by Annabel Lyon
“He’s repugnant. A sniggering, repugnant little boy.”
“Which you never were.”
“I was a prince,” Liam says. “My son is a prince. The lower life forms, we’re not accountable.”
“Liam, why were the police here?”
“I’m just coming to that.” He stares at me for a minute before saying, “Nope. Can’t think of anything funny. Was there really a cruiser in the driveway?”
“There really, really was.”
“Let’s have a baby,” Liam says.
We get into position. Then I say, “What if there’s something wrong with it?”
He hesitates over me. “You mean, like, it turns out closer to the Jason-end of the spectrum?”
“I mean, like, a condition, a deformity or a – syndrome, of some sort.”
“That’s horrible,” Liam says. “We’re making love and you’re thinking about things like that? I guess it could be a racist bigot and a psychopath too. Why do you want to think these things? Do you want to jinx us?”
I tell him my idea about the flagstones. “That’s more like it,” he says. We stop talking and start enjoying ourselves. “Be noisy,” he says. “Kid’s out of the house. Be noisy.”
As he ruts away I tell myself I’m not, not, not going to worry about a child that isn’t my child. I should know better than to try to peek behind the scenery: it always snaps back before my eyes have time to adjust, and I’m left with the props and the big lights and the goody-goody goodness of my life. I have the house, the job, the world with the bright, neat-edged colours of a cartoon. My blood twinkles in my healthy veins. My husband is a prince. My son is a prince. The prick in the cruiser was just turning around.
After he comes, gasping and shuddering like he’s wounded, I send him down for orange juice. “Newspaper, bagels!” I add. I want to eat, but I also want to be asleep before the landscapers arrive or I’ll just lie there listening, needing to supervise. Lying on my back, knees up, I think of the war soup going on inside me, hopefully. “Girl,” I say, poking myself in the belly. “Hey you. We want a girl.”
“Pulp?” Liam calls. “Or no? Kate?” But it’s pleasant to ignore him, lying here and thinking I know where Ty’s mobile is, elephants rounding to Brahms, and his little suits. I kept everything. I’m letting consciousness go, moment to moment, like pruning out a handful of helium balloons. Red is a good colour for a baby’s room, I’m thinking, brass elephants, candles, a carved wood chest. Darkness and textures, a warm cave. I’m going in.
The next few days pass as some days will, water through glass pipes. The beating makes a small worrisome item on the local news as a probable hate crime, then goes under. The landscapers bring us stone samples, big as pizzas, which we do gravely consider. Marble is not out of the question. Ty seems sleepy, out of it, which I attribute to a late-summer growth spurt, a little too much computer, the imminence of school. Still, we manage to have the following conversation:
Us: Would you like a sister?
Him (face lighting up): No.
At the hospital are painters, men responsible for the term “hospital green.” When I ask, they tell me it’s known in the trade as “herb.” And I like it, wet or dry – the world being made new for Labour Day, the sticky creak of wet paint coming off the roller. I discuss with Administration certain possibilities, a shifting of shifts, to which they proclaim themselves open. There’s a spot in the out-patient clinic next door, which I covet, and I let them know. We look each other in the eye, Administration and I, and neither of us has to blink. I go days at the clinic.
Late afternoon, Sunday before Monday before school, me still a little groggy from the turnaround, there’s a message on the answering machine from the Parmenters, Jason’s parents. Would we go round this evening and bring Ty? Liam phones back three times to confirm but all he gets is tape.
“I doubt it’s supper or they’d have said supper,” I say. “Let’s take a bottle of wine. If they feed us, great. If not, takeout.”
“Can we eat in the car?” Liam says.
We’ve been having an awful lot of sex lately. We’re both feeling a little puffy with it, a little silly and bruised.
“Ty!” Liam shouts, even though he’s right here, leaning in the doorway like we’ve taken his crutches. “Who are these people? Are these Merlot people or Chardonnay people? What exactly are we dealing with here, son?”
Ty shrugs. When I take his chin in my hand to make him look at me he scowls. “What?” I say.
He mumbles about not wanting to go.
“Well, hell,” Liam says. “I’m just going so I can throw spit-balls at Jason. Your mom’s just going so she can administer CPR if people start choking on their own boredom. You know? Maybe they’ll let us watch TV. How bad can it be?”
I say, “Did you and Jason have a fight?”
Ty inarticulates.
“Enunciate or I’ll belt you,” Liam says.
He doesn’t smile. “Can I have a shower?”
Shocked, we stare. He looks miserable.
“Yes, god,” we say, and he turns away.
At ten past seven we’re heading up the garden path. It’s not a great house, pretty bad house, in fact. Stucco, rusted railings, crap for grass. “Uh-oh,” I say softly to Liam, nodding at a tea-like stain spreading from the eaves to the front window.
“In and out,” Liam responds under his breath. “One, two –”
“Mom,” Ty says.
The door opens. “Hel-lo!” we say.
It’s just barely possible to imagine Jason ever replicating the big piece of meat that is his dad. He’s got a gut and hands like beefs, but also his son’s hair, that same straw-blond I associate with virgin farmboys. Without a word he gestures us into the house, while managing not to take the wine (a decent enough Cabernet). Ty trails. In the living room are Jason, who stares sullenly at the floor and doesn’t look up when we come in, and Jason’s mom, who’s obviously been crying.
I grab for Ty, to protect him from the big man behind us.
“Have you seen the evening news?” the big man says, and then I see he’s been crying too. His eyes are red and he’s biting down so hard he can barely talk. “Our boys have something to tell us.” Except that isn’t exactly what he says. He says, “The evening newsh.” He says, “Shomething to tell ush.”
“We haven’t seen the news,” Liam says idiotically, yielding, it seems to me, some pretty basic ground. But I look at Ty and Ty is crying. He hasn’t cried in years, that I’ve seen. He’s had no call.
“Liam,” I say sharply, the way I speak to my nurses sometimes, and everyone looks at me. I look at Jason’s dad, Mr. Parmenter. I look him in the eye. “Say what you’ve got to say.”
“It wasn’t me,” Ty says.
“It was the two of them together,” Mr. Parmenter says. Mrs. Parmenter opens her mouth and cries soundlessly. “We’re going to the police,” Mr. Parmenter says.
“No,” Ty says to me.
Liam says, “Don’t say anything.”
Mr. Parmenter says clearly, “Animals.”
And now I can see it coming: like a fist, like in slow motion, I can see where it’s going to hit before it hits – a meteor closing in on its own shadow. Pinned, fascinated, I let Liam do the talking. “You are fucking out of your mind,” Liam says.
“Do you want to know what they’ve done,” Mr. Parmenter says.
I can feel Ty start to shiver like he’s cold. A big dirty yellow dog walks into the living room and falls to the floor at Jason’s feet like it’s been blackjacked. When Mr. Parmenter talks its tail thumps, grooving on the sound of the familiar voice.
“Do you want to know what they’ve done,” Mr. Parmenter repeats.
“Don’t fucking tell me anything,” Liam says. “Look at your family.” And, indeed, peripherally, I’ve been keeping an eye on Mrs. Parmenter, who is now smiling fixedly at her hands. She’s got a dozen years on me, more, with the perm and the house dress. The smile is shock. Beside her, Jason
is watching Liam. Probably, it occurs to me, he’s never heard anyone talk to his dad the way Liam is talking to his dad. Probably Liam is just going up and up in his little head.
“Our boys beat up a retarded man,” Mr. Parmenter says.
I walk out of the house, then, with my son, and no one tries to stop me.
In the car, I watch him strap in, next to me, in the front. Liam is still inside.
“I know about it but I wasn’t there,” Ty says.
And I love him, I can’t help it.
Instead of asking questions, I tell him I know about it too. I tell him about the tests we ordered, the injuries. I use terminology. Inessential details come back to me as I talk – dandruff, how the fingernails needed clipping – but I leave those out. While I’m talking I put the key in the ignition and turn it to Battery so we can play the radio while we wait for Liam. I’m unafraid because I have seen and believe in mistakes.
“Will he be all right?” Ty asks, when I finish talking.
“Yes.”
We sit in silence. Finally Liam comes out the front door, closes it behind him, and jogs down the path. He gets in the back. The first thing he says is, “We need a lawyer.” I put the car in gear and pull away from the curb. The second thing he says is, “How about a drive?”
“Dad,” Ty says, but Liam puts a hand on his shoulder.
I drive us to the parking lot of Ty’s school, Carter High. I know what Liam’s thinking: they could be there, waiting for us, cruiser in the driveway. And if our son’s time is suddenly valuable, it’s most valuable to us. We get him first.
I back us up against the green chain-link fence and cut the motor. We watch a pair of older boys, shavers, go one-on-one in the court. Ty watches too, his eyes alert, even managing a brief wry smile at a goofy one-hander that shouldn’t sink but does. I wonder if he knows them.
“So what happened,” Liam says.
Ty keeps his eyes on the game. He’s thinking. To help him, I repeat everything I just said for Liam. For those moments, when I’m conscious of him knowing what I’m going to say before I say it, it’s as though he’s my husband and Liam is our son.
When I’m done, Ty says, “Jason and another guy did it. He bragged about it after, but I didn’t believe him.”
“Where were you?” Liam says.
I try to see my son’s shoes but he’s got his feet stuffed up by the heater vent, the way he always does, out of sight. Have I mentioned our car, a Jetta? And his legs are getting long?
“I was tired,” Ty says. “It was like ten, eleven? Jason went out but I stayed in bed.”
“His parents let him do that?” I say.
“Which was it, ten or eleven?” Liam says.
“His mom went to bed early and his dad had bowling league. I think ten.”
“Bowling league,” Liam says.
“But they knew you were in the house.”
“Well,” Ty says. “No.”
I do ironico-skeptical: lean back, chin down, eyebrows up. “You’re never in bed by ten.”
“Well, then, eleven.”
“Ty, which,” Liam says. “People are going to ask you this stuff.”
He’s fiddling with the dash vents, flicking them open and closed. “I don’t look at the clock right before I fall asleep.”
“You go to a sleepover and he goes out and you stay in?”
“Mom, god,” he says. “Sleepover.”
“What your mother is saying,” Liam says, “and we’re together on this, okay?, is we don’t quite believe you. We want to believe you, we’re trying, but our feeling is you are fucking around. You’re not even looking at us when you talk. Look at me.” Ty turns around. “I don’t believe what Mr. Parmenter believes, which is that you and Jason did something together. I don’t accept that. But you’re acting tricky, son. Did you watch?”
“Jesus Christ of course he didn’t watch,” I say.
“I once watched a group of white kids beat a black kid,” Liam says. “You know, beat him up. In high school. When I say watched, I was a distance away. I was aware of it going on, okay? Most of the school was aware of it going on, I would include some teachers. So I’m asking, did you watch?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when you heard about it on the news?”
He shrugs.
I ask, “Who was the other boy?”
“What?” Ty says.
“You said Jason told you he did it with another boy. Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” Ty says. “Somebody he met. Some kid. He might have been someone Jason knew but I didn’t know. Probably that’s who it was.”
“Why didn’t you go out with Jason?” Liam asks again.
Ty yawns. This time he says: “I wanted to use his computer.”
I squint at him.
“I pretended I was too tired so I could play on his computer while he was out. Like, how far away were you, Dad?”
“What?”
“From the black kid.”
Liam looks out the window for a long time without answering. I don’t realize he’s actually looking at landmarks, gauging distances, until he says, “Basketball court.”
“What were you doing on the computer?” I ask.
“What?” Ty says.
“Tyler.”
He looks at his lap. He digs a finger under his sock to scratch an ankle and I see the shoes, the Nikes, and the Indiglo watch on his left wrist. It’s exactly eight o’clock and some split seconds. “I was looking at this web site,” he says next, softly.
“What Mr. Parmenter told me,” Liam says later, “is that our son was the other boy.”
It’s 10:10. We’re sitting in the kitchen, drinking the Cabernet. Ty is up in his room. We’ve got a call in to our shy lawyer friend to ring us when she gets in, no matter when. “I shouldn’t really be drinking this, in case,” I say, pouring us more wine.
“Do you believe him?”
I raise my glass, hesitate. “Have to.”
He touches his glass to mine and I wonder what we’ve just decided, just done. “You?”
“I believe the part about the dirty web site. Would he have told us that if he didn’t have to?”
I take a deep breath, like I’m about to say something, and then I exhale.
Liam taps his mouth with his fingers, thinking. Minutes pass.
“Healthy curiosity,” I say finally, which is the succinct kernel of everything I want to say. I’m drinking faster than Liam. “At his age of fourteen.” The phone rings. “Finally.”
“Shut up,” Liam says, and answers it. It’s our very good shy lawyer friend, Isobel. “Yeah, not so,” he says. “Our son might be looking at an assault charge.”
What an amazing sentence. I shake my head. Assault charge, that’s the nut of it, right there. I’m blasted and I know it, but still I’m acting like I’m blasted. “Amazing,” I say.
“Kate, quiet.” Liam looks at me while he listens to Isobel. Then he looks away. “Well, you know. You can pretty much guess.”
“Hi, Isobel,” I say loudly.
“She says hi,” Liam says to me, relaying. “She says she knows a great criminal lawyer.”
“Great!” I say.
I go upstairs to Ty’s room. “It’s me,” I say from outside, and then I go in. It’s dark except for the liquid crystal light of the computer screen on his face. He’s playing a green game. He plays a lot of games because we don’t let him have the Internet in his room. I lean in the door frame like he’s taken my crutches.
“Mom.” He doesn’t look up, joylessly savaging the joystick.
“You’re gonna be a pilot,” I say, and then he looks at me. I lean down to pull the plug out of the wall and the room goes dark. The computer takes a few last seconds to die, strangely lifelike with its falling whine.
“Ah, Mom?” he says. “You could wreck it that way. You could have just wrecked it right there.”
“You shouldn’t be playing games right
now,” I say. “Go to bed.” I drop the plug on the carpet and go back down to the kitchen.
“Isobel says we’re looking at the Young Offenders Act,” Liam says. “I guess I knew that without knowing it. Also there are some changes pending in the legislation, apparently.”
I take my wineglass out to the front step. I stand in the doorway, looking at our street. It’s warm. There are stars and cars and rags of cloud.
“Let’s drink inside.” Behind me, Liam tries to get my elbow. I walk down the steps so he follows. I sit on the grass so he sits on the grass. “Almost done?”
“You made that up about the black kid, right?”
“No.”
I look at him.
“I didn’t make it up,” he says defensively, like I was accusing him of something. “You never watched somebody do something bad?”
I go down on my elbows.
“Oh, don’t do that. Don’t settle in.”
I toss the rest of my wine behind me into the bushes so it won’t spill and set the glass on the grass. It falls over. I lie down and tell the stars, “I think it’s hitting me.”
I feel Liam lie down beside me.
“Can you imagine what they must be going through?” I mean the Parmenters.
“You just knew the dad was going to be at bowling league, or something,” Liam says. “I don’t want to imagine what they’re going through. I don’t want to think about their ugly lives at all. Do you think it’s obvious we don’t want Jason coming over any more, or should we spell it out?”
I ponder. “I think it’s obvious.”
Across the street, a light goes out in an upstairs window. Liam says, “The neighbourhood is watching us.” He sits up. “Ah, Jesus. How’re we going to keep this quiet?”
“Not by talking about it on the front lawn.”
“My point.” He tugs at me but I don’t give. I think of the backyard – plumbing trenches, plastic sheeting, rock dust – a dark, crowded disorder we’re paying for but don’t totally control. I don’t want to go back there.
“There’s nothing to hide,” I say. “He didn’t do anything.”
Liam picks at the grass.
“So they beat the shit out of the black kid,” I say.