Emily For Real (8 page)

When Mom and Dad and I are having supper, Mom asks, “Why didn't you invite your friend for supper?”

“Maybe next time,” I say.

“Seems like a nice enough guy,” says Dad.

I give Dad a sideways look to see if remembers what I told him about Leo being just a friend or if he's jumping to any romantic conclusions. But he's concentrating on mashing butter into his potatoes. When he finishes that, I know he'll want the salt and pepper, so I put them beside him.

Mom looks at how much salt he shakes on his potatoes, but she doesn't say anything this time.

When I was a little kid and wouldn't eat my vegetables, Dad would mash my potatoes and smooth them flat on my plate with his knife. Then he'd spread butter in a very thin layer across the top. He'd carve even rows up and down and side to side, creating a grid of buttered potato squares. Then, one by one, he'd lift up those squares with my fork and offer them to me like a special treasure. I'd eat the whole grid that way. Sometimes eating isn't about the food.

After supper I'll call Aunt Em to let her know that the pressure's off about Leo's father's truck. I'm not going to bother telling Mom and Dad anything about it now that it's a non-story. Maybe someday, like when I'm twenty or something, and we're sitting around talking about old times, I'll tell them about the day Leo and I took a ride in his father's 18-wheeler and left it at a picnic park. I can picture Mom, biting her lip and worrying like crazy about something that happened so long ago. Dad'll probably say he's glad he didn't know about all the trouble his little girl was getting into, and I'll be thinking that I'm glad he didn't too.

Before I get a chance to call Aunt Em, she calls us. Dad answers the phone. Obviously she has something important to tell him because he gets quiet after he says hi. I'm hoping she isn't saying anything about Leo's father's truck, assuming I would've told Mom and Dad by now.

Then Dad says, “You're kidding.”

He listens some more while Mom and I watch him standing there with his back to us.

“So when'd she find out?” He turns around and looks at us. “Sure. We're just finishing supper. Okay.” He hangs up the phone.

I'm thinking,
When did who find out what?
but I don't say anything.

“Emma's coming over. She says that Cynthia Maxwell's daughter flew in from Toronto and phoned her just now.”

“Her daughter's here?” says Mom, probably thinking like I'm thinking that Mrs. Maxwell said her daughter didn't know about Granddad and definitely not about any of us, either, so how come she'd show up here?

“She knows Dad was her father. Now she wants to meet us. Tomorrow sometime.”

The plot thickens.

When Aunt Em gets here, she tells us that Cynthia Maxwell's daughter's married and works for some supposedly well-known magazine that none of us ever heard of. Dana is her name. “Pronounced Dan-a,” says Aunt Em.

Mom says tomorrow we'll have dinner together here, and she'll make lasagna with no meat because, according to Aunt Em, Dana's a vegetarian. I like Mom's spinach and mushroom lasagna better than meat lasagna, anyway.

Wonder what Cynthia Maxwell's thinking now that her big secret's not a secret anymore.

Eight

Not that I have a problem with it or anything like that, but I really wasn't expecting Dana to be married to a woman. And I know for certain that Mom and Dad and Aunt Em are trying not to have totally stunned looks on their faces right now. Which makes us all seem like we live in the dark ages.

Dana's calm and cool. Like she doesn't even notice our stunned faces. She's thrilled to be at this family reunion. “I'm Dana,” she says with this big smile. “And this is Myra.”

“I'm Gerald. Gerry,” says Dad. “And this is Emma. And my wife Winnie. And Emily.”

Everyone says hi but no one hugs. It's weird. Awkward. Like Granddad's standing right here in the middle of this family group saying,
Over my dead body
.

“Let me take your coats,” says Dad.

We go into the living room where there's a fire in the fireplace and candles lit on the coffee table.

“It gets dark so early this time of year,” says Mom, maybe to explain the candles, but probably just to fill up the empty air space all around us.

“And it's not usually this cold in November,” says Aunt Em.

What would people do if they didn't have weather to talk about at times like this? When we're all thinking private and confusing things, like whether Granddad ever met Dana and if he knew she's a lesbian who's married or whether Dana had a clue that her mother was having an affair with a married man for almost a quarter of a century.

Myra sits on the sofa and Dana sits beside her. They make a nice couple. Myra's about the same height as Dana, but Dana is quite a bit bigger. Dana's hair is very short. Myra's hair is flying all over the place with natural-looking curls. It gives her a kind of whimsical look. I can't picture her being unhappy. She has a glittery purple scarf with braided fringes and a soft green sweater. Dana's wearing jeans and a white T-shirt under a black V-neck sweater. Basic.

“I like your earrings,” I say to Myra. They're dangly purple earrings shaped like tropical fish.

She tucks a mass of curls behind one ear and says, “Dana bought them today at a sweet little craft shop down at the harbor front.”

“Historic Properties,” says Dana. She smiles and puts her hand on Myra's knee and leaves it there.

Dana doesn't look much like Dad and Aunt Em. More like what Cynthia Maxwell would've looked like when she was in her thirties.

“Well,” says Dad.

“You got that right,” says Dana and laughs. “Mom's not too happy about me coming here, as you might expect. But you already know she's not into transparency.” She gives another laugh. “In a way I'm glad Dad passed away before all this floated up to the surface,” she says. “He definitely believed I was his daughter, always saying how much I looked like the portrait of his mother. There actually is some resemblance, too.” Another laugh. “You would've liked Dad. Easygoing. Kind.”

I expect Mom to say that this man was the opposite of Granddad, but she gets up and says, “I'll leave you to your conversation while I do some last-minute dinner preparations.”

“May I help?” asks Myra, already standing up.

“No, dear. You relax.”

“Preparing food is relaxing,” she says, and follows Mom into the kitchen.

I'm not going anywhere.

Dad and Aunt Em look at each other and then at me.

“I'm okay with Emily here,” says Dana, picking up on their vibe. “We're all family. And I'm not about to repeat the secrecy scenario that Mom and Karl were into. What's the point?”

Over my dead body
, I hear again, like Granddad's sitting in that chair where he always sat, fuming about all three of his kids being here in the same room for the very first time.

So Aunt Em and Dad tell Dana about Meredith marrying Granddad when they were barely six years old and how she's at Harmony Hills now and doesn't understand that he died. They don't go into detail about the possible cause of the car accident, and I get that. Why give Dana something to feel bad about right now when she's so happy being here with us?

“We don't remember a lot about our mother. Just impressions and foggy memories,” says Aunt Em with a small smile. A melancholy smile.

They also tell about Granddad's insurance business and how he expanded and moved to Victoria Street, and that Dad owns the company now. But I notice they don't say anything about all those affair conferences Granddad went to for twenty-three years. They're sticking to the censored version of things.

Dad makes a joke about marrying Mom because he didn't know how to cook. He looks over at me and says, “Then Emily came along and nothing's been the same since.”

“He means that in a good way,” I say.

“When I look at you three, I see such a strong family resemblance. Wonderful,” says Dana.

Dad and Aunt Em are smiling at me, which makes me all self-conscious.

Dana tells us that she and Myra got married six years ago. Her mother wouldn't come to the wedding, but her father did. He said he was proud to see her marry such a fine person as Myra. Myra's parents were at the wedding and her brother and some cousins. “And, of course, all our friends,” she says.

I'm thinking she was lucky to have the father she had instead of her real father.
Birth father
, she calls Granddad.

“Mom eventually got over it,” she says. “We do lots of things together, especially since Dad died. Myra and I sometimes drive over to Montreal and we go to the symphony together. Or she comes to Toronto and we take her to musicals and shopping. She spends Christmas with us now.”

I'm listening to this but I'm starting to think about Brian because of Montreal and Christmas being topics of discussion. I know for a fact that as long as he's not around, it's easier.

“Let's go see if the table's set, Emily,” says Aunt Em. And I get the hint that it might be good for Dad and Dana to have a few minutes to talk alone.

During dinner we're all gabbing as if we've known each other for ages. Dana and Myra just got back from Paris where they go every year because that's where they had their honeymoon. They ask me about school, and I say that soon there'll be just one more semester left before I graduate. And when I tell them I'm planning to get a biology degree or a history degree but I don't exactly know what I want to do profession-wise, they don't act like I'm a misguided, directionless teenager like the counselors at school do. Aunt Em tells a few funny stories about clients, without saying their actual names, of course. All the while everyone keeps telling Mom that her lasagna is just the best, which it is. Myra asks Mom to email the recipe and she says she will.

They're staying at a B&B downtown and Aunt Em offers to drive them there.

“I guess this is the kind of thing sisters do for each other,” says Dana.

The way she says this makes us get all quiet, standing together there in the front hall.

“Brothers too,” says Aunt Em, smiling at Dad.

“I like having another aunt,” I say.

“Another two aunts,” Dana says, taking Myra's hand and giving me one of those calm and comfortable smiles.Aunt Em and I put dishes in the dishwasher. Mom and Dad watch TV together, probably debriefing. Wonder what Mom's saying about all this.

“So what's it like having a sister?”

“It doesn't quite seem real,” says Aunt Em.

“Does to Dana. You can tell.”

“I'm so used to it being just Gerry and me. Twins are in their own world. It's got something to do with sharing the same womb and being born minutes apart.”

I'm mesmerized by what I'm imagining. Two tadpole babies floating together for months. Bumping into each other. Squinting through their watery world to get a closer look. Until something clicks and they're pushing their way out. “Who was born first, you or Dad?”

“Me. By three minutes.”

“I think it'd be cool to have a brother or a sister.” I think of Caroline and Leo. How much she counts on him. How having a little sister keeps Leo from floating away like a balloon without a string. “Wonder why Mom and Dad only had me.”

Aunt Em suddenly gets this look on her face and I know she's about to say something serious. “Winnie had a baby, Emily. A boy. It was stillborn.”

This stuns me.

She looks over her shoulder as if somehow Mom could hear us. “I shouldn't have told you that.”

“Why don't I already know?”

Aunt Em looks toward the hallway again and then back at me. “I think eventually they'd tell you.”

“I'm not a kid. I understand about stillborn babies.” I'm miffed.

“I don't want you to let on that you know.”

“Oh, great. Now you're just like Granddad.”

“It's not like that, Emily.”

“It is like that!” I didn't mean to raise my voice so much.

“What are you two disagreeing about?” Mom's carrying two empty teacups. She looks very relaxed, so I'm thinking the debriefing was a good thing.

“Nothing, really.” I take the cups from Mom. I want to tell her I know about her stillborn baby. I want to tell her I understand.

“Thanks, dear,” says Mom as I put the cups in the top rack.

When I'm in bed, I can't sleep. I'm trying to picture Dad and Mom and their stillborn baby. Did they get to hold him? Did they have a name picked out?

Then I think about Leo, who's by himself right now with his idiot father somewhere in Newfoundland and his mother in rehab and his sweet little sister Caroline, curled up sleeping at Jane's in a bed that's not even hers. Probably Leo's having a hard time getting to sleep too.

“What's the difference? It's got nothing to do with you, anyway. It happened before you were even born.”

When I told Leo about Dana and Myra, he just said, “Whatever.” But then, for some illogical and highly emotional reason, I go and tell him about Mom's stillborn baby, and how no one told me about him until Aunt Em let it slip last night.

“It's got everything to do with me. It's my father and my mother and he would've been my brother.”

“Would've been but isn't.”

“You don't have emotions.”

“I don't waste emotions.”

Just past Leo's shoulder I see the girl with the flute coming into the cafeteria. Speaking of wasting emotions. She's looking around and when she doesn't find whoever it is she's looking for, she leaves.

“What?” he says, looking over his shoulder because it's obvious I've been watching someone.

“Not what. Who.”

“Then, who?”

“The girl with the flute. She was just here, but she left.”

He gives me this look. “Mind your own business.”

“Touchy,” I say in an exaggerated way.

He grabs his milk carton and sandwich wrap and stands up. “Gotta go.”

“She turned right.”

He pretends he doesn't hear this, but I know he did because when he leaves the cafeteria, he turns right.

“Emily!” It's Jenn, with Ronny beside her. “Where's your man?”

“Funny,” I say.

They sit down across from me. Now I'll look totally ignorant if I get up and leave.

Jenn grins like there hasn't been a bump in our friendship. Ronny starts to fill his face with hamburger and fries.

“We should do something sometime,” says Jenn.

“Meaning?”

“The four of us. A movie or something.”

Ronny doesn't respond to this idea. He's looking off into nowhere as if chewing food's a complicated job.

“We're not dating.”

“I say give this new guy a chance.”

“You're not listening.”

Ronny looks over at me with one cheek stuffed with food. He wasn't listening either. It's like two blank walls are sitting across from me.

I get up and leave, figuring the blank walls won't realize that I'm being totally rude.

Leo and the flute player are on the stairs. She's a couple of steps above him so he's looking up at her which must be weird because he's used to being the one looking down. I stop so I don't mess things up by walking past them. But the flute player looks directly at me and gets this very uptight expression on her face. I know exactly what she's thinking and she's 100 percent wrong. She cuts off the conversation with Leo and hurries up the stairs.

Leo doesn't move.

“She's jumping to conclusions,” I say when I'm standing beside him.

I don't bother telling him that the flute player isn't the only person at this school who's jumping to conclusions. Be fun, though, to see the look on his face if I told him about Barbie's plan for us to double-date with her and Ken. “And don't tell me to mind my own business again.”