“Hippity-doo-dah!” Ian exclaimed when Doreen walked into the room. He was emptying small bottles of perfume out of a box onto the boardroom table.
“Shut up,” she responded.
“That’s quite the maternity frock. I’ve never seen so much paisley. I didn’t know the Mod look was back in.”
“I’m not talking to you.”
“You remind me of this guy Billy in high school. He tacked an Indian bedspread to his ceiling to make his room look like an Arabian tent. I thought he was the coolest guy in Corner Brook.”
“Don’t get me started,” said Doreen.
She dumped her purse onto the floor and eased her swollen belly into a chair at one end of the long table, which was half covered in filled and semi-filled navy blue velveteen bags, giveaways for the fundraiser.
“He was so cute,” Ian continued. “But royally fucked up. He used to play Dark Side of the Moon over and over and over and over and over and over and —”
“I said shut up. I’m still mad at you.”
“In grade three Billy made me sniff model airplane glue. Once we showed each other our bums. Gosh we learn young.”
Doreen ignored him and looked at the unfinished work spread out in front of her on the table. “So, what exactly happened to Randy and François?”
“One of Randy’s drugs did a number on him. He’s in Emergency. François is on the warpath at Social Services trying to find out what happened to his disability cheque. You know, the usual. Sorry I had to drag you from work.”
Doreen shrugged. “You had to leave work too.”
“So why are you mad at me?”
“You know why.”
Ian stared at her. “You’re mad because of that? Really? Honey, buy a wrench and get a grip.”
“It’s all so simple for you, isn’t it?” said Doreen.
“What’s not simple about sex?” Ian asked, perplexed.
Doreen didn’t answer. She took up a pair of scissors and began cutting lengths from a spool of gold ribbon, to tie around the tops of the gift bags.
“There’s one more box of perfume samples in storage. I’ll be back,” said Ian as he left the room.
Doreen dabbed her neck with a tissue and undid the top button of her dress. A summer heat wave saturated the building. The air conditioning was on the fritz. A large rotating fan rattled in a corner, bringing little relief to the stuffy, windowless boardroom. Squares of fluorescent lighting on the checkered fibreboard ceiling cast a lunar glow over the beige walls and brown carpet. At one end of the room, on an easel, was a felt pen drawing of how HIV attacks cells, left over from a volunteer orientation. Homoerotic posters of attractive same-sex couples in a variety of suggestive poses festooned the walls. Community group circulars crammed a carousel rack. Next to a shelf displaying dildos and dental dams, a TV and VCR sat on an AV trolley stacked with a half-dozen copies of TAO’s new safer sex video for sadomasochists, Slap Happy.
It was a Monday afternoon. The offices of Toronto AIDS Outreach were electric with tension. Hotline phones rang. In the reception area an earnest crew licked, sealed, and postage-machined envelopes. Overworked counsellors and their drug-cocktailed clients clattered up and down the corridors, closing and unclosing doors. The air was heavy with more than humidity and the stench of stale coffee. Everyone seemed to be on edge, burnt out, about to snap.
Doreen heard the murmurings of a support group behind closed doors in one of the rooms down the hall. A voice raised in protest was followed by overlapping comments, some spotty laughter, a silence, then the monotone hum of someone calm. She popped a CD into a portable player and turned it on low. Gershwin gently swirled around her. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her toes. When was it, she wondered, that people started to compare sadnesses?
She stiffened when Ian muscled back into the room, his gym-defined arms straining to contain a heavy box of perfume samples.
“This is it,” he said, scuffling across the carpet in brand new Doc Martens. He reached the table, dropped the box with a thud, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He ran his hands through his hair. Resting a haunch on the board table, he took a small vial of perfume out of the box, removed the cap, and sniffed it. He wrinkled his nose, put the cap back on, and read the label.
“Eau d’Or, eh,” he said. “More like Eau Dear if you ask me. The blue-rinsers’ll like it.”
He smiled his boyish grin. He looked much younger than thirty-five: not a single grey hair, a toned physique from years of professional skating, trendy Queen Street West clothes, an ease of self that distinguishes Newfoundlanders from other English Canadians. He was at home in his own skin. From the moment she met him, Doreen saw why her brother had adored Ian. Everyone did. Nonetheless, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. She ignored him and fussed with her ribbons, curling them for a decorative touch.
Ian sat down, nervously fiddled with a crystal talisman hanging on a leather thong round his neck, then folded his arms and looked at her. “Dor, you’re supposed to be sealing them gift bags, not giving ’em frigging hairdos.”
She tightened her lips. Humming softly to the music — a few years earlier Ian had toured with Gershwin on Ice — he scooped up some condoms and lubricants from a basket of free samples, got up, and deposited them into his gym bag. Doreen gave him a frosty glance.
“I swear,” he said, sitting down again, “you’re behaving just like your brother. I thought he owned the copyright on cold shoulders. Now I can see it was a patent on the franchise. I’m immune to it, Doreen. I don’t know why you’re so ticked off, or what you think it will accomplish.”
“It’s going to take me a while to get used to the idea, that’s all.”
“It’s not an idea,” said Ian. “It’s a boyfriend.”
“It’s just a bit soon.”
“It’s been seven months.”
She snipped a piece of ribbon and slammed down the scissors.
“I need some fresh air.”
Doreen slipped on her sandals, struggled out of the chair, and grabbed her bag. Her maternity dress flowed all the way to the floor, billowing with each step. She felt like a Haight Ashbury Love-in. She wouldn’t have been surprised if at any moment a Volkswagen van covered in flower power decals pulled up and unloaded a coven of pupil-dilated hippies who congregated around her lighting candles for Grace Slick.
“I only told you because I thought you’d be happy for me,” Ian hollered nonchalantly after her as Doreen left the room, oozing fecundity and feeling like shit.
There was no one else on the fire escape landing. Two folding chairs and a tin ashtray filled with cigarette butts languished in the heat. Clinical white August sunshine bleached the brick apartment building across the alley. The torpor siphoned in traffic and footfall from the nearby street. Doreen removed a frayed magazine from one of the chairs and sat, glad the landing was in shade and that there was at least a bit of a breeze.
She took the phone out of her purse and rang the warehouse. Doreen ran her own business, brokering set decor for movies and television shows. She should have been there. The co-chair of the fundraising committee didn’t normally do assembly line work, but as Ian, the other co-chair, so often said, “Shit happens.” Reassured by her assistant that there had been no major catastrophes, and that at the last minute he’d been able to secure six Wassily knock-offs as well as a new Eames lounge for a movie about a corporate scandal, Doreen hung up and put away the phone. It was an American movie, set in New York but shot in Toronto where Manhattan is 25 percent cheaper to recreate. Half the time you watched a movie set in America, you were watching Canada in drag.
Doreen looked down at the alley. An elderly woman came out of a doorway and stood on a stoop scattering breadcrumbs. Pigeons swooped down and started to peck. There was a momentary commotion of ruffled feathers as a territorial seagull kamikazed the crumbs, fighting off pigeons. The old lady came back with a broom and shooed it away. Cooing, the pigeons returned to their feast. There was a shrill squeak of wheels as a man with a wild mane of white hair rattled his shopping cart of worldly belongings down the alley and around a corner.
Doreen heard the flick of a cigarette lighter and turned her head. Ian stood in the doorway lighting himself a smoke. His pale blue eyes twinkled with atrocities. Together, they’d watched her brother die. Doreen never ceased to be filled with wonder at the endurance of gentleness in a world quickly becoming medieval. She was dismayed with herself for being so angry at Ian but couldn’t excommunicate the deep sense of betrayal she felt. But whose betrayal?
She put a hand on her belly.
“How are the kids? Are they as pissed at me as their mom?” asked Ian.
“They’re fine. They’re independent thinkers, like their mom. They think I’m being too hard on you.”
Screening had revealed twins, two healthy girls. Yukio, her husband, was thrilled. She, less so. After two years of discussion, she had been prepared to settle for one, preferably a boy to name after her brother. Now they were arguing about names. This had been the only setback. Yukio was being surprisingly supportive, all things considered.
“They’ve got their dad’s flair for diplomacy,” Ian said as he sat down in the other folding chair. “Their mother needs to be reminded that Trevor and I didn’t have sex for the last year. I mean, I’m only human.”
“I know.”
Ian gave her a bemused look. “Is there a manual you’ve been reading that I don’t know about?”
Doreen rubbed her temples to ease an encroaching headache. “What are you talking about?”
“You know, that tells you how long you have to be an AIDS widow before you can lift the veil of celibacy?”
“Stop being facetious.”
“Stop being sanctimonious. Eight years together and I never slept around.”
“I know.”
“They give fags a Purple Heart for that.”
“How do you expect me to feel?”
“You could be fair to me,” Ian said calmly. “All of a sudden Trevor’s a saint, you’re a martyr, and I’m prancing around on cloven hooves. Oh please.”
“Sex isn’t the issue,” said Doreen, making a point of waving away his smoke. “It wouldn’t bother me if it was just anonymous casual sex. This is different. This is, you know.”
“What? Love?” Ian chuckled. “It’s a bit premature for that.”
He bent over, stubbed his cigarette in the crowded ashtray, and sat up again. “It was supposed to be casual. I wanted it to be casual. He wanted it to be casual. We stumbled across each other in a chatroom, talked dirty, found out we were into the same things, he zapped me a JPEG, I zapped him a JPEG, we emailed a bit, and before you know it, he showed up at my apartment in a slave boy ensemble. I don’t know if it’s love, but it’s chemistry.”
They were interrupted by a hyperactive, skeletal young man from Community Development. He wore a long-sleeved turtleneck despite the heat. It hid his lesions. “I thought you’d like to see this,” he said, a bundle of nervous energy. He handed Ian a copy of The Toronto Star folded open to the entertainment section and went back inside.
Ian looked at it and passed it to Doreen. “It’s the ad. Looks good.”
She inspected the half-page advertisement.
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
A Champagne Buffet Brunch
Tiffany & Co., Bloor Street West
All proceeds in support of the Toronto Aids Outreach
Hosted by drag sensation
TAWDRY HEPBURN
(There was an Avedon-style photo of the celebrity in cat’s eye sunglasses, a scarf wrapped around her hair, posing with a long cigarette holder.)
Featuring surprise guests and a fashion show by
The Truman Capote Memorial Bowling League
Sunday, August 16, Noon
Tickets $150 (charitable receipts will be issued)
Original items from the classic movie will be on display!
“They’ve done it again,” said Doreen. “How many times do we have to tell these people that AIDS is all uppercase!”
Ian shrugged and yawned. “Chill, Doreen. Everything doesn’t have to be a big deal. Everything won’t fall apart if you’re not around to make sure it doesn’t. The world has a funny way of continuing to turn on its own.” He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “We’ve sold 75 percent of the tickets. We should sell out.”
Doreen took a compact and lipstick out of her bag. “I have to be at Tiffany’s later, at four, for a meeting with Chantal,” she said as she touched up her face. “Can you finish off the gift bags on your own if we’re not done by then?”
“Sure. Still mad at me?”
“Not mad. Disappointed.”
Ian opened his eyes and looked at her. “Disappointed? In me? No-no-no-no-no-no, I don’t think so. Take a closer look in the mirror, darlin’. You’re coming in for a crash landing if you don’t cool them jets of yours. You’ve got two others to think of now. You better start taking it easy.”
“There’s too much to do.” Doreen closed her compact, loudly.
In the alley below, their feeding finished, a flutter of wings announced the dispersal of pigeons. They soared upward and perched on windowsills and wires. Even though it was a kilometre away, Doreen could smell the lake’s toxins brewing beyond the downtown bank towers, the black Toronto-Dominion van der Rohe cluster and its taller, illegitimate glass and steel offspring, which stymied a view of the lakeshore. Vertical and horizontal, it was a huge city of grids, spreading out into a patchwork of suburbs, making it easy to map out where and how people worked, and where and how they lived, and contain them. Doreen had grown up in Vancouver by the mountains and the sea. From her perspective this city’s terrain was flat, exposed, vulnerable, unsurprising, except for ravines incising the earth’s flesh, creating an arterial tangle of parks and nature areas.
“They’ve built on the bones of a Presbyterian banker,” Ian had commented once. He said that life here was lived undetected in the cracks. He called it the folded city. Its notable features thrust outward and upward and were completely man-made: simple, functional, declarative, but unemotional. Doreen recalled someone saying it was New York run by the Swiss.
An unrestrained piano lesson escaped through Venetian blinds across the street, in a hodgepodge of sour notes.
“I was lying about the slave boy part,” said Ian.
“I know.”
A siren melted into the urban cacophony. Come back here, Doreen thought. Save me.
“But he is a bit of a leather queen,” Ian added.
“You’re joking, aren’t you? Exactly how progressive are we supposed to be? Even we have our limits,” her mother had said over the phone from Vancouver when they told her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“We’ve already done it, Emily. Obviously,” said Doreen, sitting in Trevor and Ian’s living room.
“Ian’s got good healthy sperm, and plenty of it,” Trevor piped in on the bedroom extension.
“That’s a little more information than Mom needs,” said Doreen. “Sorry, Emily, Trevor just took his morphine pill.”
It was about a month before Trevor died. Ian was at work at the multimedia studio where he was a project manager, his new vocation since hanging up the skates.
“Jack’s going to be a harder sell than me, let me tell you,” Emily said.
“You’re the one who always overreacts before thinking about things, not Jack,” said Doreen.
“What the hell’s going on?” her father said in the background in his professorial, amused way.
Through Emily’s ineptly cupped hand over the receiver, Doreen heard her mother say casually, “Oh nothing. Your happily married daughter is pregnant with our terminally ill son’s gay lover’s child, that’s all. You know our kids, always on the cutting edge. They used a syringe apparently. In a clinic.”
“Go ahead. Talk like I’m not here,” Trevor mumbled. “I don’t mind.”
There was a banging sound as their father picked up the extension in his study. Doreen pictured him sitting back in his plush chair in front of his desk, swiveled around to stare out the window at the cedars and Douglas firs across the street, on the edge of the forested park surrounding the university where both her parents had taught before retiring.
“I realize it’s supposed to take a village, Dor, but hell, some village,” said Jack. “How’s Yukio about all this?”
“He’s ecstatic,” announced Trevor.
“Is that you son?”
“Hi Dad, I love you.”
“Some people with fertility problems adopt,” Emily interrupted. “Some make do.”
“I know son. I love you too,” said Jack.
“And some people choose to do what I chose to do, mother,” Doreen said, raising her voice. “You were the first person to teach me that a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body. Remember? So, I damn well chose.”
“He’s on his morphine, Jack,” said Emily.
“Yukio wants kids. It was either Ian as a donor or a stranger,” said Doreen.
“I love you too. Mom,” Trevor interrupted.
“I know sweetheart, and I love you.”
“And Doreen loves both of you too so don’t get mad at her.”
“We’re not mad, Trevor. We’re just getting used to the idea,” said Emily.
“It’s not an idea, it’s a child,” said Trevor. “Isn’t it fantastic?”
“Fantastic is probably the word that best sums it up.”
“We’d like to talk to Doreen in private, Trevor, all right?” Jack interjected.
“’Kay.”
After Trevor replaced the receiver, Emily jumped down Doreen’s throat with, “Have you gone insane? Has Yukio? Has Ian?”
“No one’s gone insane except you from the sounds of it,” Doreen remarked coolly.
“Ladies, please,” refereed Jack.
“I thought you’d be happy for me,” said Doreen. “For us.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Doreen,” said Jack. “You’ve always been determined and strong-willed.”
Trevor — frail, cadaverous, wearing a green bathrobe — entered the living room. He sat down on the couch beside Doreen, picked up the television remote, and turned on the set. She put an arm around him, and he rested his head against her shoulder. She could have snapped a bone by pinching him.
“Please just be honest with yourself and make sure this isn’t a gesture to compensate for Trevor when he’s gone,” her father continued.
Starved, petulant models were frowning down a runway to the frenetic beat of electro jungle. Doreen took the remote from Trevor and turned down the volume on Fashion Television.
“Children aren’t meant to replace the dead,” said Jack.
A transgender busker had set herself up outside TAO’s entrance, beside the bottom of the wheelchair ramp. Rather plain, frumpily attired in Sally Ann, she warbled Tin Pan Alley love songs, accompanying herself on a portable keyboard. There was a homemade cassette tape for sale. Doreen deposited some change into a bucket with a sign that said “Hi Sweeties” as she rushed by to reclaim her car from the parking lot.
Gunning it up Church Street, she steered with one hand as she guzzled from a bottle of mineral water. There was a snag at Carlton. A streetcar had stalled in the middle of the intersection, its trolley snapped from the wire. The cars ahead fought with the oncoming traffic to squeeze through. No one paid attention to the lights. Pedestrians did a Highland fling, heads turning this way and that, feet down from the curb then up from the curb then down from the curb again. The streetcar’s metal pole wandered anarchically in the air, sparking when it accidentally hit the cable, defying the driver’s attempts to reel it back in. One by one the horns began. Doreen was no exception. She bared down on hers with manic fury. A man in the next lane signalled her to shush, then gave her the finger.
“Asshole,” she said loudly, slumping onto the steering wheel in a surge of tears.
The streetcar cleared the intersection. The traffic moved again. The car behind her honked and Doreen regained her composure. She continued up Church, this time at a crawl.
She slowly drove down the narrow streets of toney Yorkville, on safari for a parking spot. The patios were brimming with bon ami; their well-heeled, well-dressed patrons giddy with summertime. Doreen would have given anything to join them, to sit unfettered at a table beneath an awning, with a spritzer and a good magazine. She finally found an unclaimed wedge of curb in front of a designer boutique. She fed the meter and waddled down to Bloor.
A beautiful young man with multicoloured dreadlocks was crouched on the pavement adjacent to Tiffany’s, building a silhouette of the Toronto skyline out of pennies for a crowd of appreciative tourists who snapped his photo. Some dropped coins and bills into an overturned cap. Doreen stopped and caught her breath. She recognized him: ten years ago, her twenty-sixth birthday, her leather miniskirt phase, not too long before she moved to New York. She was celebrating at the Cameron on Queen West, where a friend was playing in a rockabilly band, the Fabulous Steve McQueens. That was back in the days when she was still attracted to artists, especially if they were dry and witty. She’d picked the sidewalk guy up in a fog of pint draft and whisked him to her place for a delirious night of unbridled skank. In the morning he went home to his parents in Burlington. He was only seventeen.
He briefly glanced up from the sidewalk and smiled at Doreen, clearly not recalling her.
“That one on the left edge of the observation deck’s a Centennial penny,” she said, flipping him a fiver.
She heaved her stomach into Tiffany’s. The blast of air conditioning was a welcome relief and brought her back to her senses.
She felt old.
An orderly calm ordained the aisles and display cases of the legendary jewellers. The joint rocked with feng shui. Honey-toned wood and ambient lighting imparted the serenity of an Eastern shrine. Shoppers spoke in reverential tones. Tanned attendants presided with respect and reserve. There were no saffron robes, but the amber hue of skin beneath the suits and skirts of customer service sufficed, thanks no doubt to beta-keratin supplements and evenings at the electric beach. How else, Doreen conjectured, could a clerk get a tan like that?
She was ushered upstairs by an older gentleman wearing an impeccably tailored three-piece suit. He had the fastidious wrists of a sissy in a 1930s movie. A thin-haired comb-over swirled around his scalp like a Japanese sand garden. He deposited her in reception where she reclined in a Barcelona lounge and waited for her conference with Tiffany’s head honcho, Chantal Roan-Kenting, whose office door was closed.
Chantal came from old Toronto wealth. She and her brother-in-law, an estate agent, were on the outreach’s board, the connection to the money wads in affluent Rosedale and Forest Hill. Doreen had first met her in New York when she was studying design at Parsons, where Chantal gave a series of lectures on the business of design. Their paths had crossed numerous times since then and they had become good friends. Chantal was going to be the children’s godmother.
An androgynous young woman in a black suit, with dark hair in a severe, angular bob, appeared carrying a Styrofoam container and plastic utensils. She smiled professionally at Doreen, briefly disappeared within her boss’s office, then came back and took her place at the reception desk. She put on a headset and tackled the array of technology, ensconced in the custom-crafted, mahogany-veneered reception cubicle featuring modernist chrome lighting fixtures with halogen bulbs, and carved into the wainscotting, little deco hearts made of maple.
There was a buzz.
“Ms. Roan-Kenting will see you now.”
“Thank you.”
Chantal sat behind her desk, smoking. She was a trim, handsome woman in her mid-fifties, with thick salt and pepper hair in a short, no-nonsense cut. She wore a pearl grey Donna Karan skirt suit and matching shoes.
“Oh, damn. I’m sorry Dor, I wasn’t thinking. Sit down. I’ve got an air filter here. I’ll put it on.”
Doreen made herself comfortable. Chantal’s office was white, white, white, and sparsely but strongly decorated. Tube-metal Bauhaus furniture, a black glass coffee table, and a zebra rug in one corner; in another a huge terracotta urn overflowing with a tendrilling, sub-tropical succulent. There was some African statuary, an original Josephine Baker poster (framed), and a large Jackson Pollock. Its brilliant splatters spilled into the room with jazzy anarchy.
Chantal smiled at her flirtatiously. “How’s Yukio?”
“How’s Kate?” Doreen answered, looking at her partner’s photo on the desk, in a brushed aluminum frame from Urban Mode. Half-finished Greek salad floundered in an open Styrofoam container.
“Late lunch,” said Chantal. She shoved the container toward Doreen. “Do you like Kalamata olives? Here, take them. Can’t stand them.”
“No thanks,” said Doreen. “Yukio’s got me on a complete health kick. He watches everything I eat. Low sodium, high fibre, lots of fruits and vegetables, no wine, no coffee, no sushi, no prepacked prepared foods, red meat at a minimum, a ton of vitamin and mineral supplements.”
“How dull.”
Doreen shifted in her chair to get more comfortable. “I feel like a petri dish, things being carefully added to me so that I don’t pop out a mutant strain.”
“I’m sure it will all seem worth it when the time comes. How much longer?”
“About five weeks. Sometimes I think we’re all too careful. Why can’t we just let nature take its course? My mother’s generation threw cocktail parties up until the water broke.”
“That’s how they got through it,” said Chantal. “God knows the first contraction would have had me screaming for a martini. Of course, it was never an issue for me and now I haven’t the option. Nonetheless, people are right to be careful. Nature can’t be trusted these days. It’s on the warpath.”
“You say that as though people aren’t a part of nature.”
“Western religion’s been trying to make that point for several centuries, just in case you hadn’t noticed,” said Chantal. “So now nature’s fighting back with the big guns and it’s got truth on its side. Truth is more potent than God, even if he is backed up by a nuclear defence strategy. The truth is built with devious armour, like a cockroach. It’ll tough it out through anything, even corrupted atoms.”
“My relatives would call that immoral,” Doreen remarked.
“Amoral. Nature isn’t conscious. That’s its purity. Truth doesn’t have morals. That’s its survival.”
“But people are a part of nature. We’re animals,” said Doreen.
“The problem with the world is that most people don’t want to believe it. That’s what’s immoral.”
Chantal opened a file on her computer screen, scrolled, and clicked Print. A laser printer hummed softly as it spewed sheets of data. She stood up and went to the window, opened the lowered blinds, and peered out onto the congested traffic of Bloor Street.
“I’ve been reading how in the future people will be fighting wars on the Internet,” she said. “What a joke. Biology will be the death of us, not technology.”
“You can take the gal out of the lecture circuit, but you can’t take the lecture circuit out of the gal,” said Doreen.
Chantal smiled. “Sorry.” She removed a stack of paper from the printer tray and collated them into two piles, one which she placed into a folder and handed to Doreen. “Shall we?”
They spent some time discussing the protocol for Sunday’s gala, after which Doreen pored over a publicity report from Tiffany’s PR team. The press had picked up the story and wanted passes like crazy, thanks to a glittering guest list. It was to die for. The event promised to be a cavalcade of Who’s Who, Who Was, Who Would Be, and Who’s That? The A-list included an internationally acclaimed lesbian vegetarian torch singer (who everyone wanted to talk to); a Québécois disco sensation (who no one wanted to talk to); the only local player on the two-time World Series–winning team (who everyone had already talked to); a world famous horror movie director (who refused to talk); the bestselling Canadian woman writer in the world (who everyone was afraid to talk to); and the only out gay male comedian on North American television (who wouldn’t stop talking).
“By the way, Miz-know-it-all, I disagree with you about technology,” said Doreen, putting the folder into her briefcase. “Biology obliterates but technology deceives. It’s the perfect theatre for war. Good warfare isn’t based on death, it’s based on deception. The person who wins a war without a single loss of life, that’s who we should be afraid of.”
Doreen folded her hands over her children. Chantal sat back in her award-winning ergonomic Herman Miller chair with robotic adjustments and swiveled to look out the window, her profile to Doreen.
“Sun Tzu,” she mentioned softly. “The Art of War.”
“But then again,” said Doreen as she got up from her chair, “who’s fighting?”
Doreen drove home. She hadn’t been joking when she said she felt like a petri dish. The image had stuck ever since the doctor at the clinic inserted the syringe, and later made the unsettling pronouncement: “It took.” Not “You’re pregnant,” but “It took.” Yukio suffered from a congenital abnormality that produced antibodies to his own sperm, crippling them, forging them head to tail. They’d tried all sorts of treatments on him. But none “took.”
AIDs — Artificial Insemination Donors.
ART — Artificial Reproduction Technology.
Doreen didn’t fail to appreciate the irony of the acronyms on the literature the clinic handed out. Despite her doubts, she was developing a strong attachment to the little monkeys inside her, turning her into a globe, an attachment so strong it sometimes overwhelmed her. Soon they would emerge into the world and slowly, steadily move apart from her. She just hoped she didn’t fuck them up. It seemed to her that there were two kinds of people in the world: the kind who run in circles chasing their tails, and the kind who sit still and enjoy the comedy swirling around them. Right now, Doreen felt as though she was sitting in the centre of her own circle, watching the amazing farce she had created of herself turn into a vortex.
The black widows stared as Doreen parked in front of her renovated Edwardian row house. Mediterranean and husbandless, old women in funereal garb spent the steamy summer evenings congregated on their porches gossiping, yelling at their grandchildren playing road hockey beneath the enormous, spreading chestnut trees, and minding everyone else’s business. She smiled and waved at them. They smiled and waved back.
Doreen and Yukio lived on a street in a neighbourhood people once called working class, west of the downtown core. The block was made up mostly of Italian and Portuguese families, who faced attrition as young professionals moved in and sandblasted. When Doreen and Yukio first moved into the neighbourhood, they had aroused a certain amount of suspicion, exacerbated by Trevor’s frequent wheelchair visits in the TAO van. Unlike Doreen’s cleanly revealed brick, her neighbours’ homes were painted bright colours: yellow, red, an astonishing green. The yards were fantastical. One featured Virgin Mary as the centrepiece of a birdbath on a foundation of plaster seahorses. In another, a psychedelic pieta was framed by immense sunflowers and rainbow whirligigs. Who knew what the landscapers were thinking in the yard with Snow White’s Seven Dwarves and a flotilla of ceramic swan flowerpots, arranged in a tableau around the Crucifixion and a Dutch windmill, the entire scene accessorized by Christmas twinkle lights that went on at dusk year-round.
The ice didn’t really break until Doreen’s pregnancy was evident. Then there was a common thread stretching between Doreen and the porch elders like a tightrope, both sides maneuvering with caution, meeting somewhere in the wobbly middle. It would doubtless snap when the children appeared without Asian features, and questions formed.
“Good evening, Doreen. You work too hard,” said her next-door neighbour Paulo, flirting with her as Doreen stood at the front door fumbling with keys. “It’s no good for a woman having a baby, let alone two! You should be at home.”
Retired, house-proud, he sat on the stoop looking aristocratic, flanked by two enormous porcelain hounds. He held disdain for his fellow Portuguese on the block. “I’m a baker. They’re just fishermen,” he’d informed her once.
He meant back home. Here, his compatriots were longshoremen. No one ate fish from Lake Ontario. The water was too polluted. Doreen appreciated Paulo’s flair for dramatic omission and gift for poetic licence. Through lace curtains, she could see the large screen TV in his living room. It had been on ever since he got the satellite dish.
“Keeps me out of trouble,” said Doreen, smiling at Paulo before she went inside.
She disabled the alarm system and carried her briefcase into the kitchen where she found a note from Yukio on the table and, in the fridge, a Thai chicken salad he’d prepared for her. He’d gone to work. Yukio was an entertainment reporter at a local TV station. He wouldn’t be home till after midnight. She put the salad on a coral-coloured plate from their Fiesta collection, poured herself some juice, and took her meal out onto the deck overlooking the backyard.
The heat had subsided, but it was still bathwater warm. The sun slanted through the treetops, burnishing the leaves, dappling the lawn and Yukio’s vegetable garden in a filigree of honey. The air was still. Cicadas electrified the early evening, tiny hums rising and falling like miniature buzz saws. The concentration of light, dense humidity, and smell of earth mingled with freshly mowed grass enveloped Doreen in a serene hysteria. Midsummer’s intensity made nature seem almost sentient, watchful, slightly menacing.
The soft staccato rhythm of studio audience laughter droned through Paulo’s screen door. Doreen recognized a recycled sitcom from the 1970s, Trevor’s all-time favourite. Several years earlier, before Yukio, near the end of Ian and Trevor’s first year together, they had invited Doreen to a Halloween party in a huge warehouse. There were costume prizes. Trevor had come up with the idea of going as graduates of the Betty Ford rehab centre. Naturally, he was Mary Tyler Moore. Ian was Liz Taylor. And Doreen was Liza Minnelli. Two “burly gym queens,” as Trevor referred to his friends, completed the scenario as attendant nurses. A professional makeup artist they knew did their makeup. Ian and Trevor even went as far as renting a wheelchair for Liz. Upon their entrance they circled the dance floor handing out copies of The National Enquirer.
They were a big hit. They won the contest. The prize was an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Detroit for a weekend of festivities called White Heat. A party circuit had recently evolved within the Toronto-Montréal-New York triangle, whose central focus was, according to Trevor, “Dancing semi-clad in the semi-darkness, semi-detached.” They gave the prize to the two nurses, who were thrilled.
Later that night, Ian apprehended Doreen and took her outside to smoke a joint. “We need to have a sister-in-law talk.”
They huddled in a doorway, which buffered them somewhat from the chill late-October wind. They were in an old industrial neighbourhood on the periphery of downtown. Above them, perched on the building’s roof, a huge billboard flogging designer jeans was strategically tilted toward traffic streaming along the expressway by the lake. Doreen, dismayed, could smell winter fast approaching. She’d never adjusted to the barren months that shrouded the vast city in brown and grey, and missed the rainy, green balminess of the west coast.
They toked in silence, then Ian tossed away the roach and said, “Trevor’s inherited your family’s neurotic tendency not to want to cause anyone worry. He won’t tell you so I’m going to. We both got tested. I was fine.”
There was an icy gust of wind. A whirlpool of dead leaves careened down the middle of the road. A garbage can lid fell with a resounding crash. Dance music pulsed behind the warehouse door. A car drove by. Another drove by in the opposite direction. The door swung open. A group from the party slipped onto the cracked sidewalk and dissipated down the street. The clatter of heels diminished beneath the jaundiced glow of the street lamps. Doreen found herself counting to the rhythm of the red airplane warning blips on the tip of the faraway CN Tower.
Doreen took her dishes inside and put them in the dishwasher. She emptied water from the pan beneath the dehumidifier, then went upstairs to the office to check her website. She turned on the ceiling fan, put a CD into the wall unit, and sat down in front of the computer. There was a crackle of static as it started up. The screen erupted into blue sky. Doreen relaxed, finding comfort in mechanics. “Strange Fruit,” sang Billie Holiday in a cleaned-up recording. The veils of heroin and digitized sound mastering couldn’t conceal the deep furrows of her pain as her blues wreathed like perfume round the small room and snaked through the window, spreading a hint of gardenia into the summer evening.
There was an email from Ian, yet another list of things to do before Sunday. Her site had seventy-two hits that day, one requesting a proposal submission. An American network was getting comparative quotes from Vancouver and Toronto facilities, in preparation for a new cop show set in Boston. She began to put together a quote, but soon found herself growing dopey with fatigue, tranquilized by a tropical dusk turning the lawn outside to rust.
She shut down the computer, turned off the CD player, and barely made it to the bedroom where she passed out as if drugged. She awakened to darkness; through parted curtains a silhouette of treetops was carved into the starlit sky. A cricket wove in and out of the white noise of city. Yukio, warm, spooned against her back beneath the sheet, his arms around her, his breath soft on her neck, his cock hard on the small of her back. She turned around and trailed her fingers through his long blue-black hair. He smiled when she stroked his cock.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
His hand traced its way slowly down her body. His fingertips brushed her breasts gently, circling slowly. Then fully on her belly, stroking downward. His hand inside her, cool and warm at the same time, searching for her and knowing how to find her. Her hand playing with him, tickling. His sighs. Hers. A mouth on the skin, gliding down to her, gliding inside her, and completion. Then he knelt on the bed before her. A mouth on the skin, the taste of his flesh, warm, smooth, and hard. His hardness in her mouth. A mouth on the skin, a hand, he came.
They lay together sleepily. The cricket was gone. The hum of the city was now no more than a backdrop to the soothing swoosh of a breeze through the trees in the backyard.
“Ian’s got a boyfriend,” said Doreen, staring at the ceiling.
Yukio yawned. “Yeah? It’s about time, a good-looking guy like him. I’m surprised it took so long.”
“It’s called bereavement,” Doreen said angrily.
“It’s been seven months.”
“That’s what Ian said.”
“And they didn’t do much for a long time before Trevor died.”
Doreen rolled her head to the side and stared at him. “Ian said that too. How’d you know?”
“Ian told me at the wake. You know how drunk he was. He told me not to tell anyone.”
“That’s Ian all over, pissed or not. He just wanted to tell everyone himself. He likes to get a lot of mileage out of his self-sacrifice.”
“So? Good for him. He should. He went through hell. I like Ian. I’d do him if I was queer. But I like you a whole lot better,” Yukio announced, stretching and turning on his side to snuggle with her. “Besides, he’s my sister. I never thought I’d see the day I’d call a guy my sister but Ian’s got a way, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah,” she said softly.
“What’s this new guy like?”
She traced a finger up and down Yukio’s muscular forearm.
“Doreen?” Yukio leaned over her. “Shhh.”
He brushed back her hair and gently wiped away the tears. She drew in tightly against him and nuzzled his chest. His arms held her tight, the only person in the world who could contain her. Doreen, for the moment, felt safe.
“He does not look like Freddy Mercury,” Ian said defensively.
They were standing by the Lalique display. Doreen snuck another peek at Ian’s boyfriend, who was at the buffet arranging cutlery.
“Yes, he does,” she said. “Totally.”
A conglomeration of slender young things had agreed to staff the event, all dressed like Audrey Hepburn, in chic ’60s getups. For two months, two dozen ambi-drogynous waistlines with matching egos had complained — as the talent often does — about accessories that didn’t look right and impossible fitting schedules. There was also quite a bit of chafing over colour schemes; what matched, what didn’t, and which colour made so-and-so look fat and couldn’t possibly be worn, no, never. The largest costume house in the city had donated all the outfits, alterations, and repairs. The hyperactive young man responsible for nipping and tucking the twenty-four Audreys was in a complete state and had practically resigned but discovered that Valium was a more pragmatic solution to dealing with nervous collapse than quitting, and more fun too.
Doreen delegated various responsibilities to the Audreys, then turned her attention to the vice president of the TAO board, the owner of a big Bay Street communications firm. The woman was over at men’s watches tampering with one of the flower arrangements. The arrangements had been created by some of Toronto’s top florists, all of whom had donated their services. The florists, who were all friends, watched with horror from behind a nearby column.
Floored, they dashed like mad for a table where mimosas were being poured into champagne flutes. Doreen intercepted the woman and navigated her away from the flowers. Several flutes later the florists were florid and resigned. The dragon lady’s reputation was charmingly eviscerated.
A few guests had arrived early, including the bestselling writer. “To make sure I get some grub,” she announced sardonically to a buzz of amused approval. She wore a floppy hat, a practical pantsuit, and shoes that breathed. She waylaid a white chocolate croissant, then made her way to the mimosas and the florists. Much to their delight, she joined the conversation and added a little spice to the mincemeat they’d made of the dragon lady. The first flank of paparazzi formed a circle around them. A barrage of automatic flashes exploded.
“Is this how you weed out the epileptics?” asked the writer.
Everyone laughed.
The store was soon packed with Toronto’s elite, all of them wearing red ribbons. Silver trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres floated above the crowd. A jazz trio played.
“It has a curse,” Chantal explained to the writer. They were by a display case featuring the African Heart Stone ring, an enormous emerald with a large heart-shaped ruby centre, set in platinum and surrounded by a cluster of tiny sapphires. Doreen was next to them, trying to look interested. Yukio stood back with a videocam, chronicling their exchange for that night’s news.
“It was discovered in Zaire when it was still the Congo,” Chantal continued. “The chief of the tribe it was purchased from warned that it would ‘visit great horrors on whomever tried to keep it.’”
“Good story. I’m always looking for something to plagiarize,” said the writer.
“It’s just superstition,” chuckled Chantal. “That kind of mumbo-jumbo wouldn’t be helpful to a writer like you.”
“A writer like me uses all the mumbo-jumbo she can get,” she remarked, peering closely at the jewel. “It certainly is beautiful.”
Doreen felt a wave of nausea. Yukio turned off the videocam and sidestepped over. “You okay?”
“I just need some fresh air,” she said.
“Need some company?”
“No. I’ll be okay.”
She made her way out the back exit.
Ian and his boyfriend were perched on the edge of the loading dock, having a smoke and holding hands. She awkwardly sat down beside them. They sat in silence. The air was fresh from a recent rainfall. Pigeons pecked among the trash cans. The alley was rainbowed with oily puddles. A large white cat, mottled in orange splotches, leapt from out of nowhere and dispersed the birds. It landed on the asphalt and padded self-confidently over to Doreen.
“Hello, Cat,” said Ian. “You big old slob.”
It jumped onto Doreen’s lap, purring. Doreen scratched the soggy cat behind its ears. She discovered a collar, black velvet studded with pale blue rhinestones.
“Someone’s taking real good care of you, aren’t they?” she said.
The cat closed its eyes and purred.
It was nice and peaceful. Quiet, except for the gentle patter of dripping water and the cat’s soft rumble. A snaggle-toothed row of telephone poles trailed into the distance. Phallic, sleek, tough, and soundless, they sagged with cables. Sheathed and unnatural, the cables hid something human inside. If I were to cut open only one cable, thought Doreen, I’d break the silence and unleash the symphony of a thousand trapped conversations.