Free Girl Unwrapped by Gabriella Goliger Page B

of the world’s—Toni sees what Lisa wants to hide; the spidery lines around her eyes, the tiny, fleshy protrusion by the side of her nose, the way her feet bulge out around the straps of her high-heeled shoes, and the raw look of her fingers despite the gleaming nail polish. Toni sees, and she’s not sure what she hates more, her mother’s ugly parts or the way she stalwartly, triumphantly denies their existence through the feminine arts of makeup, dress, and charm.
    Reaching up, her mother tries to brush away the thicket of bangs on Toni’s forehead.
    “Get away from me!” Toni shrieks. She crashes out of the kitchen, slams her bedroom door. A few minutes later, her mother knocks—a firm, unapologetic rap—and enters the room without waiting for an answer.
    “That was not my daughter talking,” Lisa pronounces, bristling with offence. From a Zellers bag, she produces a new, downy soft, egg-yolk-coloured mohair sweater, the kind that is all the rage. Toni can just imagine how big and yellow she’d appear in one of those. Like a giant “caution” sign.
    “ Nu? What do you say?”
    Toni squishes her face deeper into the pillow. Even more infuriating than the appeal for gratitude is her mother’s troubled gaze, the anxiety flickering beneath the surface. Peeking out from the folds of her pillow, Toni sees her mother fish something else from the paper bag, a bottle of Arrid Junior Deodorant, which she places in the middle of the bureau. The Arrid bottle stares down accusingly. Lately, Toni has been lathering her underarms with the Mennen Deodorant from her father’s side of the medicine cabinet, always careful to put it back in the exact same spot, but apparently her mother has noticed.
    “Leave me alone,” Toni rages.
    Her mother’s hand flies to her breast where the arrow of ingratitude has lodged.
    “I lost my mother when I was not much older than you. I’m glad I have no such cruel remarks on my conscience.”
    Her voice quivers with grand tragedy. She wheels around and marches out of the room.
    Later, at lunch, devouring blintzes and sour cream (her appetite is huge these days, she can’t control it), Toni avoids her mother’s gaze. You see how good I am to you , those dark eyes telegraph. How good my blintzes are? Toni would like to go on a hunger strike, but her mother lays traps of irresistible food.
    These days, when Lisa isn’t hounding Toni about one thing or the other, she’s busy with work at the store, where she’s been promoted from alterations to sales, with Hadassah committees and bazaars, and with her bridge club ladies, who come on Thursday afternoons and leave before Julius arrives home for supper—it’s understood he doesn’t want to run a gamut of ladies. On the surface, Lisa is relentlessly cheerful—the family is finally getting ahead—but Toni suspects fraud. Something is wrong, something is missing, disappointment and bitterness fester beneath Lisa’s polished surface. You’re not really happy, you’re just pretending. Toni wants to hurl the accusation, but this could bring revelations and Toni doesn’t want to know what’s bothering her mother. She really doesn’t want to know. She assumes it’s got something to do with her mother’s nature, her impossible expectations. Always pushing—pushing and then furious to encounter a locked door.
    Her parents don’t fight, they side-step one another. Her father absents himself as much as possible, leaving the women to sort out the messy women’s business. He now has an office above a shoe store on Queen Mary Road. After dinner, he disappears into his study with a guilty but determined air, especially on evenings when discontent seeps out of Lisa’s pores and she bangs around with pots in the kitchen. His study is in what was supposed to have been the nursery for a baby. No one has told Toni there was supposed to be another child, but she knows, just as she knows the reason for its absence. Her parents are too old.