Alexandra put on
a denim jacket and headed for the little mall with a sign for sushi. She placed
her order for sashimi, miso soup, and a dragon roll, and sat listening to
lulling music and the burbling of water in a tank that housed large decorative
carps. Back at home she decided she was too hungry to assemble the dining
table. She arranged her lunch on the countertop and pulled up a barstool,
sitting sidesaddle like a lady on horseback. Look, Mama. See how gracefully I’m
perched on this stool. And a fat lot of good it’s doing me. You really think
men care for these things?
After lunch she worked as fast as
she could, populating the condo with her trinkets, her hexes against
desolation.
Alexandra heard beeping and opened
her eyes to a strange room that contained nothing but a bed. She was lying on
it, but instead of bedding there was a sleeping bag in which she was cocooned.
Her mind shuffled the information with puzzled haste and produced the answer.
This was her own bedroom. She’d tired herself out and had taken a nap, and now
she’d woken up for the first time in her new home. That was fine, she told
herself. She’d bought the place, and it was hers to fall asleep in.
Alexandra realized what had woken
her up: the salvo of optimistic little beeps proclaiming the end of the drying
cycle. She’d washed a load of laundry and had put it in the dryer before taking
her nap. The idea was to make sure the appliances were working properly first
thing after moving in. She got up and went to unload the dryer before the
clothes cooled into a crumpled heap. She folded them on the bathroom counter,
which was still empty except for a toothbrush, mug, and a vial of liquid
foundation. The mug was from the Vancouver Aquarium, with a green tree frog
perched on the handle, a tribute to her love of frogs and toads. It was a gift
from a friend in Thunder Bay, given long before she suspected she would see
Vancouver one day. At the time, her mental image of Vancouver Island was a
green lawn the size of a golf course, an invigorating swim’s distance from the
mainland. She didn’t realize until much later that the island was the size of
one or two European countries, reachable only by passage on a ferry or by air
travel.
The bottle of Christian Dior liquid
foundation wasn’t cheap, but was well worth the price. She’d purchased her
first vial back in Toronto and had wondered where she’d be when it ran out. It
lasted two years and took her to the West Coast and to her first job out of
pharmacy college. This was her second vial, now half-finished. She used it much
more often now that she needed to look professional. She had long hair the
color of ripe wheat, gray eyes behind glasses that were supposed to be trendy
but made her look like a schoolgirl, and the wide potato nose of her peasant
ancestors. She liked her nose for defying Mama’s aristocratic pretensions.
Stretching, she
looked around at her new bathroom. Such a waste. The claw-foot tub was clearly
the focal point of the room, but Alexandra had never liked taking baths,
greatly preferring showers. Taking a bath was just soaking in bits of your own
dead skin. Disgusting. It seemed inappropriate to maintain such intimate
contact with what used to be you. But people did it all the time and thought
nothing of it, glamorous people like movie stars, so maybe Alexandra could
learn, too.
It occurred to Alexandra that she was now the
same age as her mother was when they first came to Canada. Mama was then a new
immigrant with a gainfully employed husband, a ten-year-old daughter who would
grow up in this new land, and a degree in Russian history that gave her
precious few prospects for a job. By now they’d all acquired Canadian
citizenship, but Mama’s soul would remain Russian. Alexandra was single, with
no boyfriend let alone a husband, no great urge to get married at all, but with
a pragmatic degree in a pragmatic profession that assured her a good living.
Her life was streamlined to the point of minimalism, and—she wanted to
believe—free from her ancestors’ hang ups that brought happiness to no one.
She finished folding the laundry as
the sun came out and promised quiet evening light. The North Vancouver condo
had a miniature yard that had looked like a park in the realtor’s photos.
Alexandra knew well that such photos conjure up distance and depth, and didn’t
begrudge the yard its actual petiteness. With this acquisition she was now a
complete adult, with a mortgage to prove it. She unfolded a deck chair under
the boughs of a cedar, leaving the screen door open for Tassy. Maybe Mama was
right, and the cat really would appreciate a chance to walk about. But when
Tassy in her obligate curiosity crossed the threshold, she was frightened by
the sky, by the absence of a ceiling to this new room she’d entered, and she
bolted back inside. It’s too late for her, Alexandra thought with relief and a
tinge of guilt. The yard didn’t belong to Alexandra, it was strata lot, but
that made little difference. The air, redolent with the sweet perfume of the
cedars, was hers to enjoy, and the brilliance of young grass in late May was
the same in this little yard as on the lawns of overpriced mansions in West
Vancouver.
