“FOR YOU,” AISHA SAID earlier that afternoon, holding up a cheerful yellow letter. She was standing at the foot of their bed in bra and sweatpants, pumpkin-baby belly exposed, holding the usual assortment of bills and grocery flyers. A frown creased the smooth perfection of her forehead. Charlie had the urge to rub it away with his thumb to preserve the suppleness of her skin. “It’s from your dad,” she said. “Look at the return address.” She held it out to him and he squinted at her for a moment — his father had died eight years ago.
“That’s not funny, Aisha,” Charlie said, taking his glasses from the bedside table and putting them on.
“Why would I joke about something like that?” she said. She placed the letter gently in his lap as though it might contain dangerous materials. Charlie picked up the envelope and ripped it open. A peacock proudly fanned its train across the front of the card. Inside it read, in his father’s messy scrawl, Bon Anniversaire. Tu as bien fait, and was signed Papa, which was unusual because it was his mother who had always taken charge of the cards — birthdays, Christmases, graduations — writing the sugary words of encouragement and signing them, Maman et Papa. Above his father’s message was a hastily scribbled date: August 11th, 1995 — over a decade ago.
“Well?” Aisha said, impatiently rubbing her belly.
“It’s Mom.” Charlie got out of bed and pulled on a clean pair of black work pants. “She’s losing her marbles. The card’s ten years old.” Charlie had cleaned out his mother’s storage space several weeks ago and brought some boxes to the care centre for her to go through. Her mind was going soft, so he’d thought sifting through the old family letters might be good for her, jog her memory out of its stupor, but it had only been making her do strange things.
“What does it say?” Aisha sidled up to him, leaning over his shoulder to get a closer look.
“It says nothing,” Charlie said, stuffing the card in his pocket. A pain was creeping up his sternum. “It says happy birthday.”
THE CIVIC SPEEDS THROUGH a yellow (red) light, barely missing several pedestrians entering the crosswalk, before pulling onto Georgia Street and crawling to a stop in the line of slow-moving bridge traffic. Later today at Marinacove, he plans to ask Susan, the manager, for a raise. Charlie practices his monologue, breaking occasionally to give himself a significant look in the rearview mirror. He does notice a few things this afternoon outside the orbit of his own large head. He notices that his hands smell like dirty dishrags. He notices that someone in another car sees him talking to himself in the rearview, which makes him stop his monologue and scowl into all his mirrors to make sure no one else is looking at him. He notices that he looks hung over and pale from lack of light, which makes him look like his father. This doesn’t reassure him, because in a couple months he will be a father.
When Charlie left the apartment this afternoon, he barely even noticed Aisha sitting at the piano pounding out Brahms. “Don’t bother saying goodbye to us or anything.” Us meaning Aisha, her piano, and the little barnacle she is hosting. She had turned herself around on the bench so she could send a withering look his way, her dark hair swaying just above her derrière, while she played a twinkly little tune with her pinky. She isn’t happy with him. He’s been leaving for work earlier and coming home later. He had to re-enter the apartment and kiss her forehead or else the look would’ve soured into something more threatening while he was away at work. Pregnant women are like that.
“Bye bye, barnacle,” Charlie said to Aisha’s belly.
“Don’t call the baby that.”
The piano materialized last week, the last installment from her former abode, towed and heaved by two lithe, ropy men, friends of hers, so-called musicians. He had never seen musicians built like that. The barnacle materialized eight months ago, and despite undeniable evidence, he is having a hard time believing it’s actually there. Not here yet, but there, in that contained antimatter pod. Some days he stands in the middle of his living room, staring at the piano, wondering how all this had happened. An overflowing shoe rack in his front hall, underwear hanging from his towel racks in the bathroom, a pile of half-read baby books stacked on his bedside table — she is spreading over all of his stuff, over him, like spores on a week-old loaf of bread. He drew the line at Scaredy. The cat and Aisha shared almost the exact same hair colour. It gave him the heebie-jeebies. He’d find himself talking to the cat as it sat up on the counter, or shooing Aisha’s head out of the bed. He didn’t need that kind of confusion in his life. He told her he was allergic to the cat — in a way he was.
Charlie can see a corner of the yellow envelope sticking out from behind the sun visor. He brought it with him because Aisha is a snoop. He should dismiss the card as nothing more than an example of his mother’s steady decline, void of meaning in spite of the fortuitous timing, but he was unsettled by his father’s kind message turned sour. Tu as bien fait. Whatever Charlie had done so well back then had quickly come undone. He knew why the card was never sent. It wasn’t because of absent-mindedness; his father never forgot anything. Ninety-five was the summer Charlie lost his job at Le Remoulade, the city’s shining star of fine dining. It was the job his father never thought Charlie would have. It was his bien fait. He was thirty-six at the time — at that age his father already owned his own restaurant. Charlie spent four years at Le Remoulade, moving quickly up the ranks to First Cook. Under different management he’d surely have gone quite far in the establishment, and he doesn’t mind taking credit for the fricassée de veau au basilic they still feature on their menu. Charlie’s contract was “severed” during a period where he was having issues containing his abuse of certain substances, enjoyed with other staff members who will remain unnamed. His dismissal created quite a proliferation of hearsay among the insidious restaurant insiders, hence the reason he now found himself in a kitchen on the outskirts of the city. Despite everything, he still remembers those days with fondness — late nights wandering the strip, bursts of impromptu song, gropings of just-over-age servers at the Roxy. He’s nostalgic for those early mornings, zigzagging home through the Granville Street trash (animate and inanimate) as the sun began to burst over the buildings. On occasion, he’ll bestow his new staff at Marinacove with a story from those bygone days: the time he accidently snorted crystal instead of blow and was up for three days straight working doubles; or the time he was so trashed during dinner service, he burnt the bottom of his pan and sent the entire pot of artichokes in garlic saffron sauce right across the kitchen, narrowly missing six staff members. He had wanted to burn them all — or so he tells the story.