Theories of Relativity Read online

  I wonder if she’s heard me.

  “How are you getting there?” She has.

  “Bus. I have a ticket.”

  She wraps her arms around herself for warmth. “So you’re going away for Christmas. I’ll miss you.”

  It’s the opening I need. “Look, why don’t you just blow this off?”

  “I can’t.” She looks nervously up and down the street. “Brendan wouldn’t like that.”

  “Who cares what Vulture likes?”

  “Stop calling him that,” she says. “I owe him money for food, clothes.”

  I hunker down beside her. “Yeah, I know. That’s what he does to people. He makes you owe him, and then you’re his. He’s a parasite. He lives off other people.”

  “But he’s been good to me,” Jenna argues weakly. “No one messes with me when they know I’m with Brendan.”

  “Is he good to you when he slaps you around? When he makes you work for him but doesn’t give you enough money to live on? Look at Amber. She was just like you. He used her, and now she’s no good to him, so he cuts her loose. She got pregnant working the streets for him.”

  She stares down at her shoes. I know she’s smart, so why can’t she see this? Is she that scared? I want to shake her.

  She climbs to her feet. “Let’s go.” She opens her hand and flashes a twenty-dollar bill. “Brendan doesn’t know about this. I earned it myself. You hungry?”

  What a question.

  “Whatever you want. My treat.”

  She tucks a cold hand inside mine and I’m in heaven.

  We get fries, burgers, and drinks at Mandy’s.

  “How did you get the money?” I ask.

  Jenna giggles. “This guy came up to me on the street and asked if he could see my boobs for ten bucks. I figure, why not? He’s just looking. So we go into this alley and I lift my T-shirt and he says if I let him touch one, he’ll give me twenty dollars.” She takes a sip from her drink. “I guess you can say I got a boob job.” She laughs.

  I push my plate away, feeling ill. “You should be more careful. Going into an alley with some guy. Shit! You could have been hurt.”

  She’ll never do that again if I get my way. I lean over the table. “Come to Granddad’s with me for Christmas,” I say.

  “What?”

  “I’ll take my ticket back and I’ll get two. We’ll go as far as we can, then we’ll pick up rides the rest of the way. You’ll like my granddad.”

  “I don’t know.” Jenna plays with her fries.

  “Vulture will have you hustling on the street soon and all the money will go to him. You want to be working the streets?”

  She won’t meet my eyes, and my heart sinks. She’s already been out there. What was it? A hand job? A blow job?

  “It doesn’t matter how much you work for him, you’ll never pay him off. He won’t let you. That’s how pimps work. I’d never do that to you.”

  Now she does look at me. “I know you wouldn’t. You’re sweet, Dylan,” she says.

  And that makes me feel like a fraud. Am I doing this because I’m sweet? Or amazingly selfish?

  “Okay. I’ll go with you to Murdock.” She smiles, and her face is radiant.

  My heart flops over.

  “What time do we leave?” she asks.

  “Five o’clock this evening. Meet me at the bus station at four. I’ll see to the tickets.” I scramble to my feet. Elated. “I got to go. I have stuff to do this afternoon, but I’ll see you later, right?”

  “Four o’clock,” she promises.

  I bend and kiss her lightly on the lips.

  Chapter 17

  Cheese stretches in long strings from the pizza in my hand to my mouth. Hamburgers, fries, and pizza. This is the most food I’ve had in months, and all in one day. To get bus fare, I stood at the double doors of the mall, and right away some guy gave me ten dollars. Christmas generosity, I guess. The bus comes and I shove the remainder of the savoury mess into my mouth and climb on. I’m going to drop off Micha and Jordan’s gifts. A black cloud threatens to lower over me as I realize I won’t see them Christmas Day. You’ll be with Granddad, I tell myself. And Jenna. And the cloud lifts.

  At the house, I am uncertain whether or not to walk in, so I ring the bell. The curtain moves in the window, and then the door opens a crack. “Yes?” my mother says, like I’m a complete stranger.

  “I brought some Christmas gifts for Micha and Jordan,” I say.

  The door opens wider. She glances quickly up and down the street. “Okay. Leave them with me. I’ll see they get them.”

  “I want to give them to them myself,” I say.

  “They’re out with Dan.”

  “I’ll wait. Can I come in?”

  “No,” she says. “Leave the gifts with me.”

  I sit down on the step. “I’ll stay here until they come.”

  “Why are you so much trouble?” she asks. “All your life you’ve been trouble. Dan had a lot of questions about you after you came last time. You and your big mouth.”

  “Did you tell him I was your firstborn?” I say.

  “Jeezus,” she says. She goes back in, leaving the door open, so I follow her.

  “I need my sweaters.” I head toward the bedroom I shared with Micha and Jordan.

  “I put your stuff in boxes in the basement.”

  That stops me dead. She’s erasing me from the family. I forget the sweaters and pull the remote car and CD player from my pack and place them under Dan’s Christmas tree.

  “You steal those?”

  “No. I have a job,” I tell her.

  “What kind of job?”

  “I’m a tutor at a computer lab,” I say grandly. “Actually, I have two jobs. I also sort mail for a company downtown.”

  Her eyes narrow as she takes in the gifts. “Must pay well,” she says.

  I shrug as I wander through to the kitchen and help myself to a pop from the fridge. “So what did you tell Dan about me?”

  She perches on the edge of a chair. “That you’re my sister’s boy.”

  “Nothing like starting out a marriage with complete honesty,” I say.

  “I’ll tell him when the time’s right.”

  I snort at that, and the carbonated fizz tickles my nose, making me sneeze.

  “I wish you’d leave,” she says.

  “I want to see Micha with his car,” I tell her. Stubbornness runs in the family. “I’m going to Murdock this evening.”

  She flinches, as if I’ve hit her. “Why?”

  “I’m going to see my granddad.”

  “I hate that place and everything to do with it,” she says. “You’re better off staying away.”

  “What did he ever do to you?”

  “What did he and his wife ever do for me?” she replies.

  “What about your parents? You want me to look them up for you? If they live there any more, that is.”

  “Oh, they’ll be there. They’d never move away. They don’t like change.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to see them? Show off us kids?” I ask, curious about these grandparents I’ve never met.

  My mother jumps to her feet, reaches into the back of a cupboard, and takes out a cigarette package. She taps one out, lights it, then opens the kitchen door to let the smoke out.

  “Something else you haven’t told Dan about?”

  She grimaces. “I’m trying to quit. But there are some things that drive me back to them. Like you. Or thinking about my parents.” She releases a stream of white smoke into the cold. “Real Bible-thumpers, the pair of them. Wanted me to be quiet and nice, keep my blouses buttoned to my neck, my skirts over my knees.”

  She takes another drag. “Everything was a sin with them. Dancing, music, smoking, laughing. It was a sin to be alive. I put up with it at first, but then I went insane. Everything they thought was a sin, I did it. They’d lock my door and I’d climb out the window. They nailed it shut and I pulled the nails out. I found the wildest bo
y in town, your dad, and went out with him. Then you came along.” She glares at me like I’d suddenly arrived on her doorstep one day just to ruin her life. “They wouldn’t help me. Told me I’d made my bed, so go lie on it. That’s real Christian charity for you. And your dad, he just cut out. Left me alone.”

  “But Grandma and Granddad. They helped you. I remember them buying me stuff, letting me stay with them.”

  “The kind of help I needed was money and they wouldn’t give me any. Said I wasn’t responsible enough. The money wouldn’t benefit you. You stayed with them a bit, but I couldn’t get any money from the government if you weren’t with me, so I had to keep you. I told them if their son didn’t pay support, they should pay if they wanted to see you, and they wouldn’t. Guess they didn’t want you that bad.” She smirks, and I hate her more than I’ve ever hated her before.

  “Tell Micha and Jordan I said Merry Christmas. Give them their gifts.” I don’t want to be in that house with her another minute.

  “There’s smoke in here,” I yell back over my shoulder as I walk through the living room, though I can’t really smell anything. But she’ll air it out, and Dan will wonder why the house is so cold, and there will be more questions.

  The city bus crawls downtown, people getting on or off at every stop on the route. My thumb is just about gnawed off by the time we arrive. I sprint the two blocks to the bus station, burst through the doors, and discover I’m ten minutes early. I debate exchanging my ticket but decide to wait until I find Jenna. The station is packed with holiday travellers, and I push my way through them, checking both entrances. No Jenna. By four-fifteen, the pizza in my stomach has begun to churn. I leave the station and look up and down the sidewalk, but there’s no sign of her there, either. The lineup at the ticket gate stretches deep into the station, and I should exchange my ticket, but I complete another circuit of the waiting room instead. I’m like Twitch. I can’t keep still.

  Finally, a loudspeaker announces boarding for the bus to Murdock. I do another frenzied search around the waiting room, then go to the gate. I think I knew deep down that I would go alone.

  Chapter 18

  The rain turns to sleet and then snow the farther north we travel. I stare out the bus window at houses lit with strings of coloured lights, imagining the excited kids and decorated trees inside. When I was little, I thought Christmas was beer bottles and fights, until television told me otherwise. Christmas is supposed to be about basted turkey, grandparents, and presents—lots of presents. One year, I discovered a turkey in our fridge. I decided to cook it myself, because then the rest of Christmas would all fall into place. Mom and an uncle, I can’t remember which one, were sleeping in the bedroom, so I cranked the temperature on the oven as high as it could go, dropped the turkey in a pan, and shoved it in. Hours later, Mom woke up screaming the house was on fire. Jordan and I were in the basement playing and hadn’t noticed the smoke billowing from the kitchen. How the hell was I supposed to know the plastic wrapper had to come off the turkey? For Christmas that year I got a sore ass that I couldn’t sit on for a week.

  A small part of me hopes that Dan works out, for Micha and Jordan. But it’s a really small part. Mostly, I want Micha and Jordan to need me. If they don’t need me, well, I guess I’m—nothing. No good to anyone. I poke my reflection in the eye. Even Jenna knows I’m nothing.

  Why didn’t she come to the bus station? Was it something as basic as my body odour? I sniff myself. I stink, but no worse than usual. It was the kiss! I shouldn’t have kissed her. Stupid bad-breath kiss. Maybe that’s why Einstein’s girlfriend, Mileva, moved to Hungary without him. He gave her a bad-breath kiss and she thought, yuck! Except Mileva was having a baby, so at least Einstein got to have sex with her.

  Outside now are long stretches of black, broken sporadically by a lighted window. Dread knots my stomach. Will Granddad want me? Why did I leave the city for all this dark? I shift over on the seat away from the window and watch the headlights slice through the dark and snow. The driver catches my eye in the mirror. “A white Christmas,” he says. “Though the driving will be hell if this keeps up.”

  I nod. His eyes flick to the road, then back again to me. “You the one going to Murdock?”

  I nod again.

  “Too bad. I could have gone right home to the family, but Murdock takes me half an hour out of my way.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  I slide back toward the window and dig out the CD player Glen gave me, feel a moment’s dismay when I realize it needs batteries, then find a pack of them in the bag, too. He thought of everything. I slip in a CD, press the plugs into my ears, and lean back, hoping the music will push all the thoughts out of my brain.

  Doesn’t happen.

  Glen. I don’t get him. Why does he bother with me? Why did he give those computers to the lab? What does he get out of it? I find his business card and turn on the light over my seat to read: Glen Matthews, President, TechSystems.

  TechSystems! They’re huge. They have the entire top four floors of the office tower! Maybe it’s a fake. I run my fingers over the embossed name. The card’s real. He’s president! I put the card away, lean back, and try to concentrate on the music.

  Real Bible-thumpers, Mom called her parents. I have an image of a man and woman whacking the hell out of their Bibles. Thump! Thump! Up the stairs to my mother’s bedroom. Thump! Thump! Lock her in so she can’t live. No wonder she’s so nuts. I should look them up just to give them a glimpse of what they did to their daughter. Show them me!

  I pat my coat pocket to reassure myself the return ticket is still there. That was a bit of a surprise, when the bus driver handed me back a portion of the ticket.

  I must have dozed off, because next thing I hear is a man yelling, “Murdock.”

  Half asleep, I gather up my things and crawl down the bus steps into the snow and wind and cold. The doors shut behind me and the bus leaves in a cloud of fumes. I stare after it, feeling abandoned. It had become a safe cocoon.

  I’ve been let off in front of a small store. The lights are on, so I go in. It’s an everything store, selling groceries, cards, cosmetics; doubles as a post office and, it seems, is also the bus station.

  “You it?” a man’s voice asks.

  “Huh?” I don’t see anyone.

  A shiny pink head with a fringe of white hair pops up from behind a counter. “You the only one off the bus tonight?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Good. I can close up then.”

  But where do I go?

  “Do you know Edward Wallace’s place?” I ask the man.

  “Yep. You go north out of town about ten minutes, turn left on the Old Cowpath Sideroad. Second farm on the right.” He studies me over the top of his glasses. “That’s ten minutes by car. Longer if you’re walking.”

  I stare out the store window at the drifting snow. I was so busy getting here, I never thought about what I’d do when I arrived. The man goes into the back and the store’s lights go out. I see a telephone to one side. I’ll call Granddad, and he’ll come and get me.

  “Can I use the phone?”

  “Make it quick,” the man says. He pulls on a heavy coat and jams a hat over the fringe.

  I sift through my pockets and come up with a quarter.

  “Is there a phone book?” I ask.

  “Ed’s not at the farm, if that’s who you’re calling.”

  Not at the farm? My heart plummets right to my feet. Shit! I didn’t think for one minute that he wouldn’t be here.

  “Where is he?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m his grandson, Dylan Wallace.”

  “Little Dylan.” He looks me up and down. “Well, you sure sprouted up and up and up.” He smiles at his own joke. “Ed used to bring you in here when you were small. Licorice.”

  “What?”

  “It was licorice you always wanted. The red kind.” He goes to a big jar on the counter and fishes out a string of red
licorice and gives it to me.

  Bewildered, I stand there holding it.

  “Your granddad sure missed you when you went away. Especially after Anne died.”

  I hear my granddad calling to my grandmother. “Anne! Storm brewing.” After he’d sniffed the air.

  “Ed didn’t know you were coming.” It’s not a question.

  I shake my head.

  “He’s not at the farm any more. He’s over at the Home. Been there most of the past year, but he’s real bad now. He could go any minute. Lung cancer.”

  The shock must show in my face because the man claps me sympathetically on the shoulder.

  “Guess you didn’t know that. Come on. I’ll give you a lift to the Home. They might not let you in, though. It’s pretty late.”

  I follow him outside and into the cab of a pickup truck. The engine groans and protests the cold, then catches, and we move through a black-and-white world.

  “Be up around your knees by morning.”

  “What?”

  “The snow,” he explains. “My name’s Jack Cody.” He sticks out a gloved hand and I shake it.

  Murdock is a small town, one main street with a few others branching off it. Jack turns down one of the branches and stops in front of a long, low building with the name “Murdock Home” engraved on a plaque.

  “Here it is,” he says. “Miriam’s on duty. She’s a good sort. Just tell her who you are.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  I wade through a snowdrift and walk up two steps to a set of double wooden doors. They’re locked. I ring the bell and press my ear to the door, but I don’t hear its shrill echo inside. I stab it again and hold my finger on it.

  My ear is against the door when it swings open, and I nearly fall inside. A woman in a purple pantsuit glares at me.

  “That bell is in perfectly fine working order,” she says.

  “Sorry. I’m looking for Edward Wallace.”

  “Not at this time of night you’re not.” She begins to shut the door.

  “I’m his grandson. I’ve been on a bus all night to get here,” I say desperately. “I didn’t know he was sick.”

  The door swings wider. “Step in,” she says. “You’re letting all the heat out.”