The Best Thing for You (39 page)

Tomorrow, his father repeated. Good night.

Good night. Thank you, Cass.

Good night.

Keep in touch, Mr. Hammond said, a remark seemingly, strangely, directed at the boy.

Goodbye, he replied.

After the door closed the three of them stood for a moment, suspended.

I’ll do the dishes, he offered.

His parents moved together towards the stairs, as though he were the adult who had released them from an habitual duty. Then they seemed to remember themselves and turned back to wish him good night.

Are you all right? his mother asked.

Fine.

It will all look better in the morning, his father said.

Sure.

Thank you for entertaining us tonight.

Guilt seeped sweetly in his chest. He said, I don’t mean to be secretive.

You’re not, his father said, surprised, and the boy saw he really believed this was true. So either he had been quite drunk or the remark had meant something else entirely.

What was that strange thing you played? his mother asked shyly. She was always tentative when she asked about his work, knowing he hated to talk about it.

Nothing.

She hesitated, then followed his father up the stairs.

After he finished the dishes he recovered the little bag of toffees his mother had squirrelled in her baking cupboard and the evening paper his father had left on the table next to his chair, and went up to bed. But when – lying on his belly, sheet pulled to his waist, mouth sweetly full – he finally unfolded the
Daily Province
on his pillow, he saw someone had neatly scissored out the lead article, leaving a frail empty square in the front page.

That was Monday. On Saturday he rode his bike ten blocks west, to a house with vegetables growing in the front garden. From the sidewalk he could hear the piano.

Yes, Mrs. Agostino said, when he crept by the open door of the studio, where a straight-haired girl sat weeping silently on the piano bench, to the waiting room. I see you, John.

When it was his turn, he explained that he would not be continuing his lessons through the summer after all.

Where is your mother? Mrs. Agostino asked.

He explained that his mother was busy at home.

I see, Mrs. Agostino said. A stroke had left one side of her face paralyzed, and her mouth hung ragged when she listened. She had a withered hand also, and taught from a chair across the room.

He was unsure whether he should take his usual place on the bench. He had not brought his books. From his pocket he took an envelope and said, My mother says this is for today.

With some difficulty Mrs. Agostino tore the envelope, put the money on the table, and unfolded the note.

Instead you are going to spend the summer exploring your interest in sports? she asked.

He said nothing.

There is money trouble at home?

His mother had instructed him not to speak of this.

Sit down.

I didn’t bring my books.

Sit down.

His lesson lasted one hour. Scarlatti, Bartók. At two minutes to eleven he heard the front door. A student crept by to the waiting room.

Yes, the crippled woman said. I see you.

He stood up and said, Thank you, Mrs. Agostino. I’ve enjoyed my lessons.

All right, she said, glancing at the clock. You are a talented musician, though not at the piano. But you have an interesting ear.

Thank you.

You will come back in the fall?

I think so.

No, she corrected, shaking her head. I don’t think so.

Outside he got back on his bike and wavered home. His mother had explained they would be living on a budget for a few weeks, just until his father was confirmed in another position. They would simply cut back on a few frivolities until that time.

Summer poured long and yellow and smooth, with its interminable days and brief hiding nights. Foster tried to continue his life in its old patterns. He wrote and read and drew and took the streetcar to the park and to the beach, and closer to home to the fairgrounds, where he sauntered among the roller coasters and the carousels, inhaling the rich prize stench of livestock.
After a day’s work he liked to walk, anywhere where there were crowds, alone in his head but insulated from the sounds that came to him in quieter places.

One evening, early in August, he came home with his mouth still sticky from a five-penny wad of cotton candy, panting a little, a little dazed still, to find his father had got a job at an investigative agency.

Where? he repeated. The house seemed small and dazzlingly dim after a long white day in the sun, and the faint sugar-sickness that had been pleasant enough out of doors turned bilious when he stepped through the front door and smelled the supper he would be expected to put away, something thick with cheese. He had had to hide his need for sweet things ever since his mother had started watching the flow of pennies, and guilt added to his swelling discomfort. He thumbed surreptitiously, hard, at the corners of his mouth.

Ghent and Coutrell, his father repeated. I start Monday.

They’re detectives?

Investigators, they call it.

They kept their voices carefully neutral.

That’s great, the boy said.

Yes, his mother said, setting her empty glass down. She had left the olive in it, lolling on the bottom. When he was a boy he would beg her olives and she would give them to him, cool and plump with gin. The thought of putting the slick thing in his mouth now made him close his eyes with queasiness. Immediately he was back at the fairgrounds, listening to the harsh, glassy cadences of the carousel, watching a fatty blond woman throw darts for a teddy bear, watching children queuing for the Teacup, a tilting, spinning ride in cup-shaped cars; then a brief cooling walk through the cavernous exhibition hall to watch a horse auction, all but incomprehensible to him, and back outside to
see teenagers older than himself in a screaming, preening knot, sending a flask from mouth to sucking mouth, the girls’ red pursed lips, the boys’ chapped and paler, swigging; and a carny hawking tickets for the freak show and the burlesque.

I’m fine, he replied to a question that broke through this film of thoughts.

Too much sun today, maybe, his mother said.

Where’s the office?

Cordova, his father said, naming a brick-cobbled street in one of the oldest parts of the city core, in Gastown. From the street it looks like nothing, just a door and a stairway up to the second floor. It’s all very discreet. I’ll have a desk next to the secretary’s for the first few weeks, but definitely an office by October. There’s a printing firm next door and we’re planning to take over that suite as soon as their lease is up. I’ll have a proper office in there.

We
, that was an off note. His father had never seemed pathetic before.

Here’s the thing, though, son, his father continued. The firm’s waiting on a contract with a department store, a big contract. If they get it, they’ll be expanding and my job will be a lock. But until then I’m on probation, you see?

A department store?

Plainclothes security, his father explained. Six floors. Stores in three different locations. The contract is a cherry. They’ll know in a few weeks.

His father in a brown suit, laying his hand on the arm of a teenage shoplifter. The carny in a hay-brown suit, laying his hand on the boy’s arm.
Miss, if you’ll come this way. Sir, this way for you, sir.
Caught.

What I’m trying to say, son, his father said. I’m just not going to be earning as much as I used to for a little while.

That’s all right, the boy said, after a minute.

His parents exchanged a glance and he felt a surge of impatience. He reckoned he had seen as much as they ever had, after today. Vicious pride, swimming shame, both.

It’s about your tuition at St. John and St. James, his father said.

But that was all wrong, of course. The boys who went there knew to call it Jack and Jim’s.

It’s not that you’ll never go back, his father said. It’s just that we need to be cautious for a few months, not commit ourselves to more than we can – not bite off more than we can chew.

The girl, the girl.

A year in the public system shouldn’t set you back. It’s not a big exam year for you, this next one, is it? And it’s just for a year, a year at most. Maybe even by January. I know everything feels a little loose right now but we’ll get it all nailed down again, you’ll see.

Which school will I go to?

Aberdeen.

The boy closed his eyes and opened them. Aberdeen was where the Italian boys in the neighbourhood went, and the Chinese, and so on. Boys did not graduate from Aberdeen to become artists or musicians, or even lawyers. They became clerks, at best, if they became anything at all. So it was like that now.

We fall in their catchment area, his mother said quietly.

You’ll be able to walk there, his father said. That’ll make for a change. Maybe with the time you save getting there and back you’ll even be able to take an after-school job. What would you say to that?

Eyes open: I’m old enough.

That would be something, wouldn’t it, John? his father said. To be a working man like your old Dad?

Eyes closed: he saw again the inside of the tent, the hot pale light through the fawn-coloured canvas, and all the working men seated in docile rows at the front and standing at the back. He had stayed at the back.

Are you listening, John? his mother’s voice said.

I could get a paper route. I already have a bike.

Good lad, his father said.

There had been a girl on the stage, a dark-haired girl dancing with one small breast already bared, so that he thought he would go mad.

You’re not too disappointed?

What?

Pardon? his mother said.

Pardon?

You’re not too disappointed about the school? You’ll make new friends, won’t you?

Sure. Sure I will.

There she was, almost washed out in a shaft of sun, a shaft like a spotlight through a hole in the roof of the tent. Like an overexposed photo she was, dancing in the middle of the day in a shaft of white sunlight that glittered with dust, white hands winding, staring honestly and earnestly at nothing.

We might just wait a few weeks with Mrs. Agostino also, his mother said. Instead of going back immediately in September, like we usually do.

There had been a giant and a dwarf too, but that was later.

John!

Yes, he said. It’s all right. I don’t mind, really.

Outside the tent had been a candy cart, and he had straight away bought a great puff of candy floss, stuffed his mouth full of it to resurrect that jolting surfeit of sweetness he had known in the tent. The candy was a pale imitation but when he found the
carny again to ask about the next show the man pretended not to recognize him, and told him he was too young.

We’ve got a fine young man here, Cass, his father said.

I know it, his mother said.

On his paper route, now, every morning, as the final days of summer flipped away, Foster paused beneath the pink sky to inform himself of the progress of the murder investigation. His father rarely brought the papers home any more so he tracked it this way, between houses, the case bubbling along in the back pages, awaiting the high heat of the trial in September. He spent time over the girl’s photograph, memorizing the pale, round face and soft hands; he spent time over the details of the crime, the French proverb and the basement grate and the delivery boy from Farrell’s Fine Foods. That she had chosen a boy over a man – he went weak to think of it. Though Farrell’s of course was a fine place, spanking new, and on a fine wide avenue, three blocks only from his old school. From the newspapers he constructed an image of the boy, Stephen, a delivery boy, like himself now, only a year and a half older. The newspaper editorials maintained she had used him, corrupted him, and he could not truly be held responsible for whatever he might have done. Foster thought that sounded right. He would have been dazzled, as Foster himself had been dazzled in the tent at the fairgrounds, dazzled and ashamed and painfully grateful all at once. Now he was in jail, awaiting trial, probably still dreaming helplessly of their – what? He didn’t know the word for it. Rendezvous? Sessions? Sometimes Foster would go so far as to close his eyes and try to put himself in the other’s place, to see the bricks and bars while summoning the feel of her clothes – silk, surely – in his hands. Then some sound would startle him, some dog’s bark or cry, recalling him to his duty, and he would bike on through his own newly hateful neighbourhood – the cheap, scant trees,
feeble houses, washing hung in the gardens, and over it all the thin, rank, seedy pall of garbage – dismissing each paper with an angry, reckless toss.