Hummingbird Heart

by Robin Stevenson

  “I go by Amanda now.” Mom didn’t take his hand. She pushed me and Karma forward. “This is Dylan, and this is Karma, my younger daughter.”

  I shook hands with Mark, trying not to stare, and we walked over to the table and sat down, which was good because my legs had gone all loose and wobbly. Mark made a few polite comments about how great the hotel was and what a beautiful city this was and all that stuff. Mom was really quiet, and when she spoke, she didn’t sound like herself at all. Karma kept kicking me under the table, and I did my best to ignore her.

  I was sitting beside Mark, but I didn’t want to stare at him, so I studied the cutlery on the table and snuck quick peeks.

  He looked way older than I had expected. I’d been picturing him the way he looked in the old photo Mom had given me—a teenager, just a couple years older than me—but of course, he was in his thirties now, same as my mother. He looked older than her though, in his suit and all. Like a businessman. I guessed he was probably rich. Mostly what I was noticing was how much he looked like me. I kept checking off features: same thick dark eyebrows, same almond-shaped blue-green eyes, same square chin with a slight cleft—just a faint dent—in the center. Even his earlobes—they were small and kind of attached, just like mine. My skin was lighter though, pale like Mom’s. His was more olive and his hair was cut short and graying a little at the temples, but it was roughly the same shade of dark brown as mine. Mom’s was brown, too, but a little lighter and more reddish. Of course, she put henna in it, so it was hard to tell what color it really was.

  Finally he spoke directly to me. “So you’re Dylan.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “Bit of an odd situation, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.” Talk about an understatement.

  “I’m starving,” Karma announced.

  We all turned and looked at her and opened our menus with relief. Something safe to talk about. We managed to fill a good five minutes with comments about how delicious everything sounded, and another five debating whether to order the wild salmon with sesame butter or the Thai noodle salad. Mark moved his hands around a lot when he talked and he kept picking up things from the table—a salt shaker, a napkin—and playing with them. I wondered whether he always did that or whether it meant he was as nervous as I was.

  The server came and took our orders. I glanced at the menu. “Thai salad.”

  Mom raised her eyebrows. “That’s got chicken in it. Are you eating meat now?”

  “Does it?” I frowned at the menu. “Just a salad then, I guess.” I couldn’t imagine eating anything anyway.

  Finally, the server left and there was a long awkward silence. Mom cleared her throat. “So, what do you do these days, Mark?”

  “Lawyer.” He turned his water glass around, leaving wet rings on the table.

  Mom raised her eyebrows. “Just like the old man after all.”

  Mark laughed, but he sounded uncomfortable. “Well, teenage rebellion is fine, but I couldn’t really do construction forever. And you, Amanda?” He shook his head. “Well, I guess I already know that, don’t I? You run a cleaning business. That’s how I found you. Nice website, by the way.”

  “I do photography too.” Mom sounded defensive.

  “You’re still into that? Really?”

  Mom’s voice was a little sharp. “Why not?”

  “No, no. That’s great, really. I’m impressed.” His head tilted, questioning. “So you must be busy. Working, looking after two kids…”

  Mom hesitated for a moment, her lips pursed. “Karma is Sheri’s daughter. Sheri Russell, remember?”

  He nodded. “I know. In fact, that’s how I…” He broke off and hesitated for a moment, glancing at my mother. Her eyes were narrowed, lips pale, every muscle tense. He cleared his throat and looked away, turning to face Karma. “I’m so sorry, Karma. Lisa—my wife—we heard about your mother’s accident from an old friend. We hadn’t seen Sheri in years, but I used to know her well. I was so sad to hear about what happened.”

  Mom put an arm around Karma’s shoulder.

  Karma shrugged her off. “You knew my mom? When?”

  “Back when I was a teenager.” He cleared his throat and looked down at the table. “Back when Sheri wasn’t much older than Dylan is now.”

  “Same age,” Mom said. Her voice sounded tight.

  Karma just nodded. “Uh-huh. I know Amanda and Mom were best friends in school.”

  I leaned forward. “So, were you guys all in the same class?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t at school with them. I met your mom a few weeks after I graduated.”

  I’d always assumed they’d met at school. Actually, I was pretty sure Mom had said so. “So where’d you meet then?”

  Mark laughed. “At a party, actually. Someone’s backyard.” He looked at me, head cocked to one side. “Summer nights, patios, too much beer flowing. You know the scene.”

  Mom interrupted, her voice hard-edged. “Jesus Christ, Mark. Didn’t we agree there was no need to drag up the past?”

  So that was why she’d rushed out of my room with the phone—to make Mark promise to adhere to her stupid code of secrecy. I wondered if the photographs weren’t the only thing she’d been lying to me about. “I guess Mark is free to talk about whatever he wants,” I said coldly.

  Mom stared at Mark like she was just daring him to say another word. He shrugged. “Relax, Mandy.”

  “Amanda.” She was silent for a long minute. Then she shook her head. “Sorry. It’s fine. So we met at a party. Whatever.” She cleared her throat. “All ancient history. So, Mark, do you and Lisa have kids?”

  Changing the subject. Like that wasn’t totally obvious. I wondered what she was hiding. I mean, I already knew she’d been a total pothead and got pregnant at sixteen from a one-night stand. It wasn’t as if she had some perfect straight-A student, moral leader and virgin-till-marriage image to maintain.

  “A daughter.” Mark pulled out his phone. “Her name’s Casey. She’s almost four.” He looked at the image on the screen for a long moment, his mouth twisted into a crooked smile. I thought he was going to hand the phone to Mom, but he handed it to me instead. “Your half sister,” he said.

  I took the phone from him and stared at the photo. My half sister. A round-faced girl, smiling, with short dark hair and big eyes. Cute kid, I guess. My stomach was full of something much squirmier than butterflies and my throat was getting all tight. As quickly as I could without being rude, I passed the phone to Mom.

  “Must be hard to be away from her,” Mom said.

  “It is,” Mark said. His voice sounded funny, like he really meant it. Like he could hardly stand to be away from his precious little girl.

  I sucked on my bottom lip. He’d been away from me, his other daughter, for my whole life and he hadn’t cared at all. Hadn’t even cared enough to stay in touch with Mom to find out how I was doing.

  Mark was fiddling with his napkin, folding it into a small square and unfolding it again.

  “How come you got in touch?” I blurted out. “I mean, you never wanted to see me before, so how come you wanted to meet me now?”

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose and then rubbed his hands over his cheeks. I could see a faint bluish shadow, like he hadn’t shaved that day. He cleared his throat. “It’s a complicated situation.”

  I wondered if his wife knew about me, and I felt a flush of shame, as if I’d done something wrong. “You were embarrassed? Ashamed of me?”

  He made a small noise of protest. “Of course not.”

  Across the table, Karma was wide-eyed, her mouth hanging open slightly.

  He picked up his napkin, shook out the wrinkles and folded it neatly in half. “Maybe you should talk to your mother about this.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “She can’t tell me why you never wanted to be involved, can she? So I’m asking you.”

  There was a long uncomfortable silence. Mark looked at my mother and made a helpless gestur
e. She just shook her head, lips clamped together tightly. I looked down at the white tablecloth. I wished my mother wasn’t sitting there listening, but I had to ask. “Didn’t you ever even wonder about me?”

  Mark looked at me. “I’m here, now. I know it must seem odd, but can we just move forward? Get to know each other?”

  “Kind of hard to get to know you if you can’t even answer a simple question,” I said.

  Mark rubbed his hands over his face again and said nothing. The server arrived and began placing plates of food on the table, all beautifully arranged and decorated with curly bits of finely sliced vegetables. When the server was gone, Mom looked at Mark. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “We don’t need you interfering in our family.”

  He picked up his napkin, twisted it into a tight ball and let it drop onto the table beside his plate. “Long story,” he said. “Let’s just enjoy our dinner and get to know each other. Then perhaps the girls could take a little walk and you and I could have a few minutes alone together. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

  My heart fluttered. He was going to ask me to come and visit, maybe even stay for a while. That had to be it. What else could it be?

  Ten

  Dinner was painful. I just wanted to know what Mark was doing here, and I guess Mom did too. I wished he’d get on with it. I poked at my salad, sliding tomato and cucumber slices to one side and twirling shredded carrots with my fork.

  “Beautiful city,” Mark said.

  It was at least the third time we’d covered that particular topic.

  Mom nodded. “Yes.”

  Long silence. I chewed on a piece of lettuce that tasted like nothing at all and waited for Mark to say how nice the hotel was.

  “It’s a lovely hotel,” Mark said.

  Mom shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Another long silence.

  “So, did Lisa come with you?” Mom asked at last.

  Mark shook his head. “She stayed with our daughter.” His eyes flickered toward me and back to Mom. “With Casey.”

  “Of course. So. Is she working, or…”

  “Not right now. She’s a full-time parent.”

  “And you have a full-time income. Must be nice,” Mom said.

  Mark just shook his head and didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t see why she had to be bitchy about it. It wasn’t Mark’s fault that no one wanted to buy her weird photographs. Maybe she was pissed off to find out he was so wealthy. After all, he’d never paid a penny of child support. I wondered if that would change now, since he’d finally decided to meet me.

  Still, I couldn’t help noticing that Mark wasn’t asking me anything. If he was here because he wanted to get to know me, you’d think he’d show some interest. I pushed my plate away. “I’m not really hungry. Um, Karma?”

  She stuck another French fry into her mouth. “What?”

  “Ready to go for a walk?”

  She looked at her plate. “No.”

  “Come on…” I kicked her gently under the table.

  She looked up at me.

  I mouthed, “Please?”

  Karma sighed, casting a final regretful look at her unfinished hamburger. “Okay. Okay.”

  Karma wandered around, but I stayed close to the restaurant entrance, hidden behind a giant potted palm tree, watching Mom and Mark. I wished I could hear their conversation, but they were a good thirty or forty feet away with several tables of chattering people between us.

  Mom was leaning toward him. I could imagine what she was saying. She’d be telling him to get on with it, spit it out, say why he was here.

  Mark put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his knuckles.

  Mom folded her hands in her lap.

  He was talking. Talking. Talking.

  Then Mom suddenly tensed. She raised her voice, but I couldn’t hear the words. She started to stand, and Mark grabbed her arm.

  Mom sank back into her seat and he let go of her wrist, leaning toward her.

  I couldn’t imagine what they could be talking about. Maybe he wanted me to visit and Mom was saying no. Or…

  Stone, I told myself. Be as hard as stone. Be ice. Don’t let yourself care. I swallowed hard and my throat was so tight it felt like I was swallowing marbles. Even if Mark wanted me to visit, I wasn’t sure I would. He hadn’t ever wanted to meet me before. Why should he get what he wanted now?

  A man at the table closest to the entrance stood up, blocking my view. Karma sidled up to me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. It looked like they were fighting, but I couldn’t hear anything.” I leaned to one side, trying to see them without being obvious. A waitress standing just inside the entrance gave me an odd look. I ignored her. The man sat back down, but I couldn’t even see Mom’s and Mark’s faces—just their heads bent low over the table in conversation.

  “What do you think of him?” Karma asked. “Do you like him?”

  I shrugged.

  “He looks like you, don’t you think?”

  “I guess. Sort of. I mean, for a middle-aged man.”

  “I think he looks like a movie star,” Karma said.

  I snorted. “He looks like a middle-aged lawyer, which is what he is.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “Like that guy, what’s his name? In that movie where the girl gets kidnapped and—”

  “Shut up a minute,” I told her. Mom had just pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “I wonder what they’re talking about.”

  “Old times, I bet,” Karma said. “I wonder if he was ever my mom’s boyfriend. Then he’d sort of be like my dad too.”

  “Oh, Karma…” I looked at her, wondering what to say. Most of the time she was such a tough, scrappy little kid and then she’d come out with something like this, and I’d feel so sad for her. I’d remember that she was really an orphan, just like in all the old-fashioned kids’ books I used to read—Mary in the Secret Garden, Anne in Anne of Green Gables, Sara Crewe in The Little Princess. Though of course in the end Sara turned out not to be an orphan after all. I opened my mouth to say something lame about how it was okay just being the three of us, her and me and Mom—but next thing I knew, Mom came flying out of the restaurant. She grabbed both me and Karma. “Let’s go.”

  She hustled us across the lobby, and out through the automatic doors. I pulled free. “Mom! What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer. A soft rain was falling. I started to cry. “Stop it, Mom. You can’t do this. Just tell me what happened, okay?”

  Mom just pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head. She kept walking, down the hill and into the underground parking lot. “Not now, Dylan. Get in the car.”

  “Mom!”

  “Don’t argue, Dylan.” She was almost shouting. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so upset. “You too, Karma.”

  Karma got in the car, her eyes wide and scared. I hesitated. “Please…can’t I just run back and say goodbye?”

  Mom banged the palms of her hands against the car roof. “Get in the goddamn car, Dylan.”

  I got in and slammed the door behind me so hard the jolt made my whole arm ache. Mom reversed out of the parking spot, swore as she almost hit the back of a pickup truck and drove quickly out of the parking garage. I stared out the car window, twisting around to watch the hotel disappear behind us.

  What the hell was her problem? It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t even imagine what Mark could have said or done to make Mom walk out like that. She’d already practically agreed that I could go to Ontario to visit. I opened my mouth to beg for an explanation, but something—some fear—stopped me. What if it was something really bad? For all I knew, Mark could’ve spent the last ten years in jail for child molestation or murder or something. Maybe he had just told my mother something horrible. Something I would rather not know.

  I pushed my knuckles against the sharp edge of my teeth and closed my eyes s
o tightly it hurt. I could feel hot tears squeezing out anyway. Karma’s small warm hand touched mine. A tentative touch, a firmer grasp, a long squeeze. I squeezed back gratefully, but after a minute, I pulled away. Karma knew how it felt to lose a real parent. What had I lost? Nothing.

  The drive home was long and silent. It was still raining, a steady tap-splatter-tap against the windshield. The wipers squeaked and the one on the passenger side left a wide swath of window unwiped. I felt myself retreating further and further inside. Like one of those Russian dolls. Like a snail. I wished I could just curl up inside a shell and be left alone.

  When we had pulled into the driveway, my mother turned off the engine but didn’t get out of the car. Without turning to look at us, she spoke. “Listen….”

  I froze, one hand on the door handle, not sure whether I wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “I’m sorry I dragged you two out of there like that,” she said, her words coming out slow and careful, like she’d spent the drive planning exactly what she would say. “The thing is, I don’t think Mark is someone that we want in our lives.”

  I stared at my hands. My nails had a scattering of white marks across them, like tiny little scars. “Why?” My voice was a hoarse whisper. “What did he say?”

  She shook her head. “As your mother, it is my job to make the decisions that I think are best for you—”

  I cut her off, anger starting to build inside me like static electricity. I could feel the tiny hairs on my arms lifting. “Since when?” I said. “Since when do you base your decisions on what’s best for us?”

  “Dylan…”

  “No, really. Because it seems to me that it’s always all about you and what you want.” I would have said more, but beside me, Karma was starting to cry silently, tears welling up and spilling over. She wiped them away fiercely when she saw me looking, and turned to face the window.

  Mom shook her head. “He’s a selfish asshole. He always was.” She looked at me, and then looked away, blinking. Her eyes were wet. “Just do your best to forget about him, Dylan. Please.”

  “She wouldn’t even give you an explanation?” Toni asked. She scrunched her nose and wrinkled her forehead like this was the weirdest thing she’d ever heard.