The Better Mother

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  “Danny! Say something!” Frank slams his fist on the table, rattling the forks and knives, spilling the coffee.

  There are many things Danny could say. He could say that Frank falling ill is another indication that his worlds are collapsing into each other. Ever since they met, Danny has carried within him a miniature Frank who understands Danny like no one else. And now the most intimate participant in Danny’s life is a news story, his gayness a headline that invites public commentary. Danny is dizzy with the wrongness of it all. He could say, “I love you,” but he doesn’t know if this is true anymore, or if he would be saying it to comfort them both.

  Danny stares at the menu, runs his eyes down the list. “A club sandwich,” he says. “I haven’t had one of those in years.”

  Frank starts to laugh, but Danny sees the tears welling.

  “I guess there’s no other response, is there? What can anyone say about a disease that has no name, that no one knows how we catch? Club sandwich is as good a reply as any.”

  Danny waves the waitress over and places his order. Frank asks for meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and then he relaxes into the seatback. When the waitress leaves, Danny looks out the window again. The sunshine is directly overhead and so bright that there are no shadows, only pockets of shade in recessed doorways.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

  Frank brings his coffee to his lips and takes a tiny sip. “Sometimes I think I might drown in everyone else’s apologies. Maybe that would be easier.”

  The fear has gripped him, and he knows that escaping it is impossible. When he is sleeping, he writhes in his sheets, turning until he can no longer work his arms and legs free, until he is trapped in a straitjacket of his own making. Something sharp and stinging travels under his skin; he imagines it’s the infection slowly pumping through his body. He can see it, painful and clear, whenever he closes his eyes—tiny pulsing organisms floating in a thick red soup, multiplying as they bounce off the walls of his arteries.

  The fear has many features—inexplicable scabs, bleeding gums, bowels that leak. But the one he returns to is this: if he gets sick, there will be no hiding it from his parents.

  He opens his eyes, sees the reassuring whiteness of his apartment ceiling. Turning over, he reaches into the drawer of his nightstand until his fingers brush the edge of a small box. He sits up and opens the lid. Inside is a pile of photographs. On the very top sits a portrait of Frank, his eyes like half-moons as he laughs into the camera, at something Danny has said. They had been hiking on a fall day, and, even though the photograph is black and white, Danny can see the shades of grey in the leaves behind that mean red and orange and yellow. He lifts this picture out and, underneath, another. Frank at the beach. Frank with the dog. Frank standing beside a sign in a diner window that reads, “Holiday special: franks and beans, $1.75!”

  Their first Christmas together, Frank took Danny back to his parents’ house, a ninety-minute drive away in the Fraser Valley. There, his mother insisted on serving Danny her favourite wine, a sweet, syrupy drink that reminded him of powdered Tang and coated his tongue. Frank’s father pointed at the newly constructed back porch and said, “That’s some fine cedar decking. If you ever need to buy some, I can get you a deal.” Danny couldn’t imagine when or how he would ever need cedar decking, but he nodded anyway and politely sniffed the planks when Frank’s father told him to. “Clears out your sinuses, I’m telling you.”

  At dessert, his mother held up her mug of chamomile tea and said, “A toast to the newest member of our family.”

  “He’s not the prettiest daughter-in-law I’ve ever seen, but he’ll do, Frankie,” boomed his father.

  And everyone laughed, except Danny, who stared at the popcorn ceiling, his feet itching like they were about to burst right out of his shoes.

  During the drive home, Frank reached across the console to pat Danny on the thigh. “I’m sorry my parents were acting like we were about to get married. They’re just excited. I’ve never brought anyone to meet them before.”

  Danny nodded and kept staring through the windshield at the black highway. Just follow the white lines. No need to think about it.

  “Did it bother you?”

  “Did what bother me?”

  “That stuff my parents said about welcoming you to the family.”

  How was Danny going to pretend like this night never happened if Frank didn’t stop talking? “No, it was fine. They were just being parents.”

  Frank looked away and out the passenger window. “Okay. As long as you know that I didn’t put them up to it.”

  But Danny knew that nobody’s parents said things like that unless they had seen a quiver of want in their child’s face. Maybe Frank had told them—years before—that he wanted a house, a partner, a garden where he and his lover could grow beans and squash and cook it all together on a stove they bought after haggling with a salesman at a discount appliance store. Danny had never told his parents what he wanted. And they had never asked.

  Danny kept his love for Frank to himself, underneath an expressionless, silent face.

  Tonight, the photographs are nothing but paper in his hands. Frank is in another bed, perhaps feeling the spots on his body with his trembling, square-tipped fingers. Danny is light-headed and places the box back in the drawer. He lies down again, blinks at the ceiling. If only he never had to sleep.

  Danny sits in his car, the windows rolled down to catch the warm breeze that slithers in from the street. He glances nervously at his side mirror, afraid to see his own red face staring back at him. Through the windshield, he can see the entrance to the bank. A security guard paces inside the glass doors. Finally, the last customer leaves.

  Frank emerges from the bank, a binder in his hand and his jacket wadded up in a ball under his arm. He slowly walks west on Robson, away from Danny. He can see that the seat of Frank’s pants is starting to sag. Danny’s hands grip the wheel, but he stays inside his car.

  After twenty more minutes, Danny watches as Cindy talks to the security guard. She laughs as he unlocks the door and holds it open for her. Danny waits until her camel-coloured pumps hit the sidewalk before he stirs. He stands up, half shielded by the open car door. He has to grip the top of the frame in order to stand up straight enough that he doesn’t appear deflated. The outside air washes over him and he feels dizzy.

  “Cindy!” he croaks, reaching with one hand toward her.

  She looks up and down the street, oblivious, and starts to cross.

  “Cindy!” This time it comes out shaded with desperation.

  She turns her head, sees Danny and rushes forward.

  “Danny! Are you sick?” She grasps him around the waist. “Here—can you make it to that café over there? You need to sit and have a cool drink, that’s all.”

  She helps him to the café and props him up in a chair near the back, away from the sunlight streaming in through the big front window. She goes to the counter and orders two iced teas. Danny leans his head back and wonders whether, if he stares long and hard enough, a picture will begin to form among the stains on the ceiling.

  “Drink this,” Cindy says, sliding an iced tea to him as she sits down. “You look like shit.”

  Danny gulps half the drink in one swallow. The cold liquid travels, sharp like broken glass, down his throat. He smiles at his sister, at her face tanned from hours of lying in the sun at Kits beach, her thick hair in a long ponytail, her glossed lips. So pretty, he thinks. What a waste.

  “What’s going on, Danny? Did you come here to see me?”

  “I—” He pauses. “I need you.” It’s out, but the urgency is gone. All that’s left is his own voice, boyish and soft.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw Frank.” He tells her the story, about the unnamed disease, the fear. He pauses to drink and looks away, for he sees that her eyes are changing: from sympathy to fear to anger to overwhelming pity. The ice in her untouched drink melts
and a pool of water forms under her glass.

  He had thought that talking to Cindy would somehow clear his confusion, would separate his thoughts so that he could consider things one at a time, like he used to. His family. His work. Cruising. After Danny finishes talking, he gulps down the rest of his iced tea and shudders.

  Cindy pushes hers across the table. “Go ahead, I don’t want it.”

  “What am I going to do?” he asks. Please, he thinks, give me an answer. Any answer.

  “Do you need to see a doctor?” she says, scrutinizing his face with narrowed eyes.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have any spots or anything. I feel all right. Well, scared and sleep-deprived, but all right.”

  “Maybe they can give you a blood test or something, or an immunization.” He begins to hear an undercurrent of desperation in her voice, a thin line of brittle panic, yet her face remains smooth.

  “There’s nothing. They know nothing.”

  “You can’t go out and cruise anymore, Danny. You can’t go to the clubs or the baths or anything.” Her voice breaks, and she brings her hand to her throat. “What will Mom and Dad say?”

  Years ago, on a still Saturday morning, Danny was polishing the insides of the shop windows with newspaper while Doug grunted in the back, unpacking a pallet of Chinese comic books. The sky was overcast, and there were no shadows on the street. Danny stared at the tiny fingerprints near the sill and wondered which child Doug had allowed to touch the glass. A pair of feet in grubby sneakers appeared outside the window. When Danny looked up, he saw a freckled face on the other side of the glass, grinning.

  Danny knew this boy, whose father used to work mixing paint at the warehouse by the water. He was one year behind Danny at school, but swaggered through the halls as if he were student body president. At lunch, he sat by himself in the baseball diamond, digging holes into home plate with his penknife and smiling. Danny searched his brain for a name. Eugene? Gerald? No, it was George. George Mason. He frowned at George’s diabolical face. What on earth was he doing here at the shop?

  Seeming to read Danny’s thoughts, George reached behind his back and pulled a can of spray paint from his waistband. They were so close that Danny could see the colour printed on the label—Midnight Black. Danny stepped backward from the window and looked around for his father, but he was in the backroom. George, grin still in place, pulled the cap off. Desperate, Danny waved both arms in front of him and mouthed, No.

  Everything seemed to happen slowly. Danny watched as George deliberately sprayed the words CHINKS GO HOME across the front window with a fine workmanship that was disorienting. George paused to admire his work before adding a smiley face with two slanted eyes. Even through the glass, Danny clearly heard the singular pitch of George’s laugh, like coyotes mating in the park.

  From behind, Danny heard his father’s voice. “What the fuck is going on here?”

  Doug rushed outside to the window and glared at the words, now dripping down the glass and pooling around the row of bricks underneath. George, crossing the street, turned and waved. Doug pounded his fist against the wall and shouted, “Come back here, you little prick!”

  Danny picked up the wad of newspaper he had dropped. When Doug came back inside the shop, Danny timidly said, “Maybe if I try to clean it now, while it’s still wet, I can get most of it off.”

  His father cocked his head toward him. “Do you know that boy?”

  “Yeah, he goes to my school.”

  Every word that came out of Doug’s mouth seemed forced. “Younger or older?”

  Danny shrank, just a little. “A year younger, I think. But he’s pretty tough. Once, I saw him in the alley and—”

  Doug waved his thick hand to silence him. “Why didn’t you go outside and stop him? He’s no bigger than you. Why are you standing here like a sissy?”

  “Dad, he’s tough. I’ve been trying to tell you,” Danny started, but Doug was already across the shop, opening the closet where they kept the cleaning supplies.

  He turned back to look at Danny’s face. “You’re useless. How I ever had a son like you I’ll never understand.”

  Danny now looks at Cindy’s face, the impeccable makeup shading her cheekbones, the precise blue eyeliner. “There’s nothing to explain to them, is there?” he says. They’re answering questions with questions, and Danny wants to laugh at the way this mysterious disease has turned even the words they speak into something shifting and thin.

  Cindy says, “Still, do you want to come home with me tonight? At least you’ll get some of Mom’s cooking, not that it necessarily does anyone any good.” The dry edge to her voice is back, and Danny allows himself a small smile.

  “No, I’m going back to the apartment. I haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “Oh, Danny,” Cindy whispers. Tears are starting to form in her eyes. “I don’t know how to help you.”

  “I guess I have to wait and see.”

  He places his hand over hers, their identical brown hands. He realizes that waiting is the very thing that will allow him to wake up to another day. Without it, the lines of his life are final. For now, waiting is the best part.

  This problem, this invisible disease that manifests in sores and coughing and germs that settle in their bodies and multiply, like unthinned mint in a small garden. Danny stumbles toward the dry cleaner, wishing he could shut his eyes against the sharp sunlight piercing his face. I want rain, he thinks. Where has all the rain gone?

  He considers calling Edwin, but he will be no help. He will bring Danny a six-pack of beer and drink it all himself until he falls into a restless sleep. Besides, Edwin will repeat the whispers on the street, the rumours he catches and then releases.

  An old woman totters past him, pushing a walker. Their eyes meet and she looks afraid. Surprised, he wonders if she is scared of him; if she thinks that he will try to snatch her purse and knock her down. But after she is a half block away, he realizes that the fear in her eyes was a reflection of the fear in his own, that blazing fear that others can instantly recognize and be repelled by.

  He walks by a clinic on Davie Street. In its large window, his body looks so thin that it appears transparent. His eyes focus on something reassuringly solid taped to the window, black type on white paper.

  “New disease affecting gay men and IV drug users now called AIDS. Information inside.”

  It’s that tension of knowing and not knowing. He can hold what he knows in his head and pass it from one side of his brain to another. He can prepare. He can grieve. What he doesn’t know is less tangible than dreams, more like the shreds of dreams, what dreams would be if they were clawed at by raccoons. With not knowing, all he can do is stifle his horror at the possibilities, but also breathe with relief that the worst hasn’t happened yet. Stepping into the clinic will change everything.

  Danny pushes open the door to the waiting room and stands awkwardly in a square of sunshine. The other people (small, they all seem, bodies crunched like discarded pieces of paper) stare at him. The receptionist looks up at him with dark eyes ringed by purple liner. She smiles.

  “How can I help you?”

  He steps up to her desk and leans over so that he is as close to her as possible. “The paper in the window,” he whispers. “It says you have information.”

  She looks confused, and Danny points discreetly to the sign. “Oh,” she says. “Yes, we have some sheets typed up. Would you like one?”

  He nods, and she hands him a photocopy.

  “Thank you,” he says. He grasps her hand and shakes it. She smiles again, her lips frozen into an expression he imagines she settles her face into dozens of times a day.

  He rushes to a bus stop bench and sits down, holding the paper as still as he can.

  It’s simple: AIDS attacks the immune system. No one knows why, and no one knows how. Infected people are vulnerable to opportunistic infections and diseases, like Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia. Doctors think it’s passe
d through bodily fluids, like semen and blood, but they’re not sure. There are only a few cases reported in Canada, but doctors suspect there are many more that have been undiagnosed.

  By the time Danny has finished reading half of the sheet, it becomes clear that all these words are meaningless, for there is nothing anyone can do. No one knows how to prevent it from spreading. Like an advancing tidal wave that you watch coming toward you, knowing it will consume you.

  A bus stops and people stream off, their eyes fixed on the sidewalk or the displays in the shop windows. None of them allow their gaze to fall on his face. Even the passengers on the bus look straight ahead, at the power lines, perhaps, or the crows gathered on the rooftops.

  Life and death are printed right here, in words that will define things to come: the silence of nightclubs, the drying-up of bathhouses, even the emptiness of the park at night. The weight of the words and his thoughts seem to have rendered him immobile. What if his parents have already heard of AIDS? Seen it on the news, discussed it with Cindy? And if Edwin dies of a mysterious illness his grandmother never names, what questions will his parents ask then? He holds the back of his hand to his forehead.

  When he looks up, he sees a blond man hovering outside the clinic, staring at the same sign in the window. The fear is visible in the line of his shoulders, the quick steps he takes as he paces back and forth. Despite himself, Danny reaches out and his body forms itself into a half-hug. I may as well give him my sheet. As he stands and takes a step toward the clinic, the man turns around. Familiar eyes. A moustache he once gazed at in thin, shifting moonlight.

  Danny could laugh hysterically or run away. He grips the white sheet with both hands and watches as the tall, blond man looks at Danny’s face, the paper he holds, and then back at the clinic window. Before thinking twice, Danny hurries forward and grasps the man’s sleeve. “Here,” he says. “Take mine. I don’t need it anymore.” Danny stuffs the paper into the crook of his ex-lover’s arm and walks away. He feels worse with every passing pedestrian, every shiny car that speeds down the street. He turns up Jervis, remembering there are prints to make and film to buy for the next wedding. He stumbles toward his own particular silence in his contained studio.