Mistakes to Run With by Yasuko Thanh

Author:Yasuko Thanh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2019-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

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We lived in hotels until I was eighteen. I never did buy new luggage. We moved into a brand-new condo building in the Fairview Slopes neighbourhood, ten minutes from the business district over the Cambie Street Bridge. We were the first tenants. I loved having my own place, not having to pay for it at a reception desk each night. Avery hung his suits in the closet, lined his cologne bottles against his bathroom mirror, making the house a home even as he was still shuttling back and forth between the hotel rooms of my wives-in-law. I had my own bathroom, off the bedroom, and ideas about how I wanted to decorate: I’d start with an Asian motif—lacquered screens, teak chests, medicine cabinets with many drawers.

During that summer we scoured flea markets, warehouse furniture outlets, home electronics stores. Only many years later would I realize the value I’d come to place on these excursions together. Couples bought living room sets when they intended to spend their lives together. No one bought a new bed if their relationship wasn’t going to last.

We set the black leather couch diagonally against the corner of the room where it contrasted with the white walls. I put a brass magazine holder at one end of the couch and a brass planter stand holding a marble ashtray at the other. Against one wall I’d arranged a torchiere lamp, a Kenwood stereo, and a six-foot potted palm. Three square windows on the south-facing wall had small plants in each, silhouetted by sunbeams. On the spotless grey carpet was a mirrored coffee table anchored in its precise centre by a vase the colour of jade.

We began taking biannual trips to visit my family on Vancouver Island, catching a ferry to Victoria in the morning and returning that night. My parents and I hadn’t reconciled so much as declared an uneasy truce: we spoke of nothing that “mattered.” And the occasions when I chose to visit—my birthday, Christmas, cheery occasions in the first place—helped keep the mood light and upbeat. Avery would bond with my father and charm my mother, who would laugh at his jokes. Neither of them knew, of course, what truly lay between Avery and me.

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