For Today I Am a Boy (24 page)

The blond fuzz on his cheeks suggested the early days of puberty. “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

“Nineteen.”

“And what do you do here?”

“I'm the saucier. The saucy saucier.” He gave me a horsy, long-toothed grin. The waiter beside us was laying out place settings and stemware that flared like diamonds under the clean chandelier. I could feel him listening. Perhaps sending this kid to train me was some kind of test. “Just let me dump this outside and we'll get started.”

We walked through how to make their steak marinade. John stood close behind me as I grilled a bunch of halved lemons. I had to be careful not to elbow him in the stomach as I pulled the lemons off with tongs. He never stopped grinning and humming, sometimes tunelessly, sometimes recognizable as “Walking on Sunshine.”

“You're doing awesome.” He took off his cap and wiped the sweat with the back of his arm. I saw the waiter hovering by the pass window, folding napkins, carefully observing us. “How long have you been a cook again?”

“Fourteen years,” I said. “Since you were in kindergarten.”

He laughed—also equine, like a whinny. “I've been cooking since I was in kindergarten too. You couldn't pry me away from the play kitchen. I want to be a pastry chef.” My brain filled in the end of his sentence:
when I grow up.
“It's the best job in the classical kitchen. You set your own hours, make almost as much as the head chef . . .”

“You need to go to culinary school, though,” I said.

“I'm saving up for it. Did you go?”

“No.”

“Or I want to own my own restaurant, with a fixed menu that changes every week. Five courses, set up kind of like a brasserie but with—”

His incessant rambling was starting to annoy me. “What next?”

John handed me the citrus reamer. He looked surprised when I juiced the lemons without waiting for them to cool. His hands probably hadn't had enough time to callus over. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Well, we could actually cook a steak so I can see how you plate them.”

“No, I mean—long-term, what do you plan to do? You want to have your own restaurant? What's your dream?”

If I had other dreams, they stayed hidden behind the bulk of the one dream that consumed all my thoughts, dominated my existence. What else did I want? I couldn't see past it. I had no energy left for other fantasies. “My own restaurant. Sure.”

“Okay, why don't you go ahead and slap a steak on the grill? I'll get the stuff for the sides.”

I nodded. John bounced as he walked away, something between skipping and hip-hop swagger. When he was inside the cooler, he started singing, loud enough to be heard through the shut steel door. “On top of spa-
ghetti
. . . all covered with cheese . . .”

The waiter stuck his head in the pass window excitedly, like he'd been waiting for John to leave the room. “He's weird, isn't he? Don't you think he's weird?” Spittle flew off his lips when he talked. Flecks of white foam hit the metal pass.

I opened the plastic bin of already-marinated hanger steaks. I lifted one out with a pair of tongs. “He's just young.”

“He's the boss's nephew. Used to be his niece.”

My tongs came together empty, with a scratch of metal. The steak hit my shoe. I knelt down to pick it up and brought my face too close to the grill. I shot upright, smacked my head on the counter edge, and fell backward.

John came out of the cooler, using his apron to hold vegetables. He saw me sitting on the floor and cradling my skull. “What's going on?”

The waiter had vanished, leaving his spit on the pass.

“I dropped the steak.” I stood.

John put down the vegetables. He took a wide-legged stance and clapped his hands between his legs, like a soccer goalie. “Kick it here!”

I kicked the steak and it slid over to John, leaving a red streak on the floor. He flipped it onto the top of his foot like it was a Hacky Sack.

The waiter popped through the pass window again. He looked disappointed. “That's a thirty-dollar piece of meat.”

“Not anymore,” John said. “Don't worry about it, Peter. It happens. I'm still going to recommend you for hiring.”

I thought of the bar employee who had sent me and Claire across the street while we were preaching, her artificial falsetto, the way the pavement had melted. John's voice was deep and rich, and his veiny forearms had visible seams of muscle. The waiter struck me as shifty, someone who might use a new employee to start a rumor or stir shit up. Maybe it was also a test. Maybe he had seen something in me.

 

Bonnie and I walked to the top of Mont-Royal at Colline de la Croix, the path clogged with red and yellow leaves. Bonnie plopped down on the stone wall that marked the viewpoint. “Christ, is that it?”

“What did you expect?” I said.

“It seemed bigger when we started.” The downtown buildings hadn't receded as we climbed. Bonnie ran her fingers through the dirt. “I've never been on a real mountain.”

Montreal spread out in all directions from the base of the low hill, the backdrop of my entire adult life. My parka thinned as it lost stuffing each winter; the summer festival tents sprang up and were torn down. Every Sunday, I could hear the drum circles in this park for Tamtams, see the marijuana smoke like a fog through the trees, see the slack-rope walkers, the dancers, the fighters with medieval swords made of foam. The love song to the city that marked the loss of another week.

Beside us, a tourist couple took pictures of each other and the deep blush of the foliage. “I haven't seen you much lately,” I said.

“You should be able to get lost on a mountain,” Bonnie continued, as though she hadn't heard me. “They should have to hunt for your body if you're out after dark.”

“Been busy?”

The wind picked up. The tourists went inside the chalet, an empty hall with a Coke machine. After a moment, Bonnie said, “You're always waiting for the mountains to come to you. It's exhausting.”

She turned and saw my face. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.” She patted the wall beside her. “Come here.”

I sat down and she leaned her head on my shoulder. She said, “Do you remember when we would pretend to be Adele?”

“Yes. You got tired of it first.”

“I didn't get tired of it. I just . . . Being me wasn't all that different. And it was more fun.”

The wind whipped her hair into my cheek. “Lucky you,” I said.

 

The daytime shift at Le Carré ended at three, when the night staff came in, and the switchover was lively. The restaurant was officially closed until dinner. The day staff sat at the bar in half-buttoned jackets and charged drinks to their paychecks, leering at the waitresses as they filed in. Servers of both genders wore white-collared shirts and bow ties. The uniform had a strangely eroticizing effect on the women; they looked sexier in the bow ties than in their street clothes. I had a flash of longing to try one on. The night cooks shouted complaints about the state of the kitchen and the prepped food, and the day staff shouted corrosive comebacks.

John followed me to the small coatroom. Changing around others made me uncomfortable, but there were so many people who needed to get in or out of uniform that there was no time to protest. The door didn't lock. I faced the corner as I unbuttoned my jacket. “Stay and hang out with us,” he said. He pulled his chef's jacket over his head like a sweater and it snagged on his T-shirt.

I glanced over my shoulder. John's bare chest was revealed for a moment. No bound breasts, no scars, the skin smooth and tan. The waiter had lied. I relaxed. “I'm pretty tired,” I said. “I think I'll just go home.”

He shrugged. “All right. Well, I'll see you at the crack of dawn tomorrow.” He threw the door open before I had finished changing. Two waitresses stood there, holding their bow ties and shirts over their arms and looking at me pointedly. I decided to change at home. I ducked out with my head down.

As I passed, John was leaning over the bar from his stool, grabbing at one of the tumblers like he was going to make himself a drink. “Get out of there!” the bartender shouted, whacking his hand. Everyone laughed. I paused at the door, pushing against the wind that held it shut. I watched from a distance as John said something that made them all laugh again. Another cook gave him a high-five. Of course it wasn't true.

 

I paced my apartment. For the first time in a long time, it felt too small. I put on my sisters' decades-old makeup. It was hard to get the color to transfer from the dried-out lipstick. I wiped it on over and over again, chafing my lips, willing it to work.

I pulled the white—everything was so fucking
white
—winter blanket off the bed and spread it out on the floor. I set out a toy tea set, also from my mother's house, painted pink flowers and gold edging on plastic that looked like real china. I sat down with the dolls. Adele's and Bonnie's childhoods had been so far apart that the dolls represented different eras, forays in and out of realism. Helen had never played with dolls.

I lay down with my head on a cushion. It was my husband's lap. His rough hand stroked my hair. The dolls—small children running barefoot through the grass, a game of chase and tackle.

There was a knock at the door. My hair dissolved and ran through his fingers like sand. The children died where they stood, stiffening into painted smiles and stickers for eyes. I rubbed my mouth with the back of my hand and succeeded only in smearing the dry color onto my chin.

I threw open the door. Bonnie stood there wearing a camping backpack almost as tall as she was, her long hair in braids. I remembered when she'd first arrived in Montreal, fattened on Los Angeles, looking like a freshly shorn sheep.

“How did you get into the building?” I asked.

Bonnie held the straps of her backpack against her chest. “Is that Helen's?”

I looked down at the dress I was wearing, an austere, long-hemmed thing that buttoned from top to bottom. “Probably.”

She looked past me to the dolls arranged on the blanket. “What are you doing?” She sounded genuinely perplexed. Her question exhausted me. I thought of the wig Adele had sent, of Helen's terse conversation while I stood naked in the shower.

“How is it,” I said, “that you know me best and least of all?”

Bonnie shuffled uncomfortably. “Can I come in?”

I stepped aside. She sat down on the blanket next to the doll that said Mommy when squeezed. She flicked its pigtails with her finger. “I came to say goodbye. I'm going to Europe with some friends.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don't know.” She threw her hands up theatrically and smiled. “Forever! I'm retiring from stripping. Nobody wants to see my thirty-year-old tatas.”

Sitting among the dolls with her braided hair, Bonnie looked twelve. “Are you going to visit Adele?” I asked.

“I don't know. We haven't really decided where we're going. We fly into Paris, and then we'll just train around until we get bored.”

“I can give you her address.”

Bonnie stood up. She tugged at the collar of my dress, flattening it out properly. “I'll see if I can work it into the trip.” Her face came so close that I was sure she could smell the fruit-skin smell of the expired lipstick. “I didn't actually come to say goodbye. I came to ask you to come with us.”

I shook my head. It was just like Bonnie to invite me on an indefinite overseas trip on her way to the airport, giant backpack and all. “I just got a new job.”

“It's just a job. You have nothing here.”

“There's Mother.”

“Fuck Mother.” Bonnie kicked at the picnic. The empty teacups tipped over. The head popped off one of the dolls and rolled in a weighted half circle, like a bocce ball. “I know for a fact that you have a shit-ton of money in the bank, sitting around doing nothing.”

“Is that why you want me to come?”

“No! I think it could be fun.” Bonnie bent down and picked up the doll's body and head. She examined the neck like she was trying to figure out how to reattach it. “We could . . .” She hesitated. I could see her weighing her words in her head. “We could tell people that you're my sister.”

My mouth opened.

Bonnie stepped closer. “Paris,” she repeated, like she was casting a spell. “And maybe Adele.”

I saw it:
Sabrina
's Paris in 1950s black-and-white, the city that made her a woman. The Eiffel Tower as seen through her window, the shutters thrown open to the night. Two figures went running through my imagined streets, rain-soaked cobblestones lined by gaslights, girls in matching polka-dot dresses and gold earrings.
This is my sister.

I looked again at Bonnie, teetering under the weight of her backpack, ready to uproot her life in an instant. She was leaving right now. There was no time to think. No time for the doubt that held me in place. I knew this, these dolls and dresses, this miserable little life.

I was saying no. I could hear my voice saying no and I could see Bonnie nodding sadly; I could see her putting the broken doll gingerly onto my bed, apologizing for knocking its head off. Or maybe for her hubris, or for not asking earlier. For not saying it sooner. For not saying it all along:
Sister, my sister, I've always known.

 

I slogged through my next shift in a haze, my head full of Europe. Now that the opportunity was lost, my fantasies were free to break with reality. No awkward lies and costumes. Bonnie and I sprawled in matching white bikinis on a Mediterranean beach, our thirty-year-old tatas on display.

The bug-eyed waiter came to the window and said a customer wanted to talk to John. A girl came to the kitchen door and John rushed over.

The girl couldn't disguise how good-looking she was, not with her severe haircut and round, unfashionable glasses, not with her oversize T-shirt and denim overalls. I was used to the waitresses who compensated for the high-collared uniforms with glittery eyelashes and torturous shoes, who were more young than attractive. This girl pushed her femininity away and it sprang back as though coiled.