The Best Thing for You (5 page)

“You have leg problems?”

“Dad always parks by the doors.”

“That’s part of what makes Dad, Dad,” I say. “I’m Mom.”

Clearview Mall tries for festive. At the entrance, a girl on Rollerblades hands us coupons. From the height of her blades she is haughty, freckled. “Hi,” Ty says reflexively, stuffing the coupon in his pocket. When she ignores him, he blushes. Inside are streamers and roaming clowns with whistles. There’s a lineup at the frozen yogurt place.

“Just a minute,” I tell him, but he ignores me. “Ty, what flavour?” I have to raise my voice, he’s moved away.

“Not for me,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Strawberry,” I tell the girl.

“Cone or cup?”

I’ve lost Ty. One hand on the counter to keep my place in line, I’m on my toes trying to see his head amongst the heads. What’s he doing? “Cup, cup, cup,” I say.

After that, she’s slow on purpose. Looking at her, I can’t imagine having a daughter like her, sly-smart to Ty’s dumb-smart,
cat to his dog. Her hair is French-braided and clipped with little glitter butterflies, but she’s done her eyes with fuck-me black eyeliner and her mouth looks delicately cruel. Still, paying for my cup of pink, when I inadvertently touch her hand she flinches and I think: there’s someone trapped in there.

“Enjoy your yogurt,” she says.

Following Ty, I pass a toy store, a joke underwear store, a Gap, and a Dream Jeans. The Gap slows me down – they’re doing those fall harvest colours I like, they’re playing the Clash – but then I see my son standing with some other boys, up between Sam’s and the Nike store, so I take my yogurt to a bench to wait him out. I cozy up to the fake palm so I can watch through the fronds without embarrassing him in front of his peers. Every now and then I glance into Dream Jeans like into a tropical fish tank – blond Asian kids in platforms and stripy Wicked Witch of the East socks with skateboards and Tweetie Bird knapsacks – and then back to Ty. The boys with him are tall strangers to me, in enormous jeans with loops of chains and hooded sweatshirts. Next to them, in his sandals and tucked-in T-shirt, Ty looks like a little dork. I wonder how he knows them, what he’s done to earn their respect. I watch them laugh. The bigger one leans forward and shakes both arms from the shoulder, like he’s loosening up for a free throw. He cuffs Ty’s head lightly and they split up, the tall boys into the Nike store, Ty back towards me. Right away when he sees me I hold up my frozen-yogurt cup and say, “I want to finish this and then I want to go to the Gap,” so he won’t think I was spying. He shrugs.

The rest of the day does not go so well. Ty is sullen and shy, the toxic brew of adolescence. He wants me to buy him clothes, but he doesn’t want to come out of the change room to let me see them. Hell, he doesn’t even want me in the store, and this is distressing to me, new. I wonder if the interview with Officer
Stevens this morning and then jazzing with the bigger boys hasn’t gone to his head, made him over into this grunting, slouching creature who thinks he wants this T-shirt with skulls down the sleeves. I say, “You are kidding, right?”

“No.”

I hold the T-shirt up to my own chest, check the arms. It would fit me, actually. “Actually,” I say.

“I changed my mind.” He walks right out of the store, so I buy the T-shirt. “Who’s that for?” he says when I catch him up.

I decide to fuck with him. “Me.”

He shrugs again. It’s getting annoying, a tic. Maybe he suddenly wants to try being a teen instead of a person, but I don’t have to play.

“Untuck your shirt,” I tell him. “You look nine.”

“I think they’re playing Bing Crosby now, at your favourite store.”

Steaming, we do Wal-Mart. The drive home is icy silence. “Thanks, Mom,” I say, getting out of the car. I make him wait before I pop the trunk. Maliciously, while he’s grabbing his crinkly bags of stuff, I lean over to kiss his head.

He goes in, leaving the bag with the skull T-shirt in the trunk beside my purse; so I take it into the kitchen, saw through the plastic-threaded tags with a steak knife, and pull it on to cook – wok food. Dicing vegetables, I walk myself slowly through the forensics of the beating – the bruising, the fractures, the probable number of blows. I’ve been doing this all day, to anaesthetize myself to it. I wear the T-shirt through supper and Liam, looking from Ty’s face to mine, doesn’t ask. Nobody says anything, so I leave it on to vacuum. I get to like it, sweeping paths and swaths of paler carpet, variegating the pile, pushing and pulling with my new black arms.

“Nice shirt,” Liam says bleakly, startling me when I cut the motor. He’s been standing behind me, watching. “I take it you guys had a good day.” I roll my eyes. I reach for a hug but he dodges me, won’t meet my eye. “Come see what I bought while you were out.”

I loop electrical cord around my shoulder and follow him with the vacuum cleaner. “Yeah, yeah,” he says when I pause to plug it into the outlet outside his office door. Ignoring him, I recline the handle and trundle it ahead of me into the room.

“Ta-da,” he says.

“Looks like a coffee maker.”

“It
is.
It
is
a coffee maker.” He’s got it on his desk like some museum thing newly unboxed, still half-clad in packing.

“We have a coffee maker.”

“Yeah, in the kitchen. You’re going to take that thing off soon, right?”

“This?” I do a little dance from the hips, snake my arms up and down like an Indian goddess. “No, I like it. Think I’ll keep it. Think I’ll wear it to work. Think I’ll revert to my true, former self, okay with you?”

“You’re a bad influence on your son.”

“Damn straight,” I say. In the weird pause that follows I realize he was serious. I say, “I’m what?”

He says, “You need to grow up.”

Nodding, I press the big plastic button on the vacuum with my foot. Now I can see his lips move but all I hear is noise.

Now, here comes school: radio in the morning, to me, is school. Red apples, red leaves, blunt scissors. Ty and I are shy with each other, this morning, poison past – we slept it off. “Sleepy,” he
says over his waffles. He looks it, too, but Liam looks worse. He came to bed last night long after he must have thought I would be asleep.

“Are you growing a beard?” I ask.

“He’s growing a fur,” Ty says.

What he looks is tragic, there at the sink, sunlight doing an outrage when he cracks the blinds – he winces, has to look away. Khakis, black sweater, his work clothes. “Unh,” he says, and doses himself with more espresso.

“Dad’s epitaph.” I make bunny ears with my fingers. “ ’Coffee.” ’

Liam claps his mug on the counter and we jump. “Don’t talk to Jason at school.”

Ty freezes.

“Okay?”

He hesitates. “Yeah.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Liam says.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“I don’t –” I start to say, but Liam’s already out of the room. After a minute we hear the rumble of the garage door, the chunk of the car door, ignition.

“Bye, Daddy,” Ty says.

“Doctor.”

And of course I drop everything – clipboard, swab jar, paper cup of water – because I’m doing what I shouldn’t: staring at the gardener through the one-way glass, some college kid the clinic has rented, watching him shave the evergreen bushes with sweeps and licks of a power trimmer. Kneeling for the mess, I pet the water stain on my knee as though it might brush off. “I was going to drink that,” I say wistfully, blotting at the damp cloth with my sleeve. I lookup. It’s Calvin, one of the day nurses. “Hi.”

He goes, “Hey,” eyes on the gardener.

“We’re having the yard done,” I explain quickly. “I was looking at him with those evergreens and I had this revelation: holly. For in the winter, when everything else is dead.”

“Okay,” Calvin says cautiously, like there might be more.

“What’s up?”

“Mrs. Lowe is in seven. She won’t let me take her blood pressure. She wants you.”

“Calvin.”

“She hates me.”

This is hard to imagine. Calvin wears jeans and, under his smock, a T-shirt with a picture of the Grinch on it. He’s twenty-four, maybe, tall, with nice arms, and the pierced eyebrow, and the sleepy, slightly worried face. Handsome isn’t it, but endearing, yes. Probably he has a great stereo and a girlfriend he can’t get enough of and not much else. I know the type. Appealing, to me, in an itchy old way.

I take the cuff and knock on seven. I go in and right away, there’s your problem. Mrs. Octogenarian Lowe is wearing a turtleneck dress. “That’s right,” she says when she sees me. We get her out of the dress. I wrap the arm, pump the bulb. “Now, do you know the origins of Velcro?” she asks brightly.

“Yes,” I say, and then we talk for a while about her arthritis. When it’s time for her to go I tell her, “Remember, next time, short sleeves.”

“In November? I’ll die.”

“You won’t die.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” she says, shaking her finger at me like I’m a naughty girl.

Calvin is waiting in the hall with another paper cup of water. “Do you have a real job?” I say, and he smiles. No one smiles as little as Calvin.

“He has a crush on you,” May says later. She and Calvin are the pediatric nurses; they give shots.

“Funny,” I say. We’re having lunch together in the staff room. She sips Chinese tea from a four-ounce can. I’m fiddling with the pull tab, dabbing at bagel crumbs with a fingertip. “That stuff any good?”

“I’ll bring you one tomorrow. I’m serious.”

“She’s serious.” I throw the tab at her. “You’re hazing the new girl.”

“You should be flattered. He barely says hello to me any more.”

“Aw.”

May shrugs and offers me a moon cake. But one bite and I’m retching so badly I can’t see. I’m actually passing out. “Doctor,” May barks, not at me, and someone grabs my elbow. They haul me over to the sink, where I heave and heave until I’m sure there’s going to be blood. I hear May say something about sesame seeds.

“Too sudden.” A male voice, Doctor Gagnon. “That’s no food allergy.”

“I’m fine.” Sweating, cold, but breathing. I feel much, much better.

“What was that?” they ask. Doctor Gagnon, grandfather, ex-army captain, has his hands on his hips. He was on my hiring committee; he sounds like he’s wondering if it made a mistake.

“I’ve been feeling a little off all morning,” I lie. I don’t tell them about the image I had, of the man in the parking lot not knowing which way to turn.

The afternoon pours slow and even after that, gold in the trees, colds and sprains, big-eyed babies taking me in. I’m floating, I’m healing the sick, I’m drifting through Reception when Calvin, phone clamped between ear and shoulder, gives me a message to call Liam on his cell. It’s from an hour ago.

“Calvin.”

Expressionless: “I didn’t take it.”

I decide I’m going to have to ask about him.

May tells my next patient I’m running five minutes behind and follows me to my office. “Problem?”

“Is Calvin slow?”

She sees the message slip in my hand and colours. “The receptionist gave it to me. I had a patient so I asked Cal to give it to you.”

“When was this?”

“Five minutes ago.”

I squint.

“It was in my pocket for a while,” she says softly. “I apologize. The mistake, it was my mistake.”

I see she’s ashamed. “Look, no,” I say hurriedly. “It’s no problem. I just – I’m sure it’s nothing. I didn’t mean to – I’m not accusing you, I just thought that since Cal, Calvin, gave it to me – May, it’s all right.”

She nods and leaves. “Ah, shit,” I say. No tea for me tomorrow, I’ll bet.

Liam’s number yields Liam’s recording. I leave something terse and go back to work, last patient of the day. May hands me his folder in the hall. “Mr. Resnick is feeling breathless,” she says, poker-faced. I cross my eyes at her and go in.

Mr. Resnick is obviously a walk-in: the brand new folder, the attitude. “I’m not paying for this,” is the first thing he says. I get this a lot.

“What seems to be the trouble?” I hear myself say.

“Are you going to search me?”

I look at him again: long white hair, dirty suit, scaly shoes. Sixty, sixty-five. Blue eyes. “No.”