Carin comes out from the back room, her apron gone, a big bag slung over her shoulder, and steps behind the bar to pull a six-pack of coolers out of the fridge. The bartender cocks an eyebrow and she flashes him a grin. “I’ll get you back.”
“Sure you will,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Carin comes around to pull me close in a hug. I stiffen involuntarily, the smell of her sweat sweet like overripe fruit. “She’s getting married,” Carin declares to the bartender, who shrugs with indifference. “Not for a couple of months,” I say. The bartender has already turned his back to slice limes.
“Is it that soon?” Carin gives me a rough kiss on the cheek near my mouth.
“You look good,” I try, giving her an approving nod.
“You hesitated.” Arms akimbo, she takes a moment to look me over before batting a hand at me and laughing her way out the door. I fall in step beside her as we head down the strip. Teenagers hold hands along the promenade, and on the beach kids sit at their parents’ feet, digging holes in the sand. Every second storefront is selling ice cream or sunscreen or bikinis. Carin holds her bronzed arm next to my pale one. “Don’t you get any sunshine in the city?” She throws her arm around my shoulder, the way she used to when we were kids. “Are you checking up on me?” she says, squeezing me around the neck, and then without waiting for my answer, “Did you bring a bathing suit?”
ONLY SIX HOURS AGO I was in the city with Anton, standing on the street in front of our condo, trying to explain the reason for my impromptu trip to visit Carin. Along Davie, businesses were setting up for the day; the window seats in the coffee shops full; The Elbow Room packed, a single frazzled waiter buzzing among the tables; the salespeople pulling and tugging at the mannequins in the boutique windows. Earlier this morning, between showering and breakfast, I was struck with an urge beyond reason to see Carin. It was impossible to wait; I had to see her this very day. So I called in sick to the insurance office where I worked and packed a small bag.
“Doesn’t your sister live in a shack with hippies?” Anton asked. He was sitting on the hood of my car as I searched for my keys, his eyebrows stitched with worry.
“She lives in a trailer,” I said. “She’s sick. The flu. She doesn’t have anyone there.”
In fact, I hadn’t talked to Carin in months, so for all I knew there was nothing wrong with her. I kissed Anton’s hand and put the car in drive, sending a resolute wave out the window as I drove away, a gesture that said: I have a job to do. But in all honesty, I have no idea why I was so desperate to drive five hours through the mountains to see my sister. A tension had been building inside me for a while now, but it was only last weekend at my own shower that I realized something was wrong. I wasn’t the only one getting married — in fact, it seemed all of our friends were. For the past several months my calendar had been packed; I was organizing engagement parties and showers, attending weddings. I was thirty years old — it was that time in our lives. But on the day of my shower nothing felt right. The backyard garden looked trapped in the aggressive hands of a five-year-old girclass="underline" pink napkins spread out on knees, rose petal plates, miniature food, and heart-shaped balloons. It all left me feeling nauseous. I was alarmed by the sight of a cluster of women (my friends) gathered around a large sheet of paper fastened to a tree with several loops of masking tape. Each one of them, armed with a crayon, added lewd details to an anatomically incorrect life-size male (my husband). One of them waved a long, skinny balloon in my face. “Who’s pinning the first penis on Anton?” I was alarmed, but the strange thing was, I had organized parties exactly like this one.
Over the past few weeks, thoughts — random things like the dry cleaning, upcoming dinner parties, the wedding invitations — had been accumulating in my mind, teetering as I balanced them one by one, and once Carin popped into my head, I couldn’t rid myself of her. The thought of her was throwing the tower off kilter. I suppose I could have sent her an email or picked up the phone. But even if she was not actually sick, there was always something awry in Carin’s life, and so in that way the lie wasn’t really a lie at all.
And now, as I float beneath an unrelenting blue sky, I’m already reconsidering my decision to visit. Whenever I’m around my sister it feels as though someone has tightened a bunch of screws in my head. Carin is stretched out on an air mattress the size of a queen bed, looking sphinx-like, her long dark hair parted in the middle. I am in the inner tube, limbs jutting from the donut hole, floating like an upturned beetle down the channel.
“I never get sick of this,” Carin says, reaching for two coolers from the six-pack at her feet. She opens one, flicks the bottle cap onto her mattress, and takes a gulp before opening mine. “The last time we did this I was dating that guy with the Supra.” She snaps her fingers. “What was his name?”
“Something with a K. Kyle, Kurt — I don’t know,” I say, rubbing my temples.
“Man, I loved that car.” Carin passes me the bottle and thinks. “That was almost two years ago.”
“Has it been that long?” I sip at the fluorescent cooler and then hold up the bottle to squint at the labeclass="underline" Limelicious Hard Punch. “I think this stuff is giving me a headache.”
“Oh, just drink it,” Carin says, flexing her toes and adjusting her bikini. “You’re so picky.” She’s gained weight since I last saw her, the bathing suit bottom digging into the extra flesh around her waist. Pudge, Carin says. Something to hang onto.
“And the hubby?” She sends a kick of cold water at me and I splash her back, but her mattress is so large the water barely reaches her. “Anton’s fine,” I say. “He just started his residency at St. Paul’s, so he’s pretty busy.”
“I always knew you’d end up with someone like that,” Carin says, sitting up to dangle her legs in the water.
“Like what?”
“Lawyer, doctor, that type.”
As we pass under the first bridge, I sink further into the donut hole, my legs sticking up in the air, icy water over my midriff. The channel widens and deepens so that we’re barely moving and we float along lazily. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange?” Carin asks, slipping off her mat into the channel. “You dropping in like this.”
“Is it?”
“This is not exactly how I pictured my day going,” Carin treads water in front of me.
“I can’t visit my sister? See how things are coming along.”
“Coming along?” Carin raises her eyebrows and then disappears under the water. I brace myself, expecting to have my tube flipped, but instead she swims away from me, back toward the bridge, against the current. When she finally surfaces she’s several metres away. “How’s the planning going?” she shouts and starts a dog-paddle in my direction.
“Fine,” I shrug.
“A wedding seems like so much work.” Carin has reached my tube and is hanging off the side, breathing heavily. “You should just elope. I’ve never been to Mexico.”
“I have a wedding planner to help.” I close my eyes and try to relax my jaw muscles. Sue Clarkson, wedding planner, with her curlicue handwriting. She is in the habit of couriering samples, which could easily be sent by email, to the insurance office, stamping URGENT across the manila envelope. Sue has two stamps, the other being IMPORTANT. At some point, I began filing the envelopes, unopened, along with all the other mail. Pictures of towering fondant cakes and bouquets accented with sprigs of baby’s breath; sparkling cocktail recipes. The guest list is several pages long. Anton has invited his entire extended family of sixty-three people; I have Carin. “The girls at the office threw me a shower last week,” I say.