Moondance (8 page)

chapter 9

ROTMAN’S MBA PROGRAM KICKED off with a series of social events, then an orientation weekend covering personality-typing, team-building and career planning.

The Madison pub, a Victorian house in the downtown Annex area just northwest of St. George subway station, was an established University of Toronto haunt. Althea walked into The Maddy slightly nervous. Kevin and she used to come here. As she entered, the crowd blocked her view, live music was playing and it felt different, new. She relaxed and followed the music. A piano player was working downstairs next to the bar, his head down and bobbing, the microphone close to his lips. She found the sign that said “Private Party.”

On the third floor, which had been reserved for their first year class, the crowd was thinner. Stevie Ray Vaughn had replaced the piano-pop and she scanned the room, making her way to the bar.

“Do you have single malts? Laphroaig?” The bartender nodded. “A double please. On the rocks.”

She looked around at the people, now strangers, who would become part of her world for the next two years. A man with coffee colored skin and black plastic glasses held out his hand. Althea took it. His palms were soft and slightly moist and he squeezed her hand tightly, two quick pumps. She squeezed back. They had to lean into each other to hear. His name was Rasheed and he squinted slightly as he spoke.

“Have you met your group yet?”

“No. You?”

“Two of them.”

Althea paid the bartender for her scotch and pushed a few coins over the bar as a tip.

“They say that we’ll be at each other’s throats by mid-term,” the man said. Althea nodded, sipping the sweet, smoky scotch.

“So I’ve heard.”

Most of the first year MBA assignments were group work. From what she’d heard, managing the combination of personalities, egos, and demands of group work could be the most challenging part of the MBA program.

“What’s your background?” Rasheed asked.

“Advertising. For now. And you?”

“Bachelor of Commerce, and Masters in Economics from U of London.” His eyes flickered up and over her shoulder.

“I have a few friends who went to Western,” Althea said. Tori had done her undergrad at the University of Western Ontario in London.

“London,
England
. I worked in financial services there for two years.”

“Interesting. Do you know what you want to do when you’re done?”

“Investment banking all the way. I’m going to do my CFA at the same time.” Certified financial analysts were licensed to trade stocks for individuals and institutions. Investment banking was a lucrative career in which seven-figure salaries were commonplace.

Rasheed was nodding, his eyes wandering. “I figure I might as well blow my brains out. Get all the schooling done now, then I can start making some real cash.”

“Makes sense. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably —”

“Stan the man!” Rasheed exclaimed, turning away from Althea to slap a preppy Val Kilmer look-alike who was grinning and holding a Guinness. Althea backed away from the bar and turned to face a lean, tanned woman with short-cropped hair and thin lips. She looked like an aerobics instructor.

“I’m Trisha.” Trisha’s handshake was cool and dry.

“Althea.”

“I think you’re in my group.” Trisha held a glass of white wine close to her chest. Althea noticed a white metal ring on her hand. Trisha wasn’t an aerobics instructor. Trisha was a professional engineer.

That night Althea met three of the people in her first year group. Trisha was a mechanical engineer who wanted to get into management. Hermann was a software developer who wanted to start his own firm. Tony was a group insurance sales rep on the executive track. Two group members were absent that night: Celia, in the process of moving from Europe, and Michael, an accountant.

Group D drank together and laughed. Their discussions were a communion of well-chosen stories on well-contemplated topics such as education, career experience, grades, GMAT scores, their previous jobs, idiot bosses, financial aspirations and overseas travels. Beneath it all, the low-level hum of competition lingered, with an unspoken understanding: they would work together, they would rely on each other, and their own objectives would remain paramount.

As the night wore on, the alcohol took effect, and Kevin and Tori felt further and further away. Althea’s ambition and desire for success was taking root. As she talked, she re-envisioned her life: the career, the title, the success, the travel, all dedicated to build
ing, growing, making money.

Creating security.

• • •

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, ALTHEA stepped outside to get some air. A man leaned against the wall, smoking, blending in with the brick. When her eyes adjusted, she could make out angular features, fair hair and rectangular glasses. He caught her looking at him and his eyes crinkled in a smile. He was older than he first appeared.

“First year MBA?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“I saw you upstairs.” His eyes held hers, and his expression was unreadable. Althea flushed.

“I’m George O’Sullivan,” the man said. “I teach advanced strategy in second year.” He extended his hand and she took it. He pulled away, puffing on his cigarette, nodding at a group of students walking by. She could feel herself getting warm and just as she was about to speak, he tossed his cigarette onto the street and walked away.

chapter 10

MICHAEL STOOD FIVE FEET
eleven inches
, or as he liked to joke, six foot one when he blow-dried his hair. He leaned sideways as he walked down the basement stairs of their new house, his hand on the ceiling for stability. The smell of simmering spaghetti sauce followed him. Lara would be home in about an hour. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, surveying a pile of boxes that was chest high and didn’t seem to be getting any smaller. He felt tired and slightly off balance.

Which door will it be today?

Michael had spent at least two hours a day over the last week going through the boxes that he’d stored in Lara’s parents place for the last fifteen years. Most of the boxes he had opened so far were filled with books, some from school, some from his high school science fiction obsession. In one, he found his mother’s salt and pepper shaker collection, in another, his father’s stamps. The rest he could only guess. Despite telling Lara he wanted to clear some of it out, the truth was that most of it would probably go back into the same boxes, though with an updated label. To her credit, Lara had never pressured him about that.

His eyes were getting used to the murky light. On the side of a box to his right, he found what he was looking for: “Michael”, written in his mother’s handwriting. To his mother and to Lara, he had always been Michael. Everyone else called him Mike. Wincing slightly, he picked up the box, which was light, and opened the lid.

On top lay five-year old Michael’s contribution to the art world: a collage, the edges of the faded blue construction paper curling up. Young Michael had signed it in person with a shaky hand. Further in, he found a hardened array of Playdough figures, a pair of bronzed baby shoes and various abstract finger-paint creations. He dug into the box, moving forward in time, revealing layer after layer of his mother’s treasures, proof of his own past. He was twelve now, the young artist depicting half of a woman’s face in pencil, the other half a magazine cut-out. He stared at the woman’s carved up face. Then he was thirteen, standing in the second row in a blue and gold basketball shirt numbered four. And there he was in the same year, in a newspaper clipping, receiving an award for public speaking.

At the bottom of the box lay a bright yellow Hilroy notebook with wire binding. “This journal belongs to Michael Foster,” it said, printed precisely with blue magic marker. This was the journal he used to write in every day for English class.

Michael tilted his head, listening. If Lara got home right now, he’d be able to go back upstairs and leave his past behind. He heard nothing, so he picked up the journal. Two-thirds of the pages were shrunken and dry with age and ink. The last entry was made on June 18 — three days before his fifteenth birthday. He could feel his chest tighten, his stomach sink, and beads of sweat forming on his nose and between his eyes. He massaged his temples as if he could rub the memory out.

Finding the journal wouldn’t have been significant two years before. Two years before, he would have found it, read it with his wife and later, they would have made love. He would have felt nostalgic for a day and then moved on. But for the past year and a half, his subconscious had a habit of sneaking up on him. The images came to him in a variety of situations, in a variety of ways. He didn’t expect them to come, disguised as yellow Hilroy.

This time, instead of them coming at him, it was as if everything was brighter.
Look at me
, the journal said, and Michael held the book in his hand, flipping randomly, then glancing at the last entry he made. The look of his own handwriting shifted his reality. It was more than a reminder, it was more than a vision: it was the past paying a visit, magnifying the present. If he read the journal, he knew that the visions inside him would be let loose like bitter spirits hungry for innocent souls, spirits once banished by shamans, then re-opened by the curious a thousand years later.

His hands shook and perspiration dripped over the bridge of his nose onto the shiny yellow cover.
This journal belongs to Michael Foster
. He put the journal at the bottom of the box and put the other pieces on top of it, layer after layer, moving backward in time until once again he was five years old, playing with finger paints. He folded the top of the box shut, one flap at a time, just as his father had taught him to do, and placed the box back exactly where it had been.

• • •

MICHAEL WAS AN ACCOUNTANT for Exeter, a large publishing firm based in London, England. He had been there for five years and knew his career prospects were limited. He was paid much less than his counterparts in other industries and he had little support. When his assistant left and they refused to replace her, Michael applied to do his Masters of Business Administration.

The night Michael and Lara drove back from her parents, Michael had asked for two weeks to think about it. Two days later, he told her that he would stay. Since that time, they worked and planned together as well as they ever had. The baby was due in May. They moved, found a bigger place, more suitable for a family. Michael deferred the MBA. That was the new plan.

After the birth, Lara would take some time off. In the long term, since Lara made more money than he did, it might make sense for him to stay home. Or if he got a better paying job, they might be able to hire a nanny. That part of the plan was still being worked out.

The day he found his Hilroy journal, he did not mention his discovery when Lara got home. Later he lay awake, his visions silent for now, sleep at a distance, looking at his wife’s sleeping face: fine freckles, straight blond hair, even breathing. She had a small crease between her brows which gave her a serious look, a look which made her appear years older when she was in school and a look that ensured that she was taken seriously today. Michael used to kiss the crease and make her laugh when she got too serious. And when she laughed, it didn’t disappear, it got deeper, which made her laugh more. He looked at her shoulder as it rose and fell with her even breathing. He thought about how often he had fallen asleep with his head nuzzled there.

Except for a few times in the first two weeks following their reconciliation, he and Lara had stopped making love. This was rare for them. Even when she was having the affair, they had remained intimate. After they moved, he lost the desire. Lara, for reasons Michael could only suspect, chose not to mention it.

• • •

WHEN LARA GOT UP the next morning, she dressed in what she called fat classic black and sat down on their bed.

“It’s seven thirty,” she said. “You feeling okay?”

He pretended to wake up at her touch and smiled up at her through sleepy eyes. Her perfume, Opium, warmed the air around her wrist.

“Don’t feel so hot. Didn’t sleep well,” he said and she nodded, the small crease between her eyes telling of her concern and understanding, and perhaps her curiosity.

“Maybe you should take it easy today.”

When he heard her car start, he got up and called in sick. Then he went downstairs to the basement. The box lay where he left it the day before, tucked into the corner. He stood on the landing watching it as though whatever was inside might jump out at him.
He moved across the room and hit his head on a light that swung, circling the box, psychedelic. He put his hand on the light to stop it from moving and burned his finger. He swore, shook his hand and put his finger in his mouth to stop the sting.

Inside the box, he removed each layer, until he found the yellow journal and a world he thought he had left behind.

The day before his fifteenth birthday, Michael’s father committed suicide. His mother subsequently slipped into a depression, dying of pneumonia one year later. At age sixteen, he was accepted into Lara’s family and never looked back. Lara’s world and his childhood were so different that the door between them had slammed with a thud.