Page 5 of Home to Christmas Island
Unfortunately, brooding in the corner of the bar was the last person I wanted to see.
Him.
He’s not in his uniform anymore, but he still looks put together—polished, even. He’s wearing an olive-green button-up shirt, so crisp that I’d bet money he ironed it right before he got here. His sleeves are rolled halfway up his forearms, which I can’t help but notice are toned toned. And his freshly trimmed hair is movie star perfect, even after he runs a hand through it, laughing at something the guy beside him says.
He swigs on what looks like a craft beer. Of course he’s a craft beer drinker. My eyes are in danger of rolling right out of my head. But before I have time to throw a glare, or a dart, his way, there is a loud, booming voice calling my name.
There’s no mistaking Uncle Albie.
Do my eyes deceive me? I start to laugh, despite knowing what’s coming: the roasting of a lifetime.
Yes, yes, Uncle Albie, get it all out now, I lean down to where he’s sitting in his wheelchair and hug him tightly. While I’ve noticed through our video calls that his salt-and-pepper hair has gotten greyer, it’s even more apparent in person. The stubble on his cheek scratches my own cheek as I pull away and I can tell he’s trying really hard not to smile at me.
He rubs both of his eyes dramatically, as if I’m some kind of illusion or fever dream—and if he so much as blinks, I’ll disappear.
You look so familiar… he starts, and I groan again.
Alba is smirking at us, looking quite pleased with herself. Since we were young, we’ve always had an uncanny ability to hold entire conversations with only our eyes. Mine are currently saying, You’re dead meat, while hers are replying, You deserve it for being gone so long, asshole. I know Alba’s right, and the weight of regret starts to feel an awful lot like a lump in my throat.
I once had a niece who looked like you, Uncle Albie goes on, breaking me from my mental conversation with Alba. But she abandoned me. He shrugs, trying to act like he’s hurt, but I can tell by the corner of his mouth pulling up that he’s delighted to see me.
I missed you too Uncle Albie, I say, laughing and leaning down to hug him again. I’m determined not to get caught up in the past and want to enjoy this time with him. Now, what are you drinking?
He is, of course, drinking a double rum and coke. I order him another, and another cranberry Moscow Mule for myself, delighted to see the drink listed up on the specials board.
The smell in here is so nostalgic I feel like I’m time travelling through the decades. Alba and I at fourteen years old, sipping her dad’s drink while he was in the bathroom, giggling like idiots and refilling his glass with our own regular cokes so he wouldn’t notice. Dancing like our lives depended on it at nineteen, the legal drinking age in Canada, and crashing into that stupid wooden beam in the middle of the dance floor. Posing in front of the bathroom mirror for selfies and swearing we’d grow old together, hiccupping through our teenage mantra: Best [hic] cousins [hic] forever. We wrote BCF on our school binders, carved it into one of the trees by the lake house and even scribbled it on the bathroom stall here at the pub. I make a mental note to check if it’s still there.
I scan the room and see that Alba and Rose are now at the bar, cuddled up together and gazing—literally gazing—into each other’s eyes. Alba must feel me staring at her, because she turns slyly and winks at me, her eyes only straying from Rose’s for a second. The whole thing would make me gag if I didn’t love her as much as I do. I feel a pang of something like jealousy seeing them so happy together, but it doesn’t last long as my uncle pulls me again from my thoughts.
So, how’s life on the boat? Uncle Albie asks and I turn back to him, trying to think of an answer that isn’t a complete lie.
When my mother died, I fled. I was about to graduate from the Culinary Institute of America. It had been two years of literal bliss where I was living in New York and baking all the time. I had been weighing up offers from bakeries across Canada and the U.S., secretly plotting to open my own bakery instead, when everything changed in a day. It was my uncle who called me to tell me my mother had died.
After the funeral, I decided it was time to see the world—and get as far away from Christmas Island as possible. I got a job working as a baker on a cruise ship. Alba came with me, starting in the on-board gift shop and working her way up through the ranks. It was great. Well, for the first few years anyway.
It’s good, I say slowly, trying my best to fake a smile with my reply. He doesn’t buy it.
Sounds terrible. He sips his drink, swirling his ice in the glass first. You should really just move home if you’re so miserable. Everyone’s happier in Cape Breton.
I don’t really know what to say to that, so I take a sip of my drink instead. But I don’t get a chance to reply, or even finish swallowing, before he’s back on me.
And what’s going on with that guy?
I nearly spit out my drink at this. I’m going to kill Alba.
That guy is my on-again, off-again boyfriend, Justin. He’s a chef with the cruise ship company I work for and while he’s extremely talented, he can be very critical. Alba cannot stand him, and I think he’s part of the reason she left the cruise-ship life for good.
There’s no guy, I tell Uncle Albie, and that’s mostly true. When the ship last docked, I told him I wouldn’t be around for at least a month—and I wanted nothing to do with him during that time. His hot and cold attitude was finally starting to wear on me.
Uncle Albie nods sagely, And when are you going to bake for me?
I smile at this, a real genuine smile. Baking is the one thing in my life that I never lost the love for when Mom died. It steadied me, calmed me, gave me purpose.
As soon as I can get my hands in a kitchen, I tell him. But the kitchen I picture is the one at the lake house: Mom at the stove, oven mitts on, grabbing something hot and delicious smelling out of the oven. I wonder what the last thing she baked was, and quickly brush the thought aside.
Well, I have a perfectly fine kitchen at my place, Alba’s got a kitchen, the bed and breakfast has a kitchen. Actually, I’m sure if you asked Keith in the back, he’d let you use their kitchen to whip me up something. He’s giving me a big goofy grin, then turning in his chair and calling Keith over from the bar.
It’s a change to see him in a wheelchair, but like everything that’s happened to him, he takes it in stride.
