You Should Pity Us Instead

by Amy Gustine

  “I said go in the kitchen and I’ll be there to help you in a minute.”

  Ignoring him, Middie threw herself on the stairs, limbs splayed like one of the victims in Fawn’s shows. “Ugh! I hate math so, so much!”

  “Mike? Mike?”

  He put the phone back to his ear. “We should go over the films and I’ll show you what I’m looking at.”

  “I can come over now.”

  “No!”

  Startled, Middie sat up and cocked her head. He made a motion with his hand to indicate everything was all right.

  “Mike, this is my mother,” Shayla said. “My mother.”

  “Come by the office first thing.”

  “Maybe the guys at Anderson have some new therapies. We could buy some time.”

  “There’s no point.” Shocked by his own insensitivity, Mike considered apologizing, but it would be impossible to find the right tone with Middie planted on the stairs, listening to every word until he hung up and helped her figure out the value of x.

  “Okay, then,” he said, breaking into a silence he could no longer interpret. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Mike knew the answer but Middie wouldn’t listen.

  “That’s not how Mrs. Reid does it.”

  He wanted to ask, who gives a fuck how you do it, as long as you get the right answer? He didn’t, though. Parenting rule #382: don’t undermine the teacher. Fawn had taught him that.

  Abby came into the kitchen.

  “What are you still doing up?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  Mike eyed her tangled hair. The girls used to bathe every other night, which proved impossible for him to keep track of after Fawn’s stroke, so he’d established a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine. Mike opened his mouth to tell Abby to get in the shower, but like Fawn without her meds, nothing came out. His youngest had blue eyes. Pale-eyed children were more sensitive to light and chemicals. She claimed that just plain water, even lukewarm, burned. Every shower turned into a battle of wills.

  Mike turned back to Middie. “I have to go to the store. We’re out of Pepsi.”

  He got his keys and wallet. “Tell Rebecca to turn that damn music off and listen for Mom in case she gets up.”

  Mike never swore at the kids, but Middie didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’ll listen,” she said, grimacing at her algebra book. It broke Mike’s heart how readily she agreed to help him.

  Shayla found Mike’s house easily. Why this should surprise her, she didn’t know.

  She parked in the street and walked quickly to the front door. Ding dong. A deep chime, like a church organ, seemed to shake the house, and only then did she remember how late it was. Shayla’s whole body itched—especially her neck, which, though bare, felt as if she were wearing a turtleneck made of steel wool.

  Middie opened the door. “Hello?”

  More poised than Shayla expected for thirteen, but freckled and long-limbed like the picture.

  “Is your dad home?” Nervous, she continued in her Midwestern up-talk. “I’m Dr. Clayton, from the hospital? He was looking at my mother’s brain scan and I said I wanted to come take a peek?”

  “He went to the store. You want to come in?”

  This was as far as Middie’s manners had been trained. Once they were in the foyer she didn’t seem to know what to do.

  “How about I just wait for him in there?” Shayla pointed into the adjacent room. Through an open door she could see a bookcase full of radiology journals, an enormous computer monitor, and a view box for hanging film, which he probably never used now that everything had gone digital.

  Middie drifted off and Shayla sat on the edge of Mike’s desk chair, looking at the family pictures scattered on the bookcase. The most recent one, judging from the kids’ ages and taken before Fawn’s stroke, showed the five of them in front of the Eiffel Tower. Freckled Middie seemed to come from somewhere else. Rebecca favored olive-complexioned Mike and… Oh God, she’d forgotten the youngest one’s name. Emma? Emily? She favored Fawn.

  Shayla studied the shape of her lips and teeth, just like her mother’s. Abby. That was it. The youngest’s name was Abby.

  Relieved, she decided to wait five minutes, then make an excuse and get the hell out, but the minutes ticked too slowly. After three, she ventured back into the foyer. The living room was empty. Just leave? That would be too weird. She followed her instincts to the kitchen. No one. Coming back she heard crying and a mumbled voice. Shayla froze. Suddenly it felt as if she’d broken into the house. Switching to tiptoe, she was making her way through the hall toward the front door when Fawn turned out of a room and stopped. She wore a long Chicago Bulls T-shirt and slipper socks. Tears streaming down her face, she looked beseechingly at Shayla. “Do you know where Mike is?”

  “He went to the store.”

  “Oh. Oh.” She seemed to gather herself.

  “I’m one of his colleagues, from the hospital. He said I could stop by and look at a brain scan. Your daughter let me in.”

  “You are a doctor?”

  “Yes. Dr. Clayton.”

  “Did Mike send you to sit with me?” She spoke in staccato, each word with its own fervent stress.

  “Yes,” Shayla said. “He told me to keep you company.”

  “Good.” Fawn seemed to be waiting for her to say something else.

  “Where do you want to sit?”

  “The living room. I like the couch in the living room.”

  With a walker, Fawn made her way across the carpet slowly. Shayla moved the coffee table out of her way.

  “You can sit next to me,” Fawn said. “I don’t bite.” She patted the sofa’s cushion.

  Shayla sat down.

  “What is your name? I forgot your name.”

  “Shayla Clayton.”

  “Oh, oh.” Fawn seemed to remember something. “You are the doctor whose mom is going to die.”

  Startled, Shayla nodded.

  “Mike said she is old.”

  “She’s not that old.”

  “Mike said she is old,” Fawn insisted.

  “She’s sixty-two. I don’t consider that old enough to die.” Shayla had to get out of here. She was arguing with a stroke patient.

  “I’m…” Fawn paused. “Do you know how old I am?”

  Shayla didn’t know exactly, but she was about to take a guess just to keep the conversation going when she felt someone behind her.

  “Hello?”

  She jumped up and held out a hand to Rebecca. “I’m Dr. Clayton. Your dad said I could come over and look at my mother’s brain scan.”

  Rebecca looked at her suspiciously.

  “Middie let me in. I guess your dad went to the store.” A mistake. How did she know Middie’s name?

  “Rebecca, I want a Pepsi,” Fawn said. “Your father was supposed to bring me a Pepsi.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  Rebecca came back with a root beer. “I couldn’t find any Pepsi. Is this okay?”

  Fawn frowned. “I do not want ice. I want it in the can. I like the can.”

  Rebecca was already heading back to the kitchen. Shayla heard the fridge open and close, then Rebecca returned holding the root beer can, the soda apparently poured back in. One bead trickled down the side.

  “I couldn’t find any Pepsi.”

  “You didn’t look hard enough. You never look hard enough.”

  “I looked, Mom.”

  “Did you move things? I bet you didn’t move anything.”

  “I’ll look again.”

  Shayla and her mother used to have spats like this. Norma called her snobby when she was shy. She called her lazy when she was tired. Norma also cooked Shayla’s favorite dinner every Thursday, came to all her volleyball games and helped her pick out her first bra, turning away so Shayla wouldn’t be embarrassed.

  While Rebecca clinked around in the kitchen, Shayla plied Fawn with simple questions. How old were the girls? What school did they go t
o? What were their favorite subjects? Fawn answered slowly and earnestly, as if after careful reflection.

  Rebecca returned without a Pepsi and Shayla tried to calm Fawn down. “Maybe Mike is getting it. Middie said he went to the store.”

  Rebecca leveled a cold look at her. “We know. You said that already.”

  For a disturbingly long moment the sight of Shayla’s car outside his house sent a bolt of pleasure through Mike. For a disturbingly long moment he forgot she shouldn’t be here and didn’t even consider why, most likely, she’d come.

  Inside, Shayla sat on the couch beside Fawn, who slept peacefully with her head lolling against the sofa’s back, a glisten of drool like a tear on her chin. Shayla held up a palm in greeting, the unmistakable look of regret on her face, then rose by inches, watching Fawn to be sure she didn’t wake.

  Mike followed through the foyer, out the door into utter darkness.

  “She wanted Pepsi.”

  “I got some.”

  The wind flattened their coats, too light for the weather, against their bones. At the curb next to Shayla’s car, Mike looked up at the bedroom windows on the second floor. The blinds were all pulled. No faces, no shadows.

  He took her hand. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “I told your girls I came to see her scan.”

  Mike nodded. “Good.”

  Shayla took her hand back. “Fawn told me you love her too much.” She had dissolved into tears when a Pepsi couldn’t be produced, and that had led to the confession that Fawn wanted to die. “She said you won’t let her.”

  Mike cupped Shayla’s elbow. “I’ll bring us Indian next week. You like that place by the mall, with the spicy chicken.”

  “You hate Indian.”

  “I’ll have rice, and that flat bread.”

  “You can’t live on bread, Mike.”

  He grinned. “Sure I can. Prisoners do.”

  Shayla wanted to lean against him one last time, tell him the failure was hers. Someone else could string a life together from moments like this.

  A car turned the corner, catching them in its headlights. Mike dropped Shayla’s elbow and looked over his shoulder. Quickly, she slipped in the car. Tomorrow, or maybe that weekend, she would move in with her mother. Take charge of medication schedules and doctors’ appointments. Do the shopping and cleaning. Smooth the edges of Norma’s last few months. It was a job Shayla could do well, she knew, only because its time was short.

  COYOTE

  She sees him first at the back of the lot, belly-deep in snow by the wild grape. Alec sits at the table, eating the new organic eggs. It’s Valentine’s Day.

  Cory calls her husband Scott. “What do coyotes look like?”

  “Uh, like a dog, I guess. Long snout maybe.”

  “I think I saw one in the backyard. He went into the woods.” A tunnel in the snow testifies to the animal’s route, but the pack is too soft and deep to retain clear tracks.

  “I’ve never heard of coyotes in the middle of a city.”

  “Last March, Manhattan.”

  “Was he living in a homeless shelter?”

  “Ha, ha,” Cory deadpans. When Alec was a baby and refused to breastfeed, Scott just shrugged. “Maybe he’s gay—doesn’t like a nice pair of tits.”

  Cory calls the municipal office. The city manager sounds tired. “Yes, we’ve had a few other unconfirmed reports. Nobody’s sure yet. There’s no real danger. As long as nobody feeds them.”

  But how do you know if anyone is feeding them?

  When she asks Scott this over dinner, he scowls. “What kind of idiot would do that?”

  •

  That night Cory watches a special about kids with brain cancer. It’s terrible, but compared to the other threats against her son’s life, it also has a kind of innocence, almost a reprieve.

  There’s the yellow card from the doctor—measles, mumps, rubella—without a single mention of how they can be so damn sure vaccines don’t cause autism.

  There’s the faceless manufacturers with their recall alerts. Apparently, the strap on her ninety-five-dollar car seat can melt in a high-speed crash.

  The blank-faced sickos in her email alerts. Sexually Oriented Offender, victim: Child Female. File last modified 2006-09-19. Unlawful sexual Contact w/a minor. What is unlawful sexual contact? How minor?

  The little girl Alec goes to preschool with. Once, in Cory’s dream, green-eyed Lily handed him a syringe. After that Cory studied the other toddlers, trying to guess who will convince him to take a hit, pass along AIDS, make a bet about how much he can drink or how fast he can drive on a rain-slick road. Who will bring a gun to school?

  Cancer may strike without warning, but at least it arrives without recrimination. Blame lies with God.

  Cory tried to take precautions. Their upscale neighborhood has its own police and fire departments. Their house and the enormous pines on either side completely conceal the backyard from any passing sickos. The low-lying area at the back of their lot—thick with woody shrubs and large trees for a mile—discourages visitors with twig-sharp snow in the winter, boot-sucking mud in the spring, and poison ivy mosquito flats come summer. To be sure there are no tells, Cory refused to buy a swing set. When Scott mocked her, she snapped, “Why don’t we just put an advertisement in Pedophilia Monthly.” He doesn’t hold the patent on sarcasm.

  Then, less than a month after they moved in, Cory heard a piece on NPR about the West Nile virus. Suddenly that swampy area didn’t seem like such a benign shield. It took some doing, but she convinced Scott to add the screened porch and buy carbon-dioxide traps. She knew enough not to mention West Nile by then. Instead she talked about bug-free outdoor meals, the way a porch balanced the architecture of the house, the possibility of making love on a hammock during hot July nights.

  For a while Cory believed this would be enough. She hadn’t taken into account predators with fur. They were not scouting from the street and the boot-sucking mud and dense underbrush would do nothing to dissuade them.

  In April Cory sees two coyotes just inside where the trees begin at the back of the lot. She’s at the kitchen table typing another letter to the utility people. Since they bought the house she’s been filing complaints about the sagging utility lines entangled in wild grape that run along their property’s west side. Alec’s three now. How long before he can reach them and electrocute himself?

  Scott rolled his eyes. “He can’t get electrocuted. That’s phone and cable.”

  It’s a flash of something tall and long-legged that draws her attention away from the letter. Then, behind the adults, two smaller creatures—rust-red fur, long snouts, and low-slung tails between. The adults are in pursuit of something. Cory tries to see what, but the woods are too thick and all she can catch is the black puff of their tails moving quickly away.

  She does some research. Coyotes aren’t native to Ohio, but have spread across the state and favor woodlots in urban areas. According to one map, Cory and Scott live in a “light-density” area, but there is a “heavy-density” area immediately to their south. One source claims that coyote sightings during the day indicate they’ve lost a fear of humans. She finds a documented killing of a three-year-old in California.

  To deter coyotes, experts recommend cleaning up around your grill and making sure there’s no pet food left outside. Coyotes feed on anything they can—even fruits and grasses if small mammals aren’t available. In the winter they eat deer excrement. Cory has seen the black pellet-like droppings under the pines, near the deer-ravaged hostas.

  She gives away their grill and calls the administrator of their village. Yes, he admits, the stray cat problem seems to have gone away. “I don’t know what we can do, though. Coyotes are hard to trap, and we can’t have people running around shooting at them.”

  Soon the local paper runs an article. Cory’s name in it annoys Scott.

  “You’re going to incite panic. A dingo ate my baby.” He mimics an Australian accent.<
br />
  “Sure, it’s all a big joke to you, the guy who nearly killed my son.”

  Scott has no smart-aleck reply to that. A year ago Cory went for a bike ride. On the way home, along a busy street, she came over the bridge and there he was, her two-year-old. For several seconds it hadn’t registered. She attributes the delay to a horrified disbelief. Her brain calculated Scott must be beside him—he simply had to be.

  But he wasn’t. Alec stood at the corner, hundreds of feet away from her, looking at the traffic whizzing by. Cory sped up and literally threw the bike out from under herself, lunging in front of her son just as he stepped off the curb. She’d have surely been crushed except that the car coming up was stopping anyway. What she didn’t know was that Alec had pushed the button to turn the light red. He must have seen her and Scott do it.

  Turned out Scott was home watching baseball, sure Alec was in the kitchen eating a snack. She hasn’t left him alone with the baby since.

  At the Memorial Day block party Cory finds out a neighbor’s Pekinese was killed. “I heard a yelp, so I went looking and she was behind the garage. I saw the thing running off, going down your way.”

  Cory has a fence put up. She didn’t get a permit because it’s ten feet, four over the limit, and she was afraid they’d turn her down. Scott isn’t happy. “Seven thousand dollars! Do you know how much the average coyote weighs? For Christ’s sake, Cory, he’s not a mountain lion.”

  “Thirty-five pounds. And they can jump a six-foot fence.”

  Someone in the neighborhood complains about the fence. This woman doesn’t have any children and her dog, who lives outside, is at least seventy-five pounds. Cory leaves her a phone message. “I’m trying to protect my child’s life. What’s your excuse for that outsize mutt who never shuts up?”

  The village council make her take the fence down to six feet, so she finds a rolling bar sold out of New Mexico that mounts to the top and keeps animals from scaling it. Another two thousand. She puts it on the backup credit card, which Scott doesn’t check. When he notices the bar, she lies. “That came with the fence. They just got around to putting it on.”