The Best Thing for You

by Annabel Lyon

  We, that was an off note. His father had never seemed pathetic before.

  Here’s the thing, though, son, his father continued. The firm’s waiting on a contract with a department store, a big contract. If they get it, they’ll be expanding and my job will be a lock. But until then I’m on probation, you see?

  A department store?

  Plainclothes security, his father explained. Six floors. Stores in three different locations. The contract is a cherry. They’ll know in a few weeks.

  His father in a brown suit, laying his hand on the arm of a teenage shoplifter. The carny in a hay-brown suit, laying his hand on the boy’s arm. Miss, if you’ll come this way. Sir, this way for you, sir. Caught.

  What I’m trying to say, son, his father said. I’m just not going to be earning as much as I used to for a little while.

  That’s all right, the boy said, after a minute.

  His parents exchanged a glance and he felt a surge of impatience. He reckoned he had seen as much as they ever had, after today. Vicious pride, swimming shame, both.

  It’s about your tuition at St. John and St. James, his father said.

  But that was all wrong, of course. The boys who went there knew to call it Jack and Jim’s.

  It’s not that you’ll never go back, his father said. It’s just that we need to be cautious for a few months, not commit ourselves to more than we can – not bite off more than we can chew.

  The girl, the girl.

  A year in the public system shouldn’t set you back. It’s not a big exam year for you, this next one, is it? And it’s just for a year, a year at most. Maybe even by January. I know everything feels a little loose right now but we’ll get it all nailed down again, you’ll see.

  Which school will I go to?

  Aberdeen.

  The boy closed his eyes and opened them. Aberdeen was where the Italian boys in the neighbourhood went, and the Chinese, and so on. Boys did not graduate from Aberdeen to become artists or musicians, or even lawyers. They became clerks, at best, if they became anything at all. So it was like that now.

  We fall in their catchment area, his mother said quietly.

  You’ll be able to walk there, his father said. That’ll make for a change. Maybe with the time you save getting there and back you’ll even be able to take an after-school job. What would you say to that?

  Eyes open: I’m old enough.

  That would be something, wouldn’t it, John? his father said. To be a working man like your old Dad?

  Eyes closed: he saw again the inside of the tent, the hot pale light through the fawn-coloured canvas, and all the working men seated in docile rows at the front and standing at the back. He had stayed at the back.

  Are you listening, John? his mother’s voice said.

  I could get a paper route. I already have a bike.

  Good lad, his father said.

  There had been a girl on the stage, a dark-haired girl dancing with one small breast already bared, so that he thought he would go mad.

  You’re not too disappointed?

  What?

  Pardon? his mother said.

  Pardon?

  You’re not too disappointed about the school? You’ll make new friends, won’t you?

  Sure. Sure I will.

  There she was, almost washed out in a shaft of sun, a shaft like a spotlight through a hole in the roof of the tent. Like an overexposed photo she was, dancing in the middle of the day in a shaft of white sunlight that glittered with dust, white hands winding, staring honestly and earnestly at nothing.

  We might just wait a few weeks with Mrs. Agostino also, his mother said. Instead of going back immediately in September, like we usually do.

  There had been a giant and a dwarf too, but that was later.

  John!

  Yes, he said. It’s all right. I don’t mind, really.

  Outside the tent had been a candy cart, and he had straight away bought a great puff of candy floss, stuffed his mouth full of it to resurrect that jolting surfeit of sweetness he had known in the tent. The candy was a pale imitation but when he found the carny again to ask about the next show the man pretended not to recognize him, and told him he was too young.

  We’ve got a fine young man here, Cass, his father said.

  I know it, his mother said.

  On his paper route, now, every morning, as the final days of summer flipped away, Foster paused beneath the pink sky to inform himself of the progress of the murder investigation. His father rarely brought the papers home any more so he tracked it this way, between houses, the case bubbling along in the back pages, awaiting the high heat of the trial in September. He spent time over the girl’s photograph, memorizing the pale, round face and soft hands; he spent time over the details of the crime, the French proverb and the basement grate and the delivery boy from Farrell’s Fine Foods. That she had chosen a boy over a man – he went weak to think of it. Though Farrell’s of course was a fine place, spanking new, and on a fine wide avenue, three blocks only from his old school. From the newspapers he constructed an image of the boy, Stephen, a delivery boy, like himself now, only a year and a half older. The newspaper editorials maintained she had used him, corrupted him, and he could not truly be held responsible for whatever he might have done. Foster thought that sounded right. He would have been dazzled, as Foster himself had been dazzled in the tent at the fairgrounds, dazzled and ashamed and painfully grateful all at once. Now he was in jail, awaiting trial, probably still dreaming helplessly of their – what? He didn’t know the word for it. Rendezvous? Sessions? Sometimes Foster would go so far as to close his eyes and try to put himself in the other’s place, to see the bricks and bars while summoning the feel of her clothes – silk, surely – in his hands. Then some sound would startle him, some dog’s bark or cry, recalling him to his duty, and he would bike on through his own newly hateful neighbourhood – the cheap, scant trees, feeble houses, washing hung in the gardens, and over it all the thin, rank, seedy pall of garbage – dismissing each paper with an angry, reckless toss.

  One morning he recalled how, in his father’s office that day, beneath the perfume, an unpleasant camphorous odour had emanated from her clothes. This, too, he savoured.

  At home he took fiercely to the piano, rattling off the exercises that had so recently bored him, fighting Bach, fighting Beethoven, fighting Chopin, fighting Debussy, until he caught his mother furtively listening, hiding in doorways, sitting once at the turn in the stairs just out of his sight, and this angered him past speech. Her shy encouraging smiles drove him to his room and his notebooks, where no matter how much he wrote he couldn’t clear his head. At night he dwelt feverishly on the girl from the fairgrounds, who merged in his imagination with the girl from the paper, until they were – for his purposes, at least – indistinguishable.

  His new school, Aberdeen, was a sooty brick building with slits of windows, as though for archers. Inside students roamed in packs, sorted along the lines of race. There were girls everywhere. He had expected some immediate violence and was at first relieved.

  At the office, where he had been told to register, they made him sit on a bench while they sorted some paperwork. After an hour he tapped on the window and the secretary’s voice, tiny and disjointed through the glass, said, Are you still here?

  No one’s given me a room.

  Two-o-seven, she said, without referring to anything. He thought she had made the number up on the spot.

  The doors of two-o-seven were closed. He knocked.

  Yes, a voice said.

  The teacher was a woman, not old, with a bitter, pretty face, a wealth of carefully rolled blond hair, and a name, glimpsed on a metal plaque outside the door, he immediately forgot.

  Yes.

  Please, Miss, I was assigned to this class.

  The room went quiet.

  The teacher waited a heavy, deadpan beat before saying, Name?

  Foster, Miss.

  First name.

  John,
Miss.

  Sit down, John.

  Foster, Miss.

  I beg your pardon, she said very quietly, and he saw she would be no help to him in the coming year.

  I’m usually called Foster, Miss.

  She took a minute to look at his clothes, moving her head so it was clear to those in the back row what she was doing. He was wearing last year’s uniform: slacks and blazer and tie.

  Do I know you?

  I’ve transferred, Miss.

  From which school?

  St. John and St. James.

  Run out of money, did we?

  He heard, in his mind’s ear, a ragged, surprised spasm of violins.

  The teacher held up her left hand, palm towards herself, fingers splayed, and said, See this?

  He wondered if she was going to hit him.

  Learn my name.

  The wedding ring, she meant, because he had called her Miss.

  The lesson was French. Once he was seated and had been given a book he was able to relax a little. They were reviewing the parts of the family, mon père ma mère ma sœur mes frères ma tante mon oncle, and, for some reason, mes copains.

  John, the teacher said. Combien as-tu de frères?

  Je n’ai ni sœurs ni frères.

  Again the class fell silent, down to the last fiddling and rustling of pages. His accent was better than hers.

  Que fait ton père?

  He hesitated.

  Peter, she said. Que fait ton père?

  Il est soldat.

  Mario?

  Il est magasinier.

  Helen?

  A Chinese girl said exceedingly softly, Mon père est malade. Il ne travaille pas.

  The teacher met his eye again. Peut-ětre maintenant tu comprends la question. Que fait ton père?

  Il est enquěteur.

  En anglais. In English.

  Private detective, he said.

  The beating came during the lunch hour, behind the gymnasium. He recognized one or two of the boys by sight from the streets near his house.

  Is she always such a battleship? he had asked one of them at the break, trying to be friendly. They had led him out back and kicked him until he couldn’t get up. He understood it was not about the teacher.

  By afternoon she had moved on to someone else.

  Jean, you are wearing lipstick.

  No, Mrs. Borsky.

  The girl’s real name, he surmised from her black and pink Italian prettiness, was not Jean, but something longer and prettier: Gianna, Giannina, Giovanna, Anna –

  You are, Mrs. Borsky corrected. Where is your handkerchief?

  They had been solving algebra problems, another class he found easy, though the others seemed to take it seriously enough, furrowing brows and breathing softly over the symbols, pencils poised but confoundedly still.

  Here, Mrs. Borsky.

  Wipe your mouth.

  The girl dabbed her mouth with the cloth and held it up.

  Wipe your mouth.

  She wiped a little harder.

  I don’t allow sluts in my classroom, Jean, Mrs. Borsky said. Can you prove to me you’re not a slut?

  Tears started running down the girl’s cheeks. She wiped until the wiping made her lips even more red than they were before, though the handkerchief showed nothing.

  Go to the principal, Jean, Mrs. Borsky said.

  The girl let out a howl, a few tumbling words not in English, and ran from the room. He touched the point of his cheek, gingerly, dabbed at it with his fingertip, feeling the lush bruise there.

  After school they caught him again, this time for conversation.

  Yes, Miss. No, Miss. Please, Miss. My father’s a private detective.

  Well, he is.

  Bullshit. Your father got fired.

  He studied the boy who had spoken but could not place him at all.

  My mother says your mother is a snotty bitch, another said. In a mincing voice: My son’s school, have you heard of it? My son’s piano teacher, do you know her?

  He realized his family had a public existence in the neighbourhood he had never suspected.

  What’s this? said a third, yanking at his tie. What’s this?

  They found a game, pulling his tie round to the back and choking him with it. He experienced moments of pain accompanied by bursts of heightened hearing. As his vision started to swarm he distinctly heard a rhythmic chanting that did not correlate to the faces of the boys around him. He heard his own blood and systems.

  Mackenzie, someone said, and they scattered.

  He went home. His mother clucked over his face but asked surprisingly few questions. So she, too, had expected no less.

  What are the academics like? his father asked him after dinner.

  Fine.

  Comparable to the work you were doing last year?

  Maybe a little easier.

  It’s only the first day, his mother said. They’re just reviewing.

  Any societies or teams? Did they make an announcement about clubs day yet?

  At his old school, boys would set up tables in the gymnasium one afternoon during first week, advertising the various school activities – Math club, fencing, Drama club, rugby, and so on. You got to skip class, to go and watch demonstrations and sign up.

  Maybe Aberdeen does things a little differently, his mother said, when he didn’t respond.

  I know your mother won’t like to hear me say this, his father said. But it’s important, these first few days, you give back as good as you get. That way they’ll learn to leave you alone.

  His mother said nothing.

  How’s work? the boy asked.

  There was no question of going to visit him in his office, the way he used to. He understood his father was experiencing some difficulties. He was distracted these days, and disinclined to talk.

  His father shook his head. Coutrell’s giving me grief, he said, addressing the boy’s mother, as though she had asked the question. About those days I need off for the trial. He has to give them to me by law, but he’s not happy about it.

  When?

  Starting Monday. They think it’ll go all week.

  All week, the boy said.

  Why do they need you? his mother said. When they’ve got –

  When they’ve got Jim Hammond? Good question. Why does anyone need anyone when the world has got Jim Hammond?

  Ben.

  You know what he’s got me doing, Coutrell? The little camera he’s given me? The marriages I’m hired to break up?

  Ben.

  They’re going to crucify that little girl, his father said. They’re going to make me drive in the nails.

  I don’t want to hear about it, she said harshly, and to the boy: Go to bed.

  Slowly, because of the pain, he got himself under the blankets. His back ached, and he couldn’t lie on his accustomed right side because of the tenderness around his swollen eye. He tried to summon up his usual fantasy, of the mysterious dark house and the girl with the limp, but it had evolved, with a kaleidoscope twist, into something at once darker and more familiar. This time he was in a grocery store, behind the butcher’s counter, watching the girl from the newspaper walk toward him. Every moment she was near some new aspect of her broke over him like a wave – the brooch at the throat of her blouse, in the shape of an elaborately scrolled flower (borrowed from his mother), the length of the eyelashes (borrowed from pretty Jean), the hat (its shape painfully reconstructed from the blur of a newspaper photograph), the smell of camphor (most intimate of details, because it was the only one he owned). Though he savoured these things individually, they did not add up to a totality; he could not, in his mind’s eye, look her full in the face. When he tried to roll over, some time later, and give himself to sleep, the pain brought tears to his eyes.

  Every day at lunch and after school his classmates led him back behind the gymnasium, scattering only when some authority was sighted, some teacher. He would walk back home, after: alone and weak and milky,
a walking aggregate of injuries. They would have to stop soon; they would never stop. It was absurd; it was deeply familiar.

  On Monday morning he walked to school and then kept on walking. A few heads turned in the yard but no one cared to stop him. The pack had its habits, and mornings he was left alone.

  He walked to Hastings Street, to his old stop, and waited with the businessmen for the number seven. He had never taken the streetcar this late before, and the light in the street seemed different, fatter and more sullied, disappointing. He touched his wristwatch through his sleeve but did not look at it. It started to rain.

  What happened to you? someone asked him.

  On the streetcar he dozed fitfully. He was sleeping badly for the first time in his life, and a warm, scraped, numb feeling often scrambled his consciousness so that he would come to at odd times throughout the day, belatedly realizing he had been gone.

  Granville and Georgia, the conductor called, startling him so badly he wanted to cry. It was his stop.

  It was raining in cold driving threads. By the time he reached the courthouse steps his chest and shoulders were dark with wet. Dapper men, lawyers, hurried up the steps and through the doors.

  Coming in? one of them called to him, holding the big door.

  The first thing he saw, in the main hall, was his father and Mr. Hammond talking with two other men.

  Which case? asked the man who had held the door for him.

  He put a hand to his face, rubbed his forehead, turned away as much as he could. Mumbled: Pass.

  Ah.

  The murder case.

  And are you with the bride or the groom?

  Now the four men were moving off, up the curving staircase. He dropped to his knees, bowed his head over his shoelaces.

  Yes, do that, the lawyer said amiably. I’ll just be a moment.

  The four men were gone. He watched the lawyer approach one of the big, uniformed men standing by the clerk’s desk and ask him a few questions.

  Room three-o-three, he said when he came back. I don’t think they’ll let you in, though.

  Don’t they have to?

  What happened to your face?

  The lawyer’s expression was absolutely pleasant and careless. Foster said, Why won’t they let me in?