I grabbed my schoolbag and headed for the exit. As I was pushing through the doors, someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned.
“Hey. Are you avoiding me?” Tiffany demanded.
“No. I’m just in a bit of a hurry. I have a job today.”
“Oh, okay.” She pushed her lower lip out sulkily. “It’s just that we’ve barely talked since you got back. And I’ve got some news.” She smiled slyly at me, and I knew her news could only be one thing. Tiffany had been dying to lose her virginity ever since I’d met her a few years ago.
“You—really? Wow, that’s . . . I mean, how was it?”
She glanced around and lowered her voice. “Totally amazing. Derek Stevens. He’s so hot.”
I smiled, uncertain what to say. I hadn’t taken that step yet, and I wasn’t in much of a rush to. Though I wouldn’t have admitted it, the whole idea of sex made me squeamish. It seemed impossible to even think about it without seeing my mother entangled with some lover, and if that wasn’t a turn-off, I didn’t know what was.
“Well. I better get going, I have to catch the bus,” I said, and walked quickly away. When I turned back once to wave at her, she was staring at me as if I’d just ruined her birthday party.
When I got home from school, Mom was sitting at the dining table with a long-haired couple in their forties. The man grinned and stood up when he saw me.
“My word, you’ve gotten big. And so pretty too.”
“Thanks.” I glanced at Mom uncertainly, then back to him. “Do I know you?”
“Collin spent a summer with us on the Kootenay Plains,” Mom explained, and my smile faded.
I hated it when people from my past came barging into my present, wanting to reminisce about the wilderness days. I gave him a quick nod and turned toward the kitchen.
As I started making myself a sandwich, I could feel the man’s eyes on me. I did vaguely remember him, and I was pretty sure he had been nice to me. So why couldn’t I be nice back? Because he probably remembered things about me that I didn’t even know myself. Because it was highly possible he’d had sex with Mom while I was in bed beside them. And because being nice to him was the equivalent of being on good terms with my past, when I didn’t even want to admit where I’d come from.
I took my sandwich to my room and started doing homework, thankful to have a closed door between me and the world. My bedroom walls were a monument to the models I idolized, the only trace of my past being Suzie Doll placed high up on my bookshelf. I sat down on my bed and opened my books. My high school had the Pace Program, which meant I could choose how quickly or slowly I wanted to complete my classes, and my goal was to finish school a year early. Not that anyone but me cared if I graduated, least of all Mom—which was exactly why I intended to do so.
I was deep into my chemistry textbook when I dropped my pencil on the floor. As I leaned off the bed to pick it up, I noticed a bottle of Love’s Baby Soft perfume under my bookshelf. I crossed the room and picked it up. When Tiffany and I were into shoplifting together a few years before, this had been one of her favourite targets. As I slipped it into my schoolbag, I caught a glimpse of Suzie Doll, the only remnant of my childhood that I kept visible, sitting on the shelf. I gave her a little smile. Just one more year, I thought. One more year and we’ll be out of here. We can do it.
“Turn right at the stop sign,” said the driving tester beside me. “At the top of the hill, you’re going to do your parallel park.”
“Sure thing,” I replied, as the car rattled loudly beneath us. Mom’s Chevy Nova was an embarrassing heap of crap, but I didn’t even care, because my driver’s test was almost over, and my licence seemed so close I could already imagine my smiling photo on it. Just in time too. I was due to go to Los Angeles for a modelling job in a week, and I’d need a car to get around. Since I was only sixteen and too young to rent a vehicle, my agent George was going to lend me one of his. It was all set up.
I drove to the top of the hill, signalled and began backing up. Luckily I was confident enough in my parallel parking skills not to worry about messing up.
Just then, I heard a loud crunch, and the steering wheel went loose in my hands. I hit the brake. “What the—?” A cloud of smoke rose from under the hood.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I cannot freaking believe this.”
I popped the hood and got out of the car, goose bumps rising on my arms in the chilly autumn air. My driving tester stood beside me, staring down at the engine and scratching his head with his pen.
“Looks like your mom’s engine blew. I can call for a ride back to the branch, but you’re going to have to get a tow truck for the car.”
I covered my face with my hands and leaned against the bumper. What the hell was I going to do? Los Angeles was practically impossible to get around without a vehicle, and I certainly couldn’t afford to take cabs everywhere. And there was no way I could cancel the job, which was paying me more than I could make in six months modelling locally. I thought about showing up at the airport and telling George he’d have to chauffeur me around for a week. George, who had plucked me from my tiny local agency and sent me off to New York, who’d made sure I made it to the finals for a modelling competition the year before, who’d put me up in his house in L.A. and never made any moves on me, who’d always sung my praises to my bookers. It was bad enough that I was still trying to get over the last time I’d seen him in Calgary. He’d asked me out for dinner, and, to my dismay, insisted I bring my mother. I gritted my teeth as she ordered the most expensive meal on the menu, ate it like she’d been raised in a barn, got drunk on Kahlúa and then, just to top off one of my worst evenings ever, proceeded to put the moves on George. She hadn’t even had the decency to be discreet about it, instead running her tongue around the rim of her glass while gazing into his eyes, like some sort of porn star. I wanted to die, but George smiled at her politely and patted my hand like it was no big deal.
“I seriously can’t believe this,” I said to the driving tester. “I—I have to go to L.A. next week. I need to be able to drive . . .” I stopped myself, thinking how ridiculous I must sound to this middle-aged man. Like not being able to drive around sunny Los Angeles was such a huge problem for some spoiled little teenager. But to my surprise, he looked at me with interest.
“L.A., huh? Holiday?”
“No. Work,” I said quietly.
His forehead crinkled. “At your age?”
“Yeah. I still go to school and everything,” I added quickly, not wanting him to think I was a dropout. “I just . . . work too.”
“Huh. You an actress or something?”
I shook my head, pasting on a smile I didn’t feel. The judgment of my schoolmates was one thing, but that of strangers was even worse. I hated telling anyone I was a model: the word was so heavy with connotation. Just saying “I’m a model” felt like the equivalent of saying “I’m so beautiful,” because that’s how others perceived it. I’d even had people react by saying, “Well, la-de-da,” as if I were bragging simply by stating my profession. The reality was completely different. Modelling to me equalled hard work, sacrifice and perseverance. I definitely wasn’t about to explain all that to the stranger standing beside me, but then I noticed the sympathetic look on his face.
“I work as a model,” I said, taking a chance. “And I just really need to be able to drive. Would I . . . if I can borrow a car from someone, would I be able to come back and finish the test in a day or two?”
He gave me a small smile and then looked down at his clipboard. “You were only one point away from passing. If you had completed that parallel park and gotten us back to the branch safely, you would have had it. So . . .” He took his pen out and placed a check mark in a box. “I’m just going to assume you would have nailed it. Now, we better get walking. We need to find ourselves a pay phone.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god, thank you so much!” I babbled. I wanted to hug him, but I stopped myself. “You have no idea how much this means to
me.”
He grinned. “You’re obviously a very determined young lady.”
I realized that this man had put the pieces of the puzzle together for himself. Very likely he’d observed my mother’s junker car and my ambition, understood that I was a girl in desperate need of escape and handed me a gift.
The day after my driver’s test, I found Tiffany beside her locker at school.
“Hey. Guess what?” I said excitedly. She looked at me with a devilish smile. “Not that,” I continued quickly. “I got my driver’s licence!”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “Good for you. I still haven’t gone for my learner’s yet.”
I nodded, wondering if it seemed strange to her that she was having sex before she even knew how to drive. This seemed to me like a corruption of the natural order of progression to adulthood.
“Here,” I said, holding out the perfume bottle. “You must have left this at my house.”
She stared at it, her eyes widening into pretty green circles. “Thank you,” she squeaked.
I cocked my head at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Just, um . . . you’re cool with it, right?”
“Cool with what?”
“Just that . . . well, your mom said it was okay and everything, so I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“Mind? What are you talking about?”
She brought her hand to her mouth in sudden realization. “You don’t know.”
“Of course I don’t!” I replied impatiently. “What are you talking about?”
A few students turned to look at us as they passed, so Tiffany leaned in close to me. “Me and Derek. We needed a place to do it. You were away, and I know how your mom is, like, super cool about sex and stuff, so . . . well, I kind of asked her if we could borrow your bedroom—”
“You what?”
My mother was a never-ending source of embarrassment. She smoked pot in front of my friends, talked about sex like it was the weather and held her boobs with her hands when she ran for the bus because she refused to wear a bra. Her table manners were so atrocious that I didn’t dare have a friend over around mealtimes. But this was different, and wrong on so many levels.
“I—I know it sounds kind of lame now, but it didn’t seem that way at the time. And your mom said no problem. She was going out that night anyway, and—It’s not like we used your bed or anything. I do have class, you know. We brought a sleeping bag.”
“A sleeping bag?” I stared at her.
“Yeah. I mean, no big deal, right? We cleaned up and everything—”
I held up a hand. “Listen. Just . . . don’t worry about it, okay? It’s fine.” I forced a smile, turned and hurried away.
Damn it, why do I always have to smile? I thought. Why do I always have to pretend everything’s okay when it’s not? Why do I always forgive before I’m ready?
Except, of course, when it came to my mother.
“Mom!” I burst through the front door, ready to unleash.
The house was quiet. I did a quick check of the rooms and then stood in the middle of the kitchen, seething. Where she might be was anyone’s guess. My mother and I were like fruit suspended in Jell-O, sharing the same world but never connecting. Out with her new boyfriend was the best probability. Though she and Sam had finally broken up a year or so ago, she’d quickly taken up with another prize—this one being unemployed, substance-addicted and emotionally remote. I heard the front door open and jumped slightly.
“Hey,” our current roommate said, passing through the kitchen.
“Hey.” I watched her disappear into the bathroom. We had so many roommates passing through our home to help us make rent that I could barely keep their names straight.
I went to my bedroom and shut the door. I had to do something, or I would explode. I grabbed my notepad and pen. Michelle, I began, feeling empowered by the use of her first name. I hate you right now. Really fucking hate you . . .
I finished the letter and wrote my name at the bottom, and then I placed it up on my bookshelf. Tomorrow I would put it somewhere she’d find it and then spend the day with a friend—let her wonder where I was for a change. I lay down in bed and stared at my collage. Tonight, one year seemed longer than forever.
The next morning, I got up and went into the kitchen in search of breakfast. The fridge was nearly empty. I sighed. If there wasn’t food in the house, it meant either that one of us—usually me—hadn’t done the shopping or that Mom had run out of grocery money. In this case, it was probably both.
I got dressed and stood in front of Mom’s closed bedroom door. “Going to the grocery store,” I said loudly, not expecting a reply.
“Cea?”
“No, it’s God,” I said sarcastically. I heard movement, and then her door opened.
“Hi,” she said with a weak smile. Her face was red and puffy.
I crossed my arms angrily over my chest. Mom’s new boyfriend had about as much power to make her cry on a weekly basis as Sam had. How many times did she have to allow a man to devastate her before she stopped going back for more?
“What’s up?” I asked harshly.
“Oh, you know.” She flapped her hands. “Anyway, I wanted to, you know . . . say sorry for not being around more. I’m . . . I’m going to try to do better. I want to be here for you. Okay?”
“Yeah. Sure,” I said with a smirk.
“When are you going to L.A.? I was thinking I could give you a ride to the airport.”
“That would mean your car would have to be fixed. And for that, you would need money. Don’t worry about it—I’ll find a friend to take me.” I walked down the hall and left, shutting the front door hard behind me.
At the grocery store, I cruised the aisles, trying to collect my thoughts and emotions. Okay, I said to myself as I threw juice, bread and tomatoes into my basket. Okay. At least she’s trying. She knows she’s screwing up, and if she really means it this time . . . maybe it’s not such a big deal after all . . . I’m probably just being uptight . . .
I would not give my mother the letter, I decided. If nothing else, I couldn’t afford to give her a reason to try to send me away, as she and Sam had once done. Just months after I’d started modelling, the two of them had sat me down and told me that if I couldn’t accept their relationship, they would put me on a plane to live with my father. The thought horrified me—not because I didn’t think he was a far healthier parental choice than my mother, but because I had no interest in being forced on a family I barely knew. And most of all, because my new career would be over almost before it began—there was no modelling agency in the small town where my father lived, and I doubted he would allow me to go to New York and Europe by myself.
When I got home, I was putting the groceries away when Mom walked into the room behind me.
“Cea,” she said quietly, and something in her voice made me turn. “Is this for me?”
I stared. She was holding the letter I’d written. Impossible, I thought. She hardly ever went in my room. “Where—where did you get that?”
“In your bedroom. I ran out of eyeliner.”
“It’s not a good idea to share eye makeup. Modelling 101, duh.” I snatched the letter away from her, instantly regretting my last remark. It was childish and unnecessary, but sometimes I couldn’t help reminding her that while she’d never even tried to have a career, I already had one at the age of sixteen. I softened my voice. “Of course it’s not for you. There’s a girl at school I’m having issues with. Her name is Michelle too.”
“Oh. Okay, because . . .”
“Because what?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t think we were that far gone. I mean, what could upset you that much?”
I suddenly felt like I was looking through the right end of a telescope for the first time. Writing that letter had made me feel like I was in control, when really Mom was the one with the power. She still had no idea how her bad choices affected me, because she never questioned them. W
hile she lived in a protected bubble of oblivion, I dealt with the reality she’d created for both of us.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t worry about it, okay? It wasn’t for you.” I gave her shoulder an awkward little pat.
And then, of course, I smiled.
Chapter 13
December 2014
Vancouver
Okay, okay!” I said to my dinner guests, glancing at my watch. “It’s almost midnight. Quick, we need to go around the table and tell our best and worst moments of 2014.”
“All right.” Fiona laughed. “You first!”
I smiled and laced my hands together in front of me, a nervous habit since my first day of kindergarten, when I’d wanted to make a good impression on the teacher. That’s what normal kids did at school, I’d noticed in books.
Across from me sat Remy, surrounded by the ten close friends who had joined us to ring in 2015. Everyone at my table tonight had come into my life through different avenues—my kids’ schools, mutual acquaintances, a high school reconnection. Knowing they would all read my book when it came out, I’d secretly fretted over their reactions—after all, I’d rarely shown them the cracks beneath my magazine-page veneer. But I needn’t have feared. If anything, my story had brought us closer, spurred interesting conversation and even inspired them, if their claims were to be believed. My life wasn’t perfect—the darkness still threatened me sometimes, but at least I could be honest about it now. I had a wonderfully supportive husband who put his arms around me when I cried and reminded me of my value. As grateful as I was for that, I could also see that all those times I’d cried by myself had taught me something important: it’s when there’s no one to comfort us that we experience growth. And because of that, my lifelong apprehension at revealing my true self was fading. The person who’d felt shut down by both her ex-husbands’ responses to her past, who had refused to share it with her closest friends for so many years, seemed almost like another woman.
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