I watched Dizzy as her hands flew between the controls. Kinda made me jealous to see how good she was getting. Jeremy had tried to show me the ropes, but I didn’t have the patience for it. I’d rather listen to music than make it. I wish I was good at something like Dizzy. The music gene completely skipped me. I like music, don’t get me wrong. I live and breathe it — reggae especially. But to play it? Man, I got nothing! No game at all! Kind of pathetic considering who my parents are.
The real reason I came downstairs was to tell Dizzy about the concert. Just announced: Georgia Waters was playing in the city. I wanted her to hear it from me first, before she read it online or someone told her. The concert was next month, but tickets had just gone on sale. Maybe it was a late addition to her schedule; it was her second-last show. From here, she went to Montreal for the final stop on her Love’s Lost Tour. Dad’s eyes flashed at me when I told him. I’d checked it out online, curious about the tour. Was there a reason she’d added a show in the city close to us? He tried to play it cool, but I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed over and over, like his mouth had suddenly gone dry. How can you still care about her after all these years? I wanted to ask him, but didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t affection that flashed across his face. Maybe it was something else. Hurt? Anger? Surprise?
The last time she played in the city, she came to visit. I was eight. I remember she was tall, almost as tall as Dad, and when she sat on the couch, she sat right in the middle. Dad prodded me to go sit beside her, but I resisted, stubbornly standing across the room, watching her. She was a stranger, even if she was my mom.
She said we could call her Georgia and gave me and Dizzy a shaky smile. Dizzy didn’t want anything to do with her either, at first, but Dad let her give Dizzy a cookie. When Dizz got lured close enough, Georgia touched Dizzy’s hair, letting her hand get lost in the red curls. Dizzy stared at her with big blue eyes and didn’t move, like she was under a spell or something.
Before she left, she’d crouched down close to me. “I’ll come back soon, I promise,” she’d whispered.
But it was a lie. She never came back. Probably never planned to. It was just a nicer way of saying goodbye.
Half my life, I waited for her. And then one day I decided, to hell with it. If she didn’t care about us, why was I caring about her? It was like a balloon in my chest popped. I don’t know why I’d hung on to a promise someone made to an eight-year-old. People lie to kids all the time.
After she left, Dad made us swear we wouldn’t tell anyone at school. That lasted about five minutes for Dizzy. But who believes a five-year-old? Her friends came running to me for the truth. Dizzy was crying, her eyes puffy, cheeks red and blotchy because the girls didn’t believe her. I could have told the truth, defended my little sister. Instead, I shook my head. “She’s lying,” I told her friends. “Deliar,” I whispered at her. Some of the kids heard me. They started calling her Deliar, too. I remember how mad I was, at Dizzy for spilling the secret and at Dad for making us keep it. But mostly at myself for protecting Georgia over Dizzy.
Over the years, I’ve tried to make sense of how I feel about Georgia. I’ve imagined conversations and written letters that I never sent. I’d like her to know that we were doing fine without her. Coming back the way she did was a pretty shitty thing to do. Just when my memory of her had faded, she showed up, only to disappear again.
I hadn’t noticed Dizzy’s song had ended. She looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I plastered a smile on my face. Thinking about the past made me morose. I’d be better off filing it away in a mental drawer and slamming it shut. Nothing was going to change, not now. Georgia had had her chance ten years ago and she’d left us on the table. Forgotten leftovers from a life she didn’t want.