
Is that why she looks so sad and fat?

SCENE THREE

(Setting: A restaurant—two of their mutual friends face each other, sharing dessert)

Mutual friend 1:
They must have an open relationship …

Mutual friend 2:
Either that or they don't have sex.

Perhaps because he had been hearing it most of his life, the subtext was unmistakably clear:

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