The Better Mother (20 page)

This street is one of his favourites. Mature maples line the sidewalk; neat little apartment buildings stand in the shadows, their walks lined with bright annuals and ferns. He feels refreshed here, protected from the sun by large leaves, enlivened by the dampness of the grass. These few blocks south of Denman are a part of the city that isn’t quite city. This is a place that blurs the line between merely surviving in a humid, outgrown mill town and really living in a place that coddles you with gentle sea breezes until you fall asleep.

This damned city, in Danny’s experience, is often both at the same time, in the same place.

He turns right and starts to cross the street, mindful of the mothers taking their children to the beach, mothers whose ears and eyes are trained on the hungry, whining children in the back seat and not on the men in the crosswalks. A blue sedan speeds past and a face turns to look at him from the back seat. He flinches. Maybe he isn’t as invisible as he thinks.

In the window of the diner, he sees the back of Frank’s head, the collar of his blue-striped T-shirt. Danny’s stomach turns over violently, and he pauses to steady himself at a newspaper box. Its metal top is burning hot from the sunshine, but
Danny leaves his hand there anyway, almost savouring the sizzle of his skin, the numbness that washes over him once the first wave of pain dissipates.

“I am not a fuck-up,” he whispers. An ancient woman, her hair permed, turns to stare at him and then hurries away, pulling a wire shopping cart behind her.

When he steps into the restaurant, it takes a minute for his eyes to adjust to the cavernous gloom. Most people sit alone or in pairs, some silently eating, their mouths full of ham and toast and french fries, some talking with barely touched plates of food congealing in front of them. One wall is completely covered with a frameless, tinted mirror intended to brighten up the place, but all it does is extend the sense of being underground in an endless suburban basement with a fuzzy television and a table-tennis set.

Danny waves away the hostess who comes to seat him and makes his way to the small table by the window where Frank is sitting, his face partially covered by the hand that props up his head. Danny sits down opposite him and picks up a menu. He hasn’t any idea what to say or where to look, so he stares at the list of sandwiches, hoping that all these letters will coalesce into some kind of sense.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” Frank’s voice is soft, teasing.

When Danny looks up, he braces himself for the inevitable image of the Frank he dreams of, the Frank with wavy, abundant brown hair, the Frank with eyes that laughed and laughed and sometimes blazed, the Frank with broad shoulders and perfect posture.

But this is not the Frank he knows. This Frank sits there,
hunched over a cup of coffee, his hands holding the mug as if he needs the heat to keep his blood moving. His eyebrows seem to have collapsed into his eye sockets. Slowly, he reaches up and scratches a dark red spot on his cheek, and then, like he is thinking better of it, drops his hand and rests it on the table. The stubble on his chin is grey. And his eyes. His eyes tell Danny everything in a way that spoken words can’t, in a way that is understood without thinking.

“I wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else. Before it got so bad that other people started to notice.”

Danny wonders how anyone could miss this. Frank is not himself. Frank is indisputably, undeniably sick. Danny feels his hands twitch on his lap, but doesn’t reach over the table to grasp Frank’s arm. He simply stares. Frank smiles, lips closed.

“I feel pretty good right now. I haven’t lost much weight, and I only have a couple of these Kaposi’s spots. I hide them with makeup when I have to go to work.”

Outside, a mother, wearing a mint-green tank top and matching shorts, carries a screaming toddler, stopping once to shake him slightly, to glare directly into his eyes. The child continues to scream, to kick at his mother’s stomach.

“I don’t know how long the bank will keep me on. I’ve been telling them I’m getting over a lung infection, which is true, but not completely.”

The mother drops the toddler on the sidewalk, snatches away his brown stuffed bear and slaps him on the cheek. Danny jumps.

“I know it’s scary,” Frank says.

The child gulps in air, his mouth wide open, his eyes
shut. Danny wonders if he is crying silently or if he hasn’t yet inhaled enough to make a sound.

“Have
you
been feeling all right?” Frank continues. “Because if you haven’t, then you should definitely go see a doctor, not that anyone knows anything right now, but still. Maybe the key is to go in before you start to feel even a little sick.”

The mother snatches up the toddler again and hugs him, holding his chubby body close to hers, her hand on the back of his head. He sniffles, nods when she speaks, and they are off again, heading toward English Bay.

“Danny! Say something!” Frank slams his fist on the table, rattling the forks and knives, spilling the coffee.

There are many things Danny could say. He could say that Frank falling ill is another indication that his worlds are collapsing into each other. Ever since they met, Danny has carried within him a miniature Frank who understands Danny like no one else. And now the most intimate participant in Danny’s life is a news story, his gayness a headline that invites public commentary. Danny is dizzy with the wrongness of it all. He could say, “I love you,” but he doesn’t know if this is true anymore, or if he would be saying it to comfort them both.

Danny stares at the menu, runs his eyes down the list. “A club sandwich,” he says. “I haven’t had one of those in years.”

Frank starts to laugh, but Danny sees the tears welling.

“I guess there’s no other response, is there? What can anyone say about a disease that has no name, that no one knows how we catch? Club sandwich is as good a reply as any.”

Danny waves the waitress over and places his order.
Frank asks for meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and then he relaxes into the seatback. When the waitress leaves, Danny looks out the window again. The sunshine is directly overhead and so bright that there are no shadows, only pockets of shade in recessed doorways.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Frank brings his coffee to his lips and takes a tiny sip. “Sometimes I think I might drown in everyone else’s apologies. Maybe that would be easier.”

The fear has gripped him, and he knows that escaping it is impossible. When he is sleeping, he writhes in his sheets, turning until he can no longer work his arms and legs free, until he is trapped in a straitjacket of his own making. Something sharp and stinging travels under his skin; he imagines it’s the infection slowly pumping through his body. He can see it, painful and clear, whenever he closes his eyes—tiny pulsing organisms floating in a thick red soup, multiplying as they bounce off the walls of his arteries.

The fear has many features—inexplicable scabs, bleeding gums, bowels that leak. But the one he returns to is this: if he gets sick, there will be no hiding it from his parents.

He opens his eyes, sees the reassuring whiteness of his apartment ceiling. Turning over, he reaches into the drawer of his nightstand until his fingers brush the edge of a small box. He sits up and opens the lid. Inside is a pile of photographs. On the very top sits a portrait of Frank, his eyes like half-moons as he laughs into the camera, at something Danny has said. They had been hiking on a fall day, and, even though the photograph is black and white, Danny can see the shades
of grey in the leaves behind that mean red and orange and yellow. He lifts this picture out and, underneath, another. Frank at the beach. Frank with the dog. Frank standing beside a sign in a diner window that reads, “Holiday special: franks and beans, $1.75!”

Their first Christmas together, Frank took Danny back to his parents’ house, a ninety-minute drive away in the Fraser Valley. There, his mother insisted on serving Danny her favourite wine, a sweet, syrupy drink that reminded him of powdered Tang and coated his tongue. Frank’s father pointed at the newly constructed back porch and said, “That’s some fine cedar decking. If you ever need to buy some, I can get you a deal.” Danny couldn’t imagine when or how he would ever need cedar decking, but he nodded anyway and politely sniffed the planks when Frank’s father told him to. “Clears out your sinuses, I’m telling you.”

At dessert, his mother held up her mug of chamomile tea and said, “A toast to the newest member of our family.”

“He’s not the prettiest daughter-in-law I’ve ever seen, but he’ll do, Frankie,” boomed his father.

And everyone laughed, except Danny, who stared at the popcorn ceiling, his feet itching like they were about to burst right out of his shoes.

During the drive home, Frank reached across the console to pat Danny on the thigh. “I’m sorry my parents were acting like we were about to get married. They’re just excited. I’ve never brought anyone to meet them before.”

Danny nodded and kept staring through the windshield at the black highway.
Just follow the white lines. No need to think about it
.

“Did it bother you?”

“Did what bother me?”

“That stuff my parents said about welcoming you to the family.”

How was Danny going to pretend like this night never happened if Frank didn’t stop talking? “No, it was fine. They were just being parents.”

Frank looked away and out the passenger window. “Okay. As long as you know that I didn’t put them up to it.”

But Danny knew that nobody’s parents said things like that unless they had seen a quiver of want in their child’s face. Maybe Frank had told them—years before—that he wanted a house, a partner, a garden where he and his lover could grow beans and squash and cook it all together on a stove they bought after haggling with a salesman at a discount appliance store. Danny had never told his parents what he wanted. And they had never asked.

Danny kept his love for Frank to himself, underneath an expressionless, silent face.

Tonight, the photographs are nothing but paper in his hands. Frank is in another bed, perhaps feeling the spots on his body with his trembling, square-tipped fingers. Danny is light-headed and places the box back in the drawer. He lies down again, blinks at the ceiling. If only he never had to sleep.

Danny sits in his car, the windows rolled down to catch the warm breeze that slithers in from the street. He glances nervously at his side mirror, afraid to see his own red face staring back at him. Through the windshield, he can see the entrance
to the bank. A security guard paces inside the glass doors. Finally, the last customer leaves.

Frank emerges from the bank, a binder in his hand and his jacket wadded up in a ball under his arm. He slowly walks west on Robson, away from Danny. He can see that the seat of Frank’s pants is starting to sag. Danny’s hands grip the wheel, but he stays inside his car.

After twenty more minutes, Danny watches as Cindy talks to the security guard. She laughs as he unlocks the door and holds it open for her. Danny waits until her camel-coloured pumps hit the sidewalk before he stirs. He stands up, half shielded by the open car door. He has to grip the top of the frame in order to stand up straight enough that he doesn’t appear deflated. The outside air washes over him and he feels dizzy.

“Cindy!” he croaks, reaching with one hand toward her.

She looks up and down the street, oblivious, and starts to cross.

“Cindy!” This time it comes out shaded with desperation.

She turns her head, sees Danny and rushes forward.

“Danny! Are you sick?” She grasps him around the waist. “Here—can you make it to that café over there? You need to sit and have a cool drink, that’s all.”

She helps him to the café and props him up in a chair near the back, away from the sunlight streaming in through the big front window. She goes to the counter and orders two iced teas. Danny leans his head back and wonders whether, if he stares long and hard enough, a picture will begin to form among the stains on the ceiling.

“Drink this,” Cindy says, sliding an iced tea to him as
she sits down. “You look like shit.”

Danny gulps half the drink in one swallow. The cold liquid travels, sharp like broken glass, down his throat. He smiles at his sister, at her face tanned from hours of lying in the sun at Kits beach, her thick hair in a long ponytail, her glossed lips.
So pretty
, he thinks.
What a waste
.

“What’s going on, Danny? Did you come here to see me?”

“I—” He pauses. “I need you.” It’s out, but the urgency is gone. All that’s left is his own voice, boyish and soft.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw Frank.” He tells her the story, about the unnamed disease, the fear. He pauses to drink and looks away, for he sees that her eyes are changing: from sympathy to fear to anger to overwhelming pity. The ice in her untouched drink melts and a pool of water forms under her glass.

He had thought that talking to Cindy would somehow clear his confusion, would separate his thoughts so that he could consider things one at a time, like he used to. His family. His work. Cruising. After Danny finishes talking, he gulps down the rest of his iced tea and shudders.

Cindy pushes hers across the table. “Go ahead, I don’t want it.”

“What am I going to do?” he asks.
Please
, he thinks,
give me an answer. Any answer
.

“Do you need to see a doctor?” she says, scrutinizing his face with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t know. I don’t have any spots or anything. I feel all right. Well, scared and sleep-deprived, but all right.”

“Maybe they can give you a blood test or something, or an immunization.” He begins to hear an undercurrent of
desperation in her voice, a thin line of brittle panic, yet her face remains smooth.

“There’s nothing. They know nothing.”

“You can’t go out and cruise anymore, Danny. You can’t go to the clubs or the baths or anything.” Her voice breaks, and she brings her hand to her throat. “What will Mom and Dad say?”