Under the Dusty Moon

by Suzanne Sutherland

  “Not unless you’ve invented some way to teleport since yesterday.”

  “I was so close,” Mom said, “did I tell you?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, grabbing my phone and jabbing her with my elbow to point her toward the door. “So what happened?”

  “I think I forgot to carry the one.”

  “Har har. Come on, Gran’s probably already there.”

  She locked the door behind us. “Do we have to?”

  “Are you willing to let me stay here by myself while you’re away?” I asked, walking down the stairs.

  “And come home to you passed out on pills, struggling to open a jar of peanut butter? Not likely.”

  Mom spotted a cab coming down Queen toward us and flagged it down.

  “When are they going to make that stuff in a squeeze bottle, anyway?” I asked, opening the backseat door.

  “Maybe we can use that million-dollar idea to pay for the next cab ride. But in the meantime,” she said, climbing in and shutting the door behind her, “we better roll.”

  Despite the jam-jar cab ride we were still ten minutes late meeting Gran. She was already at our table with a glass of white wine in hand and a magazine opened in front of her.

  “Hi, Gran,” I said, coming around to give her a hug.

  “Just a minute,” she said, pointing to the article she was reading and brushing away my arm without looking up.

  She stopped when her hand collided with my cast and finally looked up from her reading — some sciencey thing, from the glimpse I got of a multicolour brain scan. “What happened, Michelle?”

  Naturally she asked Mom and not me. Naturally she used her full name, which no one but her ever does.

  “It’s nothing, Mom. Vic was just in a little accident on her bike. Tell her, honey,” Mom said, accidentally jabbing me in the arm.

  “Ow,” I whined, rubbing my cast.

  “Oops, sorry, sweets. Let’s just sit down.”

  The restaurant was a lot fancier than the places Mom and I usually ate, and I felt self-conscious as I sat down and tried to tuck the chair back under the table by scootching my butt forward. It scraped loudly across the floor and the couple at the table next to ours both looked up from their fettuccine to gawk at me.

  “Are you all right, Victoria?” Gran asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, as much to her as to the nosy couple next to us.

  “I don’t like you riding your bike downtown,” Gran said. “It’s dangerous. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for you to get hurt.”

  “Really,” I said, “I’m fine.”

  I waited for Mom, the certified cycling nut of the family, to come to my aid before realizing that she was staring intently at a waiter across the room, attempting to lure him over to our table to bring her a glass of wine.

  But I wouldn’t let her off that easily. “Mom bikes almost every day and she’s never been in an accident.”

  “Oh really? I seem to remember you winding up in a cast much like this one when you were Victoria’s age,” Gran said to Mom. It was like I didn’t even exist for her except as a weapon to use against Mom. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to stay with her while Mom was running wild all over Japan.

  “Let’s just drop it, okay?” Mom said as the waiter brought her psychically summoned wine to the table. “Vic’s going to be off her bike for the rest of the summer, anyway, so you won’t have to worry about it while she’s staying with you.”

  “Fine,” Gran said, clearly making an effort to bite her tongue and avoid a scene. “Shall we order?”

  The meal dragged on, punctuated by four pieces of bread and butter, on top of the heaping plate of spaghetti carbonara I ordered for dinner. I figured that if I at least kept my mouth full I could avoid having to answer Gran’s mind-numbing questions about what courses I’d be taking at school next year and try to jam the pleasure centre of my brain with carbs to trick it into thinking we were having fun.

  Gran kept going on and on about this article she was reading. The one we so rudely interrupted her from when we showed up for dinner. It was something about brain chemistry and genetics, but I could barely follow her train of thought. Mom was just smiling and nodding and getting the waiter to refill her wine glass as often as she could manage.

  We sorted out the details of Mom’s flight and when she would drop me off at Gran’s house and got the bill just as my bread binge started creeping up on me and I felt so full that I thought I might explode. Mom and Gran bickered over the cheque until Mom finally grabbed the little plastic folder with our bill in it and made a break for our waiter on the other side of the room.

  “Your mother always has to make a scene,” Gran said less than quietly.

  “She just wanted to do something nice before her big trip,” I said, holding my stomach with my good hand to try to stop myself from feeling nauseous.

  “She should be holding on to the money she has.”

  Mom came back a minute later wearing her exhausted triumph like a feathered cap. “Let’s boogie.”

  Outside the restaurant we said good night to Gran. I went to give her a hug, but she said, “I’ll see you both tomorrow. There’s no need for a big goodbye now.” So we put her in a cab home and started walking toward the subway.

  “My stomach hurts,” I moaned, when Gran was finally out of earshot.

  “My head hurts,” Mom said, taking my cast in her hands. “Let’s go home.”

  The heat wave finally broke that night and there was almost a chill in the air from the breeze coming off the lake. We piled into our apartment and collapsed onto each other on the couch. I reached out to grab the remote from the coffee table, but Mom stopped me.

  “Just wait a sec,” she said. “There’s something … well, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  “We’re getting a pony?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, he can sleep in the bathroom and run wild through the expanse of our tiny apartment.”

  “We’ll call him Captain Buttersworth,” I said, giving a small salute.

  “Yup, a real noble gentleman. But seriously, Vic. This is, well, I just want to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So no pony then?”

  “Better luck next life, kiddo. This is about the trip. You remember that journalist? The one who’s working on the book?”

  The book. The Dusty Moon book. My mom and dad’s unofficial biography.

  “Right,” I said. “What was his name again?”

  “It’s Ken. Ken Yoshida. He’s, well, he’s actually going to be coming with me. With the band, I mean. But he’s coming to interview me.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Like he can’t just interview you here?”

  “I’ve been so busy, you know? We’ve hardly had time to sit down and he has a lot of questions for me. You wouldn’t believe the research he’s done. I think he probably knows more about me than I do.”

  “So he’s paying two thousand dollars to hang out with you in Japan? That’s creepy, Mom. That’s super creepy.”

  “It’s really not that big a deal, sweets. Ken was planning a trip to Japan to visit some family anyway, and it just happened to be around the same time as my tour.”

  “That’s a pretty big coincidence,” I said, unimpressed. “You’re sure he’s not, like, stalking you or something?”

  “I don’t think I’ve quite reached the level of fame where I have to worry about stalkers, sweetie. I’m not Tiffany.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know Tiffany? ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’?”

  “Not ringing any bells.”

  I knew I had a choice. I could go for the throat and make Mom tell me why she was being so weird, why she’d waited until the last minute to tell me that this creep Ken was going with her to Japan. I could start a fight that would last until she left the next morning and make us both furious, while she flew halfway around the world to do exactly what she wanted to do. Be Micky Wayne the r
ock star.

  Or, I could keep my mouth shut and enjoy my last night together with my de facto best friend.

  I seriously needed better friends.

  So instead I turned on the TV and we watched a double-bill of Empire Records and Say Anything and I passed out, drooling, in her lap.

  Eight

  Way too early the next morning, Mom shook me awake.

  “It’s time,” she whispered.

  I offered her a primordial grunt in response and Mom left me alone to finish waking up. I packed up the last of my stuff into my giant backpack while Mom hauled her pile of luggage to the front door.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid while I’m away, are you?” she asked.

  “I should ask you the same thing.”

  “And you’ll be nice to Gran?”

  I let out a jumbo-sized yawn. “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re going to give Shaun another shot?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “You’re not going to fall in love with this stalker journalist are you?”

  She laughed. “Please, Vic, Ken’s just there for the story.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “exactly.”

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got to go meet the band to head to the airport.”

  “Got everything?” I asked, surveying the apartment. It was a mess, with socks and drinking glasses littered all over the place, but that was the way it always looked. It would’ve been weird for us to come back to a place that was clean.

  We made it downstairs, with the weight of our luggage threatening to send us both flying down the steps, and hailed a cab. I knew that if there had been any chance that we could have carried all our stuff on Mom’s bike that she would’ve tried it, but it really was the only way.

  Sooner than we both would’ve liked, we pulled up in front of Gran’s house.

  “It’s terrible out here,” Mom said, getting out of the cab. “You can practically smell the fresh air.”

  “What a nightmare,” I said, hauling my backpack out of the cab’s trunk. “By the time you get back, I’ll be a foot taller.”

  “Better hope not, or we’ll have to buy your pants at the clown college down the street.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, slamming the trunk shut.

  “You know? Like those clowns on stilts? Like how they have those super-long pants to cover the stilts? You know what I mean.”

  “I think it’s time for you to go, Mom. Out,” I said, pointing with my good hand. “Out of the country, just go.”

  “Aw, come on. Let me say goodbye to your gran before you banish me from the continent.”

  “Fine,” I said, hoisting my backpack onto my shoulder. “Let’s do this.”

  Mom held up the giant bag from behind as I walked, since it was too heavy for me to carry on only one shoulder.

  “It’s okay if you hate me, you know,” Mom called. “It’ll give you fuel for your great novel.”

  “Who says I’m going to write a book?” I asked.

  “Fine then, it’ll be fuel for the great shrink I’m sure you’ll need in a few years’ time.”

  “You could sell the plane ticket and use the money as a down payment for my therapy bills.”

  “True,” she said. “But I think you can handle this.”

  “Twenty bucks says I drive Gran up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side in the first hour.”

  “Nah,” she said, “keep your money. I’m positive that’ll happen.”

  “My mother the optimist,” I said, shrugging off the backpack near the front door.

  “Your mother who was raised by that woman.” She rang the doorbell. “It’s showtime.”

  Gran answered the door a split second later. “Geez!” Mom said. “You scared us. Were you just waiting for us to ring the bell?”

  “Of course,” Gran said, smoothing the legs of her tan slacks. They really were slacks, and she insisted on calling them that. “I have nothing better to do with my Sunday than wait by the door for you to arrive.”

  “I knew it!” Mom said. “Anyway, I’m here to unload this poor orphan child onto your doorstep.”

  “Hmm, yes,” she said, considering me like I was a vacuum cleaner that Mom was selling door-to-door. “Come in, Victoria,” she said.

  “Thanks, Gran,” I said, following her in and dragging the backpack behind me. “You coming, Mom?”

  “I better not,” she said. “The band’s waiting for me. Not to mention the cab driver.”

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  It felt like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out, having to say goodbye to her. Even for such an embarrassingly short period of time, relatively speaking. But why did she have to go? Why couldn’t she have a normal job like other moms? And why was it so hard for me to say any of this out loud to her?

  Instead I hugged her as hard as I could. She hugged me back even harder.

  “Michelle, for Pete’s sake,” Gran said, “you’re only going to be away for eighteen days. You’d think you were leaving for good.”

  And maybe it was something in Gran’s callousness or maybe it was just my own embarrassment that had finally caught up to me, but I started to cry.

  “Oh, come on, Vic. Don’t start. You’ll just get me going,” Mom said wiping a single tear away. The cab driver honked his horn. “I’ve gotta go, sweets. I love you.”

  “Goodbye, Michelle,” Gran said. “Have a nice trip.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said, letting go of my shoulders. “And thanks for taking care of Vic. You two be good, okay?” She sniffed. “I’ll see you both real soon.”

  “Bye,” I said as she gave my shoulder one more squeeze before booking it back to the cab.

  It was going to be a long two and a half weeks.

  Gran’s house smelled like a doctor’s office — clean, in a sterile way — and it was pretty obvious from our first morning that we weren’t going to be spending a lot of grandmother–granddaughter bonding time together. Gran spent most of her days in her office with the door closed. She had absolutely no interest in me apart from making sure that I didn’t die of starvation. She used to be a psychologist. I guess she still is, but she’s retired now. She and my grampa met in university back in Halifax. Mom once told me, one night after she’d had a few drinks, that she thought it was weird her mother was so interested in the human brain when she was so bad at dealing with people. Grampa kind of made up for it, though, I guess.

  I still miss him.

  As soon as I’d unloaded my backpack into Gran’s guestroom, I installed myself on the couch. Gran had an ancient TV with basic cable which was kind of a novelty since our place was cable-less, but I was glad I could still watch Netflix once that novelty inevitably wore off — Mom had given me full custody of the computer while she was away. Gran’s super-stiff couch hurt my back, though, and it was impossible to get comfortable. I flipped through the channels over and over again but I couldn’t focus on anything on the screen.

  It’s fine, I told myself. It’s only two and a half weeks. You’ll be home soon and so will Mom. You’re being a baby. Mom isn’t even in Japan yet, she’s barely been gone an hour. Just suck it up, you’re being stupid.

  I checked my phone. Mom had been gone for forty-five minutes.

  I scrolled through my recent texts. Nothing from Lucy, and nothing from anyone else. I hadn’t messaged Shaun in weeks. He’d sent me a text a few days after our disaster date, but I’d been too frustrated with only having one good hand and still reeling from my mortification fest that I hadn’t bothered to answer. When I thought about Shaun, all I could remember was how stupid I’d been that day. How dumb I’d been to bring him to a naked beach without even realizing it. I put the phone down.

  A few hours and a Love It or List It marathon on the W Network later, Gran finally emerged from her office.

  “I’m going to make myself an egg-salad sandwich for lunch. Would you like one, Victoria?”

  “Oh, nah, that�
�s okay,” I said, “I’m not really hungry. And I can’t stand mayo.”

  “What’s wrong with mayonnaise?” she asked, giving me a hard stare like I’d told her that I wasn’t that into breathing.

  “It’s nothing. It just kind of grosses me out, that’s all. You know, the texture? It’s just, like, wrong,” I said, getting up from my prone position on the couch.

  “Fine,” she said, “then you’ll have to fix your own lunch. And I hope you’re not planning on lying around the house all afternoon. It’s a beautiful day outside.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but with my arm broken there isn’t really a lot I can do. Anyway, it’s fine, I can make my own sandwich. I don’t need you to … I just mean, I can do things myself. And I can choose how I spend my time. Just, like, leave me, okay? Alone?”

  “Lunch,” she said, launching the words at me like heat-seeking missiles, “and then outside. I’ll see you back at seven for dinner.”

  “Fine,” I said, switching the TV off. I tried to muster as much fire in my voice as she had, but Gran had years of experience on her side. My vitriol sounded more like mild annoyance.

  I followed her to the kitchen — pastel and linoleum, with a bowl full of wax fruit on the counter — and made myself a bologna and mustard sandwich, the fastest thing I could slap together, while she started methodically cracking and peeling a bowl of hard-boiled eggs she took out of the fridge. Hard-boiling is hands-down the most tragic thing you can do to an egg. It’s just so tidy and bland. And then slathering it all in mayo? The thought of it made me want to puke.

  I scarfed down my sandwich and put the plate in the sink without a word. I grabbed my phone and my bag from my room and locked the front door behind me, not caring where I wound up. Did Gran really think that wandering the near-suburbs was so much safer than biking downtown? But then I remembered the bookstore with the big yellow sign not far from where she lived, so I turned around and started wandering in its direction.

  The store was packed with books and magazines and it was hard to figure out where to start. I walked over to the graphic novel section and scanned the shelves. There were lots that I wanted to look at, but I couldn’t focus enough to pick one off the shelf to read. Instead I pulled out my phone.