One More Step Read online

  One More Step

  Sheree Fitch

  Orca soundings

  Copyright © 2002 Sheree Fitch

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Fitch, Sheree

  One more step

  (Orca soundings)

  ISBN 1-55143-248-X

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8561.I86O63 2002 jC813’.54 C2002-910693-1

  PZ7.F562On 2002

  First published in the United States, 2002

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2002107490

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Julian’s parents separated when he was a baby and he is still angry and hurt. On a road trip with his mother and her new beau, Julian finds that love—and happiness—come in many forms.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover design: Christine Toller

  Cover photography: Eyewire

  Printed and bound in Canada

  IN CANADA:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  IN THE UNITED STATES:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  04 03 02 • 5 4 3 2 1

  For D. & G. & J. & B.

  SF

  Chapter One

  Purple condoms. My brother got purple condoms in his Christmas stocking. Mom must think things are heating up between Chris and Becca. Not likely. I got a diary.

  “She gave me one when I was fourteen, too,” said Chris. “I used it for about a week. Then I forgot about it.”

  Mom made a face at him.

  “Well, don’t forget to use the condoms, okay?”

  Mom’s pretty quick. We laughed. Well, the three of us did. Jean-Paul doesn’t understand our sense of humor. Or maybe he doesn’t understand period. He’s French.

  “I learn more English in two day with your mother than I did in one whole year,” he said, the first time I met him. I believe it. My mother is, among other things, a non-stop talker.

  “Yes,” he teased in his broken English. “We get along well. She talk, I listen.” I guess it was his idea of a joke. Ha. Ha. I didn’t laugh.

  They’ve been going out for about six months. At first, I didn’t think it was serious. I was wrong.

  “Jean-Paul is coming for Christmas,” Mom chirped one morning in early December.

  So. This was different. My mother gets twisted about tradition and family rituals. This was the first time I ever remember there being an extra on Christmas morning. An invitation like this meant something was up. I wasn’t cool with the idea, but I didn’t have a say in the matter.

  Jean-Paul arrived on Christmas Eve with meat pies, eggnog and presents for all.

  “An egghead with eggnog,” I whispered to Chris.

  “Be cool,” said Chris.

  “I am.” I said.

  “Liar,” he said.

  “Hello, Julian,” said Jean-Paul. To Chris.

  “Merry Christmas, Chris,” he said to me.

  “Hell-oooo!” I said. “I’m Julian. The tall one. Blonde, brown-eyed smart-ass, remember? Chris is the oldest. The short little twerp. Brown hair, blue eyes. The saint. One more time? Me, Julian. Him, Chris.”

  “Julian!” said my mother.

  “Pardonnez-moi.” said Jean-Paul.

  On Christmas morning, there was this real intense moment when Jean-Paul handed Mom a present. She opened it to find a jewelry box. Great, I thought, he is going to propose. But Sheree Fitch it was a pair of earrings. If my mother was disappointed, she didn’t show it.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said. Then she oohed and aahed and kissed Jean-Paul. No tongue, just a peck on the cheek. Thank God. Still, Chris rolled his eyes. I stuck my fingers so far down my throat, I almost gagged for real.

  To me, those earrings looked like hunks of banged up metal hanging from her ears.

  And they didn’t go with the necklace I got her.

  Then I found my diary. The diary is for getting out your innermost feelings, Mom had written on the inside cover. To learn to talk to yourself. In the end, you have to make friends with yourself and life will be easier.

  When she says things like that I want to barf. In the end? Like what does this mean? When I’m ready to die?

  “It’s really so you won’t have time to go your bedroom and jack off,” whispered Chris.

  “What was that?” asked Mom. I swear she has a sonar implant in her ear.

  Jean-Paul heard just fine.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, winking at me.

  I guess some things are the same in any language.

  My parents divorced when I was a year old. That’s always my opening line when I have to write about myself in English class. If nothing else, it’ll put the teacher on my side from the start. English is not my best subject. No subject is, for that matter. That line works okay with girls, too. They make little mouse-like squeaking sounds. Their eyes turn into puddles of pity. That’s all the information I give about that.

  First, because it’s none of their business. Second, because I don’t really know that much. Chris tells me I’m the lucky one.

  “That means you don’t have any memories, bad or good.”

  He says he remembers too well a lot of late night angry noises. Not voices. “Just doors Sheree Fitch slamming and the spin of tires on gravel in the driveway. Mom bawling her eyes out.”

  He’s only ever told me this in the dark when I couldn’t see his face. It means he’s the one who has a history with our father. Weekend visits, Christmas and summer vacations. That’s what I’ve had.

  So now there’s Jean-Paul, another in a line of strange and stranger men my mother’s tried out over the years. Sometimes, I think she sees it as taking a new car out for a test run or something.

  Okay, so there’ve only been three. But that’s three too many. Plus, Chris gets confused. Four year’s difference and he thinks he’s a father figure or something. Like I said, too many fathers. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot. There’s Poppie, my Granddad, too.

  Jean-Paul better not try to do a Dad routine on me, I thought.

  “Let’s clean up, boys,” he said just then.

  “Let’s not,” I said. He just shrugged and gave me this dorky grin.

  I turned on the TV and watched him and Chris stuff wrapping paper into garbage bags. Mom went to fry up some partridge meat. Same as always. With fried eggs and cranberry muffins. This year, though, she served the orange juice in wineglasses. Fancy shmancy.

  “Who are you trying to impress, Mom?” I asked.

  “Cool, cool.” said Chris quickly. And gave me the look.

  It’s the look that means watch your step buster or you’ll have to answer to me later.

  Chris and I played Nintendo while they started peeling the vegetables for dinner. It had to be an early dinner because we were leaving for Dad’s place. We had to eat there, too.

  Strange, I thought. This was the first year Mom didn’t complain about how impossible squash is to cut.

  “Why are there never any decent knives in this house?” she always whines whenever she’s preparing a big meal.r />
  This year, she wasn’t complaining about a thing. In fact, she was humming. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Her favorite.

  Chapter Two

  Nana and Poppie were coming over for supper. This was a good thing, I figured. Maybe that would mean Mom and Jean-Paul would keep their hands off each other. I saw hickeys on my mother’s neck when she was in her bathrobe. She’s thirty-seven years old, for crying out loud.

  “You better wear your turtleneck for dinner,” I told her.

  She nearly died when she realized what I was talking about. Then she got in a snit.

  “My sexuality is my own affair,” she said. No pun intended, I’m sure. I couldn’t help smirking.

  So let’s not see you groping each other in the kitchen while you’re peeling vegetables, okay? I wanted to say. I didn’t though.

  “Ready to go?” asked Jean-Paul, coming into the kitchen just then.

  It was time for our traditional drive while the turkey was cooking. We don’t go to church but Mom’s always insisted we should mark this as a sacred day. Her words, not mine.

  For about four years now, ever since we’ve had a car, we’ve been driving out to the same spot. It’s by the ocean. We go for a walk in the woods and end up on a ledge of rocks overlooking the sea. It’s a wicked spot.

  This year though, the weather was miserable. It was snowing, a sort of frozen-spit kind of snow. It didn’t melt when it hit the ground. Chris and I had to shovel for at least twenty minutes to clear the driveway.

  “Want some help? I have a shovel in the trunk of my car.” Jean-Paul asked.

  I kept my head down.

  “Sure,” said Chris.

  After about ten minutes, Jean-Paul stopped to rest and lit a cigarette. Real good for the lungs, Bud, I thought. “Are you illiterate or just French?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  I grabbed the package out of his hands.

  “La cigarette cause le cancer.” I read.

  He laughed, but he only took one puff before he threw it away.

  By the time we got the driveway shoveled, the snow had turned to an icy rain, the kind that numbs your face and turns it orange.

  Mom came out all spruced up in her snowsuit and funky hat. She had make-up on. The wrinkles under her eyes were gone and those eyes seemed brighter blue than usual. When we started driving, Mom put on the radio.

  “Bethlehem was peaceful this Christmas,” said the announcer. This made Mom start sniveling. Then she switched the channel partway through the next item. It was about Christmas at a hospice for AIDS victims.

  “It’s Christmas Day. I don’t want to think about this today. Where’s the music?”

  That’s Mom. Get rid of what doesn’t make you feel good. If it adds keep it in, if it subtracts take it out. It’s sort of her mathematical theory of life she explained to me once. Yeah? More like the process of elimination. Like what she’s always done with those other wanna-be Dads.

  We drove slowly along the icy roads. It gave me time to play the videotape of one of those dudes in my head.

  Candidate Numero Uno for Stepfather and Possible Husband was Winslow Thor-burn the Third.

  The Turd. That’s what Chris and I called him. It’s all downhill from the moment you’re born with a name like that.

  Winslow was as stuffed up and puffed up as his name. He was a professor type. Well, he was a professor. A professor of bugs. What’s it called? I forget. A bugologist or something. Anyhow, he looked like a bug. A cockroach. His eyebrow hair stuck out like antennae. His eyes were bulgy. I imagined them popping out if he were to ever get surprised. But he never did. Half the time, the guy was in a fog as thick as a cocoon.

  Well, there was that one time, the first time we met him. That surprised him all right. Mom announced she had a date.

  “Now boys,” she said. “Troy is going to baby-sit. My date is coming at seven. When the doorbell rings, I’ll get it and then I’ll bring him up to introduce you. I want you to be on your best behavior.”

  When Dr. Winslow Thorburn the Turd rang the bell, we settled ourselves on the ledge above the stairs. As they walked up, we counted. “One, two, three!” Then we jumped on his back. The two of us. Well, we were only four and eight after all. We knocked him flat against the steps. His glasses flew off his nose.

  “Boys! My god. Winslow, are you all right?” my mother gasped.

  “Sure,” he coughed and sputtered. “Just knocked the wind out of me.”

  My mother was fuming. Troy, who had only turned his back on us for a second, was trying not to laugh.

  What gets me to this day was that the poor sucker kept coming back for more. We never ambushed him again but we learned, during the two years he hung around, to do other things that got on his nerves. Like squish any bug we could find. Like eating bacon with our fingers and not using a napkin. We just licked the grease off, finger by finger.

  “Honestly,” he said one morning at breakfast, “can’t you two be more civilized?”

  “This from a man who prefers the spruce bud worm to humans?” snapped my mother. “And whoever heard of eating bacon with a knife and fork, anyhow? Some food is finger food, Winslow.”

  The Turd stopped coming around after that. Chris and I saw him once, riding a bike in the park. “Julian!” he shouted from across the street. “Chris!”

  We ambled over.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine, thank you,” we said in unison.

  “And your mother?”

  Just in case he had any ideas about calling her up, I spoke right up.

  “She’s got a new bo—,” Chris elbowed me in the ribs.

  “Job,” I continued.

  “Really?”

  “Um, yeah, she’s a clown at birthday parties. Loves it.”

  This was true. Molly the Clown Inc. was her latest sideline. Her regular job as a child-care worker never paid enough.

  “There’s a fortune to be made at birthday parties in this city,” she said.

  Then she sewed up a costume, painted her face, and studied books on how to make balloon animals. She spent hours learning to juggle and enrolled in mime classes. There wasn’t much money to be made, but she had fun.

  “A clown?” he said, bulgy eyes bulging.

  “Quite a woman, your mother.” As he said it, it seemed those eyes filled with thunder-clouds. I think the Turd was sad.

  “Give her my best,” he said. Like a perfect gentleman. Then he biked away from us as fast as he could. We watched until he was a small speck on the bicycle trail. No bigger than a squished cockroach. And that was the last of him.

  Chapter Three

  I was almost asleep when we got to the sacred spot, as my mother called it. I woke up pretty fast, though. As soon as I stepped out of the car, the wind slapped me in the face.

  We slipped and slid down the trail that snaked through the woods. After ten minutes, we finally reached the lookout over the ocean. Our faces were soon glazed with ice—a mix of ocean spray and sleet. Each strand of hair was frozen stiff.

  “Me come from Tribe of Icicle People,” I said, shivering.

  “Me Frosty the Snowman’s brother,” said Chris, wiping the frost off his eyebrows.

  “Now I would like us to hold hands in a circle and listen to the stillness,” instructed Mom.

  Just then a wave thumped so loud below us, it seemed to me that God himself was mocking her.

  “And—?” urged Chris. He was jumping up and down to keep warm.

  “And we each have to say a prayer.”

  “To whom are we praying, Mom?” This was me.

  “To the Source,” she replied.

  “The Sauce?” asked Jean-Paul. “What is this Sauce?”

  “No. The Source. S-o-u-r-c-e.”

  “A spelling lesson, now? Mom!”

  “You mean God,” said Jean-Paul quietly.

  “Mom, this is something you should stick to doing with your goddess girlfriends,” I sa
id.

  I wanted hot cocoa. Fire. Toasty toes. Mine felt ready to fall off from frostbite.

  Her face crumpled. I was sorry I said what I did.

  “Can we do it fast?” said Jean-Paul. Then he winked at me. That wink. Again.

  “No, forget it,” she said. “I guess I’m the only one this means anything to.” She pouted like a three-year-old. She’s been working with kids for too long.

  Chris grabbed my hand and Mom’s, and Jean-Paul grabbed her other and mine. Our circle was complete.

  “Thank you for my precious sons, for new love and the promise of hope I feel in my heart this day.” Mom’s voice trembled. Maybe it was just the cold, but I don’t think so.

  Chris cleared his throat. “Thank you for my family and friends. And please stop the snow.”

  “Thank you for your presence in my life each day,” said Jean-Paul. Heavy duty. “And bless the knitter of my new um… how you Sheree Fitch say, glove? I am happy I have them at these minutes.” Clever. Mom knit the gloves.

  “Thank-you for Mom, Chris, Nana, Poppie, Dad, Erika, Hanna, Maddie and Luke and the ski vacation I’ll be going on this week.” I said.

  “Amen,” said Mom.

  “A-woman,” I corrected her. We all laughed, even Mom. Then we beat it back to the car. I don’t know if Jean-Paul noticed. But he wasn’t on my list of people I was thankful for.

  Dinner was delicious. Also, a disaster. As always, we ate too much, especially considering we had another meal to go to. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was my manners. The fact that I’m so immature for my age. That’s a matter of opinion. It’s most certainly my Grandmother’s opinion. She’s been telling me that my whole life, no matter what age I’ve been.

  “Chew with your mouth closed,” hissed Nana. I should have done what she said. But, I can’t help it sometimes. When people use a certain tone of voice with me, I just want to do exactly the opposite. This was one of those times. I opened my mouth wider and stuck out my tongue, filled with food, at Chris.

  So then Nana kicked me under the table. For eating with my mouth open! Kicked me! In the shin! I don’t think she meant to do it so hard but she had on those pointy shoes.