“Ingrid! It’s about frigging time you came to visit!” Karen said, when we entered the hair and makeup trailer. She put me into her chair and started braiding my hair, and, even though I could smell her stale cigarette breath, it was kind of nice.
“I hope Ian’s treating you well,” my mom said.
I was gazing into the mirror, and I saw a look pass between Karen and one of the makeup artists.
“It’s not the same without you here,” Karen replied.
After Karen finished braiding my hair, Mom took us to find Dad. They’d just broken for lunch, but Dad wasn’t in the lunch tent, and no one answered when we knocked on his trailer door.
We were still standing there when another trailer door opened nearby and a woman with long blonde hair, big boobs, and tons of makeup stepped out.
Followed by my dad, who was buckling his belt.
You know that expression “the color drained from his face”? That’s what happened to my dad when he spotted us.
So I might have been only nine, but I knew something big was going down. I didn’t know what, exactly, but I did know that a man shouldn’t be buckling his belt in front of a woman who wasn’t his wife.
“Ingrid, hi!” Dad said, forcing a smile. “What a nice surprise.”
“We thought we’d join you for lunch,” Mom said, her voice a weird monotone. “But I can see you’re busy.”
“No, no, Jennica and I were just going over some line changes, that’s all. Jennica, this is Ingrid, my, um, wife.”
Jennica’s face turned fire engine red. “Hi, there! I’ve heard so much about you.”
“And these are my girls, Violet and Rose,” Dad continued, trying to act like everything was perfectly normal.
“What lovely names! I love violets,” she said to me.
I hid behind my mom.
Jennica’s smile was frozen on her face. “Well, nice to meet you,” she said, then ducked back into her trailer and slammed the door.
Dad turned to us and smiled. “Well, troops, shall we eat?”
“Screw you, Ian,” my mom said quietly. “You will tell me everything when you get home.” Clutching Rosie to her chest, she grabbed my hand, pulling me so hard I thought my arm would come out of its socket. Dad didn’t try to stop her.
That night, Mom got what she asked for.
He told her everything.
“Your mother and I are going to live apart for a while,” Dad announced a week later. He’d taken me on a bike ride to La Casa Gelato. We were sitting outside, and I was working my way through a massive cone of Rocky Road. (Phoebe told me later that my choice of flavors was psychologically significant. Her parents’ profession couldn’t help but rub off on her somewhat.)
“Why?” I asked.
“It has nothing to do with you, sweetie. It’s just that sometimes adults … they fall out of love.”
“You’ve fallen out of love with Mommy?”
“Not exactly. I still love her. I always will, in a way.”
“But you love the blonde lady with the boobs better.”
There was a pause. “Jennica. Her name is Jennica.”
Two weeks later, Dad moved out of our house and into a furnished apartment in Yaletown. Rosie and I slept over on Wednesdays and every other weekend. This change in our routine didn’t seem to bother Rosie at first; she was only two, and she acted like the whole thing was just a temporary adventure.
As for me, I was having trouble sleeping. I couldn’t help thinking about what had gone on before Dad buckled his belt, when he and Jennica were alone in the trailer.
As Phoebe said, it was a lot for a kid to process.
Luckily Jennica was never over at his apartment when we were there. But sometimes Dad would plop us in front of the TV and go into his bedroom and close the door and have long talks with her on the phone.
Once, when he was talking to her, I picked up one of his Paranormal Pam scripts, which he’d left lying on the glass-topped coffee table. I randomly flipped it open to a page and read.
INT. JOE’S HOUSE – LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
PAM is talking to JOE, a 40-year-old client.
They are both gazing at the ghost of a
BEAUTIFUL WOMAN dressed in 1920s-style
clothes, standing by his mantelpiece.
JOE
I keep seeing her hovering there.
PAM
Does your wife see her?
JOE
Never.
Pam considers this.
PAM
You know, Joe, a woman did die in this house, in 1927.
JOE
How?
PAM
She died of a broken heart. She loved her husband madly, but he was having an affair. One morning, she just didn’t wake up.
She looks at Joe, hard.
PAM
Are you cheating on your wife, Joe?
Joe doesn’t answer, but looks away guiltily.
PAM
I suspect only you can see the ghost because of your guilty conscience. She’s trying to tell you that an affair can cause unbelievable heartache. Do you want to destroy your marriage? Do you?
I could hear Dad in the other room, still talking quietly to Jennica. Rosie was staring at the TV, transfixed. I picked my nose, smeared the booger on the page I’d just read, and closed the script.
Phoebe would later tell me that this was classic passive-aggressive behavior.
Whatever. I just knew that, in the moment, it felt pretty good.
At our place, my mom was trying hard not to fall apart. Most nights, Karen or Amanda would come over with a pizza or a frozen lasagna for dinner, and once Rosie and I had gone to bed, they’d talk long into the night. I was glad my mom had her girlfriends because the mood around the house during those first few months pretty much sucked. At least when Karen and Amanda were over, I could escape to Phoebe’s house without feeling guilty.
“We can’t just sit here and let this happen,” Phoebe said to me one weekend, while we were holed up in my room. She’d stayed for dinner and witnessed my mom crying over the kitchen sink as she washed the dishes.
“But what can we do?” I asked.
Phoebe thought for a moment. “I saw this movie with my parents once. Some crazy woman was in love with this guy, but he was in love with someone else. So she made a voodoo doll of his fiancée and started to make the fiancée sick with black magic. It gave me nightmares for months.” Cathy and Günter took Phoebe to all sorts of movies that were what my mom called “age-inappropriate.”
“Are you suggesting we make a voodoo doll of Jennica?”
“Precisely. Then we can put a curse on her. Not to kill her, of course. Just to get her away from your dad.”
Phoebe was an excellent ideas person.
So we printed some instructions from the web and got to work. Using scraps of fabric and stuffing, we made a basic doll, about six inches high. When the body of the doll was complete, Phoebe stitched a mouth onto it, and I sewed on two buttons for eyes.
“We need hair,” Phoebe said. “Jennica’s hair. And we need a personal object that belongs to her.”
The next time I was over at Dad’s, I snuck into his bedroom while he was cooking dinner. It didn’t take me long to find a lipstick that had rolled under the bed. In the bathroom I found a pink hairbrush, filled with long blonde hairs. I pulled the hairs out of the brush and slipped them into a Baggie, along with the lipstick.
After school the next day, Phoebe and I went to her house. We stuck the hair on the doll’s head with some glue, then smeared Jennica’s lipstick on its mouth. We held the doll up to the light, feeling quite proud of our work.
Then we cast the spell. We stuck a bunch of straight pins into the Jennica doll and chanted, “May ill fortune befall you! May you be forced to leave this city! May you leave Ian’s life forever!” We repeated this process every day for a month.
On the final day, Karen dropped by to see Mom. Phoebe and I were in the kitch
en doing homework.
“Ingrid, I have some interesting news,” Karen announced, as she pulled out a bottle of wine. “Violet, Phoebe. Am-scray.”
We clomped down the stairs to the basement and turned on the TV. Then we tiptoed back up the stairs and listened at the basement door.
“The show wrapped last week,” Karen said. “Jennica took the first plane back to Los Angeles. Said she couldn’t wait to get out of this rain-drenched town.”
“Really,” Mom said, and I could hear a hint of hopefulness creep into her voice.
“And they screened an episode at the wrap party. What a steaming turd. I’d be shocked if it gets renewed.”
Phoebe and I tiptoed back down the stairs and did a little dance, convinced our curse had worked.
Sure enough, just like Karen had predicted, the network aired only three episodes before canceling the show. Phoebe and I figured it was only a matter of time before my dad came crawling back home with his tail between his legs. I think my mom figured the same thing because she started taking showers again.
So we were all blindsided when Dad announced that he was moving to L.A. to live with Jennica.
And that he was filing for divorce.
And that Jennica was pregnant with the twins.
That night, my sister wet her bed for the first time. After she fell back to sleep, I took all of my books off the shelf and carefully rearranged them in alphabetical order by author, from Louisa May Alcott to Paul Zindel.
When I was done, I took them all down again and rearranged them in alphabetical order by title, from Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to Wind in the Willows.
It was the first time I’d ever done a weirdly obsessive thing like that. But it wouldn’t be the last.
— 5 —
“Come on, Amanda, you must know some decent single men.”
It was a rainy Saturday morning, and Phoebe and I were talking to Amanda in the knitting shop she owned on Main Street. It was called Wild and Woolly and was just a couple of blocks away from the William Berto School of Hair Design. Mom and Amanda had met when Mom signed up for Amanda’s first-ever “Stitch and Bitch” workshop five years ago. As far as I could tell, this meant a group of women got together in her store after hours and did ten percent knitting, thirty percent drinking, and sixty percent complaining about men. They’d been good friends ever since.
“If I did, don’t you think I’d have introduced them to your mom by now?” Amanda answered, as she stocked a shelf with balls of emerald green angora wool. “Besides, your mom tells me this new guy is different.”
“She said that about Paulo, too,” Phoebe said.
“And Jonathan, and Alphonse, and Guy,” I added.
Amanda sighed. “Yeah, I know. But maybe she’s right this time.”
“Please. I’ve met him. He looks like Mole Man.”
“Who’s Mole Man?”
“I don’t know, I made it up. But that’s what he looks like – part man, part mole.”
“And his name is Dudley Wiener,” Phoebe added.
“Now, girls. Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Amanda said, as she headed back to the counter, Phoebe and I trailing behind her. “Remember, my boyfriend’s name is Cosmo.”
“True,” I replied, “but Cosmo is hot.”
“Totally,” sighed Phoebe.
Confession: I might be a love cynic, but Amanda and Cosmo were the one couple I rooted for. They’d been seeing each other for almost two years and were perfect for each other, like a right shoe and a left. When I saw them together, my heart did like the Grinch’s when he heard little Cindy Lou Who sing that day … it grew.
“Cosmo must have some friends,” I said.
But Amanda just laughed as she tucked a piece of her long red hair behind her ear. “He has plenty of friends. And I wouldn’t wish any of them on your mother.”
“They couldn’t be any worse than Guy. Or that drunk Karen set her up with,” said Phoebe.
“Carl,” I said.
“True,” Amanda replied. “But they’re still not good enough for your mom. Besides, it’s not all about looks and names, and you know it. Maybe Dudley’s got a great personality.”
“Highly doubtful,” I said. “But I guess I’ll find out tonight.”
“Tonight?” Amanda raised an eyebrow.
“She’s invited him to dinner.”
“Wow. That was fast.”
I nodded glumly. Usually we were spared that unique form of torture until after she’d had at least a few dates. And since Mom hadn’t even mentioned her first date with Dudley afterward, I kind of figured it was over before it had ever really started.
Last night, I found out I was wrong.
What happened was this: Mom arrived home shortly after six, carrying a DVD and a take-out bag full of Thai food from Sawasdee, just like she did every Friday night. Rosie placed a blanket in front of the TV, and I arranged the food on top of the blanket while Mom grabbed a cold beer for herself and glasses of milk for Rosie and me. Then Mom popped in the movie, and we all sat down on the blanket and started to eat.
It was the same routine week after week, and I loved it. See, Friday night is the official Gustafson Girls’ Night. It’s the one night of the week that Mom keeps free and clear for me and Rosie. No dates, no company – not even Phoebe or Karen or Amanda. Just the three of us.
Anyway, last night we were about half an hour into Ocean’s Eleven, a caper movie starring George Clooney, when the phone rang. We aren’t supposed to answer the phone during Gustafson Girls’ Night. But when Mom saw the number on call display, she picked up, blatantly breaking one of our rules.
“Hello?” Mom said, like she didn’t already know who it was. “Dudley, hi …” She left the room, clutching the portable phone to her ear. She was gone for almost half an hour. I know because Rosie and I watched a whole episode of “Jeopardy!” while we waited.
When she returned, I said, “You do realize you are in violation of a number of official Gustafson Girls’ Night rules.”
“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “I hope you girls don’t mind … I’ve invited Dudley to dinner tomorrow night.”
“What? You’ve only been on one date,” I protested.
“Well, yes and no. We’ve had coffee every morning this week.”
“Really.” It bugged me that I hadn’t known this. “What kind of job does he have that he has time to sit around drinking coffee with you every morning?” I asked. “Or is he ‘between jobs’ like Jake?”
“He owns a bath shop. It doesn’t open till ten.”
“A bath shop. Like, he sells tubs?”
“No, items for the bath. Towels, shower curtains, soap dishes –”
“Toilets?”
“No, Violet.”
“Toilets for pooping in,” giggled Rosie.
“Anyway,” Mom continued, “he’d like to meet you both.”
“Why? Is he a pedophile?”
“Violet!”
I was getting on her nerves, and it felt quite satisfying.
“What’s a pedal file?” asked Rosie.
At that point, Mom just grabbed the remote and restarted the movie, and that had been the end of that.
“You’re sure Cosmo doesn’t have any friends?” I asked Amanda again.
“For the last time, I’m sure. And might I point out, it’s not really your job to find a man for your mom.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “But since she’s so dead-set on having a man in her life, and since her choices affect us, too –”
“Yeah, remember the rock-throwing incident?” Phoebe interjected.
“I’ve made it my mission to find someone more suitable,” I concluded.
“And I’m her sidekick,” Phoebe said. “The Watson to her Sherlock. The Gayle to her Oprah. The Robin to her Batman –”
“I get it,” Amanda said. “So you don’t think Dudley’s The One?”
“God, no.”
&nbs
p; “I think Dudley’s nice,” Rosie announced as she joined us from the back of the store, where she’d been checking out the bins of buttons.
“You think everyone’s nice,” I reminded her. “And you met him for five minutes.”
“He liked my crown,” she said, like that was somehow significant.
The bell jingled over the door to the shop and Cosmo entered, followed by a couple of customers. “Hey, girls,” Cosmo said when he saw us. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said to Amanda. When his eyes met hers, his expression went all soft and goopy. Then he took her hand and kissed her fingers one by one, and she smiled, and it was like they were the only two people in the world. I could feel my heart expanding.
“We’ll go,” I said.
“Bye, girls. Go turn some heads,” Cosmo said. And even though we knew it was just Cosmo being Cosmo, Phoebe and I both giggled like a couple of dorks.
Amanda walked us to the door. “Violet?” she said. “Give Dudley a chance tonight, okay? Don’t get up to your old tricks.”
“What old tricks?” I asked innocently as we stepped outside.
The three of us walked a couple of blocks farther down Main Street to the Liberty Bakery. Mom had given us some money to buy ourselves a treat, like she did every Saturday, so that she could shop at Costco in peace. The sidewalks were slick with rain, and we had to dart our way in and out of a sea of umbrellas.
The bakery was bright and warm and smelled like yeast and sugar. I bought a Nanaimo bar, and Phoebe and Rosie got fudge brownies. We were just about to leave with our treats when a boy walked in. Phoebe grabbed my arm and pinched me, hard.
“Ow!” I said.
Then I saw what she saw. It wasn’t just any boy, it was Jean-Paul. He was wearing jeans and a dripping-wet bomber jacket on his lanky frame, and his dark wavy hair was plastered to the sides of his head. It accentuated his nose, which was rather large.
“Oh my God,” I murmured. “He’s adorable.”
“This from the girl who’s vowed to never have a boyfriend,” teased Phoebe, who took every opportunity to let me know that she thought my vow was ridiculous.