Encore Edie (11 page)

Good my lord
,

You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I

Return those duties back as are right fit:

Obey you, love you, and most honour you.

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say

They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed
,

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry

Half my love with him, half my care and duty:

Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters
,

To love my father all.

Nathalie and I changed it to:

Silly old dad of mine
,

Why waste your time and mine?

You make me sad in my heart.

I love you tons, you know
,

But I can’t lie for show.

You shouldn’t try to make me start.

Quinn, as Lear, sits glowering on his throne, which at the moment is a white plastic deck chair. After the song is done, they squabble for a bit and then he banishes her. In
the original play, he banishes her to France. In our version, he banishes her to Surrey. This always gets a laugh.

“What’s Surrey?” Merry asks me on the walk home.

“Another part of Vancouver,” I say. “Across the bridge. People who don’t come from Surrey make fun of people who do.”

“Why?”

“That’s a good question,” Sam says. “Why do we do that?”

“No idea,” I say. “But we do, and it’s funny, so who cares?”

“I don’t want to go to Surrey,” Merry says. She looks worried. I roll my eyes at Sam, but she looks away. Now what have I done?

At home, Dexter isn’t around. “How was rehearsal, sweet pea?” Mom says.

“Where’s Dex?”

“Out,” Mom says. “Hot chocolate?”

“Out where?”

“I’d love a hot chocolate, Mrs. Snow,” Sam says. “Then we have to prep for next rehearsal, right, Edie? The first big scene with Lear and the Fool. It’s going to be tricky.”

“Why’s that?” Mom helps Merry off with her coat, unwinds Sam’s scarf for her, points to the mat for our boots. Merry has pink rubber boots, I have black rubber boots, and Sam has purple rubber boots with green aliens on them. I’ve seen them at a store in the mall. Girls like Mean Megan wear them. They’re very fashionable.

“When did you buy those?” I say suddenly.

Sam’s eyes go wary. “Last week.”

“Cool,” I say. And then, because Sam always seems to know the right thing to wear, and nobody ever laughs at her, and she never snaps at Merry, and one day she’s going to open her eyes and see what a loser she has for a friend:
“Cool.”
My voice is mean as dirt.

“Actually, I have to go.” Sam takes her scarf back from Mom. “Thanks for the offer of hot chocolate, Mrs. Snow. Next time.”

“Any time, Sam,” Mom says.

“What?” I say.

“I’m not your enemy,” Sam says. “I’m your friend.”

“What’d I do?” I say.

“You made fun of my boots.”

When she’s gone, I look at Mom. “Well, you did,” Mom says.

“Where’s Dex?”

“Hot chocolate,” Mom says, taking Merry by the hand and leading us back to the kitchen. “How did the music go?”

Merry explains about the volume on the CD player.

“Nice boys or mean boys?” Mom asks.

“Raj,” Merry says. “I like Raj.”

“He’s nice,” I say when Mom looks at me. Her mouth relaxes.

We drink hot chocolate, the three of us together at the kitchen table. “Where is Dexter, anyway?” I ask.

“She was meeting a friend at the library.” Mom pushes my hair off my forehead. “Dad’s going to pick her up on his way home from work. What do you need her for? Is it something I can help with?”

“No. I just wanted to—”
Talk
, I was going to say, but I don’t want Mom thinking I don’t want to talk to her. I’m so stupid, anyway. I need to tell someone about school and clothes and Merry and Sam and what a mess I’m making of everything, but Dex would never want to listen to me.

Tricky, Sam said—an understatement. Quinn, our Lear, is a good actor but a lousy singer; Rob the hockey player is a good singer but a lousy actor. My solution? Quinn lipsynchs while Rob sings. Genius, right?

“No!” I shout. “Again! That was terrible!”

“Stop yelling at people, Edie,” Regan says.

“I told you guys to practise together!” I yell at Quinn and Rob. “Did you practise? Did you? Because that looked fake. Fake!”

“Edie,” Regan says.

“It has to be believable! It has to look like it’s all Quinn!”

“Why, though?” Regan says. “It’s not like it’s a secret. Rob’s going to be listed in the program and everything. Don’t you think you’re being a little—”

“Again!” I shout.

Rob goes back behind the screen we’ve put upstage while Quinn takes his place in front of it.

“Merry, music,” I call.

Silence.

“Merry!”

Silence.

“Raj! Stop messing with the CD player! I can’t believe you even think that’s funny!”

“I don’t,” Raj says, behind me. I turn around. He and Mei are sitting half a dozen rows behind Regan and me. They’re both frowning. “I didn’t touch the CD player. Get a grip, Edie.”

“That was pretty rude,” Mei says to me. “You should apologize to Raj.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Sorry I yelled.”

Raj shrugs. “I should probably go home anyway. I have an algebra test to study for.”

“You’re in this scene, though,” I say. “I just want them to get this song and then we’re going to—”

“They’re never going to get this song the way you want it,” Raj says. “You don’t want it to be all Quinn, you want it to be all Edie. You’re a control freak.”

Mei is nodding.

“You really, really are,” Regan says.

I look at the stage. Quinn is nodding. Rob steps out from behind the screen. He shrugs. “Can I study with you?” he
asks Raj. He hops offstage and starts walking up the aisle. Behind me, Raj gets up to go.

“What do I do?” I ask Regan.

The music starts suddenly.

“Please, guys,” I say. “Please, let’s just try it one more time.”

“You know what?” Raj says. “I don’t think I want to be in this show anymore. I’m tired of trying to make everybody laugh. I’m a pretty serious person, actually.”

“I’m tired of standing behind a freaking screen,” Rob says. “And being yelled at.”

“Me, too,” Quinn says. “I mean, I like being King Lear. But without the yelling.”

“Help,” I whisper to Regan.

She just looks at me with her spooky blue eyes.

“Merry! Stop the music!”

The music keeps going.

“Merry!” I yell.

“Why are you so mean to her?” Regan says.

A couple of minutes later, the music ends and Merry appears, not onstage but on the steps that lead from the wings to the aisle. I’ve drilled into her that she’s not allowed to go onstage, ever, for anything. “Where did everybody go?” she says.

“They went home.”

She laughs.

“Really, Merry. Everybody got mad at me and went home.”

“Why?”

“I yell too much, I guess.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

She just stands there, waiting for me to do something, or tell her what to do.

“Get the CDs,” I say. “We should go home, too, I guess.”

Merry doesn’t move. She’s putting together a thought.

“What?” I say.

“Come my house,” she says.

“Merry.” I close my eyes, open them. The theatre’s still empty except for Merry. She’s the only one who hasn’t walked out on me. “Okay.”

Usually I walk her to her front door and then go on to my house. Today I follow her in. The house has changed a lot since last September, when she and Aunt Ellie moved in. It has furniture now, and pictures on the walls, and a terracotta aromatherapy ball hanging from the ceiling so that the front hall always smells like gingerbread, and usually the radio chatting away in the kitchen, where Aunt Ellie works at the big table. She has a job now, writing articles for an investment website. She looks up, surprised to see me, and stands up to give me a big hug. “Edie!”

She hangs on to me for a long time and I let her. It feels good just to hug somebody and not to talk.

“Tea?” she says finally, when she lets me go.

The tea sisters, my dad calls her and my mom. “Well,
sure,” Mom always says. “We’re Newfoundlanders.” Aunt Ellie has a little wicker basket in her kitchen cupboard just like we do, all filled with colourful bags and boxes of every kind of tea. I sit down at the table and start rifling through it while Aunt Ellie fills the kettle. I can hear Merry upstairs in her room, singing.

“English Breakfast for me, please, sweetie.” Aunt Ellie takes three mugs from the drying rack. “And Merry likes white peach.” I find the bags, and add a second white peach for myself. Aunt Ellie puts one bag in each mug and pours the water in.

Merry clomps down the stairs and sets a binder and a denim pencil bag on the kitchen table. “I write a page a numbers,” she says.

“A writing page and a numbers page.” Aunt Ellie glances over Merry’s shoulder, frowning. “Which should we do first?”

“Numbers.”

I sip my tea, which is really quite nice, and watch them work their way down the page. It’s multiplication. I try to remember when I first learned multiplication. Grade two? Three times three, three times four. Merry’s trying hard, but it’s like when I tried to teach her the lights and the CD player at the theatre: things stick for a second or two and then slip away. I can see Aunt Ellie is getting frustrated and impatient and trying not to show it. I’m surprised—I thought I was the only one who had no patience with Merry, and that was because I was mean.

Aunt Ellie’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Edie, would you run up to Merry’s room and bring us some Lego? This might be easier to understand with something we can actually see. There’s a big box in her cupboard.”

“I love Lego,” I say to Merry. “Maybe I can play too?”

“I don’t want to,” Merry says. She looks frustrated too, as if she’s going to cry.

“Thank you, Edie,” Aunt Ellie says with a steely I Am Not Going To Lose My Temper voice I recognize from Mom but have never heard my aunt use.

Merry’s room has a couple of new additions since the last time I was in here. There’s a little laptop on the desk, one of those heavy-duty ones with rubber corners that look as if they’re made from titanium, the kind you can drop and nothing bad happens. There’s a Habs pillow on the bed to match the hockey posters on the walls. I find the Lego in the closet and select a few pieces Aunt Ellie can use to explain multiplication.

Back downstairs, in the kitchen, Aunt Ellie and Merry are having a long hug. “You’re doing great,” Aunt Ellie is saying. “I know you can do it.”

“Look, Merry,” I say, putting the Lego on top of her homework.

“No,” Merry says.

“I got you a present today,” Aunt Ellie says. “For when your homework is done. Why don’t we get finished and then you can see it?”

“No,” Merry says.

“Please, Merry,” Aunt Ellie says. Her eyes are too bright suddenly, with dark circles underneath.

“Maybe—” I say. “Can I borrow the phone?”

“Sure, sweetie,” Aunt Ellie says.

I phone home. Mom answers. “Can I sleep over at Merry’s?” I say, instead of hello.

“Who is this?” Mom says. Aunt Ellie and Merry are looking at me as if I just turned blue.

“Sleep. Over. At. Merry’s,” I say.

“Edie?” Mom says.

“It’s Friday. No school tomorrow.”

“Let me talk to Aunt Ellie,” Mom says. Even on the phone, I can hear her making her suspicious, squinty-eyed raisin face.

I hand the phone to Aunt Ellie, who takes it into the next room. “Maybe when your homework is done, we can look at your present together,” I tell Merry. “What’s your writing page?”

She pulls it out from under the numbers page and the Lego and we look at it together. “This is cool,” I say.

“Yuh,” Merry says. “What is it?”

“You have to finish this story. See, they give you these sentences with words missing and you have to fill them in. Want me to help you?”

“Yuh,” Merry says.

I hold up my mug of tea, cooled now, and she holds up hers and we clink. “Cheers.”

Merry says, “I spilled.”

“Me, too,” I say.

When Aunt Ellie comes back from her phone call with Mom in the other room, I throw myself on top of the page we’re working on. “It’s a surprise!” I say. “You can’t look at it yet!”

Aunt Ellie holds up both hands like someone surrendering and goes back into the living room.

“Now, you need a describing word,” I tell Merry. “Like
big
or
purple
or
lovely
or
atrocious
—”

“Purple,” Merry says.

“No, but you pick your own, see?” I say. “You don’t pick my word. You pick one of your own words, and then the story will be all yours. It’ll sound like you and nobody else.”

Merry says, “Lovely.”

“No, see—” I stop and take a breath.
Slow down
.
Just slow down, that’s all
. “You like hockey, right? The Habs?”

She giggles and claps her hands.

“What do you like about hockey?”

“It’s fast,” she says. “It’s zippy.”

“Zippy! That’s your word, see? Your very own word that you thought of. Okay, next we need an animal.”