Hummingbird Heart

by Robin Stevenson

  “Yeah?”

  “Has it always been…has Mark always had money? And you not had money?”

  She looked startled. “That’s a weird question.”

  I shrugged defensively. “I just wondered.”

  “No.” She cleared her throat. “My parents were reasonably well off, actually. I assume Dad still is. Though he might have drunk his way through it by now. Asshole.”

  She was one to talk. It drove me crazy how there was always money for beer and wine, even when the phone bill was unpaid and we couldn’t put gas in the car. “What about his family? Mark’s, I mean?”

  “Oh, they had money. He wouldn’t take money from them though, not back in those days.” She laughed, like something had just occurred to her. “He used to pocket extra packets of ketchup at fast-food places, mix them with hot water and call it soup. It was like he was proud of being so stubborn.”

  “Why was he? I mean, why wouldn’t he take their money?”

  “Pride, I guess. He didn’t get along with his father.” She shook her head. “I guess he must have got over it though, if his parents put him through law school.”

  “Did they?”

  “Oh, I assume so. That’s what they always wanted him to do. They were both lawyers.”

  “They’re my grandparents, you know.” It was a strange thought. I’d never met any of my grandparents.

  Mom snorted. “I don’t imagine they’d be too happy to hear it.”

  I curled my fingers inside my palms and clenched my fists tightly. If I saved Casey’s life, they might be.

  THIrTY

  In the pediatric ward, Mom and I walked down the hallway, and I did my best not to be too obvious about my curiosity. A teenage boy, tall and skinny, walked by us holding on to an IV pole. By the nurses’ station, a uniformed woman handed a crying baby back to a tired-looking mother. I peeked into a few rooms as we passed them, but blue sheets hung around the beds, hiding the occupants.

  “Right here, I think,” Mom said. “Room twenty-one.” She hung back and let me go in ahead of her.

  I slipped through the open door. Mark wasn’t there, but Lisa was sitting in a chair and Casey was lying in the bed, propped up on a pile of pillows. She didn’t have a hat on, and the combination of her baldness and the narrow, tight-sheeted hospital bed made her look both younger and sicker than when I saw her before. In the loose hospital pajamas, her bare arms stuck out like sticks, and I realized how skinny she was despite her round cheeks.

  “Hey, Casey.”

  She held up a pink book. “Look what Mom brought me.”

  “Cool. Have you read it?” Or maybe four-year-olds couldn’t read? I stepped closer so she could show me the pictures.

  Casey flipped pages. “It’s stickers. There’s all the princesses in here.”

  “Oh…all the princesses?”

  “Disney princesses, she means,” Lisa said. “You know, Cinderella and Ariel the Mermaid and Beauty…” She trailed off, shrugging. “Anyway. Mark just went to get coffee for us both, but he’ll be back. He wants to talk to you.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to him. I turned to look at Mom, who was still standing in the doorway, shifting from one foot to another. She and Lisa seemed to be ignoring each other, both waiting for Mark to come back before starting a conversation.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and bent my head to look at Casey’s book again. “So. Who’s your favorite princess?”

  “Oh good. You made it.” Mark walked in a few minutes later, a paper cup of coffee in each hand. “Sorry, Amanda. I guess I should have got three.”

  Mom brushed the words away. “How’s everything going?”

  I looked up at him and my breath caught in my throat.

  Mark smiled. “So far today we’ve got good news, and more good news. Which do you want to hear first?”

  I didn’t think I’d really seen him smile before.

  “Casey’s still in remission,” he said. “The doctors think she just had a virus.”

  Lisa nodded, looking at me. “Her neutrophils and platelets are coming back up.”

  Casey handed me a sticker of the Beast. “You can have this one if you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  She nodded matter-of-factly. “I don’t like him. He’s ugly.”

  I guessed she’d missed the message of that particular fairy tale. “Thanks. Um, Casey? I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” My voice wobbled a little. I really didn’t want to start crying in front of everyone. I took the sticker from her and put it in my pocket. My fingers bumped up against something smooth and cool. The silver cat. “Here.” I handed it to her. “I found this. Thought you might like it.”

  Casey’s face lit up. “A kitty? For my house?”

  “I thought maybe we could make a little cushion for her to sleep on.”

  She balanced it on her knees. “He can sleep with me. You want a princess sticker? You can have a Jasmine one. Not to keep though.”

  “So what’s the second good news?” Mom asked.

  Mark grinned again. “You want to tell them, Case? Tell them the news?”

  She shook her head. Her tongue was sticking out slightly in concentration as she tried to peel a sticker from the book without dislodging the cat from his perch. “You tell them.”

  “We’ve got a bone marrow match,” Mark said. “We’re going back to Ontario and Casey’s going to get her bone marrow transplant.”

  There was a sudden clutch in my chest and I gasped out loud. “That’s so great.” I put my hand on Casey’s arm. “Casey, that’s wonderful.”

  She didn’t look all that interested.

  “It is.” Mark lowered his voice. “There’s still a long road ahead, of course. But this gives her a chance, a good chance, of really beating this thing.”

  “Wow.” I couldn’t believe it. I found myself thinking of the poem Mom read to me: I do not approve, I am not resigned. I was actually going to be able to do something for Casey, not just stand by helplessly and watch her die. “So what happens now?”

  “We’ll fly back to Ontario as soon as we can arrange it, and as soon as she’s well enough to travel.”

  Of course. They’d be leaving. “How soon can she have the transplant?”

  “It’ll take a few weeks, probably, to get everything set up. Once arrangements have been made to harvest the bone marrow from the donor, Casey will be admitted to hospital in Toronto for her treatment to prepare for the transplant. All in all, it shouldn’t be more than a month or so.”

  Something wasn’t making sense. I looked from him, to Casey, to Mom. “The donor? But…”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t clear. We got a match through the bone marrow donor registry. An anonymous donor. We’d almost given up on it ever happening.”

  “I thought…what about my tests?”

  “We haven’t got the results yet.” Mark put his coffee down on a wheeled table beside Casey’s bed. “We wanted to try every possibility, but the odds of you being a match were pretty remote.”

  “I’m really happy for you and for Casey. I mean, that’s great. Really great.” I stopped talking before everyone heard the wobble I could feel in my voice. They didn’t need me anymore. I suddenly felt like we didn’t belong here, like we were strangers intruding on this family we didn’t even know. “I guess we better go,” I said. I stepped closer to Casey. “Can I give you a hug goodbye?”

  She nodded and held her arms up. “Bye, Dylan.”

  I put my arms around her. She felt smaller and more fragile than she looked.

  “You don’t have to rush off,” Mark said. He was frowning, those two vertical lines deepening between his eyebrows.

  I wondered if I’d ever hear from him again.

  I looked at my mother. “Let’s go.”

  “Dylan…” She picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. Then she hesitated, looking at Mark.

  “Please, Mom.”

  She looked at me and nodded. “
Okay.”

  We left without looking back, walking back down that long tiled hallway, past nurses and IV poles and dinner carts and visiting families. Mark hadn’t tried to stop me leaving. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Mom drove most of the way home without saying a word. I kept glancing over at her, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  I wasn’t even sure what I was thinking. I leaned my head against the seat back. I should be happy. Casey had a shot at making it. And maybe I wasn’t going to be the one to help her—or end up with a dad or a new set of grandparents—but I wasn’t losing anything either. I wasn’t losing anything except a fantasy about my father.

  Being angry with him was a relief in a way. It was less complicated than whatever else I’d been feeling.

  I studied Mom’s hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. The hummingbird’s green wing tip poking out from beneath the black sleeve of her sweater. “Did you really get that tattoo when you were pregnant with me? Because of my heartbeat, like you said?”

  Her cheeks flushed dark. “You saw Mark’s tattoo.”

  I nodded. “Same as yours.”

  “Baby. Oh…” Her eyes were suddenly shiny. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you lie about it? You didn’t have to do that.”

  “So stupid. I was so stupid.” She shook her head. “You know, you were maybe three when you first asked me about that tattoo. And I told you all about hummingbirds and how tiny they are, and how fast their hearts beat, and how their wings are just a blur when they hover in the air…” She stopped and smiled faintly.

  “And?”

  “And you were so sweet. You had your pajamas on, blue stripey boy’s ones, and you had your swimsuit on overtop because it was new and you wanted to wear it.”

  “You remember what I was wearing?”

  “And I picked you up and I could feel your skinny little ribs—you were such a scrawny kid, I always worried people would think I didn’t feed you. Teenage mom, you know? People have such attitudes. Anyway, I picked you up and I could feel your heart beating. And I just made up that story. I think I wanted it to be true. It was a much better story than the real one.”

  I blew out a long exasperated breath. “Mom. You can’t… you can’t do that. You can’t just pick what you want to be true.” Although really, Mom did that all the time: Scientists will figure out how to stop climate change. Sheri’s in a better place now. I don’t really drink that much.

  She turned to look at me wonderingly. “You know, I’d almost forgotten it wasn’t true. I’d forgotten Mark had the same tattoo.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe if you could stick to the truth from now on?”

  She sighed. “So now what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want to see him again? Or do you just want things to go back to normal?”

  Back to normal. I figured that was probably what Mom wanted. Outside the window, the late afternoon sun hung low in the sky. I watched the telephone poles flicker past. One, two, three…I wasn’t sure what I wanted. “It isn’t really up to me, is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know if Mark will want to see me again. I mean, now that he doesn’t need me, you know?”

  “His loss if he doesn’t.” Mom pulled into the driveway and put the car in park. She didn’t say anything for a minute, just sat there with her seat belt still on. “Dylan? He wanted to see you two years ago. When he first found out about you. I should’ve told you, but…”

  No point now in telling her I already knew. “Yeah, you totally should’ve. So why didn’t you?”

  “I panicked. Told him to stay away, stay out of our lives.” She looked at me, made a face and shrugged. “All those years I’d spent trying to avoid even thinking about him. You know, when I went to Ontario to get Karma, I was terrified I’d run into him. Just being in the same province freaked me out.”

  “Why, though? I don’t get it.”

  “I think I was scared of how I’d feel if I saw him. It was all mixed up with my mom dying and Dad cutting me off, and all the stupid things Sheri and I did. Stuff I feel kind of ashamed of, now. I’d made such a complete break from my old life, you know? It was like, the longer I avoided it, the bigger it all got. When he called two years ago, I thought I’d have a heart attack.” She shrugged again. “Now that he’s here and I’ve seen him, it’s like all that fear was a big balloon and it just got popped.”

  “When he called this time, you let me see him. How come?”

  “Because I’d felt guilty for two years,” she said. “Anyway, he said if I didn’t agree to let him see you, he’d contact you directly.”

  I almost laughed. “In other words, you didn’t have a choice.”

  She shrugged and didn’t say anything for a while.

  “I told him about the pictures,” she said at last. “I mean, that you had tried to get in touch with him. And that I hadn’t sent them.”

  “You did? What did he say?”

  She gave a laugh that was almost a sob. “He said if I still had them all, he’d really like it if I could send them.”

  I blinked hard and tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly swelled in my throat. “What did you say?”

  “I said that was just too damn bad.” She looked at me defiantly. “He really is an asshole, Dylan. I don’t want you getting hurt by him.”

  “Like you did.”

  She looked startled. “You think this is all about me?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Baby…Oh, I don’t know anymore. The way he just showed up like this. Not that I blame him for wanting to do whatever he could for Casey, but…”

  “You still think he’s an asshole, don’t you? Even though he wasn’t much older than me when you knew him.”

  “I’m sorry if that isn’t what you want to hear, but yeah. I really do.”

  “People change,” I said. “People grow up. Anyway, he seemed like he was nice to Casey.”

  Mom frowned. “You think I’m being too hard on him?” She dropped her eyes, twisted her hands together and studied her fingers. “You think your life would have been better with him in it?”

  “I think you should have given him a chance.”

  “There was a reason I didn’t send him those photos, you know.” She looked at me as if she knew what I was thinking. “Not because I didn’t want to see him, Dylan. Because I love you. Because I honestly thought you’d be better off without him in your life.”

  “Do you still have all those photos? Did you keep them?”

  She nodded.

  “Can I have them?”

  “For Mark? Are you going to give them to him?”

  I met her eyes. “Maybe. I haven’t decided. But I think it should be my choice, not yours.”

  She cleared her throat. “They’re in a box in my closet. I’ll find them for you.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Turn off the engine, would you? You shouldn’t leave it running in the driveway like that.”

  She turned it off, reached across and gave me a hug. “Dylan?”

  I leaned into her, resting my head on her shoulder. “Mmm.”

  “We’re okay? You and me?”

  “Yeah,” I told her. “We’ll be okay.”

  That evening, up in my room, I looked at the business card Mark had given me. His email address was on it: mlwheatcroft@thomsondavylaw.com. I wondered what the L in his name stood for. Liam? Lorne? Larry? I wrote him about a dozen emails and deleted them all. Too sappy, too formal, too desperate, too offhand, too serious, too jokey… The one I finally ended up with was short, just a few lines.

  Dear Mark,

  I hope Casey is still doing well and that the transplant goes smoothly. Please tell her that I send hugs and hope to see her again soon. Maybe after she recovers you can visit us again. It’d be good to stay in touch.

  Best wishes,

  Dylan

  I wondered if
it was too unfriendly. I thought about signing it Love, Dylan, but then I decided not to. It didn’t seem honest. The truth was, I loved Mom and Karma and Toni, but I barely even knew Mark. All we had in common was some DNA.

  Then again, he had asked Mom for the photographs.

  I searched his name online and found a bunch of law-related stuff. Committees he’d sat on, an article he wrote in some journal. One photograph, a formal head shot, on his law firm’s website. I really did have his eyes and his chin.

  My phone rang and I answered, expecting it to be Toni.

  “Dylan? It’s Mark.”

  “Oh. Hi.” My heart was suddenly racing.

  “You left so quickly, I didn’t have time to say…well, anything.”

  “Sorry.” I sat on the edge of my bed. “It seemed like it should be just your family there.”

  “Dylan.” He hesitated. “I’d hoped that you might start to consider us family. But, well, I don’t want to be pushy. Or, ah…to give the impression that I feel entitled to anything.”

  “Family? You and Casey?”

  “All of us, really. Lisa would like to get to know you too.”

  “Mom thinks Lisa hates her.”

  “Why on earth would she? Lisa knows I lived with your mom before she and I met.”

  “She didn’t know about me though,” I pointed out.

  “She’s had a couple of years to get used to that. Actually, we’d talked about it and decided to get in touch again when you were eighteen. To contact you directly if Amanda didn’t want to be a part of it. But then, with Casey getting sick…” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t the best way for us to meet. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Oh.” I rubbed my ankle where my too-tight sock had left indented lines. “You would have got in touch anyway?”

  “Definitely.”

  There was a long pause. “Mom told you I wanted to send you pictures, right?”

  “Yes. She told me.”

  “If you still want them…”

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll just mail them, I guess?”

  Mark answered my unspoken question. “We’re flying out tomorrow evening. But if you have time, I thought maybe…Lisa will be here with Casey so I could…” He sounded as nervous as I felt. “Can I pick you up at school? Take you out for coffee? Or tea? You drink tea, right? Or maybe lunch?”