| |
Once upon a time, I loved ice cream.
But not anymore. Now the thought of ice cream on a hot summer’s day makes me gag.
I know, I know, you’re probably wondering what kind of monster hates ice cream.
It’s not because I’m lactose intolerant, or because I don’t have a sweet tooth. Seriously, don’t keep me away from my chocolate, unless you want to get hurt. A guy at work stole a chocolate from the box I keep under my desk, and he’s still scared of me after the murderous look I gave him.
It’s not because I was run over by an ice cream truck as a child. I have good memories of the ice cream truck and the cheery music it played as it made its way through our neighborhood. My sister and I would beg my mother for a few coins so we could buy a chocolate-vanilla twist. She wouldn’t usually give in, but occasionally, she did.
I have other good memories of ice cream, too. I remember going to the beach with my family, and there was a miraculous ice cream parlor nearby with fifty flavors. Fifty! It was paradise. Out of all those flavors, I chose one called “garbage.” I may have been a little obsessed with garbage trucks at the time, plus it looked like it had everything in it. How exciting! Six-year-old me thought it was delicious.
On my very first date, when I was sixteen, I took the girl out for ice cream and we shared a banana split with chocolate ice cream and hot fudge sauce. And on my first date with Lisa, I took her to a little bakery in downtown Toronto that’s famous for its ice cream sandwiches, made with freshly-baked cookies and gourmet ice cream.
Once, that was a nice memory. But now...
I look at the book in my lap, which has a close-up of an ice cream sandwich on the cover, and shudder.
It’s a warm day in early May. I cleaned off my balcony earlier, and now I’m reclined on a lounge chair with this horrible book in my hands. It came out a year ago, and it promptly became a Globe and Mail bestseller before it started hitting the lists in the US. I’ve been avoiding it, but I feel like I ought to read the whole thing.
After all, it was written by Lisa Mathieson.
The woman who left me at the altar.
There I was, standing at the front of the church, sweating profusely in my tuxedo, four groomsmen next to me. Something was wrong. I could feel it. Shouldn’t the ceremony have started already?
Then my sister, Adrienne, came hurrying down the aisle.
She was supposed to be the first bridesmaid to enter, but she was told to walk slowly and regally, stopping every now and then for the photographer to take a picture. Instead, she was running, her fancy updo askew.
Apparently, Lisa had just climbed out a window.
My fiancée might have left me without a word, but she did, ultimately, use lots of words to describe the experience. She wrote a self-help book slash memoir called Embrace Your Inner Ice Cream Sandwich: How to Find the Positive You in a World of Negativity.
Guess who was the biggest source of negativity in her life?
Me.
I might not have read the whole book yet, but back when it came out, I read the reviews, as well as the chapter that’s all about me. She renamed me Marvin Wong in the book but kept the other details the same.
Now, don’t get me wrong. She didn’t accuse me of mistreating her. No, she called me “a cross between Eeyore and Oscar the Grouch on steroids”—a slight exaggeration, in my opinion—who was a crappy boyfriend.
So, yeah, I got skewered in an international bestseller that encourages people to find their inner ice cream sandwiches.
Can you blame me for hating ice cream now?
I wonder how Lisa would describe my inner ice cream sandwich. Probably dry, tasteless cookies, filled with the dirty snow that lines the Toronto streets in the winter.
And seriously. Finding your inner ice cream sandwich?
What the hell is up with that bullshit?
Last I heard, Lisa had sold the film rights to the book, though I’m not sure how a self-help book slash memoir would be made into a movie. I assume I’d be one of the characters, though. On the plus side, given Hollywood’s tendency to whitewash, I’d probably end up being played by some white dude named Chris, so it wouldn’t really be me at all.
Or maybe they wouldn’t whitewash me and I’d end up being played by another Chris: Chris Pang from Crazy Rich Asians.
I suppose that wouldn’t be the end of the world.
After Lisa left me at the altar, she jetted off to Portugal and Spain, where she met some guy named Hernando or Fernando, who’s apparently less of a grumpy bastard than I am.
I read the dedication in the book. For Fernando, the love of my life.
Oh, barf.
I’m about to start the first chapter when my phone rings. It’s Adrienne. Usually it pisses me off when people call rather than text me—as Adrienne well knows—but now, I’m thankful for the disruption.
“How are you enjoying the weather?” she asks.
“I’m reading on the balcony with beer and chocolate.”
“Sounds lovely.”
I don’t tell her what I’m reading. “What’s up?”
“Nathan is going to Seattle on Monday. For a month.”
Nathan, her husband, works for a software company that’s setting up a Seattle office. The plan was that he’d fly out to make sure everything got up and running smoothly, but they keep changing the dates around on him.
“Is this for sure?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She sighs. “A whole month. I was hoping it wouldn’t happen until Mom and Dad were back from Hong Kong, so they could help with Michelle, but the timing stinks. I was wondering if you could watch her next Saturday?”
My sister is a pharmacist, and lately she’s been working Saturday shifts, whereas I have a Monday to Friday job in finance. Michelle, her daughter, is five years old.
“Sure,” I say, because my sister is in a bit of a bind, though I’m unsure of how Michelle and I will get along for a full day.
“Awesome. I’ll bring her over to your place around seven thirty, and I’ll pick her up by five. It’ll be easier than you coming out here, plus there’s a shop near your condo that Michelle wants to visit.”
“What is it?”
“Well...” She hesitates. “It’s an ice cream shop.”
Given how much I hate ice cream, you’d think I might refuse.
But I’m not a child. I’m a thirty-two-year-old man with two university degrees. It’s not like I can’t stand to be in the same room as a bowl of ice cream. That would be truly pathetic.
No, I can do this. It might be uncomfortable and bring up some unpleasant associations, but if I can read Lisa’s book, I can visit a stupid ice cream parlor with my niece, though I won’t be getting any for myself.
However...
“The last time I took Michelle out for ice cream,” I say, “it did not go well.”
That was more than three years ago, only a few weeks before I was supposed to get married. I decided I could be the cool uncle who snuck her sweets.
Well, I’m her only uncle, so it’s not like I was competing for the title of “cool uncle” with anyone. But when I heard the ice cream truck come down the street, I figured, why not?
I got a chocolate-vanilla twist for each of us, and she just stood there on the sidewalk, admiring the swirls, for a minute. Halfway through my own ice cream cone, I told her to hurry up because it was going to melt. So she took a bite...
...and promptly started crying, then threw it on the ground.
Let me be clear. She didn’t start crying because she dropped her ice cream. The tears came first.
“It’s disgusting!” she said between sobs.
You see, my niece is a food snob. We hadn’t realized the full extent of it at the time, but now we know she has a better chance of enjoying blue cheese or Kalamata olives than pepperoni pizza. The foods most children love? Michelle won’t touch them. Expensive stinky cheese? Probably going to be okay.
Fortunately, she doesn’t cry and throw stuff on the ground quite as often now, but still.
“This will be different,” Adrienne assures me. “Ginger Scoops is a fancy place that specializes in Asian flavors—green tea, Vietnamese coffee, lychee, things like that. Michelle is excited to go. She keeps talking about it. She saw it the last time we were downtown, and she was sad when I said we couldn’t go in because she’d already had a treat that day.”
“Fine, fine,” I grumble.
“Thanks, Drew. You’re the best.”
I end the call and return to Embrace Your Inner Ice Cream Sandwich. Part 1 is titled “Before I Found My Ice Cream Sandwich.” The first two chapters describe Lisa’s childhood and university years in breezy language. She paints herself as an overachiever who was always listening to what other people wanted and never thought about what she wanted.
I laugh at parts that I’m sure were not meant to be funny. Here’s the thing about Lisa: she wasn’t lazy, but she was far from an overachiever, and it’s a little hilarious that she sees her former self that way.
Then I get to the third chapter, which I read a year ago, but I re-read it now. “Chapter 3: Marvin Wong*.” At the bottom of the page: “*Names have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent.”
She describes me as a grumpy stick-in-the-mud who was always telling her “no.” Who stifled her spirit and creative energy. She tells a story of how I refused to take a weeklong vacation to New England with her, but she doesn’t mention that she asked at the last minute, and I couldn’t get five days off work with only a week’s notice. It’s not like that was my fault, and I would have been happy to go some other time.
Am I heartbroken? Not anymore. Sure, Lisa was the woman I thought I’d marry, but that was years ago now. I’m over her.
I’m a little bitter, though. Most people don’t have accounts of their failed relationships published in twenty-three languages and read by millions of people around the world. Everyone in my life knows; I can’t hide from it.
And I can’t help thinking that relationships just aren’t worth it.
I was already thinking that after our wedding that didn’t happen, but having it appear in a bestselling book was just icing on the wedding cake...that no one ended up eating.
I haven’t been on a date since I was left at the altar. When I heard my ex had written a book called Embrace Your Inner Ice Cream Sandwich, I burst into laughter, and as it raced up the charts, ice cream lost its appeal.
I didn’t set out to hate ice cream. Honestly, I didn’t. A few weeks after the book hit the top spot on the Globe and Mail bestseller list, I bought some dark chocolate ice cream—the good stuff—and served myself a small bowl.
And promptly felt sick.
The next day, I tried again. Same response.
I haven’t eaten ice cream since.
Once upon a time, I might have enjoyed a scoop of chocolate ice cream on a day like today, the first nice day of the year. I may have even enjoyed it with a pretty woman by my side.
Instead, I’m alone with a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout and a book with a ginormous ice cream sandwich on the cover. My mouth twisting in a rueful grin, I raise my bottle of beer.
“Cheers,” I say, to no one but me.