Escape Velocity

by Robin Stevenson

  I shake my head.

  “Stole money from the till.” Zoe looks at me. “Everything I tried to do, she sabotaged. I’d make her doctors’ appointments, and she wouldn’t bother to show up. She was infuriating. Impossible to help.”

  “Is that why you stopped seeing her?”

  “That, and other things. We fought a lot. She said some awful things.” Zoe straightens, leans against the doorframe. “I didn’t need that in my life.”

  “You didn’t need me in your life either.” Her crying and talking about her mom made me forget my anger, but it’s rushing back now and I feel like I might explode with it. “For twelve whole years.”

  She blinks, taken aback. “I never forgot about you, you know. Your dad sent me letters. Pictures of you. I always wondered if I’d made the right decision.”

  I can’t believe she has to ask. “God, Mom. I bet most people who abandon babies at least know they shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic.” Her voice is cold. “You make it sound like I dumped you in an alleyway.”

  “Where you left me is hardly the point. I think you should at least know it was wrong.”

  “Was it, Lou? Don’t you think you were better off with your father? Tell me the truth.”

  Telling her she’s wrong would feel like betraying Dad. Things haven’t been perfect, but that’s none of her business. Anyway, living with her might have been worse. “I don’t know,” I say instead. “Whatever.”

  Zoe is quiet for a long moment, and I wonder if she is about to walk away, but instead she takes off her wet coat and hangs it on my doorknob. “Three years ago, your father wrote to me. He thought you needed to meet me. And you were the age that I was when my mother left. I’d been thinking about that when I got his letter. And Lou—I’d been wanting to see you for years.”

  My eyes fill with unexpected tears. I grit my teeth and try to blink them back before she notices. “Me too,” I admit. “I’d been wanting to see you too.”

  “I was scared,” Zoe says softly. She moves closer and sits on the edge of my bed. Then she reaches out and hugs me—a long hard hug, like she means it. I’m so startled that it takes me a few seconds to respond, but I hug her back just in time, just as I feel her arms start to loosen.

  “Go to sleep,” she whispers. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  “Goodnight,” I say. Watching her walk out the door makes me think about Alice/Zoe seeing her own mother leave for the last time, and I quickly lie down and close my eyes, pushing the thought away.

  If it wasn’t for the secret I am still holding on to, I would feel almost peaceful right now, lying in this warm bed and savoring the memory of the hug and the hope that maybe, somehow, my mother and I will work this out. The last thing I want to do is risk wrecking this fragile connection by telling her that I met Heather, but the memory of that meeting keeps floating to the surface of my mind, and it feels like a betrayal.

  By the time I fall asleep, the dark sky is starting to fade to pearly gray and I can hear the muffled sounds of early morning traffic outside my window.

  Twenty

  Zoe is awake before me. I can hear her moving around, grinding coffee beans, opening and closing the fridge. I stretch out beneath the soft comforter, enjoying the feel of the smooth sheets against my bare legs. Last night feels like a dream. I slip out of bed, pull on a pair of flannel pajama pants and pad barefoot down the hall to join my mother in the kitchen.

  Zoe is slicing a cantaloupe on a large wooden cutting board. “Coffee?” she asks. Her hair is pulled up in a ponytail, stray locks loose around her face, and even in a housecoat and no makeup, she looks beautiful.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She pours coffee into a mug and slides it across the counter. I pull up a stool, sit down beside her at the island, and watch her carefully cut the rind of the melon away from the soft orange flesh. “I’ve been thinking,” she says.

  “Yeah?” I clear my throat. “Yes?”

  “I know I haven’t been very good at the mother thing.” She puts down the knife and turns to me. “God, this is such a cliché…But I guess I’m hoping that we can at least be friends.”

  I can feel myself stiffen, like I’m bracing myself for something. “I have friends,” I say.

  “Of course you do.” Her tone is patronizing. “I just thought that now that you are fifteen, perhaps we could have a different kind of relationship. As adults.”

  As adults. Right. She’s smiling at me, head tilted to one side. Last night, I actually thought things might be different. Now it’s like she wants to wriggle off the hook. I cut her off. “God, Zoe! You’re my mother, okay? Yeah, you’ve been a lousy mother, but that’s what you are. You’re not my friend.” I blow on the surface of my coffee, heart racing, not trusting myself to say any more.

  Zoe turns away. I can hear the knife thwacking through the melon and hitting the wooden cutting board. Snick. Snick. Snick. “It’s almost noon,” she says. “You’d better eat something and get to school.”

  I guess the conversation is over.

  I arrive at school halfway through lunch. Justine is alone at the far side of the field, sitting cross-legged on the grass by the fence. I walk toward her, feeling embarrassed about last night. “Hey.”

  She looks around, startled, and then smiles at me. She has a cute smile—Zoe hates that word, but it really is the only one that fits Justine’s lopsided dimples and baby face. “Lou. How are you doing? What happened with your mom when you got home?”

  I sit down beside her. “Sorry about being such a basket case last night.”

  “It’s okay. Forget it.” She tightens the cap on her half-full bottle of apple juice and shoves it into her bag. “Anyway, you weren’t a basket case. You were upset, that’s all.”

  “Did you get in trouble? For being out so late, I mean?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s all good. You?”

  “Mmm. Well, Zoe was mad, but we ended up having a pretty interesting talk.” I don’t know how much to say. I’ve known Justine for less than a week, and already she knows more about me than anyone else does. Or if not exactly more, at least she knows different things. “I didn’t tell her about meeting Heather,” I say. “Zoe, I mean.”

  “Would she be pissed?”

  “Yeah, beyond pissed. She’d be totally furious.”

  “So, don’t tell her.”

  “No.” I pull up a handful of grass and scatter it over my outstretched legs. “I don’t understand how she can let her mom be, you know…homeless or whatever. When she has this nice condo and everything.”

  “It’s probably more complicated, right?”

  “I guess.” I study the pattern of the green blades against faded denim, brush the grass off. My jeans have that velvety softness around the knees that jeans always get right before they tear through. “She told me that she tried to help her mom,” I say. “You know, get her off the streets and all that. But her mom kept screwing everything up.”

  “Yeah, well. You can’t change people,” Justine says. “I tried with my mom. Hoping she’d dump the asshole boyfriend. Hoping she’d put me first for once.” She shrugs. “Eventually you get tired of hoping for stuff that isn’t going to happen.”

  “But she left him in the end, right?”

  “Yeah. But she…” She trails off, looks down at her hands, knots her fingers together. “I wouldn’t say she’s really changed. I mean, she has in some ways, and I’m proud of her for leaving him and getting this job and all that.”

  “But?”

  “She’s impossible,” Justine says explosively. She looks up at me for a second, then drops her eyes to her hands again. “I moved back home for a while and it was a disaster.”

  I want to know more, but I don’t want to push her. “You don’t have to…I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it…”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Just, I don’t really get my mother. Sometimes I think she’s someone who sh
ouldn’t have had a kid. Except then I wouldn’t be here.” She shrugs. “She blames me for every single thing that has ever gone wrong in her life. Even the asshole was my fault, according to her.”

  “How did she figure that?”

  “Oh, let’s see.” Justine’s voice is sarcastic, her eyebrows drawn together in a frown. She holds up a hand, counting on her fingers. “One, I was born. Two, she quit school. Three, she was broke. Four, she was dependent on her boyfriend. Five, he beat her up.” She lifts her other hand, still counting. “Six and seven, so did the next two boyfriends. Eight, I—according to her—tried to seduce her boyfriend.”

  I interrupt. “She blamed you for him hitting on you?”

  She nods. “Nine, I ran away. And ten, even though the asshole is gone, I insist on living in a group home, which makes her look bad to all the social-worker types she now hangs out with.”

  “Wow.” I don’t know what to say.

  “Yeah.” She is mocking me now. “Wow.”

  At least I have Dad, and Dana Leigh, sort of, and even Zoe…well, maybe. “Sorry I’ve gone on about my family and everything,” I say. “It sounds like you have enough to deal with.”

  “Past tense,” she says shortly. “I’ve dealt with as much as I’m going to. I go to my mom’s for dinner once a week, and if she starts in on me, I leave.” She stretches her legs out, black boots sticking out from under the long black skirt. “Anyway, I didn’t mind hearing about your stuff. Your mom and all that.”

  I nod. “Yeah.” It occurs to me that Justine is the first friend I have had in a long time, the first person my own age I have had real conversations with in over a year. I bet she has no idea. I don’t know if she even considers me a friend at all. Then I remember her hand stroking my hair, and the parting hug she gave me on the sidewalk last night. Somehow, through plain dumb luck, I have managed to find someone who knows something about loneliness.

  “Think you’ll be going back soon?” she asks. “To your dad’s?”

  “I dunno. Not for a bit, I guess.”

  Justine flashes me her dimples, but I think I can see the shine of tears in her eyes too. “Good,” she says. “I’m getting used to having you around.”

  Twenty-One

  I’ve only been home for a few minutes when the buzzer rings, signaling that there is someone at the door downstairs. Zoe is working. She looks up from the screen, frowning; then she crosses the room and presses the intercom button. “Hello?”

  “Zoe?” The voice is female, older, hoarse. I realize who it is before Zoe does: Heather. My heart jolts painfully in my chest, and what feels like an electric charge tingles down my arms. My back is suddenly damp with cold sweat.

  “Who is this?” Zoe asks slowly. I can see the expressions flickering across her face: wariness, recognition, shock, incredulity.

  “It’s your mother,” Heather says. “Remember me?”

  Zoe is staring at me, frozen.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”

  The buzzer rings again, impatient, demanding.

  “Come in,” Zoe says, pushing the button to open the door. She turns to me. “You’ve got about sixty seconds, so you’d better explain fast.”

  “I met her. I gave her the address. I didn’t know. I guess I shouldn’t have, but I wanted…I thought maybe I could see her sometime. Since she’s my grandmother. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s a bit late for that.”

  Her voice is sharp enough to slice clean through me. “You wouldn’t tell me anything about her,” I say. “I wanted to understand things.”

  Zoe shakes her head. “She knows nothing about me, which is how I want it to stay.”

  “If I’d known what she did to you, that she left you… but you never told me that.”

  “So you went looking for her. For answers.” She presses her lips together tightly. “Did you get any?”

  “From her? Not really. Except I guess something she said made me realize that she was Claire. Not you. And…”

  There is a knock at the door, but Zoe doesn’t move. “How did you find her? I can’t imagine she’s in the phone book.”

  “Your reading at the library last night. I thought she might show up so I went downtown.” Justine’s role in the whole drama seems beside the point.

  Zoe shakes her head. “Maybe you did inherit something from me after all.” She walks toward the door as Heather knocks a second time.

  I wonder what she means by that. Selfishness? A capacity for deceit? I watch Zoe straighten her shoulders and open the door, and I feel a surge of despair. I have been so stupid. Just when a real connection between us started to feel like a possibility, I have ruined everything.

  Heather steps inside, brushing past my mother and surveying the apartment. “So this is how you live,” she says abruptly. “A downtown condo. Ikea furniture.” She purses her lips. “Potpourri on the table. Christ.”

  “Mother.” Zoe holds up a hand like a traffic cop. “If you are going to be unpleasant, you might as well leave.”

  “But I was invited,” she says, opening her eyes wide. “By your daughter, Zoe. My granddaughter. Were you ever planning on letting me know about her?”

  “Honestly, Mother? I can’t really see that it is any of your business.”

  Heather ignores her and sits down on the couch. She’s wearing jeans and ancient winter boots and that same baggy black sweater. I bet she doesn’t weigh more than ninety pounds. She leans back, crosses her legs and tugs on her long braid. It’s off-center, hanging forward over her shoulder. In the midday light, I can see that her lips are dry and cracked.

  She gestures toward a chair, apparently amused by the absurdity of her relaxing on the couch while Zoe and I stand awkwardly across the living room. “Sit down, why don’t you?”

  I look at Zoe, who hesitates and then lowers herself stiffly onto a straight-back chair as far from Heather as possible. I consider backing away and retreating to my bedroom, but I’m too curious. I’m like a rubbernecking motorist in the aftermath of a car crash. Plus I feel responsible for whatever might happen, since this particular collision is entirely my fault. So I slide down to the floor and sit cross-legged where I am.

  “You always were one to hold a grudge,” Heather says. “I remember this one time when you were maybe eight and I wouldn’t let you sleep over at a friend’s place. You barely spoke to me for about a week.”

  “Don’t,” Zoe says, interrupting. “I am not in the least interested in your reminiscences.”

  Heather gives a laugh which gets lost in a long racking cough. She holds up a hand, signaling us to wait. I wonder if I should get her a glass of water, but I don’t want to do anything that might make my mother even angrier. “No,” Heather says at last. “You’re more interested in your own version of events. Including events that you weren’t even present for or were too young to understand.”

  “And your point is?” Zoe says.

  Heather looks around the room again. “I suppose you’re living well now, what with the book and all.”

  Zoe shakes her head. “Please tell me you are not here to ask for money.”

  “Exploitation, that’s what it is. Writing about me without my permission. Putting personal things in that book, things you have no right to make public.”

  “So sue me,” Zoe says. “It’s a novel. Anyway, I thought you said I got it all wrong. That Claire was nothing like you.”

  A sly look crosses Heather’s face. “Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t. All I’m saying is, since you’re benefiting from using me, you should share what you’re getting.”

  I want her to stop talking before it’s too late, before she makes everything worse. I want to believe there is something good in her, something likable and understandable, that she is here because she has regrets and wants to reconnect with Zoe and repair the damage between them, but with every word she speaks, that possibility is vanishing. Maybe it was never there at all.

  “I don’t
think you deserve anything from me. Not a thing.” Zoe points at her mother, and I can see that her hand is shaking. “But I will write you a check. On one condition.”

  Heather raises her eyebrows.

  “That you get out of my apartment and out of my life. That you stay away from me. And from Lou. You stay away from both of us.”

  “She doesn’t look much like you, does she?” Heather cocks her head, looking me up and down.

  “That’s right,” Zoe says. “Take a good look now, because you won’t be seeing her again.”

  I squirm, feeling like a bug under a microscope.

  “Didn’t inherit my looks like you did,” Heather says at last. “Too bad.”

  “Lou looks like her father,” Zoe says. “Garland was a very good-looking man, and Lou is beautiful. But you know what? I couldn’t care less what she looks like. She’s a great kid.”

  I blink, startled, and drop my eyes to the carpet. Did my mother really just say that? Is she actually standing up for me?

  “Quite the secret you’ve been keeping,” Heather says. “Always acting like you’re so much better than me. So superior. Funny how things turn out.”

  “What are you talking about?” Zoe asks. Then she holds up a hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t even want to hear it.”

  But Heather is unstoppable. “Lou told me. You didn’t raise her. You left her with her dad. All the guilt trips you laid on me, and here it turns out you’re no better.”

  Zoe’s face is white. “I laid guilt trips on you? I tried to help you, Mom. All you did was screw things up.”

  “You blamed me for everything,” Heather says. “Every little thing that ever went wrong in your life was apparently my fault.”

  “Are you serious?” Zoe raises her voice. “I can’t believe you can say that. Don’t you remember what you said to me? You blamed me for what happened to Tommy!”

  “Well, you should’ve taken care of him,” Heather says. “You shouldn’t have let him drink and drive.”

  There is a long silence, and Heather’s words seem to echo around the room. I want to jump up, to say something, to stop her, but I seem to be frozen to the spot. “I did my best,” Zoe says, suddenly deflated. Her arms are folded across her chest, her eyes wet. “I loved Tommy, Mom. He was all the family I had.”