by Moon, Dalya
Donny and Toph, who had been relieved by the next kitchen shift, sat on pickle buckets near us with their mouths dropped open.
Ginger wiggled her torso and stamped her feet while squealing.
Toph said, “I am so turned on right now.”
Donny said, “I'm going home to make sweet love to my wife.”
I waved my hand at my face to cool my own cheeks. “Holy cow. That is one dirty story.”
Ginger said, “No it isn't. I didn't say one dirty word, and there was no nudity. It was all implied.”
I said, “But there were hookers, and that weird orgasm illness. So, do you actually have that POIS thing?”
She waved her hand. “Gosh, no. Just with my ex. I think my heart was trying to tell me he was not the one. The body knows.”
Donny and Toph both grabbed their jackets and made a bee-line for the door, leaving us some privacy.
I picked at my fingernails. “I don't want that sad feeling to happen when I have sex for the first time.”
“Then pick the right guy,” she said.
I stared up at the water stains on the ceiling.
She clapped her hands in front of my face. “Quick, which one! Pick!”
“Ginger! I think I just peed a little.”
“Didn't work, huh?”
“No, but thanks for helping me check the absorbency level of my pantyliner.” I stood and checked myself, relieved the moisture was just sweat.
“See you tomorrow,” Ginger said, grabbing her purse and heading home to make love to her sexy husband.
Oh, I'd seen Ginger's husband around The Whistle: handsome face and a cute bum. You better believe I was imagining the guy making love to … well, it doesn't matter to whom.
On the walk home, I imagined flying somewhere exotic, like London, and meeting all the boys from One Direction, then starring in one of their super cute music videos, and getting their cute little British-Irish boy band bodies all over me.
When I got to the house, nobody was there, so I locked my bedroom door and had some private time. I know masturbation's not for everyone, but when you're so good at something, why deny yourself?
Chapter 22
After a little nap, I put a chicken in the oven, expecting my father and Garnet home for Sunday dinner by six. They didn't show.
I figured my father was delayed picking my brother up from my uncle's place in New Westminster, so I portioned everything into sealed containers and stacked them in the fridge. I'd tried making risotto for the first time, and it turned out tasty enough, though I was curious what it might taste like with actual wine in it instead of extra chicken stock and apple juice.
After I got the kitchen business put away, I went to my room and did a video chat with Haylee while we over-analyzed and over-thought every piece of communication or gesture I'd shared with Marc and Cooper.
I told her about my lunch with Sunshine the day before, and we checked out her YouTube channel, playing all her cover songs and discussing how well she'd do as a musician.
Haylee thought Sunshine's eyebrow tattoo was a rip-off of Amanda Palmer, a musician I didn't know much about at the time. I looked her up and found out Amanda draws in both of her eyebrows with makeup, which is different from Sunshine's look.
“It's hard to be original,” I said to the image of Haylee on my laptop screen. “My mother got in at a good time, when female singers weren't all about how much they wanted sex. In the 90s, people were actually upset about stuff Madonna did on stage—stuff that's totally normal now.”
Haylee put her chin on her hands and leaned in to her web cam, making a dreamy face. “Your mom is so crazy good, and she's working on an actual album. My mom spends all day pinning pictures on Pinterest. Pictures of fudge and flower arrangements. That site is like mind control.”
“My dad plays that same game my brother does. Skyrim. Plus he's all over this Star Wars one. He's such a geek.” I turned my head to listen and make sure no one else was in the house. “I think he and my mom might get separated. Don't tell anyone, okay?”
Haylee scratched her head and didn't say anything.
“What's up? Is Andrew doing something funny? Do you need to go?” I asked.
“I know you don't like hearing about the gossip blogs,” she said.
My skin prickled all over.
“Just tell me,” I said.
“Your mom's always getting photographed with guys. But there are these new ones.”
A horrible feeling washed over and into me, like my digestive system was full of ice cubes.
“Show me,” I said.
“It might not even be her,” Haylee said.
“Send me the link or I'll google it. Come on, let's get this over with.”
Seconds later, it was all over my screen.
The prickling on my skin turned to sweat.
When you're a regular, non-famous person, you look at TMZ or whatever when you're bored and your friends aren't doing anything interesting on Facebook. You make fun of Lana Del Ray, or read the articles about Demi Moore checking into rehab, or whatever Courtney Love is tweeting about, but those people are about as real to you as brands of toothpaste. Yes, brands. You don't think of them wrapping Christmas presents for their kids, and you don't think about how those kids feel seeing their parents' faces all over the internet.
When everyone was tweeting about Whitney Houston's death in February, and speculating about whether or not it had been an overdose, Bobbi Kristina Brown was mourning the loss of her mother.
I consider myself lucky, because my mom's fame peaked when I was a baby, too young to know what was happening. I was probably eight years old by the time I figured out other people didn't have Alanis Morrisette come for dinner with her then-boyfriend Ryan Reynolds.
But … enough name-dropping, and back to my gut-wrenching, heart-breaking discovery of what exactly my mother was up to in LA.
First of all, she'd gotten rid of the dreadlocks, and not by combing them out, like I had. Her hair was on the short side, and messy, like she'd hacked them out with whatever sharp thing was handy.
She was with another guy, some non-famous musician you haven't heard of, with tattoos all over his skinny arms. He was like the knock-off, no-name brand of Adam Levine. They were having dinner together in some of the photos, which could be explained away easily enough, but there were blurry shots, taken with a telephoto lens, of them kissing while walking on the sidewalk, right out in public, where anyone could see them.
The worst part was how she looked in all the pictures. Not her face, but her body language. Her body screamed that she was happy.
Someone asked me if I was still breathing, and if I needed her to come over. I'd forgotten Haylee was still there, on the other side of the web cam.
I tilted the lid of my laptop so my side's image was just the top of my forehead, not showing my face. “Color me the last to know,” I said.
“Why don't you come over and hang out with me and Andrew tonight?”
My hands and legs were shaking. “I don't think I can drive.”
“We'll come get you,” she said.
“Okay, I'll pack an overnight bag.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were parked out front, texting me. I left a neutral-sounding note on the kitchen table for my father, telling him about the chicken in the fridge as well as that I'd be at Haylee's.
I couldn't locate my cell phone, so I left home without it.
With my bag on my shoulder, I walked to the front door, past our hallway full of framed family photographs. As I glanced across the row of professionally-shot pictures documenting the four of us every year, each picture took on a new, second meaning.
The image of my mother and father holding hands in front of the fig tree in the back yard became a portrait of unhappiness, two people putting on a good image for the business of raising children.
The Christmas photo of us—from the year I'd had terrible acne and cried all morning before the shoot—was no longer part of a serie
s of holidays counting up, but holidays counting down. It was our third-to-last Christmas together. And last December's photo, which had only been hung on the hallway wall a month earlier, was our final one, our final Christmas.
No more family.
I stepped out, locked the front door and walked to the waiting car, Andrew's beat-up Honda Civic.
Haylee climbed into the back and insisted I take the front.
I'd never been so happy to see Andrew, whose presence was comforting.
“Let's go watch the sun set,” he said.
Andrew drove us west, to Kits beach.
The spring weather was holding, though the air had a chill there, near the ocean. The sun hung heavy in the sky, as cold as the moon.
The three of us sat on a log with Haylee in the middle. In a few months, the beach would be busy, full of people sunbathing and socializing, but that night it was mostly locals, walking their strollers and dogs.
Haylee put her arm around me, and Andrew gave me his jacket when they noticed I was shivering.
“I'm not cold,” I insisted, but I was, and I didn't know if I'd ever be warm again.
Andrew said, “No matter what, your parents still love you.”
“I know. They just don't love each other.”
“My parents split up when I was fifteen,” he said. “Things will get normal again. Not like how they were before, but a new normal.”
I fidgeted with my eyebrow piercing. After seeing the photos of my mother and her new boyfriend online, the piercing, and painting my room blue-green and Garnet's room black didn't seem so dramatic. It was just paint, in a house.
The house.
Who was going to live in the house? My brother and I would stay there, of course, but which parent would remain? If Dad stayed, I'd be stuck cooking dinners every day until … forever. If Mom stayed, she'd look after us, but would she move her new boyfriend in?
As the sun washed down into the sea, I put my head between my knees and threw up in the sand. My chicken and risotto dinner had moved beyond my stomach, so it was just bile and spit, though it tasted of chicken.
Haylee rubbed my back as I dry-heaved.
After a few minutes of silence, I said, “Why'd they even get married? Anyone can see they're not a good match.”
“They seemed happy to me,” Haylee said.
“My father puts up with way too much shit,” I said angrily. “He needs to grow a spine. Oh, man. You guys, I just imagined him trying to date. It's so pathetic.”
“I'm not gonna lie,” Andrew said. “Seeing your father go out on a date is pretty traumatic. Mine gave me a high five the first time he got laid.”
Haylee said, “I didn't know that.”
Andrew pretended to sniff and said, jokingly, “What happens in therapy stays in therapy.”
“You saw a therapist?” I asked.
Andrew confirmed that he had seen someone for nearly two years, once a week. I covered the spit-up between my feet with some loose sand and we moved to the next log over while he told us about his therapist.
She had an office that looked like the exact opposite of what you see in movies or on television, and during the sessions, he'd sat on a La-Z-Boy knock-off chair with wood over the armrests—the type of hand-me-down furniture people leave in alleys.
At his first visit, he'd expected she would declare him totally healthy and not in need of treatment, but he'd broken down and cried for the first time since he was a little boy, and they both agreed he could probably use “a couple of sessions.”
She was always trying to get him to put names on his emotions. She'd ask how he felt about something his mother or father was doing, and he'd simply say “bad.” One day, he finally lucked into the correct word and admitted he'd been scared, and the therapist had been unable to hide her delight at his progress.
From there, they talked about fear, anger, jealousy, anxiety, sadness, and also joy. At their final session together, after he was doing much better at school and sleeping through the night without bad dreams, they'd said goodbye and he'd hugged her.
Every session, he'd wanted her to hug him, and when it finally happened, he felt so good, and he knew he would carry that feeling of absolute love and acceptance with him for the rest of his life.
There was a goodness in other people, and he'd never understood it until that therapist had showed him compassion. Yes, she got paid to do her job, but he knew it had meant something to her, and that he was worth saving.
When Andrew finished talking, the sun had gone down and the sky was cold and blue. Tears were trailing down my cheeks.
Haylee asked me, “How are you feeling?”
“I don't know,” I said.
They helped me stand and we went back to the car.
When we got to Haylee and Andrew's apartment, they both apologized for the mess.
“We're going to do a big cleaning soon, but as you'll notice by the lack of housewarming invitation, we've kinda put that party on hold. We may wait until we're somewhere better, our next move,” Haylee said.
“This isn't bad,” I lied, moving some food-encrusted plates off their cream-colored sofa, which was looking a little grimy around the two indentations where they sat to watch television, play video games, and—apparently—eat dinner.
Haylee sat next to me while Andrew scurried around, tidying up.
“If you guys ever have kids, you'll make good parents,” I said.
Andrew said, “Ew, babies. They pee and poo on everything.”
Haylee explained, “My sister is potty training her little one, and they're making him aware of his bodily functions by keeping him out of a diaper. Or pants. Or anything.”
I hugged my arms around myself. “Does he come over here like that?”
Andrew said, “Hah!”
“Just once,” Haylee said. “But don't worry, we threw out that pillow.”
I did a disgusted shiver from head to toe. It felt good, so I did it again, until I got a laugh from Andrew.
Haylee grabbed the remote control. “How do you feel about gore today? Are you caught up on all the episodes of The Walking Dead? It's getting so good right now. Or, if you aren't into zombies, and frankly, some people just aren't, are you down with torture?”
I grabbed a couch pillow and hugged it to myself. “Let's see what you've got,” I said, and I actually was excited.
For the first time in my life, I was stoked about watching some guts spill out and heads get chopped off. Anything to take my mind off my problems seemed like a great idea.
In the morning, Andrew and Haylee were still sleeping when I crept out the front door to go to work. The night before, Andrew had offered to drive me, but their apartment was near Main Street, so it was easy enough for me to catch the Number Three bus to work.
I was in such a daze, I didn't realize it was Monday until Marc walked in the door, newspaper in hand, open to the crossword puzzle.
“Hey,” he said as I stared at him. “I can go up the street if you're angry with me.”
“As long as you keep your hands off my mother, we're good,” I said, showing him to his regular table.
“Is that a joke? I don't get it.”
His cute glasses were filthy, covered in specks of grime, so I took them off his face. “I'm washing these for you.”
At the sink behind the bar counter, I cleaned the glasses with soap and hot water, then wiped them off with a fresh bar cloth.
Back at Marc's table, I gave the glasses back and he thanked me. “I was blind, but now I see,” he said.
The restaurant wasn't very busy, with only three tables in my section, including Marc, and the other two were under control, so I broke one of the major waitress rules. I ran back to the coffee machine, grabbed two mugs of coffee, then returned to his table and sat in the chair across from Marc.
I said, “Pretend everything's normal.”
“You seem sad,” he said. “Listen, Perry, I think you're really cute ...”
; “Have you seen the pictures and stories about my mother getting it on with some douche in LA?”
He did a double-take and cupped one hand around his ear. “No, why would I? Oh … I remember now, she's that musician. She's Jade. You look a bit like her.”
One of my tables whistled for service. After I gave my coworker Ginger a feeble look, she took over for me, bringing them water and whatever else they needed. I didn't care. I wanted to go home, but also not go home, since I didn't have a home, in the sense of a loving set of parents.
I explained what had happened—what little of it I knew at the time, considering I'd left my cell phone at home—and Marc listened, fidgeting with the utensils in front of him.
When I was done, he said, “If they aren't happy, splitting is for the best.”
“Everybody says that, but is it really true?”
He frowned at his coffee mug like it held a thousand secrets. “Take it from someone whose parents hate each other, but are still stubbornly married.”
“That's horrible.”
“My grandparents hate each other too, at least the ones who are still around. I come from a long line of unhappy marriages.”
“You'd better not get married,” I said.
He squinted at the window as a tall dude with a black mohawk walked by. “I'd like to think we make our own destinies, but Cooper's always talking about that evolutionary psychology stuff. We may be completely helpless, prisoners of our biology.”
I smiled, remembering the conversation with Cooper, with him pointing out my pleasing hip-to-waist ratio.
“Today's a new day,” I said, feeling a little sunnier.
The music on the stereo stopped, between songs, and I heard a grumbling noise—Marc's stomach. “Should we order?” he asked. “Whatever they're cooking on the grill smells great.”
And then, it happened. He made a very small gesture that was almost lost on me at the moment, but that I think about almost every day now, whenever I see a newspaper. He glanced over at his crossword puzzle, sitting on the table to his right.
He hadn't come by to see me at all. It was Monday, and he'd come in to have his same old breakfast—brown toast, crispy bacon, and poached eggs—and he wanted to quietly work on his crossword puzzle.