Not Suitable For Family Viewing

by Vicki Grant

  She sneers at me. “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about! I tried to be kind to you people! I gave my heart and soul to Minerva Bister! I invited her into my home. I taught her how to speak, how to dress, how to brush her rotten little teeth—which, by the way, I spent a small fortune to replace. And how does she repay me?…She seduces my son! She gets herself pregnant!”

  My scalp goes all prickly before I even understand what the words mean.

  Great big Percy.

  The kid in the yearbook with the thick red hair.

  Of course.

  Percy Hiltz is my father.

  Mrs. Hiltz is holding the steering wheel so tight her knuckles have gone white. For the first time, I notice her stubby thumbnail. It’s shaped and filed and painted a pale pink but otherwise it’s just like mine.

  She takes short, loud breaths in through her nose. “Minerva duped dear, sweet Percy into believing they’d make the perfect family!”

  The rain has made the pavement slippery. We hit the shoulder. Gravel goes flying. I grab the wheel and jerk us back onto the road.

  I scream. “Slow down, Mrs. Hiltz! Please!”

  She takes my hand—my sprained hand—and bends it back at the wrist. I don’t know if it’s the shock or the pain but it’s like she zapped me with a Taser. I didn’t expect an old lady to be so strong. I let go of the wheel. I fall back against the door, panting.

  Mrs. Hiltz slows down.

  “Excuse me. I apologize. I shouldn’t let myself get so upset,” she says. She sounds calm.

  I breathe again. I rub my wrist and try to believe that this is just another scare.

  “Now where was I? Oh yes. Minerva. She said she wanted to marry Percy and have the baby—but she changed her tune fast enough when I brought out my wallet. You see, my dear, everyone has their price. Minerva’s was twenty-thousand dollars—a lot higher than most people’s—but she was a lot smarter than most people too. Believe me, there were no flies on that girl—at least not once I’d given her a good bath!”

  Mrs. Hiltz laughs at that. She has little white blobs of spit in the corners of her mouth and she doesn’t even care.

  I sit as still as I can, looking straight ahead, my back stiff. I don’t want to do anything to upset her. Maybe this is like one of Anita’s little fits. She’ll blow up, get over it, apologize. I’ll live. I’ll go home.

  Mrs. Hiltz is driving normally now. She’s watching the road. She looks like the perfect grandmother, but her voice is hard. “I gave her the money and she promised I’d never see that despicable little face of hers again. It set my portfolio back a bit but, believe me, it was worth it. A Bister grandchild! I never would have been able to hold my head up in this town again.”

  I tell myself to ignore her. Hate her later. Don’t move now. Stay alive.

  “No,” she says. “The money was well spent. Minerva Bister would have destroyed Percy. It took him years to get back on his feet again after what she did to him—then you come along to ruin him, just as his political career is finally taking off. You’re not going to blackmail us!”

  The woman’s insane. I try to sound reasonable. I say, “That’s not why I’m here, Mrs. Hiltz. Really. I don’t want money. I’d never hurt Percy.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “You never will. Because I won’t let you. I made the mistake before of thinking you Bisters could be trusted. I know better now. I’m not afraid of the ditch any more. I reminded myself this morning that a mother’s job is to protect her children.”

  She looks right at me. She tries to put on her nice-old-lady face again. “Just relax, dear,” she says. “It shouldn’t hurt much if you relax.”

  She slams her foot to the floor and cranks the steering wheel to the right. We’re heading straight for the ocean.

  I can’t just hope any more. I grab the wheel. Mrs. Hiltz lunges at me, slaps me, elbows me. I can’t believe how fierce she is. I’m trying to control the car but I can barely see the road.

  I’m terrified and frantic but suddenly I’m angry too. I scream at her, “Are you nuts? I don’t need your money!”

  She coughs out a laugh and I know that’s just another way of telling me I’m a scheming tramp.

  I think that’s what gets me. Hearing her laugh like that. At me, at Mom.

  Well, screw you. I don’t care if you are Mrs. Enos Hiltz. As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing. Nothing compared to my mother, that’s for sure.

  I get this burst of something inside me. A doctor would probably say it was adrenalin but that’s not what it feels like. Adrenalin’s just a hormone or a chemical or an enzyme or something. This is bigger than that. It completely overwhelms me. I’m like a grizzly protecting her cub.

  I grab Mrs. Hiltz’s head so she can see me. I’m not even thinking about dying any more. I go, “Minerva is Mimi Schwartz! Do you understand? Minerva is Mimi!”

  She gets this look of horror on her face, and I think I’ve gotten through to her—but I’ll never know. She stops flailing. Her mouth opens. She makes a type of groan I’ve never heard before, and then her head clunks onto my shoulder.

  I try to pull the wheel hard to the left but her body’s in the way. I’ve got maybe a second to realize we’re going to crash.

  I scream, “Mom!” and my head snaps at the impact.

  The next thing I remember is Embree Bister looking in the window and saying, “You all right, maid?”

  51

  Saturday, 1 p.m.

  Radio Mimi

  “Around the World with a Carry-on Bag.” Mimi shares some of her best tips for travelling light.

  I see the cheap rental car parked near the beach. I ask Levi to drop me off here. I’ll walk the rest of the way by myself.

  “No, you won’t,” he says. “I’m coming too.”

  I won’t let him. She didn’t want anyone to know yet. She promised she’d give her PR people at least a day or two to figure out how to spin things before the media get wind of this.

  He says, “I could be your bodyguard. C’mon. Please!”

  He’s trying to jolly me out of this. He’s trying to see what I’m up to. He knows nothing except that Mrs. Hiltz had a heart attack, and there was a crash, and my mother is here to see me. He thinks it’s strange she wants to meet at the beach, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m not telling him anything else. Not yet.

  “No,” I say. “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

  “Right—” he says.

  We both laugh. I’ve got fifteen stitches in my forehead to complement my black eye.

  “Sure you can.”

  I start toward the beach even though he hasn’t left yet. Despite everything that’s happened in the last week, the first thing that goes through my head is, I walk away and he’s going to see my fat ass.

  It makes me laugh. I turn back. He was looking at my ass but, judging by the expression on his face, he didn’t mind the view.

  I motion, Get out of here! with my hands. He does this Pleeease? thing with his face. I shake my head. He pretends to pout but eventually backs away.

  I head down the path. Mom and Percy were this age when they met. I wonder if they goofed around like that too, if he made her laugh, if he told her how pretty she was. I think of Percy in the hospital room with his head in his hands and I’m pretty sure he did. It was something about the way he looked at me when he found out. The way his eyes filled up with tears when he tried to tell me how hard it’s been all these years not knowing what happened to her, to their baby. The way he kept staring at me.

  He must have loved her.

  I cross the wobbly little boardwalk and I can’t help asking myself, But did she love him?

  We didn’t talk about that on the phone the other night. She was too shocked. Me being in Port Minton, the accident, Mrs. Hiltz dying, all that stuff about the Bisters—it was a lot for me to dump on her at once.

  She didn’t try to hide, though. She admitted right out who she was. Sh
e said, “yeah” to being a Bister, to taking Rosie’s identity, to getting money from Mrs. Hiltz, to everything in Canadian Geographic, to most of the stuff on enoughaboutmimi.com. Even Us Magazine apparently was onto something. Dad’s ex-girlfriend was going around telling all these people that I wasn’t his kid. Mimi knew everything would come out sooner or later, she said. She always meant to tell me. She just couldn’t face it yet.

  I went, “Why?”

  She paused, then said, “We have to talk.”

  It was almost funny. It was such a Mimi thing to say. The studio guest makes some sort of vague comment about a new relationship and Mimi leans in close and goes, “Oooh, darling. We have to talk.” The audience laughs. They cut to a commercial. Revelations to follow.

  The tone was different now, though. She wasn’t trying to get something out of me this time. We have to talk was a promise.

  “I’ll fly in tomorrow,” she said.

  I wanted to say, no, tell me everything now. I didn’t want to give her time to come up with a new story. But, turns out, I’m glad we waited. It’s given me a chance to get everything straight in my own head.

  At first, it was the facts that were so big and scary. But now, they just sort of…are. Dad isn’t my dad. Percy is. Grandpa isn’t my grandpa. Embree is. Mom is my mom but she’s not Mimi. She probably isn’t Minerva or Rosie any more either.

  Who is she really?

  That’s what I want to know now. Who cares about the facts?

  52

  Saturday, 3:30 p.m.

  You, You and Mimi

  “Mother-Child Reunion.” Mimi and adoption-rights advocate Laura Jeha reunite seven adult children with their birth parents.

  Anita would have run to me the moment she saw me. She’d have screamed and cried and kissed me all over my face.

  Mom just sucks in her breath and starts walking toward me. She’s got her sandals in her hand. She’s barefoot. I can’t remember the last time I saw her barefoot.

  Her hair’s a mess. There are grey circles under her eyes that she hasn’t done anything to cover up. She’s not even wearing lipstick. She didn’t need to hide out here. No one would recognize her as Mimi Schwartz. I barely recognize her.

  “Birdie,” she says. “I’m really sorry.”

  She reaches up and touches my stitches but I don’t think that’s what she means. She hugs me. I hug her back. We’re both awkward. We’ve never done a lot of hugging.

  “Let’s sit down,” she says. “I’ll tell you everything and then—if you want—I’ll take you home.”

  Her face sags like a balloon four days after a birthday party. It makes me sad. She’s interviewed the Queen of Jordan. She’s talked to Mafia hit men. She’s grilled big stars on-air about their alleged drug use, criminal records, impending divorces. But I can see she’s scared to talk to me. Her own daughter.

  I drop my cane and lower myself against a rock. She sits with her knees up and her feet digging into the sand. I notice her toes aren’t webbed and I get this little shot of happiness. I think, So she couldn’t be a Bister, then! but the happiness doesn’t last long. It’s like a firecracker that flies up in the air and then just fizzles back to earth. I know she’s a Bister. I’m a Bister.

  Do I care? I don’t know.

  Mom picks up a handful of sand and lets it run over her feet. “Ask me whatever you want,” she says.

  I’ve got so many questions but the first one is obvious. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I don’t say it in a mean way or an accusing way or anything. I just need to know.

  Mom doesn’t do any of her Mimi stuff. She doesn’t nod her head or rub her chin or touch my knee. There are no reaction shots for the camera. She just looks straight ahead at the ocean and talks.

  “Two reasons, I guess,” she says. “I promised Mrs. Hiltz that I’d keep my mouth shut until she died—so I did. Despite everything, I figured I owed her that much.”

  She must know how crazy that sounds. “She did rescue me, Birdie. If it weren’t for her, I’d still be out there…” She points her chin at Bister Island. It’s sort of a tough-guy thing to do, like a gang member picking a fight or something. Does she hate the Island, or hate Mrs. Hiltz?

  She shakes her head, pauses, sighs. “The other reason was that…I don’t know. I guess I was ashamed.”

  “Of what?” I say. “Blackmailing her?”

  “Is that what Mrs. Hiltz told you?”

  There’s an edge to her voice and for a second I worry she’s going to blow up at me—but then I realize I’m not the one she’s angry at.

  She says, “Please, tell me you don’t believe that. She gave me the money! She forced it on me! I didn’t even know what was in the envelope until I was long gone!”

  Mom turns away from me. There’s a long pause. When she finally speaks, she’s calm again. “Look,” she says. “This is what happened. Mrs. Hiltz took me in. I thank her for that. I still do. She cleaned me up, dressed me, taught be how to act like a lady. She was very kind to me. She expected Percy to be too. And he was.

  “Neither of us meant to fall in love. I mean, I was terrified of him at first. He was so big and, you know, jolly…I froze every time he came near me. But Mrs. Hiltz sort of pushed us together. I realize now she’d already envisioned his political career. She knew he needed to be able to deal with the underclasses.”

  A little smile floats across Mom’s face. I think she’s embarrassed.

  “That’s not why Percy was doing it. He was just kind. Way before there was anything between us, Percy took the time to teach me how to use the phone book, how to change the channel on the TV, how to open a milk carton, all that stuff I didn’t know. He wanted to take me to parties too—but I wouldn’t go. I was too shy. I wasn’t ready.

  “Somewhere along the line—I guess I’d been there about a year—we fell in love. There was nothing bad about it but somehow we both felt uncomfortable letting other people know. Maybe we knew some of them wouldn’t approve of the match. I didn’t even tell Rosie. We knew better than to let on to Mrs. Hiltz, of course—but mostly because if she found out, we knew we’d never be able to get any time alone. She’d be suspicious of us heading off on those long drives together…”

  She squeezes her lips to one side of her face and lifts her eyebrows. I guess she’s telling me that I was conceived in the back of a car.

  “Things changed when I realized I was pregnant. We were scared at first but we talked it over. We loved each other. Mrs. Hiltz had said she loved me. We were naive enough to believe she was going to be thrilled at the thought of us giving her a grandchild.”

  We both laugh. I mean, it’s horrible and it’s tragic but it’s funny too. As if Mrs. Hiltz would be thrilled about a teen pregnancy, not to mention a Bister teen pregnancy.

  “She looked surprised when we told her but kept that perfect smile on her face. She even congratulated us. It was all very pleasant. We talked about what we’d name the baby, where we’d live, what we’d do when Percy went off to university the next year. Then it was seven o’clock and Percy had to leave for hockey practice.

  “The door had barely shut behind him before Mrs. Hiltz turned on me. She called me a tramp, a slut, a Bister! I’d betrayed her, ruined her son’s life, destroyed her family’s good name. She said she wanted me out. I said, no. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t break Percy’s heart! She laughed at that. He’d just been using me, she said. He’d come to his senses soon enough and realize he wanted nothing to do with a low-life like me.”

  Mimi rubs her hands over her face. Even though she’s upset, I notice that’s she careful to rub up, not down. Dr. Boileau said it was better for her skin.

  “It was terrible. In moments, I’d gone from the happiest I’d ever been to the saddest. It was like someone had baked me a great, big birthday cake, then the candles went and exploded in my face. I ran into my room, sobbing. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. I just collapsed.

  “Mrs. Hiltz knocked on my door a little while l
ater. She handed me a big fat envelope and said, ‘Take this and get out.’ I did.”

  She lifts her chin and speaks in this really slow voice. “That’s what happened. I have nothing to be ashamed of as far as that goes.”

  “So then what are you ashamed of?”

  She looks out at the water. I don’t know if it’s the glare that’s making her squint or if she’s trying not to cry.

  “Myself,” she says. “You can dye my hair, give me a new nose, put me in designer fashions—but it doesn’t make any difference. I’m still a Bister. The lowest of the low. My whole life has been about trying to get over that. I kept my mouth shut all these years because I was embarrassed about who I was. I kept telling myself that one day I’d be good enough to deserve Percy—and then I could talk.”

  She reaches out like she’s going to touch my hand but she doesn’t. She picks up a pebble and rubs it in her fingers. “I thought the same thing about you. One day, I was going to be so good, so perfect, that I could tell you who I was and it wouldn’t matter.”

  “But, Mom!” I go. “I wouldn’t have cared! I wouldn’t have…”

  I want to push up close to her, put my arm through hers, put my head on her shoulder—but I don’t. I know she doesn’t want that. I’m not sure either of us could handle it. I’ll save that type of thing for Anita.

  “No. Maybe you wouldn’t,” she says, “but I couldn’t risk it. All my life people have said it didn’t matter—then acted like it did. You know, there was this big ‘outrage’ when Canadian Geographic did that story on us. Everyone around here made it sound like they were so shocked at the way we’d been living. But that was nonsense. Everybody here had known about us for years! Government people came by occasionally. Antique dealers rowed over to buy furniture off us for a tenth of what it was worth. Fishermen got their moonshine from us. Some minister even dragged Father and my uncles off to school for a while when they were boys. The minister’s intentions might have been honourable but the experience turned the Bisters off civilization for good. Father vowed he would never expose his children to that type of ridicule. The locals were more than happy to let him have his way.”