by Sara Barnard
“Hi,” I say, stupidly. “What…”
“I thought I may as well surprise you,” she says with a tearful little laugh, wiping at her eyes. “Just in case you tried to run away from me. Again.”
Her face, impossibly familiar. I’m so completely spun by her being here, but also by how absolutely familiar she is, that I can barely speak through the confusion. And then she touches my face, like she used to do when I was tiny, and I start to cry.
“Darling,” she says, opening her arms. I fold into them, and she hugs me.
“How can you be here?” I choke out.
“I got on a plane,” she says softly, rubbing my back in small, comforting circular motions.
After we’ve both calmed down, I sit beside her at the table and she orders me a Coke. “Shall we get food here?” she asks me. “Have you eaten?”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“Good,” she says. “I’ve been looking at the menu while I was waiting for you to appear. It looks quite good.”
“How did you know I’d be there?” I ask, though I can guess. “In this hotel?”
“Your grandad called us,” she says. “He gave us the information about the train you were on and this hotel. Said we’d have plenty of time to get here to meet you.”
Three days on a train. Wow. Well played, Grandad.
“He said he understood why I was doing this,” I say. A waiter appears and sets a long glass of Coke on the table beside me, clinking with ice. “Thank you.”
“He does,” she says. “Far too well. But he also understands that we’re your parents and you’re seventeen.”
“Why didn’t he just put me on a plane home, then?” I ask, frustrated and a little bit betrayed. Okay, I didn’t love that the family-abandoning recluse was the only one on my side, but at least he was on my side. Except, clearly not.
“Would you have let that happen?” she asks.
I’m silent.
“I think he was happy to be able to give you that experience,” she says. “Something you won’t forget. A gift.”
I think about those three days with Beasey. The clickety-clack of the train sweeping through endless fields of ice and snow. The mountains.
“So you’ve come to take me home,” I say, looking down into the bubbles in my Coke fighting with the ice. “To make me come home.”
She doesn’t reply right away, not until I look up and meet her sad, tired gaze. “I hope you’ll come back with me,” she says. “I’m not going to pretend that’s not my hope. But I’m not going to force you, and I don’t want to force you. I’m here because you are my daughter, and I love you, and I have missed you. You’ve been having these grand adventures so far away, and I wanted to join in. I hoped we could do some exploring together, you and me.”
Is this a trick? It feels like a trick.
“I’ve always wanted to see Niagara Falls,” she says, which makes me think of Casey and the email I never replied to. “And there’s no one I’d rather see it with than you.”
“What about Dillon?” I ask. “And Dad?”
Mum laughs. “You know what I mean, my love.”
“Is Dad here?” I ask. “Where is he?”
Her smile fades in a way that makes my heart suddenly tense with an anxiety I don’t quite understand. “He’s at home,” she says. “He didn’t feel the same way I did about coming here. He thinks I’m indulging you, acting like I think how you’ve behaved is acceptable.”
“And you don’t?”
She’s quiet, considering. “I’m disappointed at how you’ve conducted yourself, yes. But I also know you, and I know you wouldn’t have done what you’ve done unless you felt like you had no other option. So while I can’t condone it, I’m your mother; I want to understand it.” The smile returns to her face, warm and hopeful. “And I’d like to try and do that beside you, not on the other end of a phone line. Perhaps over pancakes.”
I smile back; I can’t help it. “Or at Niagara Falls?”
“Yes,” she says. “Right on the boat, wearing those special ponchos.” When I laugh, she reaches out and takes my hand. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” I say.
After dinner, Mum comes to my room with me and I show her the bits and pieces I’ve collected since I’ve been traveling: postcards, ticket stubs, a Banff hoodie, a key ring.
“I’ve been sketching the whole time,” I say. “The whole trip, like a visual diary.”
“Can I see?” Mum asks.
I nod, handing my sketchpad over. She flips slowly through it, a small, unreadable smile on her face that twitches and widens as she goes. “These are fantastic, Peyton,” she says. “Really. I haven’t seen this kind of art from you in a long time.”
“I didn’t draw as much after I started college,” I say. “I missed it.”
“Your dad and I both loved our postcards,” she says. “I know I’ve said this before, but you’re so talented. I really admire that.”
She’s trying, I know that, so I smile. When I take my sketch pad back, I ask, “When did your flight get in? Are you jet-lagged?”
“Yesterday,” she says. “I’ve mostly slept it off. If I get a good night’s sleep tonight, I’ll be fine. What shall we do tomorrow?”
“When’s your return flight booked?” I ask.
“Wednesday,” she says.
“And you’ve booked me a ticket, too?”
She hesitates. “Yes.” Before I can speak, she says, “But I can’t force you to get on the plane. If you really, honestly don’t want to come home, then I won’t try to force you. Please, though, can we just have this time together? I want to hear about your adventures. I want to share some with you. I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t want to fight either,” I say.
“Okay then,” she says. “Shall we agree to, at the very least, put that on hold for now?”
I look at her, trying to figure out how much I can trust this. Finally, I let myself nod. “Sure,” I say.
She smiles properly, warm and relieved. “Good,” she says.
We spend the next day having the full tourist experience. We visit Casa Loma, which Mum loves because it’s beautiful, and I love because it was the castle in the live-action Beauty and the Beast, before we ride up to the observation deck at the CN Tower. I must get my lack of fear of heights from Mum, because she’s as fearlessly fascinated as I am, pressing her nose right up to the glass to look across the city and beyond, comparing the skyline to the map in her hand.
I send a photo to Beasey of me lying on my back on the Glass Floor, the city over a thousand feet below me, and he replies immediately, all caps, GET DOWN TO SOLID GROUND IMMEDIATELY with a selfie of his horrified face. Wish you were here, I tell him.
I don’t! he replies, which makes me smile.
I tell Mum about Beasey—leaving out the kissing parts, and especially the sex—and the rest of my friends, explaining how well they’d looked after me, what we’d done together. I tell her how Seva is in Toronto at the moment and that I’d planned to meet up with him, and she suggests we all go for dinner together.
“I’d love to meet him,” she says.
It feels like a strange but nice melding of two worlds when they meet later that evening. Mum and I walk into the bar and grill we’ve chosen, to find he’s already at a table waiting for us, still wearing the suit he clearly wears to work. He smiles when he sees me, but it’s not the same smile that I’d gotten used to.
“Hello, Mrs. King,” he says to Mum, holding out his hand in greeting. That plus the suit has the effect of making it seem like he’s being interviewed, this time by her.
“Hello,” Mum replies in the same slightly stilted tone. “So lovely to meet you, Seva.” His name sounds strange in her voice.
Honestly? It’s awkward. Everything is different. Seva is more rigid here in this suit in this city, with my mother as company instead of our friends. He’s awkward; his shoulders tense, his smile
tight. The warmth and humor I’d seen in him from the first night we’d met, when he’d so quietly put me at ease, is stifled by… what? His suit? The fact that Mum is here? Being in Toronto?
It’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t make me love him any less. What it does is make me realize how different people can be in different contexts, which is something of course I’ve always known but never seen quite so clearly before. The Seva Mum is seeing is not the Seva I know, which is not her fault or his. It makes me think of college, the Peyton I was with Flick and Travis and everyone compared to the Peyton I’ve been in Canada. Is one more real than the other? More me? I want to say yes, that this Peyton, the bold one who goes on adventures with good friends, is the real me, but it’s not true, is it? They’re both me. Two versions of myself of the many there’ll be in my life.
Seva tells us briefly about his new job, which he says is going well, and how he is looking for somewhere to stay in the city over the six-month period of his contract.
“Toronto in winter,” Mum says. “That’ll be an experience! Or, I suppose, perhaps not for you? Does it remind you of home?”
I wince, but Seva barely reacts. Instead, he smiles. “Sometimes, yes, it does.” I want to get up and hug him.
When we’ve finished, he declines dessert and says he should leave us, pulling out his wallet.
“Oh, no,” Mum says immediately. “I’ll be paying for this.”
Seva shakes his head. “I would like to pay.”
“Please,” Mum says. “Let me. You’ve taken such good care of Peyton.”
“We are friends,” Seva says simply. He puts some cash on the table and slides it over to Mum. “I hope you enjoy your time in Toronto.”
I put my hand on top of Mum’s to stop her pushing the cash back to him, standing as I do. “I’ll come out with you.” When Seva has started to walk out of the restaurant, I release her hand. “Back in a sec!”
Outside the restaurant, it’s cold. Toronto cold, I think, smiling. I breathe it in.
“Thanks for having dinner with us,” I say. “I hope that wasn’t too weird.”
He shakes his head. “Of course not. You will return home, then? With your mother?”
“That’s what she wants,” I say. “I don’t know, though. She hasn’t even had a go at me yet, but it’s coming.”
“Perhaps she just wants to spend time with you,” he says.
I shrug.
“Your mother,” he says. “She loves you. Everything else, it does not matter so much.” I’m just processing this when he says, “Now I will say goodbye.” I look up at him, his familiar face softened back to his usual Seva smile, now that it is just the two of us again. “And that I will miss you.”
I want to tell him how amazing he’s been, how much I appreciate that and him, but he waves me off before I’ve even gotten two words out. “Come to England sometime,” I say instead. “Okay?”
“I shall try,” Seva says. “In the future, when you are a famous artist.”
I laugh, shivering. “Maybe.”
“You are cold,” he says. “Go back inside.”
“Can I have a hug first?” I ask.
He hugs me tight, like a brother. I hear him say something in Russian before he gives my back a brisk pat and then releases me.
“Da svidaniya,” I say.
He smiles. “Da svidaniya.”
The restaurant feels extra warm and cozy when I go back inside. Mum is sitting at the cleared table, dessert menu open. I slide back into the booth opposite her.
“Do you think the portions will be as big as the mains were?” Mum asks.
“Yes,” I say. “They’re huge.”
“Gosh,” Mum says, and I feel a tug of affection in my chest. “Shall we share one?” she asks. “This one with the brownies?”
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s share.”
The next day, Mum has booked us both onto a day tour to Niagara Falls. She’s giddy excited about it—more excited than I’ve seen her for years—and it makes me laugh.
“Look at you, seasoned traveler!” she replies. “I’ve spent the last few weeks in Surrey. It’s rained eighty percent of the time. Let me enjoy my small adventure.”
I put my arm through hers and squeeze as we wait to get on the coach.
Niagara Falls is everything I expected it to be. Huge—seriously, it’s huge—loud, beautiful, and full of tourists. I’d been spoiled by seeing most of Jasper and Banff in the off-season, when it was relatively quiet. Here, it’s jam-packed. But I don’t mind, not really. Niagara Falls just inspires too much of The Awe.
“Do you remember that class project you did on Charles Blondin?” Mum asks me.
“Who?” I say.
She looks disappointed. “Charles Blondin. The tightrope walker who was the first to walk over the Falls. You did a whole project—you must have been about eight or nine. You were fascinated by him. Went through a whole phase of wanting to be a tightrope walker. Remember?”
I have a very, very vague memory of making a rope out of pairs of tights tied together, fixing it as tightly as I could from the living-room sofa to the door handle and attempting to walk across it. Was that when I broke my arm? Possibly.
“Sort of?” I say. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I can’t believe you forgot,” she says. “I thought it meant you were going to be a great adventurer. A daredevil. And now look at you.”
“Well,” I say. “At least I’m not a tightrope walker.”
We’re given bright yellow ponchos for our boat trip out to the Falls—Mum is thrilled—and I take multiple photos of her, me, and both of us. I’ve already decided that I’ll re-create this moment, maybe in watercolor, and frame it for her Christmas present. I’ll call it KINGS AT THE FALLS. The ponchos turn out to be very necessary, because we get soaked. Also, it’s freezing.
I have the best time.
When we’re back on solid ground, exhilarated and damp, we have time to explore Lundy’s Lane, where I duck into a gift shop and buy a postcard of the Falls for Casey. I’m still not sure what I want to say to her, so I don’t write anything, just her name and address on one side and a sketch on the other. I draw Casey as I remember her, except with a wider smile, standing on the bow of a boat, surrounded on all sides by waterfalls. I caption it CASEY SEES NIAGARA FALLS.
We get back to Toronto that evening too tired to go out to eat, so we order room service in Mum’s room, which feels exciting and decadent in a way I’d never experienced before and hadn’t thought she’d enjoy. But she’s bright and cheerful, talking about food portion sizes, looking back over the menu and lamenting the choices she didn’t make even though her burger is “just fantastic.” I’m nodding along when she’s saying how burgers back home won’t compare, that in fact our home town in general won’t compare to the “magnificence” of Toronto, until she says, so very casually, that it will be worth it to have me back at home, back to my life, back at college.
“I’m not going to go back to college,” I say. She opens her mouth to speak, but I shake my head. “No, really, listen. I’m not going back. I’ve made that really clear.”
“But, Peyton,” she begins. “You can’t just drop out; you have to have a plan—”
“I do have a plan,” I interrupt, as calmly as I can. “Will you just listen to it? Please?” I wait for her to breathe in an impatient sigh, then nod. “Okay. I know you want me to finish my A Levels, but there’s really no point in me wasting time getting qualifications I don’t want and won’t use. I can use that time preparing for what I actually do want. And I want to study art. Illustration, if I can. I’m going to try to apply to art courses at universities; some of them have foundation years, so it might not matter about the last two years. I’m going to put together a proper portfolio and explain the situation. If they won’t take me without A Levels, then fine, I’ll retake year thirteen and get the ones I need. Even if that means I have to start again and it takes ages, then fine.
That’s okay. I’m not worried about that. It’ll take as long as it takes.”
Mum is frowning. “But…”
“I’m going to get a job as soon as I get home,” I continue. “Full time. Back at the bakery where I worked last summer, if they’ll have me. Or somewhere else, if they won’t. I’ll work as much as I can until I know what’s happening with studying stuff. I want to start earning money as soon as possible so I can start paying Dad back.”
“That’s not important—”
“It is,” I say. “To me. And to Dad. I’m also going to volunteer.”
“Volunteer?”
“Yes. I’m going to see if I can do arts-and-crafts sessions at, like, a youth center or a care home or something. I want to be doing things where I can meet lots of different people, not just people who are like me. And I want to get as much experience with art that isn’t just me drawing by myself.”
She’s looking a little shell-shocked. “That will take up a bit of time—”
“Not really,” I say. “A couple of hours a week. That’s nothing. Besides, I want to fill up my time with good things. Healthy things.”
Mum doesn’t say anything for a while. She’s clearly thinking hard, her gaze settled on the space by my right shoulder. Finally, carefully, she says, “You should be prepared that your dad might not support this.”
“What do you mean? Support what? Which bit?”
“All of it. He wants you to be in education. Traditional education, earning your A Levels, so you can go on to university.”
“I can go to university. To study what I actually want to study.”
“That’s not as financially secure an option, Peyton. I know you think we’re worrying too much about that, but it’s honestly a concern. It’s our job to worry about these things. You’ve got your whole life to do whatever you want with your love of art and drawing, but can’t you just trust us that a few years now to get a solid foundation for work is a necessary thing?”
“No,” I say. “Can’t you trust me that I know myself and what I want for my life better than you do?”