Tracy found the logs on a Tuesday in the middle of November.
I didn’t know there were logs. Nobody had told me. Nathan didn’t know either, or he’d forgotten. Two years before, when he’d first got MSN at twelve, Tracy had sat down at the computer in Lethbridge with the instruction book and turned on the setting that saved every conversation to a folder. If I’m paying for the internet, I get to see. He’d hated her for a week, and then he’d stopped thinking about it, and so had she.
She was looking for Aunt Trish’s new cell number. Trish had sent it in an email, Tracy thought, or on MSN, she couldn’t remember, and she sat down at the computer after supper while I was doing math at the kitchen counter and went looking. I heard her clicking. I heard her stop clicking.
I didn’t think anything of it.
Then it was quiet for twenty minutes, then thirty. The TV was off, and the fridge hummed. I did the same question four times and got four answers.
“Paige,” Tracy said. “Can you come here, please.”
She’d said please. She never said please to me. She said honey, and Paigey, and sweetheart. She said please to people at the bank.
I went into the living room.
She was sitting at the computer with her hands in her lap. Her hands were shaking. She’d pulled the second chair over from the dining room, and she pointed at it, and I sat down in it.
The screen was full of words. I knew them before I read them. I knew the little blue names at the start of each line, nate says and dekker #7 says, hundreds of lines, weeks of them. She’d scrolled all the way up to September and all the way back down.
“I wasn’t looking,” Tracy said. “I want you to know that. I was looking for Trish’s number. And I saw his name. And I clicked on it, and I shouldn’t have, and then I couldn’t stop.” She swallowed. “I’ve been sitting here reading for half an hour.”
I stayed where I was.
She scrolled up a bit. She didn’t have to look for it. She’d already found it. She put her finger on the screen. nate says:
she cried in the car again dekker #7 says:
i know. she says allergies nate says:
i hate this. i hate lying to her dekker #7 says:
me too. but what happens when they find out
“Who’s she?” Tracy said.
My mouth was dry.
“Who cried in the car? Who’s lying to who? What happens when who finds out what?” Her voice was going up and she was pushing it back down. “Paige, honey, I need you to tell me. I need you to tell me right now. Is he... is somebody hurting you? Is it drugs, or that boy, or his family? Is somebody doing something to you?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody’s hurting anybody.”
“Then what is this?” She scrolled to another night. his mom. her mom. when they find out. we can’t tell anybody. not yet. not till june. “What’s in June? Paige. What’s in June?”
I sat in the dining room chair with my hands between my knees.
I could tell her.
It came up in me all at once, like being sick. I could just tell her. I could say: I’m not her. I’m the other one. Your kid is in Hawkwood eating Gordon’s eggs and lifting weights with his brother. Your kid is fine. Your kid is happier than he’s ever been. Your kid used to hide in those hoodies. I could say all of it, right here, with her hand shaking on the mouse.
And then what? Then she’d look at me the way she was looking at me now, except worse. Then she’d stop being my mom.
“It’s his parents,” I said.
It came out steady. I didn’t know where from.
“His parents?”
“Nathan’s parents are really strict. His dad is. You met his dad at the game.” I kept going. I didn’t let myself stop. “He wants Nathan to take over the business. Furnaces. He’s got his whole life planned out for him. And Nathan doesn’t know if he wants it. And his mom cries in the car about it, she gets really upset, and Nathan hates lying to them about it. About what he wants.”
Tracy was looking at me.
“And June?”
“That’s when he has to decide. About high school. Which program. His dad wants him in the trades one at Crowchild.” I didn’t know if Crowchild had a trades program. I’d never in my life said anything so fast. “And her mom is me. You. That part’s about me. It’s about us. About people thinking we’re going out.”
“Are you going out?”
“No. That’s the thing, everybody thinks we are. His mom thinks we are. You think we are. And if they think we are, they won’t let us talk this much, they’ll make us stop. And he’s the only person I can talk to.” That part was true. All of it was true, that one sentence. “He’s my best friend. He’s the only one. When they find out we’re not going out, they’ll think it’s weird. That’s all. That’s all when they find out is.”
Tracy didn’t say anything.
She scrolled down to the bottom, to last night, and read it again. I watched her read it. ok. bleachers. tomorrow. let them look. That one was from before. Last night’s was just homework and Brett and the Grade 6 thing.
“You’re up till one in the morning,” she said finally.
“I know.”
“On a school night. Every school night.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” She put her hand up. “Don’t say sorry. You say sorry all the time now. You never used to.” She looked at the screen. She looked at her own hand on the mouse, and took it off. “You’re telling me the truth.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a thing she needed to be true.
“Yes,” I said.
She looked at me. She looked at my face the way she’d looked at me in the hospital, waiting to see if anything was in there that she knew.
“Okay,” she said.
She half believed me. I could see the half. It sat in her face like a stone in a shoe, and she was going to walk on it anyway, because the other half was worse.
“Okay,” she said again. “But midnight, not one. And I’m leaving the setting on.”
“I’m not going to read it. I’m not. I’m not that kind of mom.” She closed the window. The screen went back to the desktop, a photo of a beach in Mexico she’d never been to. “But I’m leaving it on. So you know it’s there. So you think about it.”
“Okay.”
She stood up. She pushed the chair in. Then she stood behind me and put both her arms around my shoulders. She rested her chin on the top of my head and held on.
I sat there and let her.
I was lying to her. I’d been lying to her since June. I’d been lying to a woman who had never once lied to me, not about the poplars, not about the job, not about anything that mattered. She’d told me the truth about everything she knew. And I was sitting under her arms, and I’d just done it again, better than ever, and she was holding on to me for it.
* * *
dekker #7 says:
she read them nate says:
what dekker #7 says:
the logs. theres a setting. you turned it on when you were 12. she turned it on. she read like 2 months nate says:
oh no nate says:
oh no. i forgot. i completely forgot dekker #7 says:
i said it was about your dad. wanting you to take over the business. and the going out thing nate says:
did she believe it dekker #7 says:
half nate says:
ok nate says:
its kind of true. the business thing dekker #7 says:
i know. thats why it worked nate says:
are you ok dekker #7 says:
no nate says:
me neither
We turned it off after that. Not the setting. Tracy would check. We just stopped saying anything that mattered on MSN. We said it at the library, at the table by the pillar, in forty-minute slots. We said it on the bleachers at lunch, with people looking. We said it on the phone in whispers, on the floor of my room with the door shut, and on the landing at the top of the Hawkwood stairs with the cordless held up as high as it would go.
On MSN we talked about homework and the Stampeders.
It was like learning a third language.
* * *
The Grey Cup was on the Sunday, the twenty-third, in Montreal. Calgary against Montreal. The whole city had been talking about it for a week. There were Stampeders flags on car windows. Tracy’s office had a red-and-white day on the Friday, and she’d gone in a red sweater.
On the Saturday Gordon phoned.
Tracy answered. I was at the counter. I heard her say “Oh, hi, Gordon,” in her surprised voice. Then “Oh!” Then “That’s so nice of you,” and “No, we were just going to watch it here, just the two of us,” and finally “Well, if you’re sure.”
She hung up.
“We’ve been invited,” she said, “to watch the Grey Cup. At the Reimers’. Paige and her mom, he said.” She looked at me. “That’s us.”
“Okay.”
“He said Donna’s doing chili. He said bring nothing. You can’t bring nothing.” She was already opening the cupboard. “Do we have anything? We have nothing. I’ll make the Nanaimo bars.”
“You always make the Nanaimo bars.”
“Because they’re good,” said Tracy.
* * *
Donna’s Grey Cup chili was on the stove when we got there. It was the same chili it had been every Grey Cup since I was born, in the big orange pot with the chip in the lid, with the beans and the ground beef and too much cumin, and a bag of shredded cheese on the counter beside it with the corner cut off.
I put the cheese in a bowl.
I’d done it without thinking. You always put the cheese in a bowl, because Gordon ate it out of the bag otherwise, with his hand, and Donna hated that. I’d done it every Grey Cup since I was eight. I’d got the bowl down from the cupboard over the fridge without even looking, the blue plastic one, and dumped the bag in it, and put it by the chili. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Then I turned around and Brett was in the kitchen doorway, watching.
He looked at the blue bowl. He looked at me.
“Thanks,” he said.
He took a handful of cheese out of the bowl and went into the living room.
* * *
It was the first time both families had been in one room.
Tracy and Donna were in the kitchen. They’d been in the kitchen since we came in the door. They were talking about everything at once, the way women talk who’ve just found out they like each other. They talked about their jobs, and the dentist Donna worked for, who was a sweetheart but couldn’t find his own car in a parking lot. They talked about their sisters, and kids, and their kids, and us.
I heard my name. I heard Nathan’s. I heard Donna laugh, a real laugh, not her company one, the one I’d heard about four times in my life.
Gordon was in his chair in front of the TV with his lucky Stampeders toque on, the red one with the white horse, which he wore every Grey Cup and washed never. Nathan was on the couch. I sat at the other end of the couch, by the arm. There was a whole cushion between us.
At halftime Gordon got up and went into the kitchen for more chili, and stayed. I heard him talking to Tracy about oil.
“It’s down to fifty,” Gordon said. “Fifty. It was a hundred and forty-seven in July. I’ve got guys who were in the patch who are calling me for furnace work. Rig guys. Good guys. Asking can I use them.”
“Coulee’s fine,” Tracy said. “We’ve got the Houston contract. Through the spring.”
“Good,” Gordon said. “That’s good. Hang on to it.” He said it the way he’d say hang on to your hat. “People always need heat. That’s the thing about my business. Doesn’t matter what oil does. It’s minus twenty, you need a furnace.”
“That must be nice,” said Tracy.
There was a little pause in the kitchen. Then Donna said, “More chili, Tracy?”
* * *
Brett sat on the floor in front of the TV with his back against the coffee table. He’d been watching the game. Then, in the third quarter, I realized he hadn’t been watching the game. He’d been watching the couch.
He was watching me and Nathan. The cushion between us. The way neither of us touched the cushion. The way we both leaned forward at the same time when Calgary got the ball on the Montreal thirty, and both sat back at the same time when they didn’t score. The way I said “Oh, come on,” and Nathan said it at the same second, and neither of us looked at each other.
When I looked at Brett, he looked at the TV.
* * *
Calgary won. Twenty-two to fourteen.
When the clock ran out, Gordon stood up out of his chair with both arms in the air and yelled so loud the windows went. He ran out the front door into the cul-de-sac in his sock feet and his lucky toque. Through the window we could see him in the snow under the streetlight with his arms up, and two houses down somebody came out banging a pot with a spoon, and then somebody else, and car horns started going off all over Hawkwood, all over the city, everywhere, like the whole of Calgary had been holding its breath since June.
Donna and Tracy came out of the kitchen and stood in the front window and laughed at him.
“He’s going to catch his death,” said Donna.
“He’s so happy,” said Tracy.
“He’s an idiot,” said Donna, warmly. “Look at him. Twenty years I’ve been married to that.”
Then she looked over her shoulder at the couch. At me and Nathan, still sitting there, at either end, with the cushion between us.
She leaned over to Tracy. She didn’t whisper quite quietly enough.
“They’re going out,” she said. “Aren’t they.”
“I think so,” Tracy said, just as quietly. “She won’t say.”
“He won’t either.” Donna smiled, a little crooked. “He’s never had a girlfriend. He never even talked about girls. I used to worry.” She put her hand on Tracy’s arm. “I’m glad it’s her. I like her. There’s something about her, I don’t know what it is.”
“She’s a good kid,” said Tracy.
“She’s a lovely kid,” said Donna.
They both looked at us. We both smiled at them, very politely.
They turned back to the window.
Nathan looked at me across the cushion.
“Ew,” he said. He didn’t make any sound. I read it off his mouth.
“Ew,” I said back.
Out in the snow, Gordon had found the truck. He’d opened the driver’s door and was leaning on the horn, one long blast, with his toque on crooked and his sock feet in the snow, and all down the cul-de-sac people were cheering at him.
Donna went to get his boots.
* * *
In the car on the way home, Tracy was quiet. It was late, and the roads were full of people honking, and somebody on Crowchild had a flag out their sunroof.
“Donna’s nice,” Tracy said, at a red light.
“Yeah.”
“She’s really nice. We’re going to have coffee.” She drummed her fingers on the wheel. “She said something funny in the kitchen, before.”
“What?”
“She said Nathan used to be so quiet. Before the hospital. She said he used to flinch if you came up behind him, he was so jumpy, and now he’s like a different kid.” The light went green. Tracy didn’t go. “I said, that’s funny, Paige is like a different kid too. And she laughed and said, maybe it’s something in the water at the Children’s.”
The car behind us honked. Tracy went.
“Isn’t that funny?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s funny.”
Crowchild Trail went by outside my window, all flags and horns and snow. I held the card in my jacket pocket so hard the edges went soft.