Impossible! “If you want.” That’s better.
It was one of those cyclical moments of parenting at which my dad excelled. I nodded. Then he held out a fuzzy mass, seemingly offering me a dead cat.
“I made you something,” he said, placing the object in my hand. It was rough and knit from yellow yarn with a pink explosion of ribbon on its head and two red buttons for eyes.
“Elaine showed me how to knit,” he said very quickly, looking away.
“What is it?” I asked, instantly realizing I sounded cruel. I added, “It’s nice.”
“It’s Holly Hobbie, you know. That girl with the bonnet and the skirt …”
I turned it over in my hand. The skirt was a square of dishtowel.
“You said you wanted one, remember?”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. I’d asked for Holly Hobbie a year ago. Now she was over. I had developed an acute sense of fashionable timing that would have shocked my father.
My dad stood shuffling and made a quick gesture toward me with his hand, like he was reaching out for something, maybe trying to take back the present. Then he halted,shoving his fists in the pockets of his pants, the belt around his skinny hips puckered and sagging, a dad in a drawstring bag.
“Thank you,” I said again.
I don’t usually tell it like that. I just describe the grotesque felt-pen grin on Holly’s face. Many laughs ensue. Lucky you. True version.
I T’S STILL A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE OFFICIAL OPENING , but the festival has already rolled into town. A few carnies barking into cellphones give off an L.A. scent, but the entourages have yet to arrive in full force. The newspapers are still covering other events soon to be shunted to the back pages (TENT CITY GROWING .
Homeless gather, light toxic barrels for warmth)
.
On Bloor Street, next to designer clothing boutiques and stores selling thousand-dollar pens, a handful of teenaged girls fan out and cover the celebrity-spotting corners, pagersand BlackBerries at the ready: The Starbucks in the Chapters bookstore. Club Monaco at Avenue Road. The restaurant Prego. Within days, there will be more of them, underdressed for winter, jackets open to show their pudgy midsections, armies of Lana Turners looking for Schwab’s.
Around the corner from Bloor at the Four Seasons, the crowds have yet to descend. There is only one man on a lawn chair staking out a square of sidewalk near the curb, drinking coffee with his mittens on, a camera around his neck. He looks proud, as if he did some investigating and discovered that this little patch legally qualifies for public space and he is going nowhere. The doorman has his eye on him.
The elevator and the hallway inside the hotel have been sprayed with a scent that’s either florid or dental. Outside room 1215, the Ethan Hawke publicist paces. She sees me and freezes, extends a palm in a halt gesture.
“Are you with
The Daily?
” she asks suspiciously, as if all day she’s been warding off civilians enacting their own personal Monkees episode, dressing up as chambermaids and waiters, smuggling each other past security by curling up on dessert carts, anything to get close to Mr. Hawke, who hasn’t had a hit movie in ten years.
“Wait five minutes. He’s finishing up,” she tells me, and I lean against a wall next to an anxious, mouth-breathing young man from the
Halifax Bugle
or whatever. A few faux-Edwardian chairs might be meant for us to sit on, but they’re covered with shiny stacks of slides, CD-ROMs, and press notes that outline the plot of the film, scene by scene, moment by moment. It’s all designed to require as little of us as is possible.Hence,
The Examiner
has been known to sleep through entire films and others don’t even show up for screenings, writing their reviews from studio-penned plot summaries plumped up by the occasional “superbly observed” and “challengingly cast.”
American publicists have an enviable don’t-give-a-shit quality when they visit Canada. They must have
It was one of those cyclical moments of parenting at which my dad excelled. I nodded. Then he held out a fuzzy mass, seemingly offering me a dead cat.
“I made you something,” he said, placing the object in my hand. It was rough and knit from yellow yarn with a pink explosion of ribbon on its head and two red buttons for eyes.
“Elaine showed me how to knit,” he said very quickly, looking away.
“What is it?” I asked, instantly realizing I sounded cruel. I added, “It’s nice.”
“It’s Holly Hobbie, you know. That girl with the bonnet and the skirt …”
I turned it over in my hand. The skirt was a square of dishtowel.
“You said you wanted one, remember?”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. I’d asked for Holly Hobbie a year ago. Now she was over. I had developed an acute sense of fashionable timing that would have shocked my father.
My dad stood shuffling and made a quick gesture toward me with his hand, like he was reaching out for something, maybe trying to take back the present. Then he halted,shoving his fists in the pockets of his pants, the belt around his skinny hips puckered and sagging, a dad in a drawstring bag.
“Thank you,” I said again.
I don’t usually tell it like that. I just describe the grotesque felt-pen grin on Holly’s face. Many laughs ensue. Lucky you. True version.
I T’S STILL A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE OFFICIAL OPENING , but the festival has already rolled into town. A few carnies barking into cellphones give off an L.A. scent, but the entourages have yet to arrive in full force. The newspapers are still covering other events soon to be shunted to the back pages (TENT CITY GROWING .
Homeless gather, light toxic barrels for warmth)
.
On Bloor Street, next to designer clothing boutiques and stores selling thousand-dollar pens, a handful of teenaged girls fan out and cover the celebrity-spotting corners, pagersand BlackBerries at the ready: The Starbucks in the Chapters bookstore. Club Monaco at Avenue Road. The restaurant Prego. Within days, there will be more of them, underdressed for winter, jackets open to show their pudgy midsections, armies of Lana Turners looking for Schwab’s.
Around the corner from Bloor at the Four Seasons, the crowds have yet to descend. There is only one man on a lawn chair staking out a square of sidewalk near the curb, drinking coffee with his mittens on, a camera around his neck. He looks proud, as if he did some investigating and discovered that this little patch legally qualifies for public space and he is going nowhere. The doorman has his eye on him.
The elevator and the hallway inside the hotel have been sprayed with a scent that’s either florid or dental. Outside room 1215, the Ethan Hawke publicist paces. She sees me and freezes, extends a palm in a halt gesture.
“Are you with
The Daily?
” she asks suspiciously, as if all day she’s been warding off civilians enacting their own personal Monkees episode, dressing up as chambermaids and waiters, smuggling each other past security by curling up on dessert carts, anything to get close to Mr. Hawke, who hasn’t had a hit movie in ten years.
“Wait five minutes. He’s finishing up,” she tells me, and I lean against a wall next to an anxious, mouth-breathing young man from the
Halifax Bugle
or whatever. A few faux-Edwardian chairs might be meant for us to sit on, but they’re covered with shiny stacks of slides, CD-ROMs, and press notes that outline the plot of the film, scene by scene, moment by moment. It’s all designed to require as little of us as is possible.Hence,
The Examiner
has been known to sleep through entire films and others don’t even show up for screenings, writing their reviews from studio-penned plot summaries plumped up by the occasional “superbly observed” and “challengingly cast.”
American publicists have an enviable don’t-give-a-shit quality when they visit Canada. They must have
Similar Books
