I hate the girl with the parrot on her shoulder. I don't
want to but I do. She's nineteen, maybe twenty, smoking as
she waits in line at the restaurant. There's always a line
now for Sunday brunch and I know it's my fault. Sometimes I
shouldjust keep these things to myself. But the Parrot Girl.
She's wearing shiny blue short-shorts with white piping,
soccer socks with the stripey tops pulled up to her knees. I
can tell her cowboy boots have been scuffed and distressed
on purpose, the leather warped and discolored by water,
they're scratched and dirty—she probably dragged them
behind a car through an unpaved alleyway then invited her
friends to stomp on them with their filthiest shoes. I know
all the tricks. Still, the boots are too stiff. She wears a
short gold satin jacket that the parrot keeps snagging with
its claws every time it readjusts itself on her shoulder.
From where I'm sitting I can't see what's underneath the
jacket and the way the sun is reflecting off the satin, I
can't get a clear view of her face. Plus, the parrot is in
the way. Ted has a better view and assures me her face is
good, so I polish off my third champagne cocktail and grab
my camera bag from under the table.
Up close I see Parrot Girl has a tiny diamond stud in her
nose. Her makeup is perfect: smudgy kohl eyes and sticky
mascara, smeared lips, classic morning-after face. But her
hair is too clean and smells like apples, her face freshly
moisturized. I wonder how long she spent getting ready this
morning, if she had a fitful sleep editing all the possible
combinations of outfits in her head.
"Excuse me." I tap Parrot Girl on the shoulder.
"My name is Sara B. and I was wondering if I could take
your picture?"
Parrot Girl turns to look at me. Her friends titter behind
her. She lights another cigarette and I notice her hands are
shaking slightly. She knows who I am, I'm sure of it. She
takes a deep drag and shrugs. "Yeah, okay, that's cool."
I lead her away from the line and ask her to face my camera.
The satin is tricky in the sun and the parrot won't look at
me. I think for a moment that the parrot is smarter than
either of us—it knows how ridiculous this all is, and
doesn't want any part of it. I get the shot and Parrot Girl
signs the release allowing the magazine to use the photos
however we see fit. She doesn't ask the obvious—it
never occurs to the ones who try so hard to be a DO that
they could possibly be a DON'T.
I push my way back through the line and to our table by the
window, which is open onto the busy street. A couple of
people call my name and wave. I have no idea who they are,
but smile and wave back anyway. One of them yells, "Sara
B.! Take my picture!" I smile again and sit down.
Genevieve is breast-feeding the baby in the washroom. She
won't do it at the table anymore after last week when a
woman in bad camouflage pockety pants that emphasized her
puffy abdomen berated her for drinking one champagne
cocktail, then feeding the baby an hour later. According to
Genevieve,
this was typical. The situation was made worse when the Bad
Camo Woman broke from her rant and narrowed her eyes at
Genevieve. "You!" She pointed a finger in
Genevieve's face. "You! You're that singer! Gen-Gen! You
had that song— what was it called? 'J'taime, J'taime
something…'"
"'J'taime My Baby Tonight,'" Ted spoke up. Genevieve
glared at her husband.
Bad Camo Woman snapped her fingers. "That's it! Wow! I
used to listen to that song over and over when I was a
teenager! You're Gen-Gen! Andrew, look, it's Gen-Gen!"
Andrew, who had been hanging sheepishly in the back, nodded
a quick hello. He, too, was wearing bad camouflage pockety
pants. "So do you think I could get your autograph?
Here." She shoved a crinkled receipt in front of
Genevieve and produced a pen from her fake Louis Vuitton
bag. "Sign this."
Genevieve obliged, scrawling Best Wishes, Gen-Gen
across the crumpled paper.
"Wow, thanks. I can't wait to call my friend Angela. She
was my best friend in school and she loved you, too. We're
not that close now—she lives in Vancouver—but we
try to keep in touch, you know. It's hard, though, with our
kids and our jobs and—"
"How would you feel about me taking a picture of you
two?" I interrupted. I couldn't take it anymore.
"Of us?" Bad Camo Woman brought her hand to her chest.
"Sure. But let's do it outside. There's not enough room
in here," I said as I ushered the Bad Camo Couple to the
door.
"Check it out." Jack nods toward the table behind
ours. We're silent, we listen. They have the magazine open
to the DOs and DON'Ts fashion page and I can see my shot of
the Bad Camo Couple staring out as the man holds it up to
take a closer look. They are the featured DON'T, the biggest
DON'T of the week, more DON'T than the unitard juggler or
any of the three other DON'Ts on the page. "Could be a
good look for us," the man jokes.
"Ugh. Put that thing away." The woman snatches it
out of his hands. "It's so mean."
Jack leans into me and whispers, "I like it when you're
mean." Then he kisses me on the neck. I order another
drink and he does the same. Ted asks for the check.
"What? No more champagne, Ted? Oh, yeah. I guess you've
got that long drive ahead of you," I say. I'm tipsy and
when I'm tipsy I can't help needling Ted about having moved
to the suburbs.
"It's not that bad, Sara. You should come out sometime.
You might even like it."
"We'll see about that," I say. I've refused on
principle to visit Ted and Genevieve's new house. Jack says
I'm being stubborn and immature but Jack's young and doesn't
get it.
As soon as Genevieve and baby Olivier arrive back at the
table, Ted announces it's time to go. He has to mow the
lawn. Genevieve's parents are coming for a barbecue supper.
She has to make potato salad. Genevieve hands Olivier to me,
freeing her hands to pack the baby gear and pop open the
stroller. I grip the baby firmly, but not too close. Jack
tickles Olivier's nose with his finger and makes goo-goo
baby-talk sounds that I hope I'll be able to block out the
next time we have sex. Which won't be for three weeks, I
remind myself. Jack's leaving for his home in Toronto late
this afternoon.
Hugs. Kisses on both cheeks all around. Safe drive, have a
great time. Give my best to your parents, Gen. Call me
tomorrow. I'll see you at the office, Ted. They're gone and
I slump back into my chair, knocking back the champagne
cocktail that's been placed in front of me. Then Gen
suddenly reappears. She's frantic. Olivier is wailing. His
pacifier has disappeared. We look between plates, under
napkins. Jack finds it on the floor and hands it to Gen. She
gives it a quick wipe on her shirt and pushes it into
Olivier's mouth before scrambling back out the door. I
shudder. Doesn't it have to be sterile or something?
Jack looks at me but says nothing. His smile is crooked and
his eyes are warm. "That is one cute baby," he says.
"Yup," I say, my eyes darting around, trying to find
a waitress, a hostess, a bus boy, anyone who can get me a drink.
"Do you ever think about it, Sara?"
I can't look at him. I catch the eye of our waitress and
point to my empty glass. She nods.
"We've never talked about this, you know." Jack is
not letting up. I hate this conversation more than I hate
Parrot Girl.
"That's true."
"I have to be honest with you, Sara. And you need to be
honest with me. You're thirty-nine and you know I'm totally
cool with that, but I also know that, well, your time
is…"
"Running out?"
"I guess, yeah." Jack's voice is very quiet.
I laugh. "Jack, I don't want to have a baby, if that's
what you're worried about." He looks relieved. My drink
arrives and I immediately suck half of it down. "I'm not
one of those women."
"I know that. I just thought that we've been
together for almost a year so maybe we should make sure
we're on the same page with this." I am certainly not on
the same page with anyone who says on the same page,
but I say nothing and smile. "I mean, I love kids,
my nieces and nephews are great and Olivier is adorable, but
it's not for me. I've never wanted kids of my own."
"Great. That's just great, then." I raise my
near-empty glass to clink Jack's, down the last of it and
instruct him to order another round as I excuse myself to
use the bathroom.
I squat above the toilet to pee and wrestle my cell phone
out of my purse. I dial Gen's number, but click the phone
shut before it has a chance to ring. I can't call her about
this, about Jack not wanting to have kids and me not wanting
to have kids and how great that should be but how I feel
mysteriously winded and sad and I don't know why. I can't
call her and we can't spend hours dissecting my feelings and
his feelings and still not really know why I feel like this
by the time one of our phones starts to die. I can't call
her about this because she has Olivier and her parents are
coming for a barbecue supper and she has potato salad to make.
There's a girl sitting in my spot, laughing with Jack.
"Hello," I say.
The girl stands. "Oh, my goodness, Sara B. I saw you
over here and I didn't want to be rude or anything, I just
wanted to meet you—you're, like, my idol, seriously. I
want your job. What you do is amazing. I mean, you're
Sara B."
"You can just call me Sara." I stick my hand out to
shake hers. "And you are?"
"Eva. Eva Belanger."
"That would make you Eva B., then."
"Gosh, yes. I guess it would." Eva's face is bright
red. She looks away from me and to Jack.
"Go ahead," Jack says. "She won't bite. Well,
not unless you want her to."
"You're funny," I say to Jack. "So what can I do
for you, Eva?"
"I just, well, I was wondering if you'd ever consider
letting me tag along, shadow you for a day, see how you do
it."
"It's not magic. It's just a job."
"No, no, it's important. You know, I have
almost every issue of Snap. I had to get the older
ones off eBay but now I'm only missing issues six and eight,
when you were still only monthly."
"Nineteen ninety-three," I confirm. The first year,
when it was just Ted and I and a bag of money his dad gave
us. By ninety-five we were weekly and had an office. Now we
have a building, six satellite offices and three retail
stores. Last month, a stuffy American company paid Ted and
me twenty thousand dollars to spend a day with their
marketing team. Advertising agencies pay us more. We don't
mention those things in the magazine. "I think I've got
some of those old issues kicking around," I say to Eva.
"If I can find six and eight, they're yours."
"Really? Are you serious?"
"It's not a problem," I say.
"What is a problem is that you're not sitting
down," Jack says. "Another round?"
"Sure," I say. "Would you like to join us, Eva?"
"Oh, my! Yes, of course—if you really don't mind."
"We really don't mind," I say. I wouldn't mind
anything that's a distraction from Jack and the baby talk
and the talk about babies and not wanting one, and not
knowing why I was spooked when he said he didn't want one
when I don't want one, either. I definitely want this Eva
girl to join us.
Eva tells Jack stories about me. She tells him about the
time I got into a very public squabble with a Hollywood
starlet after we published a picture of her wasted and
bleary-eyed, attempting to dress in what I could only guess
was her misguided interpretation of Audrey Hepburn in
Funny Face. Here to shoot a film, the starlet was
on the town, trying like they all do when they come to
Montreal to look French. But like they all do, she got it
wrong. The striped top was not black and white like
Hepburn's, but too short and striped in multicolored
pastels. The black leggings were shiny and too tight and
made her ass look like a big balloon. Instead of ballet
flats, she wore stilettos and her trashy big blond hair was
nothing like Hepburn's neat-and-sleek brunette style. To top
it off, the starlet had the scarf-—they always had the
scarf, no matter the season—wrapped around her neck
like a strangling tensor bandage. It was not French. It was
sad. She was definitely a DON'T.
Eva tells Jack about how I'd started wearing shrunken
kid-size T-shirts with cutesy logos and sayings when
everyone else was decked out in Doc Martens and plaid. She
tells Jack that when she'd read my TO DO column a couple
weeks back she knew she had to meet me for real. The column
was about recycling old Girl Guide and Boy Scout merit
badges by sewing them onto the sleeves of the prettiest
vintage beaded sweaters, and Eva said she had done the very
same thing just days before the magazine came out.
I got that particular idea from Sophie, the woman who ran a
thrift shop in Westmount I frequented. I didn't mention this
in my column and I don't mention it now. Sophie said that
the kids were coming in and rifling through a bin of old
patches in search of merit badges to sew on their coats.
Sewing the badges on vintage sweaters was my idea and,
according to Eva, hers, too.