Paige looked up at the rain clouds looming overhead, faintly amused by the clichéd skyline given her current situation.
She'd been parked in the driveway of her former family home for a good five minutes and her procrastination was starting to cross over into overly circumspect territory.
Her breathing was in danger of become laboured, she could feel the twinge in her chest as the familiar roots of a panic attack started tentatively gnawing beneath her muscles.
Calm. Calm. Breathe. Think of something else. What are we having for dinner tonight?
By now, she was well versed in how to spot the warning signs, and she was determined that this moment would not fall victim to her tenuous grasp over her own nerves.
I am going to do this. I am. I am going… It's only my mother… My god, it's my mother! Shit!- No, shut-up…
Paige literally shook her head free of the whirring anxiety that was desperately trying to take hold. She consciously took note of everything she did, narrated in her head every miniscule action so as to calm her down.
Take the key out of the ignition. Open the door, Wait…Your bag, and the book, that's right… here we go up the steps, when are they going to put that hideous doorstop out of its misery?
She had a key, but somehow the formality of the situation dictated she should ring the bell.
Her mother soon appeared, evidently having just ended a phone call, the receiver still in her hand. "Hello sweetheart, you'll never guess who just called, remember Rebecca Lang, our old neighbour?"
"Er- vaguely," Paige crossed the threshold with something approaching relief at her mother's familiar pre-occupation.
Maybe I can just slip it in while she's rambling on…"Well anyway, she phoned up to tell me her son is coming back to study at Toronto U next fall. Remember Ryan? Such a nice boy…"
Paige all but rolled her eyes at this, as she trailed her mother into the kitchen.
"So," her mother paused mid-diatribe, giving her daughter an expectant look.
"Oh," Paige took this as her cue to explain her sudden visit. She'd planned her strategy the night before, meticulously examining every possible way into the conversation.
She knew she would have to make sure her mother would actually be in, given her breakneck pace of life, which meant phoning ahead of time, which also meant finding an excuse to go round.
"Here, I thought it was finally time I returned this," Paige presented the recipe book into her mother's waiting hands. The book had been her banker, her way in.
"Oh Paige, I'd nearly forgotten I owned this one, you've had it for so long," her mother replied, carefully fingering the peeling spine.
"Yeah sorry, but… never fear, I just needed a couple years to memorise it. I'm now the A to Z girl of cuisine, from avocado to… Zabaglione. What? It's a food. It's an Italian desert."
Her mother gave her one of those faint smiles that hovered between mournful resignation that her daughter's sanity had catapulted off into another dimension and the "yes dear" look usually reserved for husbands when they valiantly tried to masquerade their own lack of meaning with a certainty of tone that nobody was buying.
"Here Paige, why don't you just keep it," her mother offered, attempting to give back the weighty tome.
"What? Oh no, mum, I-I couldn't," Paige replied more emphatically then she needed to, the prospect of her gameplan being blown into smithereens in its infant stages causing unmitigated panic.
The odd behaviour was not entirely lost on her mother, who had naturally become accustomed to her daughter's ways having had to cope with them for pretty much her whole life.
"Well, would you like some tea then?"
Paige thought at the moment that she needed something a bit stronger than tea. Like maybe a double shot of espresso, or a gallon of brandy or a raging crack habit that made everything else pale into insignificance.
"Tea would be great."
"So, to what do I owe this pleasure?" her mother chirped brightly, as she set about busying herself with the milk and kettle.
Paige's heart gave a full-on nosedive as she realised the casual recipe book returning had really sunk without trace.
You're just gonna have to out with it Michalchuk…So to speak…But too late, her mother had recommenced her interminable yapping, returning to her earlier phone conversation.
Paige tuned in somewhere around… "And of course she thought maybe you'd be going there now, since you're back here. And I don't know your plans one way or the other, so I said maybe, we'd see, but I was sure you'd be more than happy to show him around. You remember Ryan, don't you darling?"
"Hmm..What? Er, kind of. He didn't go to Degrassi did he?"
"No, that's right, he went to Lubavitch, that orthodox boys school. Very impressive grades there y'know…"
Paige tried desperately to focus on a new strategy over the din of her mother's ramblings, but the incessant tirade was stretching her concentration abilities to their maximum.
Her mother set her cup down in front of her at the kitchen table, still intent on harassing her with tales of their former neighbours.
"So, shall I pass on your number?"
Like a moth to a flame, the mention of sharing the sanctity of a girl's cellphone number instantly drew Paige right back into the conversation.
"My number? What? No! I mean… Why do you want to give my number to some guy I hardly even remember from when we were kids?"
Her mother shot her another one of those maternal specialities, the wounded martyr, the humble victim.
"I just thought, as he doesn't really know anyone here anymore, and Rebecca was always a good friend to me, you might like to do, whatever it is you kids do. 'Hang out' I guess. His mother says he's grown into a very fine-looking young man y'know…
"His mother. That's objective…"
"And she also said he's siii-nngle…" her mother practically sang the word, in place of winking no doubt.
Paige mustered every facet of facial control not to roll her eyes, or snort, or laugh. Or leave.
Here was the cue, standing up and begging for acknowledgement.
"Mum, I don't need you to set me up with guys, okay?"
"Now sweetheart, I wasn't trying to…"
"I just mean- I'm not available. Not to this guy. Not to any guy."
"Oh," her mother gave her a measured look, setting her cup down in its hand-painted saucer.
The clock ticked audibly in the corner.
"I didn't know you had a boyfriend?"
"I don't."
Mrs. Michalchuk was an achiever, a go-getter, a force to be reckoned with. She had four languages under her belt by the age of sixteen. She had graduated with the highest honours from Canada's top university. She had a good career and a doting husband who she cooked for every night, regardless of what time he made it through the door.
When her eldest son had told her he was gay she had cried and wrung her hands and confronted her rabbi about where she had gone wrong. But she had never stopped loving him for one second. And after all, she still had Paige. Her perfect little girl, who would undoubtedly be her successor in every way possible.
Mrs. Michalchuk liked to play things by the book, and had struggled to be taken seriously outside the confines of the hallowed halls of Banting. In business, a businesswoman was still just a woman. And she had never managed to soar beyond the glass-ceiling to the dizzying heights she had known she was destined for.
But Mrs. Michalchuk had carried on regardless, nose to the grindstone, beavering away, dotting her i's and crossing her t's until her bones were weary and her heart said no more.
And now, here she was, approaching middle-age with the promise of her brilliant future reduced to the faintest of glows, and it all rested on her only daughter. Her only daughter who had dropped out of the country's premier university to live in a decaying student house and work in a T-shirt shop.
And now the child, her child, was telling her there would be no white wedding, no prince charming, no barbecues with grandchildren running through the sprinkler, no tearful talks through pregnancy, no mother of the bride, no…no…no…
"Mum?"
"Just… Just a moment dear…" her mother's voice sounded unearthly and her complexion had significantly paled in the space of a few seconds.
Paige grew fidgety from the pause, and just to emphasise her point she thought it best to clarify her exact position.
"I'm in love Mum. And it's a good thing, really. But, I don't see a guy… again…" she trailed off briefly, but her mother showed no further signs of reaction.
"I mean, I think that, this is it. It feels like it is. And me and Alex-"
"Alex?" at last a reaction, although given her mother's frown Paige was forced to bite her lip nervously.
"We're back together. For real this time. She's been living with me."
She watched her mother shaking her head from side to side, her mouth twitching between a mournful tremble and angry pursed lips.
"Paige, Paige," she started to mutter quietly, setting her daughter's nerves on edge. Her mother was not a mutterer. A rambler maybe, an interrogator, definitely. But this crazy-person muttering was not her.
"Mum?"
"How do you know?" she shot her a stone-cold look that bore right through her daughter's watery resistance and into her heart.
"I just do. It- it feels right."
"Yes, but you went out with this girl before, didn't you? And it didn't work out. And why was that?"
"Because I was going to Banting and she was staying here, she was trying to figure herself out."
"And that's exactly my point. You already figured yourself out. You knew. You're not a homosexual, Paige.
"Er, I'm not saying I am. And hello? Banting- big disaster? Does any of that sound like a girl who'd already figured herself out?"
"So you're saying it's my fault? Because I wanted you to go there?"
"What?! Mum, no that's not what-" Paige paused to consider her words more carefully as the conversation started to run away from her. Her mother had magnificently managed to turn from shock to anger to guilt-ridden despair in only a few exchanges. Who knew where she'd end up next.
"Maybe I did push you too hard," and here came the inevitable tears, the wounded soldier, pitying yet pitiful, "It was because you were my only daughter. I just so wanted you to live up to your…your potential," sobs, heaving, fat, wet sobs, "You were such an amazing little girl. So beautiful, so quick…"
Paige thought about reminding her mother that she was still beautiful and quick, but decided to let it go.
"I just never… this wasn't what I wanted for you, Paige. This wasn't what we worked so hard for… wasn't what you deserved."
Wasn't what you deserved, you mean, Paige thought bitterly, the frustration rising with every self-deprecating sob that exhumed itself from her mother's chest.
"Mum. I love you. Nothing has changed okay. I'm still the same daughter I was last week, last year… And I'm sorry if you feel I've let you down or… turned out a disappointment…" the tears started shamefully spilling down her own face and she rubbed her eye sockets furiously, daring them to continue.
"I'm sorry, okay, but I love Alex. And that's all there is to it. It's not meant to mean the rest of my life is going to turn out a disaster. And it doesn't mean that yours will either. I just, I just wanted to tell you… 'cos you're my mother and…" Paige audibly cursed her own leaking eyes for betraying her. The plan did not involve ceaseless apologies or pathetic crying. This talk was supposed to have been rational, confident, coming from a place of strength.
But evidently, the only thing to make her mother feel better was the fact that her daughter was clearly feeling worse. "Oh, honey…" She said upon her daughter's dissolving into tears, leaning across the table to wrap her in her arms.
And Paige didn't know why, but something told her she was better off if she kept on crying, cried every last damn tear away right there in her mother's designer kitchen.
Because she had lied before about being the same girl. She knew now that everything had changed.