Y: A Novel (39 page)

I look at Vaughn. “No.” I shake my head at the bear and drop his hand.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” Vaughn says, “but does a woman named Yula live here?”
He taps his cowboy boot against the porch. For the first time, he looks unsure to
me.

The bear takes off his sunglasses. He has piercing gray eyes. They startle me they’re
so bright and fierce. He doesn’t seem so feeble now that I can see his eyes. He looks
past me and nods his head at the moss-covered cabin. “Come and see me before you leave,
Jo,” he says. “I’ll leave the door open.”

We step off the porch, and the door to the big house closes. Lydia-Rose picks up Winkie,
and Miranda puts her arm around me and squeezes.

“Do you want us to wait here or come with you?” Miranda says. She smooths the lapel
of my blazer and runs her hand down my arm until she’s holding my hand.

It’s hotter out here than it is in the city. The buzz of insects is suddenly loud
in my ears, and I feel the sweat start to gather on my forehead and under my arms.
I shrug off my blazer. “Hold this?” I say to Miranda.

She takes it, and I motion to Lydia-Rose to hand me Winkie, who is panting from the
heat. I’ll get her some water when I meet my mom. That’ll be the first thing I’ll
ask.

To the left, Mount Finlayson looms over my head. To the right, the traffic buzzes
along the Malahat. It’s barely audible through the trees. I walk with my head down
to avoid sunstroke.

Miranda, Lydia-Rose, and Vaughn stand together in the grass, watching me. I carry
Winkie down the path, toward the cabin. It has a steep pitched roof covered in bright-green
moss and is unpainted, the wood faded to a dull gray. It is the size of a shed, or
a garage. There can’t be more than two rooms inside. The front door has a tiny window
with a blue curtain, and there are a couple of rocking chairs on the porch, a Mexican
blanket slung over one of them, heavy with water from last night’s rain. A coal bucket
filled with cigarette butts sits beside one of the rocking chairs. A spider plant
hangs from a metal hook. It’s hot outside, but the house looks cold, water-stained,
and damp. I take a step onto the porch, shift Winkie to one arm. Whatever’s going
to happen is going to happen, so I knock.

My mother is shorter than I am by about an inch. Her shoulders are broad—too broad,
really, for such a small woman—and with her feet together, she is the shape of a triangle.
She is thin, too thin, with no hips. She has a long neck, an angular, muscular face,
and eyes as gray and marbled as the moon. The skin on her face is taut and deeply
lined. Her deep brown hair is flecked with gray at the temples. She wears it in a
tight braid that hangs over her shoulder and tapers to a fine point. Her eyes are
as piercing as the bear’s, and I understand immediately that she is his daughter.

My mother is small, so very small. She fiddles with the end of her braid, and I see
that she has the tiniest, most delicate hands. Her expression is as blunt as a cliff’s
edge.

She cocks her head and considers me, this other tiny person standing across from her.
I can tell she doesn’t have any idea who I am.

The sun is burning my shoulders, and my feet are sweaty in my shoes. I reach into
my pocket and pull out the Swiss Army Knife. It’s an old thing now, the blades dull
and rusty. It rests in the palm of my hand, and we stare at it, and we don’t say anything
at all. The sun blazes down and the knife heats up in my hand. She takes it from me
and examines it, pulls out the little blades and scissors and the tiny ice pick, then
snaps them back in. She hands it back.

“It’s you?” My mother stutters out the words, her hand covering her mouth as if to
muffle them.

“It’s me.”

We stand eye to eye, and she searches my face. “Your eye?”

“Blind.”

“Did something happen?”

“Born that way.” I turn my head to the left and then the right and my mother does
the same. We study each other’s faces as though this is the last time we will ever
see each other. I commit her face to memory; she does the same. From afar, we likely
don’t look that similar—her long, straight brown hair; my wild white-blond curls.
Her bony, delicate frame; my wrestler’s build. She wears maroon-and-white knitted
mukluks pulled to the knee over pale-blue jeans, a navy button-up sweater that stops
at her waist, the buttons done all the way up to her neck, even in this heat. It looks
as though she is holding herself together with her tightly buttoned sweater. Her clothing
hugs her body as if it is keeping her safe. Her eyes are deeply creased, but she is
only eighteen years older than I am, hardly old at all.

Up close—this close—I can see that she and I have the same face shape. The same small
forehead, heart-shaped face, deep-set eyes. We are cut from the same pattern; we are
set from the same mold. Her hand is still covering her mouth, and I look at the way
her fingers taper slightly, the pronounced half-moon on her thumbnail, the big knuckles,
the blank space where her left pinky finger should be. These are my hands, just thinner,
older. Neither one of us takes much care with them—both of us have
dirt under our nails, the cuticles overgrown. Our skin is so different. Mine is so
pale and puffy, soft against my bones, a layer of icing. Hers is drawn so tight it
looks stretched. Her knuckles are deeply grooved and dry.

I wonder what she sees in me. This shock of blond hair, the color of butterscotch
ripple ice cream just like my father’s, standing up every which way, curls so tight
they’re practically clenched, these bullish shoulders, this chubby frame. The baggy
jeans, old suspenders, my white tank top, sports bra showing through. My little round
face, which seems to me to morph every day, so that every time I look in the mirror
I feel as though I’m looking at someone new, someone else. I wonder when it will settle
into itself. Other people look the same every day; I don’t know why I always look
so different. Today I’m a bit puffy from lack of sleep. I can feel it in my eyelids
and in my cheeks. It’s a pleasant, swollen feeling, and it also makes me look a lot
younger than I am. What are you supposed to look like when you’re seventeen? The thought
flickers in my mind as my mother considers me, this weird little stranger on her front
porch in the heat of the afternoon. Weird little dog in my arms, her nose twitching,
taking us both in.

“This is Winkie,” I tell my mother.

My mother looks past me at Miranda, Lydia-Rose, and Vaughn, standing in the tall grass
in front of the big house. “And is that your family?”

I turn around and look at the three of them. “Yes.”

I take a step toward her. My mother. She smells just like me.

She reaches for my hand suddenly, and it startles us both. “I don’t know what your
name is,” she says. “I’m looking at you and I don’t know your name.”

“It was Shandi at first. Then Samantha. It’s Shannon now. I’m thinking of changing
it though.”

“I’m Yula.”

“I know. Could my dog have some water?”

My mother’s face softens, and she spins into the dark of the cabin, comes back moments
later with a yellow plastic bowl filled with water, a single ice cube floating in
its center.

“Winkie loves ice. Thanks.” I lower her to the ground and we watch
her lap up the cold water, her head tilted to the side in concentration. Her little
white tail twitches as she drinks.

Winkie finishes her water and looks up at us, and we both crouch and pat her head.
Her tail wags and she smooshes her body against us, wiggles through my legs, then
flops to the ground so we can rub her tummy.

“Hi, Winkie,” she says. She pats Winkie’s belly, fiddles with her ears. “She’s very
geometric, isn’t she,” my mother says and points to Winkie’s square face, rectangular
body, isosceles-triangle ears. “And bow-legged.”

“She’s old. She has trouble walking.”

“You’ve had her a long time?”

“Since I was five.” Winkie wiggles out from underneath our hands and sticks her paw
in her water dish, something she does when it’s really hot.

“It’s your birthday today,” my mother says. Her eyes are watering, and I can see that
it is taking everything she has to fight it.

“I’m not mad at you,” I say.

She looks past me, toward the mountain behind us, and covers her mouth with her hand
again. For a while, there really isn’t anything to do but cry.

“Will you come and meet everyone?” I say to her. I pick up Winkie and start walking
up the path toward Vaughn, Miranda, and Lydia-Rose. When I look back, Yula is sitting
on the porch of the cabin. She pulls off her mukluks and slips on a pair of dark green
gum boots. She walks toward us stiffly, and I can see how nervous she is. Her hand
trembles as she holds it out to Miranda, who, bless her heart, takes it in both of
her hands and doesn’t let go.

Quinn leads us through the great hall of his big windowed house and into the bright
kitchen, where he hands me an elaborate silver frame with a picture of my mother in
profile. She wears a red plaid shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants, and her hair
is dark brown and goes all the way down her back. She’s sitting in one of the rocking
chairs on the porch of the cabin. She holds a pair of silver scissors and is pulling
the strands of hair
in front of her face, about to snip off the ends. She’s wearing slippers with smiling
polar bear faces. Her stomach is round beneath the plaid shirt; she is pregnant.

“A month or so before you were born,” he says in his raspy voice. “She cut off all
her hair.” I hand him back the picture. He has changed out of his bathrobe and wears
a pair of paint-splattered khakis and a black T-shirt and has slicked his hair back
with water. He smells like expensive cologne and mint. His cane wobbles in his feeble
hands.

A suit wrapped in dry cleaner’s cellophane is hanging over one of the kitchen chairs,
and a half-empty glass of scotch sits on the counter. He picks it up and takes a loud
sip.

The kitchen is immaculate, the granite countertops gleaming. There’s a dishwasher
and a silver washing machine that looks like it could beam me into space. Yula pulls
out the chairs from the kitchen table and invites us all to sit down. The house is
cool and pleasant to be in, and so, so clean. There isn’t a speck of dust on anything.
A huge ceiling fan whirs above our heads. I look at Miranda, who is slightly wide-eyed.
None of us has ever been in a house as sophisticated as this before. Miranda and I
sit on one side, Yula and Lydia-Rose on the other, facing the windows. Quinn and Vaughn
sit at either end. Winkie, as usual, sits on my feet. There is a huge peace lily on
the table, and we all struggle for a minute, trying to figure out where to place ourselves
so that we can see one another over the bright-green leaves. Finally, Yula lets out
a little laugh and moves it to the counter behind her.

“How did you find us?” Quinn says suddenly, and I pause a moment, wondering how much
to say.

“Harrison.”

“I wasn’t the biggest fan of your father,” Quinn says, and Yula grips his arm with
a startling ferocity.

“For God’s sake.” She looks at me and Miranda apologetically, pleadingly. “He’s been
drinking,” she says. “He’s sick.”

I look at his body and I look at his hands. He is an old, angry, dangerous thing,
and I put my hand on his. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter to me if you liked him or
not.”

Quinn takes my hand and studies my fingers, measures the thickness of my wrists. “Your
arms look a little like your mother’s,” he says.

“I know that.”

“You’re short but long limbed,” he says. He swirls his scotch around and takes a long
drink.

“It’s beautiful here,” says Vaughn. “I forgot how beautiful. I used to live around
here.”

“We don’t forget. We’ve never been away.” Quinn lets my hand go and points at Yula’s
face with his pinky finger. “She’s looked after me all these years. Have you seen
my drawings of her? I used to draw all of us, all of us with thought bubbles coming
out of our heads, thinking silly things.” He points to the walls. There are drawings
tacked up everywhere; I don’t know why I didn’t notice them before. The walls are
covered in pen-and-ink. My favorite one is of a pointy-toed dress shoe, the laces
spilling out over the sides. I look for a drawing of a person, but they’re all just
things: shoes, a saltshaker, a pitcher of milk, a baseball, a peacock feather, a lawn
chair, a rake.