Y: A Novel (28 page)

When he wakes again, it is late afternoon. Why hasn’t Yula woken him with his lunch?
He gets out of bed and moves to the window, angry, his head heavy with sedatives and
sleep, his left hand tingling with numbness. The Meteor is gone again. He tries to
recall his dream—something about a train? He searches for the ending in his mind but
can only see the
colors, the red and blue of the subway station, and then they, too, fade away. He
holds his arm to his chest, rubbing it against his pajama top. Each day he prays for
his hand to come back to life. Sometimes he thinks it’s just a matter of thinking
hard enough about it, of willing it to rejoin the nervous system of his body. As he
stands by the window, he visualizes the hand opening and closing. He stares at the
hand and wills it to move, but it hangs limply off his useless arm. Some days he wants
to go outside and chop it off with an axe. He hates having something dead hanging
off his body. Today maybe. Today maybe he will chop off his hand. Make his daughter
take him to the hospital in her hungover and repulsive state. What was she thinking?
Was this all his doing? Is she weak, or has he broken her? The blame shifts around
inside of him like sand.

He is still at the window when the Meteor comes back down the driveway. He watches
Harrison get out the passenger side and go into the cabin. Dominic is smoking a cigarette
in the driver’s seat. These are bad men, anyone can see it. Quinn wonders what makes
women so blind. Why would a woman want to be around these two? Ex-cons are what they
are. Half the time he expects to wake up with them over his bed, a butcher knife in
one of their hands. They’d gut the house, turn the land into a grow-op. It’s only
a matter of time, Quinn thinks. So be it. He’s ready for the next thing. He’s ready
to die.

Through the window, Quinn watches Harrison rush outside and get back into the Meteor.
The men talk for a few minutes and then Harrison disappears into the cabin again.
Dominic gets out of the car, walks around the side of the cabin, and emerges with
a shovel and a flashlight, which he puts in the trunk. He lights another cigarette
and leans up against the car, his body slightly concave in an effort to keep warm.

And then Harrison comes out of the cabin with Eugene in his arms. The little boy’s
face is so blue that Quinn gasps. God, what have these monsters done? Quinn fears
for the boy’s life. He has never seen a child look this way. The little boy’s body
hangs in Harrison’s arms. He is wrapped in one of Yula’s old sweatshirts and his legs
and feet are bare. Quinn watches Harrison carry him to the back of the car, where
Dominic meets him and opens up the trunk again. What in God’s name is going
on? What are they doing? Harrison lays the boy inside, then disappears inside the
cabin. When he returns he has one of Eugene’s little red boots in his hand. Dominic
and Harrison stand over the trunk, talking, and then Harrison reaches up, slams the
trunk shut and gets in the car, and the men begin to drive away.

The door to the cabin opens, and Quinn sees his daughter break into an awkward sprint
after the car, her hand underneath her belly. Her face is white. Her eyes are wild.
She chases the car until it slows and Harrison jumps out, runs to her, throws his
arms around her. What is going on? They are talking but he can’t make out the words,
even though they are right in front of his house. When Yula starts to walk away from
them, Dominic lunges for her, and the two men drag her back to the car. She wrenches
forward, grasping her belly, and Harrison pushes her into the car.

A second later Quinn is on the phone with Joel and Edwin. They’ll be right over, they
say. Just hold on. We’ll be right there.

XV.

a
t three o’clock the next day, I am on Vaughn’s bike, pedaling down Cook Street as
fast as I can, my backpack thumping against my back, my sneakers occasionally slipping
off the pedals and shooting forward so that the pedal catches the back of my calf.
I am a terrible cyclist, plus the seat is too high and I have no idea how to lower
it. I pray I won’t have to make any left turns. I fly down the street, going too widely
around parked cars and veering into traffic. I am constantly honked at. But I’m so
scared that someone will open their driver’s side door and hit me, and then that will
be my life. Over and out. The end.

By the time I get to the Y my armpits are wet and my hands and legs are shaking. I
lock up the bike and walk inside, try to get my heart to pound a little more slowly,
try not to look too jazzed up. But I can feel my eyes are wild.

Chloe and the cockatoo are behind the counter. Chloe is filling out a form and the
cockatoo is folding towels. They nod at me when I come in. I feel like a small alien
wearing the bike helmet. I push through the turnstile and scan the weight room for
Vaughn. He’s standing by the leg press, holding a clipboard in one hand and ticking
things off while an older woman with white hair works the machine. Vaughn is wearing
a pair of red running shorts with a white stripe and a white polo shirt. His
running shoes look huge. His feet are splayed slightly, I notice for the first time.
He looks a bit like a giant duck. The Isley Brothers are playing. Kind of a weird
choice. Vaughn nods in time to the music. Then I notice that everyone in here has
white hair. Oldies’ hour. I get it now.

“Just a sec?” He gives me a big smile but I see something in his eyes—fear? Irritation?
I can’t tell, but my stomach starts to hurt.

“Hey, kiddo.” The cockatoo sidles up to me. “Seniors’ hour is over. What should I
put on?”

“Punk.”

“’K.”

I approach one of the weight machines and fiddle with it but have no idea how to make
it go. I climb on a recumbent bike, but the seat’s too far back and my feet won’t
reach the pedals, and I don’t want to stand up and fix it because I don’t know how.

Vaughn puts his hand on top of my bike helmet. “There’s a lever under the seat.”

“It’s okay. I already cycled a bunch today.”

“How’re things?” He stares down at me.

“Good. Okay. You?”

“Yup. Let me get my things.”

Vaughn pushes his bike up Quadra Street toward View Towers—still no one jumping off—and
I walk beside him, still wearing the bike helmet. We’re going to take the bus to the
ministry. We’re going to talk to Madeleine.

“You ever eaten,” Vaughn is saying, “at the Schnitzel House?”

“I’ve always wanted to.” We look into the dark windows for a second. The waitress—a
big, matronly woman—is sitting at one of the tables, scratching a lotto card with
a penny. There’s no one else in the restaurant.

Up the street we stop at the 7-Eleven to get a Slurpee for me and a Powerade for Vaughn.
I look around for Mickey, but he must be playing at one of the other convenience stores
today.

“You know the trumpet player, the one who wears the orange hat?”

Vaughn hands the store clerk a couple of bucks and we exit the store. “’Course.”

“He’s the one who told me I should contact you.”

“Oh yeah? He some kind of friend of yours?”

“Guess so.” I shoot Vaughn a look. “Why?”

“Nothing. I’m not your dad. Not going to get a lecture from me.”

We wait at the bus stop and watch people drive by, blowing smoke out their car windows,
blasting bass. A man pushes a shopping cart filled with bottles and cans by us, and
Vaughn tosses his Powerade bottle into the mix.

It takes forever for the bus to come. It always does. Vaughn leans his bike against
the shelter, and we share the bench with a man holding a baby. The man has a black
eye and Vaughn and I look at each other. There’s something about holding a baby and
having a black eye—simultaneously—that seems incongruent with the world, or how I
think the world should be, but I’ve got too much on my mind to think about it.

“Not everybody is who they pretend to be.” Vaughn picks at a hangnail on his index
finger and doesn’t look at me. “It’s a small town, but that doesn’t mean it’s a safe
one.”

“What’s wrong with hanging out with Mickey?”

Vaughn lets out a heavy sigh. “You got a boyfriend, Shannon?”

“Nope.”

“It might do you good to spend time with boys your own age.”

I rattle my bus fare around in my hand. “I’m too old for people my age.”

The man with the shopping cart comes clattering back down the street and stops in
front of Vaughn and me. “Got a smoke?” he says.

“Gave it up years ago, man,” Vaughn says, and the men nod at each other.

Two guys on choppers come around the corner and stop at the light, engines revving.
“Check it out,” I say to Vaughn and the shopping cart guy. They blow through the intersection
with a noise so loud that the black-eyed man’s baby starts wailing.

“Used to live on the other side of Finlayson,” Vaughn is saying. “Those guys rule
out there. You know, one day I was out walking and it got quiet all of a sudden, too
quiet, and I realized I was standing in the middle of a grow-op. Not two minutes later,
two guys with beards are pointing rifles at me, coupla pit bulls behind them.”

The man with the baby is rocking her, and she quiets down. He turns to us with his
big swollen eye. “I got a story like that. Cops busted a big operation a few years
ago up-island. Found a couple of black bears guarding the property. Imagine that,
huh?”

“Good security system,” says Vaughn, and the men laugh.

“I was living in Ladysmith at the time,” the man says. “Some people said the bears
even came into the house.”

“Nuts.” Vaughn shakes his head and holds his hand out to the man. “Vaughn.”

“Earl.”

When the number 6 comes, Vaughn fastens his bike to the front of the bus. We say hello
to the bus driver and sit in the raised section at the back. We read the graffiti
and the ads. The bus isn’t too crowded this time of day, and I’m grateful for it.
I hate standing for miles. It hurts my knees.

Vaughn stretches his legs out in the aisle. They are so muscular that they frighten
me. “Thinking about getting your license anytime soon?” he says.

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t see.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Were you born with a bad eye?”

“It got that way.”

Vaughn smiles at me like the sun has just risen over my head. “Sorry. Sorry,” he says.
“Sometimes I look at you and think about how little you were. Makes me happy, that’s
all. To see you okay.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

We head up Quadra Street, past the cop shop and the curling rink and the swimming
pool and the Roxy and the pawnshop and the check-cashing joint. Vaughn is looking
at the ads that line the top of the bus.

“Did you talk to Miranda?” he says.

“Yeah. We’re okay now.”

“She know you’re with me?”

I pause. “Nah.”

“Shannon.”

“I know. I know.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat and flexes his calves. “I want you to tell her
what’s what. Don’t feel comfortable with her not knowing.”

Vaughn takes off his glasses and cleans them on his gym shirt. The bus is headed up
the highway now, and we both lean back and enjoy the speed. I can hear the tinny bass
from some guy’s headphones and the murmur of two women talking in the handicapped
section up front.

So much silence on a bus trip. All these miles, all these minutes, nothing to say.
That incessant hum in my ears as the wind whips past—the
pshoo, pshoo, pshoo
of cars going the other way. Right now it feels like it would be a sin to speak.
I know Vaughn is as lost in the shadows of his life as I am.

I sit on this bus, and every bad thing I’ve ever done comes flooding back to me. I
am lost in guilt. I am a liar. I am a cheat. I steal things. I use people. I have
no friends. I have five stars carved into my leg now. There is something wrong with
me. Sometimes I just really want to go off the deep end. Get myself addicted to heroin
and check out. I want an off switch. I don’t want to be me every day. When I wake
up and look in the mirror, all I can think is
You again
. Again and again.

“Listen,” Vaughn says. “I have to be honest with you about something.”

“What.”

“When I saw your mother that day.” He pauses, searches my face. “She left you there
so that someone else would find you, and love you, and raise you. I don’t believe
this was something she decided to do—I believe this is something she
had
to do.”

“Okay.”

“Shannon, I think there’s something deeply wrong with her, but also fundamentally
right. I saw her intention for you—she left you there because you were better off
that way. It was an act of generosity. An act of love.”

“I don’t need my mother to be a good person. I just want to know who she is.”

“I understand.” He closes his eyes. “She kissed your cheek when she put you down.
She was wearing men’s coveralls, with motor oil all over them. She had on these huge
workmen’s boots. This is not someone who lived in the city, the way I see it. She
put you down, kissed you, and she walked into the cemetery beside Christ Church. Dark
hair. Little woman, I think. Our eyes have the hardest time at dawn or twilight, you
know—it’s the hardest light for our eyes to process—”