Writing

Thanks to Laura Shin for editing.

I grew up in a suburb of Toronto called North York. My mother had a friend from her childhood who lived in St. Catherine’s, which was about an hour’s drive from our home. In order for the two friends to meet regularly they agreed to meet halfway. It meant pulling off the highway—in the middle of nowhere—into a seedy truck stop that had a restaurant/gas station.

We did this for years.

I sat on the powder blue bench seat of our family car, lulled into a coma by the passing concrete retaining walls and endless grey highway. A lot of affordable cars back then were glorified tin cans. These cookie tins had murderous metal steering wheels and crank windows that made you feel like you were bench-pressing just to get some searing, smog-filled air.

Our car was a Ford. Dad was a huge and loyal Ford fan. He had come from Scotland, and the first car dealership he ever went to treated him like an old friend, so he never chose anything else. I remember that the cars had sharp lines on them like the starched collars on the white shirts that my dad wore to work. The most memorable car that we owned was a two-toned turquoise and seafoam green, with baby blue interior. I would grudgingly wait for my mom in the car at the truck stop. I would play with the cigarette lighter, loving the feel and sound when I pushed it in and anticipating the POP as it came out, glowing a campfire orange red.

These thirty minute, one way, visits were excruciatingly boring for an eight-year-old girl with ADD. My stomach would clench when I was told that we were off on another road trip. No amount of Motown, on the AM radio, could soothe the sting of me squirming in a stifling car, with the bumpity, bump of the wheels grinding along the concrete. Oh god, I hated it. The only relief came when I saw the exit for the truck stop. Finally, I could spend some of my electric energy running to the restaurant from the car four times before we were imprisoned inside.

The diner was attached to the gas bar office with a washroom joining the two. The whole restaurant was fitted with booths upholstered in Naugahyde that showed the bum prints of every person who’d ever sat on it. The fake leather was especially heinous in the August sun. And it smelled awful. The tables all had coin-operated jukeboxes. I was fascinated by them. The front of the jukebox had a flip menu with a selection of songs you could choose from. Each song had a letter and a number, such as, “The Twist” by Chubby Checker; B9. Kind of like song bingo. Underneath the silver-framed list of pages there were the “number” and “letter” buttons. A dime would slip into the hole at the top, and you would select the number/letter combination to choose a “Top 40” hit. That was a lie, of course. Some of the songs were from the 50’s. Heavily peppered with Dean Martin and Hank Williams.

The numbers/letters buttons were square. Not at all like the curved chrome of the box. They were yellow but might not have been when the machines were new. Instead they were dirty, sticky, and covered in nicotine and grease.

It was torture, not to be able to choose my own music. My mother didn’t believe in coin-operated anything. That included the mechanical carnival horses at the grocery store.

At the entrance to the diner was a life-sized carved American “Indian”. The statue was there, advertising cigarettes. It was on a pedestal. It towered over me. When I was small, it scared me. Its face looked serious. Almost scowling.

The waitresses (there were no waiters) wore sky blue uniforms with white cuffs on their short sleeves. All I could do was stare at the deco vinegar bottles and Heinz ketchup bottles, while I waited for my grilled cheese sandwich. Oily. Crunchy. And almost always, burnt.

I need to tell you about the washrooms. The tile was a hideous green colour that was very popular in the 1950’s. They went halfway up the wall with a darker green bull-nose line at the top. The sink was clunky and square. The chrome taps (there was a lot of chrome back then) looked like commas. But the most remarkable thing about that washroom was what was mounted to the wall. Beside the never-ending cloth towel (with two blue racing stripes on the edges) was a magical perfume dispenser. It was a peachy-pink enameled box. It looked a little like the bread boxes on fashionable ladies’ countertops. The advertisement attached to the dispenser seduced the viewer with the word “Perfumatic” written as if with a thick, ivory-coloured fountain pen. “SELECT YOUR FAVORITE COLOGNE.” “NEW YORK. PARIS. LONDON.” There were four little windows with the names of perfumes. There was TABU, White Shoulders, Chanel No. 5, and An Evening in Paris.

More choices. More automation. More boxes to put money into. It was too much. I had to try it.

But there was my mother’s reluctance to part with any amount of money, even spare change, for frivolous indulgences. This was going to be a hard sell.

“Mommy, can I have a quarter?”

“What for?”

“There is a thing in the washroom that sprays fancy perfume! Can I try it?”

I imagined all of the sophisticated ladies with their fox furs standing elegantly in front of this machine, bathing themselves in the best from Paris. I wanted to be that grown up!

“Pleeease! I’ll pay you back! Can I?”

I can still see the pained and sour look my mother gave me while she rolled her eyes at her friend, as if to say, It will keep her occupied for a little while, at least.

Success! I had said the magic incantation to release the money from her coin purse! I’ll never forget that day.

I ran to the washroom, slipping along the linoleum floor. It was taking too long! Maybe all the perfume will be gone by the time that I’d get there! Maybe I’d get there just as some woman drained the contents of the very last drop!

I hit the swinging door. Hard. There was no one there! But would there be any perfume left?

I nervously pushed my 25-cent piece into the slot for An Evening in Paris, because that was the MOST glamorous. I glanced at the instructions; PRESS THE PLUNGER ALL THE WAY IN. Right! I took my thumb and pushed the chrome disc on a stick as hard as I could.

Then my mother heard the scream. I was only 8. The spray nozzle was at my eye level. My eyes were drowning in Parisian evanescence. I slapped my hands over my eyes and squealed! Waitresses, my mother, her friend—a crowd of women burst into the washroom. My mother rushed me to the green sink. I heard the water gushing from the scary tap. She made me bend down, like part of a right-angle triangle, and threw slaps of water onto my face for what felt like forever.

Once my burning eyes could open again, I focused on my mother’s face. Truly this was the one and only time I ever saw that particular expression on her face. There was a mixture of horror, anger, pity, and embarrassment. Oh god. I wanted to die.

Not only had I wasted a quarter of a dollar, but I had no perfume to show for it. Well, there was a little bit left on my eyebrows.

I caught that phantom smell all the way home. I don’t remember her saying goodbye or paying (which she most certainly would have done).

The street lights all had a fuzzy halo around them. My eyelids were red and raw.

I never again asked to borrow money for the perfume bread box.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

When I first met her, my best friend was a prisoner. She was wrapped in cheap paper with Santa Clauses all over it.

It was 1961. I found her suffocating under the pink snow-flocked aluminum Christmas tree. I ripped and tore at all that kept her trapped. And when I pulled the paper off her (leaving transferred green and red ink all over my hungry fingers) she looked at me as if to announce, “I’m free! Free to be with you.”

She looked like me. The knobby knees, the silky open weave ankle socks, the out-of-control blond hair (that always needed brushing) the little red velvet winter coat with a white satin lining and a pretend ermine collar. She had real eyelashes and eyes that closed when I put her to bed. Her tea-stained freckles and blushing apple cheeks made me feel like I was staring at a real and true sibling. She even had real teeth—two of them peeking out from under her light pink lips.

Her right hand pointed a pudgy index finger (I still have fingers like that to this day) showing me just where I should open the packaging, to release her into my care.

I remember little about that Christmas except that I fled into my bedroom—that childhood sanctuary where this adopted sister came along to save me.

Chatty Cathy was a marvel of innovation at the time. She spoke real sentences. And magically each pull of her string (just below the back of her neck) with a little peach-coloured plastic ring, small enough for a six-year-old to grab, produced a different phrase with each and every tug. There were eleven endearments in all. Each of them slipped into my heart and lived there like the whispers of a compassionate god.

I love you.
Let’s change my dress.
Please brush my hair.
Where are we going?
I’m hungry
Will you play with me?
Please carry me.
Let’s play house.
I hurt myself!
I’m sleepy.
Tell me a story.

Even before this doll came to market I was called “Chatty Cathy”. Sadly, this was rarely spoken kindly. But it seemed miraculous to me—at least—that there was a doll who looked like me and even had my name. To say that I loved her wouldn’t be accurate. I had a human relationship with her. When my parents were angry, when they were absent in time and space and couldn’t “see” me, I retreated to the safety and comfort of my adopted soul mate.

Her voice. How I loved when she talked to me. No judgment. She needed me. We suffered together. And best of all, she loved me.

I loved her playful suggestions. But what caught in my throat the most was when unexpectedly she’d tell me she was hurt, and I realized that I was hurt, too.

And when she asked me to carry her I believe we carried one another.

I mean it when I say she saved me. She did. I have powerful recollections of being ignored or judged, and running straight to her after we came home, pulling her cord over and over and over until I heard what I needed, in order to breathe…” I love you.”

I suppose it must seem overly dramatic to tell you that when compassion was missing, when the world was cruel, when I didn’t know who I was, she would remind me that I mattered, that someone was counting on me, that I was good enough and that I did have someone who looked just like me. And that there was love to be heard whenever I was too small and broken to believe it.

I kept her all through my life. She sat on the top shelf of my clothes closet until I was a grown woman. I allowed my daughter two to play with her, infrequently, because like all of us in middle-age, she was becoming frail and couldn’t always remember what to say or how to say it. She skipped and halted. Sometimes I would pull her lifeline and nothing would happen. It was if she had retreated into her aging plastic body. I was afraid. Would she ever speak again? I tried one last time. I pulled and pulled for twenty minutes and finally she gave one last crackling “I love you.” It was enough. I had to say goodbye. And it hurt just as much as saying goodbye to a real friend.

I hugged her and knew it was over. My childhood was gone with her. But I can still hear her beautiful airy voice telling me what my soul was whispering all throughout my life…

Where are we going?
Will you play with me?
Please carry me.
Tell me a story.

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