“A mother always knows when something isn’t right with her son,” was Mrs. News of Freddy finally arrived, and it was horrifying: he had killed himself, throwing himself into the sea from a cruise ship. She concealed the mounting signs that John was not a “normal” boy, even buying him a coveted doll if he promised to keep it a secret from Charlie. Meanwhile, she was growing increasingly alarmed about John’s preference for dolls and kitchen sets. Though she did love Charlie, Joyce often caught herself thinking about Freddy, buying Hollywood gossip magazines in hopes of catching a glimpse of his face. They married with little fanfare and she bore one son, John. Years later, after Freddy had left Balsden for an acting career in New York, Joyce married Charlie, a kind and reserved man who could hardly be less like Freddy. When Freddy led the homecoming parade down the main street, his expertly twirled baton and outrageous white suit gleaming in the sun, Joyce fell head over heels in unrequited love. Though troubled by the whispered assertions of her sister and friends that he was “fruity,” Joyce adored Freddy for all that was un-Balsden in his flamboyant ways.

As a girl, she’d allowed herself to imagine a future of adventure in the arms of her friend Freddy Pender, whose chin bore a Kirk Douglas cleft and who danced the cha-cha divinely. This is not at all how Joyce expected her life to turn out. Today, she occupies a bed in what she knows will be her final home, a shared room at Chestnut Park Nursing Home where she contemplates the bland streetscape through her window and tries not to be too gruff with the nurses. “There isn’t anything on earth you can’t find in your own backyard,” her mother used to say, and Joyce has structured her life accordingly. Joyce Sparks has lived the whole of her 86 years in the small community of Balsden, Ontario.

I almost believed in a version of myself that had long since faded away. I was out of my element amidst my kitchen cupboards and self-hemmed curtains. In spite of its garishness, I was surprised by how I felt: glamourous, special. I wore that necklace throughout the rest of the day.

He called me Elizabeth Taylor and I laughed and laughed.

Is this what my boy thought of me? I wondered as he fastened it around my neck. “It’s beautiful,” I said, even though it wasn’t my style.

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