Under the Dusty Moon

by Suzanne Sutherland

  “Right,” she said, “you’ve got it. Now keep on walking.”

  I paused the game, already looking for an excuse to talk about something else. Lucy’s great, but she doesn’t realize how much of a control freak she can be when she’s watching me play one of her games. “You think I should ask Shaun to hang out?” I said.

  “Who’s Shaun?” she asked, taking the end of her purple freezie out of her mouth.

  “You know, that guy from my drama class. I told you about him.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Why?”

  “I told you, he’s kind of cool. We did that project together that time. I just, I don’t know, feel like actually making something happen this summer, you know?”

  “Well, yeah,” Lucy said, biting off the tip of her freezie and chomping on the purple ice. “But why do you like him?”

  It was a fair question. Why did I like Shaun?

  Shaun with his pudgy cheeks and his shaggy red hair. He had this sheepish grin whenever he rolled in late to class with some flimsy excuse, which was almost every day, reeking of weed, with those baby-blue bloodshot eyes. Shaun, who was actually taller than me, who didn’t make me feel like a freak when I stood next to him. Who wrote made-up inspirational quotes on the board whenever our teachers were late for class. “Never stop believing in your winged dreams of tomorrow. Forever and ever, ape men.”

  What wasn’t to like?

  My real plan for that day had been to ask Shaun to go to the Island with me, but Mom’s big announcement had thrown me off my game, though I wasn’t really sure why.

  The Island seemed like an innocent enough idea, kind of nostalgic, so maybe he wouldn’t notice how terrified I was of asking him out. Which wasn’t even a thing people really did anymore, but it sounded so classic and cool. Cheesy in just the right way. The ferry dock was only a short bike ride away from our neighbourhood. I figured I could smuggle out some of Mom’s rum, maybe mix it with some orange juice and bust out my new mint-green-and-gold bikini.

  I wanted to do it really old school, go over to his house and then just happen to pass by while he was out mowing the lawn with his shirt off, like in an Archie comic or a corny teen movie. I’d casually mention that I was thinking of heading over to the Island for the afternoon, and, oh, did he want to come along? Cool, yeah, no problem. Let’s do it.

  And every step and every word would play out perfectly. We’d go to the beach, fall madly in love, and have sex in the strategically camouflaged sand dunes. The way it only ever happens in romance novels or particularly steamy fanfiction. I knew it wasn’t real life, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.

  I admit that I had some of Mom’s stories, the ones that really happened to her, buzzing in my ear while I dreamed the whole unnecessarily elaborate thing up. Like when, after hours of begging, she told me the story of the time she lost her virginity. She was fifteen, and she and her boyfriend had hitchhiked to the beach. They brought a bottle of Grampa’s homemade wine and made love (her words) in an abandoned lifeguard station nearby. Her boyfriend made a giant heart in the sand out of the blue and purple stones all around them, and they fell asleep together, just like that.

  I didn’t tell Luce about it, though. We don’t talk about guys very much. Like, at all. She hates it when I bring up stuff like that. I don’t know why, but she just never seems to want to hear about it.

  So I told her never mind, I didn’t mean it about asking Shaun out and we went back to it, me playing the game and Lucy offering encouragement that veered dangerously close to spoiler territory. Eventually she had to leave to help her parents close the store. I turned the game off and pulled out my sketchbook, trying to draw Stara’s nose right for the hundredth time. I ruined it by making the tiny bump in the bridge too big and then accidentally ripped through the paper trying to erase my mistake. I tore the evidence out of my sketchbook and made a pile of confetti with it on my bed. I stirred a finger through the pieces and then threw it all in the garbage. Was it possible I was getting worse?

  Mom came back from practice an hour after that. I heard her struggling to get her bike back up the stairs and muted the TV show I had on.

  “What’s for dinner, sweets?” Mom called as she opened the door. “I’m starving.”

  I glanced at the old clock hanging on the wall, something Mom picked up at Goodwill. It had a bird by each number and made cheesy bird calls every hour. It was just after eight. My stomach gurgled, as if on cue.

  “I thought you were cooking tonight,” I said, my eyes back on the TV.

  “Hi, I’m Micky. Have we met?” she stood in front of me, blocking my view.

  I hit pause again. “Aren’t you some huge rock star?”

  “You must be thinking of someone else,” she said, plunking herself down next to me on the couch.

  “Oh.” Unpaused. “Right. Who are you, again?”

  “No idea. So, what, then … pizza?”

  “Not pizza. Chinese?” I countered.

  “Nah, Mel and I wound up in Chinatown last night. I OD’d on dumplings and cold tea.”

  Mel, her bassist, was ten years younger than her and was always trying to drag Mom out to bars and after-hours clubs. Cold tea, I knew, was a code that some of the restaurants in Chinatown used. If you ordered cold tea after the bars had stopped serving, they’d sell you beer in a teapot. Mel had been a big fan of Dusty Moon when she was younger, but had auditioned to be in Mom’s backing band a few years ago and slayed the competition. Mostly Mom was immune to her persuasion, but sometimes she gave in.

  “Hello, TMZ?” I said, grabbing my phone.

  “I wish,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and striking an exaggerated pose.

  “You don’t.”

  “True,” she said, and stopped her voguing. “Thai?”

  “Kensington?”

  “Hungary Thai it is.”

  Two

  A s if that wasn’t where we wound up for dinner at least once a week, anyway. The restaurant was half Hungarian and half Thai food, as the name might suggest, and we practically had our own table there. Their menu was a surprisingly perfect combination for Mom and me, since we almost never craved the same foods at the same time.

  Mom quickly got changed and I tossed my phone into my bag and we walked up to Dundas to catch the streetcar. My stomach was singing gurgly protest songs the whole way up as our flip-flops smacked against the sidewalk in unison and then out again. Mom had changed back into the same shirt — a stretched-out and faded polka-dot tank — that she’d been wearing for a couple of days, which was a bad habit she fell into anytime she was really busy or stressed out. I noticed a faded mustard stain near her left boob as we walked, but was pretty sure that she hadn’t, even if it was days-old. I used to think that she dressed this way on purpose, almost obnoxiously un-put-together, but eventually I figured out it was just that she couldn’t bring herself to care about how she looked. She overcompensates for dressing like a slob by piling on the accessories. Some days you can hear her coming from a block away because she’s wearing all of her bangles at once, but that’s only on days that she doesn’t have band practice. She doesn’t wear jewellery at all when she’s heading to practice, but the half sleeve of tattoos on her upper right arm dresses up her otherwise bland band uniform of a plain white V-neck and black jeans. She wears the exact same outfit to every practice, even in winter. Her tattoos make it look cool, though: flowers of every colour, shape, and size crowding her skin make her look like a walking garden.

  The funny thing was that even without trying, Mom could still totally make a spread in some too-cool fashion magazine. With her teeth and her hair unbrushed. Fly-away greys and all. It’s just who she is.

  When the streetcar arrived we walked through the car and grabbed a double seat toward the back. I thought I saw a girl with pink Wayfarer sunglasses and chunky bangs staring at us as we walked by.

  Sorry, I thought, nothing to see here. Just Micky Wayne and her not-so-little sidekick. M
ove along, move along.

  Eventually the streetcar made it to Denison, so I pulled the little string dinger and the driver let us off. We walked up Augusta Avenue and into the market — Kensington Market, the city’s hippie mecca. The streets were small but crammed with fruit markets, coffee shops, and second-hand clothing stores, and somehow the whole neighbourhood smelled like cinnamon. On a warm summer night the place was full of people, smiling as they passed each other on the sidewalk, or else forgetting the sidewalk altogether and walking in the middle of the road because there were so few cars driving through. The park we passed as we walked north on Augusta was full of kids that didn’t look much older than me, playing hand drums and dancing with balls of fire swinging from a chain. The first time I saw it — poi, I think it’s called — I asked Mom if she’d let me try.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she’d said. “I’ve seen you burn yourself on incense.”

  “Only twice,” I protested, but that was the end of the discussion.

  The restaurant was just north of the park, so we managed to make it there before either one of us collapsed from hunger. We nabbed our usual spot on the patio and Mom and I ordered automatically — schnitzel for me, lemongrass chicken and a glass of white wine for her — from a man who offered us a familiar smile. I was embarrassed because he was the one who’d served us the last two times we were there. Plus, you know, he was gorgeous. Like, your-kid-brother’s-camp-counsellor-gorgeous. If I had a kid brother. This dude had a sort of sporty-meets-earthy style — he had little spacers in his earlobes that looked like they were made out of bamboo. Total hippie. But, I mean, almost everyone in Kensington was a granola-muncher of some kind.

  The waiter had just left when Mom’s and my phones buzzed simultaneously. We exchanged apologetic looks, a rare truly twinned moment for us, as we flexed our lower lips outwards and shrugged our shoulders. There were a few of Mom’s expressions that were burned into my DNA. No matter where I went or who I became, I’d always have that Micky Wayne face when my phone went off at the wrong time. It was probably going to follow me to a job interview one day, and, knowing Mom’s luck with employment, would cost me the gig.

  I looked at my phone’s display: new message from SHAUN.

  What, seriously? No. Way.

  I glanced at Mom, who seemed unimpressed by her caller. Her agent, probably.

  She picked up, and I turned off the vibration alert on my phone before taking a quick breath and then opening Shaun’s text.

  “Hey, John,” Mom said, “how are you?” And then her voice kind of faded into the background.

  Who is this? the message said.

  You texted me, I tapped out on my phone’s keypad, before adding, it’s Victoria.

  Oh yeah. You gave me your number that time, he texted back almost instantaneously. It was a little freaky how quickly he fired off his messages. The time we worked on that thing.

  Yeah, I texted, drama class. I blanked. It felt like there was a hummingbird in my chest fighting for its escape. So, I cleared my throat, thankful that Shaun couldn’t tell over text, how’s it going?

  Good. Yeah. Just couldn’t remember who I put in my phone under this name.

  What name? The hummingbird coughed and sputtered and then started doing somersaults.

  You’re gonna laugh.

  No way, I texted. Tell me. Was this a thing? Him giving me a nickname when we’d barely even spoken outside of class? Did he even know what my last name was?

  No for real.

  Just tell me!

  And then, from some tiny part of my brain that wasn’t working overtime trying to process this unbelievable conversation with Shaun, I heard Mom say, “Wow. I’ve never played there before.”

  The hummingbird stopped dead.

  Big V.

  Not exactly the cute nickname I’d had in mind, but it was appropriate enough. The dead hummingbird felt like a ten-pound barbell.

  “Look,” Mom said, her voice fading back in, “can I call you tomorrow so we can figure the rest of this out? I’m out for dinner with Vic and —”

  Anyway, Shaun texted, maybe I’ll see you around or something.

  Do you want to — I watched my thumb tap out before my brain had a chance to stop it.

  “Okay, I will,” said Mom. “Bye.”

  — go to the Island sometime?

  Mom switched her phone off and put it back in her bag as I stared unblinking at my conversation with Shaun. Was this happening?

  Mom took a sip from her wineglass and looked down the street toward the park before turning back to me with her put-down-the-phone-already look just as a new message popped up on my screen.

  Yeah, Shaun texted, cool.

  Putting my phone back into my bag felt like reaching the finish line of the Tour de France. My legs were useless and rubbery, and my right hand was actually trembling.

  “Who was that?” Mom asked, grabbing at my shaking hand like she was an anxious kindergartner and not the woman who gave birth to me.

  “A guy,” I volleyed, suddenly pretending to be very interested in my glass of water. “What did John want?”

  “I asked first,” she insisted.

  “So? Your thing is actually important career-stuff. Mine is just …”

  “Just what?” she asked, her eyes nearly doubling in size.

  “Just a guy. Guy-stuff.”

  “What guy?” Mom asked, clutching at my hand.

  “You’re relentless.”

  “Thank you.” She bowed in her little plastic chair.

  “That wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Clearly.” She rolled her eyes. No one rolls their eyes. My mom is the only human on the planet who actually does it, and it is unbelievably irritating.

  I stared her down, arms crossed over my chest.

  “Tell me!” she squealed, waving her hands in front of me.

  I sighed. Audibly. A big cartoony sigh. This is not what mothers are supposed to act like. It’s ridiculous. People were staring at us. But the only way to shut her up, I knew, was to give her information. In my tiniest voice, I admitted, “His name’s Shaun.”

  “And …?”

  “And … he was in a couple of my classes last year. We did that drama project together, remember, that one-act play? He’s … nice.”

  “Come on, Vic. He’s a teenage boy — he can’t be that nice!”

  “Mom!” Then people were really staring. I knew she was only teasing, but I didn’t want to hear it.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’m sorry.” Before settling right back into interrogation mode. “What does he look like? What kind of music does he listen to? Is he good enough for you?”

  “Oh my god, shut up!” I so didn’t feel like playing the best-friend game with her if she was going to keep being so annoying about it.

  “Fine,” she said, “keep it your treasured little secret. You’re going to tell me. I know you want to.”

  We sat in silence for almost a full minute, which had to be some kind of record for us.

  “You’re really not going to tell me?” she asked when she’d finally drained her wineglass.

  “No,” I said, in the deadest tone I could manage.

  Mom laughed.

  “You never take me seriously!” I hissed. My voice was a hushed battle cry.

  “I do take you seriously,” she said, adopting an appropriately sombre tone.

  “You don’t,” I said, rolling my head back. Okay, yes, I was being a tiny bit dramatic.

  “I try to.” She was being serious, so I stopped my moaning and sat still.

  “Try harder,” I said, my eyes shooting through her like a laser beam.

  “I will.”

  And then she met my eye, giving me the same look that’s charmed crowds across the country and all over the world. It’s a little scary how powerful that look is, and that she can pull it out in a split second, shaking everything else off and making it feel like you’re the only two people on the planet. I’d like to
say that I’m immune to it, I should be by now. I know exactly what she’s doing. But I know she means it too. She means it with everyone.

  It sucks having to share your mom like that.

  “I love you,” she said, putting her hand over mine on the little plastic table.

  “I love … schnitzel,” I said, as our waiter appeared with two heaping plates of amazing-smelling food. Mom ordered a second glass of wine to go with her meal, while I checked out our waiter’s toned arms through his paper-thin V-neck.

  I was way too hungry to keep on hating her, so I focused my energy on tearing into my dinner instead. Mom was a bit better behaved with her chicken, and for once it was clear to the strangers around us which one of us was the adult.

  When I’d shoved enough meat in my mouth that I finally needed a breather, I asked, “So what did John want?”

  “Oh, we’re speaking again?”

  “I was hangry,” I offered, in lieu of an apology.

  “You were what?”

  “Hungry plus angry equals hangry,” I explained.

  “Ha! That’s great. Did you make that up, sweets?”

  I shook my head. She gives me way too much credit; I’m not nearly that creative.

  “No, Mom. It’s just a thing people say.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “Whatever. So?”

  “Sooo …?” she said, dragging the word out like stringy cheese on a hot pizza.

  “So,” I asked, more pointedly, “why was John calling?”

  “Oh,” she said, “right. Well, I’ve got some shows booked.”

  “Oh, good.” I got my second schnitzel-wind and started eating again. With my mouth full of breaded chicken, I asked, “Where are you playing?”

  “Out of town,” she said noncommittally.

  She was playing with her food but not eating it, pushing her meat around the plate with her fork. She was stalling.

  “How far out of town?” I asked, refusing to let her off easy.

  “Oh, you know …”

  “Obviously I don’t.” This was serious and she was still trying to shrug it off, so I persisted. “Where?”

  She drained her second glass of wine. “Japan?”