Toby

by Todd Babiak

  “You don’t want to spend the afternoon at a hot dog shop, do you?”

  Hugo turned to Toby, blinked.

  “I’m a man you don’t know. You’re supposed to avoid people like me.”

  The boy had finished all of his fish and most of the risotto.

  “You want something more to drink? Water? Another milk?”

  A nod, the gentlest and slightest nod in the history of communication, at the word “milk.” So Toby poured half a glass for Hugo, and they sat together in silence until Catherine reappeared.

  “I’ll pay you. How about that?”

  “No.”

  She had not reapplied the makeup. There were faint freckles on the bridge of her nose that he had not yet noticed. “I’ll do anything, Toby. What do you want me to do?”

  “To go have a lovely day with your son, I suppose.”

  “If he’s not with you, I’ll leave him in the car for two hours. Strapped into his seat. You want that? Maybe he learns how to get out, and he opens the door and runs into traffic. Does that sound like a good idea to you? It sounds monstrous to me. Monstrous.”

  The flagship family hot dog shop was tucked into an old neighbourhood corner without ample parking, a relic of 1960s Dollard, when people still used sidewalks. It was clean inside, even after Toby had switched on the fluorescent lights. The white and black menu sign above the counter, first acquired in 1984 with the participation of the RC Cola company, was the only surface of the store that cried out for a mop.

  Nahla, a pregnant woman in a plain black dress and a hijab, whispered advice and suggestions to him before she jetted off for her ultrasound. The soda machine was new, and his mother had engaged in some creative cost-cutting measures, so it was fortunate that Nahla had a few minutes to train him. Most other rituals returned immediately, bursting with the sounds, smells, and recollections of his teen years; all those girls he feared and adored with teased-up hair and Calvin Klein perfume who came into Le Chien Chaud for strawberry milkshakes. For the post-lunch afternoon shift, she suggested he pull only ten dogs out of the freezer. Ten seemed scant, a mistake, but Nahla insisted. Toby placed them on the warmer and brewed coffee in a machine Karen had purchased in 1974 from a Baron de Burger that had gone into receivership; the heating coils inside the machine looked as though jackals had been gnawing on them.

  Catherine wrote a mini instruction manual on a sheet of paper she had ripped out of her address book. Toby fashioned a small apron out of a tea towel and some duct tape, and handed it to the boy. Hugo held out his hand as though he were receiving a giant insect. It seemed excessive, all the kissing and hugging and baby-talking, but Toby was unfamiliar with the rituals of parenting in the twenty-first century. Catherine planted one on Toby’s mouth and discreetly grabbed his behind, cried a little bit, and departed. It wasn’t until she was in her car and away that Hugo ran for her.

  The boy screamed and jumped at the window, pounded on the glass. When he could not open the heavy door, Hugo threw himself onto the white tile floor and shouted nonsense words, kicked and straightened and rolled. He ripped off his duct-tape apron and tossed it at the wall. Two men in coveralls and workboots entered the store and looked down at Hugo; before Toby could convince them that the tantrum would soon end, they exited again. It was two thirty.

  When a moment of silence arrived, Toby offered Hugo some apple juice. The boy eyed it suspiciously, nodded, and sat at one of the four tables with the little plastic bottle and a straw. He slurped occasionally. Toby sat across from him, and they held eye contact much longer than allowed by polite society. This took them to two forty-five.

  It was at this point that Toby began to notice the smell. No one had yet entered the store, save for the two men in coveralls, but eventually someone in Dollard-des-Ormeaux would crave a hot dog. According to Catherine’s note, there were diapers and wipes in the bag. There were no further instructions. He waited as long as he could, hoping Catherine might arrive early. But the smell advanced.

  “Would you like me to change your diaper?”

  Hugo shook his head.

  “It’s unhealthy, I would imagine, to sit and stew in it. It doesn’t hurt or chafe?”

  Again, he shook his head.

  “Do you do it on the floor or what?”

  Hugo looked out the window. “Maman.”

  “She’ll be back soon, but not soon enough, I’m afraid.” Toby worried that the moment he stepped into the washroom with the boy, a rush of hungry teenagers would walk into the shop. Or worse, the health inspector. He phoned home to see if Edward and Karen had returned. They had not.

  The public washroom in Le Chien Chaud was equipped with a changing table that unfolded from the wall. Toby propped the door open for psychological access to the outside world. “Are you ready?”

  Hugo shook his head.

  “I don’t really know how to do this. So let’s be a team. If I do something wrong, let me know, please?”

  The boy ran out of the washroom and into the restaurant, where he hugged a garbage can. It took several minutes to extract him from the can, as Toby worked through a number of strategies: asking, then begging, then gently pulling, then less gently pulling, then yanking. He carted Hugo to the moulded plastic table in the washroom and made certain the boy was steady. To take Hugo’s attention off the unpleasantness, Toby pulled a plush panda out of the diaper bag and bestowed it upon him. Hugo hugged the panda and looked vacantly up at the fluorescent lights of the men’s washroom.

  “I’m going to take off your pants now, is that all right?”

  No response, so Toby removed them. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger were imprinted on the front of the diaper, having a hell of a time with some bees. It lent an atmosphere of levity to the proceedings.

  “It can’t be so bad, right, if Winnie the Pooh’s involved?”

  Hugo swallowed.

  Toby unfastened the first of the Velcro strips, and the smell roared through him. He endeavoured to breathe through his mouth, but the knowledge that he was inhaling the smell unfiltered was fouler than the odour itself. Toby abandoned the boy on the table for a moment as he walked in a circle to psych himself up, a boxer who knew he was outmatched by the fiend in the ring.

  The bells above the front door sounded, and a woman in a beige trench coat walked into the shop. Toby caught only a glimpse of her as she walked straight to the counter. “Un instant, s’il vous plaît,” Toby shouted. “I’ll be right there.”

  One had to move swiftly. Toby unfastened the other side of the diaper, and it opened heavily, with an amount of shit that seemed more fitting of a grizzly bear than a two-year-old boy. Hugo shifted up on the change table, to perform some feat with the panda, and a portion of the warm shit rolled out of the diaper and into Toby’s hand. Toby unconsciously flicked it out of his hand and, briefly, onto his Paul Smith pants. “No!” he shouted, startling Hugo, who turned onto his front and struggled to his feet. The Lady Killer sweatshirt dangled to its natural length, touching the chunks that had attached themselves to the boy’s bottom. Toby lifted the boy off the table and onto the floor while he washed his hands, splashed water on his pants, and gagged in the sink. Hugo scampered out the washroom door. “No, Hugo!”

  Toby caught up with the boy in front of the condiment station, busily cleaning himself with the panda.

  The woman in the trench coat leaned on the counter as though Hugo were a grenade that might go off at any moment. She wore plastic-framed eyeglasses with a beaded strap, in case she wanted to take them off and let them dangle.

  “I’m sorry, Madame,” he said. “This isn’t at all normal.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you have children?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll serve you in just a moment. I do appreciate your patience.”

  It was three fifteen. Toby decided that as soon as Catherine arrived to pick up her son, he would attack her with the shitty panda. He spoke sweetly to the boy, who valiantly tried to escape. Toby
carried him back into the washroom, closed the door, and removed all of his clothes. The dirty diaper lay on the corner of the change table, threatening to fall off, so Toby snatched it up and, without thinking, tossed it into the toilet. While Toby filled the sink with warm water, Hugo stopped crying long enough to pull the flush handle.

  “No!”

  “No!” said Hugo.

  Toby lowered the boy into the sink water and splashed the shit off him. Hugo kicked at first and then settled in, defeated. It seemed unhygienic to allow the boy to rest in the water, as he was immediately surrounded by floating debris. So Toby unstopped the water, let it drain, and repeated the process three times. Then he held Hugo under the hand dryer, which was at first funny to the boy and then a form of torture. The pants had escaped shitless and there was, luckily, an extra shirt in the diaper bag.

  By the time they emerged from the washroom, the customer had departed. Toby plunged the toilet. When the diaper reappeared, he gagged again, an unfamiliar honking noise escaped from him. He tried to fish the diaper out of the discoloured water with a glove fashioned from toilet paper, but it was one-ply and quickly dissolved. Toby threw the diaper into the garbage with the Lady Killer sweatshirt, wrapped the shit-stained panda in a spare diaper, washed his arms as best he could, and walked into the shop to discover Hugo on a chair, eating the sauerkraut from the condiment table.

  It was nearly four o’clock. Toby removed his Chien Chaud apron and collapsed into one of the chairs. He quietly watched Hugo eat sauerkraut, and then chopped onions and tomatoes. At ten after four he walked to the window and looked out for some sign of Catherine’s white Honda Civic. At four thirty he made a hot dog for the boy, with plenty of sauerkraut, chopped onions, and tomatoes, and began dialling the number she had left. The dinner rush—seven people—began at five o’clock. His replacement, a teenager named Rick, arrived to relieve him at five thirty.

  “Is this your kid?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.”

  Toby phoned Catherine again and left another message, then phoned home. Obviously, her emergency was more serious than she had anticipated, so Toby hoped to leave the boy with Edward and Karen while he drove into Montreal. No answer. And again, no answer on Catherine’s phone. He paced. He asked Hugo if he knew where his mother might have gone. The boy stared.

  “Um, man,” said Rick. “Is there anything I can help with?”

  “It’s polite of you to ask, Rick.”

  Rick did not feel comfortable babysitting Hugo while Toby drove into Montreal to meet his real estate agent, despite assurances that Hugo had just shit himself and probably wouldn’t shit again for at least a couple of hours. Toby bundled the boy up and led him outside to the Chevette. He was so small that the shoulder belt would have strangled him in a head-on collision, so Rick hunted through the shop and found seven bungee cords in the storage room. Together they strapped the boy to the front seat.

  Toby drove cautiously down the autoroute until someone in a minivan cut him off. Sweat burst from every one of his pores. He turned off onto Saint-Laurent and pulled into the parking lot of the Sears at Place Vertu. Hugo would not take his hand, and he screamed when Toby tried to pick him up, so to protect Hugo from elderly, vision-challenged drivers in giant Plymouths, Toby leaned over the boy like the sole member of a presidential security detail.

  The department store was bedecked with pre-Halloween Christmas trees, lights, and wreaths. Bing Crosby parumpummed over the hi-fi. It appeared as though a pack of coyotes had recently been through the children’s section of the store, as packages had been ripped open and blankets and bottles lay on the brown carpet. The car seat section was small but illuminating. Prices started at $110 and reached $300 for an elite model.

  Safety should not be compromised for a couple of hundred dollars in savings, Toby determined. He chose the most expensive seat, the Westchester, even though he worried it would take up most of the space in the back of the Chevette. When Hugo was settled in with the provincial Department of Families and Seniors, Toby would come up with an excuse to bring the Westchester back to Sears for a full refund. But the boy might as well experience luxury before moving into the orphanage.

  The Westchester was built for vehicles that were manufactured after 2000, so it took Toby almost half an hour to rig it into the back seat of the Chevette. When he finished, the seat appeared to be solidly in place. Just to be sure, he used the bungees to secure the sides and back of the unit.

  Tania, the real estate agent, met Toby in the foyer of the warehouse, where she had been answering e-mails. They were twenty minutes late. He apologized but didn’t bother explaining. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  In the hall, on the way to his suite, Tania acknowledged Hugo. “Oh my God, is he beautiful? You didn’t tell me you were a father. I did not know this about you.”

  They weren’t exactly friends. “I’m just babysitting.”

  “Hello.” She bent over. “My name is Tania Miller. And you are?”

  “He doesn’t speak English. His name is Hugo.”

  “Like the strongman?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “A stunningly serious boy. Enchanté, Hugo!”

  Something about Tania’s manner—her loud voice, her overpowering perfume, her unblinking eyes, the plastic surgery, or the inscrutable nature of her black cape and scarf combination—inspired Hugo to take Toby’s hand and cry all the way to the suite.

  As they moved through the main floor, Toby pointed out all the improvements he had made in the kitchen and bathroom, the faucets and the black toilet. Tania complimented him on his taste and his cleanliness, and made a few recommendations for staging purposes. She had him sign a contract. “So, where are you looking?”

  “Looking?”

  “For your next house.”

  Hugo no longer had his hand. “I’m living in Dollard at the moment.”

  “Oh my God, you’re joking!”

  “Hugo?”

  Nothing. Not a footstep or a squeak. The sleeping quarters and cave were on the lower level. Toby ran to the ornamental railing, hand on his heart. He said a little prayer and looked down into the darkness. “Hugo?”

  Tania seemed confused by the intensity of his worry and peeked into a couple of closets. She stopped at an open door. “Where does this lead?”

  Toby rushed past her and bounded up the stairs to the roof. Three steps from the top, he recalled speaking at a condo board meeting. Half his neighbours in the candy warehouse had wanted to spring for a tasteful cedar fence and some trees and vines on the roof, an $18,000 investment if they hired a contractor. No one had small children, and few of the tenants spent time on the roof, but it was a relatively small sum when split among ten units. Child friendliness would increase the resale value. Toby, and a couple of like-minded neighbours who did not see children in their near future, felt it was a mad waste of an international airplane ticket—especially when the art in the lobby was so pathetic.

  Hugo sat on a corner of the roof, facing the mountain. One of his feet dangled over the sidewalk four storeys below. He turned to look at Toby, who crept forward on a carpet of tarpaper, gravel, leaves, and faded chocolate bar wrappers. The cross on the mountain was alight.

  Toby spoke flatly, to calm the boy. If Hugo recoiled and slipped, he was gone—and Toby’s ability to live and thrive on earth along with him. No one would understand how this had come to be. “Hello, my darling friend.”

  Three steps away, Hugo appeared to sense the falseness and the fear in Toby’s expression. He eased away. Away was the sidewalk.

  Toby stopped walking. If he went back to ask Tania to call the fire department, the boy could slip. If he called for her, Hugo would be alarmed. Toby crouched low and whispered gently, telling Hugo that ice cream and chocolate cake and a pony ride were forthcoming if he agreed to a hug.

  Toby looked at Hugo’s perfect head, the clarity of his skin, his tiny hands and tiny shoes and tiny khakis. His blond hair
shone, nearly green in the cheap, distorting light of the street lamps. Neither of them moved for several seconds, like gunslingers before the draw. Preposterously, the taste of good mustard rose in the back of Toby’s throat. Then, with the awkward swiftness of a kitten, Hugo leapt up. Toby screamed. But the boy did not tumble to his death. He ran toward Toby and jumped on his back. A sharp rock dug smartly into Toby’s right knee and, he knew, poked a hole in the shit-stained Paul Smith slacks.

  “Poney. Allez, Poney!”

  To prevent any more trips to the ledge, and to express an explosive feeling of relief, despite the mortal damage to a second suit, Toby bucked Hugo off and hugged him. The rapid movement startled the boy, and he began to kick and bawl. Toby kissed Hugo on the forehead and said “Thank you, thank you, thank you” to Whomsoever. He carried Hugo to the stairs. The smell of his blond hair, the warm living body that was its root, inspired more kisses. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, and Tania, Hugo had wriggled away from the kisses; Toby appeared to be choking the boy.

  “Have you done this before?” said Tania.

  The agent departed and Toby called Catherine again. Her line no longer rang; a recording declared it disconnected. Toby sat on the chesterfield with Hugo, who inspected the reproductions in a Chagall coffee table book, and phoned Dollard. Karen answered and Toby explained about Hugo. Something in her tone, or on her face, inspired Edward to get on the other line.

  “So she’s gone?” said Karen. “Gone gone?”

  “She certainly doesn’t want to be found. I should call the police, shouldn’t I?”

  “You don’t have a choice,” said Karen.

  “Who says?” said Edward. “He always has a choice. You always have a choice, Toby.”

  Karen had evidently been holding a mouthful of Old Port, so there was a faint air of Cheech and Chong in her next declaration: “Stupid choices are always available.”

  “What’s the little blueberry’s name?” said Edward.

  “Hugo.”

  “If this lady wanted Hugo in police custody, she would have dropped him off. Isn’t it obvious? She investigated you and figured, ‘Hey, here’s a top-shelf guardian for my son.’”