The Best Thing for You

by Annabel Lyon

  “No,” Ty says.

  “You understand why,” I say.

  He says he does.

  “We believe you,” I tell him. “We’re trying really hard.”

  “I know.”

  Through the window I watch Liam glance over his shoulder, checking out the woman with the hair. He sees me and waves his arm in a big corralling gesture, mouthing, Come in.

  “What’s he got?” Ty says, because Liam’s also holding up a DVD.

  “Something violent,” I say. “I mean, my god, I hope.”

  Ty pushes off from the window.

  “Boom, bang,” I say. “Pow. Pow.”

  I watch him go inside, join his dad. We pretend Liam needs supervision, Ty and I. Through the window I see Liam show him the case and they study it together, just like old times, like Ty is a visiting expert whose opinion he has gravely solicited. He plays us both, our son, and we let him get away with it. There’s nothing you can’t forget, in the end. I step up onto the curb, reach for the heavy door. Inside, the familiar three-pronged turnstile and the bee buzz of the lights complete the world as Ty comes toward me with the movie in his hand, hoping this is the one we will agree on, the one that will take us home.

  THE GOLDBERG METRONOME

  The metronome had been hidden in the bathroom, under the counter, taped to the pipes beneath the sink like a bomb taped to the chassis of a car. Fanciful, Anika reprimanded herself, though she did not reach to touch or remove it right away. She knelt on the tile floor and held the cupboard door open with one rubber-gloved hand, studying the package so plumply swaddled in brown paper and packing tape, so firmly affixed to the crook of the black PVC pipe. Once, in the old house, Thom had pulled off some of the wood panelling to get at a mouse nest and had pulled out a pair of child’s pants filthy with mould and ricelike black scat, the same as they had been finding in their pots and pans and even in the burners on the stove. For a vibrant moment they had stared at each other, down in the gloom of the unfinished basement, wondering what could possibly come next – a small body or bodies, police, newspapers, television cameras on the front lawn, inevitably a move, away from the horror of it – but had quickly realized the pants, and blanket, and other, assorted children’s clothes stuffed behind the panelling were simply old rags used in place of insulation. Which only went to show, Anika thought, staring at the package under the sink and simultaneously recalling the tiny trousers, perhaps some child’s very first pair, you never knew what some people would leave behind.

  Thom, she called.

  Frustrated with their landlord’s apathy – about the mice, the insulation, the water that pooled in the basement every time it rained, the black, indelible paste of mould around the tiles in the bathroom where the caulking should have been – they decided to move anyway. They had thought the East Vancouver house a find, at first, with its eleven-foot ceilings, abraded hardwood, and lushly overgrown garden. Later, jaded, they pursued the search fitfully, defensively. Character, they had learned the hard way, meant rot; cozy meant stifling low ceilings, fenced yard meant more dog shit than dirt. They bought newspapers each weekend for the classified ads and spent precious Saturday hours poring studiously, instead, over the crossword. Sunday morning outings to neighbourhoods they felt they could afford degenerated into Sunday afternoon walks through neighbourhoods where they really wanted to live: Dunbar, Point Grey, the West end. They drank innumerable small, strong, expensive coffees in casually smart cafés, pretending they lived just around the corner, trying to postpone the inevitable return home. They both freelanced – he as a graphic artist, she as a photographer, neither entirely by choice – and their finances, while often good, were always precarious. Even coffee was a luxury over which they lingered, budget-conscious, for hours. One would read the paper while the other stared out the window. A moment would come, the lighting of the lamps that would knock the street outside into deep blue darkness, or the arrival of some other, better-dressed couple their own age, regulars greeted more warmly by the barista than they themselves had been, and they would rise and pull on their coats, leaving behind half-finished papers and empty cups, and find their way back to the car, an ugly and reliable 1980 Civic.

  On one such occasion, driving back through the tree-lined streets of apartments between Denman Street and Stanley Park, she had ordered him to stop. A small white For Rent sign stood staked to the lawn of a modest low-rise. It was the twenty-ninth of the month, October, just before the newest vacancies would be advertised in the paper. They called immediately from a pay phone and got an appointment for the next day.

  What is it? Thom said. He had been unpacking boxes in the second bedroom, what they called the study, which would also do for a baby’s room in another year or two, though they had gingerly avoided putting this into words.

  She pointed to the package under the sink.

  Drugs? he said.

  He, too, hesitated for a moment, and she knew they shared the same thought: that finding this apartment had, after all, been too good to be true, and that this object, whatever it was, was surely the reason the previous tenant had left. It encapsulated whatever would be the next trouble in their lives. Trouble, Anika thought, was not too strong a word, though they argued rarely and always with an honest, distressed perplexity that each could not see the other’s point of view. No, it was not arguments so much as distance, a polite remoteness that had led to more and more meals taken in front of the television, and a gradual lessening of regret over the hours they spent apart. The first bloom was off, that was all, Anika told herself. They were steady mates now, no longer clinging and foolish fond. But the sense of unease, of a wrong turn taken, persisted. People split up this way, quietly, without fuss; people drifted off into their own orbits and never snapped back. It was almost a scent, like bitter orange, the knowledge that they did not absolutely need to be together. She came to wonder if the disappointment of the East Vancouver house was not the cause but the effect of the widening space between them, the high drafty rooms and wet cracked floors the embodiment of the creeping absence she sensed. She wondered how long they would last.

  Hold on, Thom said.

  She held the package firmly with both hands while he reached awkwardly around her shoulder, trying to get at the tape. She felt his breath on her ear, felt, too, the warmth of a muttered oath.

  I have nails, she said.

  They traded positions, he holding the package with one big hand while she picked at the tape with her fingernails.

  It’s light, he said, when she had freed one end and he had the weight of it in his hand.

  They tore the package free, leaving a wind of tape and a flare of beige paper stuck to the pipe. Thom tore the rest of the paper away, less cautiously than Anika would have, letting it fall to the floor in drifts. Under the paper was a layer of cotton batting, and inside that was a black wooden box, roughly coffin-shaped, with a simple geometric pattern inlaid on the diagonal up each side, its symmetry marred by a small brass knob halfway down the right side.

  It’s a metronome, Anika said. She took it from his hands and removed the cover, revealing a metal face with the numbers all but worn away, and a delicate brass needle and pendulum. She set it on the counter next to the sink and gave the needle a push, but it fell with a heavy finality to one side and stopped there.

  Wind it, Thom suggested, but the brass knob was stuck, and she hesitated to apply much pressure and risk snapping it off.

  Broken, she said. Well, it looks old.

  They took it into the living room to look at it in better light. Thom stroked the high sheen on the lid with his fingertips while Anika pushed the needle back and forth a few times, hoping to elicit a tick. The sun came out from behind a cloud, sending a sudden dust-teeming shaft through the window and across their hands, and at the same time each said, It’s blue.

  What they had taken for black was in fact a deep indigo.

  We should give it to Phyllis, I suppose, Anika said.

  I
t was Phyllis who had answered their call about the apartment. Phyllis was, first, a voice: old but not frail, deliberately slow, with mannered good manners. Boston, smart. Phyllis in person (when they showed up the next day to view the apartment, overdressed, their references in an anxious manila envelope) was charmingly matter-of-fact, in a sweater with the sleeves pushed up and a pair of faded blue jeans. She described the building with disparaging affection, confessed to having managed it for thirty years and lived in it for forty, confessed to being seventy herself, all the while tossing out bits of information about laundry and parking and utilities as though they really were prospective tenants and not the objects of some particularly cruel practical joke.

  We won’t get it, Anika whispered to Thom when the elevator reached the fifth floor and Phyllis marched off ahead of them down the hall, shaking out a ring of keys.

  I know, Thom whispered back. It’s too good.

  Listen to the dulcet tones of our doorbells, Phyllis said, pressing a button beside the door that yielded a failing rasp, ending with a distinct clank when she released it. The three of them laughed. Thom and Anika were by now painfully excited.

  You know, Phyllis said. It’s old-fashioned, like I told you. Not modern enough for the other couples who came through. David, she called, rapping on the door. When no one replied she opened the door with a key.

  Cupboard here, she said. The management company will see to whatever painting needs doing, of course, before you move in. Bathroom behind you, there. Master bedroom. Please, please. (She gestured for them to precede her.) Look around. The blinds are necessary, as you can see there’s a lot of sun. Cupboard. This is the smaller bedroom. Immaculate tenant, as you can see. The pine floors are original, yes. Please. Kitchen. Not large, obviously, but so clean. David is a lovely man. He’s in the diplomatic service, just been posted to Trinidad, I think, or thereabouts.

  Yes, Anika said politely.

  Now, the living room. This is one of the nicest suites in the building, I think, because of this room. The ocean view, as you can see, and quite spacious too, compared to the bedrooms. You’ll be spending a lot of time in here, I imagine.

  Yes, Thom said, looking at Anika. I guess we will.

  That’s settled, then, Phyllis said.

  Phyllis will know where to send it on, Anika said now.

  It doesn’t really look like he wanted it, though, does it? Thom said. It almost looks like he left it behind deliberately. Wrapping it up that way, and hiding it the way he did.

  They spent some time trying to construct a personality out of the furnishings they had seen when they first walked through the apartment – Gabbeh rugs, spare teak furniture, Naipaul novels on the shelves. A large bureau dominated the smaller bedroom (art deco, Anika thought, coveting it), and a single black and white photograph of a nude male torso graced the fridge.

  Gay, Thom suggested, and she shrugged, not disagreeing. There was a large gay population in the West end. Early for their appointment, they had stopped in to a busy coffee shop two blocks away, only belatedly realizing that the other customers were all male, and Anika was drawing wry half-smiles. It had been excellent coffee.

  Not poor either, Anika suggested now. I guess diplomats do all right.

  Maybe the drugs are inside, Thom said, peering at the metronome’s base.

  Anika smiled, half at their own tired furniture on these honeyed floors, half at Thom’s doggedness when he found an idea he liked.

  You have that little screwdriver for your glasses, he said.

  She fetched it from its sleeve in the silk lining of her glasses’ case, but when he got the back off there was no cache of pills or baggie of white powder, only the machine’s tiny mechanism, shiny and oiled and apparently in order.

  I give up, Thom said.

  That evening they took it down the hall to Phyllis’s apartment and explained where they had found it.

  No, he didn’t leave a forwarding address, I’m afraid, she said. She tapped a wrinkled finger against her lips and turned the metronome over in the light of a table lamp. Blueness came and went in the dark wood like an illusion, or a bruise.

  It’s pretty, isn’t it, Phyllis said finally. Very David. He collected antiques, as you saw. Exquisite taste, he had. Only the best.

  It’s broken, though, Anika said.

  Drugs, maybe? the older woman suggested, with no hint of excitement or the least loss of poise. Thom punched Anika lightly in the arm.

  We thought of that, Anika said gravely. Thom unscrewed the back but there was nothing inside.

  No, I wouldn’t have thought it of him, Phyllis said. David was a decent, hard-working man. But you never know. Taped to the pipes, you say.

  Taped to the pipes, Thom said. Would you like it?

  Oh, I’ve no room for more clutter, she said brightly, fluttering her hands at forty years’ of possessions – books and tables and lamps and chairs and embroidered cushions and potpourri pots and china and plants – her two-bedroom layout the distorted mirror image of their own. You keep it, she said. It’s a pretty thing.

  She knows we don’t have many pretty things, Anika said that night. They lay in bed, wide awake, adjusting to the traffic noises, not overly invasive, and the unfamiliar quality of the darkness.

  Yet, Thom said. (This was a fixture of their conversations, as window shopping was a fixture of their weekends.)

  He adjusted a pillow between his shoulder and her head and pulled her legs between his. They had not lain this way, just awake and talking, Anika thought, in a long time.

  It’s like he wanted us to find it, Thom said. Let’s keep it, for a while anyway. Maybe get it appraised.

  David, Anika said experimentally, as though the feel of the name in her mouth might yield a clue.

  David, Thom repeated.

  David had stepped into a little shop in the Village, musical antiquities, and was standing before a locked glass case of metronomes when he heard a voice behind him say, Are you a Jew? Because I will only sell to a Jew.

  David turned and said, Are you a Jew?

  No.

  Then what’s wrong with them?

  The woman was in her fifties, probably, with fashionable clothes (tight pants, blue leather jacket, scarf of some mottled, bronze, filmy stuff) and hair (Roman emperor), dramatically plucked brows, a deep slash of a mouth, and a harsh, guttural accent.

  You have every right to ask me that, she said. Nothing is wrong with them. And I am somewhat melodramatic. It depends on the piece. You like this one?

  She selected a key from the ring on her belt, unlocked the cabinet, and withdrew a tall, pear-shaped wooden metronome with a lovely symmetrical grain on either side, on an elaborately carved scrollwork base.

  Eighteen thirty-six, Vienna, she said. Twenty-five thousand. Maelzel. The case is signed on the inside. You could buy this one.

  What about the blue one?

  Maelzel, she repeated. The inventor of the metronome. Believe me, when I was a girl, I loathed Herr Maelzel.

  Piano lessons?

  She didn’t answer. David could not decide whether he liked her or not; splintery women could go both ways. He watched her wind the metronome, set it down on a nearby table, and let it go.

  Hear it speak with its velvety throat, she said, and he decided she was monstrous, and the only possible thing was to enjoy her enormously. The tock was rich and round (definitely not a tick), evoking a lost world of stone and wood and firelight and horses and cream. But it was not James, somehow, and like a vessel he was filled, this trip, with thoughts of James, and returning home to James. He needed something leaner, more astringent, elegant but a bit stark and forbidding, too.

  What about the blue one? David said.

  The woman had apparently taken a liking to him, and began to show him around her store. The carpets were dark red, and the walls – turquoise – were hung with instruments on nails: lustrous horns he did and didn’t recognize, strangely tortured shapes, flutes straight and curling, a f
amily of saxophones and another of strings, a bitty inlaid guitar. A grand piano, a Steinway, was clearly queen of the room, but there were also a harpsichord, a daintier clavichord, and the sheer, tempting sheen of a gong. In glass cabinets built in around a cold fireplace he counted fifty metronomes, coffin and pear. The bookcases held hundreds of scores. She walked around touching lamps, casting spoons of light and shadows onto the walls. All these gypsy colours and noisemakers, David thought: is this what it’s like inside her head?

  Now this, she said, taking down a score and opening it for his perusal. His mouth quirked briefly as he bit down a smile. He was a little afraid, in his laughing way, to confess to her he couldn’t read music.

  First edition? he asked politely.

  She laughed, and showed him the cover – torn, chartreuse and cream, with enormous fading letters in an almost illegibly ornate gothic type. German.

  Bach, she said. Die Kunst der Fuge.

  So she is German, David thought.

  She opened to the title page and pointed to a signature, also illegible.

  Artur Rubinstein, she read.

  She flipped through the pages, stopping every now and then to draw his attention to pen marks on the score.

  Annotated, she said.

  Valuable?

  Clearly not to you.

  She closed the score and put it back on the shelf.

  I was just looking for a gift, he said. For a friend.

  A musician?

  No.

  Bravo, she said, and he turned to leave.

  But where are you going? she said. All day long, musicians. Their big scarves, their little gloves. So respectful, so knowledgeable. May I confess to you my horror of musicians? Of students? They like to carry their instruments on their backs. The tips of their noses are always pink, like mice. They like to buy my scores. They like to stand in my store and stroke the pages. They think they can catch talent like the clap, though even the most talented of them has no talent. Even their arrogance is false. They carry water bottles like athletes, they grow their hair long to suggest untameable passions, they practise until their fingers bleed, they close their eyes when they perform. We live in the culture of the orgasm, the pursuit of the orgasm. The Juilliard School, Carnegie Hall, the Tchaikovsky competition, these are the orgasms they strain and strain to achieve. Their teachers are no better, they are old panders, merely. What I say is nothing new. The true artist venerates nothing. I tell you, I despise them all.