Y: A Novel (38 page)

He says nothing about his brother; he has pleaded with Quinn. “I will say that Yula
wasn’t there, if you let me leave my brother out of it, too.” In the woods that night,
the men stared at each other. They shook hands; they made a deal.

My mother will not speak. She stares blankly. When she regains consciousness she tries
to slice up her wrists, but she is already in the hospital and they discover her immediately,
and she is bandaged and restrained.

My father is sentenced to three years. For a while, he calls Yula every day. He tells
himself that some part of her must still be in love with him, even though when she
hears it is him, she hangs up the phone.

Halfway through his sentence, he makes a phone call to the ministry. He wants to know
the fate of the abandoned baby—where I live, who my new parents are. The social worker
says she cannot tell him that. When he says he is my father, she says she’ll have
to refer him to the police. The years go by, and I continue to haunt him. Before he
gets out of prison, he writes a letter to the ministry, hoping someone has met me,
hoping someone will write back and tell him something. He hears nothing.

Eugene is buried in a small plot beside Jo. There is no funeral, and Quinn is the
only one who attends the burial. Quinn brings a potted plant for his grandson and
his wife, and reads to them both from
The Wonderful O
by James Thurber, his favorite book when he was a child.

“It’s all the vowels except the O,” Black said. “I’ve had a hatred of that letter
ever since the night my mother became wedged in a porthole. We couldn’t pull her in
and so we had to push her out.” He shuddered and his eyes turned hard. “What is the
name of this island?” he asked, shaking off the thought of O.

“Ooroo,” said Littlejack, and once more the other shuddered.

“I hate the name,” he said at last. “It sounds like the eyes of a couple of ghosts
leaning against an R.”

Quinn returns to the big house. He reshelves the book. Luella calls and leaves messages,
but he doesn’t call back. He feels the grief in his heart as sharp and black as ever.

XXV.

v
aughn rents a car—a bright-blue Chevy Cavalier—from a cheap lot downtown and begins
the drive past the totem poles, the YMCA, the Crystal Gardens, the homeless kids in
front of McDonald’s, past Mickey blowing into his horn, the Eaton Centre, the red
brick of City Hall. He turns up Caledonia, past the Szechuan restaurant and the pink
police station, and winds his way down the skinny one-way streets that lead to our
town house, where Miranda, Lydia-Rose, Winkie, and I wait for him in the warm bright
light of this early afternoon, this day, August 28, the day I turn seventeen years
old.

We have been up since six o’clock, rooting through bags of consignment clothes, picking
out our outfits. Miranda wears a denim shirt, the sleeves rolled to her elbows, a
pair of wide-legged linen pants, and white canvas espadrilles. She let Lydia-Rose
dust her face with bronzing powder and line her eyes with kohl. She has never looked
so elegant.

Lydia-Rose towers over us in a pair of heeled gladiator sandals, a black pencil skirt,
and black-and-white striped short-sleeved top, a red bandana framing her face.

They are dressed up and made up and I love them for it.

But I am who I am, how I always am and will always be. Hair shooting out from all
sides of my head, big and white-blond from the sun, still
as fine and dense as a ball of cotton. It’s hot, but I’ve got on my baggiest jeans,
held up with suspenders, a white tank top, and a man’s black blazer. I found a pair
of checkered Vans in one of the consignment bags, one size too big, and wadded a bunch
of Kleenex in the toes so they’d fit. Winkie stands beside me, a red bandana around
her neck to match Lydia-Rose’s.

We have talked about the possibilities. We have talked about how there could be no
one home; no one living out there anymore; no house. We have talked about how my visit
could be unwelcome. We have talked about how poorly this could all turn out. Miranda
and I have made a chart, listing as many possibilities as we could think of, so that
I will be as prepared as I can possibly be. We have discussed how it might be better
to write a letter first, to wait for a reply. And finally, at my insistence, Miranda
has conceded that I can’t wait any longer than I already have. And that it is my style,
after all, to show up unannounced.

Vaughn steps out of the blue car and walks toward us. He has slicked back his red
hair with gel. He wears a white button-down shirt tucked into black jeans and cowboy
boots. He shakes Miranda’s and Lydia-Rose’s hands, tells them how great it is to finally
meet them, then crouches and gives Winkie a kiss on her little head.

“Packed a cooler full of sandwiches, potato chips,” he says to us, “in case, well,
I figured at the very least we can spend the afternoon at Goldstream. Miranda, why
don’t you ride up front with me? We’ll put the girls and Wink in the back.”

He opens the door for Miranda and she slides inside, then he opens the back door for
Lydia-Rose, Winkie, and me. We pile in, and the car is as hot and stuffy as a microwave.

“I’ve never been in a new car before,” says Lydia-Rose, and I realize I haven’t either.
It smells so strongly of vinyl and new carpet that I almost gag. We examine the cup
holders, the arm rests, the space to slip a magazine behind the passenger seat. Vaughn
tells us to roll down our windows until the air-conditioning kicks in. Lydia-Rose
sits on the driver’s side and Winkie sits between us. She has never been in a car
in her whole life. She sniffs the seat furiously, then slides onto the floor and tries
to wedge herself
under Miranda’s seat, her little tail wagging frantically. In my backpack I have a
Tupperware full of ice water for her and a marrowbone, which I fish out and give to
her so she’ll calm down.

Lydia-Rose and I take forever fastening and then adjusting our seat belts, which are
hot to the touch and seem to pin us too tightly to our seats. Finally, after what
feels like an eternity, we are ready to go.

Vaughn takes us to Douglas Street, and we drive past one Traveller’s Inn and then
another, and we talk about stopping at Dairy Queen for cones but I am too nervous.
Red Hot Video, White Spot, Thompson’s Foam Shop, the 7-Eleven, all the car dealerships,
Mayfair Mall, and Lydia-Rose sticks her head out the window to get away, she says,
from Winkie’s hot, stale breath. The highway widens and we go by the big-box stores
that are everywhere now—this part of town used to be just barren fields, parking lots—and
Vaughn hits the gas and we shoot up toward the Malahat, the wind whipping through
the car until our ears can’t take the pressure anymore and we have to put up the windows.
Winkie is heavy on my lap, staring dumbfounded at all the trees as the city falls
away. The winding road leads us north, toward the forest. For a long time, no one
says a word.

Jo. Jo-Jo. Jojoba oil. Jo. I don’t look much like a Jo. When I think of the name Jo,
I see a woman much taller and more beautiful than I, dark hair cut in a dramatic bob
above her shoulders. She is an angular woman. She is my grandmother. I am not sure
I have the body or the spirit with which to fill out her name.

Finally, the sky disappears, and Vaughn turns down the air-conditioning as the car
plunges into the shade of the forest. When we reach Goldstream Park, Vaughn slows
and makes a hard right at the park’s entrance. I careen into Lydia-Rose, and Miranda
makes a little sound, and Vaughn says, “Oopsy daisy. Sorry about that.” The parking
lot is full of cars, families piling out with children. We drive over the old wooden
bridge that leads up the mountain, the trees now stretching hundreds of feet into
the sky, denser and denser, and start the ascent up Finlayson Arm Road, flanked on
each side by the majestic and spindly Douglas firs. Past these, here and there, are
Western red cedars, their bases wider than automobiles,
their trunks like red ropy cords of muscle, like giant pieces of red licorice smashed
together and then petrified. They shoot up into the sky for what looks like miles.

“Look up,” Vaughn says to us, “look at how the trees touch at the top of this road
and form an arch—like a barrel vault—like a nave.”

“Like an Emily Carr painting,” says Lydia-Rose.

“She lived out here, you know,” says Vaughn.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I used to study art,” she says to him. “She lived in a caravan.”

“With a monkey.” Vaughn smiles at her in the rearview, and I can tell they are growing
on each other.

“I’d like to live in a caravan,” I say and shift Winkie onto the seat beside me. I
hold out my hand, and she licks the sweat off my palm. “Or a trailer.”

“You’re an alien,” Lydia-Rose says and lets Winkie lick her hand, too.

“Winkie is an alien.”

“Alien dog.”

Here we come: me, Miranda, Lydia-Rose, Winkie, and Vaughn, up a deserted road the
width of a double bed. The hot hot sun, no one. Pasture. Fence. Little wooden house.
The sound of the river in the distance. Lydia-Rose sees an eagle, and we go around
in a circle, each naming our favorite bird. I like owls, I say. I like their faces.
We agree we will all dress up as birds next Halloween.

We start reading the numbers on the mailboxes, 2210, 2253. A scruffy-looking German
shepherd races to the edge of one of the properties and barks wildly as we drive by.
A man barrels past in a pickup and waves. We drive by a girl on horseback, cantering
in a riding ring. When we get to the mailbox marked 2317, Vaughn slows the car and
pulls into a narrow gravel driveway. It winds upward for about a hundred feet, deeper
and deeper into the woods, until we finally come to a field of overgrown wild grass.
The driveway ends, and Vaughn parks behind the oldest, most rust-covered car I’ve
ever seen.

“A Meteor,” says Vaughn. “Classic.” Whatever it is, it looks like junk. There are
holes in the chassis, and the passenger door has come unhinged and is lying in a rusty
heap on the ground. We get out of the rental car and stretch our legs. I hear dogs
barking in the distance and the hum of the traffic from the Malahat, but other than
that, it is a completely silent world.

Vaughn leads us, single file, through the waist-high grass. The field is dotted with
bluebells and lots of wild broom—the yellow startling in the light. I carry Winkie
in my arms for fear of losing her. Lydia-Rose steps gingerly forward in her heeled
sandals and glances back at me with a worried look. Miranda is behind me, her hand
on my shoulder.

At the end of the field, obscured by a wall of evergreen trees but visible to us now,
is a flat-roofed cedar-sided house with floor-to-ceiling windows separated by giant
timber beams. The house is fancier than the others we passed on the way up here, but
the yard is so filthy and overgrown that I wonder if anyone lives here at all.

Past the house is a moss-covered wood cabin, which has sunk on one side and sits in
the earth at a dramatic angle. Wild grass grows between and around the homes, and
there is a tamped-down path between them. Beyond the homes is the forest.

As we get closer to the big house, I see that some twinkling icicle lights have been
strung around the windows from some Christmas past. Someone has left them on, but
only half of them work. Another bald eagle circles overhead, and we watch him for
a few minutes before he disappears into the trees.

“Ready?” Vaughn asks when we reach the front steps. I nod and he knocks twice.

Miranda and Lydia-Rose stand behind us, holding hands. I bury my nose in Winkie’s
fur and kiss the top of her head. She smells like popcorn.

Through the little window of the front door, I watch a small man walk toward us in
a blue, coffee-stained bathrobe with a torn sleeve. He is wearing mirrored sunglasses
and walks with a cane. He holds his left arm to his chest as if it hurts him.

He opens the door. His white hair sticks up in little tufts around his head and his
skin is deeply tanned. He has a sunken face and a patchy white beard that hugs the
lower part of his chin. He is barrel-chested and husky and reminds me of a small bear.

I peer into the house. The hardwood floor gleams behind him, catching the light.

The small bear and I consider each other. We are the same height. I look at myself
in the reflection of his sunglasses. My hair is full of sunlight and glows around
my head. I look like a dandelion.

“Car break down?” he says. His voice is ancient and raspy.

I put Winkie down and hold out my hand. “I’m Jo,” I say. “I’m Yula’s daughter.”

The bear parts his lips but doesn’t speak. We stare at each other for a minute. Winkie
sits on my foot, and I hear Vaughn clear his throat. I can feel Miranda behind me.
I can feel her desire to put her hand on my shoulder. I can feel her so strongly behind
me that it hurts.

The bear leans his cane against the doorframe and takes my hand in his. His hand is
warm and dry. “Did—did your car break down, honey?” He speaks with the slow, careful
elocution of someone deeply humbled by his life.