ESCAPE TO THE ISLAND

SO THE PROBLEM WAS, Richard and I couldn’t really handle the parenting thing anymore.

It wasn’t as though our Joshua-John was a bad kid. Far from it. He was great. You couldn’t have asked for a better kid. Sweet, polite, kind-hearted. When he was a baby, especially, no prob-lem. Sure, there was all the stuff we had to do, changing diapers and giving him bottles and bathing him and all that. He was a good sleeper and didn’t cry much. We mostly kept him in his crib or his swing or the Jolly Jumper or the stroller, which only minimally impeded our own activities, so no complaints there.

Then he started kindergarten and his brain just exploded. Suddenly he wanted to talk to us all the time. I’d pick him up from after-school daycare and as soon as we got in the door he’d be babbling on about his day, and Richard and I would be like, “Whoa, whoa, we just got home too and we need to unwind a bit, you know, before delving into any sort of conversation here.” The two of us have always gotten that about each other — that a mental and emotional buffer is not only preferable but necessary. Unfortunately, Joshua-John did not get it.

Still, we were amazed at the progress he was making. He had friends. I really didn’t think any of the other kids would like him, since he could be such a know-it-all sometimes. But life is full of surprises, and once our boy was in the system he seemed to be getting along fine. I guess we’d done our jobs pretty well, thank you very much.

It soon became clear, though, that he was going to keep growing and learning and figuring things out, and asking more and more questions that we’d have to find answers to. You can only look up so many facts on the Internet before your child starts to think that maybe you don’t know anything. We had to make up some of the answers ourselves, which used a sizeable chunk of energy that I will fully admit was in very short supply those days. The dilemma became: if you don’t keep some of that energy for yourself — to funnel into your own creative pursuits or simply to get through the day — how can you, in such a depleted state, be expected to parent effectively? That’s a question I’d like an answer to. Because children really take it out of you. Yes, okay, they give you love, but it comes at a cost. What kind of a person puts a cost on love?

Here’s the real issue, though. One day, while I was flipping through a magazine and Joshua-John was peacefully making a craft — and I knew that was something to be thankful for, that he could entertain himself like that; give the kid a toilet-paper tube and some string and he’d spend a good hour turning them into a pet snake — I thought to myself, I wake up and you’re here. Then you go to school and we get a break for a while, but then school finishes and daycare finishes and you come back home and you’re here for at least a couple of hours until you fall asleep. And then you’re still here, but at least I can sit on the couch with your father and watch something stupid on Netflix for an hour before I collapse. Then there you are again in the morning and we have to make you breakfast, get you dressed, and send you off to school. And that cycle was going to repeat, forever.

Television certainly helped. Joshua-John liked a lot of different shows, a really wide range, so that was good. But he’d get bored easily, his attention span wasn’t the greatest, so eventually he would look up at me with his big, blue eyes and say, “Will you please play with me?” I mean, Jesus.

On top of all that, there was the never-ending worry about the future. There are a lot of problems in this world, and I feel grateful every day that Richard and I are probably not going to be around to see the worst of it. But it sucks for Joshua-John that he’s going to inherit the Earth when every storm is an extreme weather event and all the drinkable water is privately owned, and he’ll have to buy his water at the store, and maybe he’ll be smart and buy it on sale but good luck with that because his parents certainly aren’t coupon users. I know we should be; I know there are deals to be had; but I just can’t bring myself to care. When the weekly flyers arrive, either his father or I will immediately dump them into the recycling bin — which, at least, is a step in the right direction.

When I go shopping, I just go. I don’t even make a list. It’s more fun that way, more spontaneous. When you’re the parent of a small child, you get your kicks wherever you can find them. It’s a dull, dull job. And the responsibility of it! It’s a killer. And they were starting to really pile up on us, the expectations — both the ones we placed on ourselves (a low bar, admittedly) and the ones society was foisting upon us. And then all of a sudden his teachers were breathing down our necks — fill out these forms, tell us if he wants one slice or two for Pizza Day (two, obviously) — and it was all getting to be too much.

So one evening after we put Joshua-John to bed, Richard and I sat down and looked at our options, which were limited, let’s face it, and at the end of our discussion and after some half-hearted sex that seemed like a good idea at the time but ultimately left us both feeling old and vulnerable, we decided we would get a nanny.

THE WOMAN WE FOUND seemed fine when we first hired her. Her résumé was good and all of her references checked out. She had a nice smile, a nice way about her.

Joshua-John loved her immediately, which was notable, because Joshua-John didn’t like a lot of things.

I put a potato in front of him once. Set it down on his plastic plate that was shaped like a spaceship, which was the only plate he’d eat from. There was no rhyme or reason for that, of course. At least if he’d used it as a prop to fire up his imagination, to role-play being an astronaut and zooming to the moon, I could’ve understood it. But there was zero interaction with the spaceship plate — he just needed the spaceship plate.

So I put the potato on it, and he looked at the ugly, brown tuber sitting there, and then he looked at me.

I said to him, “That’s a potato, Joshua-John. That’s what french fries are made of.”

Because earlier, when I’d said we were having spaghetti for dinner, he had screamed that he only wanted french fries.

I was standing at the stove, poking at the pasta with a fork but feeling my eyeballs wander to the spot under the sink where I always keep a bag of spuds, and I thought to myself, No, Joyce. You are not giving in. Not this time.

First of all, I don’t own a deep fryer. Second of all, I know it’s technically possible to make french fries without a deep fryer, but the process is much more time consuming, and at the end of it, I knew with absolute certainty that if my homemade fries didn’t look and feel and taste exactly like the ones they make at McDonald’s, Joshua-John wouldn’t go near them anyway. In a fit of desperation, I rummaged in the freezer to see if we had any McCain five-minute shoestrings, because sometimes he would deign to eat those, but we were all out.

I was feeling a little resentful, and yes, also a little angry, just right at that moment, because I was tired and I wanted my son to stop his whining and complaining and demanding and to calmly and cooperatively consume the meal I had prepared for us. So I thought, Let him see where his precious pommes frites come from.

He started to cry.

Then he picked up the potato and hurled it at me, and I said, “That’s it. You are not going to the zoo tomorrow.”

Which was a relief to me, really, because I’ve never liked the zoo.

What was I supposed to do? Just stand there and take it? I had to show Joshua-John that women can be tough in the face of adversity, and that a mother is not just some soft, nurturing lump without any needs of her own.

Richard wasn’t there for the potato incident. He was at work.

So much for feminism, right?

I WENT TO UNIVERSITY in the nineties. Back then the whole girl-power thing was so huge that a guy would open a door for you, and then very hesitantly ask if his door-opening made you feel uncomfortable, because of course he was aware that you fully had the power to open the door for yourself, and he only wanted to be polite, but if his politeness was offensive in any way — if you felt, for example, that it was sending the message that you needed a man’s help to enter or exit a build-ing — then he would totally understand, and he could hold the handle at the top while you grasped it at the bottom, and in that way you could jointly accomplish the fair and non-discriminatory transfer of door-handle ownership, and then you could go your separate but equal ways, and smile at each other or not, but probably not, because sometimes when a man smiled at a woman it could mean something else, which could make people feel uncomfortable.

That’s how Richard and I met.

Twenty years later, I had his baby, and now we might as well be living in the fifties.

Except on top of raising our child and doing all the housework, I get to haul my behind to a crappy office job every day. So whoever invented girl power can choke and die on her invigorating messages of equality, as far as I’m concerned.

WE CAN’T CONTROL THINGS. We think we can, but we can’t.

As much as we like to tell everybody that we’re satisfied with our lives the way they are, pronounce about the contentment that permeates our days, have conversations with other parents in the schoolyard about this or that aspect of our children’s routine and pretend that we are somehow invested in those aspects — “Yes, I agree, the games they play in gym class sound pretty fun, and inventive” — don’t we all yearn to be more than what we are, to prove to all our high-school frenemies and smug aunts that we will actually achieve the lofty goals we’d set for ourselves way back when? “Oh, really? Good for you. We can’t all be winners at life but I’m sure you’ll be the exception.”

I do.

I don’t know about Richard, but Richard has other things going for him. Richard is a man, and men have certain freedoms, and I for one am not advocating for the criminalization of those freedoms. Maybe just a reduction, but definitely not an outright embargo. In any case, Richard told me once that his biggest dreams had already been realized — to be a husband and a father. And I said, “Yes, fair enough, but did you want to be those things with us?” And he said, “Of course.” But he said it fast, maybe too fast, so who even knows about him.

We can only truly know ourselves, that’s the terrifying fact at the bottom of it. And I know I want to be a successful cartoonist.

I already have a character. She’s an ambivalent mother named Trudy and she is, if I say so myself, hilarious. She works at an office job that she hates and she’s married to a man she has no respect for, and she has a young daughter who is start-ing school and of course that presents all sorts of opportunities for comedy. She is also having an affair with the kindergarten gym teacher, and after the two of them finish their furtive coupling in seedy motels, they brainstorm fun physical activities for the children and amuse each other by concocting silly names for the games, such as Jungle Jimmies and Who Put the Coconuts in the Pony’s Mouth? These are of course repeated at the dinner table in Trudy’s home, when she and her clueless, cuckolded husband ask their daughter about her day.

I FIND RICHARD MORE attractive now than when we were in university. He’s slightly more macho. He used to burn incense in his dorm room, and to this day the smell of sandalwood turns my stomach.

A few weeks after we started going out, he wove matching “loveship” bracelets for us out of multi-coloured twine. The minute he fastened mine around my wrist, it chafed, so I told him it was nice and all, and thanks, but I had to cut it off immediately. He said he respected my decision. He wore his until the dye faded and the strands weakened and eventually disintegrated on their own.

God, I used to despise him. His simpering. The way he’d ask me after every reverent caress, “Does that please you, Goddess?” His tabbouleh breath falling on me like an avalanche of male insecurity.

Those days are long gone.

Richard also used to have weirdly feminine curls that framed the admiring gaze he’d fix on me with eerie intensity. A few of the rugby players on our floor in residence called him “Poodle Baby” because of that hair, and whenever I heard them lob the nickname his way, any remnants of lust for him would drain out of me completely.

Now he shaves his head because he’s going bald, so there are no more curls to squirm against my face and neck when we “make love.” Even more of a relief, we’ve stopped “making love” altogether, because who has the time? If Richard’s in the mood, I’ll lube up and he’ll get in and out, and then he’ll fall asleep and I’ll lie there staring at the shadow that always forms in the slanted corner of our ceiling, which looks like a witch’s hat.

I still don’t have orgasms, but that’s my fault because it’s my own responsibility to figure out what does the trick, and I find masturbation unnerving. All that furtive reckoning with a hand mirror, all that dedicated focus on oneself with “A Girl Like You” by Edwyn Collins on repeat. The sensations that build and build until you feel like you’re standing on the edge of a cliff and you want to jump, you do, but you’re afraid to fall because falling means death so you just keep standing there, until eventually you turn around and go back home and whip up a cheese casserole.

Still, there’s the sneaking sense that we’ve lost something, as women. Exactly what, I couldn’t tell you. But something.

THE NANNY’S NAME IS Felicia.

I knew a girl with the same name back in high school who was shaped like a cello and would go behind the portables with any boy who asked. A lot of them did, and then they’d tell everybody about it afterwards, and one day I heard that she got pregnant and had an abortion but it was all for the best because the fetus had too many kidneys, which was a shame.

But our Felicia was different. For instance, at our introduc-tory meeting when Richard complimented her on the form-fitting dress she was wearing, she looked at me and said, “I got it at Marshalls. My friend works there and she lets me use her staff discount. If you’re interested, I could hook you up.”

With all her talk about shopping, my husband got turned right off and gave us a vacant stare and stood up and said he was going to make himself a sandwich, did anyone else want anything? And Felicia and I smiled at each other and said, pretty much in unison, “No, thanks.”

Once he’d left the room and disappeared into the kitchen, I said, “‘Felicia’ sounds sort of Irish. Are you Irish?”

She said, “No, but everybody asks me that.”

I said, “I’ve been told I have Finnish eyes, but I don’t know what that means.”

And she nodded, like maybe she knew what it meant, but it didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered except for the two of us sitting there, discussing the bedtime routine of the child playing at our feet, whom I was about to leave in her care so I could go to a restaurant with his father and eat breadsticks and make observations such as, “Why do some breadsticks have sesame seeds on them and some don’t? The ones without sesame seeds aren’t even worth anybody’s time,” in lieu of an actual conversation.

We figured we should test her out before fully entrusting our son’s well-being to this person we didn’t really know. But everyone has to start somewhere, and when we came home and Joshua-John’s door was closed and he was presumably sleep-ing soundly on the other side, we couldn’t have been happier. Her rates were so good, and she seemed so responsible. She even washed up the dishes before we came home!

So we told Felicia she was hired, right there on the spot.

She started arriving bright and early every morning. We gave her a key so she could let herself in and get Joshua-John up, which allowed us to sleep in a bit and then get ready for our own days with minimal hassle.

She was great at her job and we were thrilled with our decision to hire her. She’d get Joshua-John all ready for school, walk him there, drop him off, and then after a few hours to herself, she’d pick him up at three o’clock. Then she’d entertain him until Richard and I got home. She’d also manage to cook us a wonderful meal and have it steaming on the table when we walked in the door. Nothing fancy, but always enjoyable, and wholesome. Just like her personality.

For the first few weeks, we’d thank her and send her on her way at that point. But then we started asking her to stay longer and longer. At first only for dinner, because she was so good at getting Joshua-John to eat all of his vegetables. Then we kept her on hand to assist with the story-reading and tucking-in portion of the evening. Eventually, we were paying her right up until our own bedtimes. Partly because she was so helpful, but mostly because she was just such pleasant company.

YOU KNOW HOW YOU think your life is going to go one way, but then it doesn’t?

Before I met Richard, I had a very tumultuous relationship with a complete asshole who didn’t give a shit about my feelings. I was sure I would marry him. We had this passion, this fire, that was extremely compelling at the time. I never knew where I stood with Darius, and that uncertainty kept me sizzling for him. We’d make plans to go on a date and he wouldn’t show up and then he’d call me later that night, drunk, and tell me I was the only girl he’d ever loved, and did I want to come over and lick him up and down, and I’d say yes, yes, a thousand times yes. And then I’d show up at his dorm room and he’d be in there with somebody else, usually a woman who was much more attractive than I was, and he’d smirk and slap her ass and send her on her way, and open his arms for me and I’d fall into them like a rag doll.

I confided this to Felicia one night after Richard and I returned home quite late from our first and only experience of indoor tandem skydiving, which was exhilarating, but also made us both throw up afterwards. She’d often encourage us to go on date nights, saying it was really no trouble at all, but we’d say we were just as happy to stay in. Then she started buying us gift certificates for things like the skydiving and couples massages and tango lessons and papier-mâché-heart-making workshops, which were of course impossible to refuse due to all the thought involved, but which made us feel hollow and anxious. Still, they were sweet gestures. And pricey! We gave her a raise at one point because we felt guilty she was spending such a big chunk of her earnings on us.

So we got in, and yawned and stretched and thanked Felicia again for the unique opportunity to hold hands in a wind tunnel, and she told us she’d had a lovely time playing trains with our son, and I wondered where she found the patience. Then Richard went up to bed, and I sat down next to her on the couch and asked if she’d ever been in love with a bad boy. And she said of course she had, wasn’t that a rite of sexual passage for all young women?

She told me that in her early teens she used to frequent a particular mall food court because there was a security guard there who gave her the eye every time she sat down with her meatball sub or pizza bagel or chicken teriyaki. When buying her lunch got to be too expensive, she started bringing a packed one from home just so she could continue to sit at one of the plastic tables and feel the ridges of the security guard’s utility belt as he brushed too close to her on his rounds. One day, he leaned over and murmured in her ear, “Come with me.” She didn’t really want to but part of her did, so she followed him to the back of the food court by the public restrooms. His key ring jangled as he unlocked a door she’d never noticed before, marked FOR SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY, and that was when she lost her nerve. She backed away and shook her head, saying, “No, thank you, I’ve changed my mind.” Then she swerved sideways and pushed through the door to the ladies’ room, which was empty and she was briefly alone before the guard walked in too, snarling at her, “You think you can escape to your little island and I’m not going to follow you?” He pressed her up against the wall so the hand dryer was digging painfully into her back, and he held her wrists over her head with one hand and he shoved the other down the front of her jeans. Luckily, right then the door swung open and a group of chattering new moms with their tiny new babies strapped to their chests filed in. The man released Felicia, but his presence was still obviously strange, and the moms stopped talking and scowled at him until he left.

“Which is why,” Felicia said, patting my knee, “I am indebted to all mothers, no matter what they’re like.”

I was still in shock from her story, so I can’t remember if I thanked her for that, or not.

SOMETIME LATER,FELICIA SAID she had a favour to ask.

We said, “Anything!”

The three of us were enjoying some wine and an assort-ment of cheeses, after Joshua-John had gone down, sitting comfortably together in the living room. Almost like family members, I remember thinking. But of course not exactly.

Felicia put down her glass and cleared her throat. She did everything delicately, but with purpose, so her throat-clearing sounded like a deliberate act, as if there was a morsel of pasta stuck in there from dinner, maybe, and she needed to dislodge it as well as broach the subject of taking our son trick-or-treating for Halloween.

“Oh,” I said. “You want to do that?”

“I’d really, really like to, yes,” said Felicia.

“Aren’t we supposed to do that?” said Richard.

No one answered him, so I asked her, “What’s he going to be, again?”

“A robot,” she said.

“Oh, yes.” I nodded. “I remember now.”

Richard ate some cheese. “What does the costume look like?”

“I made it out of empty egg cartons,” she told him.

“Ah,” he said. “Is that why there are so many eggs in the fridge now, just sort of rolling around?”

“Exactly.” She looked proud of him.

“What’s the weather supposed to be like on Halloween?” I asked her.

“Clear, though a bit cold,” she said. “But don’t worry — I designed his robot suit so he could wear it over his coat.”

“Clever,” said Richard.

Her cheeks reddened a little. “Thank you.”

He speared more cheese with a toothpick. “When is it, again?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Wow.”

I knew what he meant. It’s amazing how time flies when you’re a parent.

The three of us sat there for a while, finishing up our wine.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t see the harm in it.”

“Me neither,” said Richard.

“Do you want to stay in with me and hand out candy to the neighbourhood children?” I asked him.

“Not really.”

“Shall we go to a movie, then?”

“Sounds good.”

Felicia stood up. “Thank you,” she said, and gave us both affectionate glances before she left us for the night.

RICHARD AND I DIDN’T end up seeing a movie after all. He had to work late, and honestly I didn’t even care because nothing good was playing.

I came home early because I was feeling lonely, and ate dinner with Felicia and Joshua-John. She made us a dish she called “Halloweenies and Beanies,” which was baked beans with cut-up pieces of hot dog in it. It was surprisingly delicious.

After the meal, I asked Joshua-John if he would put on his costume for me, and he said, “It’s Halloween, Mommy. I have to put it on.”

And I said, “Of course.”

He ran to his room and Felicia ran with him because, she said, she had to help him pull the straps over his shoulders, otherwise the whole thing would fall apart.

I sat in the living room with my hands in my lap. I felt like I was waiting for my prom date to arrive and take me to the dance, wondering if he’d bring me a corsage because that would prove that he really, truly loved me.

When Joshua-John emerged — Felicia making a poor but endearing attempt at a drumroll behind him, banging her hands on her thighs for added effect — I couldn’t help myself. I stood up and clapped.

The costume itself was nothing special. It was just a bunch of empty egg cartons fastened together somehow — with tape? Glue? Staples? I couldn’t tell how she’d done it, which was part of the magic — and spray-painted silver. An empty Kleenex box, also spray-painted silver, was fitted over the top of his head, with two vaguely frightening red eyes drawn on the front.

My son’s face glowed with pride, his grin stretching all the way across. When I applauded, he took a stiff bow, then stuck out his arms and straightened his back and shuffled over to me. He got as close as the bulky outfit would allow, and sort of nuzzled his Kleenex box against my side and then peered up at me, and I saw Felicia had painted his little face silver too. The effect was unsettling because suddenly he seemed like he wasn’t my child at all. Even though I could tell that under the makeup, yes, there were my boy’s shining blue eyes and sweet snub nose, and there were his perfect, plump lips all puckered up like a fish gasping for air.

“I think he wants to give you a kiss,” said Felicia. “Only it’s hard for him, because he can’t move very well.”

“Ah,” I said. “All right, then.” So I bent over and gave him a peck. The greasy pigment that transferred to my own mouth made me wince, but I didn’t wipe it off until Felicia had looped the handle of Joshua-John’s trick-or-treat bag over his arm, led him to the foyer, helped him into his boots, and then told him to wave goodbye to me before she closed the door behind them.

AFTER THEY LEFT, I turned out all the lights because I’d been expecting to go to a movie with Richard and hadn’t bought any candy to hand out.

I sat in our dark house and considered turning on the TV because I wanted to watch something, but the light of the screen might have given my presence away, and I didn’t want the teenagers to be angry with me.

I sat on the couch and thought about what I wanted. What do I want? What do I want?

And then I knew.

I crept to our front window and slid it open slightly and pulled up the blind, but only a few inches. I had to hunch over awkwardly to peer out, but that was better than having my entire form outlined for potential hooligans to detect, and then punish.

The street was packed with children and their caregivers rushing up and down the sidewalks, zigzagging across garden paths, trampling over lawns. The air was full of happy shrieks and the rustling of bags as they filled up with candy, as well as various spooky sound effects being piped out of open doors: rattling chains, spine-chilling howls, anguished moans.

Adults huddled in laughing clumps, fond heads wagging. I didn’t expect to see Felicia and Joshua-John because I figured they’d be long gone by now, up and around a corner some-where, and I was right.

I counted twelve princesses, ten superheroes, six vampires, four butterflies, three tigers, and one adorable fried egg. There were too many skeletons and devils and ghosts to keep track of, so I didn’t even try.

At one point, a rowdy gang of older kids smashed a pumpkin in the middle of the road and huddled around the guts. Then they jumped up and hurled wet, mushy handfuls at the row of cars parked in front of our house. Richard had our hatchback, so no problem there. Poor Felicia would have a big mess to clean off her windshield before she went home, though.

Then, with a sigh of relief, I realized that her little red sedan wasn’t in its usual spot, and I thought, Good for her.

Because she was a good person, and she didn’t deserve that.