For You (16 page)

Compared to how I'd grown up and been living the last few years, my grandparents seemed wealthy. It took a while getting to know them to find out they didn't have much beyond their one car and the food in the cupboards. When Jack first got sick, he had to retire seven years earlier than they'd planned for.

My main plan was to not be a burden on any of them. Eventually, I wanted to repay them and help support them when they needed it. I didn't know how yet, but I hoped something would come along. As we ate lunch together that afternoon, I noticed Grandpa Jack seemed a little fuzzy, and the spoon full of soup kept missing his mouth. I silently prayed that he wasn't getting worse, because then my grandmother would be too busy to help babysit Bell. I felt terrible for being so selfish.

Bell and I did our usual Saturday things, including a walk to the park with the good swings. I brought my cell phone with me everywhere, just in case Sawyer called. I was of two minds. I wanted him to stay away and leave me be, without his trouble and heartbreak, but I also kept eagerly checking the display for missed calls.

On Sunday, at Bell's insistence, I phoned Natalie, or as Bell called her,
Taylor's Mom
.

When she answered the phone, I said, “Hello, Taylor's Mom. This is Bell's Mom.”

She thought it was the funniest thing, and seemed happy to hear from me, which was a relief. She invited us to come for a play date and dinner on Monday, after school. I only had three shifts scheduled at the bar that week, and Monday wasn't one of them, so I accepted.

We made plans for her to pick us all up at the girls' school.

Monday.

Sawyer still hadn't called. I wondered what he was doing. By now I was furious he hadn't called, imagining him saying sweet things to some new girl.

Maybe he'd been looking for me at the bar.

On the way to Bell's school to meet the girls, I stopped by the bar, using the excuse that I was picking up my paycheck.

Sawyer wasn't there, and the waitress on shift was the surly one who didn't like me much.

I got my check, then signed the back and Bruce cashed it for me, using funds from the register.

“You need to get your bank account set up,” Bruce said, frowning from within his dark beard as he counted out the money.

“Right,” I said. “Is there a particular bank you'd recommend?”

He eyed me suspiciously. “The one across the street from here would probably be convenient. The one I send you to sometimes to get change. Perhaps you remember from one of the dozen times you've gone in? There's a big counter, and a bunch of bank tellers with bank-teller haircuts, and piles of money. Just big ol' piles of money everywhere.”

“Right.”

“And I need a photocopy of your social insurance number. Not for me, but for the accountant.”

I looked around for a reason to change the topic. I didn't actually have a social insurance number, though I'd been born in Canada and just had to apply for one. Of course, once I put my name and current address into a computerized system, it would only be a matter of time before my past caught up to me.

The big-screens in the bar caught my eye and gave me an idea for changing the topic.

I said, “Your father found the picture-in-picture function on the TV.”

“Good for him.” He kept frowning. “Hey, so what's happening with you and Sawyer?”

I shrugged.

“He asked for your phone number, but I told him I'd check with you first.”

A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed it down. “He did? I guess you could give him my number.”

Bruce nodded. “I may have already given it to him yesterday. We were hitting the vodka pretty hard.”

“Uncle Bruce, I'm starting to think you don't even drink.”

He grinned. “That's what some people choose to believe.”

“Thanks for the check,” I said, splitting the cash evenly between my two pockets.

“Off to get Annabell? What do you girls have planned for tonight?”

“Oh, we have a play date.”

“How very normal,” he said, nodding appreciatively.

I thanked him again for cashing my check, and got going so I wasn't late to meet Natalie at the school.

Going to her house empty-handed seemed rude, so I stopped at a convenience store to buy her flowers. I spent about ten minutes agonizing over what to get. And why hadn't Sawyer called? Did he lose my number immediately after getting it?
Fuck.

Finally, I picked out an orchid. It looked fancy, but wasn't much more to buy than the little pot of tea roses I'd been considering. Would Natalie think I was stupid? Probably. Whatever. Natalie was cool.

Why did I always argue with myself? It made even the simplest decisions that much harder.

I paid for the orchid, careful to pull only one bill from my pocket, and not to take out the wad of cash and peel one off. That was something big, muscular guys did. You didn't flash your money if you were a woman, even if the tiny old man behind the store counter was almost as scared of you as you were of him.

I was running and out of breath when I finally got to the front door of the school. Natalie was there already, and Bell was sitting on the step, tying her shoelaces as Taylor watched.

Taylor said, “Your shoes have way too many holes in them. You should wear different ones.”

Bell said, “But I like these ones! They're just how I like them, and we're saving up for Disneyland.”

Natalie gave me an exaggerated curious look, raising her thin blond eyebrows high above her funky plastic glasses. “Planning a trip this summer?”

“Maybe not
this
summer.”

She winked at me. “Gotcha.”

Bell finished tying her shoes, and we walked together along the front of the school to find their vehicle, which was a large SUV. Why was I not surprised?

We got the girls into the back seat together, and before Natalie walked around to her side, she stopped by me and said, “Listen, how about I start hyping something a little closer to home. We can get her switched off Disneyland. Did you know there's a zoo out in Abbotsford? Oh, and there's a water park in Tsawwassen. Oh, screw my life. What is that place called? Splashing Mountain? Something like that.”

“That's really sweet of you, but I don't know if I can afford either of those.”

Natalie looked sad, her forehead furrowing. She had her curly blond hair tied back in a loose braid, and she looked so mature, yet still girlish. With her little jean jacket, striped shirt, and her leather boots, she looked like a style icon compared to me, in my boring old don't-look-at-me clothes. I never bought clothes with stripes or loud patterns, because I didn't want people to notice I wore the same things week after week.

“I'll keep an eye out for coupons,” she said as she walked around to her side.

As I got into her nice truck, I felt a rush of gratitude. I didn't deserve to have people being so kind to me, but I swore one day I'd make it up to everyone.

When we got to their house, I understood why Natalie had been so crushed about selling it. Except for the For Sale sign posted in the front yard, with the smiling face of a goatee-wearing real estate agent named Kewal beaming out, it was a perfect house, with a bright yellow door that smelled of fresh paint.

We got the girls set up with some after-school snacks, and they ran off to play in Taylor's room.

“They grow up too fast,” Natalie said. “Everyone says it, but it's true. I do look forward to her being a teenager. I have this daydream of us sharing clothes, like I did growing up with my big sister.”

“That sounds nice.”

“How's Bell fitting in with the new school and all the changes? I heard she was so quiet the first few weeks at school. During recess, she'd hide in a corner with her nose facing the school. I guess she thought if she couldn't see them, they couldn't see her.”

“Who told you that?” I used my thumb to pick up some loose crumbs on Natalie's nice granite counter. Nobody had mentioned Bell was hiding during recess. My heart broke for her, and I felt awful that I had no idea. I should have stopped in more often.

“Oh, I get full reports from Taylor,” Natalie said. “She'll be a reporter when she grows up. That day Bell got upset and threw up on herself, that was the story of the century.”

“That wasn't very funny.”

Natalie looked aghast. “No, I didn't mean that it was funny. Taylor told me, and she was very sorry she'd taken the game, and wanted to make it up to Bell. I think it all worked out.”

“You're kidding. That was Taylor, and now they're the best of friends?”

Natalie ushered me toward the living room. “That's girls for you.”

We sat in the living room, using the ample-sized coffee table to hold a plate of the same squares we'd given the girls, plus sweet tea that Natalie called
iced tea
, though it was already sweetened.

Natalie continued, “That's how it is with girls. Don't you remember? All those dramatic fights with your girlfriends? Especially in high school?”

“I guess I was more of a loner. We lived outside of town a fair ways, so I took the bus home and didn't get into much with the other girls.”
The other girls being the ones who called me trailer trash.

“How about boyfriends?”

I helped myself to a square and some tea. “Hey, did you have an open house or something over the weekend? For selling the place? How did that go?”

“Fine. We got an offer. They're doing an inspection this week, then they'll remove subjects.”

“Do you mean you're in escrow?”

She laughed. “You're so American. We don't call it that.” She pulled at her braid, removing the elastic band then finger-combing out her curly blond hair. “What about now?” she asked. “You don't have a man living with you, but you wear that ring, so how are you supposed to find a boyfriend?”

“I don't want a boyfriend.”
Especially if he didn't call.

She looked me up and down, an amused look on her face. “No boyfriend, so… girlfriend?”

“No, not like that. I just mean… I don't want some guy around, making things confusing for Bell. I grew up with a… well, he wasn't a stepfather, because there was nothing official, but ...” My throat got tight, cutting off my voice. I never could talk about Derek with people, not even back when we were all living together.

“So don't pick a shitty one,” she said, as if it was that simple. “Life is hard Aubrey, but it's even harder if you pick that narrow martyr path and insist on doing everything your own damn self. Our generation of women, we were sold a pack of lies. We were told to hustle on to university right after high school. Ratchet up that student debt load. And for what? Most of us aren't even close to having the loans paid off by the time the clock starts ticking. So you work your ass off from twenty to let's say thirty-three, then it's sleepless nights with the baby crying. You're forty by the time your life gets halfway fun again, and to think, you could have just skipped the whole hard work thing and cashed in the good looks of youth back when you were twenty, to an older man with some security.”

“Is that what you did?”

She grinned as her voice pitched up in a “Hell, no! Do I look that smart? Don't answer that.”

I sipped my sweet tea and smiled, trying to relax on her cream-colored sofa, though the food made me nervous. How could the woman have both a seven-year-old
and
a white sofa?

She continued, “I was one year out of college when I got pregnant with Taylor. Word of advice? The withdrawal method is not an adequate form of birth control. But I guess
you
know that, of all people.” She clapped her hand to her mouth. “Whoops.”

“Bell was a surprise,” I said, which was true. My mother saw the doctor for some indigestion and found out she was five months along. She quit smoking immediately, but that small change threw off everything. We were living with her boyfriend Terry at the time—I'm fairly certain it was Terry who gave Bell her light brown hair—and he seemed eager to be having a child, but not with my mother. They had always fought a lot, but he'd tell her to go have a cigarette to cool down, and she would. With the baby on the way, and without her five-minute tobacco meditations, the tension ratcheted up and wouldn't break.