The Boy (8 page)

If someone had told him back when he was young that someday he'd go halfway around the world to make his living, he wouldn't have believed it, he said when he came back. Yemen. Dubai. Far away in every way from the old house and his life in Stettler. He said he could remember frost on the nails in the walls in winter. Sitting by the kitchen stove, an old coal stove converted to gas, and when it was really cold the mattresses came out and everyone slept there on the floor. Hard times. Macaroni and tomatoes because there was no cheese. But everyone was fed, no one went hungry.

That was life in the Cook's house as well. The house itself was boarded up for years, then finally moved a few blocks away and rebuilt. I wondered who would want to live in that house, knowing what had happened there.

We chatted another few minutes about the divided opinion on Cook's guilt.

Bobby Cook left people feeling guilty, Clark said. In spite of his criminal record, and his lies, people warmed to him. The people who were there when he hanged shook his hand. They wept
.
They couldn't imagine that a character like him could have committed such an act. Hard to imagine anyone who could do such a thing. Hard to fathom what could happen in one night to a family that was well and alive and playing.

The Boy

January, 1996

It's Jonathan's appointment for his six month check-up this afternoon, and Louise is trying to wash down a mouthful of soda cracker with flat ginger ale. This time the symptoms are familiar enough that she hasn't wasted time speculating on the “flu.” She's hoping she'll be able to make the short drive to the public health unit without stopping to puke.

The outside thermometer showed minus forty-two this morning and she doesn't have to bother converting. The two scales meet at minus forty and it's bloody cold no matter how you measure it. The church budget didn't cover any
upgraded insulating of this old parsonage; the window sills are furred with frost, and cold radiates from the outside walls. Louise worries every time Jake is ten minutes late
getting home from work. She imagines the car stalled on the highway, shrouded in ice fog, Jake's cell phone dead because he never remembers to recharge it. What would she do without Jake? How did she go from being a self-reliant, capable city woman to a quaking, dependent wife for whom even the short winter drive to Edmonton has become a trial? Hormones, she tells herself firmly.

But then there is Danny. When the phone rings, she's tempted to let the machine pick it up, sure the message will be another request from the school for her and Mr. Peters to come in and talk about Daniel. Jake has taken so much time off work for talks with the school principal and visits to the coffee shop and store where Dan has been caught swiping magazines and candy that he's begun to worry about his job. It's one thing to pop home in the middle of the day when you live in the same city, but an hour long commute turns the same errand into a three hour lunch break, and even with his seniority and sales record, the dealership is not pleased.

Maybe this time, Louise can deal with the problem, give Jake a well-deserved break. But when she picks up the phone, it's Phyllis, and on impulse, Louise confides that she's pregnant again.

“Oh my,” Phyllis says with her usual candor. “So close together.”

Louise has already decided that she won't tell anyone this was an accident. She'd agreed with Jake who thought two children would be enough for this family, even though Jon will be as much an only child as Daniel has been. There's Jake's age to consider too. He's ten years older than Louise, says he's taken some ribbing at work already for being a new papa at fifty. Louise, though, is secretly delighted in spite of the prospect of puking for another eight months.

“Are you sick with this one?” Phyllis asks.

“All day long,” Louise says. “But it's okay. Worth it in the end.” She won't whine to Phyllis.

“Of course it is, but still I'll send Marcy to you after school every day for a while so you can at least have a nap. We'll let her have the car instead of taking the bus for a week or two.” Louise is sure Phyllis's Marcy could easily run a household even though she's just sixteen. Getting Daniel to clear the table and clean his room once a week involves more energy than Louise is willing to spend.

“It's about time Daniel started doing some real helping around the house,” Phyllis says as though she's reading Louise's thoughts. “But for the love of God don't let him babysit. Call me when you get home from the clinic.”

Louise puts the phone down and scoops Jonathan out of the playpen where he's been cooing and trying to get his foot to his mouth. As if she would even consider leaving the baby with Daniel. Even Jake, she's noticed, watches closely. One Sunday afternoon though, he came into the kitchen where Louise was cutting up a chicken for supper and beckoned to her with his finger on his lips.

They stood together in the doorway and peeked into the living room. Jon was on the sofa in his baby lounger, Dan beside him with a skateboarding magazine splayed open between them.

“Okay, now look at this one, Bro,” he said, “this is how it feels,” and with his hand as the board, he swooped past the baby's nose, flipped, and came back to land on the terry cloth tummy of Jon's sleeper. The baby crowed and waved his hands, feet pedaling, one of his rare smiles lifting his face in delight. The flip of a few more pages, and then Dan took Jon's small fist in his hand and pressed it to the magazine. “See that one? That's the one I'm going to buy for you when you're big enough to skate, ‘kay? I'll have a job, and my own place and you can stay over sometimes.”

When Louise turned to look at Jake, his eyes were clenched tight behind his glasses. She closed the door softly and put her arms around him, her face pressed to his chest. He took a deep breath and she could feel him nodding. “That's the boy I want him to be, you know?”

“I know,” she whispered. And she vowed that she would do her damnedest to see Dan that way, as a brother, not as a threat.

They plan to wait a month or two to tell Daniel about the new baby they are expecting, but now that Phyllis knows and Marcy will be coming over after school, he needs to be in the loop. By the time Jake walks through the door for supper, it's past eight, and blessedly, Jon is asleep and likely to last through the night. The school
has
called again, and an RCMP officer has dropped by to let them know that if Dan is caught stealing cigarettes again, the woman who owns the coffee shop is going to ask for charges to be laid.

“I'll look after it,” Jake says, and thuds down the basement stairs to the corner they've carpeted and furnished with a sofa and television for Dan and the friends who've never appeared.

Now the pizza Jake picked up on the way home has been on hold in the oven for so long, the kitchen so rank with the smell of cheese, Louise has to stand on the back step and breathe the cold night to keep even the weak tea she's sipping from rising in her throat. When she hears the scraping of kitchen chairs, she steps back inside.

Jake and Daniel are silently chewing the rubbery cheese. Both of them look up at her as though the misery of this moment might be her doing. Or so it feels to her. She pulls her chair far enough from the table that she doesn't have to look at the pizza sweating its grease onto the paper napkins they've thrown down instead of plates.

Jake swallows, mops his lips with the napkin and leans back in his chair. “Okay, we've got this sorted out. There's going to be no more shenanigans. Right, Dan?” The boy ducks his chin. This will have to pass for a nod. “What do you have to say to Louise?”

Daniel grabs up another piece of pizza and crams half of it into his mouth, chewing with his eyes on Louise, his lips shiny with grease. Mouth still half full, he mumbles, “Sorry I embarrassed you by getting in trouble.”

“Embarrassed me? This is not about me, Daniel.” She looks to Jake for help, but how can he, when this seems to be coming from him?

“All right then.” Jake stands up and brings a mug and the pot of lukewarm tea to the table. “Now, Dan, we've got some other news here. All the more reason for you to behave. You're going to have another little brother or sister in the summer.”

It's all she can do to keep from groaning and covering her face with her hands. How can a man with the impeccable timing that makes him a top salesman miss all the cues at his own table?

Daniel spits a chewed mouthful of pizza into his hand, tosses it onto the cardboard tray and pushes away from the table. The raw mix of disgust and fury on the boy's face hits her like a fist. His lip curls and he is looking only at her. “Great. You can just be fat and ugly forever that way. Can't you guys find anything else to do?”

Jake is out of his chair so fast, Louise grabs his arm. But he's stopped, just as she is, by the sudden crumpling of Danny's face. The boy is up the stairs and almost to his room before they hear a choking sound halfway between a sob and a shout. Then the bedroom door slams.

Jake, surprisingly calm, begins to clear the table, shoving pizza box, leftover slices and all into the garbage. “He'll get it over it,” he says. “He's still new at being the big brother. He'll learn.”

By the time Lauren is born, the big brother is no longer living with them. Daniel is on probation, and has been literally farmed out to another of Jake's kin, this one the brother of Phyllis's husband, Paul. These relatives have grown children, all of them off living in the city, and it's been agreed that it would benefit both them and Daniel if he lived with them and provided an extra hand around the place. Their farm is twenty miles from town, and Dan has not been allowed to take his bike or skateboard with him. Once school starts, the trips into town and back on the school bus every day will be his only outings for the next four months, except for Sunday dinners at home, for which Jake will pick him up. This is the arrangement Jake came up with without even talking to Louise. She didn't attend the pre-court visit with the social worker, but she can imagine the cold white cast of Jake's face when he agreed to the foster home arrangement. Louise doesn't doubt for a minute that her presence as
“stepmother” is considered an obstacle to Dan's rehabilitation, treatment, whatever the hell these people feel he needs to stop him stealing. And lying. And spying. She wonders if the social worker knows that all of this began long before Louise's entry into the family. But then why would Jake offer that information, unless someone specifically asked? Jake volunteers nothing. He hates these people peering into his home, taking charge of his son.

Louise and Lauren have been home from the hospital for two days when Jake drives out to the farm to pick up Daniel for his Sunday visit. Louise, exhausted from feeding Lauren every two hours, puts Jon in the playpen with a pile of toys and curls up on the sofa with the baby. Fortunately, Jonathan is a placid child, still content to crawl, to sit for long periods quietly examining the toys around him. Daniel is the one who can elicit the most enthusiasm from the wee boy, but his interest in Jon seldom lasts through more than five minutes of rolling a ball across the floor. Still, he asked for a picture of his little brother and Louise knows, from emptying the pockets of his jeans to do laundry, that he carries it in his back pocket in a plastic folder with the learner's permit Jake reluctantly agreed to the day after Dan's fourteenth birthday. The thought of Daniel
driving, even with adult supervision, horrifies Louise, but she kept her mouth shut. Always, it seems, it's the stepmother protesting. And really, the piece of paper makes no difference. Permit or not, supervised by an adult or not, it's only a question of time and opportunity. Dan has already been allowed to drive the tractor at the farm, and is pressing to practice on the truck. That, Marvin, his “foster father,” told him, is a privilege he can earn by staying out of trouble for two months. What are the odds? Louise wonders.

She hears the slam of the car door, and sits up on the sofa, pulling down her t-shirt, tucking her daughter's small fists into the receiving blanket. Daniel comes through the door and straight to Jon. He lifts his little brother, tosses him into the air. And barely catches him.

“Hey, careful there!” Jake shouts. Danny shrugs.

“He's getting big. I didn't expect him to be so heavy.” Awkwardly, he lowers Jon back into the playpen, and starts toward the hall, but Jake takes his arm and turns him toward Louise.

“Aren't you going to say hello to your sister?”

An exaggerated pause, then Dan takes three steps forward and leans in to peer at the swaddled bundle in Louise's arms.
He looks bigger, Louise thinks. Since last Sunday, his jaw and forehead seem heavier, more masculine. But surely it's just the contrast with the baby's button nose and rosebud mouth.

“Cute,” he mutters. He folds his arms. “How come you're calling her Lorne. That's a boy's name.”

“Lauren,” Louise says. She smiles, trying to inject the welcome she is not feeling into the moment. “L-a-u-r-e-n. You're right, she'll probably have trouble with that. We didn't even think about people hearing it wrong.”

“You could give her a nickname,” Danny says.

“Laurie?”

He squints at the baby. Comes closer still. Lauren opens her eyes suddenly, her tiny mouth puckering into what looks for all the world like a kiss. Danny grins. “Sweetie,” he says.

Louise hears Jake's sigh of relief, can almost see him relax, feels the tension in the room melt. Jake claps a hand on Dan's shoulder. “I like that one,” he says. He nods at the playpen. “Bring your brother. We boys will make lunch.”

In the afternoon, Danny rattles his skateboard up and down the driveway. The sound of the wheels and the slam of the board each time he tricks and catches the board wears on Louise's nerves after five minutes, and she retreats to the bedroom and closes the window. Still she can hear the noise. Any minute now, Henry from next door will come out and shout at Dan. In fact, she suspects this is Dan's goal.

Finally, Jake calls to him. “Put that thing away, and let's go for a milkshake.” Over and over again, Jake takes Dan into the places the boy has ripped off, to show the locals that his son has a good side. Sometimes he succeeds. Louise has been assured by several kind people in town that this is just a phase, boys being boys, and with their patience he'll get over it. Heck, these boys often turn out to be the real successes, the ones who take risks and make something out of nothing. She just nods, no point in telling these people she isn't holding her breath for the miracle.