The Thirteen (3 page)

Nicki laughed, and patted her hard on the back.
Thump thump thump
. “You baby!” She took the cigarette back. “They keep you skinny. That’s why my mom smokes. She says if she quits she’ll put on, like, twenty pounds.”

Nicki held it out to Rowan. “C’mon.”

Rowan shook her head. Caleigh was still sputtering and looked sick.

“I don’t think so. It causes cancer.”

“Not the first time,” Nicki said.

“I don’t want to.”

Nicki drew on the cigarette herself and blew smoke out like a pro, holding in a cough that made her eyes water. “If you try it I’ll let you use my Friis bag for the city trip. My big one.” Grade seven and eight French students were going to Montreal for a weekend, to see an opera in French and to eat in French restaurants in order to have an “immersion experience.” Sister Claire was taking them. Everyone loved Sister Claire. Rowan would like to
be
Sister Claire, except for the nun part.

Nicki watched her with a half-grin, but Rowan wouldn’t meet her eyes. She stared at her feet, then the wall. “No way,” she said finally. “I’m not going anyway.”

“Really? Why not?” Caleigh said.

“It’s lame.” It cost five hundred dollars. “I don’t want to go.”

Nicki grinned slyly. “Can’t your mother afford it?”

“That’s none of your business, Sickie Nicki,” Caleigh said. “Get the money from your dad,” she said to Rowan. “That’s what I do when my mom won’t give me something.”

“My dad’s dead,” Rowan said. “He died in a car wreck when I was a baby. I’ve never even seen him, except in pictures.”

“Wow,” said Caleigh. “That’s kind of sad. My dad had a heart attack two years ago, but he’s okay now.” Caleigh looked at Rowan with a new sort of interest.

Nicki played with the cigarette. “Isn’t your mom a stripper? They make lots of money, you know. She should totally have the money.”

“She’s not a stripper, Nic,” Rowan said.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a stripper. I think it’s cool. I would love to have men staring at me because I’m beautiful,” Nicki said.

“They stare at strippers because they’re naked, not because they’re pretty,” Caleigh said. “Is your mom a stripper really?”

“
No
!” Rowan was red-faced. “She works in a bar downtown. But gawd, she’s not a stripper.”

“But she’s poor, right? That’s why you’re not going on the trip—”

“Fuck off, Nicki.” Rowan stared her down.

“Whatever, Wittmore,” Nicki said, as she put the cigarette to her mouth for another puff. “If my mom was a stripper I wouldn’t lie—” It was as far as she got before Rowan pulled back and smacked her in the face. The cigarette hit the wall, and sparks and ash bounced off the tile.

The smack seemed to echo loudly in the bathroom. Nicki blinked, her mouth dropped open in total surprise, a red mark appearing where Rowan had hit her. There was complete, shocked silence for a split second. Then Caleigh screamed.

“You fucking hit me,” Nicki said.

“You have a big mouth,” Rowan said, surprised at how her heart was pounding, and also at how good it had felt to hit Nicki’s (smug) face.

Then Nicki’s chin started to wiggle and her bottom lip practically swallowed her top lip as fat tears plopped out of her eyes onto her pink cheeks. “You fucking hit me, Wittmore! You fucking did
so!”

“Shut up, Nicki,” Rowan said.

Caleigh put her hands up. “I’m going to—” and then she ran away from them, leaving Nicki and Rowan standing like idiots, staring each other down while the cigarette burned between them on the washroom floor.

That’s how it was when Sister Claire came in, Caleigh trailing behind her, and all hell broke loose, shit hit the fan, everybody had a big fat crap sandwich.

Light burned through Paula’s eyelids, something wrong about that for sure, but there was something else too, a shoo-fly feeling, an irritation like an itch, pulsing.

She was not in her bedroom. The light was coming at her from the big window at the front of the apartment. Morning light. She was on the sofa in the living room, still in her clothes from the night before. She could smell beer very faintly. From her pants, most likely.
Ugh
.

The phone rang beside her head once more, pulling her completely out of sleep.

“Shit,” Paula mumbled, pawed towards the sound of the phone and hit upon the receiver, thumbing the button as much to make it stop as to answer the call.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Wittmore? This is Candace Fines, principal at St. Mary’s Academy—”

“It’s Miss,” Paula corrected her, her voice froggy.

“Be that as it may …” Fines continued, her voice chilly.

Paula listened, anger growing inside her, feeling like the bitter taste of the last straw. She hung up the phone and dragged herself off the sofa and changed her clothes.

Rowan was in deep trouble. In deep shit.

shit shit shit

Rowan was sitting on the wooden bench outside the principal’s office when Paula came out. She looked up shyly, but with a tiny bit of the expression Nicki probably had seen right before Rowan clocked her.

The two Wittmore girls stared at each other. Paula kept her expression blank, both because she was unsure how she felt and because she was exhausted. It was only ten thirty in the morning and there had already been a disaster. Mother Teresa would have been exhausted.

“Get your book bag,” Paula said. “Do you have anything in your locker that you’ll need?”

Rowan’s eyes widened and the trace of defiance disappeared. “Need for what?”

Paula’s purse felt as if it weighed twenty pounds. She dropped it to the floor and sat beside her daughter on the bench.

“Need in the next two months. You’ve been suspended for the rest of term.”

Rowan gasped. “Because I hit Nicki?”

Paula nodded. “They have a zero-tolerance violence policy.”

“What about the smoking?”

“You were
smoking?”

Rowan let out a frustrated sigh. “No. Nicki had a cigarette and was trying to make us try it. But I didn’t.”

“Is that why you hit her?” In truth she was still trying to digest the idea of Rowan hitting anyone. She’d never been what you would call an angelic child, but she’d never been violent. Rowan had always used her words when she was angry.

Rowan shook her head.

“Well, what then?”

Rowan stared at the floor, her hair covering her face, but Paula could still see her through the breaks in the curtain it made. She was frowning.

“Nicki’s an asshole.”

“Rowan! You’re not making this any better for yourself. Tell me why you hit her.”

Rowan shook her head and then shrugged. “What did Fines say?”

“She said, ‘Nicole and Rowan had a disagreement and Rowan struck Nicole in the face.’ And when I asked what the disagreement was about, she suggested I ask you, that it was personal.”

She put her hand on Rowan’s shoulder. “What was it about, honey?”

“Nicki said you were a stripper.”

It was Paula’s turn to be speechless. And when she didn’t respond, Rowan looked at her, concerned. “You’re not, are you?”

“No.
No
. Rowan, you know I’m not. I’m a waitress. Lots of women are waitresses—”

“Not here.”

Touché. Paula stood up. “Go get your stuff. I’ll meet you out front.”

Without discussion they took the long way home, down Cascade Street, past the library and the big Whole Foods that they went to around Christmas time. Neither of them was anxious to get back to the crummy apartment.

For most of the walk they were quiet. Then Paula said, “I’m still surprised you hit her, Ro. You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Paula couldn’t help it, and laughed a little. Of course she didn’t want to talk about it. Neither did Paula, truthfully. But she had to say something.

She took a breath. “I wish I was a lawyer or a doctor or something great like that, but I got pregnant and had you, and I had to choose. I wanted to be your mother more than I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer.”

It was true, after a fashion. Paula had been lost in those days, heartbroken, angry. She had been only sixteen, practically a child and pregnant with one. Her father had just died. What had surprised her most of all was her mother’s solution. At a time when they should have needed each other most, her mother had sent her away, to the same school Rowan was now suspended from. Maybe it had been too much for both of them. Their house had become unbearably sad, grief seeming to echo off every wall.

Paula had been full of secrets that she couldn’t share. Sometimes she suspected that her mother knew that. But neither of them said anything then, and they had said nothing since about those days. Bad times, but a long time ago.

Rowan snorted, and that took Paula by surprise. “What?”

“Maybe it would have been better if you’d been doctor or something. Look at us now—we’re all broke and crap. We don’t even have cable any more.”

“Oh, please—”

“Maybe you should have gotten a better job or gone to a better school or something. Instead, now we’re stuck and you can’t even make it better!”

“First of all, I went to a very good school—the same one you just got booted out of. I don’t have to explain my choices to you, Ro.”

“Why? Aren’t you always asking me what I think about life and telling me to be honest? Well,
are
you a stripper? You could be, right? I mean, you had me and you weren’t married or even with a boyfriend—”

“Rowan! What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know! I just wish—we were normal. I don’t have a dad, I don’t have a sister or a brother … I don’t even have a grandma! All the teachers call you Mrs. Wittmore and I don’t tell them you’re not married … but everybody knows—” Rowan’s forehead was sweaty, as it always got when she was upset, and her bangs clung.

“You have a grandmother, Ro. She pays your tuition, remember?”

“But I don’t see her,” she said, petulantly. “Is she ashamed of me?”

Paula reached out. “Rowan, of course not! She loves you. She’s just not … that kind of grandmother. Come on, you’re upsetting yourself. Let me take your bag—”

She jerked away. “No! I’m going home—you walk too slow!”

“Jesus, Ro—” she said, but Ro was leaving. She’d adjusted her bag on her tiny shoulders and was actually stomping away.

“Do you have your key?” Paula called.

She spun back to face her mother. “Yes, I have my key. Of course I have my key. I always have my key—I’m a latchkey kid!”

“You’re not a latchkey kid, Ro. You go to the lunch program.”

“I am at night!”

“Rowan, please—”

When Paula got back she found an envelope taped to the apartment door.
Paula Wittmore
was written in pencil on the front in Andy’s handwriting.

Paula unstuck the envelope, then let herself into the apartment. She could hear music, a little too loud, coming from Rowan’s room. She was grateful not to have to face her. Paula would have to say something about her job situation

(which did not bear thinking about just yet)

and they would have to plan for the days of school Ro would miss. She dropped her purse and tossed her jacket onto the sofa, where the blanket from the night before was still where she had left it. She took the envelope over to the kitchen counter, stuck her finger under the flap and tore it open.

The cheque was for five hundred dollars. Double what she was expecting. There was no note. Guilt money

(and she didn’t care)

and she noticed that the message light was blinking on the archaic answering machine.

Paula pressed Play.

“Paula? This is a message for Paula—” and even as she heard the voice, her heart nearly stopped in her chest, and everything else about the day slid off her.

“Dear, it’s Izzy Riley, from Haven Woods? I’m sorry to tell you, but your mother has taken ill. She’s in the hospital here. I hope you’ll come home. I know you and she haven’t been so close these past years, but she’d love to see you. And your daughter.”

Her mother was ill, badly enough off to be in the hospital in Haven Woods. That crummy little hospital. She and Rowan had been back home to visit only once, and Rowan had gotten so sick they had to go back to the city—there was no way she was taking her baby to the Haven Woods emergency room.

Her mother had come to see them maybe twice since then and actively discouraged any suggestion from Paula that she and Rowan come home.

And now … Izzy Riley.

Paula dropped to a chair beside the table and tried to take that in. Last time she’d seen Izzy she’d been standing outside the church after David’s funeral. Izzy had turned and looked over her shoulder just as the Wittmores got into their car. A quick glance and then she turned back to talk to someone. That was the last time Paula had laid eyes on a Riley.

Rowan’s other grandmother. Not that Izzy knew that.

She would go home. She and Rowan.

Her mother was ill:
Audra
was ill. Old Tex, the dog—he would be sixteen, seventeen? She pondered that, considered that he might be dead. The house would be empty.

Haven Woods, a million miles away from Blondie’s, St. Mary’s Academy; a million miles away from where she was now.

A million miles away.

TWO

What was I thinking?
Izzy Riley was thinking how long the day had been already, wondering
how much longer are these people going to stay?

It was a full house. Of course it was. It was a monumental occasion, the dispensing of one of their own.

The three oldest of them all, Aggie, Tula and Bella, had grouped together in the corner and were downing wine, shooting shifty-eyed and half-terrified glances to wherever Izzy was in the room, as if she were going to bite them.

If only she could.

They had reason to be looking like frightened dogs; they all did. What Chick had done—Izzy grimaced at the thought of Chick, dead or undead—had upset the balance, and no one knew what would happen next or, more pointedly, to whom it would happen.

But they were all there to see her off. The oldest of them and the youngest, the generation of Izzy’s daughter, and of course Izzy herself, the only one of her own generation still standing, now that Chick was dead and Audra was … had fallen ill. That was the way to say it: ill, ailing. And in deep, deep trouble.

She peered into the sitting room from the kitchen, where she was temporarily hiding, wishing everyone would just go away. She longed to escape to her basement room, where she could figure out the length and breadth of this particular situation and further damn Chick to hell. Audra too.

They were all talking talking talking in the other room, mostly in hushed funereal tones, but she could hear them well enough, and her head pounded.
Ugh
. She would like to strike them all mute. The thought made her smile.

Izzy had done hostess rounds already, once with a nice bottle of wine and then again with coffee. She was in the kitchen now under the guise of putting trays of dainties together. She was visible but mostly inaccessible. Her favourite state.

In front of her on the kitchen counter, beside the tray of stuffed mushrooms someone had brought

(full of cheese and sodium,
ugh
)

was her address book, open to Chick’s page. She tapped the edge of the counter with a pen until she caught the eye of her cat, Tansy.

“Up,” she demanded. “Up.” The cat blinked twice, not wanting to appear eager, and then jumped, landing softly.

“Good girl. Pretty girl.” Izzy rubbed the cat’s head. From the pocket of her very good suit she produced a tiny treat. She gave it to the cat, who ate it, lovingly, from her fingers. “That’s my girl,” she whispered, and the cat arched under Izzy’s hand.

She picked up the pen and scratched a line through
Margaret Henderson
. She had not liked “Chick” and had never called her old friend that. At one time she’d tried to get Margaret to give up her nickname. She wouldn’t.

Yet another good reason for her to be dead.

The line through the name became two, and then absently Izzy scribbled hasty loops over her own handwriting, completely obliterating her old friend’s name.

Under Margaret’s name and address was more useless information:

Husband Bill
.

She drew strokes through that too. Bill was dead too. Just last week. They say that couples who are close in life also die very closely. Chick—stupid stupid stupid—had done her horrible, selfish deed the day of Bill’s funeral. Everyone out there was all
poor thing couldn’t live without her Bill
. Gawd, wasn’t everyone’s husband dead, for chrissakes? Izzy’s Roger, Audra’s Walter. Aggie’s husband had been dead so long Izzy could barely remember if he’d been an Alfred or an Edward. Aggie’s husband had been the first to die, and Aggie hadn’t torched herself. No, she picked up and went on to a better life.

Audra should have told that to Chick.
You move on
.

“Mother?” Izzy’s daughter, Marla, carried a handful of dirty cake plates into the kitchen. Small forks jutted out the sides like porcupines.

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you make another appearance? I think Chick’s son wants to thank you.” She set the plates in the sink with care, but the forks still clattered on the ceramic.

Izzy sighed.

Marla arranged the dishes in the sink. “What’s going to happen to Chick’s house, do you think? Will they just tear it down?”

“Why on earth would I know that?” Izzy said.

“Lighten up, Mother. You’re so angry.” Marla looked at her watch. “Well, I have to leave.”

“No, you can’t go. I need you here. I hate this.”

Marla ran a finger around the edge of one of the plates and scooped up a bit of icing. She stared at the frosting on her perfectly manicured finger. “Timmy has a baseball tryout.”

“Don’t you have a husband? Why can’t he take him?”

“He’s making us rich, just the way you taught me a good husband should do. So I’m on baseball duty.” Marla scratched behind Tansy’s ears.

“Stay a little longer. I really do hate this.”

She shrugged. “No, you don’t. You like this, having everyone where you can see them.”

“But I have something to tell you.” Izzy raised her brows invitingly as Marla met her eyes, and for a moment Izzy was struck by how soft Marla’s cheek and jaw were, how dewy still. More and more, lately, Izzy noticed such things, getting mushy in her old age. She was fifty. A gorgeous fifty, as she was fond of telling people. Her daughter was prettier than she had ever been, though.

“What?”

“You’ll like it.”

Marla grabbed for her jacket, a lilac thing that matched her skirt. She had not worn black to the funeral. “Tell me fast, because I’m leaving.”

“A good friend of yours is coming home. Her mother is ill.” That got Marla’s attention, as Izzy knew it would.

Marla’s face relaxed into something genuine and she smiled. “Paula?”

“Yes. She’s coming back to see Audra.”

Marla frowned briefly, considering this, then smiled again. “Really? Well, I can’t wait to see her again.” She clapped her hands in excitement. “She’s never even seen the kids! I’m going to have her over for dinner. This is—”

Izzy grabbed Marla by the arms. She gripped her hard. “We are in the middle of a
dilemma
, Marla. This isn’t a reunion of old school chums … Do you hear me?” She held her tightly a minute more and then let go. Marla jerked back.

“I know. I just haven’t seen her in so long I got carried away.” Her eyes narrowed and she shifted her gaze to avoid eye contact with Izzy. “Wait until she finds out her mother isn’t really sick.”

Izzy moved more dishes from the counter to the sink. She could hear people talking in the main room and she lowered her voice. “Her mother really is sick. She’s in big trouble. Don’t go spilling the beans to your old friend.”

“Really
, Mother. I have to leave. Tim’s tryouts are in half an hour and I have to be there to cheer him on.” She slipped the jacket over her shoulders and pulled her hair out from under it, prettily.

“Wish him luck from Grandma,” Izzy said. “Paula is bringing her daughter with her.”

There was a pause and then Marla laughed softly. “Really.” She turned to stare contemplatively at her mother. “You’ve never met Rowan, have you? That will be interesting …” She grinned, the expression incomprehensible to Izzy.

“It will be
necessary.”

Marla’s grin disappeared. She opened her mouth, but for a minute the words wouldn’t come. Then she said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I have to go, I really do.” She picked up her purse, a shade that matched her jacket, and slid it over her shoulder. Just before she went out the door, she shot Izzy a look that was also incomprehensible.

Izzy stood there for a minute after her daughter had gone, then sighed deeply and poked her head into the living room. “Tula, can I have a quick word?”

The old woman looked up from her drink with a nervous expression, then got up out of her chair and made her way around the guests to the kitchen, carrying her wineglass.

Izzy waved her over to the back door. “Get to the hospital. Audra’s been alone for hours. Who knows what trouble she might have gotten up to.”

“I can’t imagine she could get up to much,” Tula said.

“Just go. I’ll be along shortly.”

Tula nodded and plunked her glass on the counter. Red wine sloshed over the edge. Izzy stared at the old lady, disgusted.

“Sorry,” Tula said quickly, then grinned. “Glass is half full, eh?”

“It’s half empty, Tula. Now go, please.”

Tula picked up her purse from a pile of others by the coat rack near the kitchen door, and scuttled out of the house.

Izzy rubbed her forehead. She felt a headache coming on, but she plastered a broad smile on her face—entirely inappropriate for the circumstances—and breezed into the living room, where the guests were subdued, mournful, bereft.

“Who wants another drink?” she said.

Everyone.