Encore Edie (12 page)

“Giraffe,” Merry says.

“Perfect.” I spell it for her and she writes it down.

When we’re done her writing page, we take it into the living room to read it to Aunt Ellie. She’s lying on the sofa, just staring at the ceiling, but smiles when she sees us. “So?” she says.

This is what the page originally said:

Once upon a time, a [describing word] [animal] lived in a [describing word] [place]. One day, the [animal] was [travelling] to [place] when she saw a [object]. “Oh no!” she said. “That [object] is [doing something] on that [other animal] over there! It’s [doing something] [describing word]! I have to do something quickly!” The [animal] [describing word] [did something] and [did something] until the [object] [travelled] across the [place]. “There!” the [animal] said. “I have saved the day!” [exclamation]

This is what we wrote:

Once upon a time, a
zippy giraffe
lived in a
lovely hockey rink
. One day, the
giraffe
was
skating
to
the Indian restaurant
when she saw a
bottle of nail polish
. “Oh no!” she said. “That
bottle of nail polish
is
spilling that green colour
on that
monkey
over there! It’s
spilling atrociously
! I have to do something quickly!” The
giraffe cleverly grabbed a big sponge
and
mopped
until the
bottle of nail polish bounded away
across the
pampas
. “There!” the
giraffe
said. “I have saved the day!
He scores!
”

Aunt Ellie sits up and claps when we’re done, and then she gives us both hugs. “Go get your present,” she tells Merry. “It’s on my bed.” Merry runs upstairs. Aunt Ellie takes the page and reads it over. “Sounded like you guys were having fun in there,” she says.

“I like writing,” I say. “She chose all the words herself, though.”

“Atrociously?”
Aunt Ellie says.
“Pampas?”

“Almost all the words.”

She smiles, then quickly blows her nose, turning her face into her shoulder so I can’t see her. I say, “Are you okay?”

“I’m just tired. Thank you, sweetie. Thank you for helping her with this.”

“You shouldn’t thank me. I haven’t been much help at all. I—”

“It’s okay, Edie,” Aunt Ellie says. “I know.”

“I’ve been pretty mean, actually.” I tell her about the first time Merry invited me for a sleepover and I said no. I want to cry, but I don’t let myself. I don’t deserve to cry and get a hug.

“Oh, baby,” she says. “You really think I don’t understand? I know it’s hard. Anyway, you’re here now, aren’t you?”

Merry barrels back into the room, waving a DVD called
Guys and Dolls
. I’ve never heard of it.

“Shall we watch it right now?” Aunt Ellie says.

We all go down to the basement, where the TV is. There’s not so much furniture here, but a lot of pillows and old quilts and blankets clutter the floor, and there are a couple of hot pink beanbag chairs Aunt Ellie got at a garage sale. “Make a nest, Edie,” Aunt Ellie says, smiling. Mom would insist on folding all the blankets and putting them away in a closet when they aren’t being used; Aunt Ellie just leaves them in a pile on the floor. That’s one of the things I like about Aunt Ellie.

Merry plops herself down in a beanbag chair. I grab a big cushion for myself, but Aunt Ellie says she’s going to do her yoga while she watches, so I take the other beanbag chair. Aunt Ellie sits cross-legged on the floor, breathes deeply through her nose a few times, and presses the clicker.

The movie is about gamblers and showgirls in New York a long time ago. The men wear suits like my dad but in candy colours, and the girls are all stupid except one who works for the Salvation Army, who’s pretty and mean. Then one of the gamblers gets her drunk and she’s not mean anymore. The music is jazzy and the talking is strange, all fancy and stilted, but funny too. There’s one love story between the gambler and the Salvation Army girl, which makes me cringe inside the way love stories always do, and another love story between another gambler and one of the showgirls. They’re dumber and funnier than the first two, and I’m more comfortable when they’re on the screen.

“What is that?” I ask Aunt Ellie.

“Downward Dog,” Aunt Ellie says. She’s bending from the waist with her palms on the floor. Her voice is kind of muffled.

“In the movie, I mean.”

Her head comes up. “It’s a dice game called—”

“Ssh,” Merry says.

“—craps,” Aunt Ellie says.

“Sorry!” I whisper. I must have wrecked her concentration.

“No, the game’s really called craps,” she whispers back.

“Ssh!” Merry says.

When the movie’s over, Merry wants to watch it again right away. Aunt Ellie says she’s going to make supper. “Want to help me or watch it again?”

“I’ll sit with Merry,” I say. “Unless you need me to help?”

“Sit with Merry.”

Halfway into our second time through, Aunt Ellie brings down trays with macaroni and cheese and raw veggies and dip and cranberry juice and chocolate pudding. “Don’t tell your mom we’re not sitting around the table,” Aunt Ellie says.

“We get to eat takeout pizza in front of the TV when there’s an election. Other than that—”

“My sister likes things just so.” Aunt Ellie smiles with just one side of her mouth, as if it’s a joke that isn’t really a joke. “All the family sitting round like a picture in a magazine. But when it’s just the two of us, Merry and me, we’re pretty relaxed.”

“Ssh!” Merry says. She’s sitting up straight in her beanbag, transfixed by the TV. Her plate of food sits untouched on the floor. I’ve never seen her concentrate so hard on anything for so long, let alone ignore food.

“What’s she doing?” I whisper to Aunt Ellie.

She passes me some carrot sticks. “Learning the words.”

When the movie’s all done, Merry wants to watch it a third time. “Tomorrow, Merry,” Aunt Ellie says. “It’s time to go make up a bed for Edie.”

“No,” Merry says.

“I don’t have pyjamas,” I say. “Or a toothbrush. Should I call my mom?”

“Merry can lend you something,” Aunt Ellie says. “And I have a spare toothbrush. You don’t have to go to bed yet, Merry, just get ready. We can do crafts or listen to music.”

“Music,” I say quickly. Crafts,
meh
.

Merry loans me a pair of too-short orange fleece pants and a too-big
Belle Province
T-shirt for pyjamas. We drink cocoa and Aunt Ellie puts a Louis Armstrong CD on the stereo. Merry sings along to most of the songs. She’s not a great singer, but she knows every single word and bit of melody, every breath and hesitation and improvisation.

“Merry,” I say when she’s done, “that’s really good. You know all the words and everything.”

“I like that,” she says. Then she starts to sing something else:

Silly old dad of mine
,

Why waste your time and mine?

You make me sad in my heart.

It takes a minute for my brain to catch up to my ears. “That’s Cordelia,” I say to Aunt Ellie. “That’s Cordelia’s first song in our
King Lear
.”

“She knows all the songs,” Aunt Ellie says, ruffling Merry’s hair. “The words, too. She’s been to every rehearsal, after all.”

“Yeah, but that’s—that’s amazing. Half the cast don’t know their own lines yet.”

“It’s okay, Edie,” Merry says.

We sleep in her room, Merry in her bed and me on the futon. She falls asleep fast. After a while I get up and find Aunt Ellie in the kitchen, back on her computer. “Can’t sleep?” she says.

I shake my head. “What are you doing?”

“Just email. Daniel says hi.”

“To me?”

“I emailed him earlier that you were here, while I was making supper. He says to call you String Bean and tell you you’re amazing.” I make a face. Aunt Ellie laughs. “He’s just pushing your buttons, Edie. He messes with you because he likes you.”

“Whatever.”

Aunt Ellie slouches and shakes her hair over her face and pouts and says, “Whatever.” I realize she’s imitating me. She’s happy, though, laughing. She’s gone pink in the cheeks just thinking about Daniel. It’s weird. “Want to say anything back?” she asks, fingers poised over the keyboard.

“Tell him we missed him tonight.”

Her cheeks go pinker. Tap-tap-tap go her fingers.

Later, when I’m back in bed and almost asleep, I hear a car pull into the driveway, the front door opening, low voices in the hall. But the next morning it’s just the three of us for breakfast, so it must have been a dream.

Mom comes to pick me up. “Have a good time?” she asks.

I say, “Actually.”

Mom doesn’t say anything, but I can see she’s happy.

Raj can juggle and walk on his hands and sing and dance and do impressions of all the teachers and tell jokes until you think you’ll pee your pants. He should be the perfect Fool, but something is wrong.

“I just don’t want to do it that way,” he says glumly, a few days after my sleepover with Merry. I’ve just suggested he make a face behind Lear’s back to liven up one of his lines. “Can’t I just play it straight?”

“You’re the Fool, Raj,” I say. “You’re supposed to fool around. Foolishly.”

“It doesn’t feel right,” he says.

AAAARGH! I want to say, but I’m tiptoeing around Raj these days, grateful he came back at all after the day I yelled
at him. “How do you want to do it, then?” I say instead.

“I don’t know.” He looks as if he wants to cry. “I just want to say the line, I guess. Can’t somebody else do the laughs?”

AAAARGH!

“I think the Fool’s kind of a serious character, actually,” Raj says. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot. I think the humour is just on the surface. Underneath, I think he’s, like, really sad.”

“Yeah?” I say.

He nods. “He speaks the truth, but nobody takes him seriously. Nobody listens to him. They just want to laugh and not to have to think about what he’s saying. Listen.” He flips through his pages. Raj is one of those I was complaining about to Aunt Ellie, who hasn’t got the text memorized yet. “‘Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out.’ The only way he can tell the truth without being punished is to make it into a joke. But the truth isn’t a joke. What if he’s all dressed up in his Fool costume but you can tell he’s—”

“Depressed?” I whisper to Regan.

She pops her eyebrows briefly, as if she’s not disagreeing with me.

“I’m a serious person, you know,” Raj says. “I just think I should be able to show that every once in a while.”

AAAARGH! “Okay, Raj,” I say. “Just say the line straight, then.”

He says it straight. His voice is flat. It’s boring.

“All right!” I say. “This will work! Let’s keep going!”

After rehearsal is over, Sam and Merry and Regan and I go to The Shot.

“Why did we cast Raj as the Fool?” I say loudly, rhetorically. “Because he’s funny! If he’s not going to try to be funny, what’s the point?”

Regan and Merry are flipping through the laminated booklet chained to the counter that shows all the kinds of tea. Sam is ordering a hot white chocolate.

“What even is that?” I say.

“Cocoa,” Sam says. “Made with white chocolate. It goes with my boots.”

“I wasn’t saying anything,” I say. “I really just wanted to know.”

Sam makes a face at me and I make one back. I’m glad she’s here, and Merry too. I can be more relaxed around Regan, more like myself, when they’re here.

“Dark roast,” I tell the counter girl when it’s my turn.

“Has anyone ever told you about decaf?” Regan asks.

Sam snorts. “Nothing!” she says when I give her Mom’s raisin face.

Merry gets chai. Regan gets rooibos. The four of us get the table with the cushy chairs under the blue glass chandelier, by the fireplace. Suddenly, for a moment, sitting in the best seats with my three friends, I feel like a rock star. Sam asks Regan what she’ll do for spring break, which is next week, and she says she might be seeing her mom. I get that night-sky
feeling I get sometimes with Regan, of an enormous black universe, all cold and empty, with just one or two stars glittering through. Then Regan asks Sam back, and Sam says going to Seattle with her family.

“How about you, Merry?” Regan says.

“We go skiing in Whistler,” she says.

“Oh, Merry, you are not,” I say.

“Yuh! We ski in Quebec. We brought our own skis from home. Daniel come with us.”

“You know how to ski?” I say.

She giggles and claps her hands.

“How about you, Edie?” Regan asks.

I know Dex has already signed up for a week-long intensive ballet camp, so our family will definitely be staying home. Nothing comes between Dexter and her ballet. “I’ll be working on the musical, I guess,” I say. “Now that our Fool won’t act funny, I’d better do some rewriting.”

“It’ll be okay,” Regan says. “I think it’s better to let Raj do it his way. You don’t know what it feels like to be a character until you’ve had to live with it for a while. You can’t make people conform if they don’t want to.”

“I guess,” I say. Regan is wearing a strapless pink satin prom dress with a line of iron-on peace signs on the bodice, her army jacket, and steel-toed boots. Her hair is currently purple. I’m going to argue with her about doing what people expect of you?