The Best Thing for You

by Annabel Lyon

  The rest of the day does not go so well. Ty is sullen and shy, the toxic brew of adolescence. He wants me to buy him clothes, but he doesn’t want to come out of the change room to let me see them. Hell, he doesn’t even want me in the store, and this is distressing to me, new. I wonder if the interview with Officer Stevens this morning and then jazzing with the bigger boys hasn’t gone to his head, made him over into this grunting, slouching creature who thinks he wants this T-shirt with skulls down the sleeves. I say, “You are kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  I hold the T-shirt up to my own chest, check the arms. It would fit me, actually. “Actually,” I say.

  “I changed my mind.” He walks right out of the store, so I buy the T-shirt. “Who’s that for?” he says when I catch him up.

  I decide to fuck with him. “Me.”

  He shrugs again. It’s getting annoying, a tic. Maybe he suddenly wants to try being a teen instead of a person, but I don’t have to play.

  “Untuck your shirt,” I tell him. “You look nine.”

  “I think they’re playing Bing Crosby now, at your favourite store.”

  Steaming, we do Wal-Mart. The drive home is icy silence. “Thanks, Mom,” I say, getting out of the car. I make him wait before I pop the trunk. Maliciously, while he’s grabbing his crinkly bags of stuff, I lean over to kiss his head.

  He goes in, leaving the bag with the skull T-shirt in the trunk beside my purse; so I take it into the kitchen, saw through the plastic-threaded tags with a steak knife, and pull it on to cook – wok food. Dicing vegetables, I walk myself slowly through the forensics of the beating – the bruising, the fractures, the probable number of blows. I’ve been doing this all day, to anaesthetize myself to it. I wear the T-shirt through supper and Liam, looking from Ty’s face to mine, doesn’t ask. Nobody says anything, so I leave it on to vacuum. I get to like it, sweeping paths and swaths of paler carpet, variegating the pile, pushing and pulling with my new black arms.

  “Nice shirt,” Liam says bleakly, startling me when I cut the motor. He’s been standing behind me, watching. “I take it you guys had a good day.” I roll my eyes. I reach for a hug but he dodges me, won’t meet my eye. “Come see what I bought while you were out.”

  I loop electrical cord around my shoulder and follow him with the vacuum cleaner. “Yeah, yeah,” he says when I pause to plug it into the outlet outside his office door. Ignoring him, I recline the handle and trundle it ahead of me into the room.

  “Ta-da,” he says.

  “Looks like a coffee maker.”

  “It is. It is a coffee maker.” He’s got it on his desk like some museum thing newly unboxed, still half-clad in packing.

  “We have a coffee maker.”

  “Yeah, in the kitchen. You’re going to take that thing off soon, right?”

  “This?” I do a little dance from the hips, snake my arms up and down like an Indian goddess. “No, I like it. Think I’ll keep it. Think I’ll wear it to work. Think I’ll revert to my true, former self, okay with you?”

  “You’re a bad influence on your son.”

  “Damn straight,” I say. In the weird pause that follows I realize he was serious. I say, “I’m what?”

  He says, “You need to grow up.”

  Nodding, I press the big plastic button on the vacuum with my foot. Now I can see his lips move but all I hear is noise.

  Now, here comes school: radio in the morning, to me, is school. Red apples, red leaves, blunt scissors. Ty and I are shy with each other, this morning, poison past – we slept it off. “Sleepy,” he says over his waffles. He looks it, too, but Liam looks worse. He came to bed last night long after he must have thought I would be asleep.

  “Are you growing a beard?” I ask.

  “He’s growing a fur,” Ty says.

  What he looks is tragic, there at the sink, sunlight doing an outrage when he cracks the blinds – he winces, has to look away. Khakis, black sweater, his work clothes. “Unh,” he says, and doses himself with more espresso.

  “Dad’s epitaph.” I make bunny ears with my fingers. “ ’Coffee.” ’

  Liam claps his mug on the counter and we jump. “Don’t talk to Jason at school.”

  Ty freezes.

  “Okay?”

  He hesitates. “Yeah.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Liam says.

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I don’t –” I start to say, but Liam’s already out of the room. After a minute we hear the rumble of the garage door, the chunk of the car door, ignition.

  “Bye, Daddy,” Ty says.

  “Doctor.”

  And of course I drop everything – clipboard, swab jar, paper cup of water – because I’m doing what I shouldn’t: staring at the gardener through the one-way glass, some college kid the clinic has rented, watching him shave the evergreen bushes with sweeps and licks of a power trimmer. Kneeling for the mess, I pet the water stain on my knee as though it might brush off. “I was going to drink that,” I say wistfully, blotting at the damp cloth with my sleeve. I lookup. It’s Calvin, one of the day nurses. “Hi.”

  He goes, “Hey,” eyes on the gardener.

  “We’re having the yard done,” I explain quickly. “I was looking at him with those evergreens and I had this revelation: holly. For in the winter, when everything else is dead.”

  “Okay,” Calvin says cautiously, like there might be more.

  “What’s up?”

  “Mrs. Lowe is in seven. She won’t let me take her blood pressure. She wants you.”

  “Calvin.”

  “She hates me.”

  This is hard to imagine. Calvin wears jeans and, under his smock, a T-shirt with a picture of the Grinch on it. He’s twenty-four, maybe, tall, with nice arms, and the pierced eyebrow, and the sleepy, slightly worried face. Handsome isn’t it, but endearing, yes. Probably he has a great stereo and a girlfriend he can’t get enough of and not much else. I know the type. Appealing, to me, in an itchy old way.

  I take the cuff and knock on seven. I go in and right away, there’s your problem. Mrs. Octogenarian Lowe is wearing a turtleneck dress. “That’s right,” she says when she sees me. We get her out of the dress. I wrap the arm, pump the bulb. “Now, do you know the origins of Velcro?” she asks brightly.

  “Yes,” I say, and then we talk for a while about her arthritis. When it’s time for her to go I tell her, “Remember, next time, short sleeves.”

  “In November? I’ll die.”

  “You won’t die.”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” she says, shaking her finger at me like I’m a naughty girl.

  Calvin is waiting in the hall with another paper cup of water. “Do you have a real job?” I say, and he smiles. No one smiles as little as Calvin.

  “He has a crush on you,” May says later. She and Calvin are the pediatric nurses; they give shots.

  “Funny,” I say. We’re having lunch together in the staff room. She sips Chinese tea from a four-ounce can. I’m fiddling with the pull tab, dabbing at bagel crumbs with a fingertip. “That stuff any good?”

  “I’ll bring you one tomorrow. I’m serious.”

  “She’s serious.” I throw the tab at her. “You’re hazing the new girl.”

  “You should be flattered. He barely says hello to me any more.”

  “Aw.”

  May shrugs and offers me a moon cake. But one bite and I’m retching so badly I can’t see. I’m actually passing out. “Doctor,” May barks, not at me, and someone grabs my elbow. They haul me over to the sink, where I heave and heave until I’m sure there’s going to be blood. I hear May say something about sesame seeds.

  “Too sudden.” A male voice, Doctor Gagnon. “That’s no food allergy.”

  “I’m fine.” Sweating, cold, but breathing. I feel much, much better.

  “What was that?” they ask. Doctor Gagnon, grandfather, ex-army captain, has his hands on his hips. He was on my hiring committee; he sounds like he’s wondering if it made a mistake.


  “I’ve been feeling a little off all morning,” I lie. I don’t tell them about the image I had, of the man in the parking lot not knowing which way to turn.

  The afternoon pours slow and even after that, gold in the trees, colds and sprains, big-eyed babies taking me in. I’m floating, I’m healing the sick, I’m drifting through Reception when Calvin, phone clamped between ear and shoulder, gives me a message to call Liam on his cell. It’s from an hour ago.

  “Calvin.”

  Expressionless: “I didn’t take it.”

  I decide I’m going to have to ask about him.

  May tells my next patient I’m running five minutes behind and follows me to my office. “Problem?”

  “Is Calvin slow?”

  She sees the message slip in my hand and colours. “The receptionist gave it to me. I had a patient so I asked Cal to give it to you.”

  “When was this?”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  I squint.

  “It was in my pocket for a while,” she says softly. “I apologize. The mistake, it was my mistake.”

  I see she’s ashamed. “Look, no,” I say hurriedly. “It’s no problem. I just – I’m sure it’s nothing. I didn’t mean to – I’m not accusing you, I just thought that since Cal, Calvin, gave it to me – May, it’s all right.”

  She nods and leaves. “Ah, shit,” I say. No tea for me tomorrow, I’ll bet.

  Liam’s number yields Liam’s recording. I leave something terse and go back to work, last patient of the day. May hands me his folder in the hall. “Mr. Resnick is feeling breathless,” she says, poker-faced. I cross my eyes at her and go in.

  Mr. Resnick is obviously a walk-in: the brand new folder, the attitude. “I’m not paying for this,” is the first thing he says. I get this a lot.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” I hear myself say.

  “Are you going to search me?”

  I look at him again: long white hair, dirty suit, scaly shoes. Sixty, sixty-five. Blue eyes. “No.”

  “Usually I see a man.”

  “Do you have a regular doctor?” I ask.

  “Usually I see a man.”

  “At this clinic?”

  “This clinic, the other clinic. I can’t afford to pay.”

  “That’s all right,” I say. “How old are you, Mr. Resnick?”

  “Today’s my birthday.”

  “Well!” I say. I ask him if he knows the year he was born.

  “Nineteen-thirty,” he says. “I’m a Jew.” I ask him about feeling breathless. He says, “I feel like a paper bag.”

  “Do you smoke?”

  “Cigarettes.” He shrugs. “I like cigarettes.”

  “Are you on any medications right now?” He doesn’t answer. “Do you have pain?” I ask. “Or just discomfort?”

  “Did my landlady phone you?”

  “No, sir,” I say. “Can you show me if it hurts anywhere?”

  “I’m not sure.” He stands up. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  I say, “Well, but you’re here now.” I reach around for my stethoscope.

  “No.” He backs away from me. I put the stethoscope down. “I never even got married,” he says.

  I look at his hands and take a deep breath. “I’m glad you came here today,” I say slowly, trying to make eye contact the way you’re supposed to. “It’s good to come see a doctor when something feels wrong. You did the right thing.”

  “You’re not a doctor,” he says.

  “There’s my certificate.” I point to the wall.

  “Did my landlady phone you?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Resnick,” I say firmly. He opens the examining room door. “Mr. Resnick.”

  “Goodbye,” he says loudly.

  I follow him a little ways down the empty hall. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he says. He turns left and I hear him tell the receptionist, “I don’t have to pay this time.”

  “You come back and see us again, Mr. Resnick,” the receptionist says.

  The examining room, when I return to it, is tainted with a rancid piss-and-gravy smell I’m afraid will get into my clothes and hair.

  Outside, textbook Indian summer: taut blue sky, leaves crisping, but blood-warm, bathwater-warm. Something about the staff parking lot pleases me intensely: altitude, maybe. You can’t quite see the inlet but you can see the open sky above it and the mountains, eye-level, on the opposite shore. My Jetta is parked between Dr. Gagnon’s Lincoln Continental and a little cartoon Mazda, red as lips, all rounded and low. I throw my jacket and bag into the back seat and punch the radio – news. I punch some more. One of Ty’s stations – lustful, lustily amped teenagers – will do me for the ride home. I think about calling Liam again but decide I can get there as quick as calling. I wonder where Mr. Resnick lives, because he surely doesn’t come from this neighbourhood unless someone’s letting him fester in a basement.

  When I pull up to the house, I see Liam standing in the drive with his jacket on. Before I can cut the engine he’s getting in the passenger side, strapping in. “Finally,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Drive, please,” he says. So I back us back into the street. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Me?” I say. “Where do I want to go? I don’t want to go. What’s going on?”

  “Can I turn this off?” He means my radio. He reaches for the dash but hesitates. We listen to the rest of the song, some serious bewailing and bemoaning and guitar-wrangling, before he kills it. “Like that,” he says grudgingly.

  “We’re old,” I remind him.

  “Know where I was today?”

  It’s a sunny day. I’ll play straight man. “Class?”

  “First I was in class. Yes. This morning I was in class. This afternoon I was in a police station with your son while they interviewed him.”

  “My son.”

  “Me, the police, our lawyer, and your son in a room with wire on the windows. I wanted to kill him.”

  On the avenue, I parallel park in front of the phô place. “Where is he?”

  “In his room.”

  “You sent him to his room?”

  “Too right,” Liam says.

  “He didn’t do anything.” No reaction. “Hey.”

  “He’s scaring the hell out of me,” Liam says softly.

  I’m trying to box the information as he gives it to me, break it down into manageable pieces. “Ty’s okay?”

  “They went to his school to get him. Ah, hell, Ty’s fine, only his classmates are going to know pretty soon if they don’t already, and then their parents will know, and so on, and so on. You know how it goes.”

  “There’s nothing to know.”

  “Yeah, but. That shit gets twisted.”

  “This lawyer, this was the lawyer Isobel recommended?”

  “Are we getting phô?” Liam says.

  We go in. I hold up two fingers. “Two beef,” I tell the girl at the counter.

  “To go?”

  I look at Liam. “You want soup in the car?”

  “To go,” Liam says.

  The girl, in a crisp white man’s shirt, writes it on a pad. “Ten minute,” she says. We sit on chairs of straight-backed cherrywood laminate to wait, our backs to the window, arms touching.

  “When did you tell him he could come out of his room?”

  “When we get back.”

  “Liam.”

  “He has the computer. He’ll be fine.”

  The girl withdraws into the depths of the empty restaurant, leaving us alone. Steamy heat reaches us from the kitchens, fogging the windows and seeming to nourish a palm in the corner beside Liam’s chair, so big its trunk grows sideways where it hits the ceiling. I’m sleepy in here, I’m starving. Minutes melt. My husband, legs crossed, wrists crossed over his lap, has his eyes closed. He opens them when he feels me staring at him.

  “Why didn’t anybody call me?” I ask.

  “I left you a message.”

  I exp
lain about that. “I meant the police. Presumably it’s our right to be there. Why did they call you and not me?”

  “Apparently they did what Ty asked them to.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  On the counter is a bowl of mints. Liam gets up, takes one, sits back down, and pulls on the plastic-wrapper ears with both hands. The candy falls into his lap. With his right hand he puts the candy in his mouth. His left, holding the wrapper, trails beside the chair. He lets the wrapper fall to the floor.

  “Why didn’t he want me?” I ask.

  “Hello, your order,” the girl says, coming back with two big Styrofoam tubs. “Ten ninety-five.” She pulls two plastic-wrapped packages from under the counter, which from past experience we know to contain paper napkins, plastic spoons, and balsa chopsticks. “You want a bag?”

  Counting coins, I dismiss the bag.

  “So, is hot.” She blows on her fingers and gives Liam a smile.

  In the car we bite open the packages, snap separate the chopsticks. Rush hour and the street is lined with parked and moving cars. A sport-utility vehicle hovers, seeing us sitting, but we wave him on: we aren’t leaving yet. He fingers us. Our tubs of soup are lidded with more plastic, like coffee cup lids but bigger. We toss them on the dash. Liam dives straight in with his chopsticks and extracts a tongue-shaped piece of pink meat, while I spoon. I say, “This lawyer.”

  “I phoned him on my way to the station. He told me we should sit tight until he got there, I should tell the police we had a lawyer on the way.”

  “Did they seem surprised at that?”

  “I don’t think so. Ty and I sat in somebody’s office while we waited. He told me the assistant principal pulled him out of English class and walked him to his locker for his jacket and when they got to the office there was a cop waiting there. The cop drove him to the station and told him he could phone whoever he needed to before giving his statement. He phoned me.”

  “Thank god you were there.” I spoon-slice some noodles. “You could have been in class.”

  “I was in class. Ty told the departmental secretary it was an emergency and not to hang up the phone until she found me. She called Campus Security. I had to tell a hundred and fifty first years to go home.”