Encore Edie (4 page)

“That was unexpected,” Mom says later, while Dexter and I are in the kitchen helping with supper. Aunt Ellie and Merry are downstairs taking showers after their long drive, and Dad is in the den having a drink with Daniel. It turns out he’s Aunt Ellie’s new boyfriend.

“He seems nice,” Dexter says.

“He smiles a lot,” I say. “Did they meet on the internet?”

Mom and Dexter stare at me.

“What?” I say. I’m embarrassed, suddenly, to have shown any familiarity with the mechanics of romance. “Aunt Ellie lives in Montreal, he lives in Vancouver. How else would they meet? I’m just being logical!”

“I think they met at Merry’s school,” Mom says. “Daniel is a special ed teacher. He was applying for a job, and Ellie was a parent adviser to the hiring committee. Then they decided to close the school, and he came to B.C. to finish his doctorate in child psychology, but he and Ellie kept in touch. I wonder if he’s the reason—”

A big laugh, Aunt Ellie’s laugh. She and Merry are standing in the kitchen doorway with their arms around each other’s waists, hair identically damp at the roots and frizzy at the tips. They’ve both changed clothes and are wearing matching T-shirts from the Calgary Zoo.

“Of course he’s the reason!” Aunt Ellie says. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

For some reason, Mom and Aunt Ellie and Dexter all start to laugh.

“Laugh, Edie,” Merry says.

“We did email each other a lot,” Aunt Ellie says to me, and when I realize why she’s telling me this, it must show in my face, because they all start to laugh again, this time at me.

“Edie, why don’t you take Merry upstairs and show her your room?” Mom says finally. “I put the air mattress and
some extra bedding up there. You could get everything set up for tonight.”

I give her a grateful look. I’m happy to have an excuse to leave the kitchen and try to leave my embarrassment behind me like a snakeskin. “Come on,” I tell Merry.

She follows me up the steep attic stairs.

“Remember the last time we had a sleepover?” I say. “Camping? When we shared the tent?”

“Yuh, in a tent,” Merry says. “We had hot dogs.”

“Wow, you’ve got a good memory.” I plop down on the floor to feed the air hose into the little spout in the air mattress. Merry plops down beside me. “And the bugs—remember the bugs?”

“Yuh.” She stares at my fingers as if I’m in a bomb disposal squad. I hand her the plastic bellows and show her how to pump air into the mattress. She pumps a few times and then says, “Too hard.”

I show her how to stand up and pump with her foot. She does it, but reluctantly. I remember this now, how she never liked to try things she knew she was clumsy at. “Remember how mad Dex got when we hid her flip-flops and she had to go to the porta-potty in her bare feet?”

Merry doesn’t say anything.

“Fun,” I prompt.

“Yuh,” Merry says. She’s not pumping anymore, just staring at the squishy mattress with a zoned-out look on her face.

“Let me.” I stomp on the bellows until the mattress is plump and firm, and get her to help me spread a sheet on top. When she drops her corners, the sheet floats off to one side of the mattress in a puddle. I fix it, and throw a pillow and blanket on top. “Good enough?”

Merry is staring at the blanket now as if she’s mesmerized by it.

“Earth to Merry?” I say.

“Green,” she says. “Remember? On my face.”

I remember: the sun through the tent wall, especially early in the morning. Pools of palest green light moving on our faces and our skin. We stuck twigs in our hair, Merry and Dex and I, and for the rest of the day we pretended we were green-skinned aliens and the twigs were our antennae. Dex got sick of the game first, and Aunt Ellie took Merry’s out when she combed her hair, but I went to bed with mine. I remember lying in my sleeping bag, almost asleep, and feeling fingers in my hair: Merry checking that my antennae were still there. I opened my eyes and looked at her.

“From Mars,” she said.

“You and me,” I told her, and pulled out one of my antennae to stick in her hair. When we woke up the next morning, they were still there.

I haven’t said much yet about Merry, for instance what she looks like, apart from what makes her look like everyone else
with Down’s. If she didn’t have Down’s, actually, I think she would look a lot like Dexter. She has blue eyes and blond hair, curly to Dexter’s straight, and that pretty pink skin, just a little rougher and rosier than Dex’s, as though she’s just come in from a cold wind. She’s fourteen, in between Dex and me, and shorter than either of us, and will never get any taller. Lots of people with Down’s get pudgy—it just goes with their body type, Mom says—so Aunt Ellie watches Merry all the time and tells her when to stop eating. Now that she’s living with us, we all have to watch her.

For instance, the night they arrived, Dad said he was going to make popcorn. But instead of everyone sharing from a big bowl, Mom gave us each a little dessert bowl with, let’s face it, not enough popcorn in it, and that was that. At breakfast the next morning, Merry poured herself such a big bowl of cereal that Mom had to help her put some back in the box. Afterwards, Mom took Dex and me aside and said we should Set A Good Example with food and snacks, putting small, healthy portions on plates rather than just rummaging through the fridge and the cupboards so it looked like we were eating however much of whatever we wanted.

When Mom cooks now, she chats along with herself like a host on the Food Channel, saying things like,
I love spinach! It’s so good for you!
and
Oh, oh, oh, not too much butter, that’s not healthy!
Dex will play along, cutting her apple into slices and giving Merry some on a plate and saying,
I love apples
,
do you like apples?
Merry will say,
Yuh, I like some apples
, and Aunt Ellie will say,
Remember your thank you.
Merry will hug Dex and say,
Thank you!
, and Dex will hug her back and say,
You’re welcome!
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how many of Mom’s chocolate chip cookies I can hide up the sleeve of my shirt so I can get them up to my room and eat in peace.

Then there’s clothes. Mom and Aunt Ellie always talk about how people with Down’s are so sweet and good-natured but stubborn. Stubborn! You have not seen stubborn until you’ve seen Aunt Ellie pleading with Merry to fix the T-shirt she’s put on backward, or change her dirty socks, or take her hoodie down when we’re in the house, and Merry just stares at her feet with her face set, batting away anybody’s hands that come near her to try to help.

Except mine, apparently. One day we’re all getting ready to go to the mall and she won’t take off her flip-flops.

“Those are the most worn-out flip-flops I have ever seen,” I say. “Put on some socks and shoes, and when we get home I’ll find you my old flip-flops from last summer. They don’t fit me anymore, but at least the soles aren’t half falling off.”

“Remember your thank you!” Aunt Ellie calls from the bathroom.

“Thank you,” Merry says, and hugs me.

“You’re welcome,” I mumble. And from then on, I am Merry’s personal fashion icon. If I come downstairs in the morning wearing a button-up shirt instead of a T-shirt,
Merry will run and change into a button-up shirt. If I put my hair in a ponytail, Merry will try to put her hair in a ponytail, and inevitably I will have to help her unsnarl it and do it right.

Everyone thinks this is cute.

Worst of all is walking Merry to and from school. I don’t mind the first part of the walk so much, actually. I tell her silly jokes and show her my Bollywood dance moves and pretend to be a car alarm. Merry’s the best audience ever; she laughs at everything I do. But as we get closer to the school, I can feel the other kids staring at us.
Who is
that
?
I can hear them wondering.
Oh, yeah, it’s that Number One girl. What a disgusting nickname. Who’s she got with her? That new girl from the special class? What’re
they
doing together? She’s her
cousin
? Seriously? No.
Seriously
?

I don’t actually hear any of this directly. Lots of them say hi to Merry, and a few of them kind of nod at me. But I see the way their eyes slide sideways at us, away, and then back again. I see them smile.

I can hear everything they’re thinking.

A month after Aunt Ellie and Merry arrive, they’re gone, but not far. Aunt Ellie has found them a house on Indigo Court. We live on Cobalt Avenue. So now, on a cool early October weeknight with the smell of burning leaves in the air, we walk the five minutes from our house to theirs (Cobalt Avenue
to Marine Drive to Bluebell Street to Turquoise Avenue to Indigo Court) for a housewarming supper. Daniel will be there, because Daniel is always there. Although he has his own house, I overheard Mom tell Dad she thinks it’s just a matter of time. I know what “it” is.

“String Bean!” he says, greeting us at the door in sock feet as if he already lives there and isn’t just a guest like the rest of us.

Their house looks a little empty still because their Montreal furniture won’t come until next week. We sit on the living room floor on a bunch of colourful pillows, drinking juice from matching glasses that still have the price stickers on the bottoms. “We made it to IKEA, anyway,” Auntie Ellie says, punching one of the pillows fondly.

“Edie see my room,” Merry says to me.

I follow her upstairs. Merry’s room is more finished than the rest of the house, with a bed and chair and dresser and bookcase, and posters on the walls, and one of those make-ityourself stained glass unicorns hanging on the window. There are white wicker baskets on the bookcase with her pencil crayons, stickers, bright plastic beads the size of cocktail wieners, and some books about crafts. Also some books with titles like
Cooking for Kids
and
Kids’ Encyclopaedia
and
Super Science Experiments for Kids
that are probably too difficult for her. The posters are all of Montreal Canadiens hockey players.

“You can sleep here,” she says, struggling to show me how the chair, a futon, folds out into a mattress.

“I sleep in my house,” I correct her, folding the futon back and smoothing out the creases, erasing the very idea.

“For a sleepover,” she says. “My mom says we can.”

This is too much.

“I’m thirteen now,” I say. “I’m too old for sleepovers.” It just comes out. I should have said yes and forgotten about it, or come up with some lie, but it came out too fast. She looks at me, confused, and then not confused. We go back downstairs without saying anything else.

Back in the living room, Auntie Ellie and Daniel are laying out Styrofoam hutches of takeout Japanese. “Girls, there’s miso,” she says, and Dexter and Merry and I each take a hot foam bowl. After that there’s udon, and colourful rolls—fish and veggie morsels encased in rice—all laid out like something precious. I can’t look at anybody, can’t bear to talk. Aunt Ellie keeps trying to give me more food, but I can’t eat because how could I take food from her after being so cruel to her daughter in her own house, and she’ll probably never even know?

“Dynamite rolls, Edie,” Mom says, offering me one of hers because they’re my favourite and hers too, but I shake my head. She gives me a look. She knows something’s up; knows from my face it’s something she’s not going to like.

Aunt Ellie sees the look, but her Edie radar isn’t as fine-tuned. “By the way, Edie,” she says, oh so casually, “I’ve been wanting to thank you for all the time you’ve been spending with Merry. Walking her to school every day, bringing her
home, showing her around. And Dexter too, for helping with her homework on the weekends. You girls have both been wonderful.”

“No problem, Aunt Ellie,” Dexter says. “It’s been fun.”

“Whatever,” I say.

Now the look on Mom’s face takes a sharp little kaleidoscope twist from What Is It, Edie? to Whatever It Is, Young Lady, We Will Be Having A Talk Later, Believe You Me.

“Later,” to Mom’s credit, comes after we’ve helped clean up, after the walk home, after Dexter has gone for her pre-bed bathroom hour and Dad has gone off to read his newspaper in front of the all-news channel, the way he likes to. “Now,” she says.