The smallest mercies by Paz

   ​​John Brighenti CC




The smallest mercies

    In the deepest misery of my unemployment, I made a call. It was a humid evening in September, four months into my exile from the workforce, when I remembered that I like deadlines. If I didn’t have one, I realized, about four Molsons in, this bleak period might stretch out in an unattainable desert horizon. In this analogy the Molsons are the refreshing oasis quenching my thirst, and they’re also the illusion of relief that actually got me into what we might call a fucking pickle. My roommate who sees spirits yelled that I was just like her dead alcoholic father, which I took offence to, because we belonged to the very special “dead father as a teenager” club and had bonded over our patriarchal grief, and the number one rule of the club is you don’t fucking do that. The second rule has to do with mothers, and how they’re allowed to go crazy and/or die after their husbands die (crazy in my case, dead in hers), and how as daughters we are allowed to be mad at them for it. Anyway, of course she saw spirits, and of course I drank too much. What the fuck else is there to do? She had a job, at least. Said I should start manifesting for mine. I enjoyed throwing tarot with her and listening intently about her prophetic dreams with talking gods in them, and I could put up with the occasional suicide threat call. But that night, that fateful humid September evening, we fought. I escaped to an overpriced one-bedroom. I’m good at living alone.
    In the absence of structure, with two degrees under my belt, and my genetic predisposition to alcohol peeking its head into my life, and no job, and an uncertain immigration status that demanded I get a job now, I started watching Ratatouille every day. Once a day, until I got a job. And I don’t mean, oh, I don’t have time today, or let me just play it in the background on mute. My ass was sat. There was only one day I failed to complete my quotidian mission, and so the very next day, I watched Ratatouille twice.
    There’s no official world record for most Ratatouille streams, of course, but I do believe the shameful crown might belong to me. I don’t even think the Guinness World Record books are getting printed anymore. I’d have to exclude the Pixar animation team and the producers and anyone involved with the hit 2007 film. Not enough people know about this, but it won the Oscar for best animated film that year. It really is phenomenal. The facial expressions in the background! The joke of having a literal “gym rat” in the colony! It wasn’t until day 93 that I started tiring of it. 
                                                                                                                                      *
    I drew little lines to keep count, like a prisoner in his cell. 
                                                                                                                                      *
    There are no bad rat movies. Exhibits A-Z: Flushed Away, An American Tail, the Rats of Nyhm adaptation, Stuart Little, Stuart Little 2, The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under, fucking etc. The rat represents the scum of society, without companies like Pixar or Disney having to get too political about race and class. Rats are associated with disease and disgust, and so I love them. Somebody has to! At one point, when my eating disorder was at its best and worst, when my immigration status was up in the air, when we received my mother’s dementia diagnosis during the weekend my sister visited because I was graduating college, I made plans to tattoo lines on my face. The idea was that no one would ever find me attractive without respecting the ways in which I wasn’t, that had all to do with my choices, proclivities, personality, and overall internal world. My friends kept telling me not to, so I shaved my head instead, using my roommate’s beard trimmer. He gave permission. It wasn’t scary because I had done it before. And the first time my mother wept on the floor of the hairdresser and refused to pay.
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    Why Ratatouille? I thought I’d be funny. I am ruled by my sense of humour. It gets me into situations I wouldn’t go to with or without a gun, whatever the saying is.
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    It’s the only kids movie that shows wine so much, I think. There’s glasses everywhere. Linguini’s boss even gets him drunk for information, as a plot point. And Linguini is a bastard child! Pixar got away with it by playing on French stereotypes, even though it is the Americans in my life who drink like their lives depend on it. No sophistication to it. I guess that’s less fun to watch as well.
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    Weird that there’s no sexy female rat, right? That seems like a classic. I guess Remy’s only interest had to be food, so there’s the sexy female cook instead. God, Colette. That woman is a lesbian. Which explains my obsession with her at the ripe age of 7. Not that I was self-aware until later, like 13. I’m still mad I wasn’t the first lesbian at my school. What’s worse, the first one was pretty and popular. Good at sports, obviously. Head girl, I think, but I’m bad at remembering, as we know. So I was the bald and fat lesbian. I won’t lie, I loved it. I wanted men as far away as possible. I did not want a shred of social approval. I wanted to get the fuck out of there. And those things never leave you, no matter where you go. My first crush was also a sportsy girl that I still dream about. The other day in my dream I ate her out in 4K detail. It’s weird, because at 19, in a strange trip I did to Colorado to see two of my friends during their “work and travel” program, I saw her again and in a new light. And I realized how much she wasn’t like the butch goddess I had imagined. She was painfully conventional. She was the first girl from our class to get married, and guess to whom? A boy I had made out with at 14 before I cried and said I was a lesbian. He said he would keep my secret. The next night me and my best friend went around pretending we were dating. He said what the fuck. The next night he threw crabs into a beach fire, for several hours, and in my friend group he become known as the crab-killer. I wonder if anyone told her that. I also remember apologizing to her, once, for being a bitch. It’s not like I even realized it was because I was attracted to her. I hope she forgave me, and I hope she is happy now. I’m never going to ask. I think about who I wanted her to be enough already.
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    They got the French love affair part right. You know that scene where Remy scampers around an apartment building like a voyeur to its tenants? There’s that couple yelling at each other, with a pointed gun that gets fired, and then they make out. I had a short stint working in France and I fucked my supervisor, and then I loved him, left, and crawled back, thrice. There’s a gun involved too but that’s purely sexual. Our voices are often raised. Turns out the only truth I can tell you isn’t a nice one at all. I’m once again considering leaving him, knowing this time, it’ll be for good. He’s opened doors inside me I didn’t know existed. I’ve loved him passionately and with pleasure. No one in my life likes him. I betrayed myself for love, and then for nothing. I did what I wanted, and so did everyone else. I’ve learned to accept the gray in life, and the gray is never pretty, but it sure is interesting. Can’t stop sniffing it. I often admire the gall and creativity I had when I was younger. I don’t think I would have hesitated once, with the problems I have now. Problems I chose. Problems I can’t leave alone. 
    I won’t be alone very long if I gather up the courage to leave him. I fall in love often these days. Six years ago, I told my best friend I couldn’t imagine liking someone enough to spend my day with them. And now I’m a serial dater, and a serial leaver. The first one felt like forgiveness. Until I looked at her on the coast of the Grand Canyon and couldn’t believe how low I’d fallen. World marvels and all that.
    That is all to say: not only does the rat not fall in love. He doesn’t even have rat friends.
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    My best friend has an armpit fetish. This is the fourth best friend I’ve had. He’s watched it with me. I confessed to him that at one point I got curious enough about Ratatouille fanfiction. I mean, I knew every character’s name. The waiter with the weird haircut is called Mustafa. I needed more content.
    On the Internet, there exists a 3 part story based on Ratatouille. However, in this world, there’s also mythical beasts like werewolves and vampires on the outskirts of society. Guess who’s a vampire? That’s right, food critic Anton Ego. The similarities are there, with his office shaped like a coffin and his skin being paler than blow. I forgot to mention this is a love story. Our narrator is none other than Linguini’s female twin, who can actually cook. Which makes Linguini or the rat being there fucking redundant, but whatever. So the new twin cooks for Ego and adds a drop of her blood to the dish. He goes home to furiously masturbate for the first time in centuries. It’s also a plot point that he’s built every hospital and school in Paris. I stopped reading here, at the end of part 1. I don’t know who I would become if I kept going. Whatever though, I can’t fucking judge. I bet you I’ve seen Ratatouille more times than this poor person.
                                                                                                                                       *
    Beyond the absence of sexualized female rats, there’s no female-coded rats at all. It begs the question: Who is the mother? For the rats, I mean. Between my mom and I, I’m quite aware of how roles have shifted. I buy her groceries every Monday, choosing what kind of ham she’ll have this week, and insisting on more vegetables than ice-cream. I’ve become her housewife. My older sister takes care of health stuff and finances, and my middle sister takes care of just about everything. Martyr complex. Plus, they got along the best before Mama went coo-coo bananas. And she wasn’t easy to get along with. A temper like a snake, baking in the sun, lying in waiting. Don’t get it twisted, my mother was a smart woman. She had a nose for people like no one else. She warned the second sister of a friend of hers, and it took more than 30 years, but the family’s father is now behind bars. She taught me an important lesson about respect. I swear, most of my high school years come down to the fucking carpool. Two girls with us: a popular one and her childhood-friend follower. I knew that dynamic. At 11 you can’t do much more than recognize it. We were the only kids from that neighborhood, in fact, the closest one to school. It was Mom’s week to drive us, and we were on the way back from school. I caught the girls flipping us off through the rearview mirror. Making faces, too. No idea how Mama didn’t catch it but I told her after we dropped them off. I guess because I knew they were insulting her too, not just me. Mama says nothing. We have dinner and go to bed normal-style. The next morning we make our pitstops at their houses, and when we pull up to our old building of a school, Mama locks the doors of the car. She said, to the two confused girls in the back, I won’t be picking you up this afternoon. You’ll have to find a way to contact your mothers and explain why. Goddamn! And this was before any of us had cellphones, mind you. We filed out of the car and into our classrooms like we were on an executioner’s row. They had been owned, obviously, but I was worried about how they’d retaliate. They didn’t. No one ever messed with me again. 
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    Against my will, I’ve inherited my mother’s tendency to make enemies. A likelihood of dementia. My father’s long line of alcoholics – my grandfather’s job was “gambler”. Horses. The patrimonial equation! I don’t think I can have children. I’m convinced that if I’m pregnant, I’ll have post-partum depression. I took molly once and the comedown reminded me of what it’s like to want to kill yourself. Like, genuinely. I grew up that way and my only problem was that my family members didn’t hug me. Quiet house. There are worse problems. We had money. And I don’t think I can have a child without money, because the best time of my life was when I had started taking antidepressants at 13 after the medicine cabinet incident, and I dyed my hair and wore bandanas, and we went to Italy for a month. My favorite sister, the middle one, was getting her masters in Bologna at the time. She’s no longer my favorite sister because I’ve grown up and understood that she is a real person. I also learned to love my other sister more. She left home when I was very young, and now she has a Wikipedia page. I just respected her, before, without a hint of understanding. 
    Which brings me to Emile. Strange ass character. An older brother who accepts but does not understand his sibling. Food-obsessed in a different way. His fur is a different color than that of Remy and their father. He changes his facial expressions around them both. I think of them as princes. When they return to the colony after believing Remy was dead, his father raises his paw triumphantly, hollering about his son’s return. No one must have liked Remy, but they all cheered. Emile stands beside them. Who elected their father as the leader? Was it an election? What are the political implications of this configuration, and how do they impact Remy’s access to resources? 
    Anyway, in Italy we travelled by train for a month. We spent Christmas in the Alps, skiing with Christmas hats. I remember posing for pictures and not even being mad. Of course there was the Christmas Eve incident with my mother but you know how she is.
    And what if the kid dies?
    I know of this one couple, really unfortunate. One of their daughters, a twin, exactly my age in high school, but at a different school. We had been at parties together, I was friends with her friends and such. The father backed up his car in the driveway and ran her crouched-self over. Either him or the mother killed themselves, I don’t remember. Not the twin. Which is fine, I’m just pointing it out. 
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    I tried watching it in Spanish and Mandarin, I tried cooking ratatouille while watching Ratatouille, I tried watching it in the bath, in a coffee shop, in shambles, in the morning and in the evenings, in company and by myself, interested and disengaged, always laughing at a joke no one but me gets. I made a drinking game. Rules include:               
​               Drink when Remy is a snob.
               Drink when stealing is mentioned.
               Drink when there’s sniffing.
               Drink when Chef Skinner is fucking paranoid.
               Drink when someone says “anyone can cook.”
               Drink when Gusteau’s ghost talks.
                                                                                                                                           * 
    Gusteau’s ghost makes sense. Who hasn’t had to imagine a father? My dad cried at Les Miserables, one night he was in New York for work. I made myself cry at the West End because he had so therefore so did I, given the man didn’t cry in front of anyone during two years of an extremely rare case of brain cancer. I clung to a friend of mine, who cried too. Later on her boyfriend’s father died and I was amazed they stayed together through it. I can’t imagine loving someone in the thick of grief. An ex-boyfriend of mine remarked upon this. We were lounging on my new green couch, looking at my cat prancing around. Consumed by love, I said, “he’s going to die”. He, the man, said: why are you like this. But he knew. His mother was also demented. It’s why I chose him. I also dated an Iranian man because his father died of cancer. Valuing the sameness of circumstances will only get you so far, I discovered, since no one deals with it the same way. Eg: watching Ratatouille everyday. The Iranian man, a self-described psychonaut, got scared when I showed him Jurassic Park. He was high, of course. We paused because he was scared, and I, petty, pressed play. Earlier that day we had argued about feminism. He said feminists were militating for divorces, and I guess this was my revenge.
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    Ratatouille revolves around the stereotype of rats as thieves. Remy steals gladly at the beginning of the movie and his culinary journey. It is only when he is starving and hallucinating that he develops a sort of moral code that goes against his situation. Linguini feeds him and takes him in. The next morning, Remy steals from a garden. This hypocrisy is not remarked upon. A convenient moment to forgo narration. All further instances of theft have to do with familial obligations. Remy has access to an almost infinite supply of food, and his colony hungers. It’s true that it would have been weird for him to deny them that. It’s one of those things that make you wish him and Linguini could actually talk, you know? 
                                                                                                                                          *
    Believe it or not, Ratatouille is about being a rich bisexual immigrant. 
                                                                                                                                          *
    Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a pity party. I’ve been to a new years eve party Anya Taylor Joy was at and I didn’t even know it. I’ve been to 17 countries, if I’m remembering right. I grew up riding horses. I was at the Cannes Film Festival on an internship for Variety (this is where I fucked my boss and cheated on the Iranian man). I work for one of the world’s biggest companies now. Those last two I’m proud of because believe it or not it was all me, but I’m not saying any of this in a bragging way. More like a Pontius Pilate thing. Sometimes people assume I’ve had a harsh background. Sometimes they let me know they know I haven’t. All I know is I hate people who pretend to be poor for clout. So I’ll answer anyone that I am aware that I’ve been lucky. This girl had an elevator in her house, though. Not that I envied it, but that was my best friend at 8. I went to a birthday party for a boy I didn’t even like and they were butlers walking around with sandwich trays. 
    When my father was dying and no one could drive me to school my second sister said: why don’t you take the bus? It’s so close. She meant the city bus, and I didn’t take the city bus until I was 17 and determined not to be like the way I was raised, despite the security risk I kept hearing about. It’s true that it’s an easy way to lose your cellphone if you’re not careful. I was frustrated with her, at the time. Not because no one else at my school or social sphere took the bus, but because I kept thinking, you never did at my age. And your dad wasn’t dying. Not nice, true. But true. We hired a private driver. Ruben, one of those fanatic cyclists ironically enough now driving a car, who let me play classic national rock like I was the one showing it to him. Every now and then he texts me happy new year. It seems to be the most important holiday to him. Or the least, depending how you look at it.
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    I got a job. I got chlamydia from a Russian boxer. I got nothing to say that isn’t absurd either in its hilarity or grief. Have you noticed the sous-chef, the blond one with the red cheeks, doesn’t come back to the restaurant? For some reason I thought he would. It always baffles me.
                                                                                                                                         *
    The end credits of Ratatouille are accompanied by a song called “End Creditouilles.” It’s available on Spotify.

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Paz is an Argentine writer living in Montreal. Her work has been published by Existere, Headlight Anthology, The Scripps College Journal, In Media Res, The Lamp, and Caret. She is the recipient of the Hollfelder Award and was longlisted for the Montreal Fiction Award of 2024. She likes writing with asterisks.


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