Flannery (17 page)

And then I jab the pink eraser of my pencil between Amber's shoulder blades and her head bobs back up and she has a full body shiver.

Isosceles triangle, says Amber.

It's
English
class, I whisper.

Atticus Finch, Amber says.

I haven't asked the question yet, says Madame Lapointe.

Macbeth, I whisper.

What did the witches put in the cauldron? asks Madame Lapointe.

Cinnamon hearts? asks Amber.

The buzzer rings.

Miss Mackey, Madame Lapointe says. See me after school. You have detention. She gathers her purse and storms away, the roses on her dress rippling with the breeze.

Somebody turns off the projector and the cooling fan at the back of the machine sounds really loud in the dark. Somebody else turns on the classroom lights. That's when I see it. Amber's hair has fallen over one of her shoulders in the front and I see a mark on her neck that was hidden by her long hair. Some kind of lettering.

I can't help myself. I do it without even thinking. I reach out and pull down the neck of her sweater so I can see what it is.

It's a big tattoo. A big red heart with an arrow through it and the name
Gary
in yellow on a bluish rippling banner.

Amber jumps up and tears the neck of her sweater out of my hand.

Let go of me, she spits.

Amber, what have you done? I say.

And then it's out of my mouth before I can stop myself.

It looks more like a brand than a tattoo to me, like he owns you.

Amber's face goes very pale. At first I think she's going to faint, but it's a white-hot rage. Her eyes narrow but she's biting her lower lip as if in an effort to hold back what she's about to say. But it bursts out of her anyway.

I am sick to death of you, Flannery, she says. I'm sick of you trying to make me feel guilty all the time. Looking at me with those big stupid puppy-dog eyes. I'm busy, okay? Do you get that? I have a life. I have a boyfriend. It's not my fault nobody's in love with you.

And stop salivating over my biology book. I'm sick of that too. It's not my fault that your mother doesn't have any money and my parents do. You can just stop rubbing that in my face. My parents work. That's why they have money. Why doesn't Miranda get a job like everybody else? You're not my problem, Flannery.

Trying to pretend there's something superior and
chic
about vintage clothes from the Sally Ann. They aren't “vintage”; they're just
used
. And they smell. Just leave me alone. Just stop, okay? I don't have time. You're Welfare. Stop hounding me. Do you think I don't notice that look on your face in the corridor every single time I walk past? I'm not going to be stuck with you anymore. I have moved on. I have new friends. People change. Get over it. I didn't want to say this. A normal person could take a hint. But here goes. Just. Leave. Me. The. Fuck. Alone. Do you think you get it now? Are you satisfied? Are you happy?

Her eyes are wet with tears, making them even bluer than they normally are. She is trembling all over. I have never seen her so angry. My blood is thumping in my ears. My face feels like it's on fire.

Everything between us is ruined. She has ruined it. She has ruined it.

The few stragglers who were left in the classroom gathering their books are now in a big hurry to get out. It's clear I'm about to cry too and nobody wants to see it.

Amber is shoving stuff into her book bag. Papers, pens. A clear green plastic ruler snaps in half against the edge of the desk and she hisses under her breath, Now look what she made me do.

I am pretending to be getting my stuff together too. I keep flipping through my exercise books like one might be missing. Like it's absolutely imperative that I find that particular exercise book right now. Then I close the binder. My tears fall on my blue binder cover.
Plop, plop, plop.

Finally I've packed all my stuff together. Of course I have biology next. Mrs. Krishna tells me if I don't have the book by the next biology class, I'll get a week's detention.

I decide to cut class. I head down two flights of stairs and out the front door and down Bonaventure, half expecting some teacher to call out after me to come back this minute.

I can just hear the automated phone call now. A child in your household named FLANNERY was absent from fifth period and she walked home all by herself, snuffling and bawling, and it was a very long, lonely, miserable walk.

24

At first I tell myself, it cannot be.

What is that? I ask Felix.

What is what? He looks up at me with his big blue evil/innocent eyes, a spoonful of Cheerios halted just below his pouty lips. Cheerios are his bedtime snack. He's wearing flannel pajamas with a hamburger print. Hundreds of little hamburgers with sesame seed buns and lettuce. And each hamburger has eyes with little hearts exploding from the pupils. They are his favorite pajamas.

Never mind the pajamas. There's a smudge of chocolate just under his lip, and I can feel my stomach flip over.

On your chin, I say.

A beard? he asks, touching his chin.

No, I say. Not a beard. A smudge. A chocolate smudge.

Felix lowers his eyes, trying to see his own chin.

And then he looks back up at me. He is unblinking, doleful, angelic. His curls are bouncing with halo light.

I know that look.

I tear out of the kitchen and take the stairs two at a time. I throw open my bedroom door.

At first it looks as though everything is in its place — exactly how I left it.

There's a layer of clothes tumbling off the bed and more clothes spilling from the bookshelf. Clothes churn in the open drawers of the dresser and a balled-up lacy skirt froths over the sides, all of it pooling on the floor.

I dive through the crumpled chip bags and books and belly under the bed and grab my jewelry box of treasures.

Even from under the bed I can hear Felix downstairs by the front door, zipping into his ski jacket. The whisper-whisper of the nylon.

I lift the lid on my pink and black velvet jewelry box with the pop-up ballerina balancing herself on her tiny wire spring. She turns in a jerky pirouette. Music tinkles out and the ballerina glances over her shoulder at the little square of mirror glued to the pink satin backing.

My own giant hazel-green eye is in the mirror. I wiggle my fingers through my beads and rings and the peacock feather earrings Amber gave me for my tenth birthday.

I pick up the jewelry box and shake it, and all the contents tumble onto the bureau.

Where is it? I scream.

I hear Felix fling open the front door, and it slams behind him.

I run out of my room screaming, Come back here, come back right now. I'm going to kill you, Felix Malone.

Miranda comes out of the living room.

What is going on here? she says.

I crumple on the staircase and I am sobbing a big wide opened-mouth sob that has no sound. I can't even get any breath in my body. I rest my head against the banister.

Flannery, for goodness' sake, Miranda says. What's happened?

He stole my heart, I sob. My mother comes up the stairs and puts her arms around me. He stole my chocolate heart that my dad gave you.

Flannery, my mother says.

It was the only thing I had of my father, I say. It was all I had.

Okay, listen. I know it's been hard on you, Flannery, without a dad. But I'm doing my best here, Miranda says. I have no regrets. I was eighteen when I met him.

Tell me the story again, I say. Tell me.

Okay. Okay I'll tell you, Miranda says. But she doesn't say anything, she's just sort of gently rocking me. So I have to start her off.

My father had big brown eyes and long black lashes like a girl, I say, to make sure she starts at the beginning. My tears are running right down my cheeks and hanging off my chin before they fall on the ribbing of Miranda's pale blue cotton sweater and add to a growing wet spot.

Or else they were green, Miranda says.

Were they green or brown, Miranda?

Hazel, sort of greenish-brown, Miranda says. Like yours. I don't know, it was dark.

My father had hazel eyes and beautiful thick curly black eyelashes like a girl, I say.

That's definitely where you got those eyelashes, Miranda says. We are practically eyelash-less on my side of the family.

He was tall and handsome.

I came to his shoulders, Miranda says.

And my father had a mysterious smile.

Well, he had very even, white teeth.

An even, white, mysterious smile.

I wouldn't say mysterious. I'd say he had braces as a kid.

You first saw him climbing the mast of the eco-ship tied up in the harbor.

They were all worried, she says.

About the hole in the ozone layer, I say.

They were sailing a magnificent ship made of garbage across the sea.

Like something out of a fairy tale, I say. The mysterious visitor from away, rising out of the North Atlantic.

Well, we met on the dock of the harbor, yes. And I told him there was a party happening at a place out in Topsail Beach that night, and I gave him the address. I told him he should bring his friends.

And you were dancing with your girlfriends when he walked in, right? And there was shag carpeting and stucco on the ceiling. The Bee Gees were playing, right?

Yes, because it was a retro-disco party, Miranda says.

You were listening to the Bee Gees singing,
Ah
,
ah
,
ah
,
ah
,
Staying
alive
,
staying alive
. The one with the life-saving rhythm, I say. (When I did my CPR course for my babysitting certificate, they told us the rhythm of that song is exactly the one you use for thumps to the chest of someone needing pulmonary resuscitation. I sing it when I'm scared.)

And we were both wearing identical mullets, Miranda says. Blue metallic tinfoil, with thick blue bangs cut very straight.

And the identical mullets were a sign that you were meant to be together, I say.

Well, actually several people at the party were wearing those wigs. They had a big load of them at the Zellers, Miranda says.

And before you even spoke, he held up his hands in front of him to show there was nothing in them and then he reached into the tinsel tendrils of your blue mullet and gave your ear a little tweak.

We were speaking, Miranda says, kind of shouting over the music. Where was he from and all that.

And then he opened his hand, and right there before your very eyes was the chocolate heart wrapped in red foil.

Big spender, Miranda says.

And later that night you decided to go for a swim together on the beach, and you ran over the beach rocks holding hands in the moonlight.

Well, actually there wasn't any moon, it was kind of foggy.

And plunged into the icy water and foam and your hearts were pounding and in the house across the highway where the party was happening the music was pounding too,
Staying alive
,
staying alive
, and there amidst the creamy surf you kissed in the moonlight and your blue tinsel mullets floated away together like two lovelorn jellyfish on the waves.

We lost the mullets when we got smacked by a wave.

Never to be seen again.

Well, we didn't really look for them.

And the very next morning my father returned to his eco-ship made of plastic barrels and Coke bottles and old bric-a-brac garbage to continue along with his fellow sailors to make a statement about how we are destroying the planet. (And the press came out to see them off and there was fanfare and camera flashes and the one picture that has survived in the Newfoundland archives shows just my father's shoulder. He happened to have his back to the camera, but it's a beautiful shoulder, all strong and round in an ordinary black T-shirt which doesn't tell me much, except my shoulder looks sort of like his, more or less. Maybe? He's out of focus so it's hard to tell.)

Then they tugged out through The Narrows into the bright red dawn, I say.

I think it was actually still foggy that morning, says Miranda.

And he left the beautiful maiden he'd fallen in love with behind in order to take his message about saving the planet to the whole wide world.

Well, yes, says Miranda. But what he didn't know, poor idiot, was that he'd left a little something behind.

And she grabs my chin in her thumb and finger and gives it a little waggle.

And I'm so glad he did, she says.

That heart was all I had, I say.

And then the doorbell rings. Miranda unwinds herself from my arms and stands to let Felix back in. It's minus ten out there and his cheeks are blazing red and his nose is running.

I'm sorry, Flan, he says. I never meant to eat your heart.

We'll get Flannery another chocolate, Miranda says.

I am suddenly furious.

“Another chocolate?” Can't Miranda understand that this is
hard
on Felix and me? Going without the things other people take for granted, like paying the heat bill on time or at all? Worrying about the groceries, schoolbooks, fathers? I've had it! I want her to tell Felix who his father is. I want Felix to know. I want Hank to know.

Miranda thinks it's her decision. It is not her decision.

Forget the chocolate heart, I say. Get me a biology book. And I stamp up the stairs and slam my bedroom door.

After a few minutes I hear Felix knocking.

Flannery, I'm sorry.

He waits.

Flannery, I said I'm sorry.

Go away, I say. I don't ever want to talk to you again.

I am deep asleep when I hear Miranda yelling through the house, calling for Felix. Then she bursts into my room. She is yelling at me.

He's gone, she says. Get up.

Who's gone? I say, but I am already out of bed pulling my jeans on over my nightie. One leg of my jeans is twisted at the knee and I have them half hauled up already and can't get my foot through the twisted leg. And I have to hop around with the jeans leg flapping like the broken wing of a Bowring Park duck.

Finally I get my leg through and I'm pulling on a sweater and my toque and one boot and the other boot is downstairs near the front door. The wind is making the window rattle and the snow is pinging against the glass. There are frost feathers all over it and the night beyond is as black as black can be.

Felix is gone, Miranda says. She's slamming the drawers in the bathroom, looking for the keys to the truck.

He's not in his bed, he's not asleep under the dining-room table, his ski jacket is gone, and his boots. His mitts are gone off the heater in the front porch. There are footprints in the snow.

It's because I didn't forgive him.

It hurts my forehead, like an ice-cream headache.

We go out into the stormy night. Miranda hasn't even done up her coat. His footprints are mixed up with the track of something smoother. It's like he was dragging something heavy — a suitcase or a toboggan. But the prints disappear altogether at the end of the street.

I scrape the windshield of the truck and go to scrape the back but Miranda yells for me to get in. We go to Felix's friend Lila's house and Miranda rings the bell, but all the lights are off. Eventually they come on — a bedroom light upstairs, the lights over the front door. Miranda is talking to Lila's mom. She steps inside and is in there for a while. She has left the truck running and I notice the gas is close to empty.

Then she comes out.

I've called the police, she says. And she drives down to Water Street. She is gripping the wheel and leaning forward.

It's a Saturday night and there are lots of people out. She pulls onto George Street, where couples are walking in the middle of the road. Some kind of hockey game must have got out from Mile One.

Move, Miranda hisses to them under her breath. Get out of the way.

Something is blocking traffic at the other end of George Street. There is a giant crowd. Maybe a hundred people.

Is it an accident?

Then we both know what it is at the same instant, we jump out of the truck and run at the same time. Miranda leaves her door open. There's a cop car behind us with the lights spinning around, and another one coming up the other side of George Street.

We push our way through the crowd. I hear bells. It sounds like bells. It sounds like “Hot Cross Buns” and some kind of crazy made-up jazz and
“Au clair de la
lune”
all at once, and I break through the crowd, and there is Felix Malone, right in the center of a circle the crowd has made, blocked from the wind, playing the glockenspiel. In front of him is the velvet-lined glockenspiel box and it's filled with loonies and toonies, like a pirate's treasure chest brimming with gold and silver coins, some of them spilling over onto the snow. Farther down the circle I see Miranda break through the crowd, and she spots Felix too.

Felix does a little crescendo with the hammers and that's when he sees us and there are police officers on both sides of him now, trying to clear the crowd away even while they're all still applauding like mad.

Flannery, he says. Look! I have enough money for your biology book. It's your Christmas present!