Days That End in Y (18 page)

I jam my teeth together to resist talking back. I guess it’s too much to ask my mother’s best friend to disagree with her.

“So don’t go giving that woman any more grief. Today was hard, for both of you, but you’ve still got to live with each other.”

Denise pulls into the driveway but doesn’t turn off the car.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“Not tonight.”

“But I thought you were going to stay over and do your nails?”

Denise shakes her head. “You two have some hashing out to do. I’ll come back in the morning. Your mother is getting married tomorrow, so you do what you have to do to clear the air tonight. No one deserves all that baggage on their wedding day.”

“That was almost wise.”

Denise snorts, then leans over and opens the car door for me. “You’re stalling. Get out of this car and make things right.”

“I don’t know if I can. I can’t act like nothing happened, or it’s no big deal.”

“Well, right-ish then.”

“I can’t believe you’re moving.”

“Is that your roundabout way of telling me you’re going to miss me?”

I am unable to answer, in case I start crying.

Denise clears her throat, then continues, “Next to Annie, you’re the person I’m going to miss the most. You’ll just have to come visit me in the big city. I’ll take you shopping.
But not if you don’t get out of this car and talk things out with your mother.”

Denise tries to smile at me, but I can see that she’s holding back tears. She wags her finger at me and says, “Don’t you start. If you cry, then I’ll cry, and there will be enough crying tomorrow.”

“What for?”

“People always cry at weddings.”

“Not me.”

“I bet you ten bucks you will.”

“Deal.”

“Great. I can’t wait to say I told you so. Now, get out.”

And this time I do.

***

Mom is waiting up for me. I brace myself for a fight, but she looks tired and small — a bundle of worn-out nerves on the couch in the living room.

“Where’s Doug?” I ask.

“He’s spending the night with friends. It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding. I think the more important question is, where were you?”

“At a party.”

“Where?”

“Charity’s.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me where you were?”

“Well
you
didn’t think to tell my dad that I existed, so I guess we’re even.”

I fully expect her to start yelling at me, but she considers me for a moment and then says, “I don’t know what to say. I have a feeling no matter what I say, it won’t make a difference.”

“Probably not.”

“So why don’t you get it all off your chest?”

I look at her, waiting for the catch, but she’s watching me expectantly. “Okay. Why didn’t you tell him about me?”

“I didn’t want to share my child with him. He wasn’t for me, and I didn’t want him in my life or my baby’s life. By the time I found out I was pregnant, Bill had already gone to B.C. and made it clear he didn’t want to speak to me, so I just … didn’t tell him. He’s not a bad person, Clarissa, but when you share a child with someone, they’re in your life forever, whether you’re married or not.”

“Maybe you didn’t want him in your life, but what about me?”

“I thought I was doing the best thing for both of us.”

I’m trying to be calm, I really am, but it’s those words, “the best thing,” that trigger the anger in me, and I’m yelling again. “You mean the best thing for YOU. Did you know he was here visiting his nephew? Maybe he would have visited me if you’d bothered to tell him. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy. Maybe all this time it’s YOU who were the bad guy. You let me believe he was some kind of deadbeat who wouldn’t want anything to do with me, but you really never gave him the chance. All this time you acted like he was the bad guy, but you broke up because
you
cheated on
him
. Then you didn’t give him a chance to be my dad. You’re a liar; a liar and a slut!” I want to say more, but my throat is raw. I stand there taking ragged breaths and waiting for her to say something, but she just stands there. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

Mom swallows. “Ouch.”

She looks so hurt it makes my heart ache, even though I’m mad at her.

“Are you mad at me because I kept you away from Bill, or
because you found out I wasn’t perfect?”

“Because of Bill,” I say, but even as the words come out of my mouth, I’m not sure they’re entirely true.

I’m mad about Bill, but the thing that has really changed is my idea of my mom. She’s not the person I thought she was. In my head, she was a teenage beauty queen, the town’s favourite daughter. More than that, she was my role model: a single mom running her own business and a breast cancer survivor. Those things are still true, but it’s also true that she cheated on her boyfriend and didn’t tell him about his daughter. Finding out that she was just as mean and stupid as some trashy teenager from a reality TV show is disappointing, embarrassing and awful all at the same time.

“I’m not perfect, and I’m sorry if that’s what you believed all this time. But you must know by now that no one is perfect, baby. Bill and I were hot and cold. When we were good, things were great, but when they were bad, well, let’s just say we both did things to hurt each other. It didn’t end well with Bill, and I wasn’t very fair to Jack, either. I know that, and I like to think that I’ve changed since then. You know, when people make mistakes in high school, generally their kids don’t find out.” Then she looks me right in the eye and adds, “I’m sorry that you did, for both of us. Nobody wants her daughter to think she’s a slut.”

Hearing that word repeated back to me floods me with hot shame. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I blurt, walking forward into her arms. “I’m really, really sorry.”

Mom hugs me carefully, letting me cry on her shoulder. “You may be sorry, but you meant it.”

“No, I’m sorry! I really am!”

“I know you are. I am, too, more than you will ever know.” She pulls away and brushes the tears from my cheeks with
her thumbs. “Have you been missing him all these years? Honestly.”

I shake my head. “Not really.”

“I never wanted you to feel cheated out of having a dad. I only wanted what was best for you, and I really and truly thought that we would be just fine without Bill Davies in our lives. Things have been fine, haven’t they? Most of the time?”

Mom is looking at me with such hope. She wants me to say that yes, we’re fine. There is no way to know if our lives would have been better, but the truth is, they haven’t been bad. At least no worse than anybody else’s lives.

“We are fine.”

This time Mom’s smile is genuine. She tucks my hair behind my ear, like she has done a million times before, and asks gently, “Do you want him to be part of your life? He wants to talk about it.”

“No.”

Mom looks relieved, but because she is a good mom, she asks again. “Are you sure?”

“Well, maybe.”

“We can work something out. He can come visit you; you could go visit him. It’s up to you, baby.”

“Do I have to decide now?”

“Of course not.”

“I’d like to think about it.”

Mom nods. “I think that’s a good idea.”

I give her one more squeeze, then make my way to bed. I make it to the doorway before Mom pipes up one more time.

“Clarissa?”

“Yes?”

“Have you been drinking?”

I think about lying, but what’s the point? We’ve both been so honest tonight. Why spoil it? “Sort of …”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I just had one cooler, and I called Denise to drive me home.”

Mom thinks about this. “I’m not exactly happy about this, but you were right to call Denise.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Just this once, I’ll let you off the hook. But if I were you, I’d drink a big glass of water before I went to bed. You’ll pay for it tomorrow if you don’t.”

“Are you going easy on me because you feel bad about Bill?” I ask.

“Maybe a little. Now go to bed before I change my mind.” After a moment she adds, “Please.”

The please is new. I like it; it makes me feel like we’re equals. Maybe after all this is over, Mom and I will emerge more like friends, with the kind of relationship that moms and daughters have on TV. That would be nice, though I still like having a mom. In a weird way, it’s nice to know that someone cares enough about you to really let you have it. That being said, I’m glad she went easy on me tonight. There’s only so much drama a girl can handle, and there’s going to be a wedding tomorrow.

“Rise and shine!”

When I manage to unglue my eyelids, I see Denise at my door, wearing my mother’s ruffled apron and holding a spatula. The smell of a big breakfast wafts in from the kitchen, rousing me out of sleepiness. I yawn, stretch, then shuffle to the kitchen. I feel better than I have in ages. More settled. Less anxious. Plus, there are pancakes, bacon and eggs. How can you be anything but happy with pancakes for breakfast? Around here, it’s a real treat. You’re lucky if you can get anything more decadent than strawberry yogurt for breakfast.

I take three pancakes and three slices of bacon and cover the whole thing in maple syrup, making Mom groan.

“How can you eat that? I think I’m going to be sick,” she scolds.

Denise ignores her, helping herself to the syrup. “It’s important to eat a big breakfast the day of a wedding. I can’t tell you how many brides run around all day not eating, and then feel faint by the time the dancing starts.”

“First of all, this is a quiet, simple, backyard affair, and second of all, there probably won’t be any dancing.”

Denise looks hurt. “No dancing at a wedding? Impossible!”

“It’s not that kind of wedding.”

“We’ll see, won’t we, Clarissa?” Denise looks slyly at me over a forkful of eggs. “Maybe you’ll want to dance with
your man?”

Now Mom is looking at me, too. “Michael?”

I nod, strategically stuffing my face with pancakes so I don’t have to answer.

After we eat, we go to the Hair Emporium to beautify. Denise pulls out her arsenal of makeup products, and Mom picks out three hairstyles for me to choose from. All three are complicated up-dos that are far more elegant than anything I’ve ever had done to my hair. On the counter, Mom has laid out a silver chain with a single pearl strung on it and a matching pair of pearl earrings.

“Any one of those styles will look great with the jewellery,” she says. “And your dress, of course.”

Despite the heat, the pearls feel cool and solid under my fingers, as if they’ve kept a little bit of that deep-sea chill of the ocean inside them. They’re beautiful but not fussy. Maybe I’ll start wearing earrings more often.

Mom does Denise’s hair first, wrapping it in hot rollers, and then sitting her under the dryer so the curls can set. That’s how dedicated Denise is to beauty: she’s willing to sit under a hot dryer for twenty minutes in the sticky, soggy heat of August. She flips through a magazine while she waits, occasionally sharing the interesting bits with us. She has to yell over the drone of the dryer.

Mom pats the seat of the styling chair. “Your turn, baby.”

I hold my own magazine in my lap, featuring my sophisticated-yet-simple hairdo of choice. Mom peers over my shoulder, memorizing the style.

“Perfect. Now head down, eyes closed.”

I do as she says, and she works her fingers into my hair, kneading my scalp and the muscles at the back of my neck, until everything feels loose and tingly. Her fingers never get
tangled in my hair, and her nails never once dig too sharply into my skin. Ten minutes or a whole day passes, I have no idea. Time gets wonky when you’re in Annie Delaney’s magic hands.

“All done. Head up, please.”

I open my eyes to see Mom smiling at me in the mirror. I smile back.

“Hello, beautiful,” she says. I could say the same to her. She is, and will probably always be, the most beautiful person I know. But now when I look at her, I don’t just see the Dairy Queen or a stylist, or even my mom. I see a person with a past and secrets and feelings and thoughts that I will never know. She’s not perfect or untouchable; she’s just a person, like me. But she is the most important person in the whole world. I smile back at her.

“Hi, Mom.”

***

Eighteen people turn up ready for a barbeque, bringing homemade salads, extra beer, chips and dip, even a whole watermelon. My job is to make sure that all the food makes its way to the card tables Doug set up side by side and draped in a tablecloth we never use. People laugh and talk, happy to be out in the sun socializing on a Sunday afternoon.

Everyone wants to know where Mom is.

“She’ll be out soon,” I promise.

When Mattie arrives, she takes one look at my dress and her eyes grow three sizes. “Oh my gosh,” she says. “Look at you! Are those pearls real?”

I’m so relieved to see her that I break with our tradition — this time, I’m the one that hugs her.

“I missed you,” I say. She’s wearing a cute sundress that
is surprisingly lacking in bows, ruffles or lace. It’s yellow, which makes her tan look even more impressive.

“What happened with you-know-who?” Mattie whispers. “I’m dying to know!”

“It’s a long story,” I say.

“A good one?” she asks hopefully.

“I’ll tell you later. You look really sophisticated,” I say. Then I catch sight of the seven or eight friendship bracelets she has on her right arm. “Well, except for those.”

“One of these is for you.” Mattie unknots a bracelet made with black and hot pink thread and ties it around my wrist. It feels soft and a bit warm from her skin.

“Thanks!”

Mattie beams and hugs me again. “You’re welcome!”

I wonder how things would have turned out if Mattie had been here this week. Maybe she would have stopped me from heading to the Lilac Motel, or maybe she would have come with me and given Bill a piece of her mind. Whatever the outcome, I know she always has my back. Anyway, there isn’t much point thinking about it. You can’t change the past.

“Where’s Benji? What has he been up to all summer? He said he was going to write, but I never got a single letter!”