Escape Velocity (20 page)

I interrupt. “She blamed
you
for him hitting on you?”

She nods. “Nine, I ran away. And ten, even though the asshole is gone, I insist on living in a group home, which makes her look bad to all the social-worker types she now hangs out with.”

“Wow.” I don't know what to say.

“Yeah.” She is mocking me now. “Wow.”

At least I have Dad, and Dana Leigh, sort of, and even Zoe…well, maybe. “Sorry I've gone on about my family and everything,” I say. “It sounds like you have enough to deal with.”

“Past tense,” she says shortly. “I've dealt with as much as I'm going to. I go to my mom's for dinner once a week, and if she starts in on me, I leave.” She stretches her legs out, black boots sticking out from under the long black skirt. “Anyway, I didn't mind hearing about your stuff. Your mom and all that.”

I nod. “Yeah.” It occurs to me that Justine is the first friend I have had in a long time, the first person my own age I have had real conversations with in over a year. I bet she has no idea. I don't know if she even considers me a friend at all. Then I remember her hand stroking my hair, and the parting hug she gave me on the sidewalk last night. Somehow, through plain dumb luck, I have managed to find someone who knows something about loneliness.

“Think you'll be going back soon?” she asks. “To your dad's?”

“I dunno. Not for a bit, I guess.”

Justine flashes me her dimples, but I think I can see the shine of tears in her eyes too. “Good,” she says. “I'm getting used to having you around.”

Twenty-One

I
've only been home for a few minutes when the buzzer rings, signaling that there is someone at the door downstairs. Zoe is working. She looks up from the screen, frowning; then she crosses the room and presses the intercom button. “Hello?”

“Zoe?” The voice is female, older, hoarse. I realize who it is before Zoe does: Heather. My heart jolts painfully in my chest, and what feels like an electric charge tingles down my arms. My back is suddenly damp with cold sweat.

“Who is this?” Zoe asks slowly. I can see the expressions flickering across her face: wariness, recognition, shock, incredulity.

“It's your mother,” Heather says. “Remember me?”

Zoe is staring at me, frozen.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”

The buzzer rings again, impatient, demanding.

“Come in,” Zoe says, pushing the button to open the door. She turns to me. “You've got about sixty seconds, so you'd better explain fast.”

“I met her. I gave her the address. I didn't know. I guess I shouldn't have, but I wanted…I thought maybe I could see her sometime. Since she's my grandmother. I'm sorry.”

“It's a bit late for that.”

Her voice is sharp enough to slice clean through me. “You wouldn't tell me anything about her,” I say. “I wanted to understand things.”

Zoe shakes her head. “She knows nothing about me, which is how I want it to stay.”

“If I'd known what she did to you, that she left you… but you never told me that.”

“So you went looking for her. For answers.” She presses her lips together tightly. “Did you get any?”

“From her? Not really. Except I guess something she said made me realize that she was Claire. Not you. And…”

There is a knock at the door, but Zoe doesn't move. “How did you find her? I can't imagine she's in the phone book.”

“Your reading at the library last night. I thought she might show up so I went downtown.” Justine's role in the whole drama seems beside the point.

Zoe shakes her head. “Maybe you did inherit something from me after all.” She walks toward the door as Heather knocks a second time.

I wonder what she means by that. Selfishness? A capacity for deceit? I watch Zoe straighten her shoulders and open the door, and I feel a surge of despair. I have been so stupid. Just when a real connection between us started to feel like a possibility, I have ruined everything.

Heather steps inside, brushing past my mother and surveying the apartment. “So this is how you live,” she says abruptly. “A downtown condo. Ikea furniture.” She purses her lips. “Potpourri on the table. Christ.”

“Mother.” Zoe holds up a hand like a traffic cop. “If you are going to be unpleasant, you might as well leave.”

“But I was invited,” she says, opening her eyes wide. “By your
daughter
, Zoe. My granddaughter. Were you ever planning on letting me know about her?”

“Honestly, Mother? I can't really see that it is any of your business.”

Heather ignores her and sits down on the couch. She's wearing jeans and ancient winter boots and that same baggy black sweater. I bet she doesn't weigh more than ninety pounds. She leans back, crosses her legs and tugs on her long braid. It's off-center, hanging forward over her shoulder. In the midday light, I can see that her lips are dry and cracked.

She gestures toward a chair, apparently amused by the absurdity of her relaxing on the couch while Zoe and I stand awkwardly across the living room. “Sit down, why don't you?”

I look at Zoe, who hesitates and then lowers herself stiffly onto a straight-back chair as far from Heather as possible. I consider backing away and retreating to my bedroom, but I'm too curious. I'm like a rubbernecking motorist in the aftermath of a car crash. Plus I feel responsible for whatever might happen, since this particular collision is entirely my fault. So I slide down to the floor and sit cross-legged where I am.

“You always were one to hold a grudge,” Heather says. “I remember this one time when you were maybe eight and I wouldn't let you sleep over at a friend's place. You barely spoke to me for about a week.”

“Don't,” Zoe says, interrupting. “I am not in the least interested in your reminiscences.”

Heather gives a laugh which gets lost in a long racking cough. She holds up a hand, signaling us to wait. I wonder if I should get her a glass of water, but I don't want to do anything that might make my mother even angrier. “No,” Heather says at last. “You're more interested in your own version of events. Including events that you weren't even present for or were too young to understand.”

“And your point is?” Zoe says.

Heather looks around the room again. “I suppose you're living well now, what with the book and all.”

Zoe shakes her head. “Please tell me you are not here to ask for money.”

“Exploitation, that's what it is. Writing about me without my permission. Putting personal things in that book, things you have no right to make public.”

“So sue me,” Zoe says. “It's a novel. Anyway, I thought you said I got it all wrong. That Claire was nothing like you.”

A sly look crosses Heather's face. “Maybe she is and maybe she isn't. All I'm saying is, since you're benefiting from using me, you should share what you're getting.”

I want her to stop talking before it's too late, before she makes everything worse. I want to believe there is something good in her, something likable and understandable, that she is here because she has regrets and wants to reconnect with Zoe and repair the damage between them, but with every word she speaks, that possibility is vanishing. Maybe it was never there at all.

“I don't think you deserve anything from me. Not a thing.” Zoe points at her mother, and I can see that her hand is shaking. “But I will write you a check. On one condition.”

Heather raises her eyebrows.

“That you get out of my apartment and out of my life. That you stay away from me. And from Lou. You stay away from both of us.”

“She doesn't look much like you, does she?” Heather cocks her head, looking me up and down.

“That's right,” Zoe says. “Take a good look now, because you won't be seeing her again.”

I squirm, feeling like a bug under a microscope.

“Didn't inherit my looks like you did,” Heather says at last. “Too bad.”

“Lou looks like her father,” Zoe says. “Garland was a very good-looking man, and Lou is beautiful. But you know what? I couldn't care less what she looks like. She's a great kid.”

I blink, startled, and drop my eyes to the carpet. Did my mother really just say that? Is she actually standing up for me?

“Quite the secret you've been keeping,” Heather says. “Always acting like you're so much better than me. So superior. Funny how things turn out.”

“What are you talking about?” Zoe asks. Then she holds up a hand. “Don't answer that. I don't even want to hear it.”

But Heather is unstoppable. “Lou told me. You didn't raise her. You left her with her dad. All the guilt trips you laid on me, and here it turns out you're no better.”

Zoe's face is white. “
I
laid guilt trips on
you
? I tried to help you, Mom. All you did was screw things up.”

“You blamed me for everything,” Heather says. “Every little thing that ever went wrong in your life was apparently my fault.”

“Are you serious?” Zoe raises her voice. “I can't believe you can say that. Don't you remember what you said to me? You blamed me for what happened to Tommy!”

“Well, you should've taken care of him,” Heather says. “You shouldn't have let him drink and drive.”

There is a long silence, and Heather's words seem to echo around the room. I want to jump up, to say something, to stop her, but I seem to be frozen to the spot. “I did my best,” Zoe says, suddenly deflated. Her arms are folded across her chest, her eyes wet. “I loved Tommy, Mom. He was all the family I had.”

Heather snorts. “Some way of showing it. You let him kill himself. You bought him that car. You admitted it yourself.”

Zoe is crying now, silently, tears overflowing her eyes and streaking her cheeks with dark lines of mascara.
Alice
, I think, and a line from
Escape Velocity
suddenly comes to mind:
As hard as I try, I can't stop asking myself
what I did to make my mother leave. What was it about
me that made me so easy to abandon? Deep down, I know
that there must be something terribly wrong inside me.
I do not deserve to be loved.

“Stop it,” I say. My voice is a frog-like croak. I clear my throat. “Stop,” I say again, getting to my feet. I point at Heather, and my hand is trembling. “You were the one who left your kids. You weren't even there. So don't try to blame my mom for anything that happened.”

“Oh, now you know all about it, do you? Now you're going to pass judgment?” Heather says. “You're going to join her in blaming me for everything?”

Zoe wipes her face roughly. “Just go, Mom,” she says. “I don't want to fight with you, and we don't seem to be able to do anything else.”

Heather gets to her feet and shrugs like she couldn't care less about any of this. “I could use a few bucks,” she says.

“Fine.” Zoe crosses the living room and grabs her checkbook. “Last time, Mom. So don't bother coming back.” She writes quickly, scrawls her signature, hands the check to Heather.

Heather looks at it, and her eyebrows lift in surprise. “Well. That's generous of you, Zoe.” She folds it in half before sticking it in her pocket. “I was thinking I might go back to Vancouver anyway. There's a lot of flights over this city, and I'm pretty concerned about all the radiation.”

“I wish you'd see a doctor,” Zoe says.

“I have, I have.” Heather zips up her coat. “They don't believe me about the radiation. The last one I saw, I think he worked for the government. I saw a letter on his desk. So I knew better than to trust anything he gave me.” She buries her hands in her pockets. “Didn't even fill the prescription. I'm not that stupid.”

Zoe opens her mouth as if she is about to say something. “Mom…” She stops. “Good luck. Take care of yourself.” She opens the door to let Heather out.

I wave hesitantly, but Heather is gone without even a glance in my direction.

Twenty-Two

Z
oe closes the door behind her and sinks onto the couch. She closes her eyes. “God.”

“I'm really sorry.” Words feel worse than useless. “How much money did you give her?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“She's horrible.”

Zoe opens her eyes. “She isn't well. That's not her fault.”

“I don't mean the airplane stuff. I mean what she said about your brother.”

“Tommy,” Zoe says. “My mother blames me. I blame her.” She sighs. “And I blame myself too.”

“How does she even know about what happened?” I ask. “She wasn't around by then, right?”

“No, she'd been gone for six years. She left when I was twelve and Tommy was ten.” She laces her fingers together tightly. “I knew I should try to find her when Tommy died. To let her know. To tell her about the funeral. But I couldn't face it. I didn't want to see her, so I didn't even try. Selfish, I suppose.”

“You weren't much older than me,” I say. “And you'd just lost your brother.”

She shrugs. “When I found my mother in Vancouver, after you were born, I told her about Tommy. She was furious that no one had contacted her about the funeral.”

“It's not like she left you a phone number,” I protest.

“I probably could have found her if I'd tried. Turned out I was right to be scared though. As soon as I told her what happened, she blamed me.”

“But he was drinking and driving, right? How could you have stopped him doing that? Half the kids in my old school did that every weekend, and it's not like their parents even knew.”

“I bought him the car,” Zoe said.

“You did? But you were only—what, eighteen?”

“Our father died a couple of years after Mom left. He had pancreatic cancer.” She drops her eyes to her hands and is quiet for a moment. Then she clears her throat and looks at me. “It was really sudden. He was diagnosed a few weeks before I finished grade eight, and he was dead by the end of the summer.”