"Why does she have to eat here again?" Teddy asked. "She ate here last night and slept downstairs and she's still there. Plus you took the day off work to look after her! I mean, isn't that enough? You're going way too far with the charity, Mom."
In the kitchen of their house on Rendall Street, Teddy was rinsing off salad greens while Neea spooned some grainy mustard into the vinaigrette she was making.
"Ted, not so loud. Darwin might be awake."
"Whatever," said Teddy. "We don't owe her anything."
"It isn't like that, Ted. She can stay for dinner... Oh, and your father called today."
"When?"
"Maybe an hour ago. He called to ask if I thought you should go over there at Thanksgiving."
"He called you cuz he knew I'd just say 'no'," said Teddy. "They're just going to get caterers again because Cassie and Dad can't cook! I really just want regular turkey this year and they're totally gonna have something weird."
"I know, but you need to spend time with him. You haven't been over there since before school started."
"Yeah, but... ugghh!"
Teddy liked Thanksgiving. He liked the turkey and mashed potatoes, the stuffing and the gravy, and he liked the fact that Canada had its own version of the holiday in October, more than a month earlier than American Thanksgiving. It was far enough from Christmas to logically spread out the celebrations. For Teddy, Thanksgiving was about cooking at home, filling up the house with good smells and filling up your stomach so much you wanted to pass out. It wasn't about fussy and pretentious catered dinners.
"Hey," said Darwin, coming into the kitchen.
"Oh!" Neea said brightly. "Here's the survivor!"
She wiped her hands on her apron and crossed the kitchen toward Darwin with a look of concern on her face.
"How are you feeling? It hurts to walk?" she asked.
Teddy stood by the stove, stirring a pot. He glanced over at Darwin. She had her backpack over her shoulder like she was ready to go. Good, he thought.
"Not too bad," said Darwin. "Couple of bruises, some aches and pains. Guess it takes more than a car to keep me down."
"Next time we'll use a truck," Teddy muttered under his breath.
"Ted!" said Neea sharply. "What a thing to say!"
"Joking," Teddy said.
"It's OK. Um, is that clock right?" said Darwin, pointing at the clock on the microwave.
"Yes," said Neea. "You slept a long time. We were getting worried! Do you think we need to put ice on your leg again? How's the swelling?"
"No, it's fine," Darwin said. "And thanks for washing my clothes. You didn't have to do that."
"Well, I was doing some laundry anyway and hoped you wouldn't mind," said Neea. "Are you hungry? We're just cooking salmon. It's a Finnish recipe. It isn't leftovers this time!"
"Yeah, I should probably just go," Darwin said, pointing with her thumb towards the front door.
"Oh no, don't worry! We're making plenty, so please stay. It's the least we can do!"
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I've heard her say that a few times already. Dinner last night was the least they could do. Letting me sleep here was the least they could do. Now a second dinner is the least they can do. I'm wondering how long I could stick around here trading on my victimhood and reaping the benefits of the least they can do.
I notice a note on the counter near the back door. As Neea and Teddy go back to work making dinner I sneak a look and read it. Seems like it was intended for me.
I have to go to out to get some groceries, but help yourself to anything if you're hungry. Also have a shower if you like. If you have to leave, please go out the back door. Here's the keyâjust lock the back door and leave the key under the flowerpot on the back porch table. Please stay in touch! Here's our number...
The bottom part of the note is neatly torn off for me to take with me when I go. It has Neea's name, a phone number and the words "Please call!"
So, she'd left me alone in this house, and even left a key? So trusting! Kodi would probably love an early Christmas present like a key to a house with food, maybe jewelry, who knows what else?... I look over at Neea and she glances back with a smile.
"Oh, I left you a note when I went out. I guess you don't have to worry about that now. Please, sit," she says, gesturing toward a chair at the table. "Do you want something to drink? There's juice, water, mineral water, milk... wine?"
"Just some regular water," I say, slumping into a chair at the kitchen table.
The kitchen is a mix of old stuff and modern with some quirky folksy-crafty items thrown in. I'm guessing a lot of those are souvenirs from Finland, where she's from. Can't help comparing this stylish hodgepodge to my mother's unwavering insistence on having things "match"âthe pillows on the family room couch, for example, having to be the exact same shade of burgundy as the dress on the stupid Royal Doulton figurine on the side-table, or the hand-towels that we aren't allowed to use in the main-floor bathroom needing to be perfectly sympatico with that yellow and white ceramic potpourri dish... Honestly, it's vomit-inducing.
Just thinking about the house in Kamloops depresses the hell out of me at the best of times, but my mother's magic sphere of misery extends all the way to Victoria, and would probably follow me wherever I go in the world. When I'm coming down off a meth high, though, it hits that much harder. Bleak thoughts of Patricia, her house of torment and its life-sucking power envelop me in what is effectively the exact opposite of a meth high.
"Our house has a name," Neea is saying cheerfully. "It's called Grimston House. There's a little sign beside the front door. It was built in 1921. The man who built it was from England and he named it after the village where he was born. It's kind of a historical house but, really, there are so many historical houses in Victoria. Teddy's father bought the house from the original owner's daughter about twenty-five years ago. Teddy's father lives in North Vancouver now, with his new wife. He's a famous painter."
There's a probably-uncomfortable silence as I don't respond, waiting for my brain to process all she's said about their perfect little abode.
Finally catching up I say, "Really? Somebody I would have heard of?"
"No," says Teddy quickly.
"His name is Alan Aiken, but he goes by A. A. Aiken..." says Neea. "Maybe you have?"
"Actually yeah," I say, "I saw one of his paintings on the wall downstairs."
"Oh yes," Neea says with a laugh, "That's one he did of me a long time ago."
Dinner is definitely happening around me now and I'm just watching, kind of dazed, as things make their way to the table: a pink slab of salmon with a creamy pale yellow sauce flecked green with dill, a bowl of baby carrots glowing orange, some red-skinned potatoes with butter and parsley and a wide glass bowl full of leafy green salad. Even in my current disinterested state, it all looks delicious.
I make a point of saying so with something that I hope sounds like enthusiasm. I wish I could appreciate this more, but I can't. I really don't belong here, don't want to be here, need to get back to the street, to Kodi...
What would he think of all this? Of this Finnish woman and all her niceness? Of fucking baby carrots? Neea takes off her apron and sits at the table then serves me some salmon as Teddy helps himself to potatoes. Neea then offers me carrots, potatoes and salad and I find myself saying "thank you" so many times it starts to sound stupid, so I just keep quiet and let it all happen.
When she's done serving me and filling up her own plate, she raises her wine glass.
"Kippis!" she says.
Whatever that means I clink the glass she's holding out to me with my water glass. Neea, smiling away, gets Teddy to reluctantly raise his glass of juice.
"Kippis!" she says again as they toast.
"Kippis," he says without much conviction and he and I clink too.
"My mother speaks Finnish when she drinks," Teddy says, glancing my way. "You might need Google Translate or something."
I'm actually a little shocked that he voluntarily spoke to me. Neea laughs, then says, "I'll try to stick to English. So Darwin, you said you were living downtown with your Aunt, is that right?"
Oh, here we go with the questions. I knew this was coming. I know I'm sitting at their table and eating their food, but does that mean I'm obligated to share my life story?
"Yeah. Just over in Vic West, near downtown," I say to her reluctantly.
"Won't she be wondering where you are?
"She would but she's away for a few weeks... in Spain."
"Spain?" asks Neea.
"Yeah," I continue. "Running with the bulls or something."
I notice Teddy raise an eyebrow and I don't even care if what I'm telling them is all that believable. Neea just says "Wow! Adventurous!"
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Teddy looked skeptically at the strange girl across the table. What was with her? Neea was trying to talk to her, asking her questions and showing real interest and the girl was just giving short answers, answers that sounded like they were probably lies, or just changing the subject to avoid answering at all. It was like she either couldn't be bothered telling the truth or she had something to hide. With everything Neea was doing to help the girl, Teddy thought that attitude kinda sucked. And what was up with sleeping for seventeen hours anyway? Once in senior year he'd had an essay to finish and pulled an all-nighter, drinking something like four home-made caramel macchiatos, but even after that he didn't crash for that long.
And that stuff she'd said after they hit her, about not wanting to talk to the police. What was up with that? Was she a known criminal?
He looked at Darwin's face while she talked to his Mom. Her eyes shifted quickly as she spoke, pausing for a half-second on Neea, then quickly glancing away, looking at the table, at the window, at him, at the cupboards, at the floor. She seemed both nervous and totally disengaged.
Teddy noticed that her hair hung limp and dull and her eyes had dark circles under them. He didn't know much about hair, makeup and clothes but this girl didn't seem to care at all about how she looked. Did she go to school? If she did, where? A lot of girls at Songhees showed up each day as if they'd rolled straight out of bed and into class, but even they looked better than this. This girl looked unhealthy.
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I'm not that eager to let these people in on the fact that I live on the street, you know? But actually, what I said wasn't a huge lie. I was living with Yvonne over in Vic West before I ended up with Kodi. That was last year when I was starting at the University of Victoria.
Yvonne is my mother's youngest sister, just twelve years older than me. She works in an office building downtown as an administrative assistant, which I guess is like being a secretary in the old days, but without as much coffee-making and sexism. Yvonne is dating a guy in the Navy, Grant, who I guess isn't the kind of navy guy who goes away on ships because he's always around. On the nights he stayed over at Yvonne's it was pretty awkward. My bedroom was really just a folding bed set up in her weird storage slash laundry room so I either hung out in the living room or sat on my bed next to a washer and dryer. Anyway, I'd find excuses to get out, even if it meant just walking the streets until 11:00 or so by which time Grant and Yvonne had most likely disappeared into Yvonne's bedroom.
While I was out on my walks, I'd often find myself heading down Esquimalt Road and over the Johnson Street Bridge to downtown, and there I would sometimes run across a particular group of street kids sitting on the sidewalk on Broughton Street. They had a special place near a parking lot there. Whenever I passed them I noticed him: the wide smile, the sandy blond hair, the scruffy beard with a few beads braided into it and those piercing grey-blue eyes. His eyes said "Danger! Stay back!" but, for me at least, they were also asking, "Is this the danger you've been looking for?"
I'd soon learn that his name was Kodi, short for Kodiak, like a grizzly bear. A weird name for sure, but to me it sounded perfect because Kodi was this wild force of nature. Soon he started noticing me too. He wasn't all that nice about itâteasing me when I came by and calling me "mouse-girl" because I'm smallâbut then nice wouldn't have been all that interesting to me at that time.
Meanwhile, school wasn't going any better than my living situation. It wasn't long after I started at UVic that the vague doubts I'd been having about studying Microbiology started coming into sharp focus and I realized I wasn't really interested in it. It was probably just something I came up with to satisfy people who kept asking what I was going to study, to please my science-loving dad, as well as to get myself safely out of Kamloops and away from my mother. I basically didn't like any of my courses and didn't feel like I fit in at all.
This was crushing because that plan had been my ticket out of Kamloops and away from my mother's toxic influence. It was my sunny road to selfhood and suddenly it was getting dark and full of potholes. It didn't feel at that time like the future held much for me.
After five months, Yvonne and I were clearly getting on each other's nerves. Her place was too small and our habits didn't exactly sync well even when Grant wasn't there.
One warm night in early May, after Yvonne and I had both been in shit moods and I was out doing my downtown tour, I was in even less of a hurry to go home than usual. I happened to walk past the group of street kids camped out on the sidewalk, their backs against a wall, their banter sounding cliquey and cool and this time, for some reason, Kodi looked at me, flashed a smile and held his hand out, inviting me to sit.
Such a simple thing, sitting down. People do it all the timeâsitting in a chair to read, sitting at the dinner table, sitting on a bus or in a car, sitting at a desk and doing a jobâbut normal people don't sit on the sidewalk on a city street. That kind of sitting announces to everyone that you don't care, that you don't want to conform and you aren't interested in playing by the rules. Looking at Kodi's raised hand, I recognized the moment as one of those fork-in-the-road, red-pill-blue-pill decisions. Even in that moment, I knew my life was about to change, about to pivot away from normal, but I didn't care. It's what I wanted.
So I sat down next to Kodi and, just like that, my perspective on the world changed. The sidewalk, which had only ever been for walking on, became my chair, my table, my living room, dining room, sometimes bedroom... my home.
The next day I told Yvonne that I'd stayed over with a friend. I said I was probably going to be spending more time with that friend and since he was a guy, I wasn't sure my parents would approve. I told her that he didn't need me to pay rent, insinuating that she could still collect the rent cheques that came from my parents as long as she was okay with pretending that I still lived with her. She didn't have to think for long before accepting the deal.
Then I started spending all of my time with Kodi, and that meant that eventually, inevitably, with a weirdly exhilarating mix of nervousness and, I guess, rebellion, I carried out my first tentative experiments with Kodi's drug of choice, crystal meth. I knew it was wrong in every way and that was most likely why I wanted to do it.
So of course Yvonne wasn't running with the bulls in Spainâas far as I knew she was at her apartment over on Edward Streetâbut I needed a logical reason for having not phoned Yvonne to tell her why I hadn't come home last night. We go on chatting like this, Neea asking questions and me coming up with half-truths or total lies to answer them. It's like a game.
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â D.B.