The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Teeth: the bonus challenge

We four surround a table laden with various bowls and platters. The bowl I brought (white, with a green stripe and a chip on the rim) is the one I position myself next to because I know everything that is in it, that it won’t nudge my gall bladder into full-fledged hysterics. It is an avocado-mango-tomato salsa, filled with minced garlic and cilantro, and I could hardly endure the enticing aroma of it as we made our way toward the city earlier in the day. I pick up a flaxseed chip and scoop a healthy dollop up, popping it into my mouth, briefly wondering about what it will do to my breath, and to my rusty red lipstick. It is delicious, I decide, good enough to justify the offensiveness of my open mouth in the near future, and I stop worrying about cilantro getting caught in my teeth. Selfishly, I hope no one else wants any. It's possible I will eat the entire contents of the bowl.

Kim is telling a story on her side of the table, fidgeting with her hair as is her usual unconscious nervous habit, except now, instead of it being a brassy store-bought blonde, it is both chocolate brown and light gold, the first bit of salon work in ages. Her teeth are gleaming with fresh veneers, and she is thinner than she’s been in a while. I can see that she’s as vain as ever, but with her it’s part of the charm. She is prattling on about how a random stranger at an office party was making remarks about her husband.

“She said he was ‘hot’, in fact, ‘rock star hot’,” she plucks a chip from the gold and red bowl closest to her, fumbling with the onion dip as she thinks about the woman, the unsettling compliment. “I mean, it’s nice to know that your husband is attractive, but I suddenly realized that I had better keep on eye on him, you know? ‘Rock star hot?’ What does that even mean?” She crunches the chip with her mouth closed but I feel it in my skull. Each crunch reverberates as I look at the table in silence. I’ve seen her husband. Not once have I thought about rock stars.

Cathie is grinning from her corner, concentrating on dipping Granny Smith apple slices into the caramel and cream cheese dip in the bowl before her. She’s been waiting for this, the chance to indulge in the very dish she brought with her. She’s more portly than she’s ever been, I notice, with a mid-section that is hanging awkwardly over the waistband of her jeans. She is wearing a green sweater that I suspect was chosen because of the length of it, a bit of camouflage to fool us into thinking she isn’t as large as she is, but we know. She is listening, but her smiles are to do with the food, not the conversation. Aside from the extra weight, she is not much different than she was years ago, with hooded grey-blue eyes and pink cheeks and the same above-the-shoulder mousy brown hair she's always had. Her teeth are still tiny and yellowish, an intrinsic yellow that is neither the result of coffee or cigarettes as she has never had either. When she laughs, though, you would think she smokes because it is usually punctuated by a fit of coughing which no doctor has ever been able to explain. She looks to me and I quickly discern that she is thinking what I am thinking: Kim’s husband is someone we've always felt she should keep an eye on. We would never say it out loud, though.

Kyla is at the other end of the table and she is sipping water from a blue, Mexican-style glass. This is one of the images one gets when thinking of her, sipping water from that very same glass. There’s that, and the image of her eating Kraft Dinner while wearing her red sweatshirt and blue and yellow star-patterned pajama bottoms. Her hair is to just below her ears, a curly mop of reddish-brown ringlets. As I peer closer, I see the silver and grey weaving through and I wonder about how long she’s been dealing with it. The hair above her lip is so light now that I barely notice it, and for a minute I wonder if it comes in grey, too. She is slightly slimmer than she used to be, but it's tough to judge. She has always been the Amazon of the group, towering over the rest of us even when barefooted and she is dressed in her usual uniform of a loose-fitting, non-descript top and a pair of jeans. The socks, though, are interesting, with a spiderweb pattern that immediately captures the eye. Kyla has always kept her wild side close to her feet; small enough to be ignored, but still on display in a quiet way, thus rendering it valid. She picks up a potato chip, ignoring the full platter of sliced peppers, carrots, cucumber and broccoli and she slowly drops the chip to her tongue, before reeling it in quickly, like a lizard would a fly. She sees me looking and winks a coffee-coloured eye, a way of telling me that she knows she should be eating the vegetables, but, whatever. She gives me a white, crooked smile and saucily reaches for more chips. She's always been defiant when it comes to chips and other salty things.

So, these are the women who know me the best, the people I have known since I was barely past my awkward pubescent phase. It is a strange relationship we have, in that time manages to stand still when we are together, as though we are back there, without the men, without the babies. As I crunch another chip with salsa, I am feeling a little bit sad that this kind of comfort is so rare to me these days. I work to please these girls as much as I expect them to love me as I am. Most of our communication is done without words. We don't always need them, now.

I look down at my grey sweater dress to make sure I haven’t dropped any salsa on it. The bow in the middle is still Mary Tyler Moore perky, and I am as stainless as steel. The dress is wool, though, and occasionally I succumb to the scratches on my back which slowly drives me mad until I reach down the back of the turtleneck and scratch feverishly. No one has commented on my leaner frame which makes me think my scale is either wrong or that they didn’t fully grasp just how big I used to be. I brush my bangs to the side, cursing myself for attempting to curl them slightly, because now they are stringy looking, hanging in spaghetti strands and it makes me uncomfortable.

‘You heard about Jeremy’s dad, right?’ Kim asks in a lower voice, dismissing talk of rock stars and tempting husbands. She leans forward, taking a quick look around the butter-coloured dining room looking for listening children, all of whom are cavorting in other parts of the house.

‘No, what?’ the three of us say in unison, leaning forward, bringing all the points closer together.

‘Well, you knew he died, right?’ she asks in an affected whisper. We three nod, making no other sound. ‘Well, he…’ and she lifts her hand up toward her temple and simulates a gun being fired.

‘No way!’ we all gasp.

‘Yup,’ she nods, looking around the table for something else to nibble on. ‘You know,’ she says picking up a carrot stick, ‘I can barely even remember what he looks like.’

‘Jeremy’s dad?’ I ask, wide-eyed, feeling a little sick to my stomach.

‘No,’ she shakes her head, crunching maniacally, ‘I mean Jeremy.’

It is odd that she says this, given her knowledge of his father’s recent suicide and the fact that she didn’t use his last name. Like she still knows him, like we have a right to know.

‘I wonder why he did it,’ Cathie muses aloud, a half-eaten apple wedge suspended between her fingers, hovering dangerously over the dip. I know I won’t be eating it.

We sit silent for five seconds, each of us trying to find some explanation that made sense, as well as a mental picture of Jeremy, someone we haven’t seen for twenty years or more. I remember his penchant for black leather jackets and red baseball hats. I remember he was humourous, and a little bit rebellious. It feels wrong, somehow, to be in the know about something so personal to him, something so traumatic, when I can't remember the way his voice sounded or if we shared more than one conversation. I can't imagine what it must be like to have women you probably don't remember talking about your father blowing his brains out, hundreds of miles away, around a table full of food meant for celebration.

The silence ends as quickly as it came, broken by the sound of hands rummaging around in the red and gold chip bowl and the crunch of green apple between yellowish teeth.