Charming as a verb, p.14
Charming as a Verb, page 14
Sure, Canada is all well and good, but twins have always fascinated me. Another wrinkle of siblinghood to observe from the outside as an only child.
“Well, this wouldn’t be happening now if you’d let us sit together on the train, Troy. That was the perfect time for factoids like these.”
Corinne shrugs. She had insisted that we sit on two different ends of the wagon because “the impulse to chitchat” would have distracted from the work she needed to get out of the way. We met for a brief lunch in the dining car, after which she returned to her seat to study with headphones in.
I have to admit that, this way, the ten hours of travel time were at least productive. Now I won’t have to think about a backlog of problem sets during this interview.
“Do you have, like, a cousin you share a telepathic connection with?” I can’t help but follow up as Corinne leads us down onto foreign streets with echoes of French in the background. “That’s so cool. Like, if they stub their toe in Canada, do you feel a twinge in New York? Do you look like them?”
“No cousins. Aunt Terry doesn’t have any kids. She and Mom are . . . Well, you’ll see,” Corinne says, with a note of dread.
“C-c-cold!” I yelp out as a wave of chill hits my bones, right through the bubble jacket and long-sleeve T underneath. Unlike New York, which has been snowless, Canada has solid banks of white coiled along the sides of every street. Some dirty, some clean, with lines of boot holes stepping into them. Every step feels gritty from the salt that’s been put on every inch of the sidewalk to help with the visible patches of ice.
“It’s Canada.” Corinne laughs, making a move to tighten my scarf but then moving her hands to the straps of her backpack. “Even if you go by the broadest stereotype, the cold would be at the top of the list.”
“I, um, didn’t expect the temperature to go down by this much since we were traveling by train and not, y’know, plane. Like, how many weather patterns could we have crossed?”
She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and looks at me with a brow so furrowed it may never unwrinkle.
“Thank God you’re pretty because that’s sincerely the dumbest thing I ever heard. Just smile a lot during the interview or something.”
I’m about to excavate as much material as I can from that stray compliment when a singsongy voice beckons to us.
“Riri! I’d recognize that hat anywhere,” a fluffy purple faux-fur coat says, waving at us from across the street. “There she is!”
“Hi, Auntie,” Corinne says—sighs, really—letting herself be hugged tightly by a mauve blur of a woman I assume to be Theresa Bien-Aimée, the decidedly mismatched twin to the elegant and stoic Chantale Bien-Aimée Troy.
“Thanks for hosting us last minute. Mom says she really appreciates it.”
“Oh, stop that!” the woman says, pulling away only to cup Corinne’s cheeks, seemingly immune to Corinne’s invisible force field of personal space. “Look at you! All woman-sized.”
Up close, it’s a bit uncanny: Terry’s features look exactly like Chantale’s. The same sharp eyes and chin, inherited by Corinne too, but this version is from an altogether different time line: one of shaved heads, dangling earrings, and blue lipstick. Nothing she’s wearing matches, which somehow totally works.
I imagine all the tea and rye toast that Chantale spent a lifetime eating while working on dissertations were replaced by muffins topped with butter, cupcakes, and donuts for this larger-than-life version of Chantale, emanating joy with every fiber of her being.
“Hi, Ms. Bien-Aimée.” I Smile, removing my glove and extending a frostbitten hand toward her to introduce myself formally. “My name is Henri Haltiwanger. Thank you so much for hosting me.”
She vigorously shakes my hand and pulls me in, tilting my chin down with a gloved hand and grinning into my eyes.
If only all women in this family were so easily charmed.
“Now, Henri, first things first: were you always this handsome?”
“No, ma’am,” I say, following her lead, wiggling my eyebrows at Corinne for good measure before getting into the front seat. “But that Monkey’s Paw had one last finger on it, and I made the most of it.”
She lets out a sharp cackle from the driver’s seat, craning her neck to pull us out of the parking spot and into the mild traffic of Montreal, Quebec.
Corinne’s smack to the back of my head is so lightning quick that I would need slow motion to prove it in a court of law.
Of course, Aunt Terry lives over her bakery. The building in question is a two-story structure by a small park. The forest-green roof looks black at this time of the night, especially covered in a layer of snow.
“‘The Good Twin,’” I read aloud. The name is in cursive, and at the side is a sketch of Terry, complete with a shaved head and round gold ear hoops, holding a pie with cartoon flavor lines drawn over it like it was baked for the express purpose of luring in Wile E. Coyote.
“Mom was not amused to learn the name when we drove up for the grand opening,” Corinne comments.
Judging by Terry’s hint of a smile, I’m going to guess that that was partly the point. Having a sibling that close must be a hell of a thing.
The store is closed when we pull into the parking lot, but there’s an orange hue coming from behind the glass front window. It’s easy to imagine Terry humming at the ovens in the wee morning hours.
We take the second door right next to the bakery’s entrance and climb a narrow set of carpeted stairs that lead up to a rather large apartment with yellow-painted walls and frames all around, knickknacks on every shelf. The air smells of tea, just like at the Troys’ but a different, spicier flavor, maybe.
“Bienvenue! Welcome! Mi casa es su casa. Look at that; three languages right there! They might have room for me at Princeton, huh, Riri?”
She laughs at her own joke. It’s both corny and the laugh a little infectious, and Corinne shakes her head as she removes her scarf and lets herself fall into a couch. She is fully at home here, whereas I find myself lurking, taking it all in.
There’s an American flag magnet on the fridge that reminds me of Ma’s Haitian flag-patterned oven mitt. A touch of home in the room that sustains the house.
“I told you we were only going to be here for less than forty-eight hours,” Corinne says, stealing a glance at me when she thinks I’m not looking. “I told you not to make a fuss for us.” She points with her socked toe to the kitchen table filled with tinfoil-covered trays. “This qualifies as a fuss.”
“Calm down, Mini Chantale.” Terry waves her off, checking the oven. “Half of this stuff is for a food fair at the end of the week. Henri, sweetie: stop standing by the door like a butler. You’re stressing me out. There’s no grand tour; make yourself at home. Go have a poo or something.”
By the time the three of us settle in for dinner in the living room and the coffee table is packed with tray after tray of food—roasted carrots, mac and cheese, and rosemary turkey fresh from the oven, all dishes that Aunt Terry waves off as being whipped up in a few minutes—it’s clear that Terry is the sort of person you believe when she says something like “Make yourself at home.” We end up watching French-Canadian news about America’s upcoming elections.
“You people sure know how to take the fun out of a country that has Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City.” Terry sighs, and neither Corinne nor I can exactly argue with that. “So, Henri: is McGill your dream school, as you kids put it?”
“And exactly what’s wrong with dream schools?” Corinne says. Terry doesn’t seem to mind her niece’s eye roll, laughing along with it.
“Let’s just say that my dreams never involved a syllabus when I was your age,” she says. “And your mom used to roll her eyes at me that same way when I said that.”
“It’s not my dream school, exactly. That would be Columbia but um . . .”
I’m not getting a lot of catcalls from that construction site, I think.
“It’s good to have options, Auntie,” Corinne chimes in, as if sensing my butt cheeks clenching at the topic.
“But McGill’s a really good school,” I find myself saying. “They have an amazing design program.”
Corinne raises an eyebrow at me.
“Yeah, I heard something about that from one of the girls at my Zumba. Well, I’m sure you’ll nail it, babe.” Terry pats my shoulder.
I Smile and she smiles, seemingly happy with the answer. Here’s a-hoping, Aunt Terry.
“I was a little afraid when you said you were coming—unannounced, no less. Last time, she rearranged the seating downstairs because it was ‘suboptimal,’” Terry says. “Your boyfriend has mellowed you out, Riri.”
“You can keep making all your jokes, but we’re still not dating, Auntie,” Corinne corrects. Was that a snort?
“And why not?” Terry asks. “Look at him. Handsome young man with a future. You could do worse. Ask your mom.”
“I am really handsome.” I grin with teeth fenced with mac and cheese.
“Ugh,” Corinne says before turning back to her aunt, legs folded under her. “He’s a hussy, for one,” she adds.
“Excuse me?” Is that what she really thinks of me?
Auntie Terry raises both eyebrows at me as if awaiting rebuttal, and for a moment, I feel like I’m presenting a dissertation to Chantale Troy.
“I—I don’t— I’m not a hussy! Is this because of Evie?”
“And Charlotte . . . And Jayna-Mae . . .”
Charlotte was my partner in a play who fully stuck her tongue into my mouth when Juliet was supposed to be comatose. And J-M was only a few Shake Shack dates sophomore year, back when I thought I would have time to date. The text she’d sent me after being left waiting outside the movies had been very, very long. A lot of exclamation points that climaxed with a DELETE MY NUMBER, FCKBOI. But that was a lifetime ago!
“You have a reputation around FATE, that’s all,” Corinne says, chewing very deliberately. “There’s a shocking list in the third-floor girls’ bathroom stalls.”
I would ask for a follow-up, but Corinne is smirking in a way that makes me want to refuse her the satisfaction with every fiber of my being.
Terry is ready to issue her verdict. “Well, Henri,” she says after literally smacking my hand away when I try to help clear the plates. “I’ve made up the couch in the study for you. Dating or not, I’m not having Chantale call me to ask why she sent her daughter up here for two days and ended up a grandmother.”
“Auntie, for the love of God, you have got to stop,” Corinne says.
“I don’t have to do a damn thing except stay Black, pay my taxes, and die, honey.” She cackles all the way to the kitchen with that one, arms full of empty plates.
Later, when Terry has gone off to shower, after doing all the dishes, Corinne and I set out to straighten up the kitchen and living room area—if for nothing else than to make up for the fact that this woman worked all day, cooked all afternoon, picked us up from the station in Montreal’s definition of downtown traffic, and even insisted on doing the dishes, all in the middle of the workweek.
After changing out of our travel clothes, Corinne and I put away the dishes as best we can figure out. It’s a nice feeling, caring for this comfortable, colorful home with Corinne Troy.
I want to say something, maybe “Thank you for bringing me here” or “Thank you for being here” or even “Thank you for being you. I’m really glad we’re doing this together, and I like you a stupid amount.” Instead, I just say:
“What if McGill turns me down too?”
“It won’t,” she says, taking wide sweeps of the kitchen floor. “It’s going to go great, Halti. Just be yourself.”
“People love saying that.” I sigh. “That’s like screaming at someone having a panic attack not to panic. What if I don’t know what that means?”
She pulls herself from the wall and steps into the study, flopping herself on the makeshift bed, bouncing a few times, completely comfortable. Not just in this home, I realize, but also in her skin. Being Corinne Troy is not a performance to Corinne Troy.
“Okay, okay: no platitudes. I hate getting those myself,” she says. “Real advice, though? Stop trying to imagine what the other person wants to hear; that’s actively dumb. Plus, they’re likely to be Canadians. Their brains are harder to read what with all the politeness protocols happening up here.”
That’s what I had done with Donielle Kempf, wasn’t it? Maybe this time it might serve me to be a little more like Corinne Troy: speak first, think later, and live with the consequences. There’s a certain courage in that.
“So,” I say.
“So,” she repeats, raising her eyebrows, almost defiantly, but does not move otherwise.
“Hussy?!”
She chuckles lightly, balancing on her knees like a toddler.
“I knew that got into your head.”
“Is that really how you see me?” I try to sound casual about it, but I can’t say the word hasn’t been bugging me since I heard it.
She throws me a look as though she’s considering all the bullet points associated with the term and assessing whether or not I meet them. Hus·sy / 'hə·sē / Impudent, immoral, loose person.
“No,” she eventually admits. “For one thing, it’s a very gendered term. ‘Tart’ is more gender-neutral, maybe? But not by much.”
“Corinne . . .”
“You’d be more of a player or womanizer or a philanderer or a roué, even. How come all the guy terms for ‘hussy’ sound so distinguished? That’s some patriarchal bull right there.”
“Corinne!” I repeat, though I can feel a smile creeping on my lips, matching hers.
“Okay, okay, I’m kidding! Find your chill, Haltiwanger.”
“I’ll squeeze that into my calendar of hussy appointments.”
“You’re not a hussy. You’re . . . aware of your charms, yes, but I don’t think you’re immoral, and you mean well. As far as I can tell.”
I catch a glimpse of myself in Corinne’s eyes and suddenly feel stuck in place, realizing how physically close we are right now—physically close and on something that by definition amounts to a bed. Whatever I was going to say next dies in a choke halfway out my throat. I’m torn between wanting to duck away from this sudden makeshift intimacy and also lean into it all at once and to hell with all the second-guessing. And unless I’m completely insane, Corinne might be leaning forward too, eyes darting back and forth across my face like she’s also looking for a clue that she’s misreading this. Maybe neither of us are, and this is where all those weird feelings and false starts were always meant to land. In Canada, on Aunt Terry’s couch.
“Master of the house, doling out the charm.”
We both startle back at the booming male voice that suddenly overfills the room, and I knock my head into the wall, leaping away from Corinne as she lets out a curse under her breath.
“Ready with a handshake and an open palm. . . .”
“What the hell is that?” I say, looking around for this singing, gravelly male voice that sounds like it’s coming from the very walls of the room.
“Les Misérables, original London cast recording.” Corinne sighs knowingly, falling back into the couch and staring blankly at the low ceiling.
“Definitely not some Barry White, huh?” I say, forcing a laugh, heart still in my throat.
“Terry loves a good musical. I guess she finally installed the digital sound system my mom got her for Christmas. I can’t believe I was the one who suggested it.”
“It was a wonderful gift, baby girl!” Terry’s voice shouts from her room, a few doors down.
I rub a frustrated hand across my face, realizing that there’s probably not an inch of this deceptively teched-out apartment that Aunt Terry can’t see from her phone. As if on cue, the volume goes up under us.
“Food beyond compare, Food beyond belief, Mix it in a mincer and pretend it’s beef.”
“Okay, I’m going to my room now, Auntie!” Corinne shouts into the air because there is really no recovering the mood once entrails get in the mix in surround sound.
“Sounds like a fine plan, babe,” Terry answers back, decidedly pleased with herself.
“Kidney of a horse, liver of a cat, Filling up the sausages with this and that.”
“It’s getting late, anyway,” Corinne says, now on her feet with half a room between us.
“Look, Corinne, I’m sorry if that wasn’t—”
“G’night, Henri!”
And just like that, she is already out of the room, which is back to an eerie silence. I fall flat onto the pillow and can’t help but let out a weary laugh. At what, I’m not sure. The weight of North American travels, maybe; of being in Cana-freaking-da, in this strange doppelganger’s home, with Corinne a door away; of having a McGill interview on the docket in less than eleven hours. Or maybe it’s just not knowing which of these facts is currently making me the most nervous.
Nineteen
McGill University is a relatively small campus up on a hill in downtown Montreal, not too far from yesterday’s train station. Aunt Terry drops me off at the bottom gates, since she doesn’t have a pass to drive onto the campus. The new Design School building is located up Rue University, at the corner of Pine Avenue West, an appropriately bilingual corner of the map. It’s a bit of a walk, which makes the fact that I’m early a good thing. The last I saw of Corinne this morning, she was a very still bundle of covers through the crack of her door. Not that I was trying to catch a glimpse of her before leaving for good luck or anything.
“Babe, I have to cover the morning shift at the bakery,” Terry says, checking her watch. “But Corinne knows her way around town, so I’ll make sure to tell her where to meet you, okay?”
“Thanks for everything, Terry. I really appreciate it.”
“Your parents raised you right. So polite! And so handsome in that suit!” she squeals. “Dazzle ’em, you hear?” she orders as she pulls away.
Dazzle. Right.
Everything about McGill’s campus feels aged to just the right age, like the architectural equivalent of expensive wine. Unlike FATE, which sometimes feels like some Manhattan spaceship, most of the buildings are bricked, coated in frosted snow, with rusty staircases. There are just enough modern steel-and-glass constructs peppered throughout to also see why the school is the academic beacon of Montreal. The cold (because there’s no denying it—it’s a hell of a sting to the face) makes everything feel crisp and new.
