~
Call

“it’s your call,” michael tells her. He’s laid it all out for her. It’s a simple plan. There’s no reason she shouldn’t go with him to Paris, there’s nothing to tie her down, nothing keeping her here. Her job is a bust. And she can ditch the room on Palmerston without penalty, it’s week-to-week. He knows she doesn’t want to take any money from him, but she can cover her own airfare to Paris with the money she saves on rent. She doesn’t have to split the cost of the apartment in Paris; his firm is paying for it.
He knows she’s worried about Rose, but there’s just not that much she can do. Rose is in Winnipeg and besides, she has a husband and parents right there to help her through this.
And this way, they can see how things go in Paris. If she doesn’t want to move in with him when they get back, if the experiment fails – he actually says this, if the experiment fails – it’ll be easy enough for her to find herself another room to rent when they get back. Simple.
It’s her call.
It’s her call, but really it’s the penny’s.
It feels cold in her hand; she’d picked it up from the bedside table. Such a small weight. She lets it shift in her palm, over and over. The flip side. The flip side of yes is no. The flip side of Michael is what? No-Michael. The flip side of Paris is Winnipeg. She closes her fist, shakes it back and forth like a pair of dice. C’mon Lady Luck. Opens her hand.
What do you want?
She’s afraid to want.
She gives the penny a proper toss, catches it in her right hand, flips it down onto the back of her left. What does it say?
The penny says yes.
And so does she. Yes, she’s going with Michael to Paris. It was her call and the penny called it and so did she. Paris. City of light. City of romance. When Sarah was a teenager, she taped a cheap print of Van Gogh’s ‘Café Terrace at Night’ to the wall by her bed. Cobblestones and round café tables with their empty chairs and the light from buildings brightening the night. The dream of someplace else, someplace not Winnipeg, not the dull place she had to live in.
The flip side of Paris is Winnipeg.
And now it’s Winnipeg she needs to call, because she needs to call Rose. Sarah hasn’t spoken with her in the ten days since she left Winnipeg. Pat and Abe have telephoned, told her Rose seems steady, maybe a bit better. The meds just take time. Sarah’s been afraid to call, but now she needs to talk to her sister. To the sister she still wants to talk to. If Rose weren’t sick, Sarah would have told her about the argument with Gail, and Rose would have found a way to fix it. But if Rose weren’t sick, Sarah and Gail wouldn’t have had the fight.
She needs Rose. Sarah dials, gets through right away; David answers.
“Hey, it’s me, Sarah.”
“Oh, Sarah, we’re just finishing dinner.”
“Do you want me to call back?” But he’s already set the phone down, is talking in a low voice to Rose. Sarah can picture their kitchen, the big window over the sink that looks out onto their side yard. Rose’s quirky tchotchkes lined up along the windowsill: a little ceramic pitcher with stubs of pencils in it, an olive-wood bowl Sarah brought her back from Israel, candlesticks made from antique wooden spools. The shadow box David made from an old printer’s tray he found in the garbage mounted on the wall, filled with tiny contact-print photos he’d taken of all of them: Rose and Sarah and Gail, Abe and Pat, David’s parents.
“Hey, Sarah.” Her voice is thin, not quite Rose.
“Are you eating dinner? Should I call back later?”
“Dinner? No, no. We’ve … we’re finished.”
“How are you feeling? Any better?” Water is running in the background. David’s probably started the dishes. She can hear the light splash of dishes in the sink.
Silence.
“Rose? Are you there?”
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“I was asking how you were feeling.”
“Feeling? I’m okay. I’m taking the pills now. They’re supposed to help.” The sound of water stops.
“That’s good,” Sarah says.
“Well, I knew all along I was supposed to be taking them,” her voice is wispy, “but I thought it would be better just to get well on my own.” A rustle on the end of the line, Rose adjusting the receiver. “That’s what I was thinking.”
She wasn’t thinking right. She wasn’t thinking at all. “But you’re taking them now?”
“I said that, Sarah. I said I was taking them and I am.”
“Right. You did. And are you sleeping okay?”
“Up and down. Mom says I need to catch up on my rest. I’m trying.”
Sarah can hear David’s voice in the background. “Do you have to go?”
“No, no, David’s just saying he’s going to sit outside on the porch.”
“Nice evening?”
“Beautiful.” There’s some of the old Rose, the real Rose, in the word. “How about there?”
“Beautiful here too.” Sarah looks out the window; the leaves on the oak in front of her room still have their fresh spring green. The muggy heat has passed for now, and the last few days have been perfect. “Remember that Japanese quince bush I told you about in front of Michael’s apartment? When I was there yesterday I saw the buds opening.”
“That’s nice.” The voice has gone wan again.
“Rose, I was calling because I’ve got some news. Well, kind of good-news/bad-news. I’m not working at the Centre anymore.”
“The pay was pretty bad.”
“Minimum wage. But they laid me off.” She doesn’t say fired, doesn’t want to tell Rose the whole sad story, make her feel bad. Worse.
“Oh, Sarah, that’s too bad.”
“It’s okay. So … since I’m not working anyway, I’m going to take a holiday.”
“Holiday?” Rose’s voice has gone even flatter, as if she doesn’t quite understand the word.
“With Michael. You remember he went on that business trip to Paris?”
“Michael was in Paris?”
“I think I told you. I guess you forgot.”
“Maybe you told me and I forgot.”
Memory lapses: a side effect of the antidepressants or the sickness itself. Little pieces of Rose gone that they can’t get back. Silence. Sarah can’t hear anything in the background. “Rose? Are you there?”
“You were saying something about a holiday? Paris?”
Rose has never been to Europe. Never did the back-packing thing because she was always busy with her dancing – the troupe was on tour, they had rehearsals, performances…
Why should Sarah get to go to Paris? It isn’t fair.
“It isn’t fair.”
“What?” Rose’s voice asking.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“It’s not fair. It’s not fair you losing the baby.”
She can hear Rose’s receiver rustle again. “No,” Rose says. “It’s not.”
Sarah leans her cheek against the window. “Remember that night you called me – you thought David was gone?”
Pause, then, “Yeah. I remember.”
“I kept thinking, why is she calling me, how can she think it’s me who can help?” The loser with the loser job. The screw-up. The dented floor model. She’d felt oddly honoured. And helpless.
“Sarah.”
“What?”
A sigh. “We can help each other, but only so far.”
Only so far. But aren’t they supposed to look after each other?
“Sarah?”
“Okay. I mean, I’m not sure.”
“Hey, Sarah, you know I’m wearing that ring you gave me.”
“The puzzle ring?”
“Yeah. It fell apart once. David helped me put it back together. It’s not that hard.”
“I’m glad.”
“You said Michael’s going to Paris?”
“He wants me to go with him.”
“And?” There’s a hint of impatience in Rose’s voice.
“And it’s not fair that I get to go to Paris and you don’t.” And it’s not fair that Rose’s baby died and it’s not fair that she wanted to kill herself and leave Sarah all alone.
“Okay. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go.”
“No?”
“No.”
~
And now Sarah’s got her passport, little navy-blue book with its gold-embossed coat of arms, its lion and unicorn, Union Jack and fleur-de-lis, crown. Her passport photo a black-and-white mug shot of her serious formal face, emblem of her official self, some self she doesn’t recognize. The woman with no job. No place to live. The woman who gets to go to Paris. The passport means she’s claimed for a given state, a given country. Home and native land. Description of bearer: sex: F; height: 151 cm; hair: brown; eyes: brown. This passport is valid for all countries unless otherwise endorsed. A Canadian passport, the golden ticket that gets you where you want to go, that keeps you safe, immune, when you get there. With a Canadian passport, no one can touch you. And this declaration of innocence and belonging will carry her out of the life in Toronto that’s wearing thinner and thinner; it will lift the barriers at the border and wave her into the dream city.