Even when she started spending less and less time at home, she denied it. Even when the sex dried up, she denied it. I figure my relationship with Cora ended a full two months before I realized it. When she was ready to move out, she taped the small, pathetic engagement ring I had given her, all that I could afford, to a note left for me on the kitchen table. It read simply: I’m sorry, Michael. I truly am. But there is something in you that lacks.
And then sent her girlfriends over to get her stuff.
Was I enraged? Of course. Did that rage express itself through some vehicular vandalism in the CBC parking lot? Possibly. But more to the point: I was now ready to accept the labels I had been denying myself for years: orphan, rudderless, alone in the world.
In fact, with Cora gone I was free to descend into the charlatanism that I knew rested at the heart of my character. It began manifesting itself through my job, with me growing less fastidious about capturing accurate quotes from the people I interviewed. It sounds close enough to what they said, I would tell myself. Then I was making up entire quotes from interviews: they still came off like something my sources should have said, and I convinced myself that it was okay, that I could get away with such behaviour, because after all this was the Lifestyle section, with so little at stake.
I knew my negligence had taken a sharp turn when I found myself creating entire sources out of thin air. The topics of the stories were (at that point) still genuine, but when I couldn’t bother finding someone to say what I wanted, I made them up. By this point, I was addicted to the rush of not getting caught, day after day. And soon enough, I was in for a pound: I eventually fabricated entire stories — topic, news angle, sources, quotes, even the occasional post-publication letter to the editor from a fictitious interviewee.
I consider it a scathing indictment on modern journalism that my dalliances could go on for four years before I got busted. Like a serial killer or corporate criminal, I grew arrogant and reckless. The “story” that did me in involved a book club comprised of immigrant housewives from the Palestinian territories who read novels exclusively by Jewish writers as an act of cultural understanding. It wasn’t the story’s questionable premise that sent the red flags unfurling. It wasn’t even a single sentence within the story. It was a passing clause within a sentence, sandwiched between em-dashes and mentioning an organization that did not and could not exist — The Jewish Consortium for the Annihilation of Arab History — that finally raised the eyebrow of my managing editor and sent her digging. And digging. And digging.
The unearthing of (most of) my ruses took no time at all. Needless to say, the Daily News’s competition had a field day when they became public. The Herald ran several days’ worth of articles about my misdeeds and subsequent termination, column inches that went on and on, needlessly. (They even mentioned my father, his noble reputation and work with the province, a tsk-tsk sort of reference.) The Canadian Press picked up the story and ran it nationwide. I know the girl who wrote it — we had a one-night stand my first year at J-school before I started dating Cora.
I was, of course, done for. Let me remind you that this was the spring of 2002 and Google was just achieving critical mass. Plug “Michael Barrett” in a search engine and you’ll need to click through several pages of results before you find a link that doesn’t include the words “disgraced journalist.” So I took some time off to recalibrate. But before I knew it, “some” turned to “a lot”: spring became summer and summer became fall. Meanwhile I had student loans I was still paying off from ten years earlier; the banks would not give me relief. I was now taking cash out on my MasterCard to pay for essentials like rent and vodka. It was almost fun to be in this kind of free fall into hopelessness. Nobody would give me a job. The few friends I had weren’t speaking to me. I was drinking all day long. And watching month after month as I spiralled toward personal and financial Armageddon.
Cut to a foggy afternoon: I was on the waterfront drinking alone in the Nautical Pub when I ran into an acquaintance from my university days. Over dinner, he told me how he had gone on to do an expensive MFA and then paid off the student debt he incurred by teaching in South Korea. Had arrived in Seoul $35,000 in the red, but after three years of teaching returned to Canada $15,000 in the black. Said I could do the same. “But I don’t have a teaching degree,” I told him.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “You don’t need one. I wouldn’t even call what you do over there teaching. You just stand up in front of a bunch of Asian kids for eight hours a day and Be White, Be Western.” We parted company with him giving me the address for an online job board.
So I checked it out. And I applied for something. And I got a job offer right away. During the brief, perfunctory phone interview, Ms. Kim didn’t even question why my seven-year tenure at The Daily News had come to an abrupt end. Nor did she ask what I’d been doing with myself in the eight months since. All she needed was for me to Fed-Ex a package containing my valid passport, notarized confirmation of my university degree, and a photograph, a headshot of myself — which, I later learned, was to confirm that I was in fact white. It would take her a couple of weeks to process my E-1 visa. After she did, she confirmed my salary — 1.9 million won a month, virtually tax-free — and that upon my arrival I would move into a free apartment, albeit with a roommate. “His name is Justin,” she informed me. “He is from Nova Scotia, like you.” She could have added He is also emotionally damaged, like you, if she had known.
As my departure grew imminent, I gave notice on my apartment, sold off whatever shabby furniture I hadn’t hawked yet, cancelled my phone. But it didn’t feel like a new beginning, a chance for a fresh start. Not at all. Even before I stepped on Korean soil, I knew the truth about what I was doing. People don’t go to Asia to find themselves. They go there, for better or for worse, to run away from whatever they have been. And all I could hope for was to butt up against something, anything, to fill in the craters that resided within me.
It’s the photos of Justin’s kid that always get me. He has a collage of them tacked to the wooden headboard in his bedroom; I see them every time I go in there. This is what Justin has been — a father to a son who died in 2000. His name was Cody. Nearly six years old when he was killed in a freak accident while the family was vacationing in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland. The photos on the headboard show the little guy in various states of little-guy animation. They overlook Justin as he sleeps.
It’s early on a Saturday afternoon and I’m just getting mobile. Freshly showered, I towel down the remnants of my hair and try to shake off my soju hangover from the night before. A crew of us had gone out after work for kalbi, Korean-style barbecue, and the liquor had been flowing; Justin and I didn’t get home until nearly dawn. Let me describe what I mean by home, this shoebox that ABC English Planet has provided. Imagine the smallest apartment you’ve ever seen and cut in half. It has the Korean-style floor heating, called ondol, a plastic simulacrum of hardwood that you never walk on with your shoes; you must leave your footwear in the small, sunken entryway by the door. Our kitchen is just a countertop with propane hotplate sitting below a row of cupboards, and with a small fridge to the right. We have no kitchen table. The living room is a leather couch parked in the centre of the apartment facing a tiny TV in the corner. We get a few English channels — CNN International and the Armed Forces Network. There are two bedrooms to this apartment. Justin’s is much bigger than mine. The benefits of seniority.
After I’ve dried off and dressed, I knock on Justin’s door and enter when he calls me. I find him on his bed reading a paperback. The photos of Cody hover all around