Emily For Real (2 page)

Two

Jenn has her own car. Her father sold it to her for one hundred dollars a month, which she pays out of money from her job at the mall. It'll take her two years to pay for it, but it's still a good deal. And she gets 20 percent off clothes where she works.

Sometimes my mind swims with details like how much Jenn pays for her car and what percent she gets off clothes. I don't really plan to think about stuff like that, it just happens. Even if I look up at this tree and try to concentrate on how beautiful the sun is, shining through those yellow leaves, hundreds of yellow leaves like a brilliant tent over my head, I end up back where I was, thinking about one hundred dollars a month times two years equals $2400, which is a good deal for a car. And I'm thinking all this while I'm waiting for Jenn to pick me up for school.

“You do the math homework?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. Jenn finds school so easy, partly because she does all the work and partly because she's just brilliant. In grade two she got in trouble for reading a book upside down. The teacher thought she was being a smart-ass (not that she'd ever say it that way), but Jenn was just bored. After that I tried reading upside down. It's not easy.

“You won't get in trouble for not doing the math,” she says. “They know about your grandfather, don't they?”

“I don't want any sympathetic looks. Pathetic looks.”

Jenn laughs and gives me her best pathetic look. Then she says, “Linda's having a party Friday. Ronny'll be there.”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Come on, Em.”

“Come on what?”

She looks at me sideways for a nanosecond because she has to keep her eyes on the road. The look means that she knows that I know what she's talking about.

But I fake that I don't get it. “What?”

“I refuse to state the obvious.”

“Well, I don't get the obvious, then.”

“You can't tell me Ronny's not hot. You even thought he was hot in grade four.”

“Okay, so Ronny's hot. So what?”

She turns into the school parking lot and concentrates on squeezing in between two cars. Then she switches off the engine, checks her teeth in the mirror, and runs her fingers through her bangs to mess them up. “It's not like Brian's the only male on this planet,” she says. “You haven't seen him for almost two months and then he calls you up and dumps you. Come on, Em. Forget Brian. Ronny's your
target
.”

Jenn's like that. Practical. When one situation's over, move on. She's left a lot of romantic wreckage behind her and didn't even hear the last tinkle of glass falling. She has her pick of any guy she wants. It's because of her looks: short brown hair, green eyes, small nose, big lips, small body, big breasts, white teeth, big smile. I could go on.
Target
, she says, because she has the power to aim.

“I don't want a target.”

“Yes, you do. Hey, there's Ronny.”

“If you say anything that even—”

“Hi, Ronny. Going to Linda's on Friday?”

Ronny's not looking at any of the bigs and smalls and whites of Jenn. He's looking at me. “You guys going?”

“Sure,” says Jenn. She's smiling because she can see Ronny's looking at me.

This reminds me of how I've been feeling ever since Brian left for Montreal. Just because he's not in the picture anymore, guys suddenly notice I exist. Like I'm some kind of manikin on display and everyone's window-shopping.

“See you there, then,” he says, and catches up to the guys he was with.

“Hot Ronny has the hots for you,” says Jenn with this silly grin and with her eyes blinking like flashbulbs are going off in front of her face.

“Don't exaggerate,” I say and she smirks.

After school I get it into my head to go see Meredith, which I've never done without Mom or Dad or Aunt Em. I want to ask her about Cynthia Maxwell, like I'm some kind of detective. I don't know why my brain's so fixated on this but it is. Maybe it's tired of being so fixated on Brian Brian Brian. Desperate for a diversion. Any diversion.

Jenn drives me to the nursing home, which is a big favor because it's halfway across the city. Harmony Hills isn't actually built on hills. There's only one floor, with two long corridors that meet in the middle where there's a big TV room with huge sofas and chairs that are usually empty. That's on one side of the hall, and on the other is a dining room that has tables with paper flowers in skinny vases. For Meredith (I've always called her Meredith because Mom and Dad and Aunt Em always call her that) life centers on going to that dining room three times a day. She has to walk with a walker but she can still feed herself.

“Hi, Meredith,” I say as I walk into her small room. She shares this room with Rose, who sleeps almost all the time in her chair by the window, like she's doing right now.

Meredith looks up at me from her own comfy chair. I think she's wondering who I am.

“Oh, look!” I say like it's a big surprise. “The flowers Dad brought the other day aren't wilted!” I'm thinking about how wilted everyone in this place is and maybe that's not such a great word to use under the circumstances. “They're beautiful! Pink! Your favorite color!” Even with all these exclamations, Meredith is just staring at me like I'm a TV.

One of the personal care workers comes in, maybe because of all the shouting I'm doing. She's wearing a blue top that looks like pajamas with teddy bears all over it. Why do they have to wear stuff like that with teddy bears and fluffy ducks when there's no kids around?

“I see you have company, sweetheart,” the care worker says to Meredith, gently touching her cheek. “Emily's here.”

I'm embarrassed because she knows my name and I never can remember any of the care workers' names. But then I notice that this person has a heart-shaped pin that says
Lucy
. Good clue. I'm brilliant.

“How's your family getting along?” she asks, meaning how are we coping with the fact that my grandfather is dead.

“Pretty good,” I say.

“Mr. Sinclair came to see Meredith every week. I think she misses him terribly.”

I put on a fake smile. Who's she kidding? Meredith misses no one because she remembers no one. Hello! Which suddenly makes me feel totally stupid coming here to ask about Cynthia Maxwell. Who'm
I
kidding?

The care worker leaves and I sit on the edge of Meredith's bed next to her chair. I take her hand, partly to get her attention and partly because that's what Dad and Aunt Em do when they come to see her, like if she can't remember you, she can feel you. “We had a big reception for Granddad yesterday,” I say. “Lots of people came to pay their respects.”

“Oh?” She says this like she's not really interested, then looks down at our hands.

“And Cynthia came too. Cynthia Maxwell.”

That name obviously doesn't ring a bell.

“Dad and Aunt Em said they didn't know who she was but she said she worked at Granddad's office a long time ago before she moved away.” I didn't say “to Montreal” because I don't like admitting that city exists.

Then Meredith looks at me and smiles. “I didn't expect you today,” she says, but right away I know she doesn't mean that she actually knows I'm Emily and that this is Wednesday.

But I go with the flow. “Oh, I just thought I'd drop by after school. Boy, those teachers make us do so much lame stuff all day and then pile on more for homework.” I laugh so she'll know I'm joking.

“Where's Gerald?”

“He's probably still at work.” Then I humor myself and ask, “Do you remember anyone called Cynthia Maxwell who used to work with Granddad?”

When I get home, I probably won't tell Dad and Mom about visiting Meredith. I know they'll think it was a nice thing to do because there's Meredith, pretty much all by herself all day. But maybe start to clue in that something about me has changed and I'll have to explain about Brian. That I don't need.

Linda's place is packed with mostly people I know, but there's a big gap in who's here compared to a few months ago, and it's not just Brian I'm talking about. Tons of people aren't around anymore because of moving away to university or doing whatever else they're doing since graduating.

It's depressing.

Jenn hands me a beer and says, “Cheer up.” She clinks the bottom of her bottle against the bottom of mine like we have a conspiracy. She looks around at people standing and sitting and dancing and getting beers and I know she's trying to figure out how to rearrange everybody so I'm drinking this beer next to Ronny.

Then Ronny comes over and stands beside me. Jenn has no idea the power she has.

“Hey, there's Greg!” she says with pseudo excitement because I know Greg's not high on her list. She leaves Ronny and me standing there alone. Surprise.

Ronny's already had too many beers. He's leaning toward me at a precarious angle.

“How'd you do that?” I ask, because he has a small gash on the back of the hand that's holding his beer.

“Playin' with our dog,” he says. “I steal her fake bone and she goes nuts.”

I picture him laughing and rolling around on a carpet with a sweet little puppy yapping and bounding and trying to get her fake bone back. My fake heart gets all soft because of what I'm picturing. I drink some more beer.

When the song changes, Ronny takes my hand and we move away from the wall and start dancing, still holding our beers. Mine is pressed against his chest and his is resting on my back. I like being inside the leather smell of his jacket and the beer smell and the darkness of the room with my eyes closed and our bodies moving together exactly the same. I'm pretending he's Brian.

That's what I'm remembering, lying here on my bed. My head is pounding. I tried to throw up a while ago, but all I did was just spit out this bubbly beige stuff. Toilets can make you feel ashamed when you're looking into them like that.

Jenn'll be pushing me for details.

Nothing happened, really.

At some point Ronny and I left Linda's party and went over to his house, which was not that far. We were laughing and walking down the street drinking beers, with my arm around his waist and his arm around my shoulder.

His room is in the basement and he has his own door at the back of the house. You go down a few steps to get to the door. I remember wondering where the dog was because there was no sound of any dog when we went into the house. His room has fake wood walls and a blue carpet and two small lamps with black shades. He has a water bed that he said belongs to his brother who's in the army. Just the way that bed rolled and sloshed when I sat down on it made me think of puking. I fell back and closed my eyes.

Ronny took off his jacket—I heard it drop on the floor. The bed rolled and sloshed again when he crawled in beside me.

When we were kissing, I couldn't concentrate on feeling anything. I forget if I said something. My mind was all over the place. His hair was against my mouth and his mouth was on my neck. He moved all the way on top of me and pulled at the zipper on my jeans. All I could think of was that this was a big mistake.

But the mistake didn't happen. Ronny passed out. It felt like he was dead. I pushed myself deeper into the water bed and rolled him off me. Then I hauled on my shoes and jacket and left.

Still no dog. Maybe there never was a dog.

“What?”

They're all looking at me and I can tell I've just caught them talking about something they don't want me to know about. I hate that. “What?” I say again.

Mom leaves the room.

Aunt Em looks at Dad. “She is seventeen, Gerry.”

Dad looks at me as if he's trying to decide if I actually am seventeen.

“What?” I say again. Now I really have to know what's going on. In the back of my mind I'm thinking it has to do with Ronny and Friday night, but there's no way they could know about that. As if Ronny's going to call and say,
I think I had sex with Emily on Friday night but I can't remember much about it because I passed out
.

“But—,” says Dad and looks at the doorway where Mom just made her exit.

Then I suddenly think that something's wrong with Mom and they don't want me to know. “Is something wrong with Mom?” I'm very worried and they can see it.

“Okay, tell her if you want,” says Dad and he leaves the room too.

It can't be anything about Mom because of the way he said “if you want,” like it's nothing that he has to tell me. It's a choice. Aunt Em's choice, for some reason.

I don't say
What?
again, but I'm thinking it.

Aunt Em looks at her hands spread on the kitchen table like someone's about to paint her fingernails. Then she looks at me. “You remember Cynthia Maxwell.” It isn't a question, so I don't say anything. “Well, she phoned this morning. I was surprised she wasn't back in Montreal by now. Anyway, she invited me to tea at her hotel.”