Beige (19 page)

She starts to play.

“Listen to it. Tell me. Am I wrong? We got the A, we got the D, we got the G, C, we got the A!” I watch her fingers as she presses on the strings. Her fingers fly. They press; they speak in code.

We got the A, we got the D, we got the G, C, we got the A!

I repeat it in my head as she repeats it on the guitar. Then she starts to play her new song.

“What do you think? Too similar?” she asks.

“Maybe you need to work on the way you sing it? Maybe emphasize something different?”

She shrugs.

“Duh!” she says. “But what?”

I shrug back. “I don’t know!”

“Yeah.” She laughs. “You don’t.”

Then Lake starts futzing around with the song again.

She sings it a million more times. She plays it in a million more different ways. But suddenly, to my ears, the solution is obvious. It’s not the music that’s wrong; it’s the words. The words aren’t right. I scribble something down on the back of one of the flyers.

“Lake,” I say.

She looks up from the guitar.

“What?”

I say her lines back to her, with a twist:

“Hey, I like that, Beige. It’s kind of poetic.”

When she sings it back to me, she slows it down, makes it sweet, almost tender.

At last the melody is not something that sounds wrong; it’s not something that sounds irritating. Everything seems to fall into place.

I’m done with the flyers, so I settle in and start reading my new library book. I’m on the
M
s.

As I read, Lake keeps singing, but I realize I don’t mind. I actually kind of like it. The words on the page and the words in Lake’s song make me feel something. They make me feel better.

Mom’s voice is far away. Instead of talking about the arrangements to get home, she keeps talking about Vittorio.

I now know that Vittorio has a PhD in ancient civilizations, his specialty being moon images in ancient cultures. He is from Turin, Italy, but is a professor at the University of Madrid. He is forty-five, divorced, no kids. He can cook a gourmet meal on a Bunsen burner and is allergic to bee stings.

“He sounds OK,” I say.

“He’s amazing,” Mom says. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“You must be anxious to get home and start working on your thesis,” I say.

“Well, yes, I am.” She says it very slowly. “I have a new theory on domestic rituals.”

“When can I book my flight home? The summer is almost over, and I don’t know when I’m going home.”

“Well, that’s the thing, Katy. I need to write now.”

“I know.”

“And pretty much a person can write anywhere,” she says.

“Mmm-hmm,” I say.

“I really need to be away from distractions and also to be able to communicate with someone who understands my theories. Someone who was on the site.”

“Right,” I say. “That makes sense. Can we go shopping when I get home? I want to go to Cours Mont-Royal and get some new clothes before school starts. And I want to eat some
poutine.
Do you know you can’t get cheese curds in the U.S.? Crazy, eh?”

“Well, Katy, Vittorio has invited me to go to Madrid with him to continue work on my thesis because he has to go back to get ready for school.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means that I’m on a roll.”

“But school starts in two weeks,” I say. “I have to get ready. I have to go home.”

“I know, I know. But there’s a great international high school in Madrid. You can start there in three weeks. Won’t that be amazing? It’s going to be such a great cultural opportunity for you.”

The floor has dropped out from under me.

“Now?” I say. “
Now
you want me to have a cultural experience?”

“Just think, you’ll be surrounded by a two-thousand-year-old city!”

I wanted to go to the rain forest. I wanted to be on the dig. I wanted to shower outside. I wanted to live in a tent. I don’t want to go to Madrid. I want to go home to Montréal.

I know what’s going on.
Vittorio.
She’s in love with him.

I could have stopped this whole love affair with Vittorio if I had gone to Peru. Mom wouldn’t have forgotten about her responsibilities to me. What did The Rat call being on tour? Unreal. A dream. Adventure time. She is just on adventure time. This Vittorio thing can’t be real. She’s dreaming. She’s not being realistic.

Going to Madrid for a guy is stupid.

“You’re going to give up your place at McGill for
Vittorio
?” I say. “You’re going to do that for a man? I thought you said that a woman never does stuff like that. A woman should be independent.”

“First of all, I
am
independent,” my mother says, her tone more serious. “Second of all, we live in the twenty-first century. I’m writing my thesis. I’ll be in correspondence with my advisor at McGill.”

“You’re moving for a guy.”

“I’m moving because the man that I am doing my research with lives in Madrid, and I want to be with him. The distance was going to be a complication, so I eliminated it.”

She says it so simply. So matter-of-factly. So unlike the Mom I know. She’s changed.

“So that’s it,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “We’ll go to Montréal, pick up our stuff, and go to Madrid. I’ve already sublet the house.”

All at once, I can’t see straight. Tears are shooting right out of my eyeballs, and the phone has slid off my ear and is sitting limply in my palm, threatening to fall to the floor. I’m barely holding on to it when The Rat comes over and takes it out of my hand and puts the phone up to his ear.

I don’t hear what he’s saying into the phone to my mom. It’s like I’m wearing a helmet over my head. Or I’ve suddenly gone deaf. And asthmatic. I can’t breathe.

Suddenly The Rat is holding the phone up against my ear. And from far away I hear my mom say that everything is going to be all right and that she loves me.

I know she’s a liar. She loves Vittorio
more.

I’m still crying. I don’t say anything back. And then the phone is put away and The Rat is steering me toward my bedroom and I’m blubbering. Almost screaming. And he’s lying to me, too. Telling me that everything is going to be fine.

I lie on my bed and I start kicking and screaming. And it’s like I’m watching myself from one million miles away, like I’m having some kind of out-of-body experience. I’m not even acting like myself. I’m acting like a two-year-old.

I start punching my pillow. I sit up and I punch the pillow. I punch and punch it.

The Rat comes into my room, standing in the doorway, watching me. And now he’s punching his fists on his thighs and it makes a beat and so I start punching the pillow in time with him.

I start saying words as I punch. “Di-sas-ter. Cat-a-stroph-ic. A-poc-a-lyp-tic. Earth-shat-ter-ing. Aw-ful.”

One punch per syllable.

Somehow, the rhythm relaxes me. I keep doing it until I feel worn out and tired.

I don’t even get out of my clothes. I don’t even get under the covers. I just lie back and hit the bed. And then I’m asleep.

When I wake up the next day, my shoes are off and the knit blanket is over me and Sid Vicious is purring next to me and the sun is streaming in through the window all happy-like and it makes me smile. But when I’m fully awake, I remember.

I’m finally going back to home to Montréal only to abandon it for Madrid.

“I heard what happened,” Trixie says when she opens the door.

I nod. She’s whispering because Auggie is asleep.

“Well, I have to get to work. How about we talk about it when I get home?”

I nod. I don’t speak. I’ve given up speaking. No one understands. Trixie nods back and heads out the door.

I sit on the couch. I don’t turn on the TV. I don’t open my book. I just stare at the wall. A scratch at the door startles me, and I let out a little yelp when it opens.

Trixie stands in the frame.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she says.

I nod.

“Fuck work. Do you want to talk?”

I nod.

“I’ll put some chamomile tea on.”

I sit like a zombie on the couch, being totally unhelpful, while she putters in the kitchen and then the kettle screams and then Trixie comes through the beaded curtain of La Sirena that separates the kitchen from the living room, carrying a tray with tea, cookies, a pint of ice cream, and two spoons. She puts the tray on the coffee table and sits down next to me.

“I brought out all the emergency girl-talk rations.”

I lean forward and take a cookie and put it in my mouth and chew. The chocolate kind of melts in my mouth, and after I swallow, I start talking. I look straight ahead and I tell Trixie everything that I can’t say to The Rat. I say things I can’t say to Mom. I say things I didn’t even know I felt.

“I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to be separated. I wanted to go to Peru. I was afraid that I was going to lose her. Lose our special bond. And now I have.”

“You’re not losing her,” Trixie says.

“My mom and I are a team,” I say.

“You still are.”

“No, she and Vittorio are a team now.”

“That’s how it feels, but it’s not true.”

I don’t want to let her get a word in edgewise, so I just open my mouth and talk.

“I don’t like The Rat. I was fine without him. I didn’t need him in my life. And I feel like I’ve had to be nice to him because he’s trying so hard. And did you know that Lake was bribed all summer to be friends with me? Lake calls me Beige, because that’s what I am. Boring. Bland. Beige. She doesn’t even like me. No one here likes me. Except Garth. But Garth likes everyone, so that doesn’t really count. And then there is Leo. I liked Leo so much and he used me. I liked Leo so much, and I hurt so much, and if Mom were here, then I could talk to her about it and she could give me advice. But I can’t because she’s in love and she’s forgotten all about me and no one ever asked me what I wanted.”

Trixie’s arm comes up and goes around my shoulder and she pulls me in for a hug, and when my face reaches her shoulder, I sigh. She smells like jasmine. She strokes my hair and she says, “Katy, that’s a lot to keep all bottled up inside.”

I’m so glad someone can see that. Finally.

“So, what am I going to do?”

“You’re going to hang in there. It’s going to be all right.”

“It doesn’t feel like it’s going to be all right. It feels like my mother is abandoning me. Like I’m not interesting to her anymore. I really am beige.”

“She’s not abandoning you.”

“Yes, she is. She’s picking a
guy
over me! I want to go
home
! And now I have to go to another new country, and this time I don’t even speak the language!”

I’m totally yelling. I didn’t know I could be so loud. Auggie is going to wake up for sure. Trixie doesn’t seem to mind. She just lets me yell.

“Katy, she’s living her life for the first time. And she can’t do it without you. Think about that.”

“Are you going to be like every other adult and tell me it’s a great opportunity?”

“No,” Trixie says. “I think it sucks. I wish Vittorio were going to move to Montréal. Make the man change his life, I say. It’s such a typical gender role for the woman to have to change her life for a man.”

“Yeah,” I say. That hurts because it sounds like something Mom would say.

“You know, Katy, your mom is really young,” Trixie says.

“I know.”

“I mean, she’s ten years younger than I am.”

“No.”

“Yeah. You know what I was doing when I was in my twenties and thirties?” Trixie asks. “I was making big mistakes and dating the wrong guy. And getting out of a stupid marriage. And I was wild. And I was independent. And I did whatever I wanted. I went crazy and did crazy things and I was selfish. You know what your mom was doing? None of that. She had you.”