brine, brillo, loner, bile, lore, robe, rob, bone, lion
When we got inside, Mom asked me to tell her everything. Having told the worst of it at the police station, I figured I might as well come one hundred per cent clean. So I did tell her everything, from start to finish. On the one hand, it felt good to get it all off my chest because I wasn’t used to keeping so many secrets from her. On the other hand, I wasn’t so dumb as to think that my belated honesty would suddenly make everything A-OK.
When I was finished, she was quiet for a long time.
‘I can’t believe that you lied to me like that. Over and over again.’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry’ seemed pretty lame.
‘You never used to lie. We used to tell each other everything. Then we moved to Vancouver and, for some reason, that all changed.’
It was like she was talking to herself more than to me. I couldn’t hold back a huge yawn; it was one o’clock in the morning and it had been a long day.
‘You’re exhausted. We’ll pick this up in the morning.’ She stood and held out her hand to help me off the couch.
I went to bed and lay under my Buzz Lightyear sheets, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.
Then I turned to the photo of my dad. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,’ I whispered.
I knew I wouldn’t sleep a wink.
Next thing I remembered, sunlight was streaming in through my basement window and my clock read 11:00 A.M. I’d slept like a log for ten hours straight.
When I wandered into our living room, Mom wasn’t there. I looked in her room, but she wasn’t there either. I felt a sudden rush of panic and I yelled out ‘Mommy?’ like a five-year-old. I kind of looked like a five-year-old too, standing there in my rocket-ship pajamas, which were way too small for me now and even had a new hole right by my you-know-what.
But then there she was, walking through the front door. I was flooded with relief, but only for a moment because I saw how grim she looked.
‘You’re up,’ she said.
‘Were you out shopping?’
She shook her head. ‘I was upstairs, talking to the Economopouloses.’
‘About what? Is Cosmo OK? Is he home?’
She started tidying up things that didn’t need tidying, like moving a cushion an inch or two, and lifting up a plant, then putting it right back down in the same spot. ‘I don’t know, nor do I care, about where Cosmo is or how he is. I was giving our notice.’
My heart sank. I knew what ‘giving notice’ meant because we’d done it over and over again – in Calgary, in Edmonton, in Regina, and in Kelowna. It meant that we were leaving.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ve been making some calls,’ she said. ‘Apparently they need sessionals in English lit at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg.’
‘Winnipeg?’
‘Who knows, maybe this time I’ll get lucky and be offered a full-time position.’ She looked almost hopeful.
‘But why?’
‘I’m surprised that you even need to ask me that.’
‘What about Bob? I thought you liked him.’
She shrugged. ‘Your well-being is far more important to me than any man.’
‘Mom, please. My well-being is weller than it’s ever been. And I’m sorry I lied, unbelievably, enormously sorry, but I don’t want to move again—’
‘What you want is irrelevant, Ambrose. You clearly can’t be trusted to make reasonable decisions on your own behalf, so I have to make them for both of us.’
‘But I have friends here. Real friends. Not just Cosmo and Amanda, but all the Scrabble Club people.’
‘Ambrose, those people aren’t your friends. I saw a documentary once about people who join Scrabble Clubs. More often than not, they’re a bunch of misfits.’
‘You haven’t even met them! And has it ever crossed your mind that I’m a misfit?’
‘Don’t say that about yourself.’
‘And that every time we go somewhere else and I have to try to start over, I fit in even less? And this time, finally, I’ve met some people who accept me for me, and I don’t care if they’re older or whatever.’
‘Well, I care …’
‘You know what I think?’ I shouted. ‘I think you like it when I don’t have friends because then all I have is you, and it’s just you and me against the world. And maybe that’s why you want us to leave again because I’m finally happy, Mom, I’m happy! But maybe you’d rather I be miserable, like you. So instead, we’re going to keep moving and twenty years from now, I’ll be a total loser who still lives at home with you, but maybe that’s what you want. Because it’s the only way you’ll have a piece of Dad with you forever.’
By now tears were rolling down my face, and I must’ve looked totally pathetic in my rocket-ship pajamas with one testicle peeping through, but I was beyond caring. Then I saw that my mom was crying too.
‘That is a terrible thing to say.’
Maybe it was, but I couldn’t help it. The words just came flooding out, words that had been there, hiding, for a long, long time. ‘I think you’ve gotten so used to being miserable, it’s just easier to stay that way. It’s just easier not to trust anyone, to just keep to yourself and drink too much wine all the time. And I feel sorry for Dad because it must make him so sad to see what a bitter bitch you’ve become.’
She slapped me hard across the face.
I was going to make a run for the door, but even though I was more emotional than I’d ever been in my whole life, I still had enough sense to remember that a) I was in my pajamas and b) that you could see one of my nuts. So instead I ran into my bedroom, which was anticlimactic since I didn’t have a door and beads don’t slam.
I waited for my mom to come in and apologize for the slap because she had never, ever hit me before. But instead, I heard our front door open and close.
After a few minutes, I got up and went into the living room. She’d left me a note that read, Gone out to clear my head. Back in an hour. She’d written an XO at the bottom of the note because we’d made a vow to each other years ago to never leave mad.
I gazed at the note. Then I walked back into my room and got changed into my purple cords and a T-shirt. I rummaged around for the backpack I’d used for school and filled it with two pairs of underwear, one pair of socks, one T-shirt, a rain jacket, and my library book. I tried to stuff my dad’s sweater in too, but it wouldn’t fit, so I tied it around my waist.
Then I went into the kitchen and used up almost a whole loaf of spelt bread, making cheese sandwiches. I filled a big water bottle and placed it in its own pouch at the side of the pack. My EpiPen went into the outer pouch. I found an old sleeping bag in the closet. It wouldn’t fit into the backpack either, so I grabbed a canvas shopping bag and put it into that instead.
I was just about to leave when I thought of three more things.
I took our Scrabble board from the shelf and stuck it into the canvas shopping bag next to the sleeping bag. Then I went back into my bedroom and got my quarter collection out from under the bed. I poured as much of it as I could carry into my backpack’s hidden inner pouch. Last but not least, I grabbed the photo of my dad from my bedside table and wedged it gently between the sleeping bag and the Scrabble game.
Then I tied up my Ikes and walked out, locking the door behind me.
I dropped my backpack behind the same tree Silvio had hidden behind only last night, then I knocked on the Economopouloses’ door. Mrs E answered. She’d been crying. I kind of threw myself at her and we hugged each other for a long time. ‘Oh, Ambrose,’ she said, ‘I’m going to miss you so much.’
‘Me, too.’
I cried a little as she squeezed me tight, then I asked her if Cosmo was back.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘He seemed OK, but I’m worried for him.’
‘It’ll be alright,’ I said. ‘He didn’t do anything wrong.’
She nodded and blew her nose into her handkerchief. ‘But, sometimes, when somebody’s done something wrong before … they think he’ll do it again.’
‘Yeah, but there were witnesses. Me and Amanda.’
She sniffed again. ‘She called me this morning. Such a nice girl. And you, you’re such a nice boy.’
I told her I’d see her later, then I grabbed my backpack from its hiding spot. I walked down to the bus stop at Bayswater and West 4th Avenue and, a few minutes later, I boarded the number four.
I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I was doing. I only knew that I wasn’t moving again. If mom really wanted to leave, she’d have to leave without me.