He shuddered to a dismal stop as he let the unformed thought fade and die. He was embarrassed because he realized too late that she would probably interpret what he said not as sentimentality but as a pathetic needy plea. If nothing else the words served to lessen the emotional pressure building inside him.
“I know what you mean. It feels the same for me, funny how life goes, eh?”
She spoke in a dreamy distracted way and he was uncertain what she meant. She seemed to be agreeing with him but he had the feeling she was thinking and talking about something completely different. The hopeful surge of emotion he felt met the crevice of despair when he took it to mean she did not feel the same way about him. He saw her looking at him and when the corners of her mouth came up in a wan smile it buoyed his spirit. Her beautiful soulful eyes filled him with fresh imaginings and reset the faltering tempo of his vacant heart. Her smile had the power to make him believe, however briefly, in the possibility of happiness.
He was surprised when he realized how much he still desired her. She had once completed his life; filled it in a manner he never truly understood until she was gone. Silent, standing beside her, he could feel warmth radiating in the space between them, thick with memories of past intimacy. The love he felt for her was the sweetest he had ever known, a bond he never experienced again; though he looked for it in others it was lost to him.
The silence grew between them and felt like they both had more to say but could not bring the words. Andi stepped away to look through a drawer and the moment was gone, the air changed.
“What do you think of Tyler?” she said.
“He is a nice kid. He doesn’t talk much, does he?”
“He’s always been quiet. Boys are less verbal than girls. I seem to recall you telling me that once,” she said and smiled coyly as she turned away.
The memory of that conversation rushed back to him like it had been waiting in the wings to come on stage to remind him of their intimate past. It had been a snow day in the city. Toronto was buried and classes were cancelled. They spent the day lying around his apartment reading, eating, and making love. It was near midnight when she asked if he was mad at her about something.
“No. Why do you ask?” he had said.
“Well you haven’t said anything for over an hour. I thought you were mad at me for something.”
He remembered closing his book, rolling over and tickling her.
“Boys don’t need to talk as much as girls” he told her.
He found himself blushing at the memory of what they did after the tickling and he wondered, somewhat hopefully, if she had reminded him of that particular night on purpose. She was watching his face and when it turned red she laughed. Hanging the tea towel on the stove door handle she asked if he wanted a beer.
They sat comfortably together as two old friends on the couch in the living room gazing at the fields across the road, listening to jazz on Seattle’s KPLU, and talking about yesterdays.
It was nice recounting histories to each other after all these years and though they both steered clear of the topic of her breaking up with him. She seemed to know a lot of his history but he knew next to nothing about hers except that which Western told him and he wondered now how much of that he could believe. He guessed she had followed his career online, which was not difficult to do in the age of Google. He noticed that what she volunteered of her own history was heavily edited. Nowhere in her narrative did a violent ex-husband make an appearance but he was not surprised by her omission, why would anyone bring up someone like that.
She mostly talked about Tyler and the troubles he was having at school and how he was socially awkward and preferred not to be around people.
“The only real friend he has is Zen the girl who lives next door. She used to babysit him for me,” she said.
The way she said it made him think she was not completely sure what to think of their friendship.
“Is she a lot older than him?” he asked.
“Two years,” she said.
“Are they dating or anything?” he asked.
“Wow. Where have you been, Lee? Kids don’t date anymore they hang out in big groups and take turns randomly hooking up with each other.”
She smiled when she said it but then her face changed again and she looked thoughtful.
“Anyway, it’s not like that. They’re friends anyway I think she is dating someone. It’s only that Ty is kind of ….vulnerable,” she said.
“To the wiles of an older woman?” he said.
“I guess I’m being a mom,” she said.
He was fairly certain that he was not getting her underlying message, there was something in her voice that made him ask.
”What is it?”
“I was thinking about something. Do you remember telling me about your cousin Ryan?”
“Robin,” he corrected.
“You told me about the weird thing he used to do. How he would go to the park and lie on the ground and watch the swings and the merry-go-round for hours at a time,” she said.
“Yeah it was a big deal for him when he was seven or eight, he eventually grew out of it. Now I believe he’s into helicopters and trains. He lives in a group home in Hamilton and the last I heard he was doing well. Why were you thinking of Robin?” he asked.
*
Andi turned her face away from him and looked out the window. The sun was setting over the hay fields across the road and she gazed upon the changing hue of coral without seeing it. She was not sure what she was trying to ask him. Lee had always been a perceptive guy and maybe he would be honest with her if she came out and asked him. The problem was she was afraid, the questions she needed to ask him felt life-altering. Her fear of what his answers might be disturbed her deeply. The truth was she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“Do you think there is anything-wrong with Tyler?” she said. She did not look at him when she spoke and her voice was soft and filled with emotion.
“Do you mean Robin kind of wrong?” he asked.
She nodded, she couldn’t find the courage to say it out loud in case she started crying.
He was quiet for a moment aware of her anxiety and conscious of her fragile emotional state. He cared about her and wanted to consider his answer carefully before responding. Tyler seemed a typical enough teen but from what she told him it sounded like his teachers were concerned he might be learning disabled. He knew enough about school culture to understand that teachers often speak in coded deniable language when discussing the problems of a student with his parents. He did it himself with some of his college student’s parents.
“Do you think there is something?” he said.
He was probing for her understanding of the situation because it could save him from sticking his foot in it.
“I know there is something different about Ty, but I don’t know what it means,” she said
“He seems normal to me but I’m no expert. Why don’t you have him assessed by a psychologist? If he has some kind of learning issue it is much better to find out what it is and get to work on it and if he doesn’t you can stop worrying about it,” he said.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“That makes a lot of sense. I suppose I’ve been afraid to find out.”
She looked sad and upset and without thinking about what he was doing he put his arm around her shoulder. It was a natural gesture of comfort and she seemed to welcome it as she relaxed into his embrace. It was nice to feel how well they fit together. It was a familiar feeling and welcome. It had been some time since either of them had shared any kind of closeness. After a while she put her arms around his waist and they held each other comfortably until Tyler came into the room and turned on the television.
He observed that the boy did not seem to notice he was holding his mother. At first he put it down to a teenage boy trying to be cool but after a while he began to feel uncomfortable with him sitting on the couch acting like they did not
exist. The show he was watching drowned out the jazz music they were listening to and he slowly broke their embrace. Andi seemed to emerge from somewhere far away, she had not noticed Tyler come into the room. When she realized he was there she leaned over and ran her hand through his hair. Although it was cut short he quickly moved to smooth it down. It was the kind of thing any mom would do partly out of affection and partly to get a response.
“Tyler did you know that Lee is a scientist?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
His answer was a surprise to her and not what she had expected. She had tried to engage Tyler in conversation while they ate dinner but he did not say much at all. She was sure they had not mentioned it to him.
“How do you know?” she asked
“He had a paper in the August 2014 edition of Gene Science Review.”
Andi looked surprised then looked at Lee who nodded.
“What did you think of the article?” he asked.
“You were wrong about the gram negative staining but sort of right about the amino acids.”
He looked at Andi and smiled when she made a face and shrugged her shoulders.
“What makes you think I was sort of right about the amino acids?”
Tyler didn’t take his eyes off the television or hesitate when he said “I mean you were right then but the formulation data has changed, now you are wrong,” he said.
He smiled at Andi and winked and said, “Tyler do they teach advanced genetics in grade eight science class?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ty spends a lot of time on the computer. He likes to read about science. Don’t ya, Ty?”
He never responded to her because he was busy channel surfing while a commercial was on. The kid seemed to be watching three different shows at the same time. He was intrigued by the way Tyler answered his questions without any hesitation. At the very least it seemed to indicate some basic knowledge of genetics. He decided to ask a few specific questions that no high school science class would teach.
“Tyler can you tell me what the LAMC gene does?” he said. Again without any hesitation the boy answered.
“It codes for brain convolutions in some mammals.”
“What is PCR?” he said.
“Polymerase chain reaction.”
“What does it do?” he said.
“It reproduces segments of DNA.”
“Have you done PCR?” he said.
“Yes but only for single strand mRNA.”
He was watching television and not paying him any real attention beyond what minimal politeness required.
“Tyler is there a genetic basis for aggression in mammals?” he said.
“Obviously.”
“Is it possible to alter aggression using discreet gene manipulation?” he said.
“Obviously.”
He stopped asking Tyler questions when he noticed the look of alarm on Andi’s face. Andi grabbed his hand and drew him up off the couch and into the kitchen.
“What was all that?” she said.
She looked concerned, confused, and a little pissed off. He thought about how to answer her question then grinned and said “I think I can safely say that Tyler is not like Robin.”
“Are you saying his answers made sense?” she said.
“Obviously,” he said, mimicking Tyler’s deadpan delivery and smiling. “That’s one smart kid at least where genetics are concerned.”
“Well if he’s so damn smart why is he flunking all his classes?” she said whispering thinking Tyler was in the house but he left almost the same moment they did. He considered her question, he could hear the frustration in her voice.
“Has he had an IQ test? It is possible that regular school is meaningless to him. He might only be attending school because it is required,” he said.
Andi did not look at all happy when he said that.
“I suppose I should be thankful he is not intellectually challenged,” she said.
He noticed that, at the moment, she did not look or sound thankful at all.
“Sometimes bright people have difficulty fitting into the typical world. Ordinary people often don’t make sense to someone who is intellectually gifted. I don’t know exactly how intelligent Ty is but he definitely knows something about genetics. It is difficult to gauge how deep his knowledge runs and it is often the case that clever people can acquire enough jargon and basic information to fake their way through a casual conversation on a complex subject without having any real depth of understanding. Exactly how much a boy like Tyler can teach himself by surfing the internet is unknown but, with the wide range of open lectures from major universities and the right kind of mind, the potential could be unlimited,” he said.
“Do you think his knowledge is shallow?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What does your gut tell you?” she pressed.
She was asking him for his assessment of Tyler and he felt like he was entering dangerous territory.
“We didn’t talk long enough for me to accurately judge the depth of his knowledge, but based on how quickly he responded to my questions, he does appear to have a good grasp of the concepts. His lack of hesitation when answering my questions is what makes me think that,” he said.
“I don’t know whether I should feel relieved or not. You don’t make being gifted or intelligent sound very attractive,” she said.
He looked into her eyes and said, “I don’t know whether you want me to tell you what else I noticed but there is more.”
“Tell me what? ” she said.
“I noticed that Tyler does not express emotions. For one thing he calls you Andrea and not mom and when he answered my questions about the article he did not try to spare my feelings or soften it when he told me I was wrong. It was simply a fact like the atomic weight of plutonium,” he said.
He paused to gauge how well Andi was taking this information. Her eyes were bright with understanding and emotion but thankfully not tears or anger. He saw the inward-looking cast of her eyes and knew she was thinking about Tyler.
*
She always wondered why he never called her mom. She told herself the reason was to punish her for her mistakes. She tried unsuccessfully to clear the emotion from her voice.
“It bothered me that he never called me mom but I got over it. And I know what you mean about the emotion thing. A doctor called it ‘low affect’ but I knew it was more than that. There was something that happened that worried me. When Tyler turned fourteen he asked me to buy him a pet iguana for his birthday. He never showed any interest in pets or his birthday for that matter so I bought it for him.
I know this sounds weird but the next day, while I was at work, I think he killed it. I never saw it again and he refused to talk to me about it. It scared me that he could be that cold. I did some reading about child development and one book said a lack of emotion combined with the killing of family pets is a precursor to other behaviours. Worse behaviours,” she said.
Chapter 8
Babysitting
September 20
10:10 am
Sergeant Daniel Nichol was dripping with sweat from the heat rising off the tarmac at Victoria International Airport. He was waiting for the grey military issue 737-100 to come to a stop. The petroleum smell of jet fuel was overwhelming and with not a hope of a breeze he would soon be soaking wet in his winter-weight tunic. He wondered if he would make it through the day without a change of clothes. He watched the ground crew push the stairway up to the aircraft and the passengers begin to dis-embarked. Lieutenant Patricia Hunter was the last one off the aircraft. She was arriving on a direct flight from Thunder Bay and because he did not recognize her from Naden he assumed that was where she was stationed.
She has a good name for a spook he thought when he saw her spot the cardboard sign he was holding with her name on it. He checked her out as she walked towards him and decided if she didn’t turn out to be a muddy-stick th
is could be a decent assignment.
“Sergeant Nichol?” she said.
She needed to shout over the sound of a nearby aircraft. He nodded and they shook hands. He almost saluted but she was in civvies and he was not sure what the protocol was for lady Intelligence Officers like maybe it would blow her cover or something. Luckily she stuck her hand out before he needed to make the decision. Her only luggage was a military issue backpack that a crewman handed to him. Nichol shouldered the bag and lead the way to the parking area.
“Tell me Sergeant, how did you get stuck with this babysitting job?” she asked.
They were in the line-up of cars to exit the airbase. She was a smallish woman, maybe 5’4”, and she wore tight jeans and an Expo’s baseball jersey. She was maybe twenty-five, wore her hair short and efficient, and seemed to be friendly enough. She out ranked him which called for some caution on his part. He knew nothing about the assignment other than he was to pick up a Lieutenant named Hunter at the airport and assist as required.
When she said babysitting his first thought was she was referring to herself, as in maybe she was an army brat with a pretend rank, but that seemed unlikely. She was younger than him but not by much and she could have easily earned her rank. He was chewing on an answer when she said
“You don’t know what our assignment is, do you?”
“No, Ma’am. My orders were to pick up an officer named Hunter and cater to her every whim. I was told it was strictly on a ‘need to know’ basis,” he said smiling.
She turned her head away from him and smiled. The Sergeant was kind of cute for a grunt.
“People call me Trish,” she said.
This was the way superior officers set the protocols for their interactions for the duration of the assignment.
“I’m Dan,” he said.
“Well Dan let me fill you in. Do you have any experience in covert operations?” she said.
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