The Masquerade

Twenty years ago I was living my hell, residing in the familial home, alone. Christmas was the only time where I was guaranteed extra inmates in the mess hall; siblings back from university, temporarily distracting the wardens from my behaviour. Coming home meant off-site socialising for my brothers. It meant a bags in hands, nose-up, determined march straight for the not quite memorialized, but occasionally dusted bedroom for my sister.

SLAM
[usual elapsed reemergence: 2 weeks]

My sister was the only little girl for the first 6 years of her life. According to her, life was very good until I came around.

She did slip out of her room early Christmas morning. Before our father (who art shrill among us; hallowed does he think his name is) had risen, my sister had carefully wrapped a special gift which she had previously accepted back at her Western University dorm. She placed it in foreground under our seasonal some-assembly-required synthetic tannenbaum. Saving the best for last, casting aside the socks and long underwear my mother took great care to purchase, gently tucking the rolled wad of cash our father begrudgingly whipped at us (his show of t'is the season), she ripped the packaging open and feigned a Scarlett O'Hara cotillion surprise. My o' my! I never expected this! Quelle surprise!

Approaching our father in Vanna White fashion, she allowed him to examine it and all it represented for a few fleeting seconds, eyeing him as she gingerly walked backwards to the seat she had chosen for the gift exchange portion of the day. I sat with head angled at 78˙as our father made his conclusions. Each year he painstakingly chose just the right elastic band which cinched the wads of 20's he thoughtfully threw at his individual offspring. Enlisting his usual gentle exchange from bearer to recipient, he whipped the little box and its polished solitary occupant straight at my sister's head.

23 years old. She was getting married anyway. She chose well.

At a very young age, my sister wanted to marry rich. She felt she'd suffered enough relative poverty. She'd had enough of chipped and mismatched plates. She couldn't bear clashing separates anymore. She was going to leave the embarrassment everyone else called family. She would be schooled, effectively an insurance policy against the life my mother has. As additional insurance, she was going to find a winner. If he wasn't silver spoon fed, he had to at least have the promise of providing her a lifestyle which her mind had grown accustomed to.

She hit the jackpot with Jimmy.

Near where I currently reside there is an forked intersection where if one ain't from around these parts, one might not see the stop sign. One might lurch into oncoming traffic and hit the Comrade squarely in the passenger panel of her once beloved Jeep YJ. Years ago, travelling in tandem, Jimmy and my sister behind me, this nearly happened. I stopped short, allowing the driver anti-killing space. Jimmy saw what could have potentially happened, sped past myself and the rented car occupied by said near-killing-foreigner. Jimmy cut him off, Starsky and Hutch style. Putting his car in park he got out, grabbed the vacationer by the shirt and directed a series of index finger button pushes 2" away from the poor bastard's eye.

Jimmy: Do you see that woman behind you? I care about that woman very much and you nearly killed her.
I: Burst into tears.

Jimmy also gave Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend, an aggressive "brother talk" before we were married. His questions were those fueled with concern of Ack's intentionality. I didn't have the privacy of a sealed car that time. We were all sitting on a very public patio for dinner as I was bawling into my pasta.

A few years ago my sister thought it would be a great and generous gesture to provide an all-expense paid trip to NYC for my mother, myself and herself. In our shared suite in the boutique Mark Hotel, one which cost $800/night, though my apartment is nicer (I still scratch my head over this phenomena), we girls were just getting settled in when room service rapped on the door. Jimmy had called from Toronto to have a luscious cheese plate and a bottle of the Widow Cliquot's finest sent up for us to gossip over.

Ack: Yeah, well, if I had all the money in the world I would have done that too.
The Comrade: No you wouldn't have. And you know it.

Jimmy has always epitomized greatness in husbandry.
Jimmy is a better brother than either of the two I was gifted.


I don't see my sister or Jimmy very often. I feel most guilty because I don't see their adopted girls subsequently. The girls who were found on the steps of a theatre in China. Twin girls in a cardboard box, screaming, covered in placenta with umbilical cords still attached. I think about them all the time, but I can't manage to see them very often.

I'll apologise to them as I did to my 18 year old niece.

After a series of emails which Jimmy had initiated by forwarding a professional portrait of the girls, riddled with guilt, I asked him if he'd care to join me for a drink soon. A drink for me or any of my friends either involve a home's deck or a location close-by, just in case one can't see very well by drink's end. The proximity factor allows the subsequent cab ride home to cost considerably less than one's arm, leg and first-born child combined. Jimmy, however, had already created an itinerary. Out of district. Crap.

5:30pm: Cocktails at the Royal York Hotel's Epic bar.
7:00pm: Charitable fundraiser at the Steamwhistle Brewery.
10:00pm: Late supper at Chiado.


I was early to arrive at the hotel bar. My good company was notepad and Japanese pen. I made notes on the old world bartenders who moved a hair faster than snail's pace, but with incredible grace. I love old world service. Men from once exotic places. Charming, avuncular, quick to smile displaying carved eloquent laugh lines. Stoli was going down very well at that bar. I ordered 2 triple vodka martinis before my hosts were to arrive.

I've been told that the reason women continue to have babies, even though it is the greatest pain most anyone will ever survive, is because the body cannot recall pain. It can, however, readily recall the euphoria from the resulting child.

Every time I see my sister I am earnestly happy. 5 minutes into a conversation I remember why I don't see her very often.

She wears exactly 4 different masks throughout her day. The quick change is dependent on to whom she's speaking.
Mask #1: charming, bubbly, slight airhead, innocent to the point of naïve, effusive
Mask #2: condescending, cunt-like behaviour, judges everyone
Mask #3: business, business all business; omnipotent know-it-all; Miss Manners
Mask #4: martyr, tortured mother/housewife, grave concern for her husband and children's well being; schoolmarmish prefect.

It had been too long since I'd seen her last. She usually remains mask-free in the company of her husband and myself. She was volleying between Masks #1 and #4 with the deftness of a geisha doing a provocative fan dance.

The Masked Sister: I'm going into Round 5 with a company who's wooing me.
The Comrade: Really? I didn't know you were going back to work. Is this just part-time or full?
The Masked Sister: This is really big. I'm doing this for Jimmy. Jimmy's really tired.
[I look over at Jimmy who is slowly gorging himself on pre-prepared sushi with a peaceful expression]
The Comrade: He doesn't look tired.
The Masked Sister: Well, he is.
The Comrade: Jimmy? Are you tired? Do you need some time off?
Jimmy: Nope.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Roll projection.

Popular (partially adopted) catch-phrases of my sister's:
Time is money.
Money is power.
You are useless (usually directed at her husband).
I am not having my mother's life.

She wants to go back to work because the title wife and mother don't bode well with her concept of self. She wants to again hobnob with Bay Street's elite, having her own identity, not just that of the wife. She wants to move, shake and share stories of victories won. How Martha Stewart was really guilty of insider trading. To me, the whole business of stock trade or how they define what is legal and what is not is usary, dubious and laden with unethical practice.

25 Year Old New Bay Street Hotshot: I guess you're not in this business.

The young hotshot, Bay Street's newest darling, is Adam. 6'5", Charles Atlas body, vacant expression, good looking in an Ivy League sense. Jimmy tried to introduce me to Adam exactly 5 times that night.

The Comrade: Darling, you know I'm living with a man whom I'm very happy with.

Jimmy's faculties in hearing and comprehension went to the wayside by the shrillness of the charity event's stampede theme. Bay Street Buckaroos were all donning modified 5 gallon straw Stetson knock-offs imported from Mexico. Jimmy bought 2 basketball player arm lengths of drink tickets. My sister was stone cold sober. Adam was 6'5"; drink hadn't hit his kneecaps yet. I was right properly sauced. Jimmy was completely shitfaced.

After a wagon pulling event (for charity), in which my sister lost it because her team didn't win, my sister, Jimmy, Too Tall Undrunk Adam and I cabbed to the west end for dinner at Chiado. This has been my sister's favourite restaurant for 5 years running.

Success of this restaurant is formulaic:
Old world service is coupled with younger flirtatious European front men.
Fish is good and abundant in choice.
Excellent overpriced wine list.
Clientele is made up of one or all of the following: rich, celebrity, persuasive, political.

I was briefly made to sit with Adam alone as both my sister and Jimmy had wormed their way to Ben Mulroney's table. My sister was enlisting Mask #1. Very expensive wine was poured down the gullets of the son of a bastard and his girlfriend, whom he of course met on a ski slope. Thinking about it now, there must have been an agreement drawn up for this obvious fabrication. It's a little too perfect to be real.

I am blaming the obvious ill combination of vodka, beer and very expensive red wine on the barrage of arm punches I issued out to the son of a Halliburton whore.

Jimmy: Do you two know each other?
The Comrade & On His Way to Lantern Jaw, just like his dad: Nope.

After our starters of mixed grille, I needed a repose. Jimmy came out to smoke with me, though he has no penchant for the weed.

Jimmy: You know, I hate your brothers.
The Comrade: No you don't.
Jimmy: Yes I do. I fucking hate them.
The Comrade: Why?
Jimmy: Because they never once made an effort.
The Comrade: Yeah.
Jimmy: I just want us to be a family. I would love for you to come over all the time, have some cocktails, some laughs. It'd be great. But I know you don't come because you're sick of your sister's judgment.
The Comrade: No.
Jimmy: Yes.

I can handle my sister's judgment because it's something I've dealt with for a very long time. I reason I can take it. I'm strong. Jimmy has the same reasoning for himself. But it's the directing at him that I can't abide by. And the gospel she speaks repeats out the mouths of their babes. That is the reason I cannot visit a beautiful home nestled in Rosedale. They're turning into her. And cycle repeats itself. And the snake eats its own tail.

From nowhere I received a rather long confessional. He was loveless. He was fat. My sister is beautiful. He is not. He is fat. Therefore he is ugly. And horrible.

And gay.

My world spun.

Everything I thought a man should be to a wife, Jimmy was. For 20 years of a loveless, sexless façade, replete with a dressing room full of masks, he's been living a lie. He's a hotshot on Bay Street to please his wife, his mother. Both of which are overbearing, abusive. Both of which are a constant reminder of his internal failings. I am bad. I should be punished, his constant mantra.

I, The Enabler, continued to raise a glass with Jimmy. Neither of us ate our $70/plate dinners laid before us, a something that induced my sister to hot-swap a mask that previous to our interruption was giving young Too Tall New Hotshot Adam helpful little Bay Street etiquette pointers on how to get ahead and achieve, achieve, achieve.

The Masked Sister: [in hushed tones in front of Too Tall Adam] This is disgraceful. They worked very hard on your dinners and you don't even have the decency to finish it.
I blinked at her for 20 seconds before I asked Carlos the Waiter to wrap up my monkfish.

I was rendered speechless as my brother-in-law signed an American Express credit card slip totalling $990.00. For 4 diners.

The Masked Sister: How are you getting home?
The Comrade: I'll probably take the streetcar.

I don't know what she was more appalled about: not touching my dinner or the mode of transport I'd suggested.

As she would have sat disgustedly beside her husband hurling insults and general learned home banter, I suggested to Jimmy we go to Boy's Town. The fucking Enabler strikes again. 3 doormen did not allow us passage to their clubs. Though we teetered, we found one place who would serve us. We nearly got our asses kicked because my not quite out brother-in-law had become an octopus whose tentacles solely heat sought posteriors of all denominations. And as a capper, while escorting said octopus to the washroom, a precarious journey, someone lifted Jimmy's wallet from his Armani suit jacket.

Please don't tell your sister.

As I've done a dozen times in my lifetime, I kissed a forehead and tucked another into a handsome cab home.

The next day he had no memory of leaving the restaurant. He was riddled with guilt in leaving my sister alone as we went off on an adventure.

The Comrade: She wasn't alone. She was still with Adam.
Jimmy: Oh?

I told Jimmy how much he means to me, how much I love him and how concerned I am for his well being. I know how much he must shoulder on any given day. He thanked me for my concern. But always concerned for others and never for himself he asked:

Jimmy: But did we have fun?
The Comrade: Of course, darling. We always have fun.

She said while masking her tears.