Heartache and Other Natural Shocks (3 page)

And finally, on a warm spring evening last May, Mom and Dad broke the news about our own move. Mom did all the talking. She said, “We’re moving to Toronto. The house and the store are going up for sale. We’re leaving at the end of the summer.” For a moment, no one spoke. Bobby and I just stared at her like she was an alien speaking in a garbled alien language that we couldn’t possibly understand. She had to repeat herself. Her words came at me in slow motion, hovering in the air like little Scrabble tiles dancing on a cartoon cloud and then exploding around my ears like grenades.

Bobby yelled, “I’m not going!”

I turned to Dad, waiting for him to rescue me. “Dad, you said this is our home,” I pleaded. “You said—”

“Julia, we have to be realistic,” Mom said, cutting me off. “The French don’t want us here. Why should we stay where we’re not wanted?”

“Because we
live
here,” I said. “This is a free country. We can live wherever we want. This is so stupid!” I could hardly breathe. It felt like a monster had just clawed into my chest and ripped my heart out of my body. I could almost feel the muscle fibers popping and twanging like broken guitar strings.
Snap. Snap. Snap
.

Bobby started crying. Mom looked over at Dad like she expected him to help her handle things. She said, “Irving …” But he just stared at the backs of his hands. And that’s when I knew this was all her idea. He didn’t want to leave Montreal.
So why wasn’t he fighting her on this? They fought about everything else. Why was he caving in?

I stopped talking to my parents after that. I really didn’t see the point in conversing. I had nothing left to say to them. After all, what could I possibly say to make them change their minds?

“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”

Over dinner, Ma gives us the scoop on the Epsteins. She and “Natalie” are already buddy-buddy. That’s the kind of mother I have. Mrs. Welcome Wagon herself. If she makes muffins, she takes some next door. And their kid Bobby has been in and out of our house all day long.

“The poor woman knows no one in Toronto,” Ma explains. “Imagine starting over in a new city with two kids.”

Papa hears the words
starting over
and—presto—he launches into his “when I was a poor immigrant” story. “When I moved from Napoli, I had two bucks in my pocket, and I didn’t speak a word of English.”

“You didn’t have two kids,” Ma points out.

“I was practically a kid myself,” Pa insists.

Already it’s a contest about who’s worse off. I’ve heard Papa’s hard-luck story about a million times, so I change the topic. I ask, “Where’s Mr. Epstein?”

“Ah,” says Ma. “Mr. Epstein owns a women’s clothing store, and no one wants to buy the business because so many people are leaving Montreal, so he’s stuck there till he finds a buyer.”

Papa frowns. “He let his wife move without him?”

“They had no choice. He’ll come later,” Ma says.

Buzz asks Papa if Bobby can join his hockey team because Bobby plays left wing, and last year he scored the most goals for his team.

Ma tries to give me more cannelloni, but I pass, even though I love her cannelloni, because I don’t want to get fat. I lost seven pounds at camp—the food was so shitty!—and I just bought this pair of Howick wide-legged jeans, size 27. They are so cool. But if I eat cannelloni, it’s going to go straight to my ass, and nothing looks worse than a fat ass on a pair of wide-legged jeans. I mentally flip through my wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear on the first day of school, because, as
Cosmo
says, first impressions are very important.

Suddenly I realize Ma is talking to me. “What?” I ask.

“I said it would be nice if you introduced Julia to your friends.”

I groan. “Look, Ma, just ’cause you like Mrs. Epstein doesn’t mean I have to like her daughter, okay? Julia is not my type.”

“You don’t even know her,” Ma says. “Would it hurt you to be nice to that girl?”

“Do you mind if I pick my own friends?”

“She doesn’t know anybody, Carla.”

“Ma, will you lay off,” I say.

But my mother doesn’t know how to lay off. No, she’s like a dog with a bone. So, first we fight in English. Then she
switches to Italian—which I hate because she talks twice as fast in Italian—and the louder she gets, the louder I get, till we’re yelling at each other across the table, me in English and her in Italian. Finally, Papa smacks the table with his hand and bellows,
“Basta!”
and Ma and I both shut up. Then he glares at me with those beady brown eyes. “Carla,” he says in his deep, don’t-mess-with-me voice, “you invite her over once, and you don’t ever have to do it again.” I open my mouth to argue, but what’s the point. God has spoken.

Later, I’m in my bedroom, about to do my nails, when guess who finally phones three and a half days late—but who’s counting? Steve. He’s been thinking about me. He misses me. I want to reach through the telephone and strangle him with my bare hands, but I’m cool. We gossip about people at camp. I picture him on the water-ski dock: sun-bleached hair, boyish smile, muscular body—California beach boy. Nice snapshot, but hey, winter’s coming, and then what? He’s not what you’d call a great conversationalist. And who cares if he’s the captain of his hockey team. I’m not the kind of girl who freezes her butt off sitting on some splintered wooden bench in a hockey arena, yelling, “Go, Steve, go.” I’m nobody’s cheerleader. So, when he asks if I want to go to a movie, I say, “Steve, the summer was really fun, but I just don’t have time for a long-distance relationship”—as if
Willowdale to Forest Hill is long distance. Steve sputters a bit. I tell him I have to go.

I’m glad I broke up with him. In fact, I’m going to take a break from guys for a while, especially high school guys. They’re so immature. Besides, I have goals. This year, I want a lead in the school musical. Last year, Mr. Gabor directed
Hello, Dolly
and I was in the chorus, but no one notices you when you’re in the chorus. And what’s the point of being in a play if no one notices you? And it’s not like I don’t have talent. I’m the best actress in my class. Probably in my grade. In fact, I would have made a much better Dolly than Pauline Heppleworth, who has a good voice but cannot act. I mean, all she does is throw her hands around and toss her hair. She’s a hair actress! And I’m way better looking than she is. Everyone says so. But Pauline was in grade thirteen and I was only in grade ten, and grade tens never get the leads. But now I’m in grade eleven, and Mr. Gabor likes me. He gave me 88 percent in drama last year, and he is
not
an easy marker. When I did my monologue, he told me I have “a strong onstage presence,” and he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it. A compliment from Mr. Gabor is worth about a million compliments from anyone else.

I sort through my nail polish colors. I pick Pearly Pink. It goes really well with my tan. And a girl has to look her best, even when she’s not dating.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”

My mother doesn’t waste any time. The morning after our move, four days before classes start, Mom leads me down the empty hallways of Tom Thomson Secondary School and into the guidance office. The guidance counselor is a chubby, balding man stuffed into a pale yellow shirt and a greenish suit. He reminds me of a ripe squash. Mr. Squash. He welcomes us and says, “You know, Julia, this school is named after one of the Group of Seven painters, Tom Thomson. Have you heard of him?”

Before I can squeak out an answer, my mother replies, “Of course she has. Julia took an art class at the Redpath Museum with Arthur Lismer, who said she has a gift for color.”

Mr. Squash raises an indulgent eyebrow. He’s probably thinking that if he had a buck for every child whose parents think their kid is a genius, he’d be living on a yacht in the Caribbean. My mother ignores Mr. Squash’s smarmy smile and points out that not only am I artistically gifted, but my marks are excellent, which is why I should skip grade ten and be placed in grade eleven.

This is news to me. I stare at my feet.

Mr. Squash says, “We don’t encourage skipping grades.”

My mother looks at Mr. Squash with cold, unblinking eyes. Her blonde hair is swept up into a chignon that shows off her long neck and high cheekbones. The words
not possible
are not in my mother’s vocabulary. She says, “I think we both realize that the Ontario school system has thirteen grades, whereas Quebec’s has only eleven. The two systems do not mesh.” The way she says “mesh” sounds accusatory. “The point is, Julia has a 94 percent average, and it would be a mistake not to move her forward.”

Mr. Squash flicks his pen against his clipboard and shifts his attention to me. “What do you think, Julia?” he asks in a condescending voice.

I glance at him. What do
I
think? Is he joking? Nobody gives a damn what I think. If what I thought counted for anything, I wouldn’t be sitting here, in this new school, in this suburban wasteland. This meeting is just a game, a power struggle between Mr. Squash and my mother. I am like Vietnam, stuck between China and the United States. A pawn. A battle zone. No one gives a shit about what Vietnam wants. Vietnam and me, we’re just territory.

I have a sudden flash of my face, photographed, like an Andy Warhol print, against the flag of Vietnam. It’s a funny image. It almost makes me laugh out loud. And at the same time as I’m thinking about that, I’m noticing Mr. Squash’s
ugly, brown ribbed socks and how my mother is glaring at me, as if she could will me to say something intelligent instead of sitting on my chair like a sullen lump.

In the end, I just shrug. Mr. Squash must think I’m an idiot. “Do you think you could handle grade eleven?” he asks. “The rest of the kids would be a year older than you,” he adds, as if I can’t do the math.

“I’ll be fine,” I say.

Mr. Squash purses his lips. “I suppose we could give it a try,” he says. My mother smiles triumphantly. We discuss my electives. I choose drama and art. It’s over quickly. When I shake Mr. Squash’s pulpy hand, he says, “You know, Julia, skipping a grade can be difficult. Don’t expect to get the same high marks you got last year.”

I stare at him with a deadpan face. I may be a social misfit, I may have the confidence of a gnat, but one thing I
do
know is how to get good marks in school. School is not my problem.

In the lobby, we pass Mr. Squash’s next appointment: a thin, elegant woman and her son. The woman has a willowy, fragile kind of beauty. Her son slouches in his chair: lean, angular, all legs, black T-shirt and long black hair. As we walk by, he flicks his hair out of his eyes and looks at me. His face changes everything about him. His body is loose and lazy, but his expression has an unsettling intensity. His face is narrow with high cheekbones, a nose that looks like
it’s been broken at least once, lips that are too wide and sharp predatory eyes. Those eyes are unnatural: pale gray-blue, cold like a winter moon ringed in black. Wolf eyes. Eyes that know their own power. Our eyes meet. Neither of us smiles.

I spend the rest of the day in my room reading
The Drifters
, a book about six young people from different countries who, unlike me, have the guts to run away from home. They end up in Torremolinos, Spain, swimming, meeting cool people in the bar, having sex and basically living out my romantic fantasy life. The book is thick, but I have plenty of time.

After dinner, the doorbell rings and my mom calls out in a way-too-cheery voice, “Julia, it’s for you.” For a minute, I’m confused because I don’t know anyone in Toronto, but there, standing in the front hall, is Carla Cabrielli. She’s flanked by two friends: Snake Eyes, the string-bean blonde, and a short, wiry girl with a mouth full of braces who reminds me of a terrier. Carla introduces Debbie and Marlene and says, “Do you want to come over to my place?” She couldn’t sound less enthusiastic. Personally, I’d rather stay home and pick lint off an old sweater, but it’s obvious to everyone that my social calendar is wide open.

The Cabriellis’ basement is a dark room with high windows, pine-paneled walls and an orange shag carpet. Carla
tosses a bag of chips onto a vinyl card table while Marlene flips through the records on the stereo stand. Debbie flops onto a corduroy beanbag chair and checks her hair for split ends. “So, you’re from Montreal,” she says without looking up.