Em was too busy playing house to play with us. There were furniture sales that week, Em told us. Matthew and I were exploring on our own. We took the subway to St. Patrick Station and found our way to Kensington Market; we took the subway back to Summerhill Station from Queen’s Park. It was our tentative way of seeing the city. When Matthew and I were getting to know Toronto, the subway was our new best friend. We took the subway to Osgoode Station and walked around Queen Street West. We took the subway to St. Andrew Station and saw some big theaters on King Street West.
It was when we were taking the subway back to Summerhill from St. Andrew that we saw those two. They were horsing around, as usual, in the car next to ours, but they were headed our way. We’d just left Rosedale Station, where I thought they probably piggybacked onto the train, but Matthew said I was wrong—those two had been with us the whole way.
“They were fooling around in the station at St. Somebody,” Matthew said.
“At St. Andrew?” I asked him.
“That’s where those two piggybacked onto the train,” Matthew told me. The next station was Summerhill. Those two had piggybacked into our car, just before the subway stopped. They were out the door ahead of Matthew and me, racing each other up the long flight of stairs in Summerhill Station—the snowshoer waving to us, my mom blowing us kisses. Then they were gone again. “All those two do is fool around—they just goof off,” Matthew said, both fondly and with exasperation. I couldn’t speak. I was so happy to see them.
“Where they are isn’t a place, Kid,” Molly had told me.
“You should listen to Molly, kiddo,” Em said, when I told her I’d seen them on the subway. “Those two must be happy to see you—maybe they were waiting for you to be where you belong,” Em told me.
“I belong with you,” I told her. I was remembering what the former maid of honor told me on my mother’s wedding night.
“There’s more than one way to love people, Kid,” Molly had said.
As I lay in bed with Em—hearing the train go by, listening for Matthew’s footsteps on the stairs—Em was describing the book tours we would take together. We were both good at writing in hotels, Em said. She would go with me on my book tours; she would get a lot of writing done. I would go with her on her book tours. Em was most interested in the translation trips to Europe. We had many of the same European publishers; we were represented by the same international literary agency, in London. When Matthew was still little, we would take a babysitter on our translation trips, Em was saying. Later, when he was older, Matthew might want to bring a girlfriend with him—“or maybe a boyfriend,” Em whispered, because we could hear Matthew coming down the stairs to climb into bed with us.
For a moment—imagining our future together, dreaming about the years ahead—I’d forgotten that Matthew was only six. There would come a time, I was thinking, when I’d be lying in bed with Em, waiting for a six-year-old to climb into bed with us, but Matthew would be sleeping upstairs with a girlfriend—or maybe a boyfriend—or Matthew wouldn’t be sleeping upstairs.
Some days, when I’m lying in bed with Em, I’m in the singles’ line for the Loge Peak chairlift—about to be paired up with Clara Swift again. Some days, I’m seeing that tall hippie girl; she’s still kicking a chunk of frozen snow in circles on the sidewalk in front of the Jerome. She’s disinclined to show me her breasts; she just gives me the finger, again and again. How many times do I have to say it? Unrevised, real life is just a mess.
I keep saying it and saying it. They publish your novel, they make your screenplay—these books and movies go away. You take your bad reviews with the good ones, or you win an Oscar; whatever happens, it doesn’t stay. But an unmade movie never leaves you; an unmade movie doesn’t go away.
One of my novel-to-film adaptations, the one with the fourth director, finally moved forward; it had taken fourteen years. So one of my unmade movies went away. In 1998, we shot the film in New England. We showed it at a couple of film festivals in Europe—at Venice, and at Deauville. Toronto was the last festival where we screened it, before we opened in theaters in late 1999. In 2000, I lost at the Golden Globe Awards, but I won an Oscar. Em went with me to the Golden Globes. Em was so upset that I didn’t win, she refused to go with me to the Oscars. “Fuck the Hollywood Foreign Press!” Em said. This was all because of one journalist from the Hollywood Foreign Press who spoke to Em in the women’s room. She mistook Em for an actress who had once been famous. Em wouldn’t tell me who the has-been film star was. “An old bag,” was all Em said. I knew the entire Hollywood Foreign Press would be blamed. “I’m a jinx—I jinxed you,” Em said. “Take Molly to the Oscars—she’ll bring you better luck,” Em told me.
Molly had her doubts about going to Los Angeles in the ski season. It was late March, 2000. Molly was almost eighty. The old patroller was still working—albeit part-time, and mostly as a ski instructor. Molly and I were thinking that my mother was the one who should be going to the Oscars with me; we knew my mom had been the one who believed everyone looked like someone in the movies.
“I don’t see a lot of movies, Kid—and by the way, I don’t have the right clothes for the Oscars,” Molly said.
Em tried to explain that Armani was dressing me for the Oscars. “Armani will dress you, too,” Em told Molly.
“Nobody’s dressing me—I can still get my ski boots on and off, by myself,” the old patroller said. Armani would need more explaining.
We had a three-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Molly and I flew to L.A. with Em and Matthew. He had just turned nine. Molly and I had given our measurements to Armani beforehand. We’d just checked into the hotel, when the three tailors from Armani came to our suite with Molly’s dress and my tuxedo. “We’re here for the fitting!” one of the tailors told Em, who’d heard the doorbell and let them in.
“Nobody’s fitting me,” the old ski patroller told the tailors.
“We do adjusting on the spot!” one of the tailors told Molly.
“Nobody’s adjusting me,” Molly told the tailor.
Nothing went wrong with our clothes at the Oscars, which were at the Shrine Auditorium that year—maybe the last year the Academy Awards were there; I can’t remember. I just remember being on the red carpet with Molly. I saw Paige what’s-her-name coming our way, with a cameraman in tow. “This woman is a ditz,” I warned Molly. In the press release, I’d said I was bringing my mother’s best friend to the Academy Awards. Molly hadn’t liked the sound of that.
“Best friend sounds like old girlfriend to me, Kid—it’s nobody’s business to go there,” the old patroller had said. “And I’m not your stepmother—everyone thinks stepmothers are evil,” Molly said. Paige what’s-her-name was such a moron, I was hoping she wouldn’t remember Molly was my mom’s best friend—if Paige had even read the press release.
“You brought your mother’s best friend—more of the nominees should do that!” Paige what’s-her-name exclaimed. “Is that a writer’s thing?” Paige asked me, or maybe she asked Molly. It was hard to tell if Paige was speaking to you, because her eyes always roamed around—looking for someone more important to talk to.
“I’m more like his second mom,” the old patroller told the idiot.
“His second mom!” Paige cried. She was one of those interviewers who breathlessly repeated what you said when she didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m not a writer’s thing,” Molly told Paige, but Paige had spotted a movie star on the red carpet; Hollywood’s what’s-her-name and her cameraman were moving on. Paige knew people didn’t watch the Academy Awards to see the writers. “If I had to spend more time around that woman, I might break her femur—or her tibia, or something,” the old ski patroller said.