pace, cepe, cape, cap, ace, ape, pea, pee, pa
THE SKY IS different here. More blue and more vast. I gaze up at it as my mom and I drive down the highway in a rental car.
It’s my thirteenth birthday, July 19th.
It was almost exactly two months ago that I ran away to Granville Island. We had our dinner at the Economopouloses’ that night, and Mr and Mrs E and Cosmo and Amanda were all waiting for us. They each had a turn at crushing me with hugs. When they finally stopped, my body felt bruised and tired but also good.
The dinner was delicious. Mrs E had gone all out, and I stuffed myself with lamb and tsatziki and dolmades and salad and roasted lemony potatoes and her famous peanut-free baklava.
The conversation wasn’t too bad either. It had its ups and downs, but my mom actually listened to what I had to say. I told her again how happy I was in Vancouver and in this apartment. I told her how much I loved the Economopouloses and the Scrabble Club and especially Cosmo, who’d taught me things that, whether she liked it or not, I needed to know. ‘Like how to stand up for myself,’ I said. ‘Like how to have more self-confidence, even when I feel like a speck.’
What I didn’t admit was, thanks to Cosmo, I was even thinking of retiring my purple cords. But he didn’t need to know that. It would just go to his head.
I won’t lie and say it was perfect. I could tell my mom was still having trouble with a lot of it. Cosmo tried to reassure her. ‘Ambrose is a really special kid, Irene. He’s taught me things, too. He saw the possibility in me, which I wasn’t seeing in myself. I feel lucky to count him as my friend.’
That made Mrs E cry and she pulled out her hanky and blew her nose, making a sound like a Canada goose. Then I looked at my mom and I saw that she was crying too.
‘His father was like that,’ she said. ‘Always seeing the good in others. Always seeing the possibility.’
That brought tears to Amanda’s eyes, and even Cosmo looked all choked up. Then I started thinking about my dad and how it really did suck that I never got a chance to know him, and pretty soon we were all crying. Mr E had to leave the table and watch sports in the other room because he couldn’t take it anymore.
After dinner, all the grown-ups got drunk on ouzo. At first they were laughing a lot, but then they all got maudlin and embarrassing. Mom and Amanda apologized to each other, which seemed kind of phony to me because I could tell they still didn’t like each other very much. Finally, at one o’clock in the morning, I had to drag my mom back to our apartment. As she tried to get her shoes on, she kept saying, ‘I love you guys,’ and her words were all mushy and slurred. Eventually she picked up her shoes and walked back to our apartment barefoot.
The next morning she told me we weren’t moving to Winnipeg, or to anywhere else for that matter. She also told me that if I ever pulled a stunt like running away again, or any other extreme tactic to get my own way, she would have me drawn and quartered.
I could safely say, this was an idle threat.
There are a lot of things that are still hard for my mom. Like thinking about me driving with Cosmo, whom she still doesn’t totally trust. She’s asked me to always sit in the backseat with my seat belt tightly fastened, and on the driver’s side because, apparently, it’s the passenger side that gets hit more often. I’ve promised, and so has Cosmo. I can’t help but notice that every time she sees him, she always checks out his eyes to see if he’s high. I’m pretty sure Cosmo’s noticed it too, but he never says a word.
She’s also made me promise not to go back to the climbing gym until she can afford to take me there and see it for herself. And every time we go into a restaurant, she still has to lecture the staff about my allergy, which I guess I’m kind of happy about because it saves me the trouble of doing it.
But she doesn’t hold my hand when we cross Broadway anymore, and she’s agreed that I can keep going to the Scrabble Club. She even came once, getting Jane to cover her summer-school classes so she could check it out. When she watched me play, I could tell she was really proud of me, especially when some of the other players told her how much they liked having me around.
Last night (the day before my birthday), I came home from picking up my first very own deodorant stick at the drugstore on Broadway because Mom and I had agreed that I kind of needed it. I walked into our apartment and almost had a heart attack when Mom, Cosmo, Amanda, and Mr and Mrs E all jumped up from behind the couch and yelled, ‘Surprise! Happy Birthday!’ Mom had made a massive cake, and Mr E grilled hot dogs and hamburgers on the barbecue in the yard. Mr and Mrs E gave me a cheque for fifty dollars, and Nana Ruth sent me another cheque for twenty, so altogether I had seventy bucks. Amanda and Cosmo gave me a Franklin, a sort of calculator for Scrabble players. You can punch in your letters and the Franklin will list all the words you can make. You can’t use it during a game, but it’s a great way to review your plays afterward.
‘We have one more gift for you, too,’ Amanda said, as I was trying out the Franklin. She reached into her purse and pulled out a brand-new MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER trophy, identical to the first one. I gave it a place of honor beside the photo of my dad on my bedside table.
Just before we cut the cake, Bob showed up. He and my mom hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks after the cooking class, but one night I heard Mom talking to him in a low voice on the phone and I’m pretty sure she was apologizing. Bob even brought me a gift. It was a book called The Catcher in the Rye, which sounds like a baseball book, but Bob tells me it isn’t.
And Mom gave me this: a road trip to Calgary. We left early this morning. When we get there, we’re going to stay with Nana Ruth. Then I’m going to play in the Calgary Scrabble Tournament. Mom, Cosmo, and Amanda entered me weeks ago, without telling me. We’re going to spend some time camping in the Rockies too, after the tournament. My mom’s even packed her camera, so she can take some nature photos. And for the first time ever, I’m going to see where my dad is buried, and while it may sound weird, that’s the part I’m looking forward to most.
‘The joke I was telling your father,’ she says to me now.
I look at her, confused.
‘The photo you have in your bedroom. You’ve always wondered what joke I’d told him to make him laugh like that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Knock, knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Little old lady.’
I groaned. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘I’m telling you the joke; at least play along.’
‘Fine. Little old lady who?’
‘I didn’t know you could yodel.’
‘And Dad laughed at that?’ But even as I said it, I realized I was laughing, too.
Mom smiled. ‘Dad and I laughed all the time. The quality of the joke was beside the point.’
‘Then have I got some knock-knock jokes for you. Knock, knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Orange.’
‘Orange who?’
‘Orange you glad you’re my friend?’
When I’m through telling her my top ten lamest knock-knock jokes, I turn around in my seat and look out the rear window. Cosmo and Amanda are in his Camaro behind us. They’re going to play in the tournament too, then head straight back to Vancouver because they both have to work.
I wave at Cosmo for the millionth time that day. And for the millionth time that day, he waves back.
then, dent, hen, net, thee, teen, heed, ten
THE END