For the first two months in Montreal, I was buffered from the full-frontal blow of my decision to move, living two minutes from Martlet House in an executive apartment hotel. In many ways, it felt like an extended business trip. Jake—whose nickname was Jackrabbit—had shipped a package to the front desk for Valentine’s Day: I am sure I was the only person in that hotel with a stuffed jackrabbit on her pillow.
Each night, Jake would tell me about his writing day, a world I understood intimately. “Feels like cracking concrete with my forehead,” he’d say. “Tell me about your day, baby.” Holding on to that rabbit, I’d try to entertain him with the complexities of my new world. I’d always end the same way: “Looks like someone forgot to book my return flight,” I’d joke. Neither of us ever laughed. There was a peacefulness to our nightly calls. He had just had an unexpected hip replacement, and I had flown out to nurse him. He was anxious to heal, to come to Montreal, to take a crack at the city. I was keen to have him by my side: I was growing more lonely by the day.
By June, I’d stopped spending evenings in the stuffiness of my office. Night after night, I’d lug my work to the warm glow of Alexandre, settling in at the same cozy table with my BlackBerry and my reading. I could see other people, and it eased the deep sense of isolation. Night after night, the same waiter would bring me the first of three glasses of crisp Sauvignon Blanc, a warm chèvre salad, and a baguette. Every evening, he did his best to change my habits. “Escargots, madame?” “Non, François.” “Steak tartare?” “Non, merci, François. Un autre verre.”
With that first sip, my shoulders seemed to unhitch from my earlobes. With the second, I could exhale. I loved the way the wine worked on my innards. That first glass would melt some glacial layer of tension, a barrier between me and the world. Somehow with the second glass, the tectonic plates of my psyche would shift, and I’d be more at ease. Jake used to say it this way: “When you drink, that piano on your back seems to disappear.”
I had always taken my work seriously—maybe too seriously. Somewhere between the first and second glass, I’d take a fresh look at a problem, or find an answer to some complex question. Suddenly, it all looked simple. By the third glass? Well, that one just took my clarity down a notch, and I’d know it was time to go home.
Did my evenings at Alexandre count as drinking alone? I tried to fudge it in my mind, thinking of it this way: I wasn’t exactly alone. There were people at neighboring tables. Besides, I had no one to have dinner with. But in my heart, I knew the truth: I was breaking my promise—not only to Jake, but to myself. I was drinking because I was lonely. I was drinking because I was anxious. This wasn’t Grace Kelly pouring a glass of Montrachet for Jimmy Stewart. This was something else, something I had never encountered, and it felt wrong.
I don’t know what month I began picking up another bottle on my way home, in case I wanted a glass before bed. But I do know exactly when I began sleeping through two alarms.
One fateful June evening, after a particularly difficult interchange with a senior employee, I headed off to Alexandre. Here is my journal:
Four. I had four last night. Maybe it was five. One was vodka. And I slept through both alarms.
My boss’ car left for the country and the annual executive retreat, and I missed the ride. The car came to pick me up, with her in it, and found no-one waiting. I will have to resign. In 30 years of professional life, I have never made an error like this one.
I made it by 11:00, but there is no mending what is broken.
My boss asked me: “Did you take a sleeping pill last night?”
“No,” I said.
“I was hoping you’d say you had.”
Two weeks later, in one of our regular meetings, she asked me how I was doing. I surprised myself with the answer: “I don’t know how to explain it, but I am losing my voice.” And somehow, this was true. I was losing myself in Montreal. And missing journalism—my writing, my world—was only part of the story.
That summer, Jake bought me a beautiful gold engagement ring, hand-carved with delicate leaves—or were they bird feathers? Either way, it spoke to our love of nature, and of our time in the woods together. I stole two weeks at the houseboat. We swam each morning before breakfast, and indulged in our long morning meals, sitting on the driftwood bench, the table laden with fruit and eggs and coffee. It always ended the same way: “Come here, baby, sit on my lap and I’ll rub your back.” Jake and I would kiss before we parted for our morning chores. By mid-afternoon, he would be baiting my hook, mid-river, the two of us on one of our four-hour adventures in either the Boston Whaler or the classic wooden boat.
But this summer, the talk was less about writing and more about BlackBerry reception. I might be on vacation, but the monkeys weren’t taking a holiday. Rumor had it that the principal’s husband had tossed her BlackBerry in the lake one summer, so frustrated was he by her constant emailing. I thought the story was apocryphal: it was hard to imagine her unrufflable husband—screenwriter and yoga master—tossing anything. Still, Jake found the story amusing, especially when my own work habits tested his patience. His mother was concerned: “You look exhausted,” she said to me. “Something about this job isn’t good for you.” I held her hand and told her it would be fine.
By fall, my loneliness was overwhelming. But like the unhappy couple who decides to have a baby to fix their marriage, I had started to work with a real estate agent to purchase a home. In the meantime, I moved into temporary digs on the executive floor of the new student residence. My peripatetic ways were raising alarm bells with the principal, and so they should have been. Most weekends, I was flying home to Toronto, BlackBerry in hand. During the week, I’d troop through a selection of condos and houses, rejecting them all. They looked like movie sets to me, backdrops for a life that had nothing to do with mine.
The frosh had arrived. Each night, gangs of fresh-faced kids would pour out of the residence, eager to down another heady gulp of Montreal nightlife. From where I sat, they seemed to have the city on a string. Me? I was up on the fifteenth floor, with a glass of white wine, checking out real estate listings, lost as lost could be. I had a big job, a life partner halfway across the country, and not a true friend in sight. My summer holiday with Jake was long over and I felt like my life was close to over as well.
All that fall, the residence rocked late into the night. Sometimes, all night. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” pulsing at 2 a.m. The gravelly voice of Leonard Cohen trailing down halls. Four years earlier, my own son had headed off to university himself, taking his guitar but leaving a CD on my pillow, with a note: “If you get lonely, play this music LOUD.”
This residence felt as close to home as it was ever going to get in Montreal. I liked wandering the corridors, listening to the Korean student play the grand piano in the foyer, watching young girls in bunny slippers giggle over pizza. One evening, when I was coming home late, the elevators opened to reveal three semi-nude guys, all dyed various shades of red, with matching towels tied around their waists, their heads encased in Molson Canadian boxes, with eye slits.
“Well, hello, miss! I take it you’re new in town?”
All three were weaving slightly.
“Not as new as you,” I said. “I’m one of the vice principals.”
One head case straightened up.
“Oh, sorry, ma’am!”
He wiped his hand on his towel, and gave my hand a good pumping.