The Letter Opener (12 page)

Perhaps at the time I wasn’t entirely normal myself. What I felt inside me during those first few weeks seemed more like a strange curiosity than fear—not unlike the way I felt when my father drank too much at Christmas one year and I watched him waltz into a glass door.

My mother’s face looked as if she had just competed in a marathon, conquering a task so strenuous that she had now earned as long a rest as she desired. Under the covers, she wore an old T-shirt and
grey sweatpants. Though she didn’t wear makeup, the room always smelled sweetly of honey skin lotion. A thousand pills of wool formed on a baby-blue cardigan she draped over her shoulders. Even her clothes were returning to an atavistic state.

Weeks passed, and Kana and I stopped waiting for our casserolemaking, euchre-playing mother to return. I convinced myself that all mothers, even the good ones, maybe particularly the good ones, needed to take time for themselves.

The arrangement was that we would see our father once a week, but more and more frequently he would cancel or postpone at the last minute. I could always see the hurt on Kana’s face before she could hide it. Our father had stopped being reliable. The more we needed him, the more distant he became.

My father always had a knack for fixing things. He spent much of my childhood sitting at a work table in the garage surrounded by warped bicycle wheels, lopsided picture frames and uneven table legs. The state of the concrete floor, strewn with nails and splintery scraps of wood, made entering off limits, but I counted on him to be there, and often stood at the doorway watching him. As winter approached, my mother would wander over and try to convince him to bring his workshop into the house so he wouldn’t have to be alone and in the cold. But he insisted he liked it out there by himself. He said it was his “bit of crust,” a geographer’s way of referring to his portion of the earth.

One afternoon after he left, I ventured into the garage. I was desperate to be in the spaces he had occupied. The garage was dim, but as soon as I entered I saw something wedged in the bench vise: one of my mother’s shoes. My father had mended the wooden heel and left it there for the glue to dry. I walked over, unscrewed the vise carefully,
and placed the shoe on the wooden table among his clamps and filing tools. It was the last thing he fixed before he left his marriage.

I tried to kept busy. In the morning we had school. I ate arrowroot cookies and orange juice for breakfast. In a burst of maternal feeling, Kana suggested I explore other food options, but I didn’t like cereal and I was tired of eggs. So I continued eating cookies, added La Vache Qui Rit cheese triangles to my diet and sometimes substituted milk for juice. I begged off scrambled eggs forever, explaining, in a note I left for Kana on the fridge, that I had a “klorestral problem.”

It was near the end of the first month that the novelty wore off. I hit a wall. Whatever my mother was thinking and feeling on the inside just wasn’t getting through to us on the outside. No longer did she seem serene. She was comatose. Yet according to our family doctor—who paid a house visit after Kana called and pleaded with him to come—there was nothing physically wrong with her. He took her temperature and pulse, ran a few other tests and concluded that she was suffering from shot nerves, a “woman’s problem,” something we’d understand one day when we were grown up. Kana was ready to kill him when he said that, but I just thanked him and showed him out, feeling secretly guilty that I had wished our mother had a bona fide illness, something that involved wounds or lumps or spots. (Could the doctor show me an X-ray of her shot nerves? Would it look something like Swiss cheese?) I wanted splints and gauze and ointment. Maybe my mother was permanently deranged and the doctor was trying to protect us from the truth.

Oddly, I now found myself turning to television in a search for social explanations for my mother’s unresponsive behaviour. At first, this convergence of fact and fiction was a lark. After watching an episode of
Gilligan’s Island
, I told Miss Lowry, my grade four teacher, that my mother couldn’t attend a parent–teacher night because she
had a tarantula bite. (It was 1970 and, for some reason, television was glutted with stories about deadly spiders, piranhas and sharks.) Then a week later, after watching an episode of
General Hospital
, I told Miss Lowry that my mother had contracted septicemia.

“Won’t you stay and talk with me? Please do,” Miss Lowry said one afternoon in October, leaning forward in her swivel chair. “I know this has been a very difficult time for you.”

I cut out of the conversation. My eyes flicked over the room.

“…divorce…immigrant mother…”

I stared at the orange-and-brown-striped curtains, then at a cluster of paper jack-o’-lanterns taped to the window.

“…at lunch or after school…someone to talk to now and then…So how does that sound?”

“Thank you, Miss Lowry. But I think I’m fine.”

I knew she was genuinely concerned that I had lost a grip on reality. I tried to explain that it was just a game, but she simply stared at me, nodding.

Despite Miss Lowry’s intervention, I kept telling stories.

Just before Thanksgiving, my father stopped by unexpectedly. My mother was still in bed. I was on the wood floor beside her, crawling forward on my belly the way commandos do in war movies, playing with the cats, trying my best to ignore the fact that my mother had been watching a mute game of
Family Feud
for over an hour. It was late afternoon. The doorbell rang and Kana let my father in. My mother remained upstairs.

“For you,” he said when he arrived, and handed us an odd-shaped package.

I balanced it while Kana peeked through the foil wrapper and sighed. “Great,” she muttered. “A plant.” (For my sister that was the clincher. Our father had brought us something else to care for—the surest sign that he had no clue.)

“Pretty.” I smiled.

“I thought your mother might like it,” he said sheepishly. “She always liked mums…mums for Mum. Perhaps it’ll brighten things up a bit.”

Kana and I had grown accustomed to ordering in. We had collected takeout menus for every pizza and barbecue joint in the area. As supper hour rolled around, Kana made a dramatic performance of arranging our menus in a fan on the dining room table. Her eyes were flickering with defiance.

“There’s a two-for-one deal at Pizza Palace,” she said.

“It’s chicken-and-rib night at Roasters,” I said.

“Good idea,” Kana said, pointing her finger at me.

“They have good sauce,” I explained to our father.

“Or, if you’d prefer“—she turned to him—“I’d be happy to whip up a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich.”

He smiled. “How Julia Child of you.” There was an awkward silence, then he said, “Actually, I had a late lunch. You two go ahead. I’m not hungry.”

“I could make spaghetti,” I offered.

Kana shot me a killing look.

“I’m fine, Naiko,” my father said, his voice thin and tired. He stood up and started moving toward the living room. He looked pale. On his face there were wrinkles I had never seen before. I ran ahead of him and scooped a pile of dirty clothes from the couch so he could sit down. I was afraid he would dash off and leave us alone again.

He spent the remainder of the visit trying to get Kana to look him in the eye. She behaved as though his presence meant nothing at all to her, but I knew better. Whenever he turned away, I saw her watching him. I wanted to catch his eye, roll mine knowingly at Kana’s behaviour, but he kept passing over me. Ping, ping, ping, our eyes ricocheted around the room.

Kana was sullen. I rubbed my socked feet on the carpet and touched the cat to watch the sparks fly. I felt my heart zip itself up.

Thank you. Yes. Yes. Great. Not at all. Not at all. I’m really glad you came…

The only emotion I seemed capable of expressing that afternoon was accommodation.

Perhaps the exaggerated way we discussed takeout options tripped a guilt wire in my father. The next week he packed us in a rented car and we headed for the Caledon Hills for Thanksgiving dinner in the country. This time he insisted that our mother join us.

Suddenly we were one family among many on Highway 401, cars braiding their way across the three lanes. I remember watching other people pass in their hatchbacks and station wagons, replicas of us—father, mother, two kids—other odd-acting clusters, and wondering,
Were they better or worse?

I was wearing a pair of Mary Janes that I had polished with cooking oil and a blue-and-white sleeveless dress my mother had sewn for me years before from a McCall’s pattern. The dress was now a size too small and much too summery, but I wore it all the same, layering it on top of pants and a turtleneck. I played with the long trailing ribbons attached to the bodice, dangling the ends in front of my mother’s face during the car ride. Perhaps I wanted to remind her that she did once make things. But she was lost in her own world, concentrating perhaps on the soft drone of tires on the highway.

My father broke the silence by asking if we had ever tried venison. I asked what it tasted like and he said: “Gamy. Like strong liver.” Kana made a moan of disgust. “Now, now,” he continued, “it can be quite excellent with a dash of clam marinade and a spoonful of pork gelatin.”

Kana and I were clutching our stomachs and writhing in mock pain. Our mother, sitting in the front seat, wasn’t blinking.

Our father dropped us off in front of the inn while he went to park the car. We entered the restaurant foyer. My mother was dressed in a special-occasion outfit, selected by Kana. It consisted of a yellow silk blouse and a long skirt with a black-and-red diamond pattern. Kana was wearing a brown duffle coat over her favourite velour jumpsuit. We must have looked like a family of hippies on our way to a jamboree. The fact that we arrived without a reservation did not endear us to the maître d’, who seemed, in the particular long-necked manner of maître d’s, to challenge our right to be there.

The room smelled of buttered yams and roasted turkey. There were hunting pictures on the walls. The other diners looked very dignified, satisfied: life going as planned, members of a circle. Our presence seemed to make them uneasy, hostile in a genteel, don’t-display-it sort of way. Even if we had dressed in black gowns, the other diners would have seen what a calamity we all really were. But as soon as my father arrived some unspoken agreement was made, some secret aristocratic handshake exchanged, and we were seated in that tiny, crowded room. Soon, the waitress was bringing us our menus, and no one seemed to entertain any grudges, at least not openly. I picked up a fork, held it under the tablecloth and began scarring the soft surface of the wood table.

My mother, years later, denied the dinner had ever taken place. She said, “You must have dreamt it,” then she fell silent. But I have enough memories for the both of us.

I remember the oval table, the amber light and the wine-red velvet upholstery. I remember watching the diners around us—the men with their white cuffs, the women with their tasteful bracelets (my mother with her heavy silver bangles, courtesy of Kana). I remember that Kana insisted on wearing her coat throughout the meal despite the wood fire roaring a few metres away. I remember my mother putting down her
soup spoon to ruffle and rearrange the flowers in front of her, my father bending down to pick up the serviette that had fallen from his lap. The server kept refilling his water glass and my father kept drinking it in long gulps, as if he needed to flush something inside himself.

I remember the white candles, bowls of liquid wax melting around the wick. I tipped drops onto the linen tablecloth. No one scolded me. Deft hands came and removed the filigreed soup bowls; the server’s steps were light, so as not to scuff the polished floor. The quails on my plate were too small to eat. The steaming pool of meat juice that seeped off them made my stomach churn. I stared ahead at a painting of a dead fox draped over a man’s shoulder. I remember thinking that my family was like a dead fox that I would carry around for a long time.

I wanted to scream: WHY CAN’T YOU LOVE EACH OTHER? ISN’T LOVE SUPPOSED TO LAST FOREVER? WHAT DID I DO?

I wanted to say so much, but I didn’t. I never do.

My father left again, and finally, one afternoon in late November, my mother got out of bed. I came home from school and my mother was walking around the house in white jeans and a floppy peasant shirt, calmly watering plants. I wasn’t prepared to see her upright and without the sweatpants. The whole thing took some adjusting to.

“I like your shirt, Mama. You look pretty.”

“Thank you, Nai-chan.” She touched her hair.

I smelled a faint whiff of starch, rice steaming in the kitchen. After so many weeks, the scent filled the house with promise.

My mother quickly set about restoring order. She sent me on an errand to buy scouring pads, bleach and a bottle of detergent. When I returned she was heaving a wooden hutch away from the wall. Beneath it, in a dust mound containing hair, bread crumbs and shrivelled grapes, was a desiccated mouse. Without a moment’s hesitation, she pulled a rubber glove from under the sink slipped it over her hand.

It was soon clear that my mother’s hibernation had worked wonders. She had never looked or acted younger. Toward spring, she called up an old friend and got a job working at his art supply shop. She liked touching all the fancy paper and grouping the paints together by colour. It turned out she had a knack for dealing with the customers, and before we knew it she was dating—nothing lasting or serious, but the attention boosted her confidence. One guy came by every Friday night for several months. He was a painter with long silvery hair and eyes that were too close to his nose, so they always looked crossed. He wore a brown sweatshirt with a mandala silk-screened on the front. When I told my mother that his face reminded me of a ferret’s, she just laughed. She was now as permanently happy as she had once been tired. Everything around her was showered with affection.

Even her body language began to change. As our father became more clean-cut in appearance and more reserved in his mannerisms, our mother became less inhibited. I saw it in the way she interacted with people on the street and at the store. She pressed up close in a way that made me squirm in embarrassment. She was constantly pinching her cheeks to make them rosier and throwing her jeans in the dryer so the fabric tightened and hugged her bottom in an alluring way.