After three Cokes and an hour of Mike’s stories, I have to pee so bad that I risk a trip to the ladies’ room, which is surprisingly clean. There’s even a hilarious framed poster on the wall. The Sound of Music starring Michael Keene as Captain von Trapp. That must have brought back a few memories of the good old days at Northwood High.
When I come out, I gather up my stuff and shake Mike’s hand. I promise to send him a copy of my paper and I stumble out into the sunshine. I start to cry as I walk to the bus stop. I cry as the bus crosses the bridge to downtown. I cry when I buy a Starbucks Frappuccino. I cry as I walk back to the Y. People turn away from me as if I’m spraying bird flu germs all over them. I have no Kleenex, so I use my sleeve to mop up the snot. I wish Tina was here with her cool washcloth. When I finally get back to my room, she’s the only person I can think of to call, but all I get is her voice mail. I leave a message asking her to meet me tomorrow. Then I climb between the thin sheets and cry myself to sleep.
Chapter Seven
I meet Tina the next afternoon at a café on Robson where a cute barista decorates my latte foam with a wobbly heart. I wish I was more inclined to flirt, but all I can mumble is a lame “Awesome. Thanks” as he lingers by our table.
Tina is wearing the same clothes as before, and there are purple shadows under her eyes. She brushes off my questions about Tom, although she does admit he parties a lot and there’s no food in his kitchen. Just a lot of booze.
“The sooner I get my own place, the better,” she says, “but everything’s so expensive here. I had no idea. I’m probably going to have to live in, I dunno, Surrey. Or find a shared house closer in. It’ll work out, though.” She sips her undecorated black coffee. I wish I’d thought to order her a latte. She needs a foam heart as much as I do. Maybe more.
“You sounded pretty upset on your message. Did you find your dad?” she asks.
“Sort of,” I say. I stab my latte’s heart with a wooden stir stick. “He’s dead. Which makes me an orphan, I guess. Little Orphan Emily. And no Daddy Warbucks in sight.”
“How did you find out that he was dead?”
“His son told me. His very cute son, Mike Junior. My brother. Or half-brother, I should say.”
“No way,” Tina says. She slams her mug onto the table and spills the coffee. “You’ve got a brother. That’s great!”
The cute barista zooms over with a rag and mops up the spreading pool of coffee. He must have been keeping an eye on us, which makes me feel both annoyed and pleased. He refills Tina’s mug and flashes a dazzling smile in my direction before heading back behind the counter.
“He’s flirting with you,” Tina says with a giggle. “He’s cute. Excellent ass.”
“At least he’s not related to me,” I say. “Mike flirted with me too. It was weird. I almost flirted back. But then I kept thinking how grossed out he’d be when he found out I was his half-sister.”
“So you’re going to tell him?” Tina asks.
I groan and put my head in my hands. “I don’t know. Should I?”
Tina leans over and touches my arm. “You don’t have to decide right this minute, you know. He’s not going anywhere, right? Tell me about your dad.”
So I tell her everything that Mike told me. That our dad would bust out singing anywhere, anytime. That he made sure the regulars at the Bull’s Eye didn’t drive drunk. That he always sang “Some Enchanted Evening” to his wife on her birthday. As I talk, it finally sinks in that my father was a real person, not an anonymous sperm-donor. He was a real person who never knew I existed, didn’t know what color my baby poop was, how I got lost at the mall, how I won the English prize in seventh grade.
When I finish talking, I’m crying again and Tina is fishing in her purse for more Kleenex.
“He sounds like a good guy,” she says as my sniffles subside.
“Who?”
“Your dad, I mean, but Mike too. They both sound like good guys.”
“Good guys don’t sleep with their students and cheat on their wives,” I state.
“Even good guys make mistakes,” Tina says gently. “at least you have a bit more information now. You can go home and think about what you want to do with it.”
“Go home?” I say. “You think I should go home?”
“Well, yeah,” she says, looking surprised. “You have to go home sooner or later. And you did what you came to do. You found your dad. And you need to go back to school too. The longer you stay away, the harder it will be to go back. And you have to go back. You need to talk to Sandra. Hang with your friends.”
All of a sudden I am furious with her. She doesn’t even know me. I only met her a few days ago. Why am I even asking her what I should do? She has no idea what my life is like. As I stand up to leave, she stands with me and says my name very softly. “Emily.”
“What?” I growl.
“Your mom needs you.”
“I don’t have a mom,” I say. I sling my pack over my shoulder. “Remember?”
“We both have mothers,” she replies. “They’re just not who we want them to be.”
“You got that right,” I mutter as I stomp out of the café. On the way out, the cute barista hands me a slip of paper. I crumple it up and throw it on the ground. Behind me, Tina bends over to pick it up. She stops and says something to the barista—probably apologizing for my rudeness—and I break into a run. I’m halfway down Robson Street in no time, breathing hard and sweating. Tina is nowhere in sight.
“Smooth move, Emily,” I say out loud. I figure there are so many crazies on the street that one more babbling lunatic won’t matter. Maybe I’m more like Donna than I thought. Maybe soon I’ll be hearing voices telling me to steal a jacket from Banana Republic, but for now all I hear are the noises of the city. And my cell phone, which plays the first few notes of James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” Which I don’t, especially when I look at the display and realize it’s the un-mom calling.
I’m not ready to talk to her, and I am not sure that I ever will be. I put the phone back in my pack. I carry on down Robson all the way to Denman and then down Denman to the ocean. Along the way I grab a mango gelato and a chocolate cupcake. Nobody flirts with me, the food tastes too sweet and I am beginning to regret throwing away the cute barista’s number. If I stay in Vancouver, I’ll need a friend. Even if I only stay one more night. Maybe I could take him back to the Bull’s Eye with me. Maybe we could just grab a burger somewhere and chat. Like normal people. Except there’s nothing normal about me right now.
I sit on the grass in front of the Sylvia Hotel. I take the picture of Donna and Sandra out of my pack. I hold the photograph in my hand and stare at where they posed for it. It dawns on me that I am in the picture too—invisible but present, already a force in two women’s lives. Until this moment, my tears have all been for myself—my loss, my pain, my anger. As I stare at Sandra and Donna, I see for the first time the look of confusion on Donna’s face, the expression of love on Sandra’s. I see Donna’s hand caressing her belly—caressing me. And I see Sandra’s arm supporting her sister. Questions whir in my brain like wasps in an empty beer bottle. The hotel isn’t about to give me any answers, nor is the photograph, so I take the little pink blanket out of my pack, ball it up into a pillow, lie down and go to sleep.
The next thing I know, I hear a voice say, “Is she dead, Mommy?” and I open my eyes to see a tiny girl in a red dress standing over me.
“Get away from there, Amy,” her mother says sharply, as if I’m contagious or something.
Might as well be dead, I think. I gather up my stuff and trudge back to the Y.
Chapter Eight
The next day I get on the bus and go home. I can’t think of anything more to do in Vancouver, and I’m running out of money anyway. The woman who sits next to me on the bus opens a People magazine the minute she sits down. For a second I miss Tina and her particular brand of nosiness. I’m starting to worry about all the school I’ve missed. Eight days off s
chool in grade twelve is a lot, and the possibility of not graduating is truly horrifying. Another year with the un-mom? No way that’s gonna happen. I’ll just have to work my butt off and get out of there. Maybe Tina and I will share a place in Vancouver. Maybe I’ll travel a bit. Maybe I’ll take a bartending course and learn how to make drinks with ridiculous names. All I know for sure is that I’ll be gone—somewhere.
When I get home, it’s dinnertime and Sandra is out. Probably off having a good time with her friends. The really weird thing is that the house is a mess. There are take-out containers everywhere, dirty clothes piled on top of the washer, gunk on the kitchen floor. Sandra hates sticky floors—she says they make her feel like a fly on flypaper. The mess must mean that she’s either 1) sick, 2) dead or 3) moved away and rented the house to someone whose housekeeping skills are pretty sketchy.
I unglue myself from the kitchen floor and run upstairs. I’m still mad at her, but I don’t want her dead. Not really. The house is going to be a bitch to clean even without a dead body to deal with.
She isn’t lying in a pool of her own blood in her bedroom, nor is she passed out in her office or lying in the tub with the toaster, but there are mugs with cold tea in them on almost every surface. They are on the desk beside her computer, on top of the books on the night table, on the windowsills, on the dresser, on the file cabinet, on the back of the toilet. I even find one in the medicine cabinet next to a half-empty bottle of Ativan. When the un-mom is stressed, she drinks tea, lots and lots of tea. She only takes tranquilizers when she has to fly, and she never lets mold grow in her tea mugs. Not that I know of, anyway. But then there are obviously lots of things I don’t know about Sandra.
I gather up as many mugs as I can, take them downstairs and start cleaning up the kitchen. I’ve done two loads of dishes and one load of laundry (my own—I’m not a saint), and I’m just filling a pail with soapy water when the back door opens and Sandra walks in. She doesn’t look as if she’s been out having a good time. She looks as if she hasn’t showered, brushed her hair (or her teeth) or changed her clothes since I went away. She could easily generate some extra income bumming change downtown.
“Emily,” she says. “You’re back.” Her voice is soft, and her eyes look sort of blurry. Maybe it’s the drugs. Maybe she’s just really tired.
“Yup,” I say. “I’ve missed enough school. I need to graduate if I’m gonna get out of here.”
“You do,” she says, and I can’t tell if it’s a statement or a question. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Better than you,” I reply. I put the pail of soapy water down on the kitchen floor. “This place is a sty.”
She shrugs and takes off her coat. As she crosses the floor, her muddy shoes leave black marks on the grimy floor.
“It just didn’t seem that important,” she says. “The cleaning, I mean.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You could make penicillin from the crap I found floating in your mugs.”
She smiles at me and for a second it feels like old times—me and Mom, kidding around in the kitchen. Except the kitchen is filthy and she’s not my mom.
“At least take your shoes off,” I say as I wring out the mop.
As she bends down to take off her shoes, I can see that her roots need touching up. I usually do that for her, but when I think about putting my hands in her hair, I want to puke into the sink. I concentrate on washing the floor, changing the water twice, scrubbing away at blobs of jam and what looks like cat shit, even though we don’t have a cat.
When I’m done, I take my stuff up to my room and shut the door. The house is silent. The un-mom isn’t talking on the phone or watching TV or listening to the radio or banging pots and pans in the kitchen. She’s probably doing what I’m doing—lying on her bed with the curtains closed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what to do next.
After a while I hear the doorbell ring, and after that the TV goes on. I try calling Tina, but her phone’s turned off. I’m not ready to talk to Vanessa or Rory. I think about calling Mike Junior, but what would I say? I’m getting pretty hungry, though, and I can’t hear the TV anymore, so I sneak downstairs. I find a note on the kitchen table: Pizza in the fridge—your favorite. I pull out the box from Uncle Tony’s Pizza Patio and take the double cheese, jalapeno and fig pizza into the living room.
When I turn on the light, I see that Sandra is lying on the couch, a ratty old afghan pulled over her head. As I start to leave the room, she mumbles, “Stay, eat your dinner. I’ll go up to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Dream on, I want to say. We’ll talk when I feel like it, which may be never.
“Enjoy your pizza,” she says as she stumbles past me.
“Yeah,” I reply. I watch Law and Order reruns while I eat. I wish I had someone to talk to, but Tina’s phone is still off. I think about going up to the un-mom’s room and waking her up and telling her everything, but I don’t do it. She doesn’t deserve to know about Donna and Michael Keene and Mike Junior. She doesn’t deserve to know about Tina. Or about how lonely and confused I am. Or how I’m afraid I’m going to go crazy, like Donna. Sandra’s lied to me for seventeen years. Now she’s going to find out how it feels.
Chapter Nine
The next morning I go back to school. Everyone assumes I’ve been sick all this time, and I don’t correct them. My body attends every class. I hear my teachers drone on about equations and syntax and global warming. My hand takes notes, my eyes see what’s on the board, but I am not there. Or, to be more accurate, I don’t know who the girl is that is living in my body.
On my way to math class, I pause outside the office and look at the framed photographs that line the hall. They look just like the ones at Northwood, except Donna and Sandra aren’t in them, of course. I am in a few of last year’s pictures: the tennis team, the yearbook staff, the jazz choir. This year Rory and I are co-captains of the tennis team, I’m the editor of the yearbook, and I still sing in the jazz choir, even though I’ll never be as good as Vanessa. I look at Mr. McPherson, the choir leader, who is standing next to me in one of the photos. The thought of sleeping with him makes me itch with disgust. The photos need dusting. I reach out and circle my face in the tennis team photo. Once around, then again and again. Three concentric circles. One for me, one for Donna, one for Michael. Bull’s-eye. I do it on every picture of me before I go to math class.
At lunchtime I head for the smokers’ tree, a huge chestnut that is probably slowly dying from the poisons leaching out of the thousands of cigarette butts that ring its base. I wrote a poem once about a tree that coughs and leaks black sap and eventually dies. Very cheery. None of my friends smoke. Neither do I. The smokers’ tree is as good a place as any to hide.
“Hey,” says a girl who is crouching under the tree, hands deep in an enormous purse. A cigarette is dangling from her glossy lips. “Gotta light?”
“Sorry, no,” I say. “I, uh, don’t smoke.”
She looks at me as if I’m insane. She calls to a boy who is sauntering across the field to the tree, hands in the pockets of his hoodie.
“Hey, Jared, gotta light?”
A small silver object arcs through the air, and her hand flicks out and snags the lighter. Her reflexes are amazing, like a frog catching a fly. She lights her cigarette and inhales. The tree shudders.
“You’re Emily, right?” she asks. “You’re in my French class.”
I look at her more closely and nod.
“Je m’appelle Christa,” she says. “Voulezvous une cigarette?”
“No, I don’t smoke, ” I say again.
“Bien, que voulez-vous?”
What do I want? That’s certainly a good question. I shrug and lean against the tree trunk. Jared lights up a cigarette, and he and Christa watch me in silence while they smoke. When the bell rings, they nod at each other and stub out their cigarettes.
“Later,” Jared says as they walk away.
“Okay,” I reply. I’m sorry to see t
hem go. I don’t plan on going home until dinnertime—maybe I could hang out with them. At least they won’t pester me with questions, like Vanessa’s been doing.
I’m just about to run after them when I notice that not only is the poor tree being poisoned, but it has been slashed and stabbed as well. There are hundreds of initials and words carved into its tender bark, along with hearts, skulls, flowers, lightning bolts, spiders, guns, swastikas and knives. There’s even a cow, or maybe it’s a horse. I dig in my pack for my nail file and find a bare spot on the far side of the tree, in between a lopsided heart with a crude knife stuck in it and what looks like the word crank or crack. I carve slowly and carefully. One circle, two circles, three. Bull’s-eye. It’s hard work, carving with a nail file, but I finish. My file is toast and I’ve defaced a living thing, but I feel happy for the first time in days. Well, maybe not happy. Maybe just in control.
After school I go to the mall by myself and buy a small Swiss Army knife. When I get to homeroom the next day, I carve a bull’s-eye into my desktop and color it in with a red felt pen. By the time I’m finished, my fingers are bleeding and stained, but I find it comforting to trace the three circles while I listen to Mrs. Gates babble about final exams and graduation. Every desk I sit in gets the same treatment, and by the end of the morning I have carved three bull’s-eyes and am in serious need of first aid. I meet Jared and Christa at the smokers’ tree at noon, and we go to the McDonald’s near the school for Big Macs and fries. I draw a little bull’s-eye on my tray, but it doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as carving.
Bull's Eye Page 3
