My Cousin's Keeper

by Simon French

  “Bon didn’t come and have a kick with us,” Dad remarked afterward. “What does he do at school when it’s recess?”

  “He hangs around with the girls,” I said.

  Dad was more than surprised. “Really?”

  “His best friend is a girl,” I added.

  Dad nodded his head. “Well, everybody’s different, I guess,” he said, dropping his gym bag in the hallway and heading for a shower. “Poor kid. He looked completely lost with that soccer ball tonight.”

  I heard the noise of my aunt’s car leaving and our front door clicking shut.

  “How was practice?” Mom asked.

  “Good,” Dad replied. “Kieran nearly got the ball into the net past Jacko Anderson. How was your dinner?”

  Mom thought a moment. “Interesting. We worked through some issues. Made some important decisions.” She glanced at Gina and me. “I’ll tell you more later.” Which I knew meant after my bedtime.

  We saw Bon again early the next morning.

  “Now, that’s interesting,” Dad said, stopping on the sidewalk across from the Tealeaf Café. Usually, he kept his eyes on the sidewalk or on the road ahead. He would jog the length of the Sheridan Street shops without stopping, and he would keep a sharp focus on every breath and step. He would only glance up when someone else walked nearby or he came to a curb and had to look for traffic. Dad might pause to say Hi, guys to Lenny or Danno as they emptied the bins, but would usually not stop until we came to Apex Park, where he would do his leg stretches, sit-ups, or simply lie on the grass for a few minutes. This was when we would talk — about the weather, the familiar people or cars we’d noticed while jogging, our guesswork about the warm scents that drifted from the bakery. Or we might talk about the approaching weekend game, about players and tactics.

  But today was different. Dad had happened to glance across at the café as we passed by, and then he stopped in his tracks. Of course, I knew what he had seen. Who he had seen.

  “It’s Bon,” he said between breaths. “What’s he doing there? Kelsie’s giving him breakfast, by the looks of things. So where’s his mother?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well,” Dad said, “I might go and say hello. Coming?”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  Dad crossed the road and tapped on the door that had its CLOSED sign showing. I could see Bon’s alarmed face, a slice of toast at his mouth. I saw Kelsie wave and grin, open the door, and say hi.

  I decided then to follow Dad across the quiet main street, and I stood directly outside the café window.

  “Your customer,” I heard Dad say. “My nephew. ’Morning, Bon.” I saw him ruffle Bon’s hair the way he might have done with me, and then have a short conversation I couldn’t quite hear. Maybe Bon relaxed a little; he said something to Dad and nodded before taking a long drink from the tall mug that Kelsie had brought to his table. Uncomfortably, he looked at me through the café window.

  When Dad returned, he said to me, “Breakfast. Kelsie has been giving Bon free breakfasts for a few weeks now. She saw him wandering around early and invited him in. It’s a regular thing. Can you believe that? Bon says his mother doesn’t have any breakfast to give him; she’s asleep when he’s ready to go to school.” Then Dad asked, “Did you know about this?”

  A pause, and then I nodded. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I saw him. Other mornings when we were out.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  Dad took a deep breath. “Kieran, I think you probably should have. How often have you seen Bon over there?”

  “Six, maybe seven times.”

  Dad exhaled loudly. “Kelsie is not charging him. She’s feeding him because she’s kind and she cares.” He paused. “I thanked her and said she wouldn’t have to keep doing it. That Bon and his breakfasts would be looked after from now on.”

  “Looked after?”

  “Renee needs our help,” Dad said as he gazed along the length of the main street. “We’ll talk about it more at your nan’s tonight.”

  Before I could ask another question, Dad set off jogging. “Come on!” he called.

  Somehow I knew I was going to be told something I wasn’t going to like, and that it was going to be all about Bon.

  He was nowhere to be seen on the playground as the school day dragged on, and I started thinking that maybe Bon and my aunt were gone, had moved away somewhere else.

  My aunt’s car was not parked outside Nan’s house later that day when we arrived. But Bon was curled up on the couch, hypnotized by the television show he was watching. He said hello in a dreamy, absent voice, and I caught sight of his backpack in the spare room, his sneakers and a jacket scattered on the floor. Gina bounced herself down on the couch, alongside Bon.

  “Where’s Aunt Renee?” I asked, sitting down at the table with Nan and my parents.

  “She’s already left,” Nan said. “She decided to return . . . home.”

  “Why isn’t Bon with her?”

  “Because,” Nan said, “Bon is staying with me. I had him and Renee here most of the day, which is why he wasn’t at school.” She paused. “It was good for us three to be together for a while. Kieran, I’m going to be Bon’s guardian from now on.”

  “He’s staying with you?”

  She wants to leave him here with us. Mom had said that the day my aunt had visited, the day Bon had remembered the way to our house. The picture became a little clearer. Bon’s mom did not want him, or else could not look after him.

  “He’s going to stay with you? Why?”

  No one answered at first, and the moment of silence quickly became uncomfortable.

  “What’s the matter with Aunt Renee?” I asked.

  “Kieran,” Mom began, “Renee is often not an easy person to know or to be with. She doesn’t always look after herself, and she never stays in one place very long. She doesn’t always make good decisions, and none of that is very good for Bon. Renee knows that, too, and what we’ve all agreed to do is very important. For her, and especially for Bon.”

  “Kieran,” Nan said, “this is not about playing favorites. It’s about giving Bon a safe, happy place to be, for as long as he wants. Somewhere to call home.”

  Home. Reluctantly, I let the word bounce around in my head. “So he’s going to live at your house.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s going to take over the guest room, so Gina and I can’t have sleepovers there anymore.”

  “You can still have sleepovers.” Nan smiled. “Now I have an excuse to clean out the junk room. So there’ll be space enough for three grandchildren.”

  “And,” I said, “instead of his mom, it’s going to be you looking after him.”

  “It’s what grandparents need to do sometimes, become parents to grandchildren. I know other people my age doing exactly the same.”

  “You do?” I asked, surprised.

  Nan nodded, but I tried to avoid her steady gaze by focusing on other things — the crimson streaks in her hair, the dangly dragonfly earrings she had chosen to wear that day.

  “And it’s going to be a team effort,” Dad said. “To give your nan a break, we’re having Bon stay with us as well. Every second weekend and a couple of weekdays every other week.”

  It was the last thing I had expected Dad to say, and the surprise must have shown on my face, because Dad added, “We’re all going to help out. Aren’t we, Kieran?”

  I couldn’t get an answer out. Bon was not only taking over Nan’s house, but ours as well. For a moment, I felt like shouting at someone.

  Dad thought I was daydreaming. “Kieran?”

  “Yeah,” I answered doubtfully. “I guess.”

  Now I’m stuck with him. Now I’m supposed to find a way to like him.

  “It’s going to be a big change for us all,” Mom said, reaching an arm around my shoulders. “Lots of things for us to think about and start gett
ing used to. But it’s an even bigger change for Bon.”

  “We need to tell Gina,” Nan said.

  “The short, easy version, suitable for six-year-olds,” Dad remarked.

  Which was how it came out. Bon is coming to live at Nan’s house.

  Bon drifted into the room and was silent. He gazed at the table, the floor, at our night reflections in the kitchen window glass.

  “So what are you thinking about all this, Bon?” Mom asked gently.

  He was silent a moment longer. “I think it will be good.” He used his precise voice, sounding neither happy nor sad. He stood beside where Nan was sitting and leaned against her shoulder.

  “What about you, Gina?” Dad asked. “What do you think about Bon living with Nan and staying with us a couple of days each week?”

  Gina was happy. When the short, easy version had been told to her, she had jumped up and down a couple of times, exclaiming, “Yay!” She grinned and added, “It’s good, because Bon is my favorite cousin.”

  Bon looked at her. “Thank you,” he said, smiling.

  Then he looked at me. He held the smile a moment longer before it faded. I could tell he was hoping for me to say something as well, but I couldn’t.

  It was the longest we had ever faced each other, and the first time I had noticed how long his eyelashes were, and how a little scar above one of his eyes showed as a pale straight line.

  I was sitting a long way from everyone, and it was a strange, new experience.

  Our SUV had a third, fold-down seat that we only ever used whenever our friends were along for the ride — but now, I had it to myself. My parents were a long way off in the very front, and in the seat behind them were three kids. There was Gina and Emily, because this year it was my sister’s turn to choose a friend to come along with us for our one-week vacation at the beach. Last year, I had invited Lucas, only to have Mason find out afterward and say grouchily, “Well, you didn’t ask me. That’s pretty lame.”

  “I’ll invite you next time,” I had reassured him, feeling a bit panicked and awkward. “The year after next.”

  “What?”

  “My sister and I. We take turns; it’s like a family rule. Sorry, Mason.”

  It had been good having Lucas along with us. He behaved differently from the way he did at school — or as I realized, differently from the way he behaved in front of Mason and the other kids. We swam and fished together; he said thank you to my parents every time they bought us lunch or dinner, or took us to the movies at the little beachside theater. But with the vacation over and school on again, Lucas went back to his old self.

  “Yeah, I had a good time” was all that I heard him say to Mason. Asking him along hadn’t turned him into my new best friend. I had started to think hard and worry more about whether even to ask Mason when my turn came around again. Maybe he would be too busy being friends with Lucas — and busy being most popular boy in class — to even remember.

  I wriggled down a little farther into my seat and gazed through the window. It was open a bit and the breeze cut sharply across my forehead. I had earphones on and my own music playing. Mom and Dad were talking. I could see Dad relaxed and cheerful, the way he always was at the beginning of a vacation at the beach. On the drive home in a week’s time, he would be quieter and maybe even a little disappointed that the trip was over and he would be back working at Rural Engineering soon. But now, I could see a little of his face in the rearview mirror, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses and his teeth occasionally showing, smiling about something Mom was saying. Sometimes his face looked back at mine, or at the loaded trailer we towed behind us.

  In a long meandering line, the back road across to the ocean passed dry yellow fields and slopes, deserted farmhouses, and grazing sheep. Gradually, the hills bunched up and became greener, and the open country became shaded with trees and bushes. There was a place where we would reach the top of the mountain range and begin the steep downhill run, where the coast would start to appear in promising glimpses and the air would start to smell a little of salt water.

  In the row in front of me, Gina’s and Emily’s heads were tilted at the same angle. They had talked and giggled nonstop for the first hour of the journey, and then fallen soundly asleep. The third kid in the middle row was still awake.

  It was Bon, and I had done my best to pretend he wasn’t there at all, or at least to ignore him. From the angle of his head, I could tell he was reading, or maybe drawing his stupid pictures or maps. He wore a set of earphones, bought by Nan, and was listening to music he had downloaded from her computer.

  “I should have rented a bus,” Dad had remarked back at home.

  “We couldn’t just leave him,” Mom had said. “The choice was with us, or have him be the only boy in a busload of grandmas and aunties. What eleven-year-old boy would find that fun?”

  Bon, probably, I thought bitterly, wishing that Nan’s trip to the city with her golfing friends wasn’t happening at the same time as our only vacation away for the year. I would have loved the thought of Bon being dragged along on shopping trips, river cruises, or horse-racing days with Nan. There could have been no better revenge.

  “He’s probably never seen the beach,” Dad had replied.

  “He’s probably never been away on a vacation,” Mom had pointed out gently.

  I didn’t feel sorry for Bon. In the car now, I glared at the back of his head, at his braid pulled sideways and spilling down against his own window. I knew I didn’t want to be seen anywhere at the beach alongside him, that there would be plenty of other kids at the motel to make friends and hang out with. I squirmed at the thought of Bon with his stupid braid, with the babyish wool hat I’d seen packed in his overnight bag, along with the new clothes that Mom and Nan had been buying him. Instead of having my own room at the motel, I’d be sharing with the last person I would have chosen to invite.

  When we arrived, there were no other kids my age at the motel. It seemed to be nothing but little girls the same age as Gina and Emily, or else teenagers with sunglasses and loud voices. I sat miserably through an hour of boring afternoon television while Bon and the girls swam in the motel pool with Mom. I would have scowled my way through our first night there and through dinner at the local restaurant, except for one thing the waitress said. She was about to take our meal orders and looked first at the side of the table where Gina, Emily, and Bon all sat beside one another. “Are you three girls ready to order?” she asked.

  I laughed out loud. Mom nudged me with her elbow and whispered my name in an annoyed voice. Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Dad looking down at the table and grinning to himself.

  “Two girls,” Gina explained to the waitress. “Me and my friend Emily are girls. And this is Bon. He’s a boy and he’s my cousin. He’s been growing his hair for four years!”

  “My mistake. I’m so sorry,” the waitress said to Bon, and I could tell she was really embarrassed.

  Bon simply shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I’d like salt-and-pepper squid, please. With fries and salad.”

  Afterward, with our food in front of us, I asked, “Hey, are you three girls enjoying your meals?” Mom elbowed me again, frowning and shaking her head.

  But Bon was going to give me at least one other thing to laugh about.

  Dad and I liked to go fishing along the deepwater jetty at the end of the bay. It was one of the places we visited each year we came to the coast. Mom wasn’t the fishing type. “It’s like watching paint dry,” she remarked, although she was happy to barbecue and eat whatever we caught when we had evening picnics at the beachside park, along with other vacationing families. So Dad and I took our rods, bucket, and gear to the jetty while Mom took the girls to the beach and the rock pools at the opposite end of the bay. Except this time, it wasn’t just Dad and me — Bon came along, too. I didn’t know why, because everything about fishing seemed to worry or scare him.

  “Doesn’t it hurt the fish?” he asked.

&n
bsp; “A little, I guess,” Dad replied as he and I baited up our hooks and checked our rods.

  “But when you catch a fish, what happens then?” Bon asked.

  “If it’s too small, or it’s a protected species, we let it go,” Dad told him. “If it’s big enough, and it’s what we’re after, it goes into the catch bucket.”

  “Do you eat it?”

  “Sure do,” Dad told him.

  “But there’s . . . cutting up,” Bon said, and he sounded really worried. “Who does that?”

  “I do,” Dad said. “I can show you how if you —”

  “No!” Bon almost shouted, and moved a little away from us. He watched in silence as we sent our lines swishing into the water below the jetty, and then he sat down, pulling his cloth cap over his face so that I couldn’t quite see his eyes.

  “Scaredy-cat,” I mumbled, hoping Dad might agree.

  “He’s OK,” Dad said. “This is all kind of new to him.”

  After a while, Bon hovered closer and Dad offered him a turn fishing with his rod. “But you hold it good and tight,” Dad said firmly, though he smiled as well. “Because if you drop my rod, you’re going in after it. I assume you know how to swim, Bon.”

  “I’m a good swimmer,” Bon replied. I wondered how much of a fib he was telling. “And if I catch anything, I’m throwing it back. I don’t want my fish killed.”

  Dad and I laughed. “It’ll be your fish and your decision,” Dad told him.

  In the end, Bon didn’t catch anything, but he sat for quite a long time with Dad’s rod, gazing out at the water and humming to himself. I thought I saw the rod twitch one time, but Bon didn’t flick the rod back or wind the line in. Eventually, he decided he’d had enough of a turn. The bait was well and truly gone when the hook came spinning shinily from the deep water below.

  Between us, Dad and I caught five fish. Bon turned away each time we caught something, and he refused to look into the catch bucket, or go anywhere near us as Dad and I scaled and filleted our catch at the preparation benches near the jetty bait shop. And when we had dinner at the beachside barbecue area, I saw Bon avoiding the fish and eating only the salads Mom had prepared.