Page 6 of Christmas at the Ranch
I’m not at home right now,I text with numbing fingers.I’m at a work interview in the north end of the city. I won’t be home for a while, I’m sorry.
It’s true, I am sorry. My eyes are filled with tears. I close them, and I can picture my mother. Her eyes are green, like mine, and her mouth matches mine, too: cupid’s bow. But that’s where the similarities end. She’s glamorous; I’m minimalist. She’s sophisticated; I’m awkward. She has, all my life, been focused on keeping up appearances—and so I know how much this is hurting her, to see our family’s dirty laundry aired onthe news. But she’ll want me to empathize with her, and I know I can’t do that. Not now, and maybe not ever. This is starting to feel like it has to be happening to someone else. Because while I love my parents, I have always felt like an outsider in my family.
I watch as my mother’s car pulls around, then away. Her face, completely smooth and free of lines, a slight downturn of her mouth and a darkening of her eyes the only way to tell she’s upset, flashes past. She doesn’t see me. Still, I count to thirty before stepping out from the alley. I keep my hood up and my head down. I let myself in the side door of my building’s parking garage and walk quickly to my car. Once I’m inside it, I put my gym bag in the back seat and turn on the heat, full blast. My heart is racing. I take deep breaths to try to calm myself down, but it doesn’t work. My inner voice is no longer all-knowing and calm.
Now there are only three words in my head, on a repetitive loop:fight or flight.
Two
I choose flight. With a modicum of fight, since navigating Toronto’s perpetual gridlock is always a battle. I inch toward the Gardiner Expressway and persevere until I’m sailing down the Don Valley Parkway in my Prius. Past the icy river and the valley filled with the leaf-bare, snow-dressed trees. Past happy kids sledding down the hill beside Riverdale Farm, which gives me a twinge to see. I don’t have any core memories like that and couldn’t imagine either of my parents pushing a child version of me down a toboggan hill, ever. Back when my dad and I used to be close—which now feels like a different lifetime—his idea of bonding was taking me to the Toronto Stock Exchange to hear them ring the opening bell, then out for what he called a power breakfast. I asked him once if we could go to the library instead and he told me we were the sort of people to donate money to the library, not actually use it. But I loved the library and went on my own whenever I could, taking the subway two stops from our neighborhood inRosedale to roam the stacks of the reference library, to drink coffee in the café and dream of one day writing for the newspapers my father spread on his desk every morning, keeping the business sections and leaving the rest for me.
I’m on the 404 now. I keep driving north because it feels good to do this. Because my brain is telling me that as long as I keep moving in this direction, I’ll be okay. Which is not true, of course, but it’s working in the moment. When the news comes on the radio station and they start talking about my family, I spin the dial away and onto 96.3. Soon, I’m being lulled into complacency by Michael Bublé’s vanilla-sundae-with-a-cherry-on-top voice, singing about having myself a merry little Christmas. I only realize how far I’ve traveled when I speed past the sign for Webers, an iconic BBQ institution at the gateway to Ontario’s cottage country.
My phone rings. It’s Lani.
“Emory! I’ve been so worried!”
“Lani, I have to tell you something…” My voice wobbles and I grip the steering wheel tight. But I can tell my best friend anything. Ever since Lani and I met in our first year at Concordia in Montreal, at a Halloween party where we were both dressed up as Encyclopaedia Britannica volumes in protest of them going out of print that year, we’ve been soulmates. I was still heartbroken over Tate, my first boyfriend, when I met her, and she helped me through it. But this is worse. This isn’t a teenage heartbreak I should have gotten over well before I did. It’s my family. My culpability.
“I always knew something was going on with mydad’s company,” I say. “Right from the first moments he and Reuben went into business together. If I had told someone—”
“Oh, Em. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“He wanted me to work with him at the company, and I refused. I never would have let this happen.”
“No. Just because your parents have never made it feel safe to be who you are doesn’t mean who you are isn’t great. You were supposed to abandon your dreams just to make your dad happy? Now, where are you? Do you want to come here?” A baby’s wail in the background punctuates her words. “Hang on, let me just get this one on the boob and”—the cries reach a desperate pitch, then stop suddenly, making me realize my best friend has way too much on her plate with twin newborns to be dealing with my stuff.
“Which one is that?” I ask with a smile.
“Cece.”
“And Matt is on shift?” Her husband is a pediatric cardiologist who works long, often erratic hours.
“Yes, but my mom and her sisters are getting here tomorrow—at which point I’ll be lucky if I even get to hold the twins for the foreseeable future. It’s you I’m worried about. Come here. Stay with me. Let us take care of you, too.”
I can’t help but feel a tug of longing at the idea of Lani’s mom, Isa, and her many aunties fussing over me during the holidays, feeding me Filipino food until I want to burst.
“It’s you and the twins they should be doting on,” I say. “And besides, I need to keep driving north.”
When I say these words, they make perfect sense.
“Drivingnorth? Where are you?”
I look at the next highway sign. “In Orillia.”
“Why?”
“I needed to get out of the city.”
“You should probably stop soon, Em,” she says gently. “There’s a blizzard coming.” I hear a second baby wailing in the background. “Hang on, just let me get these two settled and you’ll have my full attention again.”
“You go take care of them. I’ll turn around soon. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“And text me later so I know you’re okay?”
“Promise.”
I hang up and keep going. Soon, the winter scenery I’m passing makes me feel like I’m driving through Narnia. Thick white snow covers the tall coniferous trees lining the highway, so they all appear to be wearing regal white robes. The walls of blasted granite that signal the official entrance to Ontario’s northern cottage country are frosted with snow so thick it could be mistaken for layers of marzipan. Crevices in those rocks are festooned with waterfalls stilled by ice. Creeks line the shoulder of the road, their frozen surfaces shimmering in the light of the descending sun. Through the trees, I see a snowy river ribboning away along snowy banks. It’s so beautiful, so perfectly wintry. Like the Christmas cards I used to tuck away and save, making me feel nostalgic for the sorts of holiday seasons I had never had.
