Page 145 of Here & There

My hands pick up my napkin, twisting it into a knot in my lap. “I couldn’t find her,” I whisper.

“Pardon me?” Mom asks.

“Shelby Fox.”

Mom looks pale. “You looked for her?”

“It’s the reason I stayed up there. At first, anyway.”Mac. Mac’s the reason I stayed.

I shove that aside hard.

“Is she gone?” I ask, my voice higher pitched than I mean for it to be.

“My mother?” Mom asks, her voice shaky. “I don’t honestly know. But I…I don’t think she’d want to be found. When I left—” She reaches for her water, then seems to reconsider. “Well. She wasn’t an easy woman to live with. She never wanted me to leave her side. She said I’d be breaking my family’s legacy if I left. But I was so desperate to escape. I wanted to see the world.”

I try to imagine my mother like that, as a young woman with hopes and dreams. I think about me, standing at the end of that dock, feeling like I couldn’t breathe. Not until I leapt off the edge.

Mom sighs, wrapping her hands around each other in front of the soup, which she hasn’t touched. “When I told her my mind was made up, she told me she didn’t have a daughter. I tried to say goodbye to her, and she didn’t even look at me.” Mom looks away, as if into the past. “The name Shelby Fox—I took it on when I left, so she couldn’t find me if she looked. I was angry too.”

I’m having trouble processing all this information. I suddenly find it stifling in here. “Wait, soyouwent by Shelby?”

“Yes. I read it in a magazine. Can you believe that? I called myself that for a whole year.”

Suddenly I remember, from back in the beginning of my search.Shelby Jessica Fox.An actress. A passing name.

The world seems to spin out from under me.

“When I was Shelby,” Mom says, “it was the most wonderful year of my life. I lived in an apartment in Kitsilano with a handful of other girls. I went to parties. I took magic mushrooms and slept with strange men.”

Her words bring my attention back, and now my jaw is on the floor. “Mom!”

She smiles. Then it slips. “I met your father after that. He offered me an entirely different life. One with money and stability.” She laughs wryly. “The thing is, your grandmother would have hated your father. She would have preferred Shelby Fox. That’s why I told you that was her name. She hurt me so badly I couldn’t bear to tell you who she really was, but Shelby was an homage to her, in a way.” She looks down, wringing her hands together on the table. “I’m sorry, for not being truthful with you, or with your sister, when you were young. I understand if you decide never to forgive me.”

“Is there something wrong with the food?” the server asks when he comes by. He looks deeply concerned.

“No,” I whisper. “I think we’re just not hungry.”

Mom nods. I try to pay, but she hands the man two large bills, just like Mac did at the other restaurant.

Then we walk together outside. We stand under the covered awning while I call a car. My parents’ place—or, I guess, my mom’s place now—is only a few blocks from here, and she insists on walking.

“The car’s two minutes away,” I tell her, my mind still reeling.

Mom nods.

We stare into the pouring rain for a moment, the sound of cars splashing by punctuating our silence.

“Can I see you again?” Mom asks.

I want to tell her no, or maybe. I want to hold on to all this old hurt I’ve been nurturing like one of my houseplants. But then Iremember Mac, standing in front of that portrait of his mother, the way he had to work like his life depended on it to keep from falling apart right there in his bar. At a picture. I think of my mom, being told by her own mother that she didn’t exist.

I don’t want any of that. I want her. I want us, the two remaining members of our family, to have at least some kind of relationship.

“If you promise me something,” I say.

Mom looks at me, her eyes filled with what looks like longing.

For me.

---