Encore Edie

by Annabel Lyon

  “I thought about what you said,” Mom said. “I thought, instead of watching other people decorate, we could do some decorating ourselves.”

  “Who is this ‘we’ all of a sudden?” I asked.

  “Well, Dad and I just repainted our bedroom last year. And Dexter’s room is—”

  “—perfect,” said Dexter, who happened to be passing through the kitchen that moment on her way to the bathroom.

  “—still relatively fresh,” Mom said carefully.

  “What’s not fresh?” I demanded. I loved my room, with its sloped ceiling and warm yellow walls, and my shelves of old books and toys I’d outgrown but wasn’t ready not to see every day of my life. It was true the paint was getting a little picky here and there, and the curtain was torn, and the carpet was stained in some places and threadbare in others, and I had books piled on the floor now that the shelves were full of everything I had ever owned since I was a toddler, practically. But I knew where everything was, and nobody else had to live there, so why was it anybody’s business but my own?

  “She means your room smells,” Dexter called from the bathroom.

  “Does not,” I called back, thinking, It does? I fingered idly through the paint chips, sorting them into piles with one finger. No, no, no, actually, actually no, hey!

  “Just think about it,” Mom said.

  I pushed a chip over to Mom.

  “Really?” Mom said.

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  We got it done in a weekend, just like on the TV shows. We even took the carpet up so Mom could put down laminate. “I’ve always wanted to do this!” she said, puzzling together the strips of wood, or wood-like substance, or whatever laminate is. The result looked like a dance floor. Mom persuaded me to box up most of my old toys and books and store them in the other half of the attic, where I could get them whenever I needed them, Mom promised. Surprisingly, I haven’t needed any of them so far. We scrubbed and sanded and painted and put up nifty wooden blinds instead of curtains.

  Now I slap the CD into my stereo and slap on the earphones and flop on my bed and stare at the ceiling, listening.

  After a while, Dad comes upstairs. I know it’s Dad because his step on the creaky attic stairs is the slowest and heaviest. He knocks.

  “Yeah,” I call, which isn’t very nice and I know it.

  In comes Dad, stooping a little under the low doorway and then standing up straight once he’s in. Then he pretends to stagger, brushing his hand across his eyes. “What’s happening?” he says. “Everything’s gone dark. My life is flashing before my eyes! Help!” This is his joke every time.

  “Quit it,” I say. I painted the room dark purple, and Mom and I went down to Little India on Main Street and bought an entire bolt of flame orange sari fabric that we swagged from ceiling corner to ceiling corner. Even Dexter was impressed, and her room is pink.

  He sits on the end of my bed, which is still covered by my bunny quilt. Mom says we can afford to replace the quilt cover in a few months or so, which is secretly a relief. I know it kind of mutes the dramatic effect, but I’m not quite ready to give up every last trace of my childhood.

  “Dex thought he was going to phone her,” Dad says. “When he asked for our phone number.”

  Interesting that it’s Dad having this conversation with me, and not Mom. “Interesting that you think I care,” is what comes out of my mouth.

  “No,” Dad says, and I know the joking is over. “That’s not nice. And you were very rude on the phone. It takes a lot of courage for a boy to call up a girl like that. Girls have it easier that way.”

  “Please. Boys call girls, girls call boys, boys call boys, girls call girls. It’s all the same now, in the nineteenth—I’m sorry, the twentieth—I’m sorry, the twenty-first century. When were you born, again?”

  Dad looks surprised. “I need to watch more of that music channel,” he says.

  “For instance,” I say, “if Dexter wants to go out with Robert so badly, I don’t know why she doesn’t just phone him up and ask him. I don’t know what’s stopping her. Not me, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t think your sister is used to doing that,” Dad says.

  I consider this. It’s probably true. Dexter has blond hair and blue eyes and takes Advanced Ballet and wins competitions and gets straight As (well, so do I), and is used to boys coming to her. Like bees to honey, Dad said once, but they’re more like mosquitoes for my perfect princess sister to swat. I think of Robert’s thin little voice on the phone, and his mom’s faint drone in the background, encouraging him. How do you catch a mosquito, other than swatting it?

  “This is a stressful time for you,” Dad says. He starts playing This Little Piggy with my toes, wiggling them between his fingers one after the other, without really seeming to notice it. “You’re getting so big and grown-up, and going to a scary new school, and now boys. Then your body’s going to change, and your skin will start to break out—”

  “Stop it!”

  Dad seems to snap out of his reverie. “Well, I guess your mom has talked to you about most of this stuff. I guess I’m just trying to say your mom and I know you’re stressed out, and we’ll help you however we can, but if you could try to be a little nicer to everybody, that would help too.”

  “I am perfectly nice,” I say.

  “Dexter went through a phase like this,” Dad says, off dreaming again. “You guys are so similar. All awkward and rude all the time. We were at our wits’ end.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Okay,” Dad says, and when I won’t look at him, mortified by the comparison, he gets up to leave.

  “Wait,” I call just as he’s closing the door behind him. He sticks his head back in. “I really like the CD.”

  He looks happy then, and blows me a kiss, and goes downstairs. I sigh and lie back down. It’s almost too easy. Sometimes, being nice just makes me feel alone.

  High school, day one, Tuesday:

  “Look,” Sam hisses. “There. There! Don’t look! God!”

  “You said look!” I hiss back.

  “You are totally embarrassing me!” Sam hisses.

  We’re standing in the hallway between periods, watching all the newness: new people, new clothes, new behaviours, new hairstyles, new expressions, new everything. Sam is my best friend. I’m wearing my yoga top and new jeans. Sam is wearing a skirt and sweater. I’ve never seen Sam in a skirt in my life. It’s taken us this long, three periods, just to find each other in the flood.

  “What am I looking at, anyway?” I whisper.

  “Katie wearing makeup,” she whispers back. “Bye-bye, Elmo.” Katie was in our class last year. Her favourite T-shirt had the front of Elmo on the front and the back of Elmo on the back.

  I say, “Bye-bye, Elmo.”

  “My mom won’t let me,” Sam says.

  “Won’t let you what?”

  “Makeup.”

  “Why would you want to?” I say. “To cover those disfiguring facial scars? Oops. You don’t actually have any.”

  “Grow up,” Sam says.

  High school, day two, Wednesday:

  “Yes?” Mr. Harris, the drama teacher, says.

  I put my hand down. “Please may I go to the washroom?” I say.

  “No,” Mr. Harris says.

  Everyone looks at me, and then at him, and then at me again. I’m taken aback. No one ever said no in middle school when you had to go to the washroom. “Excuse me?” I say politely.

  “No,” he says.

  I’m now regretting taking drama. Dexter told me band was for losers, and my brief experience with piano lessons persuaded me music wasn’t for me. And Shakespeare is drama, which sealed the deal. But now here’s this bearded guy not even looking up from his book to deny me my bodily functions. Is he kidding? Is this some kind of drama test? I didn’t know what drama was going to involve, but on this first day, anyway, it involves us sitting quietly and writing a list of our favourite fictional characters while t
he teacher reads.

  “I don’t need long,” I say. “It’s only number one.”

  The class starts to laugh. Mr. Harris looks up, finally, and he’s laughing too. “Oh, well, in that case,” he says.

  Whatever. I don’t realize the extent of the problem until I get back and someone says, “Hey, Number One. Where’s your list?” And I have to walk up to the front of the room to put my list on top of the pile Mr. Harris collected from the rest of the class while I was out of the room. “Number One, Number One!” people are whispering all around me.

  High school, day three, Thursday:

  “Wasn’t that girl like wearing that same top like yesterday?” a girl in my math class says. “And like the day before?”

  “Ew,” the other girl says.

  It takes me to the end of class to realize they mean me.

  High school, day four, Friday:

  “Edie?”

  “Go away,” I mumble.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Lost my pen,” I mumble. I have my head stuck in my locker. I’ve had my head stuck in my locker for the last ten minutes so no one will see I don’t have anyone to talk to or sit with at lunch. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out where to take my sandwich. A bathroom stall sounds about right, except that’s what got me into trouble in the first place. Now everyone in my drama class calls me Number One and Sam is too mortified to be seen with me. How do I do these things to myself?

  “Are you stuck?”

  Oh, for god’s sake. “Oh, for god’s sake,” I say, pulling my head out. I’m staring at three strangers, older girls. Two and a half strangers. The half is my sister’s best friend, Mean Megan. I didn’t recognize her right away because she’s gone from having the longest long black hair I’ve ever seen to the shortest short black hair I’ve ever seen. She still looks pretty, only older.

  “This is Ruby and this is Bridget,” Mean Megan says to me. To them she says, “This is Edie, Dexter’s sister. Are you going down to the cafeteria for lunch? Do you want to sit with us?”

  I say, “What?”

  “You know, sit with us,” Mean Megan says.

  “Why?” I say. Mean Megan and I have a history, not all good.

  “Because you look pathetic with your head sticking in your locker,” Mean Megan says. “Come on.”

  In the cafeteria, I act the way you’re supposed to around strange dogs: don’t show fear but don’t make eye contact, no abrupt moves, hands to yourself. Megan and her friends head straight for a table in the middle of the chaos, where spaces for us magically appear. They are popular girls. Dexter is already there. When she sees me, she hesitates for a minute then slides over. I fit myself in next to her. I’ve never been so grateful to be near her in my life. I eat my sandwich in silence, listening to them talk about their classes and somebody’s party and some band I’ve never heard of that they all love. At the end of the hour Dexter says, “You know you can’t sit with us again.”

  The older girls are all nodding, sympathetically but as though to say, It’s out of our hands.

  “This was just for today,” Mean Megan says. “To help you out a bit. After what happened the other day in your class.”

  I blush. They heard about that? Other classes heard about that? Other grades heard about that? The whole school?

  “Oh, yes,” they all say, reading my face, nodding seriously.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Dex says quietly. “You just need to figure out where you fit in. Join a club or something, make some friends.”

  “It’s hard for everybody to start with,” the one named Ruby says to me. “It’ll get better, you’ll see.”

  “It can’t get worse,” I say.

  “What do you mean, I have to share a bedroom with her?” I ask Mom.

  “You don’t have to,” Mom says. “But she would like it very much. Ellie phoned last night and said it’s all she talks about, a sleepover with her favourite cousin.” Ellie and Merry are in Calgary. They’ve been driving a U-Haul across the country and arrive tomorrow afternoon.

  “Why can’t Dexter be her favourite cousin?” I say. Sleepovers are giggly and I don’t feel like getting giggly, even with Merry. I don’t feel like cheering up.

  “She can sleep in my room,” Dexter says. “I don’t mind.”

  “Thank you, Dexter,” Mom says. “That’s very considerate. We’ll explain it to Merry somehow.”

  I mumble something.

  “What was that?” Mom says sweetly.

  I mumble it again.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” Mom says. “I knew you’d understand.”

  “They’re here!” Dexter shouts. “Edie!”

  “I’m on the toilet,” I shout back. Which is sort of true. I’m sitting on the closed toilet seat, reading one of the newspapers Dad is always leaving in the bathroom. The bathroom is the one room in the house where I can lock the door. I have to turn the pages very, very quietly so no one will hear the crinkle and guess that I’m hiding.

  “Edie!” Mom says, rapping at the door as she hustles down the hallway. Her voice is excited.

  “Edie!” Dad calls from somewhere else in the house.

  I ignore them all. In this way I miss the first few moments of the big arrival, everybody standing around in the driveway hugging seventeen thousand times, telling each other how tall/old/skinny they look, Mom probably crying a little and then Dad and Dexter hugging her too and then everybody hugging everybody and saying Group Hug! I can see it all in my mind’s eye, and right now I don’t need it.

  I hear them move into the house and settle in the living room. There’s a voice in the mix I don’t recognize, a man’s voice, deeper than Dad’s. He says something and they all explode laughing. I try to pick out Merry’s voice, but she’s lost in the general noise. The strange man says something else and they all laugh again. I can’t stand it anymore. I stuff the newspaper in the inch of space between the toilet tank and the counter, flush, and open the door.

  “Here’s Edie!” Mom says.

  Before I even have time to see everyone in the room, I’m knocked off my feet. You think I’m kidding? You think this is a figure of speech? I am down on the floor, arms and legs all tangled up, barrelled over by someone determined to give me a bear hug. Someone.

  “Edie!” Merry says.

  We untangle and get up. Then we have to hug all over again. I kiss her on the cheek and she kisses me. I tap her nose with my finger and make a beep sound, because it made her laugh the summer we all went camping. She beams. “You tall!” she says.

  “She’s a string bean!” the strange man says. Everyone laughs. He’s sitting on the couch with Auntie Ellie, holding her hand. He wears skate shoes and jeans and a T-shirt that says Friendly Punk. He has curly hair and glasses and looks as if he might go to university.

  I say, “Excuse me?”

  “String Bean!” Merry says, clapping and laughing.

  Aunt Ellie is up by now and coming to give me more hugs and kisses. “You’re so tall!” she says. “So skinny! So grown-up!”

  See? “Thanks,” I say, because what else can I do?

  “This is Daniel,” Aunt Ellie says. The strange man jumps up and holds out his hand, so now on top of the hugging and kissing I have to shake hands. He whaps my arm up and down about thirty times, grinning as if this is the happiest day of his life.

  “This my Edie,” Merry tells him. That’s what it sounds like, anyway; she doesn’t always speak too clearly. He hugs her and she closes her eyes, she’s that happy with him and me and everyone in the world.

  “That was unexpected,” Mom says later, while Dexter and I are in the kitchen helping with supper. Aunt Ellie and Merry are downstairs taking showers after their long drive, and Dad is in the den having a drink with Daniel. It turns out he’s Aunt Ellie’s new boyfriend.

  “He seems nice,” Dexter says.

  “He smiles a lot,” I say. “Did they meet on the internet?”

&nb
sp; Mom and Dexter stare at me.

  “What?” I say. I’m embarrassed, suddenly, to have shown any familiarity with the mechanics of romance. “Aunt Ellie lives in Montreal, he lives in Vancouver. How else would they meet? I’m just being logical!”

  “I think they met at Merry’s school,” Mom says. “Daniel is a special ed teacher. He was applying for a job, and Ellie was a parent adviser to the hiring committee. Then they decided to close the school, and he came to B.C. to finish his doctorate in child psychology, but he and Ellie kept in touch. I wonder if he’s the reason—”

  A big laugh, Aunt Ellie’s laugh. She and Merry are standing in the kitchen doorway with their arms around each other’s waists, hair identically damp at the roots and frizzy at the tips. They’ve both changed clothes and are wearing matching T-shirts from the Calgary Zoo.

  “Of course he’s the reason!” Aunt Ellie says. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  For some reason, Mom and Aunt Ellie and Dexter all start to laugh.

  “Laugh, Edie,” Merry says.

  “We did email each other a lot,” Aunt Ellie says to me, and when I realize why she’s telling me this, it must show in my face, because they all start to laugh again, this time at me.

  “Edie, why don’t you take Merry upstairs and show her your room?” Mom says finally. “I put the air mattress and some extra bedding up there. You could get everything set up for tonight.”

  I give her a grateful look. I’m happy to have an excuse to leave the kitchen and try to leave my embarrassment behind me like a snakeskin. “Come on,” I tell Merry.

  She follows me up the steep attic stairs.

  “Remember the last time we had a sleepover?” I say. “Camping? When we shared the tent?”