“Do you think of this as a humanitarian gesture to save a child, a charitable act to help an underdeveloped country?” she interrupted.
“Oh, we’re like any other parents; we just want a baby.”
His blue eyes landed knowingly on Giselle. She held back a smile. I shifted focus by saying that we had been together for close to ten years, that we had met in university, and that we’d always wanted children. Recounting it brought me back to Côte de la Fabrique, in Quebec. With our backs against the grey stone of the School of Architecture, smoking cigarettes, we had declared all our desires. Neither of us had really smoked, but we’d used it as an excuse to meet up between classes. We were so young. We’d had the same will to excel, and had fallen in love with each other’s ambition. As I spoke, I slipped a hand up the sleeve of my sweater, revealing my forearm. Gregory’s expression suddenly changed and his lips tightened. I quickly covered back up.
It was hard to tell whether Giselle had noticed the exchange, as she was still taking notes. I crossed my legs and let my attention pass to the window behind her. Children were coming home from school, walking loudly down the snowy sidewalk. Their woollen hats bounced with their laughter. The snow melted beneath their steps into slushy mud.
“We live right by the elementary school, which will be a big help.”
I had taken the time to think. Giselle approved with a subtle nod of her head and Gregory relaxed. She closed the first file folder, and then pushed back her plastic glasses, which had slid down her nose, and opened a second, thinner, folder. I could see rudimentary floor plans designed to be filled in.
We stood up calmly, imitating her movements.
“So you’ve seen the downstairs. Nothing to hide here, since everything is out in the open, as you can see,” Gregory joked.
We lived in a traditional Edwardian house, but we had knocked down all the walls to make it feel more spacious. From the front door, you could see straight to the back wall of the kitchen. A central island separated it from the dining room. Nothing defined the boundaries of the living room except an Acapulco chair and a hide rug.
“You have a gas stove.”
We were ready for this one.
“Yes, but look, we have the safety shield to block the knobs,” I said proudly, pulling a long piece of metal out of the drawer.
“All right.”
We led her upstairs and walked her from room to room, pointing out each of our creations.
“The shower is glass,” she said, sliding the door.
“It’s bulletproof, best you can get. Practically unbreakable. We recommend this one for families,” Gregory assured her in his professional voice.
“The baby will get to use the bathtub first,” I added.
“I’ve never seen a square bathtub before,” Giselle said, visibly impressed.
“The upstairs was divided into four bedrooms when we bought the house, but we combined two of them last year to get some more space in the bathroom. Emma likes to get dolled up.”
Gregory thought he was funny, and Giselle seemed to as well. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, stealing a look at herself in the mirror. I gestured for her to go first as we left the bathroom.
We had moved nearly everything out of my office to show how accommodating it was for more than one child. My drawing table sat forlornly in the big white room. Jules stood in the middle of the floor in a sunbeam. He let Giselle walk right around him without moving a whisker. She circled the room, looking at the bare floor and walls. She had taken her boots off when she arrived and was wearing thin nylon socks that revealed bright red polish on her toes.
As she walked into our bedroom, she stopped, mesmerized. Our clothes faced each other in an enormous walk-in closet that took up the entire back wall of our room.
“Emma designed it,” said Gregory. He paused. Giselle’s mouth hung open.
“Magnificent balance of wood and glass, isn’t it? We’ve reproduced this dozens of times for our clients.”
Giselle walked out of the room without taking any notes and distractedly adjusted her bangs. The upstairs tour ended in Gregory’s office.
“What’s that?” she said, pointing to the bookshelf with a distasteful look.
“Oh, uh, it’s a mould of my teeth,” said Gregory.
He’d had a mouthguard made last summer to whiten his teeth. When the dentist gave him the yellow plaster cast, we laughed about how hideous it was and Gregory decided to put it on display. His teeth were perfectly aligned, and were all the same size, even the canines. But the mould also contained the gums and ended in a flattened fleshy lump that made the teeth look especially morbid in a way that we found very funny. Giselle was not amused. She tilted her head, still contemplating the horrifying knick-knack.
“You can get a good view of the backyard from this window. Come see,” I said, guiding her there with a hand on her shoulder. “I have some lovely rose bushes on the brick wall in the summer. That one’s a cherry tree and the little one is a fig tree.”
“You manage to grow figs in the city?” she said. “How?”
I launched into a long explanation of bush pruning methods, leading her down the stairs to the first floor and to the patio doors that opened onto the garden.
“It’s too cold to go out, but as you can see we have an exceptionally large yard for Toronto. It’s more than a hundred square metres. That’s what convinced us to buy this house.”
She didn’t seem particularly impressed. She must have been from the suburbs.
“There’s also the screening room in the basement,” I said.
Giselle went down, holding onto the handrail. Jules snaked past her.
The basement was vast and empty. Gregory used a remote control to
