The Better Mother

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  Leaving was one of two choices. He could stay, and work in the curio shop for the rest of his life. He would marry a girl he barely knew or barely tolerated, and live in this house with his parents, eating the same food, staring at them staring at him. If he left, no one would notice him. He would be invisible, moving around this city or another one, one body among many—life unseen, life unplanned. If he left, he could be anonymous for a time, observing and quiet. And then he could create a new Danny, one who took the world’s most famous photographs, one who never thought of his parents at all.

  There was no in-between. He couldn’t stay in this house and work where he wanted. He couldn’t leave and still come home once a week for dinner without his father shouting at him for neglecting his duties or his mother staring at him with her eyes half filled with tears. Leaving now meant leaving for good.

  There was one more spot he needed to look. He lay down on the floor and peered underneath the bed. Two shoe-boxes, filled with smudged paper dolls that looked dishevelled, like women who had been drinking champagne and allowed their dates to smear their lipstick over their faces and spill caviar on their long silk skirts. A stack of department store catalogues crusted over with dust that had mixed with the dampness in the air and then dried. He ripped the dolls into small pieces and placed them back in the boxes, piles of green and red and purple confetti. He took two issues from the middle of the pile and threw them into the suitcase. For company on a lonely night.

  The hands on the bedside clock pointed to ten past four. He wanted to leave well before his mother woke up at five. On his desk sat a pile of hockey cards, a collection his father added to every birthday and Christmas, even giving Danny the thin plastic sleeves to protect the cards from dirty fingers and the disintegration brought by time. Danny left them where they were.

  He pulled on a pair of socks and crept, suitcase and shoes in hand, down the hallway, past his parents’ bedroom. Holding his breath, he slipped a folded note under his sister’s door. Tell them not to look for me. I won’t come back no matter what. He knew the precise location of the squeaky floorboards and stepped around them, wincing each time he had to shift his weight from one foot to the other. The front door was the hardest part and he twisted the knob slowly, making sure he didn’t rush, that the door didn’t rub against its frame. Once outside on the front stoop, he put on his shoes, grabbed the suitcase and hurried down the stairs. Across the street, a white Cadillac started its engine and Danny threw his bag into the back seat before falling into the passenger seat, shutting the door as silently as he could. He slid down so that his head was no longer visible through the window.

  “What took you so long?” Edwin pulled out, steered through a U-turn and sped westward. “I’ve been waiting for an hour.”

  Danny wondered if he had breathed at all this morning. “I found some more stuff that I needed to pack.”

  “Well, you’d better tell me where I’m taking you because if I’m not back in bed in about forty-five minutes, my grandmother will have a hairy conniption and start screaming at the neighbours.”

  “Keep going,” Danny said, “and I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  They stood in the middle of a single room in a downtown hotel where the occupants of one floor shared a single bathroom. A strange combination of people walked the halls and through the lobby: working men who had rolled into Vancouver from Campbell River or Williams Lake; women who crept up the stairs four or five times a night, each time with a different man; and young people who were determined to escape to the big city.

  Of course, he hadn’t come very far, only from the house on Dundas in East Vancouver to this hotel on Seymour. But it felt like he’d travelled around the world and was now in a place his parents never once thought about, a seedy establishment where those with shattered reputations nursed their watered-down beer in the ground-floor bar. A building that you noticed only if you needed it. Danny carefully placed his suitcase on the low dresser and grinned.

  Edwin talked without once removing the cigarette burning between his lips. “God, did you look into the corner here by the nightstand? I don’t even know what that black crud is. Mould? Dirt? Hair? I’m getting the willies, Danny. You can’t stay here.”

  Danny parted the curtains. “This is temporary.”

  “You should go to New York,” Edwin said, sitting down on the single chair and then standing up immediately and brushing off the seat of his pants. “There’s nothing happening here. Vancouver is dull, dull, dull.”

  “I don’t know where I’m going. I might even stay in town. But I’ll get an apartment after I find a job. This is okay for now.”

  Through the window, Danny could see the pearl-grey light of dawn growing brighter around the edges of clouds. He turned and saw Edwin lying on the bed, eyes closed, his cigarette still in his mouth.

  “I thought you had to go home,” Danny whispered.

  “Grandma can wait. I don’t care. I’m tired.” He pulled out the cigarette and, without even opening his eyes, stubbed it out directly on the cracked nightstand top.

  Danny lay down beside him. Even here, in the middle of downtown where the stunted trees were forced to grow out of tiny plots cut into the sidewalk, he could hear the singing of birds, the rise and fall of their chirping. As he fell asleep, he heard no other noise, not even the rush of a car or voices from the hall.

  He felt like he was being pushed awake, crashing through a single-paned picture window into the cold morning. He sat up, breathing hard, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He could hear the splatter of raindrops as they hit the sidewalk and ran together into the gutters.

  As his vision cleared, he looked down and saw Edwin’s head between his legs, his own pants in a puddle by the side of the bed.

  Why. Off. What the fuck. These were all the words that sat behind his teeth, ready to be shouted. At first he retracted, his body like a hand in a sleeve. His knees jerked and he was poised to jump up and shake off all of this, everything, that is, except the outrage that hissed through him.

  But wait. This felt good. It was a mixture of pain—the sharpness of nerves coming to life, crackling under his skin—and warmth, as if his entire body was radiating heat, wave after wave after wave. He thought he might suffocate; every limb was heavy with simmering blood. His mouth was now too dry to ask Edwin anything; he simply sighed an exhalation of hot air. No one knew they were in this room, not even Cindy. They were alone, with strangers on the other side of the wall. Knowing this, Danny tilted his head back and breathed.

  Moving so slowly that it seemed he wasn’t moving at all, Edwin crept up the bed and pulled off Danny’s shirt, every touch like a small explosion on his skin. The mattress creaked and, briefly, Danny wondered how many people had fucked on this very spot, on these same sheets and blankets.

  He felt the weight of Edwin’s body. For half a minute, the pain was vicious, like a scream that ripped across time and space, but Edwin’s right hand was still stroking him and, soon, the pain dissipated, leaving Danny feeling like a melted human candle, a humid pool of liquefied flesh and hair. He shuddered and buried his face in the rough sheets.

  They might have been lying there for hours or minutes; there was no clock in the room and the light through the window remained an overcast grey. The rain thickened and the individual drops falling on the pavement couldn’t be distinguished from the roar of water rushing down the street. Neither of them was asleep. For the first time that Danny could remember, Edwin didn’t speak, only breathed deeply, his arms thrown over Danny’s chest. Danny shifted and brought the covers up over his shoulders, but Edwin still didn’t move, his naked body half obscured by the tangle of blankets. Finally, his voice rose from the pillow.

  “I love you.”

  Danny hadn’t been this close to crying since he was a little boy. His mouth felt glued shut, but the silence was growing thicker by the minute.

  “I can’t,” he said, breathing deeply through his nose. How inadequat
e.

  “But, I thought—”

  “You never leave me alone, Eddie.” Danny was surprised at the force of his voice, at the way his words echoed in this small room, shrill and clear as glass. “Why do you need me to be with you all the time? Why can’t you make some other friends? Did it ever occur to you that sometimes I just want to be alone?”

  Edwin was silent. Danny knew that he was thinking about the unfairness of this outburst. It was Danny who had asked Edwin to drive him to this place, Danny who had accepted his touch and enjoyed it. But still. He couldn’t be Edwin’s lover. At night, Danny drifted to sleep buoyed by images of blunt fingers tracing a line down the side of his body and the fleshy smell that men have nestled in their clavicles, the smell that reminded him of the dirt floor in a dark forest. Edwin’s substantial thighs and sour breath were so real, so solidly part of his everyday life that he felt sick.

  Edwin sat up and turned to face him. “I’m gay, Danny. Get it? Maybe that’s something you should try saying one day.”

  I’m gay. Danny thought those words were like unexploded bombs, potentially lethal, but still only words. But he knew that they were the right words, ones that had been circling inside him for years and that partially propelled him to leave his parents’ house. Still, he wanted to grab Edwin by the shoulders and ask him, How do you know for sure? How do you know this won’t go away? How do you know you’re not crazy?

  Edwin had already begun putting on his clothes. He left without saying another word.

  Danny walked down the hall to take a shower. When he returned, he crossed the room to open the window. He breathed in the damp air, so wet that he swore he could feel the invisible mist coating the inside of his nostrils. The morning was halfway over and people hurried past the hotel, careful not to look directly into the bar where dedicated drunks were hunched over on their stools. Edwin paced back and forth directly below Danny’s window, his hair soaked and shiny with rain.

  He looked up and waved at the open window, jumping up and down. Danny scanned the street, wondering if someone else might be witnessing Edwin’s strange dance in the middle of a puddle.

  “Danny!” Edwin shouted. “I’m sorry I left!”

  Danny waved his hands, tried to hush him.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Edwin continued. “I know you and me can never work!”

  Half hiding behind the thin curtain, Danny yelled, “Shut up!” Then, lower, “Everyone will hear you. Come upstairs.”

  “No, I have to go. My grandmother is probably freaking out. I just wanted to tell you that it’s all right! I know you don’t love me. It’ll be okay, Danny.” Edwin gave a thumbs-up, nodding and smiling.

  Danny watched as Edwin ran across the street to his car. The headlights of the Cadillac cut through the gloom as Edwin nosed the car into traffic. He was gone before Danny could shut the window.

  THE PLAGUE

  1982

  There’s something creeping through the night, a faceless monster that breathes, damp and quick, on the back of Danny’s neck. At first he thinks it’s just him, that his visit to his parents’ house has disconnected him from his carefully structured life. But the feeling that something menacing is following him has been increasing for months, long before the family visit, and it will not disappear. He begins to notice a skittish, unsettled look on the faces of the other men at the bar, on the trails in the park at night, at a birthday party for his friend Jack.

  On a Friday afternoon, Edwin, perched on Danny’s couch, turns to him and says, “Marco is sick. It’s that gay disease.” His head droops on his chest.

  In a flash, Danny knows what is chasing him, or at least he knows the shape of it. The havoc it creates with a touch of its invisible finger. Their friends are sick, shivering through pneumonia, a mysterious cancer, cold after cold. The monster, nameless and undiscriminating, captures a body and then another, felling each by a different method.

  “But there are only two cases in Canada,” Danny protests. He feels panic rising up his legs, into his stomach. “I heard it on the radio.”

  “People are getting sick all the time, but no one’s counting, or no one really sees what’s going on,” Edwin mutters. “James stopped coming to the bathhouse months ago, and we don’t know where he’s gone. And Sean. I saw him last week. He was wearing an overcoat and toque in this weather. It won’t take long, Danny, before everyone begins to freak out.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  Edwin grimaces. “Nothing. Live harder. What else?”

  Danny walks down Davie Street with this new awareness and sees that men move with their heads down, not looking up for fear of seeing yet another man newly infected, newly spotted with Kaposi’s sarcoma. In the nightclub, the dancing has become feverish, panicked, as if these nights of shaking their asses and arms to New Order could be annihilated mid-song. The night progresses, and the men move sombrely through the crowd, some drinking quickly, some doing lines in the bathroom until their faces reconfigure into a forgetfulness that doesn’t obliterate the confounding circumstances, but dulls their feelings, which is second best, but perhaps acceptable for now.

  The gay community newspaper has been publishing reports since last winter, and is now punctuating the low-level panic with actual words. Gay cancer. No one knows how it jumps from one body to another. Danny wonders about sex but shakes the thought free. What he does with other men doesn’t belong to the doctors and the journalists, only to the park and cry-muffling bush.

  He returns to the park after an absence of a few days and begins to notice how everything has changed. The needles on the trees have turned rust brown; those that have fallen to the ground are half powder now, crushed by the passing feet of humans, coyotes, even the sharp paws of raccoons. All thirsty, all searching for fresh water. Danny walks by a sign. FOREST FIRE HAZARD HIGH. NO FLAMES IN WOODED AREAS. Ahead, he can see the lit ends of cigarettes bobbing in the evening light. He wonders what sound one-hundred-year-old trees make when they burn. He imagines coarse, scratchy screaming, the whoosh of branches lighting from the bottom up. The nerve endings in his fingers twitch as he aches for a fast blaze, instant combustion. If he doesn’t touch someone soon, he will slowly smoulder.

  The fucking is sad and deliberate. Danny is grateful for the silence, for the tangled clumps of bush that darken and conceal. Sex is a consolation when nothing is certain. Though the men hold each other briefly, it is better than being alone in your apartment, where there is no protection against the shadows that fall across your skin until you are convinced you are dying. Here, in the park, everyone knows everyone else’s thoughts. They don’t need to be spoken.

  The movie with the Siamese Kitten has been lingering with him for over a week. He hears Miss Val’s voice wherever he goes, that purr and growl offering advice to the film’s novice dancer. “Now, sweetie, remember to look those fellows in the eye. If you want tips, you have to make each one feel like he’s the only guy in the room, like the two of you are going to go off and mate like bunnies.” Even now, as he stands on his balcony in a patch of shade, he laughs at her delivery—part world-weary dame, part concerned mama trying to make sure her kids are treated fairly, part bad actress shouting lines when there’s no need.

  He replays the shake of her backside, the way the camera zoomed into her face until her fake eyelashes cast shadows wider and longer than his index finger. He swears he could feel the pounding of her heels, as if she were dancing on his chest. If he closes his eyes right now, he could smell her—that combination of cigarettes and cedar and clean, dried sweat. He can feel her fingers in his hair, her long painted fingernails gently grazing his scalp. If he could have revealed every one of his secrets to her years ago, he might never have run away. Even now, Miss Val might still be the person who understands him, who makes him see he isn’t the only one who dreams of being just as he is but lovelier. And then maybe he wouldn’t want to scratch off the parts of his face that he shares with Doug or Betty or even Cindy. S
he was the mother he could never have. And he loved her for it.

  —

  He stands in a musty basement room below the radio station. The once-white walls have been so assaulted by damp that they are now yellowy grey and strangely shiny. A short man with a crewcut stands with his arms crossed over his chest. He squints at Danny, who forces a smile. The man doesn’t reciprocate.

  “Who sent you here?” he asks, his forehead wrinkling.

  “I was at the library and the woman there told me to ask for you. You are Jerry, right?”

  He huffs. “Yes, that’s right. But why are you here?”

  Danny resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m looking for anything you might have on a dancer who used to perform in Vancouver in the fifties. You know, radio interviews and things like that.”

  “Why should I help you? The general public isn’t even allowed in here,” Jerry says, his voice short and clipped.

  There really is no reason for him to help. Danny is asking a total stranger for a favour. His intentions are quite straightforward: Danny wants to roll around in Miss Val’s voice again, let its roughness scratch his ears while he pictures her red-painted lips and long neck. But this is not something that he can explain to someone else. He stares at Jerry.

  “The librarian told me that you’re the only one who can find what I’m looking for. She said you’re the best archivist in the country.” Danny smiles at the man.

  Jerry shrugs then turns toward a card catalogue against the near wall. “The best, eh? All right then, what’s the name of this dancer you were talking about?”

  —

  Danny sits in a rickety wooden chair at a scarred chrome and laminate desk, his headphones connected to a tall reel-to-reel tape recorder, his hands twisting in his lap as he waits for a sound. Jerry said nothing about what he found, simply pointed Danny to this chair and handed him a pair of puffy headphones. The tape scrapes along for half a minute, silent.