The Best Thing for You (9 page)

“Is anyone allergic to nuts?” I take a Tupperware container from the fridge and shake it. “I have coconut for the chicken.”

“Stand back,” Liam says. “She’s gone hostess.”

Abruptly, the music above our heads stops. I’m thinking it’s the hurricane eye between songs but the moment stretches until we’re all cringing.

“See, my view,” Liam says, frowning, “and Kate and I have had cause to discuss this recently, is that motivation is basically opaque. What motivates a Stalin or a Charles Manson? Don’t know. What motivates my son to torture us with that noise? Don’t know.”

“ ’No Fun,” ’ I say.

They look at me.

“That song,” I tell Liam. “That song I recognized, it was a cover of an Iggy Pop song called ‘No Fun.” ’

“How old is your son?” Jupiter asks.

We say, “Fourteen.”

“That can be a difficult age,” May says. “That was the year I decided to give up the violin. My parents were very angry but I was so stubborn, eventually they had to give in. I was a brat.”

“I was a ping-pong
champion
,” Jupiter says.

May frowns at him. “I was good too,” she says, looking troubled.

“May, Jupiter.” I touch the backs of a couple of chairs.

At the stove, Liam is jerking rice onto five plates. The rice comes off the paddle in sticky shaped clumps. I transfer the curries from the stove to three toasted-looking cork pads on the table. May rearranges my settings to help make room. “Here,” she says, handing Jupiter a saucer of mint condiment, keen and pretty as poison. He studies it, head bobbing faintly like he’s revving up for something, until she takes it back and sets it in a new place. “Did you say your son was having trouble at school?”

Liam and I glance at each other. “He’s also having trouble at school,” Liam says.

“Just a fight,” I say. “He’s a boy. He’s never had a fight before, now he has. He’s just going through the monkey stages.”

“What was the fight about?” Jupiter wants to know.

Liam and I are doing the same thing, looking around the table to see what’s missing. “Basketball.”

“Calvin plays basketball,” May says. “Plays or played. I think he used to be really good.”

I say, “Here’s Ty.”

Ty looks pretty good, looks not bad, in a button-down plaid shirt and jeans, skinny wrists and hips. The clothes seem a little big on him. The puff on his cheek, the boxer’s eye from school two days ago – the work of his new bad-boy friends – I’m almost used to. They make him look hardy, wry. I watch him shake hands with May, watch her hang on to him while she ducks her head automatically for a better view of the damage.

“Mr. Chan, Ty,” Liam says.

“Jupiter, please!” Jupiter says.

“Okay, hi.” For the first time, probably because I’m trying to see him through the eyes of our guests, I notice a deeper note in Ty’s voice, the first light bow-strokes of a cello.

Jupiter seems disappointed. “I was named after the planet,” he’s saying.

“Is Borneo a country?” Ty takes a chair between Jupiter and me. “Homework,” he explains. This is the old Ty: little, affable, honour roll Ty.

“First week of grade nine,” Liam says grimly. “Is that a rock and roll curriculum or what?” He isn’t looking at me now.

“Borneo, Borneo, Borneo,” Jupiter says.

May takes a half-spoonful of each curry, setting them at equidistant points on her plate so they won’t touch or mingle. “I bet they have that on the Internet.”

“Don’t encourage him,” I say, and he scowls at me. This is the other Ty, the changeling.

“Ask me some trig,” Jupiter says.

For a while we eat, and I’m distressed because May and Jupiter are eating little, slowly. When May asks Ty what his favourite subject is at school he rolls his eyes. “Tyler,” I say sharply.

“I’m not currently enjoying school, Mrs. Chan,” he says. Liam puts down his knife and fork. “I guess it’s the curriculum.” May and I start to laugh, we shouldn’t but it’s not a choice. Jupiter, lenses of his glasses flashing, is grinning at his red shirt. Gingerly, ignoring us, Ty fingers his bruised cheek. I guess he was trying to be rude, not funny, and we let him down.

“You hear they made an arrest in that beating case? That retarded man?” Liam says.

I start taking plates.

“May I be excused?” Ty asks. Liam says no.

“I heard it was a teenager,” Jupiter says. “Maybe a couple of teenagers?”

“They’ve only charged one so far.”

“Dad,” Ty says.

Liam’s leaning back, hands in his lap. He’s left some odds and ends on his plate – gravy-dirty rice, a bit of skin, chickpeas – like he’s in a restaurant. “Speaking of hate crimes.”

“It’s a weird phenomenon, these violent kids,” Jupiter says, nodding. “Predatory. It’s not like, you play dirty on the basketball court, I call you on it, we throw a couple of punches.” He winks at Ty. “But teenagers going after a disabled man in a deserted parking lot, it’s like they think they’re hunting moose or something.”

“Like sport,” May says. “Where are their parents?”

“Please Daddy may I be excused from the table?” Ty says.

“So what do you think, Kate?” Jupiter winks at Liam this time. “What motivates these kids?”

“Tea, coffee?” I count heads.

“Kate,” Liam says.

“We weren’t there,” I say. “There may have been reasons. We don’t know how it happened, what he did or what they did. But I agree with May. If the parents are good people, the children will be good people. Good kids will not get involved in things like that, and I believe that. A kid who’s been good all his life does not suddenly turn on a man with Down syndrome just because there’s an opportunity. You look at the kid who did this, you look at all the circumstances of his life, and you’ll find a straight path back from this act to other acts, to the upbringing, to the parents. I’m talking about patterns of behaviour, established predictable patterns. A thing like that doesn’t come out of a vacuum.”

Jupiter’s waving his hand even as I’m talking. “Chicken and egg, fate!” he says, getting ready to argue.

“Down syndrome,” May repeats. “Was that on the news?”

“Daddy, please,” Ty says.

“Come here,” I say. He comes over to where I’m scraping bits into the garbage disposal. “Are you really doing homework up there?” He shrugs. Liam is pouring the rest of the wine, saying something to May, who’s smiling again. I lower my voice: “Borneo?”

“I was making conversation.”

I walk him to the foot of the stairs, my arm on his shoulders. “Quit pissing him off.”

He touches his face again. “He’s pissing
me
off.” But sick, not insolent, is how he looks.

“I’ll tell you something,” I say. “When you came home from school looking like that? He started crying. After you went to bed.”

Ty doesn’t say anything.

“He loves you so much,” I say.

“Ty,” Liam calls. Startled, he flinches.

The kitchen smells of coffee now, that bracing, roast smell, and I see Liam has ferreted a bottle of liqueur from the cupboard under the food processor where we keep the kirsch and other undrinkables we seem to have acquired over the years.

“Sit,” Liam tells Ty, holding the bottle up against the light and tilting it. Liquid rolls thickly inside. May and Jupiter look content enough but there’s an edge to Liam I’m not liking. “We need to work on your conversation skills,” he says. “You can start by telling us about your real, actual homework.”

“How about he just goes and does his real, actual homework?” I say. I haven’t let go of Ty’s shoulder.

Liam puts the bottle down.

“I have a biology lab,” Ty says quickly. “We’re doing a genetics unit and the parts of the cell. You want me to tell you the parts of the cell?”

May and Jupiter have gone still.

“Yes,” Liam says.

“No,” I say. I put both my hands on his shoulders and turn him to face me, so he can’t see his father. “I want you to go upstairs now and finish off what you’re doing. I’ll bring you your dessert up in a little while. And not so loud with the music, we’re trying to hear ourselves think down here.” I give my eyes a Nixon-flick towards our guests, hoping he’ll pick up on it.

“Good night, Mrs. Chan, Mr. Chan,” he says. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Good night,” they say. Their voices sound small and quiet.

“Go,” I say. I turn him away and give him a push towards the stairs, a little harder than I mean to. He goes.

“What you see here is a difference of parenting styles,” Liam says when the sound of Ty’s light step on the stairs has disappeared. “On the one hand, I’m trying to raise our son to be a moderately decent human being. On the other hand, Kate here doesn’t care what he turns into so long as she gets to be the good cop. Brandy?”

Jupiter quickly lifts a flat palm, dismissing the bottle. May, blushing, shakes her head. I see them exchange a glance, see Jupiter straighten up in his chair, preparatory to leaving. I know if they go now there’ll be a rent between May and me that no amount of bubble tea and friendliness will repair. “Coffee, dessert,” I say, eyebrows raised, nodding encouragement, trying to make it a question and a statement at the same time.

May looks at Jupiter. “I would love a coffee,” he says. “Could I just use your bathroom?”

I lead him out of the kitchen and down the hall. “Should we go?” he says, when we’re out of earshot. I like how he does it – unembarrassed, matter-of-fact. His manner makes it easier to respond in kind.

“Not at all,” I say, reaching in for the light and stepping out of his way at the same time. “I’m sorry about that back there. Ty’s always been a great kid, great grades, nice friends, cleans his room, you name it, and suddenly these past few weeks it’s just been one headache after another. It’s just – caused a few tensions, lately. It’s just karma, right? I guess now we have to pay for all those years of him eating his vegetables and so on.”

“I like the alien abduction theory.” Jupiter squeezes past me so that now we’ve traded spots – him in the doorway, me in the hall. He lowers his voice to a cheesy intense whisper and wiggles his fingers by his ears to be spooky.
“That’s not really your kid out there.”

“That’s not really my husband out there. This isn’t really me, for that matter. We must sound pathological to you.”

He does a double take and a smile, and puts one hand on the door. “You seem like slamming parents to me, Kate. I know May thinks the world of you.”

“But?”

He grabs his belt and does a little collapse at the knees with a frazzled look on his face.

“Go,” I say, laughing, turning away. “I’m the good cop. I’m not stopping you.”

In the kitchen, May and Liam are talking about the clinic.

“It’s a problem,” May is saying. “Salaries here just aren’t competitive with the States. It’s almost impossible to keep new nurses in the country.”

“You stayed, though, for instance.” Liam doesn’t look at me.

“My family is here, my life.” May smiles up at me when I hold a cup of coffee out to her. Liam’s I set down in front of him.

“I wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to travel,” Liam says, staring at his cup without touching it. “San Francisco, Saint Petersburg. At certain points it would have been extremely
beneficial to my career. I found having a family quite limiting, in fact.”

“Financially,” May says, frowning and nodding at the same time, trying to understand.

“That too,” Liam says.

“Thanks so much,” I say, as though this is just another of our routines, as though this is a line he’s used before and I’m not rocking, reeling hurt.

“Calvin’s travelled a lot, I think,” May tells me. “Thailand, Vietnam. Did you know he’s a Buddhist?”

I nod gravely. “You can just tell.”

“Tell what?” Jupiter’s in the doorway, pulling at his cuffs. He gestures I shouldn’t get up, he’ll help himself to coffee.

“Calvin, at work,” May says. “I told you about him. He’s kind of cute, too, in a sad sort of way.” She giggles. Jupiter rolls his eyes and puts his hands round May’s neck like he’s going to strangle her. Then he sits down and sips his coffee.

“Kate’s fitting in, then, at the new job,” Liam says. “Everybody loves Kate, as usual.”

May giggles again, inadvertently, then stops, like she’s stopped a bottle of bubbles. She’s not stupid, she has radar. She glances at Jupiter again and this time it’s not a question. He holds up his cup for a fraction of a second which I take to mean, I know. Just let me finish this.

Liam must have seen the signals too, for he puts the brandy bottle away and makes some more conversation about nursing shortages and government cutbacks, but May and Jupiter are wary and within a few minutes they’re on their feet pleading an early morning. We hug, and the men shake hands again, and May says, “See you Monday.”

“They don’t even work weekends, I’m pretty sure,” I tell Liam when we’ve closed the door behind them.

“Lucky them,” he says.

We spend some time in the kitchen cleaning up. Silence makes the house feel like a decompression tank down under water. Liam starts taking chairs out into the hallway so he can sweep. “Let’s move the fridge,” I suggest. We grapple the fridge out of its nook until we can see the precise dimensions of its absence: a square patch of dust and a couple of Cheerios.

“May has a crush on this Calvin guy from your work, wouldn’t you say?” Liam says. “Did she talk about anything else all evening? I can’t remember.”

“He likes her too,” I say. What the hell. “He tries to hide it but he can’t. It’s kind of endearing.”

“Poor Jupiter.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s always worse for the husband, isn’t it? So
limiting.
”

He gives me a look from the old days: misery. Then: “I’m going to Mass tomorrow.”

“Oh, great,” I say.

“I have to do something.”

I cap the Pine-Sol with a sponge and flip the bottle upside down, then back. Kneeling in the gap between fridge and wall, I make passes over the floor. The dust collects on the sponge in black lines. The linoleum shines wetly. The fumes are the best.

“I want to go to confession,” he says.

“Why?” I take another shot of Pine-Sol on the sponge and hand it to him. “Now what have you done?”