around the house, cut his face out of all their photos, hang up on him? She’d never done any of those things. And now she seemed okay with him and me spending a bunch of the summer together. In a place you needed a passport to get to.
Parents are hard to figure.
Later, while we ate the casserole — she had added carrots, tomato, celery, and cheese (but not zucchini) to the onion — I studied my mom’s face. I did that every once in a while. She was an okay-looking woman in a forties-looking kind of way. (What I said before about people over forty doesn’t apply to Mom.) It’s not like she seems younger than she is; in fact, sometimes she seems older, but she always kind of gets people younger than her.
Her eyes had wrinkles at the corners, but they weren’t laugh wrinkles. Mom’s not a big laugher. She smiles some, and sometimes there’s this little throaty chuckle that’s cool, but I’ve never heard her laugh real hard or real loud. Ever. I couldn’t see any grey in her hair. I didn’t know if that was because she coloured it. I didn’t think so. Mom wasn’t into her appearance very much. I was pretty sure she’d never gone out with a guy since the old man left. Too bad.
And she didn’t yell either. It was like the laughing thing. Mom could make you know she was mad with her voice and with the looks she’d give you. But she wasn’t much for yelling.
I worked the casserole for a while. “I had plans for this summer,” I told her between bites.
“Your dad said he thought three weeks or a month. That still leaves a lot of time.”
“I had some stuff I wanted to do.”
She nodded. “Stuff you could do next summer?”
“Stuff I wanted to do this summer.”
“But could be done next summer.”
I shrugged. “Maybe, I guess.”
“I know this isn’t the way you’d like to spend this time, but I think you should do it, and I think you should give your dad a chance.”
“A chance for what? It’s a little late for him to be a dad.”
“Yes, it’s too … no it isn’t, not really. Maybe not a dad as in raising you, but —”
“What other kind of dad is there?”
“I guess … I guess the kind who wants to be with you for a while, maybe be your friend as you get older.”
A couple of times before, Mom had said she wished I knew him better. She didn’t make a big deal of it, just mentioned it. I guess maybe that’s why she was thinking this was all okay.
“He send you money?”
She looked at me, raised an eyebrow.
“You know, alimony, child support? He send money for that stuff?”
“He sends money.”
“He send enough?” I’d never thought of us as struggling financially, but we weren’t exactly the rich people on the block either.
“He sends money.”
She reached for a little more casserole and asked me something about school, so I figured she was finished talking about the old man.
6
If you are going to read this, there are things about me you need to know. One of the things you need to know is that I don’t like dogs. Pretty much hate them all. Including Jen Wertz’s golden retriever. I’ve only seen the dog a couple of times and everybody says it’s a real nice dog, but I figure once I’m in solid with Jen, like real solid, I’ll just quietly mention to her that either the dog goes, or I do.
Yeah, that should work.
7
When I was four years old, I had a bad experience. Scary bad. My mom and I were visiting my aunt and uncle and their kid in Regina, Saskatchewan. I can’t remember if the old man was there or not. He could have been because he didn’t take off with the college student until a year later.
My cousin and I were playing outside. Her name was Sandra. I didn’t like her much, I can’t remember why, probably because she was two and I was four, and two-year-olds can be a giant pain in the ass to four-year-olds. I remember that it was a big deal if you called her Sandy.
“Her name is Sandra, S-a-n-d-r-a.” I heard that a few times from Aunt Meg. She was okay as long as you didn’t call the kid Sandy. Or swear. I remember one time I committed the worst of sins when I said “Sandy is a poop ass.” Four-year-old swearing. I got a couple of whuppings for that, the first one from Aunt Meg for “Sandy” and the second one from my mom, who hardly ever laid a hand on me. I guess she figured “poop ass” was a little over the line.
Anyway, we were outside in the front yard and a dog, a big dog, got in the yard and went after my cousin. Attacked her. I don’t remember the details all that well, but I think she tried to pet the dog, and it just went for her.
I jumped in to try to get the dog off her. I yelled at it, and I tried to hit it to make it go away. It stopped attacking my cousin and turned on me. I heard my cousin screaming. I don’t know if I was screaming or not. The next thing I remember was being in the hospital, with my mom and my aunt standing beside my bed telling me what a brave little hero I was, and how I had saved Sandra.
I wound up getting sixty stitches, most of them on my arm but some on a leg too. Some cuts on my face, but those weren’t major. The worst part was the needles for rabies. The dog was a stray, and he was gone by the time the adults got outside.
I was in the hospital overnight and the next day when I got home, they had a party for me … like a birthday party. There was a cake and some of Aunt Meg’s neighbours were there and some little kids from around the neighbourhood. I didn’t even know most of them. Sandy the poop ass was there too. I mean she would be. I saved her, didn’t I?
My mom carried me in from the car and set me in this big soft chair in the living room of my aunt’s house. I liked that chair. There was more of the “brave little soldier” talk, and people I’d never seen before were taking my picture and smiling big smiles at me and touching me on the face.
It was okay for a while, but then I started crying and couldn’t stop, which pretty much wrecked the party. My mom finally carried me upstairs to bed and read me a story. I don’t remember which one.
I think maybe the reason I was crying was that I knew they were wrong. I wasn’t brave at all. I was scared to death. Long after it happened, if I thought about it, I’d start shaking, and I’d clench my eyes shut to try not to see that dog.
But it didn’t work. For a really long time I’d see that dog’s face right in front of me, the huge jaws, the terrible teeth, always coming back at me, even though I was already hurt and not doing anything to him anymore.
I don’t see the dog’s face anymore. Haven’t for a few years now. But I’m still scared of dogs, especially big ones. Little dogs don’t scare me as much, but I don’t like them. We’ve never had a dog. I’m probably the only kid I know who doesn’t bug his parent to get a dog.
8
Another thing about me you should know is that I get headaches. Mom even had me checked out a couple of times to see if there was something wrong with me, like really wrong with me, but nothing showed up. “Tension headaches,” the doctor said. Stress. When he said that, I was like, Come on, I’m fifteen years old. You can do better than playing the stress card. But maybe he was right. Sometimes I get pretty wound up, I guess.
So, no surprise — the night after the old man’s call, I woke up with a headache. The pounding kind … like there’s somebody chopping wood, and they’re using your head for a chopping block. This time I could definitely see stress as the cause. I got out of bed and crunched a toe trying to get to the bathroom in the dark.
I swore, fumbled for the light switch, turned it on and made it the rest