Y: A Novel

by Marjorie Celona

  He is still at the window when the Meteor comes back down the driveway. He watches Harrison get out the passenger side and go into the cabin. Dominic is smoking a cigarette in the driver’s seat. These are bad men, anyone can see it. Quinn wonders what makes women so blind. Why would a woman want to be around these two? Ex-cons are what they are. Half the time he expects to wake up with them over his bed, a butcher knife in one of their hands. They’d gut the house, turn the land into a grow-op. It’s only a matter of time, Quinn thinks. So be it. He’s ready for the next thing. He’s ready to die.

  Through the window, Quinn watches Harrison rush outside and get back into the Meteor. The men talk for a few minutes and then Harrison disappears into the cabin again. Dominic gets out of the car, walks around the side of the cabin, and emerges with a shovel and a flashlight, which he puts in the trunk. He lights another cigarette and leans up against the car, his body slightly concave in an effort to keep warm.

  And then Harrison comes out of the cabin with Eugene in his arms. The little boy’s face is so blue that Quinn gasps. God, what have these monsters done? Quinn fears for the boy’s life. He has never seen a child look this way. The little boy’s body hangs in Harrison’s arms. He is wrapped in one of Yula’s old sweatshirts and his legs and feet are bare. Quinn watches Harrison carry him to the back of the car, where Dominic meets him and opens up the trunk again. What in God’s name is going on? What are they doing? Harrison lays the boy inside, then disappears inside the cabin. When he returns he has one of Eugene’s little red boots in his hand. Dominic and Harrison stand over the trunk, talking, and then Harrison reaches up, slams the trunk shut and gets in the car, and the men begin to drive away.

  The door to the cabin opens, and Quinn sees his daughter break into an awkward sprint after the car, her hand underneath her belly. Her face is white. Her eyes are wild. She chases the car until it slows and Harrison jumps out, runs to her, throws his arms around her. What is going on? They are talking but he can’t make out the words, even though they are right in front of his house. When Yula starts to walk away from them, Dominic lunges for her, and the two men drag her back to the car. She wrenches forward, grasping her belly, and Harrison pushes her into the car.

  A second later Quinn is on the phone with Joel and Edwin. They’ll be right over, they say. Just hold on. We’ll be right there.

  XV.

  at three o’clock the next day, I am on Vaughn’s bike, pedaling down Cook Street as fast as I can, my backpack thumping against my back, my sneakers occasionally slipping off the pedals and shooting forward so that the pedal catches the back of my calf. I am a terrible cyclist, plus the seat is too high and I have no idea how to lower it. I pray I won’t have to make any left turns. I fly down the street, going too widely around parked cars and veering into traffic. I am constantly honked at. But I’m so scared that someone will open their driver’s side door and hit me, and then that will be my life. Over and out. The end.

  By the time I get to the Y my armpits are wet and my hands and legs are shaking. I lock up the bike and walk inside, try to get my heart to pound a little more slowly, try not to look too jazzed up. But I can feel my eyes are wild.

  Chloe and the cockatoo are behind the counter. Chloe is filling out a form and the cockatoo is folding towels. They nod at me when I come in. I feel like a small alien wearing the bike helmet. I push through the turnstile and scan the weight room for Vaughn. He’s standing by the leg press, holding a clipboard in one hand and ticking things off while an older woman with white hair works the machine. Vaughn is wearing a pair of red running shorts with a white stripe and a white polo shirt. His running shoes look huge. His feet are splayed slightly, I notice for the first time. He looks a bit like a giant duck. The Isley Brothers are playing. Kind of a weird choice. Vaughn nods in time to the music. Then I notice that everyone in here has white hair. Oldies’ hour. I get it now.

  “Just a sec?” He gives me a big smile but I see something in his eyes—fear? Irritation? I can’t tell, but my stomach starts to hurt.

  “Hey, kiddo.” The cockatoo sidles up to me. “Seniors’ hour is over. What should I put on?”

  “Punk.”

  “’K.”

  I approach one of the weight machines and fiddle with it but have no idea how to make it go. I climb on a recumbent bike, but the seat’s too far back and my feet won’t reach the pedals, and I don’t want to stand up and fix it because I don’t know how.

  Vaughn puts his hand on top of my bike helmet. “There’s a lever under the seat.”

  “It’s okay. I already cycled a bunch today.”

  “How’re things?” He stares down at me.

  “Good. Okay. You?”

  “Yup. Let me get my things.”

  Vaughn pushes his bike up Quadra Street toward View Towers—still no one jumping off—and I walk beside him, still wearing the bike helmet. We’re going to take the bus to the ministry. We’re going to talk to Madeleine.

  “You ever eaten,” Vaughn is saying, “at the Schnitzel House?”

  “I’ve always wanted to.” We look into the dark windows for a second. The waitress—a big, matronly woman—is sitting at one of the tables, scratching a lotto card with a penny. There’s no one else in the restaurant.

  Up the street we stop at the 7-Eleven to get a Slurpee for me and a Powerade for Vaughn. I look around for Mickey, but he must be playing at one of the other convenience stores today.

  “You know the trumpet player, the one who wears the orange hat?”

  Vaughn hands the store clerk a couple of bucks and we exit the store. “’Course.”

  “He’s the one who told me I should contact you.”

  “Oh yeah? He some kind of friend of yours?”

  “Guess so.” I shoot Vaughn a look. “Why?”

  “Nothing. I’m not your dad. Not going to get a lecture from me.”

  We wait at the bus stop and watch people drive by, blowing smoke out their car windows, blasting bass. A man pushes a shopping cart filled with bottles and cans by us, and Vaughn tosses his Powerade bottle into the mix.

  It takes forever for the bus to come. It always does. Vaughn leans his bike against the shelter, and we share the bench with a man holding a baby. The man has a black eye and Vaughn and I look at each other. There’s something about holding a baby and having a black eye—simultaneously—that seems incongruent with the world, or how I think the world should be, but I’ve got too much on my mind to think about it.

  “Not everybody is who they pretend to be.” Vaughn picks at a hangnail on his index finger and doesn’t look at me. “It’s a small town, but that doesn’t mean it’s a safe one.”

  “What’s wrong with hanging out with Mickey?”

  Vaughn lets out a heavy sigh. “You got a boyfriend, Shannon?”

  “Nope.”

  “It might do you good to spend time with boys your own age.”

  I rattle my bus fare around in my hand. “I’m too old for people my age.”

  The man with the shopping cart comes clattering back down the street and stops in front of Vaughn and me. “Got a smoke?” he says.

  “Gave it up years ago, man,” Vaughn says, and the men nod at each other.

  Two guys on choppers come around the corner and stop at the light, engines revving. “Check it out,” I say to Vaughn and the shopping cart guy. They blow through the intersection with a noise so loud that the black-eyed man’s baby starts wailing.

  “Used to live on the other side of Finlayson,” Vaughn is saying. “Those guys rule out there. You know, one day I was out walking and it got quiet all of a sudden, too quiet, and I realized I was standing in the middle of a grow-op. Not two minutes later, two guys with beards are pointing rifles at me, coupla pit bulls behind them.”

  The man with the baby is rocking her, and she quiets down. He turns to us with his big swollen eye. “I got a story like that. Cops busted a big operation a few years ago up-island. Found a couple of black bears guarding th
e property. Imagine that, huh?”

  “Good security system,” says Vaughn, and the men laugh.

  “I was living in Ladysmith at the time,” the man says. “Some people said the bears even came into the house.”

  “Nuts.” Vaughn shakes his head and holds his hand out to the man. “Vaughn.”

  “Earl.”

  When the number 6 comes, Vaughn fastens his bike to the front of the bus. We say hello to the bus driver and sit in the raised section at the back. We read the graffiti and the ads. The bus isn’t too crowded this time of day, and I’m grateful for it. I hate standing for miles. It hurts my knees.

  Vaughn stretches his legs out in the aisle. They are so muscular that they frighten me. “Thinking about getting your license anytime soon?” he says.

  “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  “Can’t see.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Were you born with a bad eye?”

  “It got that way.”

  Vaughn smiles at me like the sun has just risen over my head. “Sorry. Sorry,” he says. “Sometimes I look at you and think about how little you were. Makes me happy, that’s all. To see you okay.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  We head up Quadra Street, past the cop shop and the curling rink and the swimming pool and the Roxy and the pawnshop and the check-cashing joint. Vaughn is looking at the ads that line the top of the bus.

  “Did you talk to Miranda?” he says.

  “Yeah. We’re okay now.”

  “She know you’re with me?”

  I pause. “Nah.”

  “Shannon.”

  “I know. I know.”

  He shifts uncomfortably in his seat and flexes his calves. “I want you to tell her what’s what. Don’t feel comfortable with her not knowing.”

  Vaughn takes off his glasses and cleans them on his gym shirt. The bus is headed up the highway now, and we both lean back and enjoy the speed. I can hear the tinny bass from some guy’s headphones and the murmur of two women talking in the handicapped section up front.

  So much silence on a bus trip. All these miles, all these minutes, nothing to say. That incessant hum in my ears as the wind whips past—the pshoo, pshoo, pshoo of cars going the other way. Right now it feels like it would be a sin to speak. I know Vaughn is as lost in the shadows of his life as I am.

  I sit on this bus, and every bad thing I’ve ever done comes flooding back to me. I am lost in guilt. I am a liar. I am a cheat. I steal things. I use people. I have no friends. I have five stars carved into my leg now. There is something wrong with me. Sometimes I just really want to go off the deep end. Get myself addicted to heroin and check out. I want an off switch. I don’t want to be me every day. When I wake up and look in the mirror, all I can think is You again. Again and again.

  “Listen,” Vaughn says. “I have to be honest with you about something.”

  “What.”

  “When I saw your mother that day.” He pauses, searches my face. “She left you there so that someone else would find you, and love you, and raise you. I don’t believe this was something she decided to do—I believe this is something she had to do.”

  “Okay.”

  “Shannon, I think there’s something deeply wrong with her, but also fundamentally right. I saw her intention for you—she left you there because you were better off that way. It was an act of generosity. An act of love.”

  “I don’t need my mother to be a good person. I just want to know who she is.”

  “I understand.” He closes his eyes. “She kissed your cheek when she put you down. She was wearing men’s coveralls, with motor oil all over them. She had on these huge workmen’s boots. This is not someone who lived in the city, the way I see it. She put you down, kissed you, and she walked into the cemetery beside Christ Church. Dark hair. Little woman, I think. Our eyes have the hardest time at dawn or twilight, you know—it’s the hardest light for our eyes to process—”

  I frown. “In the article, you said—”

  “Shannon, not a day goes by when I don’t think about it.”

  “Red sweatpants? White tennis sweater?”

  And then he’s telling me all kinds of things: how the inside of his van smelled like diesel fuel that morning and he thought he might have a leak—that he was living in Langford at the time, took him over an hour to drive in—that my mother took short steps, not long strides. In the last sixteen years, he says, it was the one day he didn’t get a proper workout. The night before, he’d watched Uncle Buck.

  “You have to understand something,” he says. “I wasn’t supposed to be there yet; I was early. I was living so far out of town, I left early thinking there’d be traffic, and there wasn’t. Shannon, it was an error—my presence. Or, at least, my intervening would have made it so. Your mother wasn’t crying. No. She was beyond that. When you’re truly hurt, you don’t have enough left inside of you to cry. Listen, I didn’t want to intervene with what was happening. It seemed important not to trouble the waters of fate like that. There was a look in your mother’s eyes—”

  “So you would recognize her?”

  “Pretty sure, yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Shannon. I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing.”

  I look at his big sad eyes. I shrug at him. What am I supposed to say? “This is it.” I pull the cord, and we jostle into position by the back exit.

  I hate being out here. Suburbia. It’s hideous. How can people live like this? Row after row of the same-looking house. I’d kill myself for sure.

  Vaughn unloads his bike and we walk up the street toward the ministry.

  “Strange location,” Vaughn says. “I never come out here.”

  “It’s weird out here.”

  “It is.”

  “Only robots live out here. Robot people.”

  “There are a lot of robot people.” Vaughn laughs.

  “It’s this building, here.”

  Vaughn holds the door for me, and we walk into the waiting room. He inspects the loaves of bread, picks out a whole wheat one, and pushes two slices into his mouth. I start reading a pamphlet about methadone. Vaughn taps the front-desk bell and we pace around the room. The door to Madeleine’s office is shut, as are the other doors. I can hear people talking behind them.

  “Guess we should have called ahead?” Vaughn shrugs at me, and for a moment I miss the organization and efficiency of Miranda.

  But then the door to Madeleine’s office opens and a man spills out, red-faced and disheveled, tugging a little girl behind him by the hand. She has to run to keep up with his strides so that he won’t drag her to the floor.

  Madeleine steps out in a white cotton sundress and open-toe white wedges. Her hair is pulled back by a headband covered in daisies. Her blond roots are showing even more than last time.

  “Oh,” she says and looks back and forth between me and Vaughn. “We’re about to close.”

  “Spare five minutes?” Vaughn steps forward and offers his hand.

  She smiles weakly and takes it. “Come on in,” she says and gestures to her little office.

  Surprisingly, Vaughn does most of the talking. He tells her who he is, how I found him. His voice gets really quiet when he leans in and tells her he may have misremembered what my mother looked like, that the description he gave the police wasn’t as accurate, say, as it could have been. “I’d know her if I saw her again, though. I want to help Shannon find her. I understand there’s something in her file about William Head, something about the initials H.C.”

  “I’m afraid,” Madeleine says, running her long fingernails over her forearm, “that information is confidential.” She looks tired. She is not charmed by Vaughn, and whatever door that had opened between her and me seems to be closed now. She looks at her computer for a second and taps her nail on the mouse. “We never became aware of your birth parents’ identity. There’s nothing I can do to he
lp you.”

  “Why did you leave my file up for me to see?” I look at her and try to burn a hole in her forehead with my eyes.

  “A mistake. I’m sorry.” She purses her lips, gets up from her desk, and opens her office door. “What you can do, Shannon, is request a copy of your file through Freedom of Information. I can help you do that.”

  Vaughn puts his hand on my shoulder and thanks Madeleine for her time, then shimmies past her. “Shan, I’ll be outside,” he calls. Madeleine and I stare at each other until he leaves.

  “Shannon, you keep in touch, if you want,” she says. “You come back and see me anytime.”

  I don’t want to cry; I don’t want to feel bad. I dig my nails into my knees and press my calves together until I feel the scabs from my stars. It burns and stings, and I focus on the pain, which is manageable and small.

  I remember her words from our last visit. Sometimes it’s better not to know. I feel so heavy with disappointment that the weight of me could crash through the floor. “I don’t care if they’re monsters,” I tell her. “I just want to know who they are.”

  She looks down at me and closes her office door. She leans against it for a minute and closes her eyes, as if she’s willing the day to come to an end. She reaches to straighten out her headband and exposes the inside of her wrist, which is so white it’s almost blinding. A long-ago stitched-up scar runs the length of her arm.