by Foxglove Lee
I shrugged as Braces the Waitress started awkwardly setting glasses of orange juice and cups of coffee down on the table. She looked like she was really struggling not to spill stuff over the sides.
“I thought you and Zachary had a plan to set up your own theatre company,” my dad said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Are you cooling off on the idea of being an actress?” my dad asked.
“What kind of director’s gonna hire an actress with a bum leg? I can’t do musicals if I can’t dance, so what’s the point?”
“That’s why setting up your own company would be perfect.” He took a sip of black coffee while Amy poured cream in hers. “Then you could direct plays, and maybe give yourself roles with no dancing. You’d really enjoy that, I bet.”
He was right, but something kept me from saying so. The silence between us must have made Amy the Architect uncomfortable, because she stood and whispered, “I’m just going to wash my hands before breakfast gets here.”
My dad stood too, and stepped out of the booth so Amy could get by him.
And then it happened: she quietly said, “Be right back,” and leaned in close and kissed my dad on the cheek.
My dad looked like a statue. His eyes shot wide open, and then Amy’s did too as she glanced awkwardly in my direction. She must have done it without thinking. She must have done it because it’s what she usually did. She must have forgotten I was there.
Amy the Architect’s cheeks broke out in a blush. She slipped away just as the waitress approached with my chocolate chip pancakes.
I vaguely heard my father say thank you to the girl with the holiday braces, but he didn’t say anything to me. I doubt I’d have been able to hear him anyway. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the clatter of cutlery or other diners chatting. The only sound in my ears was the sound of the ocean, like when you listen to the inside of a seashell.
My throat burned too much to eat. I just stared at the chocolate chip pancakes in front of me, stared at them in a daze, trying desperately not to cry.
Chapter Six
Because I was visiting, my dad had taken Christmas week off from his usual job. When it snowed the day before Christmas Eve, he told me he’d been picking up extra cash by shovelling driveways.
Shovelling driveways? That’s what my older brother Graham did for pocket money. If I was too young for a part time job, my dad was definitely too old for one. But the water was off at his house again, and with the kitchen full of noisy workers I didn’t want to stay there alone.
“Do you have an extra shovel?” I asked. “I can come with you. I can help.”
My dad looked over his shoulder from inside the toolshed. He was wearing the bulky ski jacket he’d had since the 70s and insulated winter gloves. “Are you sure you can handle it?” he asked. “Shovelling is physically demanding work.”
I knew exactly what he was implying, and I shot back, “Just because my foot is stupid doesn’t mean I can’t shovel a driveway. I can do anything anyone else can do.”
He looked like he didn’t know what to say. He just grabbed an extra shovel and handed it to me. Then he led me down his gravel driveway, which he didn’t bother shoveling because he didn’t have a car.
Even the day before Christmas Eve, his fans were out in droves. Most of them had gone home when the snow fell, but some huddled under umbrellas sat there staring at the house. The garbage can fire burned brightly and the barbeque beard man cooked hotdogs. No sign of the popcorn machine, but someone had brought an urn of hot cider and people filled mugs they must have brought from home.
Things hadn’t been totally comfortable with my dad since that thing at Darla’s Grill, but I told myself I must have misread Amy’s affection. It was just a kiss on the cheek. That didn’t have to mean anything.
As for snow shovelling, we got into a routine pretty fast. My dad went up to each house and knocked at the door while I waited on the road. If the people inside didn’t want their driveway shovelled we moved on. If they did, he turned around and gave me a thumbs-up. I worked up from the street and he worked down from the house and we’d meet somewhere near the middle. Teamwork!
Until he noticed me walking a little funnier than usual and asked, “Sylvie, are you sure you’re wearing your leg brace?”
I didn’t want to lie, so I turned the tables on him. “Mom thinks she has to protect me from everything and you think I’m a gimp? That’s nice, dad. Thanks a lot.”
“Sylvie, you know I don’t think that. I just don’t want you pushing yourself too hard.” And then he surprised me by asking, “How is your mother doing, anyway?”
My suspicions burbled up and I said, “What do you care?”
Oh no! Why did I ask that question? It was so obvious what I was talking about and I really didn’t want to get into it.
“I’ll always care about your mother, Sylvie.” He walked through the unshovelled snow between us and brushed my bangs out of my eyes, which made me want to cry. He hardly ever did those tender things, but when he did it meant something. “I’ll always care about Mom just like I’ll always care about you and your brothers and your sisters. I might not live in the same house with you anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about the six of you. I do. Every day.”
“Then why don’t you come back home?” I pleaded. I didn’t mean to. I felt stupid asking, like a little kid. “Just sell the crappy old house and move back in with us. Mom cries all the time. I know she misses you.”
“Sylvie…”
“Don’t you Sylvie me!” Dropping my shovel in the snow, I stormed off down the sidewalk.
I probably should have been more careful. I probably should have noticed where the curb gave way to the road, because my foot sure did. It sunk into that big pile of unplowed street snow and I did a face-plant.
Behind me, I heard my dad cry out, “Sylvie! Sylvie, are you okay?”
His hands found my shoulders and he heaved me up as I pushed up off the road. There was snow all over my face. I could feel it there, melting on my skin, making me hot and cold at the same time. I didn’t stand. I didn’t want to. I sat on the side of the road, letting winter’s chill creep up my pants.
“Are you okay?” my dad asked as he kneeled beside me in the snow. He was going to get his jeans all wet.
I wanted to show him how angry and betrayed I felt about Amy the Architect. Out of nowhere I asked, “Are you cheating on Mom?”
“What? No! Sylvie, your mother and I are separated.”
“Yeah, separated, but not divorced.”
“Separated, divorced… Sylvie, it amounts to the same thing: the marriage is over.”
Nooo! My mind wouldn’t stop screaming that word. Nooo! Nooo! Nooo! “Does Mom know?”
“Yes, Sylvie. It was a mutual decision.”
“Is it because you were cheating on her?”
My dad smiled and cocked his head like he thought I was crazy. “No, honey, I never cheated on your mom. It’s just like we told you when we sat you kids down: sometimes people who’ve been married a long time just realize they have nothing in common anymore. It isn’t always a big thing that causes a divorce. Sometimes it’s a lot of little things.”
“Says you,” I shot back, looking away from him.
He sat back on his feet, still kneeling at my side. “Sylvie, where is this coming from?”
“From Amy,” I spat. It was all coming out now. “She kissed you at Darla’s Grill. She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?”
My father looked me straight in the eye and pursed his lips, not in an angry way, just in a way like he didn’t know what to say. Finally, he admitted, “Yes, Amy is my girlfriend.”
“Was she your girlfriend when you were still living with us?”
“What? No! We didn’t even meet each other until I was looking at houses in Erinville.”
I didn’t want to believe him, but I knew he was telling the truth. I could see it in his eyes.
“Are you hurt
?” he asked.
Hurt by what? By the fact that my parents for sure weren’t getting back together? By the fact that my family would never live the way we used to? By the fact that my dad was dating a woman who drove a little red car with no garbage on the floor or gum stuck to the seats?
I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and said, “What do you think?”
Pushing myself up off the ground without my father’s help, I stormed down the street. He didn’t follow me this time. He just let me go, which was pretty unfortunate, because I had no idea where I was walking. We’d come from the opposite direction, but I didn’t want to retrace my steps and have to walk by him and finish this conversation.
“You look positively distraught.”
Gasping, I turned to find Celeste leaning against a tree on someone’s front lawn. “Don’t do that,” I said, hiding how pleased I was to see her. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“My apologies.” Celeste kicked through the snow and took my hand and I let her. “Did you come here looking for me?”
“No, I didn’t even know you lived here. I just couldn’t stand being around my dad for another minute.” I told her why while we walked along the snowy street, and she listened politely. She didn’t offer any advice, which was fine. I didn’t want any. Then I asked, “Hey, why did you run away yesterday when my dad came by?”
Celeste smiled gently and said, “I’m not overly fond of the male of the species.”
I could feel myself blushing. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“Are you?” Celeste asked. “I apologize if this sounds forward, but it seemed perhaps you weren’t. One has auspicious feelings about these things. Feelings that cannot be spoken—must not be spoken.”
Everything Celeste said sounded like poetry, and I wasn’t good with poetry. “Are you talking about crushes and stuff? I don’t really get them. Have you ever asked your other friends about all this?”
“I can’t say I have a great many friends,” Celeste replied, sadly.
“I do.” For a second, I was going to stop there. But there was something about Celeste. I felt like I could really trust her. I felt like I could tell her things I’d never told anyone. And so I said, “Sometimes I worry they’re just being nice because they don’t think I could make friends on my own. Because of my foot. Does that make sense?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Celeste said. “Explain it to me.”
“Well, Zachary used to be my only friend. We’ve always been friends, ever since kindergarten. Kids used to make fun of him and call him gay. Well, they still do, but everyone used to just ignore me until I got my nerve damage. After that it was like they went out of their way to be super-super nice. Sometimes they talk to me like I’m stupid or like I’m an old person or a puppy.”
“I see what you mean.” Tightening her grip on my hand, Celeste said, “It sounds as though you question whether they are true friends at all.”
“Yeah, exactly. Like, are they being nice to me or making fun of me? It’s hard to know sometimes, so instead of being nice back I…”
I didn’t want to tell Celeste. She was the first person I’d met in a long time who genuinely seemed to like me. What would she think if I told her I’d been called down to the Vice-Principal’s office three times for bullying? Mrs. Weaver never seemed to understand. All the girls would say, “We were just being nice. We were just trying to help her,” and nobody heard the tone of their voices. Nobody heard it but me, and I didn’t need their pity.
So I didn’t tell Celeste any of that. Instead, I asked, “Have you seen Show Boat?”
She cocked her head. “Show Boat?”
“Yeah, the musical.”
Recognition sparked and her eyes lit up. “Ahh yes, I do recall Show Boat: Old Man River, After the Ball, Can’t Help Loving That Man—so many classics.”
“It’s playing at the new theatre in North York. I went with Zachary. Our moms bought tickets as a surprise early Christmas present.”
“How lovely,” Celeste said with a smile.
“Yeah, well we’ve been listening to the world premiere cast recording since October. Zachary calls us Show Boat and Slow Boat. You can guess which one I am.”
Celeste’s eyebrows went up. “That’s awful.”
I shrugged. “It’s kind of funny, if you ask me. I walk slow so I won’t trip. Big whoop. When Zachary teases me, I know it’s because we’re good friends. If we weren’t so close, he would be just like everyone else: over-nice and treating me like an invalid.”
Swinging my hand, Celeste she started singing a song from Show Boat: “Why do I love you?”
I couldn’t resist. I answered in song: “Why do you love me?”
And then we both sang together: “Why should there be two happy as we?”
Zachary and I performed this song together all the time. We had a whole routine worked out for it. But singing it with Celeste was more fun, even if her voice wasn’t as strong as Zachary’s.
As we walked in the tire tracks of that unknown Erinville street, a group of girls came up on the horizon. Most of them were wearing puffy NBA starter jackets with team names emblazoned on them. Those girls didn’t dress anything like Celeste. They looked more like the girls at my school, but they acted exactly just the opposite.
“Are you singing show tunes?” one of the girls asked, mocking us.
“Why are you singing show tunes on our street?” another girl chimed in.
In about five seconds, the gaggle of girls was right in our faces.
That’s when I knew we were in trouble.
Big trouble…
Chapter Seven
One of the girls got right up in my face and burped. “Ha! My burp sounds better than your song!”
The girls all laughed.
“On this street, you can only sing Ace of Base,” someone shouted.
“Yeah, they’re the best!”
Half the group of Erinville girls started singing Don’t Turn Around while the other half sang The Sign. Both were equally loud and off-key, but at least they’d found another focus. The competing gangs stood so close together Celeste and I struggled to slip through a gap. All I could think about was that scene from West Side Story where the Sharks fight the Jets.
“Hey, look how she’s walking!” one of the girls said. When her friends turned to watch, she swooped her leg around in an exaggerated motion. Was that supposed to be me?
Then they all started doing it, planting one foot heavily in the snow and then swerving the other leg around, landing gingerly on their toes. “Duhhh George!”
“Duhhh George!” they all shouted. “Duhhh George!”
My jaw dropped. Now I wished they’d go back to making fun of Show Boat.
“She’s not even from here,” a girl with a slicked back ponytail said. “Her dad bought the ghost house.”
“Haw-haw!”
They laughed as they walked down the street imitating me but also singing Ace of Base songs. Celeste and I turned to watch them go, on high alert in case they turned around to come after us. Eventually they must have forgotten we were there, because they started pushing each other around, teasing, shoving snow down the backs of each other’s coats.
“Do you know those girls?” I asked Celeste.
“I’ve seen them around town,” she replied.
“So they’re not in your class?”
She said nothing.
I don’t know how long we stood there in the middle of the road, just watching our tormentors, making sure they were through bothering us. It didn’t make sense that I could push around girls at my school because they were too nice to me, but when it came to the brats of Erinville I couldn’t speak up for myself. Those girls deserved a punch in the mouth. I should have run after them. I should have plunged their stupid faces in the ground. I should have done something. Anything!
Just when I got the idea to throw snowballs at their heads, a pick-up truck honked and flashed its high beams. Celeste and
I shrieked, because it came out of nowhere. After we’d moved out of its way, Celeste took my hand and sang, “Why do I love you?”
That brought a smile to my face. I joined in and we sang even louder than before. I didn’t even worry about whether it sounded nice. By the time we’d arrived at my father’s house, we were just laughing and screaming the lyrics.
“Want to come inside?” I asked.
Celeste shrugged and we entered the unlocked house which was, mercifully, quiet. Dad’s workers had even left a plate of Christmas cookies and a nice card saying they’d see him after Boxing Day. That meant my dad and I would be spending Christmas in a house without a working kitchen.
Great. Just great.
At least they’d installed the new sink into the new countertop, but there was still a lot missing. I turned on the taps and coppery water splashed out.
“How very unpleasant,” Celeste said, turning up her nose.
“It’ll go back to normal in a minute.” I snacked on a sugar cookie while Celeste picked up a piece of blue chalk the workers had left behind. “There. See? Clear water. At least I can take a shower later if I get too cold.”
“There is rather a chill in the air,” Celeste said.
“Sorry.” I picked up the plate of cookies and led Celeste to the front room. “The central heating doesn’t work, so we have to light fires. It’s actually kind of cool.”
“Warm,” Celeste said with a straight face, like she didn’t even realize she was making a joke.
I laughed and set the cookies down on the kitchen table, which Dad’s workers had moved into the front room. My dad had taught me how to arrange newspaper and kindling so the logs would light. Still, it took a while to get the fire going. By the time I turned around, Celeste had drawn all over my father’s table.
“What are you doing?” I cried. “That’s an antique!”
She looked surprised. “It’s only chalk. Chalk rubs off.”
