Hummingbird Heart

by Robin Stevenson

  “I agree, Dylan. You do. But keep in mind, your mother was only sixteen when she found out she was pregnant. Her mom had died not that long before, and she was pretty wrecked over that. Well, you can imagine.” Mark rubbed the lines on his forehead. “Her dad was no help. He cared more about getting drunk than he did about anything else. I don’t know if Mandy even told him she was pregnant. They’d barely spoken since she moved out.”

  “She moved out? Left home, you mean? When was that?” I’d known her dad drank, and that they hadn’t spoken in years, but it was driving me crazy that Mark seemed to know more of the story than I did.

  He shook his head. “Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of things between you and your mother. You should talk to her about this. Let her explain how it was.”

  “But she won’t. She doesn’t like talking about it.” My eyes stung with tears of anger. “I don’t understand why she never told you about me.”

  “Nor do I, not really. Maybe there isn’t a logical reason, Dylan. When I got in touch with Amanda—the first time, two years ago, I mean—she tried to explain. She said she just panicked and took off. Running away from all kinds of stuff, not just me.” He shook his head. “Sixteen. Same age as you. God, it’s crazy, really. The whole thing. I feel pretty sick when I think about it.”

  The waiter arrived with pots of tea and milk and sugar, and we all took a minute to pour and stir. Toni leaned forward. “So how did you find out about Dylan?”

  Mark sipped his tea and winced. “Hot.” He rubbed his chin, which was faintly blue with stubble, and looked at me. “A couple of years ago, Lisa ran into an old friend—a guy called Paul, someone who had known Amanda and me and Sheri back when we were teenagers. He was a bit of a troubled guy back in those days—still is, probably. Anyway, he’d stayed in touch with Sheri and he told Lisa about Sheri’s accident. He’d been to the funeral the year before, was all choked up talking about it.”

  I nodded. “Okay. But…”

  “He told her that Sheri had a kid, a little girl, and that the kid had gone out west to live with Amanda and her daughter, who was about fourteen.” Mark shook his head. “Lisa told me and I did the math. I didn’t know for sure, of course, but I figured you could be… you might be…”

  “This was two years ago?”

  “Uh-huh. I looked online—Amanda Jarvis—and found her business, Urban Cleaners.”

  “Urban Organics,” I corrected.

  “Yeah. And I called her and asked about you.”

  “Two years ago.” Right after Karma came to live with us. And Mom had said nothing to me. Not a word. “What did she say?”

  He sipped his tea again, and when he put it back on the saucer, it clattered, and I noticed his hand was shaking slightly. “She said that yes, I was your father—though she didn’t use that word. I think she said that yes, I got her pregnant, as if it was entirely my fault. She said her dad had given her some money to get rid of her—some life insurance policy from her mom’s death, I think—and she’d gone out west to get a fresh start. She said she wanted me to stay away.” He looked at me steadily. “And I agreed. Did I do the wrong thing, Dylan? Maybe I should have pushed harder, but I didn’t want to interfere in your lives after all that time.”

  “Until Casey got sick.”

  I could see his Adam’s apple jump as he swallowed. “I’m sorry.” He looked at Toni for a moment and then back to me. “And I know I’m beyond preoccupied with her at the moment. Her illness has pretty much taken over our lives. But I’m glad you know that it wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t around. That I wasn’t just an asshole, or, as your friend put it, a deadbeat.”

  I nodded. “I’m glad too.”

  “And…” He cleared his throat. “At some point, when things are more…when my life is a bit less…when Casey is better…” His voice cracked. “I really would like to get to know you, Dylan, if it isn’t too late for that.”

  My eyes were stinging. I stared down at my tea. “Maybe,” I said. “Yeah, maybe.” Under the table, I felt Toni’s hand squeeze my knee. “I think I better go,” I said. I didn’t want to start crying in front of him, and if I stayed here any longer, it’d happen for sure.

  Toni scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Mark. “Dylan’s cell,” she said. “You should call her.”

  I stood up. “Do me a favor?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t call Mom and tell her I was here.”

  “Fair enough.” He stood, and for a second I thought he might try to hug me, but then he took a step away and held out his hand. I shook it, not meeting his eyes. He had long fingers, like me, the little one slightly crooked. As Toni and I walked across the restaurant, I could feel his eyes on our backs, watching us leave.

  eIGHTeen

  Mom was in bed when I got home. I tiptoed past her room, freezing mid-stride as her light flicked on. Crap.

  “Dylan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine. I’m going to bed.”

  “Come in here for a minute.”

  Reluctantly, I slipped through her half-open door. “What is it?”

  She patted her bed. “Just wanted to talk to you.”

  I stepped closer but didn’t sit down.

  Mom was sitting up in bed, the covers pulled up to her waist. She was bare shouldered, wearing a faded green tank top, and her bird and lizard tattoos were splashes of bright color against the white sheets. “Dylan, what’s wrong? Can’t we talk about it?”

  “Nothing to talk about.” It sounded sharper and ruder than I’d meant it to.

  “Are you nervous about your appointment? It’s just a quick blood test.”

  Thanks for reminding me. “Not really. Just, you know.”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I mean, no one is going to pressure you into…”

  I snorted. “Right. Casey might die, but hey, no pressure.”

  “Dylan.” She patted the bed again. “Come sit down.”

  I perched on the edge of the bed.

  “I know Mark showing up like this has been difficult—”

  I interrupted her. “Actually, finding out that you’ve been lying to me my whole life has been difficult.”

  After a long pause, she said, “I want you to do what is right for you.”

  “As long as it means helping Casey?”

  Mom reached out and touched my hair, brushing it away from my face. I didn’t say anything. My throat was aching, and if I tried to talk, I was going to start bawling like a little kid.

  “It’ll all be okay,” she said. “I promise.”

  “You can’t promise that.” I pulled away. “You can’t just make everything be okay. It doesn’t work like that.”

  She sighed and didn’t answer for a minute. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded funny. “I know. I just wish it did.”

  There was an empty wineglass on her bedside table. Drinking again. I looked at her more closely. Her eyes were puffy and pink-rimmed and her nose was shiny. “Mom? Have you been crying?”

  “Scott and I sort of broke up. I’m taking a break from seeing him.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t ever wanted her to be with him, so why did I have this heart-sinking achy feeling? “Are you… I mean, was that what you wanted?”

  This time she took even longer to answer. “I don’t think I really know what I want.”

  I felt the ground shift beneath me. A flicker of sympathy—after all, I didn’t know what I wanted either— and then a flood of anger. Why couldn’t she just get it together and be reliable for once? With everything else that was going on, shouldn’t I at least be able to count on my mother to be sane and solid and predictable?

  “You’re almost,” I said. The words were stiff and bitter in my mouth. “Isn’t it about time you figured that out?”

  She flinched. “Dylan.”

  I didn’t wait to hear what she was going to say. I could hear
her saying my name a second time, but I just walked down the hall and went to bed.

  The next morning, Mom was all fake-cheerful, as if she had made a decision to put last night’s conversation behind her. Tomorrow is a new day, she always said. I thought it was the stupidest saying ever. Everything that had happened in the past just followed you into the future. One day followed another, and there was nothing really new about any of them.

  “Have some breakfast.” Mom was still wearing her green tank top and boxer shorts, and her hair was all messed up from being slept on.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  Her pseudo-smile started to slip. “Fine. I’ll have to drop you off at school right after the appointment though. I’m meeting Julia.”

  “Fine.”

  “Karma, Dylan and I need to leave before you this morning, so make sure you lock up. Okay?”

  Karma didn’t answer, and I turned to look at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she was poking at her cereal with the tip of her spoon.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

  She shrugged and kept poking.

  “Karma is a little upset that Scott and I…that we’re not together right now.” Mom’s voice was tight.

  Karma stood up. She looked at Mom, and without a word she dropped her spoon into her bowl. Milk splashed all over the table and dripped onto the floor.

  “Karma!” Mom stood up too and raised her voice. “What the hell is wrong with you? You think I need this right now?”

  Karma slammed out of the room.

  “Well.” Mom stood there uncertainly for a moment before slowly lowering herself back into her seat. “Goddamn it.” She glared at me. “You’re awfully quiet this morning. I hope you aren’t going to be difficult too, because I don’t have the energy for that right now.”

  “I’m always quiet in the morning.” I sat down at the table and dragged a finger through Karma’s milk puddles, tracing a pattern of lines on the smooth surface. Poor kid. She just wanted things to stay the same, and they never did. For a moment I wondered if I should go and talk to her, but Karma was like me—she’d rather be left alone when she was upset. Anyway, there was nothing I could say that would help.

  Mom sighed. “Are you worried about the appointment?”

  I wiped my milky finger on my jeans. “No. What happens next, after this?”

  “They’ll run tests on the blood to see if you could be a potential donor for Casey. The results will go to Casey’s doctor back in Ontario, and he’ll let Mark and Lisa know.”

  So they’d know before I would. “And they’ll call us?”

  “That’s right. In a couple of weeks.” She hesitated. “Dylan…Don’t get your hopes up about being able to help.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It isn’t likely you’ll be a match. When I spoke with Casey’s doctor in Ontario about getting you tested, she said that even a full sibling has less than a thirty-percent chance of being a match. They don’t usually even test half siblings.”

  “They don’t? So why…?”

  She lifted one bare shoulder and let it drop again. “Because Mark was desperate. Casey doesn’t have any full siblings, which would be her best chance of a donor, and so far none of the people on the bone marrow donor registry has been a good match for her.”

  “But they wouldn’t test me if there was no chance I’d be a match.”

  Mom eyed me closely. “Just don’t get your heart set on this. Apparently Casey’s doctor isn’t hopeful.”

  That felt all wrong. “Isn’t it her job to be hopeful? She can’t just give up on Casey.”

  “It’s her job to be realistic.”

  I swallowed. It sounded like I was in the same no-hope category as Casey’s quack doctor in Vancouver. “So it’s… a long shot.”

  “Yes. A very long shot.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. Her elbow was sitting right in the middle of all that spilt milk.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You are helping, you know. Whatever happens.” Mom’s eyes were suddenly full of tears. “If Casey doesn’t make it, Mark has to know he’s done everything he could possibly do.”

  I pulled my hand away. It made me furious, her acting as if she was concerned for Mark’s feelings after what she had done to him.

  She stood up, turned away from me, dried her hands on a dish towel without bothering to wash them first. “Get your coat on. We have to go.”

  nIneTeen

  The appointment wasn’t even at a doctor’s office—just a hospital lab. We sat in the waiting room for a while: plastic chairs lining the walls, people sitting around avoiding eye contact by reading magazines or staring at their hands folded in their laps. Mostly older people, although one young woman was there with a baby sleeping on her lap. Mom read a magazine, and I pretended to do the same.

  Finally someone called my name and I stood up. Mom looked at me, and I shook my head to tell her I didn’t need her to come with me. I followed a slim, longhaired woman into a small room and sat down in the single chair.

  “Any trouble with needles?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I passed out once after giving blood at school, but I think it was just because I just hadn’t eaten that day.” Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten today either. I decided not to mention that.

  She took my hand, palm up, stretched my arm out and tapped two fingers against the inside of my elbow. “Nice veins.”

  I looked down at the tracing of fine blue lines under my skin. “Uh, thanks, I guess.”

  “Just a quick pinch.” The needle slid into my vein, and my blood, surprisingly dark, streamed into the vial. Her hand was steady and competent, matter-of-fact, and there were a scattering of tiny brown moles on her forearm. I wondered what her name was. Maybe she’d told me and I hadn’t been listening.

  “There. All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She stuck a cotton ball to my arm with a piece of tape.

  I shook my head. “No.” I stood up. Nothing tilted or slid away like it had that time at school, and I guessed I wasn’t going to pass out. I felt slightly disappointed. Not that I exactly wanted to pass out—it’d be embarrassing, and Mom would freak out—but it felt odd to just go to school after this. It felt odd that I had to go on like everything was normal while we waited to find out if my bone marrow was any good.

  Mom drove me to school, chattering nonstop the whole way. I shifted in my seat and loosened the seat belt where it was tugging across my shoulder.

  “This weekend, hon? You remember? Me and Julia are going to that concert in Seattle?”

  “Is that this weekend?”

  She nodded. “We thought we’d catch a ferry Friday evening, go clubbing in Vancouver, and drive down to Seattle for the concert on Saturday. I need you to keep an eye on Karma.”

  “So you’ll be gone for two nights? You’ll be home Sunday?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, Pickle. I feel kind of bad leaving right now, with everything that’s going on. It’s just that this concert is going to be so awesome. And we’ve had this planned for ages. They’re Julia’s absolute all-time-favorite band, you know?”

  Through the layers of my jacket and sweatshirt I could feel the cotton-ball bump at the crook of my elbow. “Yeah. Well, we won’t have heard anything by then anyway.”

  “No.” Mom turned into the school parking lot and glanced at me. “You sure you don’t want to meet Casey while they’re here?”

  I wanted to see Mark again, but I wanted it to be his idea. I wasn’t going to be the one to ask. And as for Casey…“I’m sure.”

  Mom sat there for a moment, just looking at me.

  “I gotta go.” I opened my door, nodded goodbye to Mom and walked quickly into the school, breathing in the cold damp air.

  Toni was standing by her locker. She had hung a small mirror on the inside of her locker door and she was looking at her reflection, pulling on her bangs and frowning.

  “Hey, Toni. Your
hair looks fine.”

  She made a face. “I wish it was straight like yours. Look at this.” She pointed. “It keeps curling up. Flipping up. It looks stupid.”

  “It looks fine. Really.” I wished all I had to worry about was my hair. “Want to hang out at lunch?”

  “Um, maybe. I’m not sure what Finn is doing.”

  Finn, Toni and I all had third-period lunch. Jax had fourth. I didn’t know if he’d want to spend lunch hours with me anyway, but I was glad it was a non-issue. “Well, let me know,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

  “Got any plans for the weekend?”

  I shook my head. “Mom’s going to Seattle, so I guess I can do what I want.”

  Toni’s eyes widened. “Have a party.”

  “Not a chance. Karma would tell Mom. Anyway, the downstairs neighbors complain if we make too much noise.”

  “So just have a few people over. Like me.” She grinned.

  It turned out that Finn had a lunch-hour meeting for some project, so Toni was free to hang out. Part of me wanted to tell her that I’d made other plans, but I swallowed my resentment. I wanted to talk to her, and besides, she probably wouldn’t believe me.

  The morning clouds had cleared, and the dampness had blown from the air. A blue-sky day, as cold and clear and sharp as glass. We walked down the sidewalk. Toni kicked at a carefully raked pile of leaves on the edge of the road, scattering them wildly, and I tried not to worry that someone would see and yell at us for messing up all their work.

  “Toni? Can I ask you something personal?”

  “Sure.”

  I looked down at the sidewalk and slowed my steps. I couldn’t think what words to use. Toni waited patiently, matching her steps to mine. Finally I just blurted it out. “Do you think it’s weird that I don’t know if I really want to go out with Jax?”

  She looked startled. “Course not.”

  “It’s…I feel like he expects me to, you know, have sex with him. Like if I go out with him, it’ll just happen, sooner or later.”

  “Do you want to?”