Escape Velocity

by Robin Stevenson

  “Oh.” Even I know that there is no way everyone—my parents, my teachers, the social workers—will let me stay here on my own for that long. “It’s just, if I go to Victoria, there’ll be no one to visit my dad.”

  “You want to help him, right?”

  “Course I do.”

  “Honestly, Lou, the best thing you can do is to go stay with your mother so that he knows you are okay.”

  Being okay and staying with my mother don’t necessarily go together. But Dad doesn’t really understand that. “Is that what he wants me to do?”

  “Absolutely. You can phone him from Victoria as easily as from home, right? And it probably wouldn’t be that easy for you to visit him anyway.” She talks slowly, like she is trying to sound calm and soothing, but I can hear a clicking noise and guess that she is checking her email while she speaks to me.

  “Fine,” I say. “If that’s what he wants, I’ll go.”

  I throw some clothes into a duffel bag, call Dana Leigh and leave a message letting her know what has happened and telling her that she should try to give all my shifts to someone else. She won’t be happy about that. Then I call my school and tell Mrs. Robson that I’m going to Victoria.

  “I didn’t realize your mother was Zoe Summers,” she said. “I mean, I only just made the connection. I’ve read her books!”

  “Yeah. Well…”

  “You take good care of yourself,” she says. “Try not to worry about your dad. I’m sure he’ll be fine.” She gives a little laugh. “And tell your mom I absolutely loved Leaving Heaven.”

  My mother manages to book me a flight for early the next morning, and Dana Leigh insists on driving me to the airport. I want to visit the hospital first, but there isn’t time. I have a brief chat on the phone with my dad, who says he feels like he’s been run over by a truck.

  “You had that angio thing? The stent?”

  “Yeah. It went fine; I’m tired, that’s all. Don’t worry about me, okay?”

  “Course I will.”

  He laughs. “Lou, I’m okay. Damn left leg isn’t working now, but the old heart will be fine. Have fun in Victoria and don’t stress, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You can call me. Dana Leigh’s coming tonight and she said she’d bring your cell phone for me.”

  “I will. I love you, Dad.”

  “Love you too.” He clears his throat. “Look, I know you weren’t very happy after your last visit with your mother, but that was over a year ago. You’re older now. It’ll be good for you to get to know each other.”

  I’m not convinced, but the last thing I want to do is cause him any stress. “It’ll be fine,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Six

  I get a window seat on the plane, but it’s too cloudy to see anything. Within seconds of takeoff, the plane is flying through a thick opaque whiteness. I strain my eyes, trying to focus, but there’s nothing there to focus on. It’s like my brain can’t figure out exactly where the whiteness is, like I’ve lost my depth perception.

  Two days ago I was in class, daydreaming about escape—about flying through the clouds—and now here I am, doing it.

  And then I think, Did I make this happen somehow? Does the world work like that? It seems about as likely as anything else.

  Then again, my dreams of escape never led to my mother. I stare out at the clouds and wish this plane was going to land anywhere but Victoria.

  A flight attendant—tall, dark-haired and smiling broadly but vaguely—hands me a plastic glass of Coke.

  “Cookies or pretzels?”

  “Can I have both?” I can’t even remember the last time I ate.

  She hands me two tiny pretzel bags and a package of two cookies, those ones with a layer of cream and a red circle of sugar-sprinkled jam in the middle.

  “Thanks,” I say, dropping the snacks in my lap and looking up at her. Her lipstick is the exact same shade as Dana Leigh’s. “Um, do you like being a flight attendant?” I ask.

  She nods. “Very much.”

  “Is it hard? I mean, to become one?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of training. But I’m sure you could do it if you wanted to.” She is still smiling as she moves past me to the next row, and I wonder if the smile is something they teach you in the training, if you have to practice a great deal for a smile to become your natural expression. I wonder if after a while you would smile all the time even when you weren’t working.

  I tear open the plastic wrapper and slide out a cookie, dropping crumbs on my lap. I press my finger against the sugary specks, lift them to my mouth and lick them off my fingertip. I’m so nervous about seeing my mother that I can hardly sit still. I keep picturing that photo of the two of us in front of the Empress, her arm around my shoulders.

  Despite everything, I guess some stupid part of me thinks that perhaps it will be different this time.

  Halfway to Victoria. Halfway between my mother and my father. I turn away from the snow-covered mountains below and stare down at the magazine I snagged from an empty seat in the airport.

  I read through an article on the latest trends in makeup (smoky eyes and pale lips), a review of a movie I haven’t seen, and some readers’ letters confessing their most embarrassing moments. Then I turn the page and find a quiz: How Well Do You Know Your Mother? The very first question has me stumped:

  1. Would your mother prefer:

  a) A day at the spa.

  b) A glamorous party.

  c) A quiet afternoon alone with a book.

  d) A hike with the whole family.

  Not the last one, clearly. I move on to the next question.

  2. You buy a fabulous new outfit and show it to your mother as soon as you arrive home. Does she:

  a) Tell you how wonderful it looks?

  b) Pretend to admire it but somehow manage to let you know that she thinks it is hideous?

  c) Say that she hopes you aren’t planning to wear it outside the house?

  d) Ask if she can borrow it?

  I have no idea. None of the above. I am failing this quiz. I flip to the end to see what it says if you get the worst possible score, but it’s one of those stupid quizzes that doesn’t even interpret your answers. Whatever. What could it say anyway? 0-5 points: You don’t know your mother at all, you freak.

  “I guess you don’t miss having a mother,” Dana Leigh said once. “Seeing as how you’ve never really had one.” At the time, I probably just nodded; but Dana Leigh was wrong. You can miss something you have never had. You can’t help it, not when the thing that you miss is all around you, when everyone you meet has a mother, when every story, every TV show, every movie reminds you of what you should have.

  Seven

  “We are beginning our descent,” the pilot announces. My stomach clutches tight as a toddler’s fist around the cookies and pretzels I ate earlier in the flight. The smiling flight attendant hands out candies and reminds stragglers to buckle up and stow their bags. With a bump and the roar of engines, the plane lands in Victoria.

  My mother has said she will meet me at the airport. I have no checked suitcases, only my carry-on bag, so I walk straight through the crowd and out into the Arrivals area. I don’t see her right away. I fix a half smile on my face. I don’t want to look anxious in case she sees me first. I don’t want to give her the advantage.

  Then I see her. She looks different than she did last time I saw her, different from the photo in her book. Her hair is shorter, barely brushing her shoulders, still white-blond and smooth as glass. She is wearing dark-framed sunglasses that hide her eyes. Jeans. A plain white T-shirt and a soft suede jacket. It’s a look that says I just threw on some old clothes, but I can’t help looking gorgeous anyway.

  She’s walking toward me but hasn’t seen me yet, and I suddenly wonder if she will recognize me. It seems awful not to be recognized by your own mother, so I wave frantically, not wanting to find out whether she would or not. “Mom! Here I am!” />
  She stops walking, turns toward me. “Lou?” She gives a low laugh. “Look at you! You’ve grown so much.”

  Well, yeah. It’s been a year. “Hi, Mom,” I say. Last time I visited, she suggested I call her Zoe. In some ways, it fits our relationship better. Why pretend she has been a parent to me when she has never even wanted to be one? But calling her Zoe feels like letting her off the hook. Every time I say Mom, it’s like I’m reminding her that she is my mother whether she likes it or not.

  She shakes her head. “You look so much like your dad.”

  What she means is, It’s too bad you look so much like your dad. It’s true I’ve got his dark hair, his nose and his small square teeth that everyone says look like baby teeth, but I don’t think I look that much like either of them. Anyway, she hasn’t seen my dad for fifteen years. “You look different too,” I say.

  “Do I?” She looks down at my hands. “No suitcase?”

  “Only my carry-on bag. I didn’t pack much.” It seems dumb, now that I’m here, but I didn’t want to admit that I might be staying for longer than the weekend.

  My mother drives a white Toyota, not new, but so clean and empty it feels like a rental car. It’s a half-hour drive to her condo downtown. We exchange a few awkward sentences and then give up and drive in silence for a while. I turn my face to the window: farmland, a field of still-tiny pumpkins, a dark lake half hidden by trees. The air in the car is charged with tension, the emotional static so intense that lightning bolts might flash between us any minute.

  “Do I have to start school right away?” I ask desperately.

  “Well, you can’t hang around the condo all day. I can’t work with someone hanging over my shoulder.”

  “I wouldn’t be—”

  “So I called yesterday, right after I booked your ticket. You can start Monday.”

  “Today’s Saturday.” At least I don’t have to go tomorrow. Or today.

  My mother gives me a funny look but says nothing. My sense of reprieve dissipates as I realize that a day at a new school might actually be easier than spending a day with my mother.

  My mother’s condo is smaller than I remembered, but every bit as elegant. It has honey-colored wooden floors (bamboo, she says), big windows and a view of the harbor. She shows me into her spare room, which she makes a point of telling me usually doubles as her office. Pine bookshelves line one wall, and the foldout couch has been made up as a bed, with a pale blue comforter and big pillows. A painting hangs low on the wall. “Always hang your artwork at eye-level,” my mother told me last time I was here, as if I had artwork to hang. “Most people hang it too high.”

  “You like it?” she asks.

  “The room? It’s fine. Great.”

  “The painting.”

  I look at it again. Swirls of gray and black. No doubt it should mean something to me, evoke some emotion or other. I feel a flicker of anxiety—she always makes me feel incompetent, foolish, childish—followed by a flash of anger. “It looks like an oil spill,” I say flatly. Let her think I’m shallow. I don’t care.

  She doesn’t say anything for a minute, just studies the picture. “He’s an up-and-coming artist; everyone’s talking about him.”

  “Yeah? What are they saying?”

  She shrugs. “The reviewer in the Globe said his paintings were ‘disturbing, demanding, and infinitely rewarding.’ Personally, I think you’re right. It does look like an oil spill.” She gives a short laugh. “He was awfully good-looking though.”

  Was instead of is. I figure that means she slept with him once or twice and now it’s over. “Well,” I say. “I don’t hate it or anything.”

  Zoe pulls a fading yellow tulip from the vase on her desk. “So,” she says, “I’m doing a reading tonight, from my new book. It isn’t really appropriate for your age though. I thought we could rent a couple of DVDs for you if you like.”

  “I’ve read it already.”

  “You have?” She shakes a drop of water from the tulip and folds the stem with a soft snap. She looks as if she isn’t sure whether she should be pleased that I’d bother or taken aback that I’ve read something other than vampire novels. “What did you think?”

  My heart is suddenly beating faster. “It’s good.”

  She tilts her head, as if she is wanting more from me.

  When I say nothing, she shrugs. “Well. If you’ve read it anyway…I mean, I suppose you can come tonight if you want to. But don’t feel you must.”

  “I’ll come.” I can feel myself smiling in the stupid way I do when I am nervous.

  She looks at me intently and frowns. “Is that a chip? In your front tooth?”

  “Mmm.” My hand moves up to cover my mouth and I close my lips over my teeth quickly.

  “We should get that fixed while you’re here,” she says. “I’ll make you an appointment with my dentist. She’s excellent.”

  I can’t help noticing that she doesn’t ask how it happened. I wonder how she’d react if I told her I was getting high with my dad’s friends. Then again, maybe if my dad wasn’t taking good care of me, she’d rather not know.

  I’ve gained an hour from the time change, and the morning feels weirdly stretched and endless. Dana Leigh picked me up crazy early to drive me to Calgary for the flight, so although I’ve been awake for ages, it isn’t even lunchtime yet. I call Dad to let him know I’ve arrived safely and to make sure he is still doing okay. Since he has had the angio-thing done, he says he feels a lot better; the stent seems to be working.

  “It’s like this little tube,” he tells me. “They stuck it right in the blood vessel to hold it open. First useful thing a doctor’s ever done for me.”

  He sounds like himself again, and I wonder if the doctors know about all the pills he takes. Maybe he’s getting so much medication anyway that it’s a non-issue at the moment. “You still hooked up to all those machines?” I ask.

  He laughs. “A few. Feel a bit like Frankenstein, getting zapped back to life like that.”

  “The doctor, Ramirez? He said you had a stroke.”

  “Don’t worry, okay, Lou? I’ll be fine. I am fine. Let’s face it, I wasn’t exactly running marathons before this happened.”

  “No.” I want to ask when I can come home, but I know he can’t answer that. “I’m going to Mom’s reading tonight. At a bookstore.”

  “Are you?” He clears his throat. “I should read some of her stuff sometime.”

  He always says that. He’s not much of a reader though. He flips through music magazines, but that’s about it.

  “I love you,” I tell him. I feel like I should keep saying this, end all our conversations with it, just in case. My throat is suddenly all tight and achy.

  “Stop worrying,” he says. “I’m bionic now. Got me some spare parts that’ll outlast us all.”

  I wander out into the living room, but my mother seems to have left while I was on the phone. “Zoe?” I call out. Then: “Mom?” The condo is quiet and empty. I want to snoop, but I’m too nervous. I decide to take a shower, partly because I feel gross but also because I don’t know what else to do.

  The bathroom is pale green, with a separate shower, not one in the bathtub like at home. It has clear glass sides, and even though the bathroom door is locked, I feel oddly exposed without a shower curtain. I stay in the shower for a long time, until the bathroom is hot and filled with steam. Then I rub myself dry with the soft white towel my mother put out for me. In the fogged-up mirror, I look like a pale blurry ghost.

  My mother doesn’t know why I stopped talking to her halfway through my last visit. I never told her. At the time, it seemed like the only thing I could do, but now I wonder what she thought. Probably she added it to her list of things she didn’t like about me.

  The worst thing was that I’d had hopes for that visit. Crazy, in hindsight, but I’d thought that staying with her for a few days would make us into a real mother and daughter. So I had tried really hard. I read her first novel a
nd some of her poems before the visit, and other poetry too—Sylvia Plath, plus a collection of Beat poetry that Dad had lying around. I didn’t understand all of it, but I wanted to have something to talk about with her. I had thought that because I was fourteen—a teenager, almost an adult—we might start being closer. I wanted her to take me seriously and to see that we were not so different. I printed out half a dozen of my own best poems and brought them with me, tucked inside my backpack.

  None of it turned out the way I’d hoped. The more I tried to connect with her, the harder she pushed me away, and the harder she pushed me away, the more frantically I tried to connect. I was way too chicken to show her my own writing, and when I tried to talk about the poetry I’d been reading, she rolled her eyes and made a snarky comment about Plath’s poetry primarily appealing to self-absorbed teenagers.

  Eventually I gave up, listened to my music and watched her pace around her apartment, tense and brittle and beautiful. I felt more stupid and ugly than ever. My anxiety kept building until by the fourth day, it was squirming around like something alive inside me, and I felt as though it might crawl right up my throat and materialize in the room, twisted and hideous and neon-bright.

  That evening, I overheard my mother talking on the phone. “Honestly, I have been trying. The thing is, she is not a very likable child. She’s either being completely ingratiating and trying to impress me, or sulking around with those awful headphones plugged in her ears. The sullen adolescent. It’s such a cliché.”

  That was the day I stopped bothering to make an effort. I ripped up the poems I’d written and never shown her, and I flushed them down the toilet. For the rest of the week—three long days—I did my best to avoid her. She asked what was wrong a few times. “What’s the problem, Lou? What’s wrong? Are you homesick? If you’re upset about something, why don’t you tell me? Fine then. Be like that. Go ahead and sulk. I have plenty of other things to do if you aren’t interested in spending time with me.”