Off Limits

“Your father’s here,” the social worker says, with the same small, pitying smile she’s been giving me all afternoon. She probably thinks it makes her look sympathetic. To me it just looks tight and fake. It’s the same smile everyone’s been giving me today—professionals who are trying to look compassionate but really just doing their job. They’ve seen it all before, I guess. She ducks back through the door, leaving it open, and I turn to the cop standing beside me.

“That’s it, anyway,” I shrug. “She basically took everything with her.” 

She gives me the same smile as the social worker and tilts her head. “I’m sure you’ll be real happy to see your daddy. Thanks for your help, hon.”

I walk down the shoddy hallway, my running shoes pressing down on the too-soft, stained blue carpet, and into the living room, where the social worker is waiting for me. A large, dark figure fills the doorframe.

Jean-Luc.

It’s been a year since I saw my stepfather—a really long, fucking difficult year—and heat rushes to my face as I step towards him, tears threatening. He doesn’t look at me the way the social worker does, or the cop. His jaw is tight, his gaze level, but there’s an intensity in his eyes that tells me exactly how he’s feeling: relieved, worried, emotional.

We’ve kept in touch since he and my mom broke up. Jean-Luc has never stopped checking in on me, always concerned about how things were going with Melanie. But he didn’t know the half of it. And now he’s about to embark on a fast learning curve.

I dive in for a hug without saying anything and he wraps his huge, strong arms around me, pulling me in tight. It takes everything in me not to break down and cry. His well-made suit jacket is polished and stiff against my cheek, so unlike everything in this apartment, where even the walls seem to droop and sag. The solid plane of his chest is unimaginably reassuring. And his smell! I forgot how warm, clean, and comforting it is. I take a deep breath and let my body melt into his, enjoying the feeling of safety and security in his arms. It’s the first respite from constant anxiety that I’ve had in months.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs into my hair.

“Hey, Jean-Luc.” I don’t care that the social worker is standing there watching us. I can’t bring myself to let go. 

Jean-Luc chuckles, his whole body vibrating against the length of mine. “You used to call me Dad,” he says affectionately.

I just sigh, and wrap my arms around him tighter. 

It’s true, I did used to call him Dad. Melanie had insisted on it—until they broke up, and then suddenly it had to be Jean-Luc. I had so much trouble calling him by his name at first that I’m surprised to realize now that I finally broke the habit. Surprised, and disappointed. Jean-Luc is my father in nearly every imaginable way. It feels like a betrayal that I stopped calling him that.

We break apart and he shakes the social worker’s hand and signs a release form. I can tell by the way she looks at him that she’s flustered by his appearance—maybe the height and breadth of him, or the cleft in his chin; I know women go crazy for the cleft. She’s wide-eyed and breathless as she repeats what she told him on the phone, blinking her eyes as she tries to stay focused: My teacher came to the apartment because I hadn’t been to school in several weeks, and then called Family Services; I have no idea where my mother is; Jean-Luc will have to take me home to his house; she’ll come by to check in tomorrow. 

He nods gravely through the whole thing, his jaw tight and his face serious. He doesn’t seem to notice the way she swallows when she says she’ll come by the house, or the way she keeps tucking her hair behind her ear. Then the cop comes out of my mom’s bedroom and gives him her card, asking him to call if he hears anything, and promising to be in touch. When they both leave, Jean-Luc takes my bony shoulders in his large hands and looks down at me with a furrowed brow.

“You okay, kid?” he asks.

Sure. I’m fine. My mom ran off five weeks ago and the electricity just got shut off. Couldn’t be better.

I nod and say nothing, and then he follows me to my room so I can pack a bag. I’m keenly aware of what this apartment must look like to him, as we enter the dingy bedroom beside the kitchen. I see it through his eyes. The scuffed pink walls, the closet door hanging on its hinges, the worn-out single bed. He doesn’t say anything but I see his eyes scanning, taking it all in. It’s such a shithole here. Not at all the kind of accommodation Jean-Luc Rochat is accustomed to.

He leans against the door frame as I grab handfuls of my clothing from the warped, secondhand dresser and shove them into my old hockey bag. 

“Why are you living here?” he asks in his deep voice with just the faintest trace of his French accent. I shove the last of my clothing into the bag and zip it up.

It’s the question I wish I could avoid answering, the reason I didn’t call him when I began to wonder how long I could make the canned food last. I was ashamed to have him find out that we were here, ashamed of my mother’s behaviour, her tricks. I reach for the stuffed, white bunny on my bed, Bunners, and Jean-Luc smiles softly. He gave Bunners to me when he first started dating my mom, and I’ve been sleeping with it ever since. 

“Melanie rented out the house,” I admit. 

“What?” He frowns. “What do you mean she rented it?”

“She rented it,” I repeat, and try to lift the bag off the floor. It’s too heavy for me and I drop it with a thud. “Can we…can we talk about this later?”

He blinks his eyes, drawing himself back to the matter at hand, and pushes himself off the wall. “Of course, honey.” He reaches down and grabs the handles of my bag, swinging it over one powerful shoulder easily. “I’m sorry. Let’s just get you home.”

*   *   * 

Home.

I’ve never been to Jean-Luc’s new house, the one he bought after he and my mom broke up, because Melanie didn’t want us to stay in touch. ‘Just leave him in the past where he belongs!’ she’d said flippantly, as if I could just forget about the one person who was ever really a parent to me. Jean-Luc, who’d been my dad since I was eight years old.

The old house, the one he’d left to me and Melanie after the break-up, and which she’d rented out, was a beautiful three-storey house with a pool. This new house, further away from Vancouver’s city centre in its most expensive neighbourhood, is even more stunning. Sleek, modern, and imposing, it’s exactly the right style for my Swiss architect stepfather, with his expensive taste and exacting attention to detail. My running shoes squeak on the reflective, polished black floor as I follow him through the massive double front door, down the entry hallway, and into the cavernous, open space of the main area, still clutching Bunners in my hand as if I were eight years old. The far wall in front of us is entirely glass, spanning the full height of the house, and looking out over a ravine of tall pine trees. Bright, natural light dapples the austere, modern furniture and futuristic-looking kitchen. It’s gorgeously appointed, impeccably designed, and perfectly Jean-Luc.

Jean-Luc has always had money. No doubt that’s what drew Melanie to him in the first place, as much as his stunning good looks. Tall and powerful-looking, with thick, wavy hair, dark brown eyes, and that cleft right in the centre of his chin, I know that my mom was proud to be on his arm at one point. Looking at him now, I still can’t imagine why she ever wanted to be with those other men. At forty years old, Jean-Luc is exceptionally handsome, even to my seventeen year old eyes. 

Women were always wild for him, I think, remembering the social worker today, and for one bizarre, fucked-up second, my mind briefly imagines him in a naked embrace—what he would look like gazing deep into a woman’s eyes. How much softer, how intense, his gaze would be. How powerful his shoulders and arms would look. 

Shame sears through me, and I look down at the polished floor, chasing away the thought. What’s wrong with me?

“I’ll show you to your room,” says Jean-Luc, still effortlessly carrying my bag over his shoulder, and I follow him up a circular metal staircase leading to a second floor mezzanine that overlooks the living room and the view through the windows. There’s nothing to see but the tops of huge, ancient pine trees, and beyond them, the ocean. Three large wooden doors face the bannister, and at the far end, there’s an open area with a desk. Jean-Luc indicates each in turn. “Guest room, your room, my room, office.” I love that he’s already calling it my room.

The doors are all at least eight feet high, and he swings the second one open and waves me into an airy, industrial-looking room, nearly the size of the entire apartment I’ve been living in with Melanie. It has polished cement floors and a skylight and its own small washroom with a sink and toilet. Several potted trees are gathered in one corner, soaking up the light from above. There’s a large bed dressed in white linen against the wall, and a padded reading bench under the window.

It’s an incredible room, better even than my room at the old house, and I beam with happiness as he places my hockey bag on the floor and runs a big hand affectionately over my hair. “You get settled in,” he says, his dark eyes crinkling with warmth. “And I’ll start dinner.”

When he closes the door behind me, I take a deep inhale, drawing in the peaceful energy of my stepfather’s home. It doesn’t smell anything like the apartment, with its damp, mildew smells and the constant odour of the neighbour’s cooking. It smells fresh and clean—faintly like Jean-Luc himself, and slightly like sage.

It’s the nicest place I’ve been since I last saw Jean-Luc. Since the last time I was home.

I sit down on the bed and clutch Bunners to me, lowering my nose to the rabbit’s head and inhaling its familiarity. Melanie tried hard to get me to part with the stuffed toy, even going so far as to throw it in the kitchen garbage one time. But I’d always found it and retrieved it. I refuse to give it up, no matter how juvenile it is. Bunners was the first piece of Jean-Luc I could grasp and hold on to, and even now it reminds me so comfortingly of being a child in Jean-Luc’s care. How safe he always made me feel, how he was always there for me.

There for me even now, after my mother has left both of us. Ironically, the one parent I’m not biologically related to is the one I have the deepest bond with. 

I should have called him a long time ago, I think. 

I could have been home all this time.