CHERRY BLOSSOMS // Revisited // Montréal // 3.3

Rocco’s cottage was about fifteen minutes north of Haliburton on Lake Mishigekekgwag. It was a two-and-a-half hour drive out of the city and they left at just before ten. They’d made love, showered together, made bacon and eggs for breakfast, sat and ate with Odie, got the car packed and got an early start. One stop along the way, Odie needing a bathroom break, whining for one. They stopped at a McDonald’s in Beaverton. Geoff was bursting, so was Nia, and she took O into the girls’ and he was out first and got himself a coffee. Nia drove the last half of the trip.

Now they were at the end of a winding rural road, nothing their GPS could help them with, turning onto a side road marked with a pole with about a dozen last names on it. Names on fancy little wooden signs, some elaborate, some hand-painted, all just a name and an arrow. Left or right. The Dragonieri name was written in black paint on a white wooden arrow that pointed left.

They followed that gravel road, looking at the cottages along their left side, all of them with a prime view down over the lake. At the end of the drive they came to three driveways bunched together, fanning out to wide pie-shaped lots. Some sort of rocky peninsula or point that jutted out onto the lake. Rocco’s was the one in the middle. Not a cottage how he’d pictured it, the simple sort of wood-sided two-bedroom cabin retreats (sometimes with the added luxury of a bunkie) that some of his friends’ parents had and that he’d visit over the summer. This was a second home in cottage country. A sprawling cedar-sided compound, three angled boxes built into the landscape at different heights with panoramic windows and vaulting peaked slate roofs. One great wide stone chimney ran the centre of the highest point.

“This is his cottage? What the fu—hey, I mean, what the hey?” he said, giving a brief glance at Odie in his periphery, thinking he got away with it.

“Yeah, it’s nice, eh?” Nia said, looking up at it like he was.

She drove down the paved dip that came to a parking area around the front entrance of the home. They caught glimpses of the bright blue lake, the choppy water with winking white sunlight. Geoff saw an inflatable bouncy castle on the water down there, half a dozen kids in swimsuits crawling over it. There was a dock that extended far into the lake, bending three different times, and a sporty-looking boat and two jet skis.

“How much does he make, Nia?”

“Bills over four million a year. I don’t know what his personal is like, really, but he takes home mid-six, year to year. Ten percent of net.”

“Half a million?”

She nodded. “A little under that. Plus, the business, you know, handles a lot of his expenses.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Those are his decisions,” she laughed. “I just keep track for him.”

Geoff got closer to the windshield, looked up at all the tall trees as Nia parked the car.

Nia said, “What do you think, Geoff? You and me one day . . .”

“Get a cottage?”

“Yeah,” she said, beaming. She looked back to Odie for support. Geoff looked back, too.

Odie spotted the bouncy castle floating out on the lake, down past the side of the house, a long rocky walkway between incredibly tall white pines. Her face went wide.

He looked back at the cottage—beautiful home, really—said, “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

“We’re responsible,” Nia said.

“Yeah, but the money . . .”

“We don’t get one like this,” she said, gesturing out the window. “Something built for three, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, looking out and up again.

“Two incomes,” Nia whispered to him. He nodded.

She pulled to the side in between two pickup trucks, one brand new GMC, MARIA 1 on the license plate. Rocco’s ridiculous jacked up truck wasn’t there. He’d probably brought the family up in Maria’s fancy truck. There were around ten cars in his lot and as they got out and stretched, he heard loud music coming up from the water and yelling voices. He hoped he knew at least someone else down there.

***

The meeting at the door was uncomfortable. Rocco wasn’t in the house, he was down at the lake with some of the guys. His wife Maria answered the door.

Geoff stood behind her and held Odele’s hand. Nia stood on the stone-paved stoop with her gift basket. Maria had a look of recognition on her face, although the two of them had never met. Kids ran around behind Maria. Boisterous young black-haired boys. She saw Dino’s wife Stacy in the house talking to another woman and eating a stick of celery.

Maria was a big girl. She was tall, taller than Nia by an inch or two, and she took up space. Not a fat woman, but large, goodly. Dark-haired like Nia and a beautiful face. She remembered her from parties back in high school. Maria had been a fucking bombshell. She drove the guys crazy. Big hips, big round butt, double Ds. A plump mouth on a very sexy face. Cock-sucking lips most girls would have killed for as long as you didn’t call them cock-sucking lips. That was when Maria was sixteen. How old was she now? Twenty-eight, twenty-nine? She’d bore Rocco four sons. She was substantial. Still beautiful in the face, still a great looking set under that tank top, but her legs had got very big, even her feet, and her arms shook and jiggled with her movements. There was a certain easy meanness to Maria’s face that unnerved Nia a little. It dissolved now with a manufactured friendliness.

“Are you Nia?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I remember you, Maria. It’s been so long . . .”

“Come on in,” Maria said, friendly enough.

In the kitchen Nia introduced Geoff and Odie, and presented Maria with a hostess gift. Following her hangover theme from the bachelorette, she went down to the bakery on Roncesvalles and she had them put together a bunch of items for a gift basket for her and Rocco and the kids. A sort of easy-morning theme. The morning-after—breakfast items for the Sunday morning in anticipation of a late night up celebrating, even though Geoff and Nia wouldn’t be staying over. Just a funny gift that might make Maria’s Sunday morning easier. Fresh bagels, assorted cream cheeses, freshly ground coffee. She already knew their boys ate a ton of Froot Loops, so she bought mini-boxes of those and a few bottles of organic milk. There were jars of local preserves—strawberry jams, blueberry, marmalade. When she got it all home and added a few more things, then wrapped it all in cellophane, she looked it over, quite satisfied. Then burst out laughing. Hands-down the whitest thing she’d ever done. Geoff rubbing off on her. This was a basket that Geoff’s mom Connie would have put together. It was the thought that counted, anyway—but she was sure Rocco would make fun of her when she went back to work on Tuesday.

Nia, that’s some mangia-cake shit.

Geoff brought some excellent beers he’d picked out—some craft brews he enjoyed, and she had picked up a few bottles of nice Italian red, too. Maybe tempering that whiteness down a fraction with some fine products from their home shores.

Maria showed off the boys that Rocco had given her. She held Peter in her arms as she walked around the kitchen. Peter was under a year old. There was a Marco, a Paolo, and the oldest, of course, a mean-looking blocky five-year-old called Rocco Junior. She met them all and suffered their capricious stares.

The kitchen was a wide open space with a high ceiling and bright A-shaped windows. Every surface was littered with bowls and food and chopped tomatoes. Pots were on the stove, the oven was on. Maria had help: Stacy wore a dirtied apron, working in the kitchen and entertaining a dining room full of younger kids, all at the table, working on crafts. Stacy didn’t say Hi.

Geoff was polite and gracious man, always making a good impression, but that coffee did its magic and he sheepishly asked Maria where he might find a bathroom, and he left her alone with these women. Odie stayed close, hugging close to her mom, not used to such a chaotic home.

Then Dino was there, coming in from the outside through open double French doors, holding a beer bottle in a coozie with a Canadian flag. He looked good in a T-shirt with no sleeves and a pair of cargo shorts. Tall, handsome, and muscular. Stacy got between them—accidentally or on purpose, she didn’t know, but it was probably for the best. Nia shuffled sideways in the kitchen, got a partition wall between them before Dino saw her and before Stacy saw Dino see her. For Stacy’s sake—she would hate to run into an ex-girlfriend of Geoff’s, especially if she’d heard wild rumors about their passion.

“Who was that?” Odie said, clinging to her as Nia made her way around the other side of the busy kitchen, weaving through kids and holding her daughter close, heading down a flight of stairs that looked like they opened on to the patio out back.

“Who, sweetie?”

“That tall man.”

“No one, baby. My boss’s brother.”