This Cake is for the Party (5 page)

“No thanks,” I say.

“It's just Coke.”

“It's toxic. I thought we weren't going to buy it.”

“It reminds me of my childhood,” Lise says. “It's sweet.”

“It's going to rot our teeth.”

“No it won't. It's diet.”

“I'm trying,” I tell her. “We say we want to eat better. Then you buy this stuff.”

“I said it's
diet
.”

Lise drinks it to make a point, looking at me over the edge of her glass. I can see her teeth swimming through the caramel liquid. She has such neat white teeth. They should be yellow from all the coffee and cola, but they look like polished oyster shells. Her lips are pursed over the rim to exaggerate the suction. Her eyes ignite as she chugs it down. She's going to start laughing. I turn my glass slowly on the table. It occurs to me to not say what I'm about to say, but the way she's drinking in my face makes my sinus cavities hurt. I can't stop myself.

“You know, at least
Krystal
—” I start.

Lise swallows the rest of her drink and lets out a rocking burp. “'Scuse
me
,” she giggles. “At least Krystal what?”

“I was going to say that at least Krystal—who is a
drunk
, who is a
loser
, who is in
deep problematic trouble
—”

“Greg, shut up now,” Lise warns.

“—at least
Krystal
is pretending to get a job.”

A rhythmic, throaty, muffled sound comes from the living room. Atlas is screaming from inside a pile of pillows. Lise jumps up from the table to check on him. The screaming stops as soon as she steps into the room. See, that kid is
calculating
. He knows exactly how to get to her. I saw him scrape his knee on purpose once. He was rubbing his knee over the edge of the concrete step in front of our door, trying to make it bleed. When I caught him doing it, he actually started to cry and said, “Ow, I hurt my knee.”

When Lise walks back into the kitchen, the look on her face is as expressive as a wall of aluminum siding. “He's pretending he's a tiger,” she tells me. “He's made a fort with the cushions and he's playing a tiger that wants out of the cage.” She takes a sip of her diet Coke and then says, “I'm going to forget that you called my best friend a loser. I'm just going to forget that.”

I got my first car last summer after I landed the job at Scotiabank. It's a black Jetta—predictable, I know—but now I have deep feelings for it. It's probably not right to feel this kind of love for a vehicle. But it's more than just a car. It's my
zone
. Sometimes, when I'm driving along the outskirts of town on windy Highway 15, watching humps of trees like curvy hips and shoulders lying down in the distance and the line of the horizon straight in front of me, I'm able to completely exit my mind. I stop feeling or thinking anything at all. It's my own private enlightenment.

When I pull out of the driveway this time, I'm heading to GoodLife Fitness. I twist the air conditioner dial up to max. I slide in Bedouin Soundclash and turn up the volume. I turn it as far as it can go without distorting the bass. Then I just holler along. It feels like I'm ticking so close to the end of a countdown I might blow up. It feels good. At the corner of Lansdowne and the Parkway, I stop at the lights. There's a woman on a bicycle beside me wearing a tank top just like Lise wears. A small white dog sits in her front basket.

“Hey-hey, heeey!”
I yell to the music. My windows are rolled up. I shout to make my voice go through the glass.
“Hey beautiful day! Hey beautiful day!”
I hit the steering wheel with my hands over and over like I'm beating a conga drum. Who knows if she can hear me?

In the beginning there was a little bar on campus, a dark, inauthentic British pub called the Royal, an underground hovel, dim even on the brightest afternoons. There was a pool table in the back and twenty small tables covered with chipped forest green laminate, each set with its own cat- and dog-shaped salt and pepper shakers, a white ramekin full of sugar packs, and a plastic menu stand that held an oil-and-ketchup-stained list of what was on tap. It was April, the month of snowmelt, finals, and tree-planter recruitment. I had just finished my final commerce exam. I walked into the Royal and saw her right away—her hair was in a ponytail and there was a big peach-coloured rose attached to it, a silk flower—and it was like she was the answer to the bonus question.

She was sitting alone, talking to Matt behind the bar while he rolled cutlery into white napkins. I went to the bar and sat down and Matt slipped a coaster in front of me. I introduced myself to her. She told me her name was Lise, and that she'd just aced her French exam. We both ordered Coronas even though it was only eleven in the morning. She pushed her wedge of lime down into the bottle, put her thumb over the top, and turned the bottle upside down until the lime floated through the beer. When she turned it right-side up again, a blast of white foam sprayed all over the bar.

“Now, that's not supposed to happen!” she said, laughing. “That's not how it's supposed to go!”

I used wads of paper napkins for the spill and reached over her to wipe it up. Lise came close. She put her beer-damp hands on my arm and pushed up my sleeve to see the rabbit tattoo on my bicep. I have always regretted the tattoo. It was such a stupid idea. I was only nineteen when I picked it—it's a little kid's tattoo, a cartoon, it's meaningless. But Lise noticed it. It was the thing that brought us together. So I changed my mind about it. At that moment the rabbit was a karmic necessity, because when she held my arm in both of her hands, she looked up at me, smiling, and she said,
“Merci beaucoup, mon petit lapin.”
Her voice was warm syrup and its effect on my inner organs was scandalizing. That was when I experienced the synthetic lining of joy—its perpetual companion—fear. Because now that I had found Lise, it had also become possible to lose her.

We moved in together and it was fast, in some ways, but it wasn't like we got
married
or anything. It's not like we're having babies. Everyone's having babies now. Half of my class got married the year after they graduated. Jake Middleton, Harv Saulter, Mitchell Lavois. I hardly see those guys anymore. They're involved in fatherhood, they're growing puffy because they can't metabolize their beer anymore, they're buying real estate. They have parties in the summer up at their family cottages in Muskoka. They hire caterers and babysitters and they drink to get drunk and talk stupid. I've been up there, and let me just say that those aren't even cottages, they're
houses
. Big houses. These guys went into commerce for a reason. Even though I know that they're all mostly unhappy, that they're all morphing steadily into versions of their own fathers and they hate it—if they could talk about it, they'd see that they actually do
hate
their lives—even though this may be true, even though I try to deny it, the thing is that
I want it too
.

Am I a big dick? What's the problem with a diet Coke once in a while? She can make her own choices, I am the driver of my own life, her decisions are not a reflection of my own, we are
autonomous individuals
, et cetera. I know I have these control-freak tendencies. I can't relax. I walk around the house like a clenched fist ready to pummel any flat surface that gets in the way. I should breathe more, I should find a vitamin for stress relief, what are those, are they B vitamins? Vitamin D? Lise is so calm all the time. I've seen her lying on the couch in her pink sweatpants, adorable, her little chin poking into her chest, and she's staring at the wall, totally serene. I want some of that. What is she thinking about, when she's lying there? I could ask her. Maybe that's what she wants—for me to show her my
vulnerable side
. Does she want me to tell her how I'm
feeling
?

This is how I'm feeling: I hate Scotiabank. I am twenty-three years old and I have to wear a
wrist guard
for my repetitive strain disorder, caused by
data entry
. Most of my friends from school have erased me from their lives within one year of graduation. The one friend who hasn't forgotten me—Jay—just moved to British Columbia to get his
MBA
. I'm paying too much rent for our house, which is so dark it could double as a torture dungeon, and I've started paying our rent with my Visa card because I'm having a slight
cash flow problem
. Lise is the only thing that's good in my life right now.

I change my mind about going to the gym. I just need to drive. I take the exit onto Highway 15 instead. Shift into third. Maybe I'm on the wrong track. Maybe this is all about the kid. Because today it was very clear: Atlas is a
major problem
. The kid's mother has problems, so the kid has problems, and now Lise and I have problems. Too many people in this town drinking instead of thinking. Like that woman Sylvia, perfect case in point. She was one of
Krystal's
friends, as if that's a big surprise. And look what happened to her. It's going to happen to Krystal too, if someone doesn't do something soon.

We could take Atlas away from her. There would be enough to make a case for it. But they
protect
her, her friends hide everything, they try to make it better for Atlas by keeping him there. They say,
No matter what, he needs
his mother!
These women go to Krystal's place after she's gone on a bender and they clean up the catacomb. They scrape fossilized cat shit out of the carpet fibres and they gather up the empty yellow Gordon's bottles in cardboard boxes, dropping them off behind the Price Chopper Dumpster so nobody will see. They put boxes of cornflakes in the cupboard for Atlas, and put a bowl of apples on the counter as well as a Mason jar filled with the daisies that are growing in the driveway. They open Krystal's mail for her, they bring Atlas a pile of library books with Cellophane covers and full-page colour illustrations, and they brush Krystal's hair until she's sober again. What they do is, they make it look okay when Children's Aid comes to visit. They come for regular checkups now. Sure, CAS knows it's not right when they come, they know there's a cleaning brigade, but there's nothing they can do.

Highway 15 is first-rate this afternoon. Nobody on the road but me. The air conditioner fan refrigerates my wrists and forearms, and they ache from the cold. My brain is slowing down the way it does before shutting off. My thoughts are finally stalling. I adjust the direction of the vents on either side of the steering wheel to aim the cold air away and off my skin. I see Lise in her little tank top. I shift into fourth. There's Atlas with a splotch of mustard on his big wide face. A car is going slowly in front of me. I shift down instead of braking. It's a cop. I'm only a click over the limit. I drive behind the police car for a bit. I think about Krystal and her stubbly legs squeezed into Lise's pantyhose. The cop is really going slow, he's driving below the speed limit, which I figure means
Go ahead and
pass me, I know my car is intimidating but I'm not going to pull
you over,
so I pass him. But I keep glancing in the rear-view until I'm sure his lights won't start flashing.

When I come home from the drive—I ended up at the mall for retail therapy—Lise is making dinner and Atlas is sitting at the kitchen table twisting a lump of dough in his hands. There's a curl of blue cardboard on the kitchen counter, which means it's a Pillsbury night again. I bring in my shopping bags and set them on the table. I drop my keys in the dish by the front door that says
Florida's Ripe
for Picking
.

“A few treats,” I say.

Lise slices a green pepper on the cutting board. The cutting board should probably be soaked in bleach. There's a stain on the edge of it, something blackish. It's probably mould.

I open the bags and take out my presents: a
Finding
Nemo
DVD for Atlas, a new Radiohead CD for myself, and a shell-pink matching bra and underwear set for Lise.

“I saw these at La Vie en Rose,” I tell her. I lift the gold sticker, tearing the tissue paper slightly, so she can see them folded nicely inside.

The pizza dough is already unrolled onto a cookie sheet. It's pale white under a sweep of red sauce. It reminds me of naked skin, but not in a good way. Lise raises her fist and scatters the diced green pepper over it.

“They're nice,” she says to me. I fold the pink cotton back up in the tissue paper.

“Atlas, do you like olives?” Lise peels the lid off a can of black olives as she asks.

“Nope,” Atlas says. Atlas rolls the piece of dough into a worm shape, presses it flat with the palm of his hand, then scrapes it up and rolls it again.

“I like olives,” I say.

“Can you make me a doggie?” Lise asks Atlas.

“I'm making a snake,” he answers.

“Krystal hasn't called yet,” she tells me.

“You can put olives on half of it.”

“She'll call soon.”

Lise has twisted her hair up on top of her head and held it in place with a rubber band. Her bangs have slipped out of the twist. They're falling into her eyelashes. I reach over and push them out of her eyes, because her hands are covered in green pepper juice and she can't do it herself.

“Must have been some kind of extra-long interview.”

“She'll call,” Lise says, in a quiet voice.

“Maybe they hired her, and the boss told her to start tonight.”

She turns her back to me, drains the can of olives in the sink.

“Maybe her car broke down and she's waiting for a new part.”

“Please leave it,” she tells me.

Anger makes my eardrums swell. I stand there and feel what adrenalin does to the inside of my head. My stomach goes oily. Why won't Lise admit it? Krystal's on another date with Jose Cuervo at the HoJo tonight, and they're obviously having such a
scintillating
conversation that she simply forgot to come home! Why is Lise so loyal to Krystal, anyway? Because they have a
history
together? Because they've been through some
rough times
together? It seems to me that the rough times are
here and now
, and that one's heartwarming memories of high school bush parties and drinking games can turn out to be rancid nostalgia when one grows up and finds out that she
can't stop
drinking
.