by Carole Lazar
“She won’t wake up,” I say.
Siobhan’s dad looks at me but says to Colleen, “You better take this one too. If she’s been as sick as she smells, she should at least be checked out.”
He gets me into the backseat and helps me with my seat belt. Siobhan’s mom has started the engine.
“Don’t worry ’bout me,” I say. “The thing is, Siobhan won’t …”
“Shut up, Lucy. I know she won’t wake up. You’ve told me about twenty times,” Siobhan’s mom says.
Her dad goes back into the house and we drive away. I must fall asleep.
twenty
Next thing I know, there are lights all around me. Someone’s taking Siobhan out of the front seat. Someone is saying my name, asking me questions. It’s a strange woman, and she undoes my seat belt and helps me out of the car. There’s a wheelchair there, and she guides me into it. We’re at the emergency department of the hospital. They’ve already taken Siobhan in. They leave me in the waiting room, but Siobhan and her mom go into another room where there are beds with curtains around them.
Is she going to be okay? Why would she be unconscious? There’s no one here to ask, just some guy holding a bloody cloth to his head and a lady with a baby who is fussing and coughing.
The entrance we came through has big double doors that open automatically. Now they open again, and my mom and dad come in together. They see me right away, which isn’t hard because, like I say, there’s hardly anyone else in the waiting room. Mom comes running over and kneels down by the wheelchair so her head’s even with mine.
“Are you all right?” she asks. “Have they checked you yet?”
I shake my head no.
“How do you feel?” Dad asks.
“Not wonderful,” I say. “But, Dad, Siobhan won’t wake up. She’s unconscious.” The tears start to come. At first they just slide down my cheeks while I’m trying to talk. “What if she dies?”
Mom puts her arms around me. I don’t know how she stands it because I know I smell very bad. Somehow it makes me cry harder. Dad goes and answers some questions so the nurse at the front desk can fill out a form. I calm myself down a bit so that when another nurse comes to get me I can at least talk to her.
She wheels me into a small office. She takes my blood pressure and my temperature. All the time she’s asking me questions.
“What were you drinking?”
“Irish Cream,” I answer.
“And how much did you have?”
“About three-quarters of a glass.”
“What about your friend, was she drinking the same thing?”
I nod.
“Did she have the same amount you had?”
“A little more,” I tell her. “We started out with the same, but I started feeling sick so I went to the bathroom. When I came back, Siobhan’s drink was gone and so was mine. I think she finished both of them.”
“Did you take any acetaminophen or other pills?”
“No.”
“Did you use any other drugs at all: marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy …”
“Of course not!” I say. What kind of a kid does she think I am?
A doctor comes in. He checks my eyes with a light. He reads the notes that the nurse took. Then he turns to my mom. “She probably got rid of most of it when she vomited,” he says. “Looks like you just have a drunk on your hands. She’ll be hung over tomorrow, but other than that, she’ll be fine.”
He folds up his stethoscope and walks away like he’s got more important things to do, which he probably has.
I’m mortified.
“He thinks I’m a drunk,” I say.
Mom just raises her eyebrows at me. She probably thinks I’m a drunk too.
When we get back to the waiting room, Siobhan’s mom is there. Right away she comes up to my mom and puts her arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “And I criticized you for not supervising properly. I’m such a hypocrite.”
Mom returns her hug. “Never mind that now. How’s Siobhan?”
“Will she be okay?” I ask. I can feel the tears coming again.
“We got her here in time. She’ll be fine, but they’re going to keep her overnight to be sure. They’ve got her on an IV. Something about electrolytes.”
Siobhan’s mom’s been crying. She sniffles. Mom gets a tissue from her purse and hands it to her.
“I never thought they’d do something like this,” Siobhan’s mom says.
“Well, Siobhan’s fourteen and Lucy will be too, come November. We’ve all been warned about that age,” Mom says.
What does she mean by that?
I fall asleep on the way home to the trailer park. Next thing I remember is Dad lifting me out of the van. Then I’m in my own bed and the dog is curled up beside me.
I don’t feel too good when I wake up the next morning. The dog is gone. I look at my clock. It’s after ten. We always go to ten-thirty mass. I’m never going to make it. Why didn’t Mom wake me up? I jump out of bed and wish I hadn’t. The world spins for a minute. My stomach lurches. I lie down again. It’s too late to make it to church anyway.
I try to sleep some more. Usually when I’m sick, I sleep a lot, but this time I can’t. Finally, after half an hour of trying, I get up again, but very slowly. I really need to get something to drink. I wander into the kitchen in my nightshirt. The place is so quiet I’m thinking Mom has gone to mass without me. She hasn’t. She’s sitting on the couch, drinking coffee.
“Ah!” she says when she sees me. “Our invalid. I think some juice would probably be in order.”
She pours me a big glass of orange juice from the fridge. I sit down on the chair opposite her and take a couple of gulps.
“Feeling rough?” she asks.
I nod; it hurts my head.
“Colleen called. They picked Siobhan up this morning. She’s fine.”
I’m so relieved, but then, like an idiot, I start crying again. “I was so afraid. I thought there was something seriously wrong with her.”
“It was serious,” Mom says. “She had alcohol poisoning. People can die from that.”
My glass is empty. Mom pours the last of the orange juice into it and takes the empty jug over to the sink.
“But we only had one drink; even Grandma says one drink is okay.”
“And did Grandma say you should help yourself to one anytime you wanted?”
“No.” I can’t meet her eyes. I look down at the table in front of me. There’s a section of the newspaper there. It’s open to the crossword puzzle, and I notice it has all been filled in. No blanks spaces left this time.
“And how big was the one drink you had, Lucy?”
“Just a regular glass, like this one.” I hold up my juice glass to show her.
“Irish Cream is a liqueur. There’s as much alcohol in one ounce of it as there would be in a whole bottle of beer. It’s usually served in tiny little glasses.”
“So what we drank would be like eight or ten bottles of beer?”
She nods. “And you probably drank it fast too.”
“We didn’t drink any faster than we usually do,” I say. “Yeah, but usually you’re drinking water or milk, not alcohol.”
How does she know all this stuff anyway?
“Did something like this ever happen to you when you were younger?” I’m sort of hoping she’ll say yes. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like such a loser. I cringe every time I think of that doctor calling me a drunk.
“No.”
“How come you know so much about it?”
“I’ve read about it, seen it on TV.”
That’s how I know about condoms. So now I’m thinking maybe Mom’s heard about them too. I hope so. She could still get pregnant even if she is almost thirty. And with her maybe picking up strange men in bars, she needs to be thinking about AIDS and those other diseases you can get from sex.
“You could sure use a shower,” she says.
She reaches across and touc
hes a piece of my hair. It’s crunchy. I have puke in my hair. Gross.
When I’ve had a shower and washed my hair, I go into my room and flop down on my bed. The dog comes in and grunts until I lift her up beside me. I lie there, staring at the ceiling for awhile. I’m still thinking about Mom.
Maybe she wouldn’t use a condom because she’s Catholic and we’re not supposed to. Of course, she shouldn’t be sleeping with men she’s not married to either. Adultery is a mortal sin. I’m not sure if using a condom when you’re already committing a mortal sin makes it a worse sin or not. It seems to me, if she can avoid getting a horrible disease, she’ll live longer and have more time to repent. That would be good. It’s all too complicated. It makes my head hurt thinking about it.
I wish I could sleep some more, but I keep tossing and turning, thinking about sin – which reminds me, I missed mass this morning. That’s a mortal sin too. So is getting drunk. I’m in big trouble with God.
There’s a knock at the trailer door. The dog barks and jumps down to go investigate. Then I hear my dad’s voice. I don’t know what he’s doing here. Probably checking up on his hungover drunk of a daughter. I pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
I walk down the hall, and the first thing I see is a pair of men’s running shoes on the mat by the door. They’re white with silver markings and there’s a small royal blue crescent-shaped logo on the side. The inside of the shoes is the same royal blue. I stop for a minute and stare at them. Dad’s sitting at the kitchen table with Mom, spreading out some tile samples.
“Where did you get those shoes?” I ask him.
“Walmart. $69.95.”
“When?”
He stops what he’s doing and looks at me. “A week or so ago. Why?”
I just give a shrug.
“We have some things to discuss with you,” he says.
“You girls really let us down last night,” Mom says. “We expected better than that from you.”
“We had a talk with Siobhan’s parents this morning,” Dad says. “They’re grounding Siobhan for two weeks. She won’t be allowed to visit or talk to anyone on the phone.”
“So go ahead and ground me too,” I say.
If Siobhan is grounded, there’s no one for me to phone or visit anyway.
Mom and Dad exchange a look.
“I think that would be just too easy for you,” Dad says. “We’ve decided we’re going to put you to work.”
“Where? What do you mean?”
“You’re going to have some extra chores to do,” Mom says.
I look around the trailer. There’s not much to do here, even if Mom were to go on strike completely. How bad could it be? But that isn’t what they have in mind.
They put me to work in the backyard of the house Dad has bought. It’s not very large, but there’s a tall fence all around it, so the dog comes along to keep me company. She thinks it’s a great adventure because the plants and grass are way over her head. I keep thinking I’ve lost her. At one time, there was a vegetable garden in one part of the yard. That’s what I’m supposed to work on. Who needs broccoli plants three feet high, especially when they’re from last year? I spend all of Monday evening pulling up big old vegetables.
Dad’s taken vacation time to work on the house. It’s a good break for him now that tax time is over. He picked me up right after school and brought me here. Mom comes by later with a pot of chili, and we eat dinner together. She’s wearing her grungiest work clothes, and, after dinner, she starts pouring paint into a tray.
“What are you doing?” I ask. She didn’t get drunk. She didn’t even sleep with Jake. Why is she sharing my punishment?
“I’m starting on the bedrooms,” she answers.
“Why are you painting Dad’s house?”
“Because it’s my house too,” she says. “This was the house I wanted to look at on Saturday morning. Your dad and I are going halfers on it.”
This makes no sense. “So who’s going to live here?” I ask.
“You and me,” Mom says.
“I thought you didn’t want to rent from Dad.”
“But I’m not. I put some money into the house too, and I’m the one who’ll pay the mortgage.”
“We’re going to fix it up, and, in a couple of years, when your mom is finished her course, we’ll be able to sell it and make a tidy profit,” Dad says.
“So you’re business partners?”
They smile a bit at each other.
“You could put it that way,” Mom says.
Yeah. Business partners who ended up sleeping together on Friday night.
I work on the house every night that week. I even learn how to use a weed trimmer. By the time I finish cutting the long grass in about a quarter of the backyard, my hands are shaking so badly I can’t drink a glass of water without spilling it. I’m sure the vibration from that machine has caused some sort of weird nerve damage. I want Mom to take me to the emergency room, but she says it’s nothing to worry about and that it will go away on its own.
She’s having a break too. “You realize this house is only a five-minute drive from Siobhan’s?” she asks.
Like she thinks I wouldn’t notice.
“You two will be able to catch the bus to Holy Name together.”
“I know,” I say. “I’ve been counting on it.”
“Once my course starts, I’ll have to leave way too early to drive you, but I’m sure Grandma wouldn’t mind …”
“Oh, let’s not bother Grandma,” I say. “If I can get a bus from Holy Name to Langley, I can easily take one from here to Siobhan’s.”
I’ve already looked it up. One bus, five minutes. Maybe ten if I add a bit of a walk on each end.
“That would be great,” Mom says. “I think Grandma has a lot of other interests these days. What do you think about all this gambling she’s doing?”
“I really don’t approve. Do you think that Muriel is a bad influence?”
“Well, I wondered if it was Granddad who was leading her astray.”
We don’t get any more work done that night. We’re too busy discussing Grandma.
Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to my good friends Jean Bullard and Bonnie Lepin who read earlier drafts of this story and offered their suggestions and encouragement. Thanks too, to Tundra publisher, Kathy Lowinger, who took the time to give me some lessons in plotting and to Kelly Jones and Kathryn Cole for asking all the right questions and helping me say what I meant to say all along.
This book would never have made it as far as an editor’s desk had Bill Richardson not offered his encouragement and persuaded his friend Carolyn Swayze to act as my agent. Finally, a big thanks to Carolyn for her quiet persistence and faith in me and in this book.
Text copyright © 2010 by Carole Lazar
Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9
Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,
P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938447
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Lazar, Carole
Lucy unstrung / Carole Lazar.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-226-4
I. Title.
PS8623.A949L83 2010 jC813′.6 C2009-905863-4
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation�
��s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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