Classes finished, and I had even fewer reasons to visit Toronto. I made a few trips out of picking up exams and helping out at Merris’s place, but I no longer stayed overnight, so coming to the city meant driving six hours in the same day or taking the very unpleasant bus or very expensive train. It was nice to have somewhere to be, even if I was finding my work uninspiring and certainly not worth the train ride—over two hours and eighty-five dollars each way.
I went down to clear out my office for the summer and let myself fall into familiar routine: a cup of weak coffee from the machine in the kitchen, an hour or so of clicking around online, a few minutes of desk-friendly stretches, some filing and organizing. I found a crumpled receipt in a copy of Utopia and rolled my eyes at the eager marginalia I’d left in it a few years earlier. I closed the never-ending Word doc with my dissertation on it and browsed a few resumes.
I was in the process of finding Merris a new research assistant. We’d both agreed that would be best, although our post-physio tea dates were getting longer. She had started telling me about her life, working forward chronologically from an apparently formative skating accident, age eight. We’d recently reached her first marriage, at nineteen, and I was trying very hard not to ask her to skip ahead to the sort-of-secret daughter. I ate a cheese sandwich and forwarded a few applications that looked promising.
Olivia walked by, tote bag brimming with exams. The bag had a poorly rendered cat on its front, and when I inquired about it, I learned it was a gift from the cat shelter at which she was a volunteer. The idea that a person could a) perform a charitable activity in a long-term way and b) keep that information to themselves for any amount of time was incomprehensible and impressive, and I asked if she would take me along sometime. “Of course!” she said. Then, concerningly: “Don’t wear shoes you like too much.”
A week later I was outside Paws4Thought No-Kill Feline Rescue and Shelter (I had notes about the name), on an east end street full of warehouses and drab dental practices almost directly under the highway. It was either very near a bunch of those trees that smell like cum, or someone had done something awful in the parking lot. Inside it was sterile and harshly lit and loud, the chaos of its animal charges barely balanced out by the insistent tranquility of the volunteers in their stirrup pants and fun vests.
My trial shift was horrible. Olivia frolicked with a batch of new kittens as I cleared out piss-soaked cages and tried to give sad animals their dinners in a non-traumatizing way. My big victory was getting a hulking three-legged beast called Colin to come eat in the center of the room, apparently an indicator of trust. I tried to give Colin a comforting pat to show him that trusting humans was okay, even if one had hurt him in the past. He hissed at me and threw up.
Nearby, Olivia played with her litter of tabbies. “They always give the grunt work to newbies,” she said, just absolutely covered in kittens. “Weeds out the people who are only here for cuddles.” She giggled and dangled feathers for her tortoiseshell army while I wiped up Colin’s mess and sprinkled deworming medication into chunks of brined tuna.
Other than Olivia, everyone who worked at the cat rescue place was weird, which was fine. Being there probably meant that I was weird too, and I’d already learned my lesson re: adult hobbies. Plus, I liked the cats, even the mean and stinky ones, even big Colin. I understood and could easily meet their needs. I filled in the requisite forms, acquired the requisite branded polo, and was given access to the shared Google Calendar.
It was soothing to be around animals, to have quiet time among people I didn’t know, to see kids and couples and old men on their own come in and encounter their future pet. It was gratifying to help a cranky, nervous creature understand that it was safe, its life would no longer be as hard as it had been. When I went home I looked up the adoption profiles of my new friends, which I felt undersold them a little: Don’t be put off by Dunstan’s scrappy looks! Carrie is a dramatic girl who may seem strange at first. Tomasina is NOT for everyone. Did we need to lead with this information? These animals had already been through a lot. The names were another thing altogether: what kind of disturbed individual calls a cat “Meaghan”?
A few weeks into my time at the shelter, Olivia took a shine to Tinker, a charming old boy with a grizzled face and one bad eye. (His bio read, A classic grandpa, Tinker is not afraid to give you a nip to assert himself. Whose grandpa behaved like this?) After talking it over, she and her fiancé decided to “add him to their growing family” and started the adoption process. I was running the front desk when she and Aidan the Egg King came to claim him. I watched them fuss over their new charge and thought, that cat’s gonna have to get into hiking. As they walked away, I admitted to myself that I was jealous of Tinker.
When my shift ended, I threw my vest in a hamper and pulled on a new, less-hair-covered dress. I touched up my makeup in the tiny staff bathroom and tried to make my hair do something normal. Most of the time I went straight back to Kingston after the shelter, but Lauren had given me special permission to stay at hers for two full nights. I was excited to be in the city for a longer haul, to take a stab at a wilder version of existence, or at least one where I went to parties. I’d booked Sunday off from the cheese store and stolen a pair of shoes from my mom, and Clive was having us all over (plus seventeen strangers I hoped to mostly ignore) in celebration of Amirah and Tom’s engagement.
I took the streetcar across town and walked up to Trinity Bellwoods, stopping on the way to buy the couple a gift—a coffee table book? of large-scale pictures? of beaches?—and pick up some food. I watched clusters of students eat charcoal ice cream and tried to practice compassionate non-judgment toward the too-old slackliners and rich moms complaining about their colorists being away on holiday. Anyone in the park over age thirty had a dog. Anyone over thirty-five had a stroller. I lingered near a recessed off-leash area called the Dog Bowl and waited for the desire to take a video of the animals to pass. While smugly putting my phone back in my pocket, I spilled the contents of a vegetarian banh mi down the front of my dress.
I didn’t want to be the first person at the party, but I didn’t want to loiter in the park smelling of carrot and rice vinegar all day either, so I got on the bus, knowing Clive would have a bleach pen or some other tidy man trick to clean me up. I sat by the window, absorbing the late-May sun and reading a book about a woman who kills her entire family but in a chic and feminist way. At some point between Dundas and Harbord, Jon got on.
What happened was this: I became distracted by an odd, insistent noise and looked up to discover its source. Across the aisle, a few seats down from mine, a black gym bag was emitting a long, low growl. A blur of grayish-brown fuzz from inside revealed it to be a cat, furious in its carrier, meowing and throwing itself against the sides of its mesh and canvas prison. Watching this made me miss Janet. She used to do something very similar, scooting around in tiny circles inside her bag until— ah.
It was Janet. Her little face was mashed against the carrier’s front window, displaying her signature snaggletooth. The carrier had a smiley face key chain attached to it, one I’d tried and failed to take off several times. And above this, with the bag in his lap, was Jon.
I could feel my pulse in my ears. I was a big bag of whooshing blood. I snuck another look at Jon, who did not notice me—he had headphones on and was absorbed in his phone, ignoring Janet’s antics but occasionally patting the bag in a soothing way. He looked good. Healthy. He was dressed up, for him: a light sweater I didn’t recognize over a shirt one of his sisters had given him for his birthday last year. He looked like he was going to a job interview, or a party, or a date.
I had thought about this moment once or twice . . . a day, for the last three hundred and fifty-three days. There was so much I wanted to say, so many ways I had imagined this encounter taking shape. I could sing the exact right song, of course, or fall to my knees and apologize, or say something clever but devastating, toss my hair over my shoulder, walk away. I could admit that I was angry, still, at both of us. I could explain what I had discovered with Helen: that cutting someone totally out of your life without warning during an ongoing legal process was not a particularly useful application of “boundaries,” and had robbed us of the small moments of exposure necessary to defang moments like these. I could hug him and see how it felt.
The bus stopped again.
I wondered if he would recognize me with my new hair. I wondered if I could grab Janet and run. I took a breath, stood, and walked past them—my cat in the ratty carrier I’d bought at a yard sale, my husband in a shirt I loved—my little family. I stepped down into the street and the doors closed behind me. I leaned against the bus shelter and let my breathing slow. My eyes watered but did not break into full tears, and when I raised them to watch the bus depart, Jon was looking at me, and I didn’t want to say anything cool or do anything right, I just wanted him to know I was sorry it had turned out this way and I hoped he was okay, and to promise that I would be too, probably, or at least if I wasn’t, it would not be his problem. I guess I would also have liked it if he made the cat wave her little paw out the window, but it would have been unwise to let Janet out of her carrier on public transit. Jon’s upper lip twitched, and the bus pulled away, and I watched our old life drive up Ossington Avenue.
Then, obviously, I had to wait for another bus, which was kind of a pain in the ass.
I decided, ultimately, to walk, and got to Clive’s an hour or so later, slipping into the crowd as Tom’s dad gave a speech about how excited he and his wife were to welcome a woman like Amirah into their family. Amirah’s cute parents dabbed their eyes, and Tom smiled bashfully at his father’s platitudes. It really was the same every time.
A dark-haired woman holding a baby (there had started to be babies at things) stood in front of me, next to a tall blonde in enviably dramatic earrings. The blonde leaned over her friend’s infant and whispered, “I don’t know how many more of these I can do.”
“Rachel, relax,” said the brown-haired woman. “You always get like this.”
“I’m thirty-two,” she said. “I’m thirty-two and I’ve never even been engaged.”
I knew why Rachel felt this way. Wedding stuff was everywhere. Since I’d turned twenty-five, developments in other people’s relationships and families had been the social tentpoles of my year: engagements in the winter, starting at Christmas and continuing into Valentine’s Day, then in spring the weddings from last year’s engagements would start, and by autumn some bitches would be pregnant. My social feeds were similar: girls from elementary school stretching their left hands to the camera in posts that were indistinguishable from the omnipresent ads for engagement rings; photos of friends at quirky, jar-filled venues; babies next to chalkboards proclaiming they were sitting up now. Despite my rigorously clicking NOT INTERESTED every time it appeared, I was being stalked by a sponsored post for something called ModernWeddingHarpist.com.
I did not feel pressure when I saw these items. I had been married—it was bad. I had not considered that it might also feel bad to not have been. The blonde swished past me, looking for the bathroom. She was so beautiful it was hard to imagine her having any problems whatsoever.
I had been reading a lot about intuitive eating and let my intuition guide me toward a plate of mushroom and leek pastry things. I ate seven, knowing they would make me bloated and gassy later, which was probably not what this approach to food was going for, but I figured there would be a learning curve. The event was dry, out of respect for Amirah’s parents, who also believed that Tom worked at a “kombucha brewery,” something Amirah thought she had made up but which had blissfully turned out to be a real thing. I poured myself another sparkling water and surveyed the room.
Tom was standing alone at the other end of the snack table, carefully reading the little cards Clive had made to explain each dish. I wandered over to ask some whispered softball questions about craft beer. He was friendly as always and knew an unbelievable amount about hops. Unable to keep up with the yeast filtration chat, I tried to glean if he was the type of man who would be psyched to receive a large book of blown-up beach photography.
“Tough question,” Tom said. “I love the coast, but I’d say for me the jury is still out on sand.”
I decided the main thing was that he loved my friend and told him I was very happy for him and Amirah.
“Thanks,” he said. “What do you think, would you ever get married again?”
“She’s focusing on herself right now,” said Amy, appearing from nowhere in an expensive-looking boho minidress and steering me toward the balcony. “And I need to ask her something privately, so, back in a jiff!”
“Please don’t tell people I’m ‘focusing on myself,’” I said after she slid the door closed behind us. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“That’s literally what you told me you were doing.”
We stood outside, and I wished I’d brought my sweater; the weather was getting warmer, but it was still cold in the shade. Below us in the building’s brick courtyard, a woman was losing an argument with a fragile-seeming dog. Amy looked at me solemnly and brought her face close to mine.
“I saw on Spotify that you’ve been listening to that confidence boosting playlist a lot,” she said. “So, I wanted to remind you . . . it’s okay to not be okay.”
One of Amirah’s handsome cousins came outside to smoke, giving us a friendly nod of acknowledgment. I nodded back, then lowered my voice and moved closer to Amy, unwilling to let another person know about the playlist. I had tried to change my Spotify settings several times and had no idea how to do it.
I whispered, “Let’s talk about this another time?”
“You said you were trying to mean it when you said you enjoyed your own company,” she replied, so loudly, certainly much louder than necessary. “And I love that goal for you. You’ll get there!”
She smacked me, hard, on the arm, and the cousin looked over again. Amy grinned at him.
“My friend is taking a break from dating,” she said. “Bad divorce. I’m divorced too, but I’m not that disciplined!”
The cousin looked thrilled and introduced himself. His name was Sam. He was a hockey fan and sometimes-DJ and, body language–wise, seemed single. He worked in real estate.
“What a coincidence,” said Amy. “I’m looking for somewhere to live.”
“Fantastic,” he said. “I should give you my number.”
Sometimes it really was that easy. I told Amy I didn’t know she was moving. “What about the condo?”
“Greg got it, in the end,” she said. “I got sick of arguing and was like, honestly, take it. He did technically pay for it, so whatever. Plus, now I have a hot little down payment to live somewhere else!”
Amy shot another big smile at the cousin as I searched her face for hidden pain.
“And you’re . . . okay?” I asked.
“Yeah!” said Amy, seeming to mean it. “I feel like, you know, que será.”
“Totally,” said Sam. “That’s my philosophy one hundred percent.”
“Well, are you going to move in with Ryan?”
“Ryan and I broke up,” she said. “A few weeks ago. We were on very different journeys. God, I literally haven’t seen you in forever!”
Sam saw his opening and took it, stepping forward and angling his body in a way that cut me slightly out of the conversation. I left them talking about how the Leafs were doing (Amy had heard this would be their year) and found Amirah and the Laurens in the kitchen.
“Which cousin?” asked Amirah. “If it’s Daniyal . . . he’s a fuckboy.”
She was more approving of a match with Sam, though warned he had already been out with a former housemate’s cousin and a girl Emotional Lauren knew from work. I said I was glad to be taking a break from dating. There seemed to be an endless supply of single women in the city, and I didn’t feel like competing with them.
“Everybody’s so hot,” I said.
Lauren nodded. “They’re probably more mellow than you too.”
Amy joined us, flushed and excited and holding an ornate mocktail. “I’ve been working on a theory,” she said. “I think your thirties are honestly the perfect age. Like in a way being thirty-one is exactly like being twenty-six, except you’re smarter and hotter and you know a bit about tiles.”
I said I would probably enter my thirties on a single bed at my dad’s house.
Amy groaned. “Could you not be a downer for five seconds, please? Sam’s taking me to some viewings tomorrow, and it’s like a date, I think, so you can’t come, but I’ll send you pics.”
“Really?”
Amy looked confused. “What do you mean, ‘really’? Duh, really! We were gonna look at one-bedrooms, but I’m sure there are tons of twosies.”
“But . . . what?”
“Oh my god, bitch, let me be your roommate,” Amy said. “Or your landlord, I guess, which is a bit rando, but whatever.”
“Very rando,” I said, trying to be sarcastic and somehow sounding very sincere. I could not hide that I was moved; I knew this because Emotional Lauren started rubbing my arms.
“You need to move back to Toronto anyway,” said Amy. “The Kingston thing is such a bummer. The other day a friend of mine asked what had happened to you, and I swear I almost just told her you died. So, perfect, you’ll live with me—okay, he’s looking, he’s looking, oh my god, don’t cry, for god’s sake!”