Y: A Novel (19 page)

She drives all the way to Mile Zero, and by the time they get out of the
car and walk down the long staircase to the beach, it’s almost dark. They sit on the
biggest log they can find and look out to Port Angeles. The log is wet from the spray
and soaks through my mother’s coveralls. Harrison gets that look in his eye, and she
takes him in her arms and lets him talk.

“When I was a teenager I used to suck off guys in the bathroom for drugs,” he says,
and pretends he’s giving head. His lips are dry and cracked, and Yula runs her finger
over them. He gets in these moods more and more frequently, needing to confess his
past to her, needing to be babied. She tries to listen but her thoughts are with Eugene.
She needs to get back.

My mother picks up a big smooth rock and lobs it into the ocean. Her belly aches and
she rubs it, slips her hand inside her coveralls, and feels the incredible warmth
radiating from inside her. “Tell me why you quit the bakery.”

But now Harrison is irritated by her questioning—he’s so
fucking
damaged, she thinks—and doesn’t want to talk. She prods anyway. “Tell me what happened
this time.”

The waves are quiet. It isn’t too windy to talk. When he doesn’t respond, she looks
at my father and yells in his ear, “I’m bothering you, aren’t I.”

“Don’t be mean to me,” he says, digging his finger into his sneaker. “Listen. My brother
gave me this incredible shit, not like the stuff you get in the city. It’s at the
house.”

“What do you know about the city?” She feels him warming back up to her, and so she
runs her fingers down the back of his neck and fiddles around in his hair. He likes
this. He closes his eyes.

“It feels like bugs are crawling in and out of my bones,” he says. “When I do this
shit, it ends like that.” He snaps his fingers and then gestures to Yula’s pregnant
belly. “After—you should try some with me.” She leans in to him, lets him cradle her.
He takes another joint out of his pocket and waves it in front of her face.

“I can’t,” she says. “I have to get back to Eugene.”

Harrison lets go of her and she watches him walk down the beach, balancing on logs
with his arms outstretched, his cheap sneakers slipping
every couple of steps, his ankle threatening to twist, the sound of his footsteps
on the rocks and sand. She climbs the long staircase that leads to the car, slowly,
holding the wet metal rail in the dark. It is frightening here; my mother has forgotten
how dark it gets, that this is a place where homeless men live. She can see their
fires farther along the beach; if she kept walking she would meet one, or a group
of them, all of them high. They think they’re psychic here; if you grow up in the
woods you think you’re some kind of visionary, and now in the parking lot, where Quinn’s
car waits, there are four men in a Volkswagen camper, bearded men, looking at her,
waiting for her to leave so they can claim her spot, the best part of the beach on
Dallas Road at night, right under the lookout. The men run their eyes over her belly.
She looks behind her for Harrison and holds her breath.

When he finally appears at the top of the stairs, his eyes are bloodshot, the joint
in his hand smoked down to a roach. He waves to one of the men in recognition.

“That’s Darryl,” he says to Yula. “Let’s stay a little longer. Ten minutes, that’s
all.”

It’s hard to say what happened next, or why so many hours later my mother was asleep
in the back of the Volkswagen camper, peacefully high on weed. At eighteen, she still
sleeps like a child: deeply and happily. Her hand rests on her pregnant belly, and
her eyelids flutter as she dreams. My father is on the beach with the men. They pass
around a bottle of Irish whisky. It is three in the morning and their campfire is
smoldering, but they’re all too drunk to be cold.

“I hate my life. I hate life,” my father is saying, letting the waves slop up underneath
his boots. He leaves the group of men, walks to the pay phone at the top of Clover
Point, and calls his brother, Dominic, who lives a couple of blocks away. He is so
high that at first he holds the phone away from his body, unsure for a second what
it is.

“You up?” he says into the phone. “Can you drive us home?”

IX.

b
y sixteen, it is clear what I am and what I am not. I’m not going to be a supermodel—Vaughn
didn’t tell the police that my mother was only five feet tall and that her shoulders
were almost twice as wide as her hips, giving her the build of a miniature linebacker.
This becomes my build. It also becomes clear that I am completely blind in my left
eye now, though we still don’t know what or whom to attribute that to. I get headaches;
I can’t see in 3-D. I’ve gotten used to it. I don’t like fickle men (are they all
fickle?), and I don’t like Baptists or people who can’t make up their minds about
people being gay.

Miranda and I are still tense with each other. There’s a kind of desperation that
comes from having a small family, a palpable strain between her and me, especially
when Lydia-Rose isn’t around. Each of us tries too hard—each must encompass, for the
other, an entire family combined. When I can’t take it anymore, I go down to Dallas
Road and watch the tide come in. I try to be grateful that I live in this beautiful
place. I try not to be so restless. But I feel like I grew up on the moon. When you
live on an island, all you can think is, “How am I going to get off it?”

Some of the kids at school get cars for their birthdays. Miranda gives me a bus pass
and a five-dollar bill. She says if I fold it a certain way I can
make Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s head look like a mushroom, but I’ve got other plans.

“Ticket to Tsssshhwassen,” I say, my right eye focused hard on the queer spelling
under Destinations. “That’s Vancouver, right?”

“Yeah. Well, almost. You get the bus, little missus. Traveling alone?” He pushes the
ticket under the glass but keeps it under his thumb. “Nine dollars.”

I start counting.

Here’s a trick: mind over matter. When you’re counting five bucks in change but it’s
got to add up to nine, say “twenty-five” instead of “five” when you throw down a nickel.
They’re almost the same size.

“Safe trip.”

“Yup. Thanks.”

The ferry’s engine rumbles to a start and so does my stomach. I stand on the deck
and watch the water move in big white sprays. Most people have cameras. The wind picks
up, rattling the tarps slung over the safety boats, and I watch the island move farther
and farther away. My hair is in my face, in my mouth. The air is salty and cold, but
the sun is hot on my back. When the ship’s whistle sounds, it is so loud that I jump.
Someone behind me says “Let’s get a hot dog” and I dig in my pocket for more change
but find one lousy paper clip instead.

The inside of the ferry is warm and smells like vinegar. After one safety announcement
ends, another begins. This goes on for what feels like an hour. I wonder what everyone’s
so worried about.

Here’s another trick: walk up to the vending machine, slide in a paper clip, press
A5 or B6, or whatever.

“What? Hey!
Hey!
This thing ate my dollar! Give me my chips! Aw, c’mon, I don’t have another dollar—”

“’Scuse me? Honey? Here’s a dollar.” It’s a nice mom or grandma, and I hope she buys
me a root beer, too. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Shannon.”

“You traveling by yourself?”

“Yeah. I have to take the bus into town. I’m pretty hungry, too.”

The woman looks behind her, searching for her husband. “Maybe we could give you a
ride. Why don’t you come over to where we’re sitting and we’ll see if we can work
something out.”

Here’s the thing: I’m not trying to be a user, but people are curious about me. They
stand and stare and try to figure out if I’m mentally slow or what it is exactly that
makes me so odd looking—I’m saying I pique their interest. I’m saying they’re very
happy to give up a dollar or a seat in their car to find out what’s wrong with me.

“Hugh, this is Shannon. She has to take the bus all the way into town by herself,
so I thought we—”

“Sure we could! Hi, Shannon. I see you’ve met my wife—”

“My name’s Belle, dear. I forgot to tell you my name.”

I smile at her and admire her little outfit, which is color coordinated, right down
to her clip-on earrings and ankle socks. Everything is the same magenta shade. Her
husband taps her leg with a shaky hand. He’s wearing a Rotary Club vest and blue jeans
with an elastic waist. They look like the nicest and most naive people in the world.

“Plenty of room in the car, Shan,” he says. “Our kids grew up years ago—where you
going all by yourself?”

I have to stop and think about this, because I don’t know the answer. I want to get
off the island; I want to get away from Miranda and Lydia-Rose for a while. I want
to see what it feels like to be alone. Miles and miles of alone, big empty stretches
of alone, endless trails through dark green woods alone, pebbled beaches and nights
spent with only driftwood for a pillow—alone, alone, alone. “Vancouver?”

“Yes, dear, but where do you want us to drop you? Is someone meeting you at the bus
station? I hope they won’t find it odd, us giving you a ride. Will they find that
odd?”

“No, I don’t think so. The bus station is fine, thank you so much.”

“Belle, why don’t you offer the girl a piece of your Toblerone?”

By the time we’ve rounded Active Pass, Belle and Hugh have bought me a tuna sandwich
and another bag of potato chips. It’s my sixteenth
birthday, but I’ve told them I’m twelve, and Hugh says that when he was twelve he
was independent also.

“Had a job at the shoe store,” he says. I can tell he’s a nice man, that he’s been
good to Belle. I guess they’re in their sixties, but I can’t really tell. Neither
of their children has married, and that makes them sad. They want grandchildren. Belle,
I bet, wishes she had a granddaughter like me, only not so funny looking.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Belle asks.

“A firefighter. Or dog trainer.”

The police find me the next day at a homeless shelter on Burrard Street, just around
the corner from the Y. Vancouver has a bigger Y than Victoria does; I think, actually,
it has more than one. Miranda called the police after I’d been missing for twelve
hours, and my description was faxed to every station in B.C. Short; stocky; frizzy
blond afro; lazy eye. I’m hard to miss.

“You’re Shannon, I bet,” one of the officers said and held my arm tight.

I had an okay time. Vancouver smelled like rain and pizza. The Sky-Train was like
a big white snake that darted all over and into parts of town where no one spoke English.
Everywhere I went, someone wanted my money for drugs. It’s a gray city, mostly because
the buildings are made of glass and the sky is gray. Someone should have thought this
through a bit.

I met a lot of people in fur coats. Some were homeless; some were rich. Everyone gave
me a dollar or two. One lady paid me three bucks to hold her poodle while she went
for lunch, and I met a guy who hadn’t slept or eaten in six days. He said it was the
crystal meth. He told me about the homeless shelter, and we walked together and talked
about hot dogs.