Lucy Unstrung

by Carole Lazar

  Mom has pulled into a spot on the side of the trailer opposite the deck.

  “What do you think?” she says.

  “Those pigs have got to go,” I tell her. “I always thought all those rules they have in Greenwood Glade were a bit much. You know, how we all have to have aggregate driveways, and we can only use certain finishes and colors, and everyone has to have exactly nineteen shrubs. Now I’m beginning to understand. Do they have rules about decorating your whole house with pink pigs?” I just can’t see it happening in our subdivision.

  “That’s Mrs. Warren’s place, not ours.”

  Mom is getting out of the car and I realize that our place is the plain, little, brown and cream trailer next to the pig place. Now that I know how much worse it could be, I’m relieved. This is a trailer, plain and simple. No one’s going to think it’s a bungalow. I don’t think anyone would call it a mobile home either. Still, the guy who owns it has taken down his Christmas lights and any pigs he might have had around the place. There’s a small porch at the single door, which is about a third of the way down one side of the trailer. Behind the porch is an unpainted wood lean-to. It has no windows and I can’t see a door. Maybe you can only get to it from the inside of the trailer.

  Oh please, God, I silently pray. Don’t let that be my bedroom.

  Mom doesn’t ask what I think of the new place. For this, I am truly thankful.

  “Come have a look,” she says. “I have the key.”

  So he’s given her the key. It must really be a done deal; it’s probably too late for her to back out.

  I follow her up the three steps onto the little porch, testing the railing as I go. It doesn’t look all that sturdy. Mom opens the door and stands back so I can go in first. What can I say? It’s like walking into the den of some small, burrowing animal. Everything is dark brown. Directly opposite the door is the kitchen sink, set in a row of cupboards done in dark wood. There is no division between this kitchen area and what must be the living room. All the walls are covered in dark wood paneling. There’s a pretty big window at the end of the living room and smaller ones over the sink and next to the door where I’m standing, but all the dark wood totally sucks up the light. The rug in the living room is a mottled brown-and-beige mix. The kitchen linoleum is cream-colored with a very busy brown-and-orange pattern. It extends down the hall.

  Mom closes the door behind us. It’s even darker. I scan the bare room. They’ve left the fridge and stove. There’s no dishwasher. The appliances are baby-poop yellow. I know all about that color because I once started to change the diaper on Siobhan’s little sister Erin and found she had this stuff in her Huggies. Totally gross. I thought something must be seriously wrong with her, but Siobhan said it’s normal for them to have that yellow poop when they aren’t being fed anything but milk. Then she gave me this big lesson on how it gets darker when they start eating solids like meat and vegetables. It was way more than I ever wanted to know about poop, but she was changing the diaper and washing Erin’s bum while she talked, so mostly I was just glad she was such an expert and had taken over. I’d sincerely hoped I’d never see anything like that again. Now here I am with that color being the only bright spot in the trailer.

  “The bedrooms are down this way,” Mom says, steering me to the left down a narrow hall. The first room on the right is the bathroom. It’s a normal size, but it looks smaller because it too is paneled in dark wood. The fixtures are that poopy-yellow color again.

  Mom notices me looking at them.

  “That color is harvest gold,” she says. “It was very big in the late sixties and early seventies. Did you notice the fridge and stove are the same color? It’s sort of retro.”

  That’s not the word I’d use.

  The next door leads to a tiny bedroom. I won’t even talk about the paneling. It’s in every single room. It’s especially awful in such a little room with only one small window.

  The hall ends at a larger bedroom. Same walls, and it looks like they’ve used some of the leftover carpet from the living room. It’s the same color and pattern, but it doesn’t quite cover the whole floor and the edges are all frayed.

  “Of course, we’ll fix it up a bit. You remember what our house was like when we first moved in.” I can tell my mother is trying hard to be cheerful.

  She has a point. Like Dad says, anyone who thinks you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear has never met my mom. She’s really good at fixing places up. When people see our house, they always think we’re kind of rich, which we’re not. Dad and Mom got our place cheap because the people who owned it before us didn’t make their mortgage payments and the bank foreclosed. Then the bank had trouble selling it because the house hadn’t been kept up very well. You wouldn’t know it was the same house now. So maybe Mom’s right. Maybe she can make this place nice too, or at least nicer. Anything’s bound to be an improvement.

  “It will be a challenge,” I say.

  “What colors would you like in your room?”

  “What would go with all that wood?”

  “Oh, I thought we’d paint over it, but if you like the wood, we can …”

  “No, no. Paint sounds good.”

  We haven’t been in the trailer long, but there isn’t much to see, so we lock up and head back to Surrey. She’s going to drop me off at Dad’s. It’s a quiet ride.

  Dad’s home when we get there. He says he has things to discuss with Mom. I go upstairs because I just want to be alone anyway. I look around my bedroom. When Dad and Mom were fixing it up last spring, Dad took the doors off one of my closets and made it into a study nook. I can’t remember if my new bedroom even has a closet. It must. It’s probably disguised. Press one of the wood panels and it will give way to reveal … a wood paneled closet.

  Siobhan comes over to visit later in the afternoon and I tell her about our new place.

  “And how do you feel about that?” she asks in that kind of phony voice our school counselor, Mrs. Blanchard, always uses.

  “Well, it will be a relief to settle a bit and lose this crazy schedule I’ve been on.”

  “But it’s in Langley.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Langley.”

  “But it’s so far away. My mom won’t ever want to drive me there to visit.”

  “You can still visit me when I’m at my dad’s,” I say.

  “Yeah, but what about when your house is sold?”

  “We can visit at his new place. He’ll have to get an apartment or something, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind coming to get you.”

  “If he has half a brain, he’ll get a place in Vancouver or Burnaby so he doesn’t have that three hours of commuting every day.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but she’s right. It would make more sense for him to live closer to his work.

  “Well, my mom will drive me to your house,” I say. “And it’s not like we’ll be living there for long. It’s just temporary.”

  “And how are you going to get to school?” she asks. “Your grandma’s not going to want to drive all the way to Langley to get you.”

  “No one would even think of asking her to do that. I’ll manage on my own. I can take the bus, like you do.”

  Siobhan catches the school bus at Sacred Heart, the elementary school that’s only two blocks from her house. “Do they have a school bus coming in from Langley?” she asks.

  “They must. I’ll get Mom to check where I have to go to catch it.” I’m trying to sound really confident and sure of myself as I explain things to Siobhan, but she’s got me a bit worried. I wonder if Mom has thought of any of this. I decide to call her Sunday night to ask her to check where I have to go to catch the bus from Langley to Holy Name.

  It’s the first thing I ask about when she gets back to the apartment Monday after work.

  “Have you walked the dog?” she asks.

  “Yes, of course. First thing, like she gave me any choice.” I try to sound stern, but I don’t do a good j
ob of it. The dog is finally over that crazy spell she had when I first came in, and now she’s sleeping. Guess where? On my lap. She thinks she owns me.

  “But about the school bus …”

  “Why don’t I get dinner together first,” she says. “Then we can have a real talk about it.”

  Why does this reply make me feel uneasy? She doesn’t have to draw me a map. I just want to know if the school bus leaves from somewhere I can walk to or if I’ll maybe have to take a city bus to hook up with it. I’ve never taken a city bus, but how hard can it be?

  She keeps me hanging until we’re finished eating and then she drops the bomb. “I called the school today,” she says. “There is no bus in from Langley. Their buses leave from Sacred Heart in Surrey and from Our Lady of the Sea in White Rock. That’s it.”

  I’m trying to think of a Plan B. “Well, could you drop me off on your way to work?”

  “It would mean you’d get to school at eight o’clock.”

  “That would be okay. I could go to mass before school started.” I like the idea. Grandma would be really impressed, and if I was that holy, maybe God would listen to me for a change and my mom and dad would get back together again. I’m thinking I should pray that they buy another house close to Siobhan’s when they get back together.

  “It’s the afternoons that won’t work,” Mom’s saying. “I’m not off till four-thirty and traffic is bad by then. I wouldn’t be able to pick you up till five.”

  “If I have to wait, I have to wait.”

  “They’re not running a babysitting service there, Lucy. They clear that school and lock up the doors as soon as any after-school games are finished. Remember the time you forgot your library book in your locker and we went back to get it?”

  I do. We had to run around knocking on one door after another. They were all locked and no one heard us. Finally, Mom saw a custodian working in a classroom and went up and knocked on the window.

  “Poor Grandma,” I say. “It will be such a long drive for her, and I suppose she’ll get caught up in rush hour after she drops me off and starts back home.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mom yells. “You leave your grandmother out of this.”

  “Well, how else am I supposed to get home?”

  “How could you even think of asking her? And don’t bother trying to do it behind my back. Even if she agrees, I won’t let her do it.”

  “You don’t have to have a fit about it,” I say. “You don’t like my idea, so fine. Do you have a better one?”

  “There’s a public high school just a few blocks down the road from the trailer park. The only plan that makes sense is for you to finish the school year there.”

  At first, I am totally speechless. I won’t know a single person. I’ve never been to a public school. I start to cry. “I’ll get pregnant, just like you did. I don’t want to be a mother when I’m fourteen.”

  My mother rolls her eyes. “So Grandma’s managed to blame that on the public schools?”

  “She said the supervision on the ski trip you went on wasn’t good enough.”

  “So you won’t go on any ski trips, okay?”

  “But I won’t know anyone there.”

  “You’ll meet other kids. Maybe you’ll even make friends with someone who lives close by. Think how nice that would be. You and Siobhan never see as much of each other as you’d like because you live so far apart and have to wait till someone’s free to give you a ride. Think what it would be like to have a friend to walk to school with each day.”

  I try to imagine meeting someone new who would want to be this kind of friend. I can’t.

  “Once the house sells, I’ll have more money,” she says. “And I’ll start looking for another place in Surrey. Hopefully you’ll be back at Holy Name by September. This is just temporary.”

  It seems like everything in my life is temporary these days.

  “And public school will be a good experience for you. You’ll have all sorts of adventures to tell Siobhan about.”

  Right. I read the papers. I’ll get to learn about putting condoms on bananas. I’m sure Siobhan’s mother will be real happy if I start teaching Siobhan stuff like that.

  That night, I lie awake tossing and turning. I have to come up with a plan. In the morning, I call Grandma and tell her I really need to see a priest. I want her to pick me up after school. If she’ll drive me to Saint Francis, I can walk back to her place after I’m finished my appointment.

  Grandma is too good a Catholic to say no or to ask why I need to talk to a priest. She probably thinks I’ve committed a really bad sin. If I had and she didn’t help me get to confession right away, I might get hit by a truck and go to hell and it would all be her fault. So she just says sure, she’ll pick me up from school.

  Then I call Mom and tell her I want to visit Grandma this afternoon. Mom says she’ll come and get me there when she’s finished work.

  Grandma picks me up after school and drops me off in front of the church about three-thirty. I go into the parish office. The lady at the desk looks like she’s been sucking lemons. She eyes me up and down. I’m wearing my school uniform. I’m not one of those girls who roll up the waistband of the kilt to make it shorter. I look like a good Catholic girl, I’m sure of it.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asks.

  I shake my head no.

  “Both Father Mac and Father Tony are very busy,” she says. “They don’t have time to just chat with visitors.”

  “Excuse me? I didn’t come here just to chat …” I don’t get to finish my sentence.

  “Lucy!” Father Tony says. “I’m so glad you dropped by.”

  I was actually hoping to talk to Father Mac because he at least has some manners. He’d never tell me I looked like a dog. Still, Father Tony is better than old prune-face here.

  I follow him down a long hall to his office. When we get there, he leaves the door partway open.

  “I’ve come to talk to you about personal matters,” I say. “Shouldn’t we close the door?”

  He opens it wider. “From my desk, I’ll be able to see if anyone comes near enough to hear,” he says.

  I guess that’s okay. “It’s about my parents and about school,” I tell him.

  He makes a little tent with his fingers and waits.

  “You probably didn’t know, but my mom and dad have split up.”

  “Actually, I did know. Your dad and I have talked about it.”

  “Well, I was going to stay with Dad, but he works too late at night and so he can’t really look after me.” He nods.

  “So I’m going to have to live with Mom, but she has hardly any money and the only place she could afford to rent is in Langley.”

  “That’s a long way from your friends, isn’t it?”

  I just nod. No need to tell him I really only have one friend. “The thing is, though, they don’t have a bus from Langley to Holy Name, so Mom wants me to finish the school year in a public school.”

  He doesn’t look as worried as I thought he would.

  “My faith is very important to me; I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be going to a public school where they teach you to put condoms on bananas and don’t even allow you to pray.”

  A funny look comes over Father Tony’s face. He puts his elbow on his desk and props his chin up with his hand, half covering his mouth.

  “The thing is, Mom could drop me off at Holy Name on her way to work. That way, I’d get to go to mass every day. I think that would be very good for my spiritual growth.”

  He lowers his forearm down to the desk and I can see that he’s been smiling. I imagine it makes a priest happy to learn that a person is serious about her religion and wants to be really holy.

  “The problem is with after school. Mom couldn’t pick me up till five o’clock and that’s too late. I’m sure my grandma would come and get me, but Mom says I’m not supposed to ask her. She says, even if Grandma agrees to it, Mom won’t
let her.”

  “How old is your grandma?”

  “She’s way older than you’d expect. Sixty-seven, I think. She didn’t get married till she was thirty-six.”

  “So your mom is maybe worried about her taking on too much?”

  “I don’t see why. I mean, Grandma’s blood pressure gets a little out of hand sometimes, but usually she’s pretty healthy. Anyway, I was thinking that maybe you could have a talk with her and Mom. You know, explain to them how they have a duty to make sure I have a Catholic education. I think they’d listen to a priest.”

  He sits there looking at his hands for a second or two. “I don’t think that would be a wise thing for me to do, Lucy. I’m sure I could persuade your grandma. You could do that yourself, couldn’t you?”

  I nod.

  “The problem would be your mother. I don’t think she’d listen to me. She’d just be mad at me for interfering.”

  I feel deflated. Especially because I know he’s probably right.

  “I don’t think you need to worry about losingour faith even if you do go to a public school for a couple of months. Lots of very devout Catholics have done all their schooling in the public system.” He must see how sad I look because he carries on and says, “Look, I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll have a talk with Sister Cecile. I suspect that there are other students who attend Holy Cross but live in Langley. They’ll have made some sort of transportation arrangement. Maybe we can get you a ride with one of them.”

  I smile for the first time since I’ve come in. I hadn’t even thought of that. I walk out of there feeling like the problem’s finally solved.