She said we could call her Georgia and gave me and Dizzy a shaky smile. Dizzy didn’t want anything to do with her either, at first, but Dad let her give Dizzy a cookie. When Dizz got lured close enough, Georgia touched Dizzy’s hair, letting her hand get lost in the red curls. Dizzy stared at her with big blue eyes and didn’t move, like she was under a spell or something.
Before she left, she’d crouched down close to me. “I’ll come back soon, I promise,” she’d whispered.
But it was a lie. She never came back. Probably never planned to. It was just a nicer way of saying goodbye.
Half my life, I waited for her. And then one day I decided, to hell with it. If she didn’t care about us, why was I caring about her? It was like a balloon in my chest popped. I don’t know why I’d hung on to a promise someone made to an eight-year-old. People lie to kids all the time.
After she left, Dad made us swear we wouldn’t tell anyone at school. That lasted about five minutes for Dizzy. But who believes a five-year-old? Her friends came running to me for the truth. Dizzy was crying, her eyes puffy, cheeks red and blotchy because the girls didn’t believe her. I could have told the truth, defended my little sister. Instead, I shook my head. “She’s lying,” I told her friends. “Deliar,” I whispered at her. Some of the kids heard me. They started calling her Deliar, too. I remember how mad I was, at Dizzy for spilling the secret and at Dad for making us keep it. But mostly at myself for protecting Georgia over Dizzy.
Over the years, I’ve tried to make sense of how I feel about Georgia. I’ve imagined conversations and written letters that I never sent. I’d like her to know that we were doing fine without her. Coming back the way she did was a pretty shitty thing to do. Just when my memory of her had faded, she showed up, only to disappear again.
I hadn’t noticed Dizzy’s song had ended. She looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I plastered a smile on my face. Thinking about the past made me morose. I’d be better off filing it away in a mental drawer and slamming it shut. Nothing was going to change, not now. Georgia had had her chance ten years ago and she’d left us on the table. Forgotten leftovers from a life she didn’t want.
- 7 -
Dizzy
“You are going to be amazing!” Maya gushed as we walked home from school. Her long, dark hair hung down the back of her coat in glossy waves. She was as excited about the idea of me opening for DJ Erika as I was. Maya pulled her coat tighter around her chin. The epitome of flea market chic, she’d found that coat at Vintage Village with me one day. With a bright-pink furry collar and cuffs, it looked to me like a slaughtered Muppet. But Maya had grabbed it off the rack, squealed “It’s Diane von Furstenberg, circa 2002!” and flounced around the store in the coat like she was Cinderella at the ball.
Lou was outside the store taping a poster announcing DJ Erika’s show to a street-light pole. It was covered in layers of posters that never got taken down, just taped over. I skimmed the other posters to see what was new and did a double take.
I stared at the poster. “Georgia Waters: Love’s Lost Tour” the poster shouted in bold letters. “Tickets On Sale Now!” There were at least ten of them on the pole. Lou had a stack of DJ Erika posters and he was methodically covering up each of Georgia’s posters.
“She’s touring?”
Lou stood back from the pole to check his work. He’d hidden all but one of Georgia’s posters. “They just added the show.”
Maya’s eyes darted between Lou and me. “What’s going on? Who’s touring?”
“Georgia Waters,” I said nonchalantly.
If I’d known Maya and I were going to become best friends, I would have told her the truth when we started hanging out. Instead, I’d lied. I’d told her my mom died in a car accident when I was little. Maya had accepted my lie and never asked again. I knew I could tell Maya the truth; she was my best friend and I trusted her, but Dad’s warnings were always in the back of my mind. I remembered what it had felt like to tell kids in kindergarten. Their taunts of “Deliar” still rang in my ears. Most of the time, I didn’t think about it. But there were times, like now, when I felt the lie hanging between us like a cobweb that needed to be swept away.
I looked at the photograph of Georgia on the poster. She had a slight smirk and her eyes looked off to the side, secret and seductive at the same time. She wore a scarlet dress, her lips painted red to match her outfit and hair. Lou put a DJ Erika poster on top of it and held the tape gun up. “Wait!” I said. “Can you take the Georgia poster off? We could put it in the store by her records.” It was a lame excuse. If Maya hadn’t been beside me, Lou would have scolded me for wanting it. Reluctantly, he peeled the tape off the pole and handed it to me. “Come on,” I said, dragging Maya inside. “We have so much homework.”
The bell on the door jangled when we walked in. I shook the ice crystals out of my hair; the dampness would make it even springier than normal. Maya followed me as I trudged upstairs and flopped down onto my bed. The poster was still in my hands and I dropped it onto my nightstand as if it were nothing more than a piece of trash. My room was small and still painted pink, even though it was kind of babyish for a girl my age. I had a single bed, a dresser, and a desk pressed against one long wall. On the other was a ratty armchair, where Maya always sat when she came over. The floor was beat-up hardwood, but Dad layered small area rugs on top of each other to cover it up and muffle my footsteps on the store’s ceiling.
“Hungry?” I asked Maya. She nodded, checking her phone.
I went to the kitchen to fix us a snack. Seeing that poster had caught me off guard. It made sense that Georgia’s tour would stop in the city, the only major centre within a two-hour radius, but I couldn’t help wondering if she had another motive for coming.
I’d seen videos of her shows. She commanded a stage like no one else could. People would be willing to pay top dollar to go to the concert. She was legendary. What would it be like to watch my mother on stage? Surrounded by thousands of adoring fans and one daughter? Even if she knew I was in the audience, she wouldn’t be able to pick me out. She hadn’t seen me in ten years.
“Need help?” Maya’s voice in the doorway made me jump. I’d been staring out the kitchen window at our view: the brick wall of the neighbouring building. “You okay?”
I nodded and passed her a plate, pushing thoughts of Georgia out of my mind. I wished I hadn’t seen the poster. It would be better if I didn’t know she was coming to town, but now that the show had been announced, it would be impossible not to know about it. Everyone would be talking about it, lamenting if they hadn’t got tickets and bragging if they did.
“My mom texted me. I have to be home in an hour to babysit the twins,” Maya groaned. In the space of two years, Maya’s family had more than doubled. After living with just her mom since she was little, she now had a stepdad named Dale and twin sisters. After her mom and Dale married, Maya had moved from her old two-bedroom apartment into Dale’s townhouse a few blocks from me.
It wasn’t just her living situation that had changed. Before, when it was just Maya and her mom, there used to be mother-daughter days with pedicures and afternoons at the movies. Not anymore. Maya’s mom was too busy running after Lily and Ivy, having traded in her classy business suits for yoga pants and T-shirts with crusty stains on them. Maya spent more and more time at our place, trying to avoid the mayhem that came with twin one-year-olds.
I raised my eyebrows at her disgruntled sigh. “I don’t mind looking after them, but I hate that she just expects it, you know? She doesn’t even ask anymore, she just says, ‘Be home in an hour.’ What if I had plans?”
“Want me to come over?” I asked. Little kids weren’t really my thing, especially the diaper-changing part. Maya had told me too many horror stories. But I’d help Maya if she wanted me to.
She shook her head. “It’s okay. No point in both of us having no life.”
We went back to my room and settled in to do our homework. Maya was better at Engl
ish and I could fly through math. I liked the patterns the numbers made. They reminded me of music, the way everything fitted together. But today, my mind kept wandering back to the poster on my nightstand. Knowing Georgia was going to be touring so close to home stirred up a lot of questions. Would she come to see us? Would we go to the concert? By the time Maya had to pack up and head home, I’d barely finished anything, except producing more questions than answers.
“You’re kind of out of it,” she said, glancing at my almost empty page of loose-leaf. “Are you sure you’re okay?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Yeah,” I said automatically. I stacked her empty plate on top of mine. “Just thinking about DJing.” It was a believable lie. Lots of times I drifted off, songs spinning themselves together in my head. “You better go. Your mom won’t be happy if you’re late.”
Maya rolled her eyes and stuffed her binder into her cross-body satchel. “She’s never happy anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
With a sigh, she slung the satchel over her shoulder. “Oh, nothing.”
“What?” I pressed.
“I feel bad complaining.”
Maya’s face twisted with guilt. Because my mom wasn’t around, Maya felt guilty talking badly about hers. The weird thing was I kind of liked hearing her complain. It was like a window into the world of mother-daughter conflicts, a world I’d never been a part of. “I don’t mind,” I said.
Maya took a deep breath. “She’s always yelling at someone: me, the twins, even Dale. She goes back to work next week and she’s super stressed. I mean, part of me feels bad for her, stuck at home all day with the babies. I thought she’d be happy to go back to work.” Maya frowned. “She’s not even like the person she used to be. She just wears the same black sweats every day.”
I was about to point out that not all of us are fashion plates like Maya. I’d be happy wearing the same pair of sweats every day, too, but Maya kept talking. “I get that she’s worn out. The twins are exhausting, but she shouldn’t take it out on me. She’s the one who wanted a baby, right? She actually told me before they were born that my life wasn’t going to change.” Maya scoffed. “And about how I’d always be the most important thing in the world to her. But now that she’s going back to work, she’s going to be split in one more direction. The piece of her that’s saved for me keeps getting smaller, Dizz. Pretty soon, there’s not going to be anything left.” She paused. “She never even asked for my first semester marks. That used to be such a major thing for her, but now, it’s like she doesn’t care anymore.” Maya brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
“She does, she’s just —”
“Busy. Yeah, that’s what she’d say, too.”
I rubbed Maya’s arm. “If it makes you feel any better, Dad never asked for my marks either.”
She snorted and gave a little laugh. “He doesn’t even know we get marks.”
“True.” I nodded. I walked Maya downstairs. “Have fun with the girls,” I said as she put the Muppet coat on.
Lou was behind the cash desk. She gave him a quick wave. “I will. See you tomorrow.”
As soon as Maya was safely out of the store, I turned on Lou with laser-beam eyes. “When did you find out she was coming?”
“Whoa. You’re kind of intense.”
I kept my eyes locked on him.
“I found out yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lou shrugged. He turned back to his book, propped up on the desk. No matter how much he acted like he had cut Georgia out of his life, some part of him must have been curious about her. “Does Dad know?”
“Yeah.”
I sighed and looked out the window. “They’ll just put up more posters, you know. You’re going to have to keep covering them up.”
Lou pulled his eyes away from his book and met mine. He opened his mouth to stay something just as Dad bounded downstairs, rubbing his hands like it was Christmas morning. He moved a few chairs into a circle and went to his office, coming out a minute later with his saxophone case. All this activity meant one thing: jamming.
Rudy arrived first. He was dark skinned and had a snow-white afro, and he hugged me before he’d even taken off his jacket, heavy with the smell of cigarettes. I’d known Rudy and his bass guitar since we’d moved here. As one of the musicians who had become our family, he’d been at most of my birthday parties. “Hey, sweetheart,” Rudy said. We shuffled to the side as Barney opened the door.
During the Christmas season, Barney worked at malls as Santa Claus. With a long, greying beard that hung over his protruding stomach, he had a deep, gritty voice and could belt out a convincing “Ho ho ho!” But in his normal life, his suede jacket with the fringe under the arms and the heavy silver rings on almost every finger screamed musician, not magical gift-giver.
Barney’s grizzled voice made his greeting sound like a growl. “Wattsgoingon?”
Dad and Rudy erupted into greetings, and I jumped out of the way as they back-slapped each other. Lou made room for me behind the cash desk. Every time they got together, it was like a high school reunion, except they’d just seen each other the week before, not twenty years ago.
Big Tom, the vocalist, showed up next. He’d had some troubles in his life that Dad alluded to but never went into detail about. There’d been a few years when we didn’t see him. He came around to the cash desk for a hug, and my arms barely went halfway around his back. He held up his fist so Lou could bump it. “You kids gonna stay for a while?” His voice was deep and mellow. But I knew that when he sang, a soulfulness crept in and he could hit high notes that other singers only dreamed of.
“Yeah, sure,” Lou answered, sliding his book under the counter. “It’s always good to hear a bunch of old guys trying to make music.”
That comment got a stream of ohhhhs from them and they started teasing Lou about everything from his toque to his lack of a girlfriend. He bowed his head, laughing, and admitted defeat.
Last to arrive was Donnie, my favourite of Dad’s friends. He was soft-spoken and played guitar, his case covered with stickers from around the world. He unwound a knit scarf from his neck and carefully hung it on the hook by the door, and then he turned to me and opened his arms for a hug. “How are you, beautiful?” He’d asked me that same question since I was a little girl.
The thing was, Donnie truly believed I was beautiful. I could see it when he held my face in his hands and peered at me through his glasses. Even when I’d gone through a painfully awkward stage in grade five, he’d gazed at me like I was the most precious thing in the world, wonky teeth and all. His smile belied the pain of losing his baby daughter. She’d have been about my age if she’d lived. When he looked at me or commented on how tall I was getting, I knew he was thinking about her.
Dad had known some of these guys for half their lives. They’d hung out in bars together, toured, and tried to make it as musicians. Some had regular jobs that paid the bills, like Donnie, and others made do working when they could in construction or security, like Barney. He’d snuck us into concerts more than once when tickets were too expensive. They all knew Dad had been with Georgia and we were the result, but it never came up when we were around. To them, we were Ray’s kids, and that was it.
Once they’d all settled into their chairs and taken out their instruments, Lou switched the neon sign from Open to Closed. Barney was the percussionist, so he settled into a drum beat using the set Dad kept at the back of the store beside my DJ booth. Donnie gave a signal to begin by leaning forward in his chair and strumming the first notes on his guitar. He slapped the side of the guitar to signal the beat and Barney picked up on it, using the whisk brush in one hand and quietly tapping the cymbal with the other. Rudy plucked at his guitar, wobbling his head with the wah-wah of the bass.
Dad tapped his foot and licked his lips, ready to play. With the saxophone between his knees, he took a breath of air and blew. A slow, easy stream of notes flew into the a
ir. All of them grinned appreciatively at each other. These guys were a family as much as Lou, Dad, and I were. I watched as bass lines and melodies that had been sitting dormant spilled out of them, filling the store and making Lou and I shake our heads in wonder.
Would I be DJing when I was their age? Spinning records on turntables for my friends? I turned to Lou to ask him, but he was lost in the music, a wistful smile on his face.
The jam lasted late into the night, as it always did. Dad would have pulled out bottles of Scotch for some and soda water for others. I tossed in my bed, trying to find a comfortable position. At first, I blamed it on the music below me, but, two sleepless hours later, I realized it wasn’t the jam session that was making it hard to sleep, it was the poster. I’d tucked it into my top drawer under ten pairs of rolled-up socks. I tried not to think about it, rolling over onto my side and pulling the covers over my ears.
Finally, when I heard Dad creep upstairs around two in the morning, a little unsteadily, and shut his bedroom door, I threw off the covers, turned on my bedroom light, and went to my dresser.
The drawer sticks, and I had to give it a yank to open it. My fingers landed on the shiny, stiff paper, and I pulled it out. Above the dresser was a mirror with a gold frame. Dad had found it at a garage sale. Necklaces, most of them gifts from Maya in her never-ending attempt to get me to accessorize, were draped over one side. Along the bottom, I’d tucked some of the notes Dad used to put in my lunches when I was in elementary school. The edges of the paper had curled and the ink had faded, but I could still make out the words: “Rock on!” and “Space control to Master Tom,” a reference to a song by David Bowie. Sometimes the notes just said, “I love you.” I’d saved those ones, too.
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