Escape Velocity (7 page)

“Mmm.” My hand moves up to cover my mouth and I close my lips over my teeth quickly.

“We should get that fixed while you're here,” she says. “I'll make you an appointment with my dentist. She's excellent.”

I can't help noticing that she doesn't ask how it happened. I wonder how she'd react if I told her I was getting high with my dad's friends. Then again, maybe if my dad wasn't taking good care of me, she'd rather not know.

I've gained an hour from the time change, and the morning feels weirdly stretched and endless. Dana Leigh picked me up crazy early to drive me to Calgary for the flight, so although I've been awake for ages, it isn't even lunchtime yet. I call Dad to let him know I've arrived safely and to make sure he is still doing okay. Since he has had the angio-thing done, he says he feels a lot better; the stent seems to be working.

“It's like this little tube,” he tells me. “They stuck it right in the blood vessel to hold it open. First useful thing a doctor's ever done for me.”

He sounds like himself again, and I wonder if the doctors know about all the pills he takes. Maybe he's getting so much medication anyway that it's a non-issue at the moment. “You still hooked up to all those machines?” I ask.

He laughs. “A few. Feel a bit like Frankenstein, getting zapped back to life like that.”

“The doctor, Ramirez? He said you had a stroke.”

“Don't worry, okay, Lou? I'll be fine. I am fine. Let's face it, I wasn't exactly running marathons before this happened.”

“No.” I want to ask when I can come home, but I know he can't answer that. “I'm going to Mom's reading tonight. At a bookstore.”

“Are you?” He clears his throat. “I should read some of her stuff sometime.”

He always says that. He's not much of a reader though. He flips through music magazines, but that's about it.

“I love you,” I tell him. I feel like I should keep saying this, end all our conversations with it, just in case. My throat is suddenly all tight and achy.

“Stop worrying,” he says. “I'm bionic now. Got me some spare parts that'll outlast us all.”

I wander out into the living room, but my mother seems to have left while I was on the phone. “Zoe?” I call out. Then: “Mom?” The condo is quiet and empty. I want to snoop, but I'm too nervous. I decide to take a shower, partly because I feel gross but also because I don't know what else to do.

The bathroom is pale green, with a separate shower, not one in the bathtub like at home. It has clear glass sides, and even though the bathroom door is locked, I feel oddly exposed without a shower curtain. I stay in the shower for a long time, until the bathroom is hot and filled with steam. Then I rub myself dry with the soft white towel my mother put out for me. In the fogged-up mirror, I look like a pale blurry ghost.

My mother doesn't know why I stopped talking to her halfway through my last visit. I never told her. At the time, it seemed like the only thing I could do, but now I wonder what she thought. Probably she added it to her list of things she didn't like about me.

The worst thing was that I'd had hopes for that visit. Crazy, in hindsight, but I'd thought that staying with her for a few days would make us into a real mother and daughter. So I had tried really hard. I read her first novel and some of her poems before the visit, and other poetry too—Sylvia Plath, plus a collection of Beat poetry that Dad had lying around. I didn't understand all of it, but I wanted to have something to talk about with her. I had thought that because I was fourteen—a teenager, almost an adult—we might start being closer. I wanted her to take me seriously and to see that we were not so different. I printed out half a dozen of my own best poems and brought them with me, tucked inside my backpack.

None of it turned out the way I'd hoped. The more I tried to connect with her, the harder she pushed me away, and the harder she pushed me away, the more frantically I tried to connect. I was way too chicken to show her my own writing, and when I tried to talk about the poetry I'd been reading, she rolled her eyes and made a snarky comment about Plath's poetry primarily appealing to self-absorbed teenagers.

Eventually I gave up, listened to my music and watched her pace around her apartment, tense and brittle and beautiful. I felt more stupid and ugly than ever. My anxiety kept building until by the fourth day, it was squirming around like something alive inside me, and I felt as though it might crawl right up my throat and materialize in the room, twisted and hideous and neon-bright.

That evening, I overheard my mother talking on the phone. “Honestly, I have been trying. The thing is, she is not a very likable child. She's either being completely ingratiating and trying to impress me, or sulking around with those awful headphones plugged in her ears. The sullen adolescent. It's such a cliché.”

That was the day I stopped bothering to make an effort. I ripped up the poems I'd written and never shown her, and I flushed them down the toilet. For the rest of the week—three long days—I did my best to avoid her. She asked what was wrong a few times. “What's the problem, Lou? What's wrong? Are you homesick? If you're upset about something, why don't you tell me? Fine then. Be like that. Go ahead and sulk. I have plenty of other things to do if you aren't interested in spending time with me.”

I don't know what to feel now. Sometimes I think I hate her. It seems stupid to hope for anything at all.

Eight

M
y mother returns with bags of groceries, and I help her unpack them: strawberries, romaine lettuce, pita bread, hummus, tomatoes, cucumber, capers, tuna steaks, red peppers, a loaf of sourdough, all kinds of cheese and fruit…My mouth waters.

“Are you hungry?”

I nod. “Starving.”

“Help yourself to whatever, okay? I'm teaching a class this afternoon.”

“You are? Will you come back here for dinner?”

She puts a jar of olives on the counter with unnecessary force. “I can't rearrange my whole life because you're here.”

“I didn't mean that. I was just asking.”

She sighs. “I'm having dinner with some of my students. They asked if they could take me out. I suppose I'll have to come pick you up for the reading though.”

“Could I walk there?”

My mother brightens. “You could take the bus. I'll write it down for you. It's easy.”

My mother changes into dressier clothes—loose black pants, heels, a shirt that would show cleavage if she had any boobs. Instead it shows her collarbone. Even my mother's bones are elegant.

She writes down directions to the bookstore. “I'm leaving you change for the bus. And my cell number, but don't call before five, because I'll have it turned off when I'm teaching.” She glances up at me. “You'll be okay on your own here all afternoon?”

I wonder what she'd do if I said no. “Yup.”

She fastens a necklace around her throat: sparkling silver with black and green stones that lie flat against her smooth pale skin. “All right then. I'll see you tonight.” To my surprise, she leans close and gives me a sort of one-armed hug. Her perfume is nothing like Dana Leigh's, and I feel a wave of homesickness.

It's easier after she leaves. I walk around the apartment, snooping a little. My mother's sleek wooden desk is tucked-into a corner of the living room, and there is a small black filing cabinet beside it. I tug on the drawers, but they are securely locked. Her laptop is sitting open on the desk, and I consider turning it on and going online but decide not to. Dad and I didn't have a computer at home, so I always had to use the school ones, and despite my sixty or so friends on Facebook, I'm not really that connected to anyone.

I push open the door to my mother's small bedroom. Queen-sized bed with smooth white sheets, mirrored closet, pale beige blinds, one tall pine bookshelf. I run my fingers along the shelves of books and look in the closet, touching the silky clothes. On her bedside table are two novels, a small bottle of body lotion that smells like roses, and a digital alarm clock. I slide open the drawer, but all that is in there is a wooden jewelry box, a pen and a small notebook with nothing written in it. I lie on her bed until my stomach starts to rumble; then I head to the kitchen and make myself a sandwich—fresh tomatoes and cheddar—and a bowl of sliced-up nectarines and berries.

I take it all to the living room and eat it in front of the television. Dr. Phil is interrogating a woman whose son shot some people. He wants her to take responsibility for not preventing it. I don't get it. Her son is older than I am, and I wouldn't blame either of my parents for anything I did. I mean, if I took a gun to school and shot people, how would that be their fault? Even if Dad handed me a gun and suggested I go shoot some people, it'd still be my choice. Dr. Phil is an idiot.

The streets downtown are busy, crowded with people who all look as if they belong here. After small-town Drumheller, Victoria is like another world. Fairy-tale lights sparkling on the legislature buildings, boats lining the docks in the harbor, tall ivy-covered buildings, busy roads, lights and signs and doorways everywhere. Even the people around me look different: silky-haired women in high heels, clutching Starbucks coffees; a couple of brown-skinned girls with their hair covered with pretty pastel-colored scarves; a guy with spiky blue hair and a studded dog collar around his neck. Excitement is buzzing through me as I wait for my bus. Here I am, this is me, Lou Summers, alone in the city at night. It feels like anything could happen.

I find the bookstore easily. It is huge, right in the middle of a shopping mall. A small crowd has already gathered, some taking seats in folding chairs that have been lined up in the open space of the mall's hallway, and others milling around looking at the books or talking to each other, or standing by the food, pouring coffee and grazing from trays of cookies and cut-up vegetables. My mother is standing by a table stacked with copies of her books, and I make my way through the crowd toward her.