Flannery (14 page)

18

Tyrone makes an unexpected appearance — in math class of all places. There he is, long legs sticking out in the aisle. He's wearing socks with marijuana leaves on them and army boots spray-painted gold. But he's jotting down notes from the board.

I corner him in the hall while the lunch buzzer is droning through the speakers.

I have an appointment at a glassblower's studio, I tell him. To look at bottles for our potion. It's somewhere on Bond, and I'm not going there by myself. Even though the guy seems pretty nice in his texts, he is, after all, a complete stranger.

It's been a week since Mercy Hanrahan attacked me behind the school, and I'm still constantly looking over my shoulder. I haven't let my guard down for one second until now. I'm standing there trying to convince Tyrone he has to come with me when Mercy Hanrahan walks by with Jessica Kelloway. I don't see them until they're practically on top of me.

Mercy fakes this dart-jolt toward me, her sneakers squeaking on the floor, her eyes nearly popping out of her head. Her face so close to mine I can feel her breath on my cheeks.

She whispers, Boo!

Of course I nearly jump out of my skin and that sends her into a fit of giggles. She's jabbing Jessica Kelloway in the ribs with her elbow and the two of them are laughing hard, crossing their legs so they don't pee in their pants and staggering forward like the laughing might make them keel over.

Hey, Malone, Mercy says. Did you give your friend our message? Tell her she's next.

What was that all about? asks Tyrone. I haven't told anyone about the attack, not even Miranda. I feel ashamed for being stupid enough to cross the dark parking lot in the first place and I feel ashamed about feeling ashamed. Of course it wasn't my fault. But I can't help it. I feel so stupid. And the condom was so disgusting. I can't bring myself to speak about it.

What did that mean, “She's next”? asks Tyrone. What have I been missing around here?

Look, I say. I did the whole interview thing on my own and signed your name to it. Twenty percent of your grade. And I did the initial proposal on my own. And the rewrite. All I'm asking is you come with me to check out this glassblower's perfume bottles. It's the perfect packaging for the love potion. It'll just take an hour. The thing is, I'm depending on you, Tyrone. I mean it. We're already behind with this. Jordan and Brittany already have their prototype in. They're making wallets out of duct tape. They're really cool. And David and Chad are recycling old tires to make sandals. Lori McCurdy and Allie Jones are selling herb gardens. The things are already sprouting.

Tyrone ducks his head a little and scratches the back of his neck. It feels so good to be near him. Those blazing brown eyes. When he looks at me — giving me his full attention like this — I feel like one of Miranda's neon sculptures, brilliant green light zipping all through me. I'm lit up.

Can we do it tomorrow? he asks.

No, we can't do it tomorrow, I say. Everybody is supposed to have a sample of their packaging for tomorrow.

I absolutely can't go today, Tyrone says.

You sound ambivalent, I say. I reach up and pull the little thread on his Santa Claus pin and the nose lights up and there's a little tinny voice inside there that says, Ho, ho, ho.

And suddenly I find that I am flirting with Tyrone O'Rourke. Out and out full-blown hair-tossing flirtation. What's to lose, right? My days are probably numbered, when you consider Mercy Hanrahan. Desperation has made me brave.

Aw, come on, Tyrone, I say in a kind of baby-talk. Maybe we could get a cappuccino after? I feel exhilarated and unrecognizable to myself. And I can see Tyrone is taken off guard. He straightens the shoulder strap of my knapsack, though it doesn't need straightening. His finger smooths down a wrinkle in the fabric, kind of lingering there.

I am so sure I can't go today, he sighs. I've never been more sure about anything in my life.

But you have to admit there's a chance, right? There's always a chance? I mean, the guy is an artist. It could be fun.

I show him the glassblower's texts. I found him in the crafts section of
Newfoundland Buy and Sell.
He says he has a hundred handblown perfume bottles for sale, each one a unique work of art. I texted him as soon as I saw the ad. And the guy says he'll let them go for cheap because it sounds like an interesting project. Also, he's closing up shop. Moving to Italy.

Newfoundlanders don't understand glass
, he texted.
They aren't ready for it. In fact nobody in North America gets glass. What I do is art
.

I could tell he must be in his fifties because he kept texting big long paragraphs.

Just then Amber walks down the corridor. She doesn't even look at me. She's talking to Melody Martin.

So you'll come? I say it loud enough for Amber to hear. And I get up the picture of the bottles on my phone.

See, aren't they pretty?

They do look sort of perfect for a love potion, Tyrone says. He takes the phone from me and flicks through the pictures.

Don't make me go there alone, I say.

This time I'm not flirting. I'm dead serious.

He's also selling swan ashtrays, Tyrone says.

I only want the perfume bottles.

They
are
cool.

So meet me by the front doors and we'll walk there after school?

I guess so, Tyrone says. Yeah, I'll see you there, Flan. And thanks, you know, for doing the interview and stuff and signing my name.

I feel intensely relieved. The truth is, I've been kind of afraid to walk home from school even while it's still light out. But with Tyrone I'll be safe.

And then I'm beaming. I can feel all the muscles in my face involuntarily align themselves into a beam. I'm humming to myself through Madame Lapointe's class on
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. I get to read Titania.

I'm still full of relief as I jam my books in my locker and hurry down the stairs and wait in the front porch of the school while all the students pour out of there.

I watch as the basketball team comes out of the boys' change room and heads into the gym for practice.

I'm not smiling quite so much at 3:45 when Amber and Melody get out of Amber's father's car with armloads of the costumes Amber and I picked out at the Arts and Culture Centre three weeks ago.

Flannery, still waiting for Tyrone? she asks.

Amber, I say. Can I talk to you a minute?

I don't know, Flannery, she says. I'm kind of busy.

I have something to tell you, I say.

My arms are full, Flannery. Gary is upstairs waiting to get to work on our project.

I'm worried about you, I say. I want to tell her about Mercy.

Oh, I know, she says. You're worried about me. You want to protect me from my boyfriend. Thanks a lot, but it all seems to be working out fine. I don't think we need your help. Maybe you should worry about yourself, Flannery.

Sean, Amber's dad, sees me at the door and waves and toot-toots the horn before driving off. Amber breezes past. The school is emptying out now, and I really have to get going. I guess I'll be going to the glassblower's alone.

Just then Kyle Keating comes up to me and thrusts a brown paper bag into my hands.

Here, he says. I've been carrying this thing around for a week. Now it's your turn. You and I are partners in Healthy Living. Mr. Follett put us together while you were supposedly sick, as I'm sure you know, since I've been texting you all week.

You know something, Flannery? he says. I didn't ask to be partners with you. But I was glad when Mr. Follett put us together because I thought you were cool. I didn't think you were the kind of person who would let somebody else do all the work on a project.

I didn't get your texts, I say. (That's a lie, of course. I did get them, but I didn't pay attention to them.)

Sure you didn't, Kyle says.

I'm sorry, Kyle, I say. God, I'm really sorry.

I take my hand away from the bottom of the bag of eggs and there's slimy egg white webbing my fingers together.

Oh great, he says. Let me tell you something. They didn't break on my watch. You've had them for all of five seconds and now look. You can write the essay on unwanted teenage pregnancy all by yourself.

It suddenly occurs to me that Kyle Keating likes me. Like,
like
likes me. I mean, that's why he's so mad about the broken egg. I mean, he's
not
mad about the egg at all. He's mad that I have been ignoring him. I haven't been thoughtful. In fact, I've been thought
less
. I suddenly remember him asking me to walk to the Oxfam office after the Bursting Boils concert. I'm totally flabbergasted! I mean, I'm flattered and confused. I don't really know how I feel about Kyle. But I feel terrible about not being thoughtful.

I've been having a bad week, I say. I hope you can forgive me. I really am sorry. I had this really terrible thing happen.

And suddenly I'm telling him all about Mercy Hanrahan. I can't stop myself. I tell him about kicking and biting and even the condom. I cry a little bit. And I laugh too. And when I'm done I see that he has walked me home. I still have the bag of eggs in my hand.

And I'm sorry about our metaphorical baby, I say.

I hold up the bag. The bottom is completely soaked through now, and it tears apart and all the eggs fall out on the sidewalk.

Some of them break and some roll away.

19

I'd come home from a sleepover at Amber's one day when I was nine. This was after Hank had married the soon-to-be-lawyer lady and the happy couple had both headed into the sunset on their surfboards. I got the key out of the mailbox and opened our front door and all of a sudden I noticed the house was very quiet.

Our house was never quiet.

Miranda likes to have music blasting and it was the height of her tango phase, when she was taking tango lessons and sometimes I would come home and there would be six couples — mostly women though there was one gay male couple — charging across the living room with their arms out straight and grim looks on their faces, cheek to cheek, turning on their high heels just before they smashed into each other or the opposite wall.

Or she'd have her feminist consciousness-raising group over and they'd be yelling about social justice, equal pay for equal work and sexual freedom. At the very least, she'd have several pots boiling away on the stove, the lids rattling, the fire alarm set off by whatever she was burning in the oven.

But on this day, I'd come home and it was very, very quiet.

I called out to Miranda.

The window was open in the living room and a square of bright sunlight lay over the hardwood floor and a billowing curtain had knocked over a plant.

The pot had cracked and the roots of the banana plant were poking out through the black soil and the roots were white and hairy.

Something about the great mass of those twisting hairy roots and how very translucent they looked gave me goosebumps.

I went up the stairs and every room was empty and all the curtains were open.

I was afraid to look in Miranda's study so I stood on the landing. I could hear a jackhammer several streets away. I could feel the vibration of it in my teeth.

And then I peeked into the study. Miranda was sitting at her desk, but her head was hanging down and a thin strand of drool had dropped from the corner of her mouth to her chin.

I had never in my whole life seen Miranda asleep in the afternoon. I had never seen her drool.

I knew at once that Miranda had been enchanted. Something powerful had cast a spell and drawn her away. She had been possessed. Or taken over by an alien life form.

What was left at the desk was the husk of my mother. She had become a host or a shell.

She looked like my mother, sure, but — like the Big Bad Wolf after he'd eaten Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother and put on her clothes — there was something unfamiliar in her expression, in the flush of her cheek.

I tried to say her name and nothing came out, and then I tried it again and said it very loudly and her head jerked up with a snort and she said, Oh!

She saw me standing there in the doorway and she smiled at me. Even the smile was weird. It looked as if I had already grown up and left her and she was smiling at the kid I used to be.

The heat must have knocked me out, she said.

I knew if she spoke again everything would change forever but there was no way to stop what was coming.

Flannery, she said. The alien put out my mother's hand and wiggled my mother's fingers, beckoning me to come toward her. I stepped forward against my will.

This wasn't Miranda and the knowledge made me miss Miranda so much I couldn't stop my feet. They moved, one heavy clodhopper at a time, across the room. Miranda had put up a fight, that's why her cheeks were blushing and radiant. But she had finally succumbed.

Come here, girl-child, Miranda said. Which is the name the real Miranda sometimes called me. Girl-child, Flana-Banana, Buckwheat, Bucktooth, Lover Lumps and Malone-Face. But there was still the telltale glimmer of drool on her chin, which she wiped at with the back of her hand.

She drew me close to her, rested her head against my chest.

I didn't care if she was an alien then. She was all I had.

She yawned and rubbed her eye with her knuckle.

Miranda said, I'm going to have a baby. You're going to have a little baby brother. It's not just going to be the two of us anymore, Flannery. We have a beautiful new baby on the way.

I felt the sting of tears. They were rolling down my cheeks and my neck.

She was my mother. Mine. Not somebody else's. I didn't want to share. Why should I? Why did we need somebody else? Wasn't I enough?

I thought of her footprints in the flour spilled on the kitchen floor when she was making pizza dough the week before Hank's wedding and the flour print of her hands on her hips.

I thought about us both sitting on the side of the bathtub with the book about sex. I thought of all those sperms with their angry faces in the animated film the teachers had shown us.

And the egg, preening in front of the mirror, putting on mascara, batting her eyes. I thought about my dad, Mr. X, sailing the high seas in his boat of plastic bottles and tin cans and chip bags.

Miranda was pregnant with Felix, but she hadn't told anybody — least of all Hank. She'd been hiding it in loose clothes. Even at nine years old, I think I might have understood that she would only have wanted Hank to be with us if he was in love with us. It doesn't feel good to be somebody's obligation.

One other thing I suddenly understood. Something had come between us now. Between Miranda and me.

There was something definitive in the way she said it wasn't going to be just us.

And the third thing that dawned on me that day was that there should be a magical phone you can call when things are bad, and someone on the other end who can fix just about anything.

There should be a special red phone with a flickering red button that you can use only once in a lifetime, when all is lost.

Not when all is almost lost.

Not when a few things are lost.

This would be a phone that you'd use on that very singular occasion when
all
is lost.

Say you are on the highway in your beat-up old Toyota truck with your very pregnant mom on the way home from a picnic in Northern Bay Sands and a rain has started. A rain so dense and hard that no matter how fast the windshield wipers flick back and forth, ridges of water pile up on top of each other and you can't see. The trees are the same gray as the sky.

It is getting dark and Miranda says she has to pull over because we might hydroplane and on the radio they are saying there are accidents and to stay off the highways and so Miranda pulls over because she can't go any farther and she's having pretty intense contractions.

You are nine years old, almost ten, but you know what contractions are because ever since you can remember you've had to know things most kids don't.

You've had to know that the heat bill might not get paid and that some people are slightly uncomfortable with children who don't know who their father is, don't even know his last name for God's sake.

You've had to know not everybody can afford the school trip to Quebec at the end of junior high, and that sometimes perfectly respectable people have to get welfare and go to food banks and that there are welfare police who sit outside your house in their cars and spy on your mother to see if she has a boyfriend sleeping over on a regular basis, so they can take away her welfare check.

You've had to know and pretend you don't notice that there's a guy in greasy glasses and a black-leather bomber jacket who is an undercover welfare cop and who sits outside your house in his car every day with his daily slice of takeout pizza and a can of pop, watching your front door hoping to see a boyfriend of your mother's come out.

Because welfare moms are not allowed to have boyfriends because that might mean they are being
supported
(an idea that causes Miranda to snort like a horse).

And you've always had to know that it costs the government more to have him sitting there, with strings of melted mozzarella cheese sagging between his glossy lips and his pizza slice and the car gradually filling up with his pop cans and after-pizza cigarette smoke, than the amount of welfare your mother receives, and all the while she's trying to make art which the world needs in order to make life worth living.

You have had to know that someday you might find yourself trying to wave down a transport truck in the middle of a rainstorm at the edge of the highway because your brand-new baby brother is coming.

The hard wind and gritty mist of a passing transport truck will nearly knock you down and you will watch the taillights zoom away while your mother is having contractions.

A red phone should appear on the hood of your new/old Toyota, with a red blinking button that puts you in touch with somebody higher up.

You would pick up this magic phone and somebody would say, This is big stuff, kid. Life and death. This is a job for adults. Step aside.

Okay, forget the phone. The clouds should part and a ray of light, the hand of God. Somebody should take over.

There was a phone, of course. Miranda had an ordinary (though second-hand) cell phone in her purse and she dialed 911 and she told them where we were and that the baby was coming and that it was a month premature and that she only had her daughter with her, her nine-year-old daughter.

She was looking at me while she said all this, except when she squeezed her eyes shut. She was in the middle of speaking and she shut her eyes and she didn't look like Miranda at all. She didn't look like my mother.

Our next-door neighbor had had a home birth a little while before this, which I thought was gross, and they'd invited all the neighbors to stop by for a visit during the labor like a big party, and they kept the placenta in the freezer because in some cultures everybody fries up the placenta later on and eats some of it as part of a ritual to welcome the new baby.

I was so scared Miranda would make me go over and watch the birth I forgot to ask some important questions that might have come in handy there on the side of the road in the rainstorm.

Miranda hung up the cell phone.

They're coming, she said. Then she said it over and over. They're coming, they're coming, they're coming.

Which is what I mean about the special phone, because anybody could see that they weren't coming.

They would never come, whoever they were, but I was there. I was there already, and that's the part that was profoundly unfair. I was going to have to deal with it.

Miranda grabbed my hand and she squeezed it hard and she said, Flannery, this baby is going to be born very soon.

And I thought, All is lost.

Perhaps it would be helpful to list some of the many things that were lost.

We had been hiking in the woods in our rubber boots and mine had wild horses on them and there was a waterfall with mist coming up all around it and the squelch of the mud and lots of pitcher plants and the long grass was golden and there were rust bushes with glittering frost and a few trees that were so orange they looked like a fire.

Miranda was huge and she had a big felt hat with a striped feather and an overstretched unraveling sweater that used to belong to Hank and a red poncho and our picnic basket had olives and peanut butter and honey sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies. It was supposed to be
our
trip, a mother-daughter thing. A day in the woods together before the baby came. We'd even had a little bonfire.

I had seen Miranda's belly wobble. I had felt Felix move under my hand. I'd been at the baby shower.

All the diapers and powders and blankets and sleepers.

But did I believe there was going to be a baby?

I did not.

Not until that transport truck whipped past me on the highway in the rain and I heard Miranda's door open and she was pacing back and forth behind me and moaning and panting and yelling and leaning against the side of the Toyota and at one point she got down on her hands and knees which was the scariest part, but she got back up and she sat down on the truck seat with the door open and her head hanging down.

The rain was lashing the divided highway. It looked like steel ropes swinging down from the heavens when cars driving past on the other side of the highway lit it up in their headlights. The headlights lit up the tops of the trees and the big empty sky and, for a brief moment, the wrenching pain on my mother's wet face, and then she was plunged back into darkness and there was a floating spot hanging before my eyes, and there was nothing but forest and my jacket was soaked to my skin and I was shivering.

Miranda stood up again and was resting her back against the tailgate of the truck and she threw back her head and screamed into the sky as loud as she could,
The
baby is coming
.

And then I believed, without a shred of doubt. The baby was coming.

Also, there was going to be no red phone. What was lost was the life we had before, Miranda and me. What was lost was just the two of us.

I had loved just the two of us.

But later, on Saturday mornings, when Felix and I would wake up early and get two big bowls of vanilla ice cream with bananas and chocolate sauce and maraschino cherries and watch cartoons, I had to admit. All had not been lost.

All had almost been lost. Sure. And maybe something had been lost. Miranda screamed her head off and then we heard the siren. We heard the siren before we saw the flickering red lights.

An ambulance was coming out of the dark.