I shake my head, mouth still full. Why would I mind Columbus being here? He practically lives at my house when Ma isn’t around, as Pammy well knows. But she’s being careful, and I get the feeling she wants to talk about last night, what she might have heard. But I don’t have the patience for all that. I hurt everywhere.
“Thanks, Pammy,” I say, trying to sound okay.
Not sure if she buys it, but she doesn’t push. “You’re welcome, hon. Your mom had to leave early, and she said I could come over and use your television. She’s got a whole season of Sherlock recorded and I need to get some knitting done.”
Something about the easiness in her voice tells me that nobody is fooling anybody. She’s deliberately not looking at the dent in the wall that is shining at us like a bruise. She’s here to make sure I’m fine, and that my mother is, too. Because we’re a village, in this section of the co-op. I don’t think she knows about the beating (I don’t think she’d be okay with that), but she knows my mom will fling things about when she’s good and mad. Which isn’t often, but when it happens, Pammy hears it all.
Maybe it’s because I’m so relaxed with all the carbs in my belly (which I’ll have to work out later), but I feel like I can trust her with something that’s been on my mind.
“Hey, Pammy?”
“Yeah?” She turns back to me.
“Remember that night? The night my dad died?”
Her expression shutters closed. “I do.”
“I saw you talk to the police when—after it happened. You said you saw the whole thing from your window.”
She knows exactly what I mean by it. “I was in my kitchen, making some chamomile tea, and happened to look out. I heard your car pull into the lot.”
“Right. I know about that. But did you…did you see anyone else there that night?”
She goes still. “No. Why? Why do you ask?”
“No reason. It’s just we didn’t even see my dad when we drove into the lot. But you saw everything and I was wondering if there was anyone else who could have seen it.”
“I didn’t see anyone else. It was raining, hon.” She looks at me closely. “Have you been sleeping enough? You look tired.”
“But if you could see what happened from that distance, then maybe you could see him? Dad. Did you know he was there?”
“Nobody knew he was there,” she says sharply. “Honestly, Trisha, I think you need to try to forget about it. I think you need to move on.”
The door to our little townhouse opens and she brightens.
“There’s Christopher! And just in time for some pancakes, too. If you can spare a few for him, that is.” Then she winks at me, which freaks me out as Pammy doesn’t do things like “brighten” and wink. But I don’t have time to think about it because Columbus has made it up the stairs with his slow ass and he’s looking like he’s gonna fall over from the effort.
I try not to look too glad to see him, but I’m grateful for a (semi) male presence somehow. I don’t know what’s up with the ladies in my life right now, but I’m thinking they won’t be this weird always, right?
When Columbus finishes the rest of the pancakes, we go over to his house to compare notes for economics class.
“What are you doing?” he asks, when I pause in his kitchen, which is a mirror image of mine. The view, let’s be honest, isn’t great. We’ve had one major snowfall this year, but the snow melted almost as soon as it touched the ground. So it looks the same as it did a month ago. There’s not much to see out that window, other than a wooded area that backs out onto a ravine. And one part of the parking lot. Their kitchen has a full, unobstructed view of the corner where we always park. Where my father died.
“Earth to Trisha,” Columbus says, coming up behind me. He punches my shoulder. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” I say.
I open the cupboard above the electric kettle. There’s a French press and a bag of coffee beans next to the grinder that Pammy uses every morning. She puts a bit of the beans in the grinder, adds that to the French press, and pours hot (but not boiling) water over the whole thing. I’ve seen her do it a thousand times. “Where’s your chamomile tea?”
Columbus snorts. “What are we, senior citizens?”
Exactly. I close the cupboard. “Let’s study.”
“Wanna make out instead?” he says, grinning at me.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
“I would,” he laughs, “but it’s my house. You’re gonna miss your chance with me, you know. We’re going to college in the fall and I don’t know about you, but I plan to meet a hot foreign exchange student and have loads of mad sex with her and then move to Europe where I find out she’s rich and we’ll live off her trust fund for the rest of our wasteful lives.”
“I have the same plan, so let’s see who gets there first.”
I fake a punch.
He flinches.
What a baby. Like any hot foreign exchange student is going to go for that.
* * *
I spend the night thinking about my dad. The big spaces in my life where he’s never been. You would think the garage he ran in Trinidad was the Rockefeller empire or something, the way he always needed to be back there. When I was ten I spent a week with him. Ma couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come with us. He took me to Maracas, on that death-defying mountain drive, all twisty and terrifying. We had bake and shark on the beach and he laughed at my pineapple chutney. He was happy there on the island, happier than he’d ever been in Toronto with me and Ma. But he loved her, couldn’t stay away from her. I think she loved him, too. Mostly.
The beatings didn’t start right away when he’d come up, a few weeks at a time. They would have maybe two good days, and then she’d say something, do something—little, of course. It wasn’t ever a big deal. But I guess he had that in common with Columbus’s dad. Just a little thing to set them off and then wham.
She’s on the ground and he’s whaling on her.
Okay, so I hated him.
Hated him as much as I loved her. He never touched me. Never loved me enough to lay hands on me, maybe. Or maybe my mother would never let him. I think she’d die before she let anyone else beat me. That was her job alone. That, and loving me.
Because I was always hers.
Things were better when he wasn’t here. It’s not like I miss him or anything. Why would I? So why can’t I stop thinking about him? I only stop when I’m sparring—and it’s not like I can spar forever.