Escape Velocity

by Robin Stevenson

  “She never told you about me?” I ask.

  Heather shakes her head. “Well, we’re not close.”

  I almost laugh at that understatement, but it isn’t really funny at all. “I’ve never lived with her,” I say. “I’m only staying with her now because my dad’s sick. She left right after I was born.” I shiver and wrap my arms around myself, tucking my hands inside my sleeves. “I was kind of hoping you might know why.”

  Heather doesn’t answer right away. I’m scared she might just walk away without telling me anything at all. I study her face, searching for any resemblance. My mother is taller and stronger-looking, but they both have that same Scandinavian fairness. Heather’s eyes are blue but they’re faded, the eyelids drooping, the skin beneath them so dark it looks bruised.

  “Did you read her book?” she asks me abruptly.

  I know without asking which book she means. “Escape Velocity. Yeah, I read it.”

  “Then you already know plenty, don’t you?” There’s an angry edge to her words, as if she thinks I’m playing games with her.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “I mean, I get that some parts are true. Like about how she felt.”

  “It wasn’t right,” Heather says. “Putting personal things in a book like that. Pretending she made it all up. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “You read it then.”

  “I read enough of it,” Heather says. “Didn’t finish it. I got better things to do with my time.” Her lips twitch in a quick grimace. “Mind you, she always was ambitious. Always bought into that middle-class idea of success.” Her voice is scornful, dismissive, and for the first time, she reminds me of Zoe.

  “When did you last see her? I mean, not counting just recently?”

  “Dunno. Been ten years maybe.”

  The rain on the awning above is a loud drumming, and every few seconds a cold fat drip lands on my head. “Do you have somewhere to go?” I want to ask if she is really homeless, but it doesn’t seem polite. “Where do you live?” I ask instead.

  “Staying with a friend,” she says. “Not far from here.”

  “Can I see you again? Wait a minute.” I fumble in my pocket for a piece of paper, write down Zoe’s phone number and address, and hand it to her. “Please?”

  She looks taken aback. “What for?”

  “You’re my grandmother,” I say. “And…well, maybe I could help? In some way?” I feel like an idiot, and I can see the skepticism in her eyes.

  She laughs, mocking me. “Help? And what makes you think I need help?”

  My cheeks burn. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you or anything. Just, I don’t know. Are you, you know, okay?”

  “Dandy.” She takes a last drag on her cigarette and tosses the butt into the gutter. “What do you want from me?”

  I am still holding the scrap of paper out toward her. I feel like an idiot, but I guess I’ve got nothing to lose by telling her the truth. “Zoe won’t talk about the past at all,” I admit. “Um, I thought if I understood what happened with the two of you, then maybe I’d understand why my mother never wanted anything to do with me.”

  Heather takes the piece of paper and crumples it in her hand. Her eyebrows draw together, and two deep furrows appear between them. “If you want to blame me, go right ahead. Your mother does.”

  “I don’t want to blame anyone,” I protest.

  She gives a short laugh. “Right.”

  “I don’t.”

  Heather shakes her head. “If you don’t like your mother, go back to your dad. None of my business, is it? Leave me alone.” She turns and starts to walk away from me.

  “Wait,” I say. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She doesn’t look back. I take a few steps after her, catching up easily. “Heather. Can I call you that? I’d really like to get to know you. Because we’re family, right? Doesn’t that count for something?”

  That stops her. She turns and looks at me. “In my experience, no. It doesn’t.”

  My eyes sting with rain and tears. “Please. Can we go for coffee? Or something?”

  “Go home, kid.” She sticks my crumpled paper into her pocket. “Go home.” And she turns and walks away. I stand and watch as she gets smaller and smaller and finally disappears down a side street. Gone.

  Eighteen

  I get home before Zoe. There’s a message from Justine, asking me to call her when I get in, but I don’t feel like talking. I slip a copy of Escape Velocity from a stack of identical copies under Zoe’s desk and take it into my room. Heather seemed to think it held all the answers, but I haven’t found the ones I’ve been looking for. I flip the pages until I come to the first section in Alice’s point of view. It has always made me angry that my mother would base a character on me when she has never made any effort to know the real me at all. And yet, even though Alice isn’t really like me, and even though she ends up being so screwed-up, I can’t help caring about the fictional child in this story. I read her words again.

  I was twelve years old when my mother left. Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a shock. She’d been leaving for years, slowly, piece by piece: the sense of humor, then the patience, the affection I barely remember but have glimpsed in old photographs. Depression, my father told me, whispering. Since Billy’s birth, or maybe before that. She stayed in a hospital a couple of times, but it didn’t help. It seemed to me that my mother didn’t care about anyone but herself.

  Then, long after we’d all given up hope, everything changed. She seemed to be getting better, laughing at my feeble jokes, tickling Billy, making elaborate dinners as if we were having company even though we never did. She looked different too: the blacks and grays of her wardrobe turning to pinks and reds and golds, the old runners traded for high-heeled shoes, her lips stained startling shades of fuschia, burgundy, maroon. She talked fast, bought us unlikely gifts, dragged me and Billy outside to dance in the rain. Billy loved it, but the change made me uneasy.

  One night, after I was in bed, I heard my parents fighting. My father called her crazy.

  —Shut up. Just shut up. I’ve had enough. Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? Damn it, Claire. I’m in love with someone else. I’m leaving.

  She started to laugh and laugh. A few minutes later, she came up to my room. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. Her footsteps approached, and I felt her cool hand brushing my hair from my forehead. Then her hand was gone, the floor creaked, and I opened my eyes a crack to watch her slip out my bedroom door.

  That was the last time I ever saw her.

  Oh my god. Oh. My. God. I stare at the words. I have read them before, more than once, but this time, it is as if they have all been thrown into the air and landed in a completely different arrangement. Heather’s words are echoing inside my skull: Putting personal things in a book like that. Pretending she made it all up. It took Heather to make me see it, but the answers have been right there in front of me all along. This novel isn’t some metaphorical, emotional truth as I had assumed. It’s the actual literal truth. It’s my mother’s story.

  Sad, screwed-up, abandoned Alice isn’t me. She’s Zoe.

  The clues were all there: Alice’s blond hair, her little brother. I should have known. I drop the book onto my bed and stumble out of my bedroom into the empty apartment. I can’t take this in. I look at the apartment door and imagine my mother walking through it, and I feel like I might be sick. I’ve had it all wrong. All the things I’ve been so angry at my mother for—describing her babies as parasitic creatures, condemning children for their neediness— maybe those were never really her feelings at all. I have screwed everything up between me and my mother because I read it all wrong.

  Then again, she did leave me. I close my eyes and feel the pounding of my heart, the beat of my pulse at my temples, the jaw-aching tightness of my clenched teeth. Everything is upside down, and I don’t know what is true and what isn’t.

  Next thing I know I am out that doo
r, running down the stairs and out onto the dark street below. I run toward the lights of downtown and away from my mother, as if I can somehow escape this awful feeling. The rain soaks my thin sweatshirt and my hair, and drips down the back of my neck. I’m gasping for breath, but I don’t know where to go.

  So I just keep running.

  When I finally stagger to a stop, gasping, I’m wet, cold and miles from my mother’s apartment. I’m on some dark industrial street: parking lots and chain-link fences and low hulking buildings.

  When I was a little kid, I used to wear this one shirt of my dad’s every day. It came down past my knees, and the sleeves were so long they dangled almost to the ground. The other kids called me Loony Lou. Loony Lou. Maybe they were right; maybe I’m as crazy as Heather. Maybe it runs in our family. I shiver and tuck my hands into the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I just want to lie down somewhere and go to sleep until things make sense again.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  I spin around. A group of guys, five or six of them, all laughing. “Nothing,” I say. “Just going home.” Home. Where is that anyway? Not Zoe’s place. Drumheller? I think about Justine running away, living on the streets, and wonder what it would be like to do that.

  One of the guys says something under his breath, and the others laugh. The street is dark, and no one else is around. I guess I should be scared, but I’m not. Maybe because they look like okay guys, or maybe because I don’t have room to feel anything else right now. “Do you guys have a phone I could use?” I ask.

  Seconds later, they’re all rummaging in their pockets and holding phones out to me. I take one from a tall brown-skinned guy with a short beard and dark eyes. “Thanks.”

  I dial Justine’s number and she picks up right away.

  “It’s Lou,” I say. “Justine? Can I come over?”

  She hesitates. “Um.”

  “Please? I’ve screwed everything up. I can’t go back to my mother’s place.”

  “Uh, I’m not really supposed to have people over after eleven.”

  I interrupt. “Please, Justine? I really need a place to crash tonight.” My voice trembles on the edge of tears. “Please? Can you ask Nicole?”

  “She’ll say no,” she says, and I can hear the sigh in her voice. “Look, I’ll meet you downtown, okay? There’s a twenty-four-hour place. We can get a coffee and talk.”

  The guys actually want to walk with me to make sure I’m okay. From the way they act, all concerned and big-brotherish, I can tell they think I am younger than I really am. I thank them, tell them I’ll be fine and follow the directions Justine has given me. The place is a restaurant with a red and yellow neon sign that said Open 24 hours a day, which is probably its only selling point. Inside, it smells of coffee and grease and body odor.

  I find a booth in a corner, avoiding the eyes of the half dozen customers, all older men. I order a coffee, hoping that Justine will be able to pay for it, because I have no money. Finally she arrives, pink-cheeked and breathless. “So,” she says, sliding onto the bench across from me.

  “So. You know how you told me you ran away?” I ask abruptly.

  “Mmm. What about it?”

  “How come you did that? Was there something that happened? Or did you just want to leave?” Back in Drumheller, I used to have all kinds of fantasies about running away, but I couldn’t have left my dad on his own.

  She shrugs. “Mom was dating this total creep. He moved in, I moved out.”

  “They’re not together anymore?”

  “No. It took awhile, but she finally dumped him after he broke her arm.”

  I stare at her. “Jesus. Seriously?” She must think my own family problems are pretty trivial.

  “Mmm. And now she works at the same shelter where she stayed after she left him.” Justine gives a short laugh and changes the subject. “So what happened tonight? Did you catch up with your grandmother?”

  “Yeah. She wasn’t too pleased to meet me.”

  “Did you get answers to your questions though? About your mom?”

  I don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to admit how wrong I’ve been about everything. “They haven’t talked in ten years.”

  “How come you don’t want to go home? I mean, back to your mom’s place?”

  “I just want to go back to Drumheller,” I whisper.

  She turns toward me and raises an eyebrow. “You told me you hated it there. That you couldn’t wait to get away.”

  I turn away and look out the rain-streaked window. A pale yellow moon is peeking through the dark clouds. It looks unhealthy somehow, like a gross infected sore on the night sky. Despair settles over me like a cold mist. Other people look at the moon and think how beautiful it is. What is wrong with me that I hate everywhere I am? That I always just want to get away? Justine’s hand touches my shoulder briefly, and I realize that my face is wet with tears. “Everything is so fucked-up,” I whisper.

  “You want to call your dad?” She pulls out her phone and lays it on the table. “Go ahead and call your dad if you want to.”

  “It’s long distance.”

  “Duh. I know that. Go ahead.”

  I hesitate, suddenly unsure. I want to know that Dad’s okay, but I don’t really want to talk to him. He wouldn’t understand, and more importantly, he wouldn’t let me catch a bus home. Which is what I am planning to do. “Maybe I’ll call Dana Leigh instead.” I look at Justine. “My dad’s ex-girlfriend.”

  “Call whoever you want,” she says.

  I dial Dana Leigh’s number and listen to the ring. Pick up, pick up, pick up. And then her voice is saying hello, husky and familiar, sounding like she’s just in the next room and not a thousand miles away after all.

  “Dana Leigh? It’s me. Lou.”

  “Lou! Is everything okay?”

  She sounds so close and so familiar. “Can you send me some money for the bus?” I ask. “I need to come home.”

  “Honey! What is it? Are you worried about your dad?”

  “Mmm.” Justine gets up and walks around, collecting plastic No Smoking signs from the empty tables closest to us. Trying to give me some privacy.

  “I talked to him today. He’s doing fine. Seriously, Lou, it’ll take some rehab, but he’ll be in better shape at the end of this than he was before. Off all those damn drugs he was taking, for one thing.”

  “He told the doctors about that?”

  “Um, no. That’d be me.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Bet he was pissed.”

  “Well, he cussed a bit. You know, I expected him to freak, but he got over it pretty fast. I think he might have been almost relieved to have it all out there.”

  I don’t want to get my hopes up. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to quit. “Dana Leigh?” I try to think about how to explain. “I just really need to come home. Everything is messed up here.”

  “Have you talked to your mother? She knows you want to leave?”

  “Not exactly.” Justine slips back into our booth and pulls a marker out of her big black purse. I watch as she systematically changes Ns to Ps, so that the signs read Thank You for Pot Smoking. “She won’t mind,” I tell Dana Leigh. “She doesn’t even like me.”

  “Don’t say that, Lou.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth.” I try to hold my voice steady.

  “She doesn’t want me here. Can’t I stay with you until Dad’s better?”

  There is a long pause. Too long. Across from me, Justine looks up from her graffiti project, eyebrows raised in a question. Finally Dana Leigh sighs. “Let me talk to Trevor, okay? And your dad.”

  “Okay.” My heart sinks. I’d forgotten about Trevor. He’s not going to want a teenager in the house, and besides, those awful drooling dogs of his make me sneeze and itch. “Now? Can you ask him now?”

  “Honey, it’s awfully late. We were actually both sleeping.”

  “Oh. Sorry I woke you.” I tighten my grip on the phone and ball my free hand into a tight fist
. “Should I call you tomorrow or what?”

  “Give it a couple days,” she says. “Maybe things with your mom will feel better by then anyway.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I have to go anyway.” I hang up. My jaw aches, and I realize that I am clenching my teeth.

  “No luck?” Justine asks softly.

  I shake my head. “She says my dad’s okay though.”

  “That’s something.”

  “Yeah. That’s something.” I run one finger around the rim of my mug. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Justine leans toward me, puts her elbows on the table and rests her chin on her hands. “What happened tonight, Lou? With your grandmother?”

  I stare down at my coffee. It’s cold now, the surface scummy and opaque. “I’ve had everything wrong,” I say.

  “Ass-backward.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mom’s book. You know how I said that girl, Alice, was sort of based on me?”

  “The screwed-up one?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, here’s the thing: That wasn’t really me at all. It was supposed to be my mom.”

  She frowns. “So the woman, Claire. The one who leaves her kids…”

  “Is Zoe’s mom. Heather. My grandmother.”

  Justine sucks her lower lip. “Did she tell you that?”

  “Not directly. She said a few things, and then I looked at the book again and it all kind of fell into place.” I take a sip of cold coffee and let the bitter taste spread across my tongue. “I thought the novel sort of drew on some real feelings of my mother’s, you know? About seeing kids as parasites, that kind of thing.”

  Justine nods. “You told me something Claire said about having to sacrifice things to survive. I thought it was a horrible thing to say about your own kid.”

  “Yeah, only it turns out it wasn’t my mom who said it. It was her mom.” I shake my head. “It’s so confusing. The thing is, I think the novel is actually partly true, but I don’t know which parts really happened and which parts are made up. I mean, I think Heather left when my mom was twelve or so, and—oh!”