Ten days before Christmas, Beth told her mother that Joni Mitchell was dead. She did it out of spite because her mom wouldn’t let her go to Paula Gordon’s party on Saturday night. Years later, Beth tried to explain it all to a stranger in an airport bar, but it sounded so implausible even as it came out of her mouth. One stupid lie shouldn’t have the power to break such a fundamental bond, but that’s what had happened. Beth couldn’t remember a single nice moment after that awful December night. Whenever she’d hear a Joni Mitchell song on the car radio or in a candle shop or at the open mics a folky roommate would drag her to, she was forced to confront the sound of the woman she’d so casually killed off and how completely that had altered her life.  

But it didn’t have to be that way. Her mother had wavered just a bit when Beth first brought up the party.  

“Are Paula’s parents going to be there?” 

“I don’t know.” 

What did that matter? Beth was fifteen. She knew for a fact that Bob Chow and Laura Friesen were going. Bob hadn’t even turned fourteen yet, and Laura was a friggin’ Mennonite. Beth, who was never invited anywhere, just needed to be seen. People needed to know she was alive. She wasn’t going to drink, and she wasn’t going to ride home with anyone who did. If absolutely necessary, it was only forty minutes away by foot. “In the dark, all alone?”  

One firm shake of the head ended the discussion.

Less than an hour later, her mom got a phone call from her friend Jackie asking if they could shift book club that night. Beth could hear the high, melodic voice from across the room. “Hate to spring it on you, Kiki, but the heat is out,” Jackie said. “Todd says he can fix it, but—”  

“Sure, sure—we can do it here. But you need to bring the wine.” 

Kiki had two different kinds of acceptable cheese, but when she checked the cupboard, she found only an empty box of saltines. Could Beth go out and buy crackers? “I need to clean the place,” Kiki said, already getting out the mop. 

“I have to walk there?” 

Beth couldn’t drive, and it was almost a kilometre to the store. 

“You just told me you had no problem walking all the way from Paula’s—”

“That’s different.” 

“And I know for a fact, that you finished the box then just put it back on the shelf.” Yes, this was true. Beth had eaten an entire sleeve of saltines Monday night while watching The O.C. She should’ve tossed the box into recycling, but she hadn’t. She was an unbearable failure on every front. At the store, they played that Joni Mitchell tune about reindeer. Beth once called it a Christmas song and her mother had gotten more upset than seemed necessary. “Just because a song mentions Christmas doesn’t make it a Christmas song.” No, a song about reindeer, and carols that ended with Jingle Bells on the piano was clearly not a Christmas song, Beth thought, pushing down the sidewalk against a brutal wind. Then back at home, she was in on a Saturday night while her mother’s friends were allowed to run riot with cheese, wine, and Alice Munro, Beth couldn’t even watch television because the club would take up the living room. She fanned the crackers across a tray they’d gotten at the aquarium when she was seven. She’d been so enamored of the Boesemani rainbowfish that her mom had bought her this plastic keepsake with colorful sea creatures tessellated across the flat surface. Beth compressed the empty saltine box and slid it into recycling.  

Jackie showed up early. A jolly woman with untamed red hair, she asked what Beth was doing home on a Saturday night. 

“Just getting a jump on my schoolwork,” Beth said without a touch of acid.  “I wish my son had your attitude.” 

Jackie ate two crackers without any cheese and swayed to Big Yellow Taxi.  “What kind of music do you listen to?” she asked Beth. 

“I don’t know. Just regular music, I guess.” 

“Ah yes, regular music. My son thinks regular music is some guy yelling that he’s going to stomp on your head.” 

“I guess I don’t listen to that kind of music.” 

Kiki came back into the living room. 

“Well, she hates Joni Mitchell.” She nodded to the CD player. “I can tell you that much.”

Jackie shook her head sadly. 

“Oh, sweetheart. You’ll come around.” 

But it wasn’t even true. Beth once told her mother that she thought Joni Mitchell’s voice sometimes sounded a little fake, like she was going for this odd pixie thing instead of just singing like a regular person. That was a long way from hate. 

The rest of the women trickled in soon after, and Beth retreated to her bedroom, where she put on headphones and cranked Brittney Spears. But the left ear didn’t work, so she wasn’t able to blot out all the sound from the other side of the thin wall. The women spoke low and earnestly until something set them off into wild gales of laughter. They uncorked three bottles of wine while Beth worked on a history paper about the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange. She’d originally been inclined to deplore the brutality and advocate for reasoned discussion, which would’ve pleased Ms. Gregson, but now she was all aboard for the FLQ and only criticized their lack of violent imagination. 

On Monday, she heard about the party from Sarika in homeroom: who’d made out on the stairs, how hilarious and inappropriate Dimitry Rose had been, how Sarika had three rum and cokes. 

“But you know, it didn’t really affect me at all,” Sarika said. 

Walking home from school, Beth was angrier than she’d been Saturday night. It was useless and immature, but it was how she felt. When she got back, she dumped her books onto the kitchen table and casually told her mother that Joni Mitchell was dead. 

“What!” 

“I don’t know. Some of the teachers were talking about it.” 

Beth poked through the fridge with studied nonchalance, finally pulling out the peanut butter.  “I didn’t hear about this,” Kiki said.  

She immediately went to her computer, but she wasn’t a skilled researcher. She could do little more than open emails and access a few trusted websites. At the CBC homepage she scrolled up and down, stopping when she saw a picture of a long-haired woman who she must have taken for Joni Mitchell.  

Beth spread peanut butter on a slice of bread. When she glanced at her mother’s screen, she saw that the long-haired woman was a marine biologist with dire news about water quality. Kiki was having a hard time navigating back to the homepage. She clicked impatiently which sent her off the site completely.  

Beth finished her snack. 

“See you.” 

“Where are you going?” 

“Helen and I have a group project in English. I’ll be back for dinner.” 

Kiki threw a hand towards her computer. 

“Who told you this? Where was it written?” 

“I don’t know—some teachers were talking about it.” 

Kiki had finally gotten back where she started: a hockey strike, a shooting on the TTC, a year-end review of books. Beth left the house but peeked through the window at her mom, typing then leaning back in the chair with her hands up at her frustrated hairline. Finally she picked up the phone and dialed. The rumour would spread quickly, alarming the good matrons of Peel, and Beth was glad. She’d hurt her mother, drawn blood. Kiki deserved this crushing, disorienting loss. She deserved to feel it at least as long as the three hours Beth had missed at Paula’s party. 

At Helen’s, Beth tried to get her friend to work, but Helen just wanted to talk about Saturday night. 

“Larry’s brother came and he had cocaine.” 

“No, he didn’t.” 

“You weren’t there.” 

“So you did cocaine. Okay, great.” 

“I didn’t do cocaine. But it was there. So don’t tell me something isn’t true when you weren’t even—there.”

When Beth came home, her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea in front of her. No plates, nothing on the burners, no smell of chicken curry, which was what Beth was expecting for dinner. 

“Sit down,” Kiki said without turning to face her daughter.  

Beth’s first reaction was that someone must have died. Her grandmother in Regina? But soon she realized the opposite was true: someone was alive. 

“Joni Mitchell is not dead,” Kiki said.  

“No? All right. Well… good for her.” 

“Why did you say that she was? Why would you do that?” 

“I heard some teachers talking about it after school.” 

“No, you didn’t.” 

“So I’m lying? Why?” 

“Because you want to hurt me. You think it’s funny.” 

“Look, Joni Mitchell isn’t dead. That’s good news, right? You can go see her in concert or something.” 

“Are you proud of what you’ve done?”  

Kiki sat, tense but composed, with her hands encircling the steaming cup, and now Beth was furious at her mother for accusing her of doing something so sleazy and base, for being so sure of the accusation, and for making it all so dramatic. Mostly, though, she was angry because her mom was right about everything. But there was no way she could prove Beth had done this on purpose. Who could say that she hadn’t heard a rumor, misheard a conversation, or seen a poorly written headline? Wasn’t the real crime here how certain a mother was about the depravity of her own daughter? Wasn’t that much worse than a silly, little prank?

Kiki stared straight ahead, a grand inquisitor, but Beth admitted nothing. They sat facing one another for at least a minute, and then Beth almost broke. She could sob and beg forgiveness, and this would all be behind them. Finally, she put her jacket on. 

“Where are you going?” 

Beth heard Kiki stand up. In socks and a bathrobe, she stopped in the doorframe.  “Come back! Come back, right now.” 

But Beth just walked faster, out to the cluster of stores where she’d bought saltines on Saturday. Hungry now, she went into Tim’s, got two chocolate donuts, and brought them to a booth in the back. When she’d finished the first one, the head of a blonde woman appeared suddenly pressed against the window next to her. For one absurd moment, Beth saw Joni Mitchell. If this were a movie, Joni would walk in and get a green tea. Beth would tell the great artist what she’d done to her mother and how bad she felt. Joni Mitchell would be wise and sympathetic, with the ability to see the issue from more than one perspective.  

In shorts and a tee shirt, the blonde woman opened the front door and stood in the entrance until the man at the counter yelled at her to shut it. She was about Kiki’s age, high on something, but Beth didn’t know enough about drugs to say what. Later in her room, she felt a tightness in her chest and tried to think if there was anything she could do to clear her name. Maybe she could find someone who’d swear to have heard the rumor, too. Or the fantasy Joni Mitchell from Tim’s could knock on the door, leading to an emotional moment in the kitchen.  

But none of that happened. Instead, Beth sealed herself in her room every day as soon as she got home from school. There were petty squabbles at breakfast and mean-spirited digs in passing from both mother and daughter. Then there was Kiki’s disbelief that Beth would want to go to university in the States. Even after scholarships made it free, Kiki tried to prevent it. She wouldn’t help Beth get a passport or cover airfare. Beth just shrugged. At eighteen, she could do her own government paperwork, and it was easy enough to find a ride with another girl going to school in Boston.  

Beth got As and Bs and spent vacations working near the university. Then she graduated, found a job out west, married an American, settled in the far corner of the continent, and had one child. She never told Ryan specifically about the Joni Mitchell incident; she usually said things were strained between her and her mother. 

Strained.

Her husband played with the sound of it. 

It was a word for baby food, an athlete’s shoulder, not for a mother. Beth had a hard time completely believing the chummy way he had with his parents: a father endlessly amused by everything his son said, a mother who gently caressed those she loved as she walked by. She’d weave a hand through the hair of husband and son, and when the time was right, she began to do it to Beth as well.  

Three months after Lou was born, Kiki made one visit. Her smile felt faded and fake, and she kept forgetting to support the head when she held her grandson. Ryan tried valiantly to lighten the mood. He asked for stories of his wife as a child—trick-or-treating, sledding through harsh winters, riding a moose to school—but every recollection was hazy and poisoned by the fact that the end was bitterness.  

Beth knew there were nice memories: her mother doing all the voices for the Narnia books or carrying her home from pre-school on her back when a water pipe had burst and flooded the streets. Or the games they’d played on long car rides, when they’d make up the origin of every town’s name: Marysville because a very spoiled little girl demanded that everything be named after her; Mount Pleasant because all the way up the hill was muffins, soft music, and well-behaved kittens. 

The night before Kiki was to leave, Beth fed her son from a bottle and remembered taking third place in the district geography bee. That was grade nine—no, grade ten. Beth won a tiny metal globe and a 35-dollar gift certificate from Indigo. She’d been in it for the win until very late when she’d gotten lost in the Caucasus. Still, mother and daughter had celebrated with pizza in the parkette behind the firehall on the last warm day of October. Kiki put the globe on top of her slice, and Beth saw that all humanity was just flying through space, supported only by a thin layer of cheese and tomato paste. Nothing was bigger or more consequential than her mother chewing, laughing, and playing with a cheap toy.  

Beth put Lou back in his crib and decided that the next morning she’d remind her mother of that day, that casual meal, and all the other gleaming moments that had made her who she was. She’d tell her mother how great she’d been and how she’d given Beth everything she could possibly need by age fifteen. But five hours later, she woke up sore and Kiki’s ride to the airport cancelled. Everyone was just a little edgy, and Beth had to work the phones to find someone willing to make the trip last minute. When he showed, there was only enough time to throw Kiki’s luggage in the trunk and wave from the curb as the car peeled away.  

It was September when Kiki died suddenly. Beth left her men behind and went to the memorial ceremony alone. Ryan had a lot going on at work, and Lou was just settling into kindergarten; it would be unwise to pull him out even for a few days so early in the year. Over the Rocky Mountains, Beth thought of how she sometimes justified the trick she’d played on her mother by reasoning that one day, Joni Mitchell would die and her mom would be prepared for the emotions she’d sat with for two or three hours on a cold Monday evening. It was a sort of inoculation against future pain. But now Joni Mitchell had outlived her mother. The urn sat on a plastic table in a small room in the community centre, but the turnout was impressive—a few men, but mostly women, sharp and alert in their middle sixties. When she first walked in, Beth felt like everyone was staring at her in icy judgment, but Kiki’s old friend, Jackie hugged her affectionately.  

“Oh, my sweetheart.” 

People spoke of how much their friendship with Kiki had meant to them—her warmth and her humour. One woman told a story about getting thrown off the Go Train with Kiki for drinking wine out of Fanta bottles.  

“Officer, I swear it’s only mango-citrus punch,” Kiki had said. 

Everybody laughed, but Beth wondered if her mother had slid into alcoholism in her final years. At the end, Jackie announced that they would hear a song selected by Kiki while they all bowed their heads one last time. As she fumbled with the sound system, Beth got up to leave. She knew what it would be. From just outside the crowded room, Beth heard a voice that wasn’t the least bit fake or pixie-like. It was an older woman singing something she’d written as a child. Chosen deliberately to hurt Beth, the song was also the only reasonable option her mother had.  

It wouldn’t be long before she’d begin to cry uncontrollably, convulsively, but before that started, Beth remembered a perfect day at the aquarium, looking at unimaginably beautiful fish while clutching the hand of the woman who’d given her life.