by Todd Babiak
“About what again?”
“About how good you feel.”
“Thanks so much for this, son. I do mean it.”
Toby asked Hugo if he would be all right with Edward, and the boy said he would be. Edward held out his arms, and Hugo shook his drowsiness away and jumped into them.
“I’m feeling so much better, Hugo, now that I’m here,” Edward said.
The giant nurse stood in the hall, speaking with a colleague. Toby closed the door behind him and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Yes?”
“May I speak to the doctor before he sees my father?”
“She.”
“Of course.”
The nurse led Toby to a small office, where an Indian woman of his generation, Dr. Singhmar, sat in front of a computer, an e-mail program open before her. The nurse introduced him as the son of a patient. Toby sat.
“I was just about to join you.”
Toby thanked her. “My father has been acting strangely. Very strangely. But I didn’t want to tell you about it in front of him.”
The doctor asked Toby to summarize recent events, and he did, right up to the sleeping pills in the beer. She sat for a moment, in active silence, a sexy hint of a moustache on her upper lip. It was a small office, with few personal decorations. Some inspirational quotations, in French, about treating the whole being. Dr. Singhmar stood up abruptly and led Toby into the examination room. She introduced herself warmly and dismissed both Toby and Hugo.
The toys in the waiting area of the emergency department were of the broken truck and naked Barbie variety, and Toby worried that they were covered in bacteria and viruses that would attack and harm the boy. Hugo received several more compliments on his smart attire from the women in the waiting area. He thanked them in the language in which he had been addressed, and each time Toby rubbed the boy’s head and kissed him.
His phone rang: Karen. She had been to the Chien Chaud, to the bank, and to Garrett’s office. It was over. She would be filing for bankruptcy protection first thing in the new year.
“How’s Edward?”
“We should be home soon.”
“Let’s order in tonight, while I still have a credit card.”
The big nurse came through in the automatic swinging doors that separated the waiting room from the emergency wing. She beckoned to Hugo and led him into the examination room, saying, “Let’s go see your grandpa.” Dr. Singhmar stood in the doorway of her office, waiting for Toby.
Her expression was stern. He worried that Edward had complained about the way Toby had acted toward him, the birdwatching, the dope in his beer. A scolding was in order.
“When was the last time your father had a physical examination?”
“I don’t know.”
The doctor transferred her prescription pad, for the drug that would return Edward to him, from one hand to the other. “Edward is going to have to stay with us. I’m ordering some tests.”
“Tests for what?”
“I can’t say, exactly.”
“Can you say inexactly?”
“I suspect your father is ill.”
“Mentally ill, I know.”
“His behaviour may be only a symptom.”
“A symptom of what?”
“It is my strong suspicion that your father has cancer and that it has metastasized. There are certainly tumours in his abdomen—I could feel them during my examination. It’s possible they have spread to his brain, you see, where pressure can cause—”
“You could be wrong.”
“I could be.”
“They might be benign. It might be nothing. It’s nothing. He just needs a pill.”
“Would you like to sit down?”
An open box of Pot of Gold chocolates sat crookedly on the doctor’s desk. Underneath one corner of the box were a set of keys and a grocery list. Canola oil, yogurt, chickpeas, butter. Five of the chocolates were missing from their plastic moulds. Outside, a siren. A heart attack or a car accident or a stabbing on the north side of the mountain, where the stabbings happen.
“What do people do in these situations, Dr. Singhmar?”
“Sorry?”
“What do I tell him?”
“I tell your father, we tell him, that further tests are necessary.”
She stared at Toby for a moment, drew air in, and released it with a faint gesture of uncertainty. Uncertainty or defeat.
In the examination room, Edward and Hugo had pulled out several feet of the paper blanket. They had constructed a fort, using the chairs and stool, and had hidden under it, giggling. Edward whispered something and Hugo peeked his head out.
“Surprise!”
All the way home Toby and Hugo played the translation game. Toby would say a word in French and the boy would either translate it or ask for help. They had made it through barnyard animals, fruits and vegetables, clothing, and musical instruments. When they were only a few minutes from the house on rue Collingwood, Toby stalled for time by stopping at the IGA. Neither Emily Post nor Letitia Baldrige had prepared him for the conversation he would soon have with his mother.
From the grocery store to rue Collingwood, they concentrated on automotive concerns.
“Autobus.”
“Bus.”
The cars and minivans parked along the curved streets had acquired an exotic quality. Vehicles after one’s father is diagnosed.
“Bus. More, Poney.”
“Please sit quietly.”
They remained in the Chevette, under the dim street light.
“You want to see Karine.”
“Just a minute, Hugo.”
“Now, please. You want to see her. Okay?” He struggled in the Westchester. “Okay!”
Toby released the boy from his straps. They held hands. Toby walked slowly through the wet snow in the front yard, while Hugo tried to run. In the interests of environmental conservation, Toby had refused a plastic bag at the IGA. He carried the carton of eggs in his left hand, but he did not trust the muscles in his fingers to work, so he cradled it.
The door opened. Karen stood in jeans and a white Juste Pour Rire T-shirt. It was too large for her. Her husband’s shirt.
“Where’s your dad?”
This was not how Toby had planned it. They weren’t even inside yet. Hugo was supposed to be on the floor, playing. Karen was supposed to be in her recliner, relaxed and philosophical. “Back at the hospital.”
“What for?”
“Tests.”
“What sort of tests?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Scans and things. He has to stay overnight.”
“And you left him?”
“I have a two-year-old here. His bedtime is in an hour.”
“You can’t leave someone alone in a hospital. You know the condition he’s in. He’ll be scared.”
“I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.”
“Why not?”
“We should save some things for genuine human contact, shouldn’t we?”
Karen pulled a ski jacket from the rack. “This isn’t one of those things, Toby. You should make a note of that.”
Toby and Hugo remained outside.
“Karine! You are here.”
“Hi, baby.” She snatched up her purse and stepped outside. “You’re all right for dinner? I was going to make a—”
“Soufflé, I know.”
Hugo reached for Karen, and she picked him up, hugged him tightly, kissed him. “Édouard and I will be back soon, Hugo.”
Karen tromped over the snow to her Corolla. Toby nearly let her go. “Mom.”
“What?”
“It’s not good.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and moved the hair from her face. “What’s not good?”
“Dad.”
“What’s not good, Toby?”
“He’s sick.”
“But there’s a pill.”
A plumbing van drove by slowly, the driver squinting at the h
ouse addresses.
“You left him there, sick and alone?”
Toby picked up Hugo.
“Did you…” Karen rested her arm on the roof of the Corolla. A man in tights and a long yellow jacket jogged down the middle of rue Collingwood, puffing. Days into days. Karen watched him go. “Did you get a second opinion?”
“The tests aren’t all done.”
“You have to get a second opinion. And you never leave. I would never leave you. Never.” Karen stomped around and opened the driver’s-side door. She paused and looked up into the cool night sky, its faint glow obscuring all but the brightest stars. She slammed the door closed and walked back toward the house. Toby put the boy down and met her near the cherry tree. She fell into him. Hugo pulled at their jackets.
“What kind of sick?”
“Terrible sick.”
“How is he? Is he terrified?”
“He doesn’t really know.”
Karen cussed all the way to the Corolla, then shouted an apology to Hugo. She honked and held the horn as she sped down rue Collingwood. The jogger veered toward the sidewalk, a strip of silver shining in the headlights.
Hugo stood in the snow.
Inside, Toby sliced vegetables for the soufflé while the boy sat against the warm door of the oven, flipping through an oversized edition of The Velveteen Rabbit Edward had picked up for him. In Toby’s chest and pelvis, minute tickles and clenches. He was clearly being poisoned by the same forces that were killing his father: tobacco, microwave popcorn, failure. Edward, as they took him away to be scanned, had dished his son a thumbs-up: “Wipe that look off your face. It’s a test.”
The doorbell rang. It was the original bell that came with the house, and part of it had died in the mid-eighties. There was a distinct melancholy about the sound, heralding not the excitement of a new visitor but the miserable certainty that someone else had arrived and would need to be fed. It was the first time Hugo had heard the dying elephant call of the doorbell, and it alarmed him. Toby scooped him up and carried him to the door.
A small man in a black watch cap, an army jacket, and astoundingly thick spectacles, stood clutching a piece of paper. “Yeah, hi, Toby.”
“Hello.”
The man waved the piece of paper before him. “I’m here for the meeting.”
“What meeting?”
He read aloud from the paper. “The first meeting of the Benjamin Disraeli Society, devoted to the art of how to be a gentleman. And in brackets here it says, ‘in the twenty-first century.’ Hosted by celebrated television host Toby Ménard, of television’s Toby a Gentleman. And then it says your address.”
Snow had begun to fall. Hugo delivered a whispered monologue directly into Toby’s ear, in a combination of French and English, about the snowman he would build tomorrow. The man at the door adjusted his eyeglasses.
“I’m Toby Ménard.”
“From television’s Toby a Gentleman.”
“Evidently.”
“Real nice to meet you. I’m James.”
“May I look at your flyer?” Toby noticed right away that James was half an hour early. The military garb, designed to conceal weapons, and half an hour early. “This may come as a disappointment, James, but I think you’ve been tricked. I didn’t put these up.”
“You didn’t?”
“Not at all, and I know nothing of this.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, I am half interested in starting a Benjamin Disraeli Society, and I’m thrilled to know that interest is out there. Thrilled, so thank you, James. But a meeting: no, not yet. And not here, at my parents’ house. And definitely not tonight. I can’t think of a worse night.”
“It’s something I want.” The man sniffed, looked away. “I want to know how to be a gentleman. It isn’t easy, with all those temptations out there.”
Toby fetched a pen and asked James to write his name and contact information on the back of the paper. It took some work to convince James to actually leave the property, first promises and, eventually, as James grew both suspicious and ornery about the misunderstanding, sincere apologies.
To ensure his safety and that of his family, Toby walked out and wrote down the licence plate of James’s red Trans Am. It was a rear-wheel drive, and it fishtailed in the slush as it growled down Collingwood.
Fifteen minutes later, when Randall and Garrett arrived, Toby was ready for them. He described James as a hulking criminal who was not at all happy to have his evening’s plans thwarted. The irony of all this, he explained, is that a gentleman would never do this to a friend: spring a party on him, in his own house.
Randall swung a white plastic bag. “We brought meat.”
Flyers had been posted all over the West Island, in restaurants and coffee shops and on community bulletin boards. Garrett had designed them and Randall had photocopied and distributed two hundred of them. The festivities were set to begin at eight. Only two more budding gentlemen arrived, one an old high school classmate who was now a toupee-wearing accountant in Dorval and the other a newly divorced science teacher from West Island College who was so nervous that Toby worried he would faint.
Edward’s fate and, now, the repudiation of what he had seen as his life’s work, his contribution, were too much to consider, let alone discuss with Randall and Garrett. So Toby entrusted Hugo to them and went outside with a glass of wine. The garden light was weak but ample for his task: lighting the barbecue.
The instructions had faded long ago, but Toby understood the principles. One turned on the propane and the burners. Then one made fire and introduced fire to the propane. It was common family knowledge that the automatic lighting mechanism on the barbecue had worked for one week; thereafter, Edward had used matches. The matchbook Toby had found in the kitchen cupboard advertised the American Hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. On the cover was a photograph of the hotel, which appeared historic, a couple arm in arm out front, dressed in bell-bottoms and flamboyant hats. The colours were unnatural.
Toby practised with a match. The last time he had lit one was for Toby a Gentleman, an episode about how to be dashing around an intended who smokes. The match did what matches are supposed to do, so he turned on the propane and opened the burners. He stepped back and dropped the matchbook into a shallow puddle of meltwater. Toby wiped the matchbook on the grass and pulled off a match. He could smell the gas now. The first match didn’t light. Neither did the second. It was decision time: make fire and light the barbecue or turn it off and regroup. Match number three lit, and Toby tossed it into the barbecue. Flames shot up with a whoomp, high enough to make the cable line to the house shiver. Something on Toby’s face had singed and now smelled.
It did not feel like a winter night, but cold air did rise off the new snow. Toby stood in his Paul Smith suit, the one with the hole in the knee, and stared at the flickering orange and red inside the black barbecue. Through the windows of the house, he could hear Randall and Hugo engaging in the art of medieval Japanese assassination; upon seeing them, Hugo had insisted on donning his ninja costume. Toby gulped his wine and tossed the glass against the side of the garage. It shattered with a high-pitched whisper. He looked around; there was nothing else to throw but the barbecue sauce and smoked gouda he had prepared, so he reached down and slid his finger into the knee hole and pulled up.
Eleven
The young woman wanted the handsome man to leave. Go, she said. It rained outside the stone house, in the valley. Sheep and goats wandered past olive and fruit trees, and there were bells around the goats’ hard necks. The handsome man was American, and the woman was Mediterranean, or seemed so. Slim, dark-skinned, large-eyed. There was something primitive about her; perhaps she lacked the capacity to understand political stories in the newspaper. Her fingers were long and thin. They covered her enormous brown eyes because she did not want the handsome American to see her, to witness and enjoy the pain he had caused her. The American smoked a cigarette and looked away. The valley, where he lo
oked, was drunk with green. A gentle fog obscured the hills. Two fighter jets passed overhead. The man dropped his cigarette, stomped it out, winked at the woman, and walked out the door. She fell to her knees.
Toby watched the American reject the woman on a miniature television. It hung over his father’s hospital bed from a rotating arm attached to the brick wall. His first coherent thought was that he longed to be in the valley with her, that he longed to be the handsome American just as all Canadian men long to be the handsome American. The smell of disinfectant and pudding faded, the tube below the bed, unhidden by covers, filled with blood and shit, blessedly faded.
Karen walked into the room, holding the ninja’s hand.
“Poney! Édouard!”
Toby touched his finger to his lips. It was a vast room in the oncology ward, a recovery area with six beds. Of the four who had been in for treatments, only Edward was awake—and barely. His eyes opened slowly.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, to no one in particular.
It had begun in his lungs and had spread up and down. In the two weeks since Edward’s diagnosis, the radiation treatments had diminished the tumours in his brain somewhat, alleviating the pressure. Already he was more like himself—himself on a fixed diet of morphine. His doctors had warned that the mood changes were unpredictable; some patients in his situation turned petulant and cruel. Others seemed to understand the fix they were in, and in the act of resignation they were more philosophical, more festive and amiable than usual.
It was dark but not late, rush hour on a cloudy day. Cars hummed and honked five storeys below. On the rolling table near the window stood a tall vase of smoked glass filled with yellow freesia. The flowers were from Steve Bancroft, a fact that Karen and Toby had agreed to keep a secret from Edward.
Toby’s BlackBerry bleeped quietly in his bag. The sound had become distressingly rare since October.
“Is that your phone?”
“It is.”
“Shouldn’t you get it?”
He wanted to devour it. “I don’t want to be a boor. I’m in my dad’s—”
“Go answer the phone.”