Circus (21 page)

Edna and Calvin met in university. He sat next to her in first-year Calculus and copied all her answers. They kissed at a dorm party and then Edna got bashful, so they didn’t start dating until several weeks later, when he showed up unannounced at her shared dorm room and declared his intention to marry her someday. He dropped out the following year, and moved from job to job until he enrolled in culinary school, where he didn’t have to copy his fellow students. Edna would come home to plastic buckets overflowing with slivered onions when he was practising knife skills, and even, on one occasion, to a whole pig sectioned into its tastiest cuts, the trotters cleaned and bubbling into gelatin on the stove. It suited him: buzzing around the kitchen, stirring, flipping, and poking the sizzling delights, then plating tenderly with his hands. Edna almost never cooked. The most she ever made was toast. But instead of the usual clumsy homemade sandwiches, the girls were brought up on duck confit and day-old baguettes from the restaurant.

His main interest, New York–wise, was the food. Normally, they almost never ate out, but they splurged on a fancy meal at a restaurant he’d chosen on the first night. This was his only contribution to the planning of the trip. Edna ordered a spot-prawn risotto and then white wine–poached pears in star anise
for dessert, and the meal was so delicate and finely flavoured she was practically floating above their dining table. The only other time she remembered feeling as though she were levitating was when she shimmied exuberantly into the second hour of a Zumba class and the endorphins made everything shiny. Calvin was less impressed with his poussin and his chocolate fondant, but that was the attitude he took towards all meals he hadn’t made himself, so Edna knew not to trust the dismissive arch of his eyebrow. The chocolate probably tasted super-nova fabulous. She suspected this was the case because he hadn’t offered her a single bite. Her meal that evening was the only thing about New York that hadn’t let her down.

In the airport lounge, Edna sits opposite a family of four and a small lost bird. The little boy of the family, who looks to be about five years old, keeps his eyes on the sparrow as it hops along the carpet.

“I wonder how it got in here,” his teenaged sister says, watching the bird as she untangles the cord from her earphones. “Fucking depths of the building, et cetera.”

“Leave it alone, Alec.” Their mother has been staring at the same page of her magazine for the last hour and tapping her foot like a madwoman, occasionally glaring at their father, who is stretched out across four chairs beside them, napping. “And you,” she says, without looking at her daughter, “can watch your mouth. Last thing we need right now is a hassle.”

The daughter gestures rudely at her mother and puts one earphone into her ear.

“Do birds die if they can’t be outside?” Alec is now tapping his foot rapidly as he warbles his concern.

“I am going to die if we have to stay here much longer.” The girl puts in her other earphone and starts head banging theatrically to music that Edna cannot imagine. For the next few minutes, she can’t help herself from staring as the girl’s shoulder-length hair swishes around in the recirculated air, obscuring her face. Once it is clear that her mother is sufficiently irritated but unlikely to outwardly react in any strong way, the girl combs her hands through her hair and ends her private party. She slips off her sneakers and sits cross-legged, tucking her knees under the awkwardly placed armrests. Closes her eyes like a yogi.

Edna has seen this girl before. Dozens of her. She has seen every conceivable version of this girl over the years in her classes. Hard to tell if she will snap out of her rudeness eventually, or if she will remain spoiled. She’s exactly the kind of girl who would make Emma feel stocky and unbeautiful once the earthquake of adolescence struck. Who would tease her at school for wearing jerseys, for failing to comb her hair. But Emma would be okay. Liz, too.

When Edna and Calvin left the hotel on the sixth morning of their trip, they didn’t have an itinerary for the day. Edna had wanted, at first, to pack the vacation full of sightseeing, to take it all in and really get the most out of their ten days in the city. She purchased three guidebooks and had been reading selections aloud to him for weeks before they left. She’d
marked relevant pages with Post-it notes, and drawn up daily schedules.

“Once a teacher, always a teacher,” Calvin said, flicking a pink Post-it in the Attractions section.

“Oh, shush. If it was up to you, we’d aimlessly wander the streets for ten days, stopping only for gourmet donuts.”

The museums were open earliest, so they started their days with dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum or hideous abstract paintings at the Guggenheim before taking a preplanned scenic route to their next destination. She’d spent hours on Internet forums seeking out-of-the-way cafés where the locals ate. With all her energy focused on one place, rather than the travel offerings of the entire world, she came up with more things to see and do than they could possibly have managed in ten days.

They were snuggling against the wind on the ferry coming back from Ellis Island – Edna reading aloud from the guidebook’s section on the history of immigration – when Calvin tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and said, “Listen, honey. I enjoyed sprinting from the subway to the terminal to catch the boat, especially when you elbowed that old guy on his walker out of the way” – he paused to kiss her forehead – “but I’m not sure you’re getting the hang of taking a break. What if tomorrow we just took it a little slower, eh?”

So, instead of lining up outside the MoMa, they went in search of authentic New York bagels for their breakfast. This way they could be both touristy and relaxed: a compromise, said Calvin. At first, spending a couple of hours in the morning reading the paper and drinking coffee just as they would
have done at home seemed a waste. But Edna’s breathing soon became deep and full again, and she could tell by the softening of his squint that Calvin was relieved to have a break from traipsing around museums. Somehow the disappointing gentleness of what was supposed to be the most exciting city in the world bothered her less once they were back to their regular routine.

“What can I getcha?” The waitress had the upright posture of a ballerina, and she held her pencil above her ticket with a delicate arch of her wrist.

“Two New York bagels and two coffees, please,” Calvin said.

“You can just call them bagels, hon, but sure thing! Cream or milk or sugar for the coffees?” Her lips were watermelon-pink and shimmery.

“Milk and sugar, thank you.”

“Your accent is super-adorable! You from Minnesota?”

“Canada, actually,” said Calvin, meeting her gaze and then letting his eyes wander.

The waitress laughed. “Awesome! America’s hat, my dad calls it.” She paused for a moment and her perfectly smooth forehead furrowed. “Is that offensive? I don’t mean it like that. I love Canadians!”

“That’s okay,” said Calvin, and then with the first real enthusiasm Edna had heard him muster on the trip: “We love New Yorkers!”

The waitress hadn’t looked at her at all through this exchange, so Edna started drumming her fingers on the Formica table-top. Taking Edna’s cue, the waitress slid her pencil back into her apron and said she’d be right back with their order.

Calvin was clearly infatuated, but Edna focused on her paper, pretending his stray glance didn’t bother her. She knew it was harmless, and she herself had been known to be flirtatious from time to time, like with that new IT developer at school who happened to be an ex-jeans model. Not that he took her seriously when she complimented his new jacket while tucking her hair self-consciously behind her ear: not this forty-year-old mum with straggly hair and a wardrobe of shirt-dresses and comfortable shoes. Calvin coughed a little, adjusted his glasses, and reached for her hand. As she leaned across the table and kissed him lightly, she wondered once again how many times a day Calvin thought about her. It was a question that surfaced more and more frequently as the years passed. He had the nicest tasting lips of anyone she’d kissed, and each time she tasted that little hint of toothpaste and sweetness, it still took her by surprise. Even after fifteen years. Maybe how many times a day was not the right question, because the best answer would be one time: all the time.

The bagels turned out to be doughy in the centre even though they were toasted and crispy on the outside. Edna loved them. Her bagel was soft and seemed as if it could be chewed forever if you wanted, like a mouthful of cloud. This was no ordinary baked good. This was a kind of ecstasy. Calvin claimed he found them a heavy, unpleasant texture.

“So, okay, once we’re done here we’ll head to Central Park, then we need to have late afternoon drinks, and then we have to get gifts for the girls,” she continued, pausing only when he reached over and wiped the corner of her cream-cheesy mouth with his thumb.

Edna has been keeping track of the little boy as he wanders back and forth across the departure lounge, trying to get a closer look at the bird. The sparrow’s hops become increasingly frantic as it makes its way towards the corner of the room near the airline desk. Who could blame it? In the low-ceilinged room, it is well and truly trapped. Although each departure lounge is a separate glass box nestled beside other glass boxes on either side of a long open corridor, there are no windows to the outside to show the planes taking off or the light changing in the open sky. The most scenic view Edna has is of the Dunkin’ Donuts on the other side of the secure area. The miracle of man-made flight was just beyond the exterior wall and her only view was of unreachable French crullers?

Alec approaches with his small, clumsy version of stealth, walking exaggeratedly on his tiptoes. As he gets closer, the bird hops farther away, and finally hides behind a metal garbage can. Now down on his belly, Alec crawls underneath the seats to spy on the bird, like a soldier infiltrating an enemy camp, and from where Edna sits she can see the bird twitch its head and look right at him for a second. As the boy crawls nearer, inching along the carpet towards her feet, Edna places her hand almost protectively on the small cardboard box sitting on the seat next to hers.

Cancelling the return leg of his journey was the most complicated thing she’s had to do so far. The airline had refused to give her a refund because by the time she remembered to deal with his ticket there were less than 48 hours before the flight.
Most of the other paperwork could wait, they said, until she got back to Canada. She was surprised to find that cremated human remains were an allowable carry-on baggage item. The airline’s policy made sense, she supposed. It could seem crass to relegate ashes to the hold. Still, what a relief to find them listed on the website as a permissible item, alongside strollers and small musical instruments. At least the cremation had been clear. Had been discussed. His wishes written down for the future. For a future more distant than now. When she read the guidelines on the airline’s website, she felt as though they had been written just for her: anticipating her need for instructions and rules so that she didn’t have to make any more phone inquiries. Sure, the real reason they listed it was probably to avoid having their employees deal with melt-downs. Not that she would have conducted herself that way. The airline staff were not to blame. She hadn’t told the girls anything at all yet. How could she do that over the phone? And it wouldn’t change anything, anyway. You can only do what you can do.

After their bagels, they went to Central Park to take a walk, and Edna felt the familiar disappointment of the week set in. It was a park, and parks were lovely, but it was really nothing remarkable as far as she could tell, unless what was notable about it was that the trees were able to survive in the smog of Manhattan. Like in any park, there were teenagers kissing in the bushes, and there were young mothers with running strollers jogging endless loops around the place. There were ice cream stands
and little plaques explaining the flowers. She was sick of nature. They had the best of that at home: show-off sunsets and old-growth cedars. And those rowboats! How ridiculous.

“Maybe we should go and row one,” he said.

Edna laughed. “What? Just so we can take pictures and the girls can make fun of us later? You’re just trying to mess with the itinerary.”

“Touché,” said Calvin, pulling her in close and rubbing her shoulder.

All the activities she’d planned for them to do had taken on a kind of sarcastic edge, as though everything Tourist Edna had once earnestly wanted to do was suddenly a kind of parody. As they continued walking along the gravel path beside the lake, passing up the rowboats, Calvin nodded his head and rolled his eyes in the direction of a couple sitting under a tree with a picnic packed in mason jars. The twenty-something lovebirds were wearing almost identical clothes: skinny jeans, plaid shirts, and large black plastic glasses. There was a fedora on the grass beside the boy. When they were a safe distance away, Edna and Calvin started in on their saved-up observations for each other.