by Robert Markland Smith.
Last night, I understood the meaning of life. Boing. Just like that.
This is how it happened. Our twenty-one year old daughter Isabelle had the car for the evening. She had to work at the Collège de Montréal and it was agreed she would be back with the car by 11:00 o’clock. The reason she was supposed to be back at that time was that her sister Cordelia was invited to a party on Sainte-Catherine Street and my girlfriend and I were supposed to drive her there. We had agreed with Cordelia we would leave at 11:00. So we waited. Eleven o’clock rolled around and we waited some more. I was starting to get impatient. I was fuming in fact. I was telling myself that Isabelle wasn’t getting the car all weekend. We kept phoning her and texting her and there was no answer. Finally she texted back that she had gone out for supper with her boyfriend Shayne and she would be back soon. And I am waiting and I am angry.
At long last, Isabelle shows up with the car at 11:40 p.m. She has her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s dogs in the car with her. Now we know the landlord doesn’t want dogs in our apartment, but we don’t fuss. As Cordelia is getting into the car, so we can drive her to her appointment, a few sharp words are exchanged because Cordelia borrowed Isabelle’s jacket. OK the dogs are cute. They are two Doberman puppies six weeks old that Isabelle and Shayne bought two weeks ago. But they are not allowed in our apartment.
So we leave anyway. Cordelia’s party is at La Cage aux Sports near Sherbrooke and Atwater. Those are the only directions Cordelia gives us. We drive down one street and Cordelia says we have to go back home because she forgot her I.D. and her house keys. So we try to drive back and come up Earnscliffe from Monkland and the street is blocked because a tree has fallen in yesterday’s wind storm. So Bonnie turns the car around with great difficulty on a narrow one-way street and we drive the wrong way down back to Monkland Avenue. Finally, we make it to our house. Cordelia gets out of the car, runs to the house and runs back to the car a minute later – and we take off. We are driving up The Boulevard in Westmount and keep getting red lights. I tell Bonnie, ‘‘It seems the gods are not with us…’’ I am not too happy with things. It is midnight and my daughter is going out for a drink and we don’t know where she is going.
OK, we pull down Atwater and turn left on Sainte-Catherine. We go past the AMC Forum and suddenly, like a revelation, after all this frustration, despite all odds – Cordelia screams out, ‘‘Stop the car! There are Lauren and my friends on the sidewalk!’’ They were walking towards the bar — they hadn’t gotten there yet – if we had got there at 11:30 as we planned, her friends wouldn’t have been there yet – the timing is just perfect!!
Cordelia gets out of the car, her friend James gives her a big hug, and there is Cordelia with four or five of her buddies, and everything worked out! And it occurs to me a few minutes later that maybe the whole universe is like that. We struggle, we suffer, we encounter opposition and contradiction, we create drama, — and we don’t know it, but we are right on time!