Page 22 of The Work Boyfriend

“For a wedding I haven’t even agreed to have yet.”

“I got the ring on your finger once, that’s the first step in my long-term plan to finally win you over, and you did promise to think about it with an open mind. That’s all I’m asking.” He nuzzled my neck. “I’ll bring you over to my side before you know it. A house in Lawrence Park. Two kids. A cottage. You won’t know what hit you.”

I pushed him away gently. “Don’t even joke about it.”

Rob yawned, pulled his hand from my bottoms, and squeezed my waist. As if talking about his parents buying us an entire house, mortgage-free, was not a big deal at all. Like it was expected. Like the ring. Like the horrible Christmas meals in semiformal attire using the good silver. He fell asleep quickly from the scotch, his arm growing heavier on top of me.

What was my next step? Resign myself to a life that I had never dreamed of leading—and not in the kind of oh my god, this man has walked into my life, and now I’ve got a ring and maybe a house, and I’m set for life romantic plots that enrage me. Was there a way out of this without leaving the only person who had ever stuck by me, no questions asked, behind?

I slipped out of bed to use the bathroom and turned my phone back on. I didn’t know why I expected Garrett to ping me back. I just wanted him to hear me call through the internet ether. Instead, there was a message from my sister.Hope you’re having a nice Xmas eve w/ the in-laws. See you tomorrow at the mother’s. I’ll be the one throwing up. Morning sickness is no joke.

I held my phone tightly as my hands started to shake. My heart felt light, like it was floating outside of my chest. I quickly typed back,Babies seem to be the thing this holiday season. Getting knocked up is going around like hand, foot, and mouth disease at a daycare. Story to come tomorrow.

My BlackBerry flashed red. Garrett? No, my mother.

Kelly, this is the one who gave birth to you. I finally have the turkey under control (the poor bird was too cold outside so I made Carl lug the tub into the kitchen and leave the window open. He’s already complaining about the cost of heating). Anyway, it’s late. My hands are tired from chopping. The boys got home okay from school. I think exams might have done Daniel in—he’s not loving Western. You’ll be happy to know that Annie left a package for you (and one for Meghan). Looking forward to seeing you and your gorgeous Rob tomorrow. Love, your mother, who can’t get to sleep and it’s well after 1 a.m.

I typed back,Mom, you don’t have to tell me it’s you—your name comes attached to the email. Can’t wait for turkey. There better be lots of potatoes. We’ll see you midday, maybe earlier. Go to sleep! Love you too.

She replied again:Cheeky cheeky. Says YOUR MOTHER. You go to sleep.

It was hard, sometimes, to know if my mother really didn’t understand email or if she was willfully being obtuse. But she was right, I should have been in bed. Rob was deep asleep now; the house, this room, deathly silent. He barely moved or made any noise while he was sleeping. It was uncanny and sometimes a little unnerving. My legs were growing stiff and sore, all crunched up against the side of the tub.

I wrote to my sister again:I’m sure Mom will have soda crackers and ginger ale for you, like when we were kids. Maybe cinnamon toast?

* * *

We had been living with my mother’s boyfriend, Anatoly “Toly” Ivanovich. He was religious in a way that made both Meghan and me deeply uncomfortable, but my mother had convinced herself that the Catholic school was probably better than our old one across town, so she enrolled us. I think we managed a good three-week stint before Meghan refused entirely to attend religion class and skipped it regularly. As I was a year ahead of her, I wasn’t scheduled to have religion that semester, so I was free of that particular torture. But we were both subjected to the daily prayers strumming through the morning announcements, and that was enough for me. Our grades were suffering. And Toly was insufferable. Meals made by my mother needed to be on time and on the table. We were at the whim of his moods, his inability to give any of us space, and the fact that the apartment was so small that we were all on top of each other all the time. The run-down place backed onto the lake, which was the only blessing.

Meghan and I spent a lot of time in the shoddy old playground to the side of the building, swinging away for hours to avoid spending the dead hours after school in the apartment before dinner, and when Toly left for his night shift. Did I mention if we did come home right after school we absolutely couldn’t make any noise because he worked nights as a security guard for the huge grocery distribution center on the Queensway? Toly wasn’t bad or mean, but he was old school, and we were miserable. My mom put constant pressure on us to just get along with him for her sake until Meghan screamed, “Why? I’m the kid. You get along with him.” And stomped out of the house.

My mother’s relationship with Toly lasted for about six months. It unraveled as quickly as she stitched it together. She had gotten the job as a receptionist-slash-secretary-slash-personal assistant at Carl’s accounting firm, a small family-owned business he had inherited from his father. Toly tailed off into my stepfather. We moved right from his apartment to Carl’s family home.

I met Carl twice before we all moved in together that August. Once at an awkward family-welcome office party and the second time at a terrifically awkward dinner when my mother explained he was her long-lost life partner, and we’d be moving in a week. She had laughed a lot during that dinner. Meghan and I had given each other knowing looks. It was the uncomfortable, forced laugh that we knew meant she needed us to help her make sure this worked out. It wasn’t like we had any other choice. We’d have to trust her.

Our father was so far out of the frame he couldn’t even define the picture. At that time, I wasn’t even sure where he was—in England somewhere, maybe. We weren’t the type to run away from home. We weren’t abused or even mistreated. Our mother was flighty. She’d describe herself as ever searching, and depending on my mood, I could be more or less critical of her self-description. But she loved us, and everything she did in her life was to try to make our lives better. She had made mistakes, but each time she tried again, getting her own heart crushed from another poor, hasty decision, but she did it for us. For the idea of family, which meant more to her than anything.

A year later, my mother and Carl were married. All of her tossing us from place to place as she changed jobs and updated boyfriends had stopped the moment she and Carl said I do at City Hall. Up until then, my mother had kept us on the straight and narrow with little money but a lot of ingenuity. Still, we were lost in the sea of her emotions, in her clinging to the idea that once we made a complete family with a male member at its head, everything would be better. I know now that wasn’t necessary. Our unit had been complete with the three of us, but my mother had never thought so. She had felt inadequate and ashamed that her marriage hadn’t worked out, and she had played hard at happy families until she couldn’t anymore. Then Carl became the anchor for her boat, and once she found him—as messy as it was in the beginning—she never stepped into open water again.

The end of August that year fooled everyone in the city into thinking fall might start on time. Instead, early September was stifling, and the morning Meghan and I started at our new school, the day started off murky and humid. There was only one way to conquer a new school: face it head on and with attitude. We wore matching black twenty-four-hole Doc Martens tightly knotted up to our midcalves. Our backpacks were riddled with band buttons, and my sister had just shaved half of the hair on her head. Besides our boots, we were dressed in our black tights and kilts from the Catholic school—it was our first-day uniform. We were a team, Meghan and I—we were so close in age that it was easy to be friends, but always being a year apart in school meant we didn’t have to fight over boys or other ridiculous things. And we’d cycled through so many schools until we moved to Etobicoke to live with Carl that it was just easier to be the two of us. Meghan met Jason the first week there, and they became inseparable. We became a threesome. And it worked; it always worked. Sure, my sister drove me crazy and I’m sure I made her batty, but there was always an us against the world mentality. And I felt selfish for a moment thinking that her baby was going to change all that, but it would. It was another signal that we weren’t all carrying on like we had for years.

* * *

My BlackBerry blinked. Meghan.I can hear you spiraling over there in preppy land. What’s up? I haven’t had the baby yet. I can still be relied upon for advice.

I wrote back:The same old arguments. Rob gave me a ring. And I might have real feelings for Garrett. You are literally the only person I can admit that to.

A RING?ANDWORK BOYFRIEND DRAMA. I told u so.

Tell you tomorrow. SRSLY huge diamond tho.

ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY HIM?

Undecided. Talk tomorrow.

K, love you.

You too.

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