people, picked up bad habits—
very
bad habits. I lost the plot. That’s what addiction does—makes you forget who you are.”
He snapped his head up, as if he’d remembered this wasn’t a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, then brightened as Liam squeezed between him and Jane to grab the salt shaker. Julian tapped the boy on the shoulder and opened his mouth dentist-chair wide, sending a set of false upper teeth flying into his palm, the extraction shrinking his face so that he looked, not like an old man, but twenty-five years younger. And yet he’d had such beautiful teeth as a teenager, an honour guard of polished white shields massed behind his full lips.
Liam laughed and asked him what had happened to his real teeth.
“I lost them in a fight—
with myself
.” He capped the joke by fake-punching his own mouth.
The situation rescued, Jane turned to Franny. “I can’t believe how much taller you’ve gotten since March. Your dad was the same way.”
It felt good hearing this positive father–daughter connection asserted. “I remember my big growth spurt,” Joseph said. “Seven inches in a year.”
“Your dad was one of the shortest boys in school in Grade Nine,” Jane said.
“I was a bit of a geek.”
“
Was
, Daddy? You keep trying to get me to watch the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
box set with you.”
He let the laughs die down, admiring Franny’s droll delivery. “I grew so fast that my body felt like a pair of shoes three sizes too big for me. I kept bumping into doorways and tripping on stairs.” He took a deep drink from a fresh beer, letting the story pull him along as Jane watched from over her wine glass, her face as radiant as if she’d just emerged from a cold lake.
“It took me another year to grow into my new body. Everyone treated me like I was a different person.” Gaining seven inches and thirty pounds was a sixteen-year-old boy’s deepest wish granted—and the wish, too, of a dozen or so bright, beautiful girls who only months earlier had called him
friend
, if they’d called him anything. He drew looks from girls with pupils so dilated they might have been watching him from inside dark rooms, and what did they want from him? Only that his new body, his new
self
, fulfill the romantic expectations these girls learned fromhundreds of love songs and movies. There were rewards for playing this role, which he’d collected like a bounty hunter.
Jane gave him a secret approving smirk that directed his wandering memory straight to their last year of high school, when she asked
him
to the prom, the two of them too cool, too punk to take the evening’s pageantry seriously. It was a lark, he’d told his Jane-coveting buddies, a chance to play bodyguard for a girl whose face all the school freaks sketched in their gloomy notebooks. He even half-believed his own shtick until he got to her family’s apartment and saw her prom dress, a strapless indigo gown tailored from a single bolt of cloth supported, as far as he could see, by nothing more than her body’s curves. Her hair was heaped into fertile bunches, and he wanted to kick her kid brother when he cracked a joke about her high heels. He stayed by her side all night, recklessly funny, drunk as a pagan warrior on the eve of a battle that could not be won. Later, on a hotel-room balcony, the after-party blaring inside, the city lights spread out before them like a flotilla of lanterns, he pressed her against the railing, the loosened cones of hair tumbling down her shoulders and falling eighteen storeys to the ground for all he cared.
He couldn’t help saying it out loud: “Prom night.”
“Can you believe it?” Jane turned to Franny. “Your father took me to the prom.”
Liz laughed and Julian clapped his hands together.
“He kept the weirdos away that night,” Jane said.
This was it then, their first night together revised for public consumption. He took a swig from his beer. What was it about being in on a lie that
very
bad habits. I lost the plot. That’s what addiction does—makes you forget who you are.”
He snapped his head up, as if he’d remembered this wasn’t a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, then brightened as Liam squeezed between him and Jane to grab the salt shaker. Julian tapped the boy on the shoulder and opened his mouth dentist-chair wide, sending a set of false upper teeth flying into his palm, the extraction shrinking his face so that he looked, not like an old man, but twenty-five years younger. And yet he’d had such beautiful teeth as a teenager, an honour guard of polished white shields massed behind his full lips.
Liam laughed and asked him what had happened to his real teeth.
“I lost them in a fight—
with myself
.” He capped the joke by fake-punching his own mouth.
The situation rescued, Jane turned to Franny. “I can’t believe how much taller you’ve gotten since March. Your dad was the same way.”
It felt good hearing this positive father–daughter connection asserted. “I remember my big growth spurt,” Joseph said. “Seven inches in a year.”
“Your dad was one of the shortest boys in school in Grade Nine,” Jane said.
“I was a bit of a geek.”
“
Was
, Daddy? You keep trying to get me to watch the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
box set with you.”
He let the laughs die down, admiring Franny’s droll delivery. “I grew so fast that my body felt like a pair of shoes three sizes too big for me. I kept bumping into doorways and tripping on stairs.” He took a deep drink from a fresh beer, letting the story pull him along as Jane watched from over her wine glass, her face as radiant as if she’d just emerged from a cold lake.
“It took me another year to grow into my new body. Everyone treated me like I was a different person.” Gaining seven inches and thirty pounds was a sixteen-year-old boy’s deepest wish granted—and the wish, too, of a dozen or so bright, beautiful girls who only months earlier had called him
friend
, if they’d called him anything. He drew looks from girls with pupils so dilated they might have been watching him from inside dark rooms, and what did they want from him? Only that his new body, his new
self
, fulfill the romantic expectations these girls learned fromhundreds of love songs and movies. There were rewards for playing this role, which he’d collected like a bounty hunter.
Jane gave him a secret approving smirk that directed his wandering memory straight to their last year of high school, when she asked
him
to the prom, the two of them too cool, too punk to take the evening’s pageantry seriously. It was a lark, he’d told his Jane-coveting buddies, a chance to play bodyguard for a girl whose face all the school freaks sketched in their gloomy notebooks. He even half-believed his own shtick until he got to her family’s apartment and saw her prom dress, a strapless indigo gown tailored from a single bolt of cloth supported, as far as he could see, by nothing more than her body’s curves. Her hair was heaped into fertile bunches, and he wanted to kick her kid brother when he cracked a joke about her high heels. He stayed by her side all night, recklessly funny, drunk as a pagan warrior on the eve of a battle that could not be won. Later, on a hotel-room balcony, the after-party blaring inside, the city lights spread out before them like a flotilla of lanterns, he pressed her against the railing, the loosened cones of hair tumbling down her shoulders and falling eighteen storeys to the ground for all he cared.
He couldn’t help saying it out loud: “Prom night.”
“Can you believe it?” Jane turned to Franny. “Your father took me to the prom.”
Liz laughed and Julian clapped his hands together.
“He kept the weirdos away that night,” Jane said.
This was it then, their first night together revised for public consumption. He took a swig from his beer. What was it about being in on a lie that
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