by Annabel Lyon
PUFFIN CANADA
ENCORE EDIE
Encore Edie is ANNABEL LYON’S fifth book, and a sequel to her first novel for young people, All-Season Edie. Her first novel for adults, The Golden Mean, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. It won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Lyon lives in New Westminster, British Columbia, with her husband and two children.
Also by Annabel Lyon
For children
All-Season Edie
For adults
Oxygen
The Best Thing for You
The Golden Mean
PUFFIN CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published 2011
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)
Copyright © Annabel Lyon, 2011
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in Canada.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Lyon, Annabel, 1971–
Encore Edie / Annabel Lyon.
ISBN 978-0-14-317741-8
I. Title.
PS8573.Y62E43 2011 jC813’.6 C2010-905823-2
Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca
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For Sophie and Caleb
and for Mark
my best bro
Contents
Lush Life
Fools Rush In
Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered
My Funny Valentine
Embraceable You
Edie in the Sky with Diamonds
Lush Life
“I’m a fool for you,” Dad sings along to the CD. He sings to Mom into the microphone of his thumb with an intense look that makes her laugh. While the CD moans on, I catch Dexter’s eye and pretend to stick my finger down my throat.
“What’s wrong, Edie?” Dexter says sweetly, and I can’t get the finger out before our parents see. I’m thirteen (today!), Dexter is fifteen, and sometimes we’re allies but more often we’re enemies, like those knights in Elizabethan times, the ones with the white roses and the ones with the red, like on the front of my Collected Shakespeare Volume III: The Histories and Non-Dramatic Poetry. The first volume, The Comedies, has a guy with a donkey’s head, some fairies, and a bearded guy in a big starry cloak glowering at an enormous book. Volume II: The Tragedies is my favourite. It has the dressed-in-black guy, and the hunchbacked guy, and the crazy-looking red-haired woman, and the old guy sadly patting the head of a boy with bells on his hat. Hamlet, Iago, Lady Macbeth, King Lear.
“Cake in my molars,” I say quickly.
“Cake in my mo-o-lars,” Dad sings along to the CD.
“Like, please stop,” Dexter says.
“I love this one,” I say. “Like, shut up.”
On the table in front of me are the remains of my birthday: cards, wrapping paper, half a cheesecake, books, a stuffed giraffe, a T-shirt, a mug with Edith on it, and the case for the CD we’re listening to. My family recently returned from our annual holiday at the cabin on the lake, and while we were driving there, Dad tuned in to a jazz station while Mom slept and Dexter iPodded, and after a while I said, “I like this,” and Dad said, “I do, too,” and he remembered and went out and bought me a CD of someone named Sarah Vaughan singing songs from eighty years ago, and that was his present to me. Usually he just signs his name under Mom’s on the cards. I get the feeling he approves very much of me liking jazz, and is Encouraging Me, which I usually resist, but I like the CD. I’m looking forward to listening to it again, alone in my room, in bed with the earphones, where I can concentrate.
The books are from Mom. The mug is from Grandma. The giraffe is from my cousin and arrived in the mail in an envelope warped by too much taping. It has enormous eyelashes and giggles from a recording inside its body if you tickle its horns. It’s for a three-year-old.
“Ellie told me Merry chose it specially for you,” Mom says. Ellie is Mom’s younger sister. Merry has something called Down syndrome, which makes her short and pudgy, with tiny ears and stubby fingers and eyes like pods, and worst of all, it makes her slow. She goes to a special school and makes lopsided crafts and can barely read and doesn’t understand jokes and loves me and Dexter more than anyone in the world. That’s what Merry told her mom, who told our mom, who told us. “Aw,” Dexter said. “Huh,” I said.
“Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart that’s sorry yet for thee.” That’s what King Lear says to his Fool. Auntie Ellie and Merry live in Montreal, so we don’t see them very often. Once, the summer I was nine, Auntie Ellie and Merry flew out for a visit, and the next year each family drove to Winnipeg, where we camped together for a week and then turned around and went home again. Since then it’s just been letters and presents, and very occasionally a video Auntie Ellie makes of the two of them blowing kisses into the camera and clowning around, and then Merry studiously working on some craft while Auntie Ellie explains what she’s doing in a voice-over. “Those are pretty sequins!” we’ll hear Auntie Ellie say, and Merry will say, “Uh.” Merry’s dad is Not In The Picture, as Mom and Dad put it, and hasn’t been since Merry was a baby, which is, Mom always adds, making her raisin face, Just As Well.
Don’t get me wrong—I like Merry well enough. She’s all right; she’s harmless. I just can’t imagine her life very well, and—if I’m being honest—I don’t really want to try.
Forget the giraffe, though. The T-shirt is from my sister, and true to form, Dex gave me the best gift of all. It’s black, not previously an Edie-colour, and has silver dragons on the sleeves, and is stretchy, and fits a little closer to the body than I’m used to, which makes me feel self-conscious and grown-up at the same time. It is, Dex says, a yoga top.
“I want a yoga top,” Dad says now, because I’ve picked the shirt up again and am stroking it and admiring the dragons for the seventeenth time. He stands on one leg, the other foot tucked behind his knee, and holds his arms over his head like a ballerina, and wobbles. “Fragrant-blossomof-tranquility pose,” he says. We ignore him.
<
br /> “I want a look at that giraffe,” Mom says brightly, because she always acts super-interested in Merry and super-impressed by everything she does.
I push the giraffe and the remains of the envelope it came in across the table.
“Cute,” Mom says. Then she frowns. “Did you see there’s a letter in here as well?”
“Is there?” I don’t look up from the shirt.
“It’s for me, anyway.” Mom turns the envelope over. “From Auntie Ellie.”
“You have to hand-wash it, that’s the only thing,” Dexter says. “It’s delicate.”
I nod seriously. I’ve never owned delicate clothes before. Old Edie wants to make a joke about this, but Teen Edie (as of today!) is feeling kind of pleased and confused and embarrassed and excited all together, and thinks she should maybe just shut up and listen for once. Next week Dexter and I will be going back to school, the same school for the first time in years, and I know Dexter is really, really trying to be nice because she’s really, really hoping I won’t do anything Old Edie–like to embarrass her. Teen Edie is kind of hoping the same thing. I skipped kindergarten way back when I was tiny because I could already read. The kids in my old school always made fun of me for being the youngest in my class, but I’m really, really hoping this year they’ll stop. High school. High school!
Dad is now down on the floor on one knee with the other leg out to the side, a hand on the small of his back and the other pointing to something straight in front of him, and wobbling, and grimacing a little. “Warrior-with-old-hockey-injury pose,” he says.
“Oh my god!” Mom says.
“Thank you,” Dad says.
“Oh, shush,” Mom says. She jumps up. “I have to call Ellie right now! She’s thinking of moving to Vancouver!”
“Wow!” Dexter says.
“What?” I say.
“When?” Dad says.
Mom laughs. She’s looking all around her for the portable phone. “This month! You know Ellie.” (This is addressed to Dad.) “She decides something and she has to do it the same day. She never could wait for anything.”
“Why?” I say.
Mom squints at the letter again. “She got a job?” she says, obviously paraphrasing. “Or knows someone who might be able to get her a job? She’s not really clear about that. But she said Merry’s old school is closing and since it’ll be a big change getting her settled somewhere else anyway, this might be the best time for a move, and get all the changes over with at once.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Dad says.
“They can stay in our basement until they find a place, can’t they, Jamie?” Mom says to Dad. She looks around wildly and a little vaguely, as though they’ll be arriving in five minutes and she’s forgotten to put clean linen on the guest bed. “She asked if we could find a list of possible schools for Merry so she can start thinking about which part of town.”
“There’s a special class at Burnham,” Dexter says.
Burnham is my and Dex’s high school. I know about the special class because I spent the summer, off and on, consulting the high school handbook my classmates and I were given on our last day of school, to help get us ready for our “new educational situation” (Principal’s Greeting, p. 2). Along with band and drama and woodworking and French and Punjabi and Cantonese and choir and computers and outdoor leadership and all the other classes, the handbook talks about the special class (Additional Programs, p. 14). The special class is partly integrated, which means (if I understand right) that special kids take some regular classes, such as PE and art, and the harder ones, such as math and English, they do their own version of, in their own classroom, where they won’t slow anyone else down.
“That’s right,” Mom says, staring hard at Dexter, as though she’s just given her a brand new idea.
“It’s a great class,” Dexter says. “They’re sweet kids. So cute.” This is the kind of annoying, false-grown-up thing Dexter has taken to saying lately, which seems to charm our parents no end—Have you noticed how Dex is getting so mature? blah, blah—and which I don’t buy for one single minute.
“That’s right,” Dad says. He’s now sitting back at the kitchen table with the rest of us in, I tell myself privately, Dad-disappointed-because-no-one-is-laughing pose. “You did some volunteer work there last year, didn’t you?”
I vaguely remember something about that, Dexter tutoring some kids after school. I assumed these were cute, dumb boys in Dexter’s own classes, a category Dexter seems to enjoy, as opposed to cute, dumb boys in the special class, which is a whole other category entirely.
The phone rings. Dexter jumps up as if someone has struck her with a cattle prod. “It’s for me!” she yells, even though we’re all sitting right there. She finds the phone Mom’s been looking for under a pile of grocery store flyers. “Hello?” she says in her teeny-tiny phone voice, her eyebrows all perky.
I look at Dad, who makes his eyebrows go all perky. This time I have to laugh. Then something flicks me in the head.
“It’s for you,” my sister says, holding out the phone without looking at me. Her face is interesting—almost raisiny, like Mom’s—but I don’t have time to pay attention because the person on the phone is waiting. I know who it will be.
“Grandma!” I say.
“Uh, sorry,” a voice says. “Not Grandma.” It’s a boy’s voice.
“Who is this?” I demand. I don’t know any boys.
“Robert,” the voice says. “Happy birthday.”
“It’s Robert!” I say, because Dex has been whispering to Mom and Dad and all three of them are looking at me expectantly. Dexter still looks the same, tight around the mouth, but our parents look as if they’re trying not to smile. Robert, of course, is not a boy at all, not in Dexter’s sense, but is the friend we see every summer at the cabin. He and his mom always stay in the cabin next door. He used to be a heavy kid, kind of goofy, and at first Dex wouldn’t hang out with us. But over the last couple of years he’s gotten taller, and he actually swims now rather than just lying on the dock, and his voice has gotten deeper. Dex decided, since there was no one else around, she could tolerate someone a year younger than her after all. The three of us spent the summer boating and fishing and playing practical jokes on each other and renting movies when the weather was lousy, or playing board games. He’s comfortable to be around, Robert, as I imagine a brother would be, or a boy cousin, or a big friendly dog. We only said goodbye four days ago. I wonder how he got our phone number. “How did you get our phone number?” I ask.
“Your sister gave it to me,” he says. “Is this a bad time?”
“For what?” I say.
There’s a silence. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. I think I hear his mom in the background, saying something encouraging. “Do you want to go to a movie sometime?” he says, loudly, all at once.
“What?” I say.
“A movie. My mom could drive us. Or both our moms could and we could meet halfway somewhere.” Robert lives way out in Vancouver, near the planetarium. They don’t even own their own car really, but share different cars with a bunch of other people in something called a co-op. This is because they can walk everywhere, to the planetarium and Robert’s school and the shops and Robert’s mom’s work. Dexter and I live in a much more realistic place—a suburb called Coquitlam—that requires driving in one’s own personal car to get anywhere.
“What movie?” I say.
There’s a pause, and I hear his mom’s voice again in the background. “What kind of movies do you like?” he asks.
“I don’t know. What kind of movies do you like?”
“I don’t know,” he says. Which is ridiculous since we’ve been watching movies together all summer long, and we both know that we both like the same kind: Bollywood.
I’m getting fed up. This is not a conversation; this is more like a thumb-war. I look up and see Dexter whispering urgently to Mom, her eyes flicking to me and back again, and our parents excha
nging a long, fond look that tips me over the edge. “I can’t,” I say.
“Okay,” Robert says. He sounds relieved.
“There are no good movies right now,” I say. I have no idea if there are or not. “And school starts next week, and then I’ll be too busy.” I see Mom trying to catch my eye and ignore her.
“Okay,” Robert says. “Maybe some other time.”
“Bye,” I say, so I won’t have to answer this question, which I’m not even sure is a question. I hang up.
“Oh, Edie,” Mom says right away. “You won’t be too busy. You could have gone on a weekend. I’ll drive you. Call him back.”
“Don’t know his number,” I say.
“You could star-six-nine him,” Dad says.
“I know that!” I say. “I don’t want to star-six-nine him! Leave me alone!” Then I see my sister’s eyes are oddly bright. “What’s the matter with you?” I say. I don’t mean to snap at her, but I was caught off guard. I thought Dex was making fun of me, whispering to our parents while I was having that embarrassing phone call. It’s only now sinking in that I’ve just been asked out, for the first time, in front of my entire family, and I managed it less than graciously, which makes me feel even less gracious now. “Are you crying?”
“Shut up!” Dexter says.
“You shut up!” I say. “A boy called and it wasn’t for Dexter, wah, wah.”
“Go to your room, Edie,” Mom says, pulling Dexter in for a hug. Dexter’s shoulders are shaking now, but she isn’t making any noise.
“IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!” I say.
“Do what your mother says,” Dad says. This is so completely unexpected—usually he’s on my side when it comes to seeing the humour in Dexter’s absurd moods—that I almost start crying myself, except that I’m not going to give anybody the satisfaction. I stomp out of the kitchen, stomp back to scoop up my new CD, and stomp upstairs to my attic bedroom.
My bedroom has recently undergone some changes. Mom is addicted to those shows on TV where people in matching T-shirts make fun of each other’s furniture and buy wildly unlikely paint colours and make craft-y light fixtures instead of buying them like normal people, and then pretend to be all surprised about how much they love each other’s bright, weird results. “You are literally watching paint dry,” I told her once. But Mom seemed to take me seriously, and a few days later came home with a sheaf of paint chips.
