“Yeah, okay. So, were we bombed? Or gassed? Are we at war?”
“No, lame-o. Next time listen to your radio! It was just a practice. They do that every now and then to keep us on our toes.”
A practice? All that for a practice? I wasted a whole day in this prison for nothing? What kind of a stupid country is this?
Suddenly, I was mad. What a fool I was, waiting around with my teddy bear to be rescued! I ripped the gas mask off, threw it on the floor, and stomped out of the shelter. The look of amusement quickly disappeared from Marla’s face.
“You know, everyone gets freaked out the first time they hear the siren,” she said, following me to my room. “The first time I heard it go off was a couple of months after we got here from Buffalo. My poor cat actually jumped out the window! Splat!”
I didn’t know if she was joking or not, but it didn’t really matter, anyway. I was too pissed off to laugh.
“Cool apartment, Mack,” she said, flopping down on my bed while I rummaged around in the closet for a pair of shorts. “Is your dad at work?”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling them on. “Maybe you can meet him next time.”
“Sure, whatever. So, where’s your mom? Does she work at the university too?”
I froze in my tracks.
Oh my God! How am I going to tell her about Mom?
I turned around slowly and stared at her.
“Um, well … you see … um …”
Make up a story, Mack!
“ … my mom’s … um …”
Say she’s on a vacation … or out grocery shopping or something!
“ … she’s, well …”
Just say anything! You don’t need her pity.
“ … she’s … she’s dead.”
And there it was. The terrible awful truth, hanging in the air like a bad smell.
Suddenly serious, Marla sat upright on the bed. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Back home the news had been splashed all over the TV and the papers. Everyone I knew had seen or read about it, which was good in a weird way because it had saved me from having to tell the story myself … until now. For a split second I thought about making up a total lie, something less violent. But Marla was a good friend. I knew I owed her the truth.
I took another deep breath and closed my eyes.
“It was a hit and run. It happened down the street from my house in Toronto. She was walking home from work. The driver ran a stop sign … they never caught him. Her name was Elizabeth.”
As simple as that. The facts of Mom’s tragedy in fifty words or less. For Marla’s sake, I left out all the truly horrible parts.
Like the blood-stained road. And how even after they scrubbed it clean and even after countless rainfalls, I could still see a shadow permanently ingrained in the pavement. And how I had to walk past it every morning on my way to school and every afternoon on my way home.
And I didn’t mention how Mom’s personal items were returned to us in a manila envelope: her watch, her wedding ring, her key chain, and her wallet, which I knew without even opening was still stuffed with my baby pictures.
And I didn’t say anything about how my own twisted brain sometimes forced me to imagine her last, horrifying moments, seeing the car coming, freezing with fear, and knowing that she was about to die. And how often I tortured myself wondering if, in that split second, she thought about me.
I took the hem of Mom’s sweater between my fingers and held it out for Marla to see.
“This was hers,” I said as my thoughts flew back to the day I’d snuck into her closet to take it. It was right after Dad had told me about the move. Thinking about it now, I could still smell the leftover traces of Mom’s lily-of-the-valley perfume, which had wafted underneath my nose as I ran my hands over the stack of cashmere sweaters on the shelf above my head. Mom loved cashmere so much that she wore it even in the summertime. Dad and I had given it to her as a gift every birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day for as long as I could remember. By the time of the accident, it seemed like Mom owned a cashmere sweater, scarf, and pair of socks for every colour of the rainbow.
I had taken this sweater down and pulled it over my head, letting the smell and feel of Mom take over. And that was when the tears finally started to flow. Months and months of pent-up sadness spilled out of my eyes and down onto the soft lilac knit of the cashmere. I sunk into a puddle on the floor of that closet and cried for my mother and the memories I worried would soon fade away.
“Mommy mommy mommy,” I sobbed. As if saying her name over and over again could somehow bring her back. I needed to know when the sadness would go away … when I would stop seeing her face in crowds and hearing her voice in my dreams … when I would start to feel normal again.
And I was still waiting for those answers. It had been over a year since the accident, and my memories of her were slipping further away with each passing day.
“Mack?”
I opened my eyes and looked up into Marla’s face, ready for the inevitable look of pity. But instead, for the first time ever, I saw my own pain staring back at me.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she said softly. “My mom’s dead, too.”
My mouth fell open with shock. “Really? When? How?”
She turned her head and nodded towards my window.
“Believe it or not, it happened right down there.”
“What?” I gasped, walking over and peering down at the busy intersection below. I turned and looked back at Marla, my face covered in question marks.
“Was it a car accident?” I asked, remembering the frenzied rush of crazy drivers and blaring horns.
“No — a bus bombing,” she explained, her pretty face crumpling with sadness. “It was almost four years ago now. We were going to the market together, only we got into an argument about something stupid on our way to the bus stop. I got mad, turned around, and came home. And she got blown up by a terrorist.”
Suddenly, Marla stopped talking and bit her bottom lip. I knew right away that she was leaving out her most horrible parts, too.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it!” I whispered, sitting back down on the bed. “That’s just so awful!” An icy chill passed over my body, followed quickly by a layer of goosebumps. I rubbed at my arms, trying to smooth them away. “Aren’t you angry, Mar?”
She looked surprised at the question. “Of course I’m angry. My mom was murdered, Mack! You, of all people, can understand how that feels. Aren’t you angry, too?”
I nodded.
“At one point, I couldn’t even leave my house I was so angry,” she continued, wiping away a stray tear from the corner of her eye. I could hear the control she was putting into each word, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “For a long time, I wanted to die, too. I used to wish Mom and I had never argued that day — that I’d been with her on that bus. At least that way I wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of living without her. It’s been almost four years since the attack, but some days I still feel like that.”
I saw a couple of big tears roll down Marla’s cheeks before she turned her face towards the window. “You know, my mom was a really good person — a doctor, for God’s sake. She didn’t