“You know it’s better if I don’t, Auntie. It’s easier.”
It’s only been a few years since the days when even she andOnclerefused to see me. They all turned their backs on me for a while, and I deserved it. There was a time when I didn’t think I’d ever hear Auntie’s voice again, and while we’ve slowly been building up the bridges that burned down between us, they’ll never be as solid as they were before.
There’s some shuffling like Auntie is moving around the house, and the noise of the party gets quieter.
“You should be here, Cole. You should be able to come to things like this. She’s got a fiancée now, for goodness’ sake. I’m not saying it didn’t hurt me too, butmon dieu, it’s been years. It shouldn’t be like this anymore.”
“But it is,” I say, as gently as I can. “I just want you to have a nice birthday. What did you do today? DidOnclemake you breakfast?”
She lets the subject drop with a sigh and tells me about her morning. I know she really does want me there, but deep down, she realizes it’s better if I stay away. It kills me to hear the laughter in the background, to think about all the faces in that room. It twists something inside me so sharply that I’m almost selfish enough to show up at the door, but I know that if I did, there wouldn’tbeany laughter in the room anymore.
I’ve called them Auntie andOncleas long as I’ve known them, but we aren’t related by blood.Mon oncleand my dad were in the military together. They served on the same overseas mission before I was born.Onclecame back with a busted leg. My dad came back with a busted brain.
It was like he was an engine that ran out of coolant. He’d start up, and he’d just overheat, every damn time. People would try to talk to him about it, and the next thing they knew, he’d be throwing a table across the room or shoving his fist through a sheet of drywall.
My half-brother, Damien, had to deal with the worst of it. He’s five years older than me. Dad was so bad when he got home that Damien’s mom left him after a few months. As far as I know, the divorce was brutal, but Dad somehow ended up with custody for a few weeks every summer. He also ended up with a new girlfriend who was as unstable as he was.
I was the result of my mother taking herself off birth control and deciding not to tell my dad.
The first ten years of my life were spent watching my parents throw things and swear at each other. They’d raise their fists and make threats, but they never actually hit one another, so I guess I have that to be thankful for. My mom would just take off sometimes, and we wouldn’t see her for weeks. When I was ten, she took off for good, and that’s when Auntie andmon onclestepped in.
My dad had already been dumping me at their place whenever the times the army needed him coincided with the times Mom wasn’t around. I fucking loved being at their house. Sometimes it was as loud as my parents’ place, but it was a good kind of loud. Everyone in that house could play at least three different instruments, including Auntie andOncle’s two daughters, who were my best friends growing up. When my mom left and Dad got assigned to a job that kept him out of Montreal for weeks at a time, I basically started living with them.
Life was normal there. I was always quieter than them, always a little closed off, but they took me as I was. We had dinner in the dining room every night.Mon oncletaught me to play guitar— until I became better than he was and they signed me up for lessons. I never did go back to six strings after I first got my hands on a bass.
The girls and I would jam together all the time as teenagers. We were a fucking weird combination: me on bass, Lexi on clarinet, and Nadia—
Nadia would sing.
“I’ll save some cake for you, okay, baby? You come see me andton onclesoon. How about Friday?”
“The tour starts this week,” I tell Auntie, as someone starts yelling for her in the background, “but I could come by for a bit tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is good—better, even. Your cake will be fresh.”
“It sounds like they need you in there.”
The whole room seems to be chanting her name now.
“They can wait. It’smybirthday.” She sighs again. “Cole...”
I let the silence hang between us for just a second before I wish her happy birthday again and hang up.
These phone calls always feel like a glimpse into a parallel universe, one where I still spend Christmas and birthdays in that house, letting Auntie pat my cheek even though I hate it and listening to old Whirlpools records withmon oncle.
One where Lexi’s kids know me as more than just a shadow, more than just a subject they’ve learned to drop as quickly as everyone else.
One where Nadia never kissed me that night when we were seventeen, or at least one where I didn’t kiss her back.
Then the calls end, and I realize there’s no such thing as parallel worlds. There’s only the life you’re living and the choices that formed its shape. I made choices that hurt people, just like people made choices that hurt me, but I would choose them all over again if I had to because they led to the one decision that made everything else make sense, the one that made them all worth it.
I would choose Roxanne Nadeau every fucking time. I would choose hell with her over heaven with anyone else, and sometimes it feels like my whole life is one huge quest to prove it to her.
