Days That End in Y (4 page)

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s look up William Davies first.”

Over three million results pop up. This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

“We have to narrow it somehow,” Mattie says.

“He lives in Vancouver. Maybe type in ‘Bill Davies, Vancouver.’”

Mattie types the words in as requested. Still way too many hits to go through, but definitely less than three million. The first three entries that pop up are a LinkedIn profile, an obituary and a movie database listing for an actor.

“Which one should we check first?”

“Go to the actor.”

“Good idea. Maybe you get your love of acting from him,” Mattie says, optimistic as ever.

But Bill Davies the actor turns out to be a twenty-six-year-old black man.

“Obviously not. Try the LinkedIn profile.”

That also ends up being a bust. The Bill Davies listed there is too old and doesn’t look a thing like my father does in his high school photos.

“Remember that people change,” Mattie points out.

“That man’s face is an entirely different shape, he has red hair and he’s at least ten years too old.”

Mattie sighs. “I know. I’m just trying to be positive. Do you want me to check the obituary?”

I hesitate. Even if I’ve never met him, I’m not sure I want to find out whether or not my father is dead just yet. I take a deep breath, gripping the back of the computer chair so hard my knuckles turn bone white. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

According to the obituary, the Bill Davies who died last Saturday was eighty-four years old and left behind two children and six grandkids in Surrey, B.C. I let out a big sigh.

“That’s a relief,” Mattie says. “Do you know anything else about him?”

“I think Denise said he worked in sales.”

So Mattie types in
“Bill Davies” Vancouver, sales
. Two lawyers, a photographer and a police report pop-up. A quick check proves that none of these men are the right Bill, either.

“This is impossible,” I sigh. “There are too many Bill Davieses in the world.”

“Don’t give up so quickly!”

“What’s the point? What am I going to do, email him?”

Mattie thinks about it for a moment. “Maybe. Or maybe you can just read about him and move on.”

“What do you mean, move on? It’s not like he’s holding me back. I barely think about him. It’s just these stupid yearbooks.”

“Maybe …” Mattie begins, then she trails off.

“Maybe what?”

“Or maybe the yearbooks are a sign.”

“What kind of sign?”

“A sign that you are meant to look him up. Why else would you find them now? They’ve been in your house forever.”

“That’s crazy. They turned up because we were cleaning.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Let’s try Facebook.”

Next Mattie signs into Facebook and searches for his name. Not surprisingly, there are tons of Bill Davies from all over the world. It’s hard to tell from the little profile pictures that pop up, but none of them look anything like the picture in the yearbook.

“Maybe he doesn’t like the internet,” Mattie says. “My Aunt Karen moved to Vancouver and now she lives on an organic farm that uses solar power to heat the water. She hates cell phones and microwaves because she thinks they give you cancer. Maybe your dad is one of those back-to-the-earth types.”

“I doubt it. The way Denise described him, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who goes for solar power and electric cars and all that.”

Mattie sighs, crestfallen. “I’m sorry this was so useless.”

“It’s not your fault. Like you said, maybe this is a sign. Only this time the sign is telling me to forget it.”

Mattie frowns. “That’s the most depressing sign I’ve ever heard of.”

Truth be told, my spirits have dipped a little low, too. A big part of me was looking forward to learning about Bill
Davies. But looking for him online was like looking for a needle in a haystack, only the haystack was the internet — the biggest haystack in the world.

“Can’t you just ask your mom?”

I shake my head. “No way. I told you, she’d read into it and take it too seriously.”

Mattie wasn’t finished. “But she must have some way to contact him. Maybe she’s been waiting all these years for you to ask, letting you come to her in your own time.”

“You read too many books,” I say.

“Maybe you should read
more
books,” Mattie says, just the slightest bit of sass in her voice.

“Why should I? It’s summer.”

Mattie rolls her eyes, but laughs. “You never know unless you ask,” she says.

“Trust me, I know. She’d completely freak out,” I say.

For the past two weeks, whenever he dropped by, Doug brought a box or two over with him. The house is like an obstacle course: boxes in the living room, boxes stacked in the hall outside the master bedroom — there are even a few boxes in the bathroom beside the toilet. I have no desire to open these.

But today Doug has brought over the final load of boxes and the most significant piece of baggage: Suzy. For such a little dog she sure comes with a lot of stuff. Along with her stainless steel bowls and enormous potato-sack sized bags of food, she has a travel crate, a regular crate, a sleeping pillow, a variety of very worn blankets and an entire box of toys. I don’t mean a shoebox; I mean a box that originally held a microwave. It’s possible that Suzy has more toys than I ever did.

Having Suzy around might be the weirdest part about Doug moving in. I’ve gotten used to seeing him at the dinner table or watching TV on the couch with my mom, but Suzy will be a new fixture in our everyday lives. Doug will be at work for part of the day, so I won’t really see him much more than I used to before he moved in. But now Suzy will always be around, sniffing at our heels, trying to eat our shoes and crying if we don’t give her enough attention.

Tonight my mother puts her foot down for the first time since the move-in started. She does not want Suzy to sleep in their room.

“She’s a cutie, but I don’t need to vacuum dog hair off my comforter every day,” she says.

Doug appears to take the news quite hard. He looks truly sombre, as if imagining the moment he has to break the news to Suzy. Eventually, he agrees. Annie Delaney is a hard woman to argue with.

“For now, let’s confine her to the kitchen at night,” Doug says sadly. “It’s probably better if she gets used to the house one room at a time.”

Suzy has been to our house plenty of times, so she doesn’t seem to get that something is up until Doug traps her in the kitchen with a complicated series of baby gates. At first she thinks it’s a game, jumping around in circles and growling at us through the gate.

“That sounds threatening,” I say, taking a step back toward my room. “Are you sure that gate will hold?”

“She’s just playing,” Doug insists.

“But what if she decides that I’m responsible for locking her up and manages to get out in the middle of the night, hunting me down in my sleep?”

“She’s a dog, not a tiger, Clarissa.”

She may be a dog, but right now she’s growling like a tiger. But neither Doug nor Mom seems worried by her aggressive behaviour.

As we head to our rooms, the growling turns to whining and then barking in loud, evenly spaced barks. It sounds like she’s sending out some kind of doggy distress signal. Any minute now other dogs, from all over town, are going to start barking in response.

“Is she going to do that all night?” I ask.

“Probably not,” Doug says.

“Probably not?” I repeat.

“Just ignore her.”

Easier said than done. Suzy has more stamina than I thought possible, and after fifteen straight minutes of her sounding the doggy alarm, I’m ready to climb out the window and go sleep at Benji’s.

Doug yells at her from the bedroom, “Suzy-Q! Quiet down, now! Atta girl.”

Hearing Doug’s voice does nothing to calm Suzy down. Instead, it encourages her to change tactics. Now she’s whining, a sound so pitiful that it even manages to pull on my heartstrings. I may not be the biggest Suzy fan, but I’m not cruel. I know it must be lonely being cooped up in a strange place, especially for a dog that used to sleep at the feet of her one and only master.

From the other bedroom, I hear the bed creak and the door open. Then Mom’s voice rings loud and clear into the hallway. “Don’t. You’re only showing her that if she whines, you’ll come running.”

Burn, Doug. You just got told. I smile into my pillow, even though Suzy has gone back to barking, and it’s not clear if we will ever sleep in peace again. It’s nice to know that Mom still knows how to rule the roost. To myself, I think, Clarissa 1, Suzy 0.

But at three o’clock in the morning, after I’m rudely awakened by round two of Suzy’s protest, I change that score to Clarissa 1, Suzy 1.

This is going to be even more difficult than I imagined.

I fold Mattie’s letter and leave it on the coffee table. I will add it to my collection later. She is a dutiful pen pal, writing two times a week, sometimes even more.

I look forward to her letters. I’ve already read this one about fifteen times since it arrived on Thursday. Sadly, walking to the mailbox after lunch has become the highlight of my day. I hate to admit it, but I’m bored. It feels wrong to not take advantage of summer, but there’s only so much
I can do on my own. Benji is fully occupied with drama camp, which seem to be taking up some of his evenings, too. In past summers, whenever things got dull, at least we were bored together. Being bored on your own is a totally different story.

I keep finding myself hanging around the Hair Emporium out of sheer desperation.

“What’s wrong with you?” Denise asks, barely looking up from her magazine. “You’re spoiling the lovely, peaceful ambiance with your sulking.”

Oh right, and her snapping her gum and tapping the toes of her shoes against the metal bar of the stylist chair isn’t?

“I’m bored.”

Denise sighs. “Must be nice to be young and have the luxury of being bored. These days I don’t have time to eat, let alone get bored.”

“And yet you manage to make time to drop by here every day,” I point out.

Denise ignores me and continues ranting. “Do you know how much time I’ve spent in the car this week? Twenty hours. That’s almost a full day! These sales calls are going to be the death of me. If I don’t drop dead from exhaustion, I’ll probably die in a head-on collision.”

Mom makes a supportive murmuring noise and folds another strand of Denise’s red hair up in a little foil package.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?” I ask.

“Think about it: I spend more time in a car than anyone I know. Odds are if anyone’s going to get in an accident, it’s me. I’m not being paranoid; I’m just considering the numbers.”

“Didn’t you fail grade ten math?”

Mom gives me a warning look that Denise
can’t see. “Why don’t you give Benji a call?” she suggests.

“He has drama.”

“It’s Saturday; I thought drama camp was just weekdays,” Mom says.

“He’s decided to help out with the little kids,” I grumble, still not quite believing it.

When Benji told me he’d decided to volunteer with the Kiddie Camp, I was completely shocked. Benji has never shown any interest in kids before.

“But why?” I’d asked.

“It’s good practice.”

“Practice for what? It’s not like you get to act! You’re basically babysitting for free!”

“No, but I get to help out backstage and with costuming. And Charity says any time spent with Dean, the director, is valuable. Did I tell you that he goes to theatre school? He had to audition to get in. They only take, like, ten people a year!”

I knew then that he was a lost cause. Benji takes everything Charity says to be the final word. If
she
told him it was a good idea, I’d never be able to change his mind.