“Come on, Nina. Let’s beat Dad!” Her mom ran down the hill, laughing as Dan followed, jogging with Emmie on his shoulders, who slapped his head, shouting, Faster, faster.
At the bottom of the hill, Lyssa collapsed onto the grass, but she didn’t stay there long. The castle needed exploring and the girls were pulling her up by the hands to line up and buy tickets, looking for people they knew, calling to their friends. She took a turn with them at dunking the principal and missed, got them roasted corn, looked for her sister-in-law but couldn’t find her, clapped as Nina tried to do a cartwheel. Way to go! Awesome! Emmie was sitting in the police car, chatting with the officers. They stood next to a poster of the Christie Pits riot: blurry men in white shirts, several women in long dresses, colour unknown, balls of light reflecting off the camera’s flash. The names of police officers who’d been called to quell the riot were listed alphabetically. Lyssa read through them all in case there was a mistake.
“There’s no Amos Edwards,” she said to Dan.
“Rick’s grandfather? Huh. I wonder why.”
“Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe he wasn’t even a cop.” Lyssa was looking up the hill to where Cathy was pushing the stroller along the path toward her parents’ booth. “Can I leave the kids with you?”
“Sure.” Dan lifted his camera and snapped a shot of the stilt walkers. Then he followed his wife’s glance. “You’re going to try to talk to her again?”
“Yup.”
“And get upset again? You’ve done your best. There’s nothing more you can do.”
“Ha! Watch me,” Lyssa said, waving as she jogged backward, nearly bumping into a woman handing over a credit card at the next table.
The Committee for Youth information booth consisted of a table, an easel with a sign on it, a backboard with blown up photographs and big, bold terrifying statistics: every year a million people committed suicide around the world, more than died in wars; the most common method was firearms; annually eight out of every hundred thousand teens died this way. Pamphlets were printed with the logo that Dan had designed, CFY coming out of cupped hands in embossed gold, and in smaller black letters below, IN MEMORY OF HEATHER EDWARDS. People were crowding around the table, reading pamphlets, signing up for the e-mail list, giving donations by cheque, by credit card, taking their receipts from Rick. He marked the amount on the large drawing of a thermometer, mercury rising ever higher. Standing to one side, Lyssa leaned against a cottonwood tree, waiting.
Debra wore her white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope around her neck. “It’s your turn,” she was saying to a child who was getting impatient, putting the earpieces into the girl’s ears, the drum against her chest.
“I hear it!” The kid was about six, chubby, rapt as Debra explained how the sounds were produced when different heart valves closed against the reverse flow of blood.
Rick kept rubbing his chin as if to rub away the grey of his beard. “It took you long enough,” he said, pointing at his watch as Cathy reached the booth, putting the stroller with the sleeping baby in it behind the table.
“Sorry, Dad.” She wore white shorts and a polka-dot shirt gathered under the bust, bangs newly cut across her forehead, a light fringe of gold.
“Hey, can I borrow Cathy?” Lyssa asked. “I need her opinion.”
“Just a moment.” Debra put down her stethoscope, ignoring the kids’ awws and When’s my turn? She came around the table, standing close to Lyssa beneath the cottonwood tree. She wore a new, ambery perfume. “Cathy hasn’t been herself lately. She even threatened to call children’s services. Where would she get an idea like that?” She peered at Lyssa suspiciously. Her lipstick was red, her face pale.
“Wow.” There were shouts from inside and Lyssa crossed her arms, balancing on one foot, pressing the other into the trunk of the tree. She wasn’t going to run. The others had tried and failed. It was her turn now.
“After Heather died the police had to look over the scene.” Debra made quotation marks around “scene” with her fingers. “You can’t imagine how it feels to have strangers come into your house and walk around as if they own it.” She came in close. Her perfume was thick, her pale eyelashes dotted with mascara. “Nobody will ever do that to me again.”
“No kidding,” Lyssa said, running through possible answers faster than she’d have guessed possible, throwing each useless one aside until, Bingo, there it was. Just what she needed. “I know what you mean—awful,” she said.
“Pardon?” Suspicion faded to puzzlement.
“I called social services when I was nine.”
“No! Why?” Debra asked.
“I was upset so I called. The social worker asked what I was doing out of school.”
On a winter’s day in grade four, with no warning, Lyssa had been pushed forward. She’d had no idea of what had been happening on the outside. All she knew was that Sharon was gone and she was lying on the ground in the schoolyard, surrounded by a circle of kids pointing, elbowing each other, shrieking with laughter and shouting butt-head, stinky-butt, fart-face. Her coat had been open, her panties around her ankles. The kids had been holding projects, the solar system, a tepee made of paper and Popsicle sticks, the girls’ knees red between their socks and skirts. The Plasticine model of a volcano on a sheet of cardboard had been put on the snow near one of the boys, who was empty-handed and laughing the hardest. He must have been the one who’d pulled her panties down. She’d kicked off the panties, got to her feet and, holding up her dress, peed on his volcano. As the teacher on duty had moved toward her, she’d run, intending to make the most of this unexpected gift of time. With nobody home, she could look up the phone number in the front of the white pages. Not that she would say any of this to Debra except for the end result.
“What did you tell the social worker?” Debra asked.
“Oh, I tried to say something was going on at home, but all they did was talk to my parents and tell them I was skipping school. Naturally I was punished.”
Her parents had ordered her to stay in her room for a week, so sure of themselves they hadn’t even locked her in. But the ice rink was at the end of the road. There was a fence and a field and then the railroad tracks. Every day after her parents left for work, she’d gone there to skate, using up Sharon’s allowance to rent skates and buy cups of cocoa. The old man in the snack bar had put marshmallows in it. He’d looked over his glasses, unsmiling, and he hadn’t asked Lyssa how come she wasn’t in school. He’d just given her free marshmallows, had said that the french fries were on special, half price, and had taken her money. The man had had grey hair in a ponytail, he’d worn wire-rimmed glasses and a big greasy apron. He’d sat on a stool and read newspapers. He’d never even said, I’ve done something for you so now you do something for me. It was this kindness that had kept her from walking in front of a car. On the ice she’d fallen and she’d got up. Falling on ice had hurt less than her other bruises. The snow had been white, the sky had been white. Nothing stained. Nothing stank.
“While I was skipping school, I learned to skate,” Lyssa told Debra. “If I was a boy they’d have sent me away to military school.”
Debra nodded sympathetically. “We need to get away and make a new start. Usually we just go up to the cottage on weekends, but this year we’re planning to spend the whole summer up there. We can put our house up for sale and stay at the cottage until we locate something permanent. Given that it’s winterized, there’s no rush.”
“So far?”
“It would be a long commute for Rick, but doable.”
“When?” Lyssa glanced over at Cathy, who was standing near the stroller. She was close enough to hear the conversation between Lyssa and her mom, though she looked as if she wasn’t paying any attention, staring past them, a bored expression on her face.
“As soon as Cathy’s exams are over,” Debra said.
This was it then. They were running out of time. “Hey, Cathy,” Lyssa said. “I want to pick out something new a
t the clothing boutique. I’m done with this beige look. Totally done. But I don’t know what would look good on me. Come with me and tell me what you think.”
“Can I, Mom?” Cathy asked. She spoke like any kid eager to get out of babysitting for a while. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, the rims red and sore. On the palm of her left hand was a dime-shaped scar, which looked nothing like a stovetop burn, but a lot like the wrong end of a cigarette.
“Don’t be too long,” Debra replied. She smiled pleasantly, like any mom giving in.
As Lyssa pushed her way through the lines of people waiting to get books signed, Bonnie Yoon waved and she waved back. She guided Cathy past the inflatable castle and the cotton candy booth where Dan would soon be getting pink for Emmie and blue for Nina, both bags containing the same spun sugar mixed with dye. She stopped at the table of teddy bears and remained long enough to pay for one in a kilt and put it in the backpack. Then she was off again, past the wooden toys and past the beaded purses, past the metal art and past the mugs and T-shirts, stopping finally at the clothing boutique that was out of sight of the Committee for Youth. There were racks of clothes of mixed styles and sizes. Lyssa stood before them, wondering what to do next.
“Try this. Very nice with your hair,” the Chinese saleswoman said, holding out a jacket. “It fit nice. You have good figure.”
“Me?” Lyssa rolled her eyes at Cathy. “Sure I’ll try it. Why not?” She took the jacket from the saleswoman and shrugged it on.
Laura Anderson was in front of the mirror, trying on a jacket that was the exact shade of her blue pumps, pointy-toed and stiletto heeled, miraculously not sinking into the grass. “I need something longer to cover my hips, but that jacket works for you,” she said.
“What do you think?” Lyssa asked.
Cathy was gazing at her critically. “You look like somebody’s mother,” she said. “Here.” She pulled a jacket off a hanger. Faux leather with a diagonal zipper and a ruffled border at the waist. “Try these.” Faded jeans, back pockets embroidered, low on the hips. “And these.” She picked up some bangles from the table, and eyed the display of earrings.
Lyssa pulled on the jeans over her shorts, then glanced at the mirror. “They fit,” she said, hopping on one foot and leaning on Cathy as she removed the jeans. “I’m trusting you.” She nudged the girl.
“The jacket is pretty on you,” she said shyly, looking down.
“I’ll take these and also,” Lyssa pointed to the display of punky earrings, “those silver ones. No, not that, I want the anchors. These are for you,” she said to Cathy. “And the skulls. Yup, that’s all. No, wait.” It had taken her a moment to realize that Cathy had switched to someone whose voice and face were slightly familiar.
The girl’s hand was hovering over a tray of hair claws, drawn by the coloured crystals. Then she snatched it away as if she wasn’t allowed.
“Can I try that?” Lyssa asked the saleswoman, picking up a hair claw shaped like a butterfly and decorated with white and blue crystals. She bunched the girl’s hair, twisted and clipped it up, revealing the long neck. “It goes with your eyes. Turn around. You can see it if you hold up this mirror.”
The girl smiled tentatively, then shook her head, looking up at Lyssa through her lashes. “It’s too pretty,” she said.
And in those few words, Lyssa understood that here was a flirty girl, one of those dirty girls not allowed shiny things that show the lovely colour of the eyes. “Hey, didn’t you help me pick out this great jacket and the jeans?” Lyssa asked. “If that’s okay for me, then it must be for you since I’ve done everything you could do and more.”
“Daddy likes pink on girls.” The girl glanced up quickly then away, eyes on her feet. She wore silver flip-flops. Her toenails were painted pink. “I heard what you said to Mom about calling social services, but we can’t do that,” she whispered. “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”
Lyssa could say kiss my ass. She knew how to say it in numerous languages. In Turkish it was lick my ass. But instead she said, “I’ve always wanted pretty things. I’m not a stranger. Talk to me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“What do you think about your sister’s baby growing up like her?”
“It’s not so bad.”
“She killed herself. Isn’t that bad enough?”
The girl shook her head, then unclipped the hair claw, letting her hair fall around her face. Sometime when this kid was middle-aged, she might wander into a therapist’s office. God had more patience than Lyssa.
“By the end of next month you’ll be gone. You’ve got till then. That’s your chance. Just think of that,” Lyssa said. And she bought the hair claw.
Pushing through lines and wending her way between displays, Lyssa led the girl back toward the Caring for Your Pet booth, where Ingrid had joined Amy, bringing lunch. It smelled good, roast corn and burgers. Over on the grass, their next-door neighbour Nico Agostino was playing the saxophone, the case open, people throwing in coins. He would soon graduate from high school and his father was opening his wallet to give a donation to the Committee for Youth. Rick turned the receipt book to a fresh page. This was Mayfest; who among them was the snake in the garden?
Debra put her stethoscope in the ears of a little boy, next in the line of kids wanting to tap each other’s knees and hear their own hearts. Heavy clouds covered the sun. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Yup. I nearly bought a jacket that was awful. But this girl saved me. She has a good eye. Thanks,” she said to Cathy but it was her mother who smiled back.
“At the cottage I’ll be able to spend more time with her,” Debra said. “We’ve been in a state of shock and let things go in a way we shouldn’t have. She used to be such a good girl.” At the word good, the girl tilted her head coyly, glancing at her parents from under her lashes. “She was just like Madeline as a baby. Madeline hardly cries at all, even at night. I’ve checked on her in the crib and she’s just lying there with her eyes open.”
Tony Agostino took his receipt and there was a momentary break in the crowd, nobody looking at pamphlets, no one signing up.
Frowning, Rick looked at the sky. “Is that a raindrop?” He lifted his palm. Seagulls were squalling. “We’ve got to load the car in a hurry. Pack these up, Cathy.” Umbrellas were coming out, newspapers held over heads, the guinea pig chirping as a cloth was dropped over its cage.
“See you!” Lyssa called, waving one last time. In the western heaven water and ice collided. Lightning flashed as she went to collect her family.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
By the Friday after Mayfest, warm rain had turned to cold rain as the north wind gathered speed. Lyssa was looking through the closet for something to wear with her new jeans. That shirt might do, she thought, or that one. After trying on each combination, she gazed at herself in the mirror and shook her head. What about the lacy camisole she’d seen underneath the cotton tops in the dresser? Nina and Emmie were asleep, Cathy and Josh in his room, studying for exams, Dan working in the office.
“Can I have some money?” Josh called from the bottom of the staircase.
“Sure,” Lyssa called back. She went to the dressing table, opened the purse that was on it, and took out the wallet as Josh came into the bedroom.
“What do you need money for?” Dan asked, emerging from the office.
“Snacks. There’s nothing to eat,” Josh said. The fridge was full, but he couldn’t study on a cheese sandwich or carrot sticks. “And I want to get a movie for later.” When Dan raised his eyebrows, Josh added, “It’s not a school night.”
“Great. Bring back donuts, too,” Lyssa said, giving Josh some money. “I like the lemon jelly.”
After Josh left, Dan stayed in the bedroom, watching Lyssa with a smile while she dug the camisole out of the dresser drawer and changed into it. She studied herself in the mirror. Possible. Tucked in or out? Definitely out.
; “What do you think?” she asked.
“Nice,” he said.
“I should ask Cathy.” She didn’t have any jewellery to wear with it except for the jade heart. What about makeup—would the guys inside put up with it?
“My opinion not good enough?” he teased.
“It’s a chance to talk to her alone,” she said. “Josh will be a while. He has to go farther for the donuts.”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope.” She started down the stairs.
“Maybe I can help this time,” he said and followed her.
Stopping, she turned her head to look at him dubiously. “I don’t know.”
“I haven’t tried, yet. What if she sees that both of Josh’s parents are willing to believe her?”
“Okay,” she said, and, together they continued down the stairs and along the hallway to Josh’s room.
Cathy was sitting at his desk, a tablet plugged into the computer, moving a stylus on its surface. She lifted the pen and leaned to touch the monitor as she studied the image, so absorbed she didn’t notice her boyfriend’s parents walk in.
Dan swore under his breath when he saw the computer screen. It was one thing to know such things existed, another to see it in colour and in his house. Lyssa thought: Not this, I can’t do it, I need to get out of here.
Cathy turned, pointing the grey e-pen at her. From where she stood, Lyssa could read the URL: www.angelsoftranquility.com. The little angel on the computer screen was blonde. Her hair was in pigtails. Her nose sunburned. She was naked and mounted by a grimacing rider nearly twice her height and four times her weight. Lyssa made herself stay though she wanted to run out the window and into the sky and along the trail of stars as far as she could get. On the inside some folks were moving lils back, others on alert. Thinkers thinking. Protectors protecting.
Cathy—not Cathy, but someone else in the same body, the same white top and pink skirt, hair in a ponytail, scarred palm, turned toward them, blue-grey eyes of a newborn, edgy voice, sardonic smile. The girl who’d drawn Wonder Woman with stained glass hair said, “Sorry,” as she closed the browser. “I gotta go.”
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