The Best Thing for You

by Annabel Lyon

  What school do you go to?

  St. John and St. James.

  That’s a fine school. Why aren’t you there?

  Why won’t they let me in?

  Right, the man said, unruffled. Well, for one thing, there are probably a lot of reporters and rubbernecks there ahead of you.

  Foster thought about the word, a new one to him, then said, I’m not a rubberneck.

  No, I don’t think you are. For another thing, you’re rather scruffy. The sheriffs, they’re the men in the brown uniforms, like that one over there, they might look at you and think you look like trouble. Are you trouble?

  The boy shook his head.

  Three-o-three, the lawyer repeated, looking at his wristwatch. I have to go. You give it a try, though. You came all this way.

  Thank you.

  You’re welcome.

  He watched the lawyer trot towards the stairs, then followed him up to the third floor, where there was a thick crowd. He shouldered his way through, in the wake of the friendly lawyer, right up to the door of room three-o-three, where the man spoke a few words to the sheriff and was allowed in.

  Full up, the sheriff said to the boy, barring his way. Through the open door he caught a glimpse of a crowded, restless, silent room. Just before the door closed the lawyer glanced back and winked.

  He turned around and saw his father sitting not ten feet away, alone on a bench, staring at his feet.

  He spent the rest of the day slowly pacing out the city block around the courthouse, hoping she might be allowed out for a breath of air, hoping not to round a corner and run into his father or Mr. Hammond. At two-thirty, he walked back down to Hastings Street, took the streetcar back to the East end, and walked home.

  How was school? his mother asked.

  Fine.

  That evening his father went straight up to the bedroom and stayed there. His mother took him a meal on a tray.

  He’s got a screaming headache, she explained.

  The next morning Foster left all but one of his papers in an alley and got to the streetcar stop while the sun was still coming up. He wore his school uniform. He was not afraid of bumping into his father or Mr. Hammond because he knew from the paper that they had both testified yesterday. Today it would be the murdered man’s colleague from work.

  He joined the lineup that had formed outside room three-o-three and waited there for an hour. Occasionally someone would speak a word or two to the sheriff and be admitted. The room seemed to be filling up but his line did not move at all. He watched a reporter show his credentials and go in.

  Good morning, a familiar voice said.

  Good morning, he replied. Faces turned sharply to look at him, at Foster. The friendly lawyer had some celebrity, clearly.

  Better luck today, maybe, the lawyer said. Foster nodded. He watched the man greet the sheriff and go in.

  Thank you, the sheriff called to the people waiting. That’s all for today.

  The line did not immediately disperse. Thinking these people knew something he didn’t, he kept his place.

  He saw another reporter hurry up to the door, speak a low word to the sheriff, and be admitted.

  Thank you, the sheriff called again, over various protests and indignant fingers pointing after the man. That’s it, folks, we’re full up. You can read about it in the papers.

  An old man in front of him began to make a speech about fairness and openness in judicial proceedings.

  There’s a rape downstairs, the sheriff said. In two-ten. It’s almost empty. Only just started, I think.

  The old man scowled and hurried away.

  Foster stared at the closed door. They would have started by now. She was in there, probably not twenty yards from where he was standing, and the boy, too. He felt weak again, and closing his eyes found himself instantly in the hanging place between sleeping and waking. There had been a new photograph in the paper that morning, taken as she was led from the courthouse the day before, but her face had been obscured by a large hat. He had even touched it with his fingers, trying to push it back, to uncover her face.

  He opened his eyes and went to where a knot of people stood trying to see through the window in the door, watched closely by the sheriff.

  Where do the photographers go? Foster asked. To get them as they come out?

  Scram, the sheriff said.

  Who are you? one of the rubbernecks asked, temporarily diverted from the window. I saw Wilder talking to you.

  I don’t know who he is, Foster said, and the eager man said, Counsel for the defence. For her.

  That evening, he overheard his mother telling his father that Mr. Coutrell from the office had called for him at home, asking when he was coming back to work. I thought you were at work yesterday, his mother said.

  I was, his father said. That is, I was out following leads all day, so he wouldn’t have seen me in the office. But I was working.

  Well, he wants to see you in the office tomorrow, he says, for sure.

  He will, his father said.

  On the third day the friendly lawyer stopped again and said, Good morning.

  I want to meet her, Foster said.

  He saw the man have his habitual word with the sheriff at the door before he went in, saw the sheriff glance over at the boy and nod. His line advanced to the door, but when his turn came the sheriff held his arm out and said, Not you.

  Tell me where the photographers go, he said.

  Listen, punk, the sheriff said. Foster turned around and headed back towards the stairs. The line he had been standing in was still moving.

  The alley, said the old man who had made the speech the day before, shuffling forward with the others.

  Pardon?

  The photographers. They wait in the alley. You won’t see the boy, though, if you’re a friend of his. They remand him here, in the cells. You’ll only see her.

  The old man went through the door. Foster went outside and stood in the mouth of the alley for six hours. After five hours men started to gather there, with sandwiches and cigarettes and bags of equipment. They joked loudly and cynically with each other but they ignored him, except for one who offered him a cigarette in a way obviously intended to amuse his colleagues. He declined.

  A good, clean, healthy boy, the man said, and the others laughed.

  By five to four the photographers, twenty or so, had gathered around a single doorway and were elbowing him out of their way. A car pulled into the alley and nosed slowly up to the waiting men. The courthouse door opened, tripping a flash; a man’s head looked out and nodded at the waiting car. The car door opened. Foster went up on his toes, trying to see over the flashbulbs.

  Piss off, the man behind him said, giving him a shove. He went down. Above his head the men began to surge and shout her name. Someone stepped on his hand, pinning it. He heard the snickering of a hundred cameras, heard rather than saw the flowers of white light. Take it off, the men begged. He looked up and saw straight into her face, below the monstrous tilted hat, saw the soft black eyes, the vacant expression. Then she was in the car, the photographers were snapping lenses off cameras, and someone was helping him to his feet.

  Sorry about that, said the man helping him up. You were in my shot.

  He got home after his father.

  You’re late today, his mother said. Where have you been?

  Band practice, he lied.

  You never said anything about joining the band. That’s wonderful. Ben, John’s joined the band at school.

  His father sat by the fireplace, clipping articles from the newspaper with his mother’s big kitchen scissors. He lifted his head and said, That pleases me very much. You don’t know. Which instrument?

  I like the oboe, he said truthfully.

  So do I, his father said, nodding, using the scissors like a seamstress with silk, just sliding cuts off the blade. Squares and columns of newsprint accumulated on the table at his elbow. His hands were black.

  Ben, for heaven’s s
ake, some others of us may want to read that too, his mother said, but his father carried on mutilating the paper just as though she hadn’t spoken.

  It didn’t matter, though, because Foster saw the paper every morning and knew which way things were tending. The pair was down. The dead man’s colleague from work, also a family friend, had testified that the girl had asked him to perform the task that had eventually fallen to the delivery boy, and had offered him whatever he might want in exchange. She had made it pretty clear, he said, what she meant by that. He had laughed her off, he said, and thought nothing more of it until her husband was found dead. The photograph in the newspaper showed the colleague to be a stocky man with salt and pepper hair, with a look that was truculent but not unamused. She must have been desperate, Foster thought. Sex in his imagination was tense but soft, his lips against the tendons of his own wrist, in a dim room that smelled unaccountably of Christmas baking. He could not imagine anyone enduring, let alone seeking, the embrace of the colleague.

  He saw her twice more. The next day, a Thursday, he waited again in the alley with the photographers. This time he stood a little further back, out of the scrum. He wanted to call her name with the rest of them, to add his voice to that sound, but when she appeared he found he could not.

  On Friday the jury began its deliberations. When he arrived, the alley was already full of reporters and photographers and others who had come to see. Cars slowed, stopped, and men got out; then after an hour or so word came that the police had cordoned off the street and were not letting anyone else near. He dared not leave his place to go and see for himself. Rumours rippled through the crowd that the city had shut down, that workers were leaning out of office windows in their shirt sleeves watching the scene around the courthouse, that traffic into and out of downtown was at a standstill, that they might have to wait well into the night.

  At two someone brought word they had been found guilty and the judge was even at that moment sentencing them. Even before he had fully absorbed the words, Foster saw the door open and she was there, hands held awkwardly behind her back, flanked by two uniformed men. The crowd roared like Romans. A hand went up above the cameras, snatched her hat, and sailed it off into the sea of men, where it went down like an anchor. Flashbulbs exploded. She looked out over them once, squinting against the light, before they led her down the two or three steps and he lost sight of her.

  At home he found his mother, his father, and Mr. Hammond in the living room, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. They fell silent when he entered, and he guessed he had interrupted an argument.

  Ha! Mr. Hammond said. The prodigal returns.

  Foster closed the door behind him.

  We got a note from the school today, his mother said. They want to know where you’ve been.

  Mr. Hammond winked broadly.

  I cut, he said.

  His father, he noticed, was slowly shaking his head, shaking his head, and didn’t seem to have noticed his presence in the room.

  Now, Cassie, Mr. Hammond said. You never told me he was such a rebel.

  You must go to school, his mother said, without conviction.

  Foster untied his shoelaces and hung his jacket on the tree by the door. He found himself trying to move as silently as possible, and wondered why.

  That’s some shiner, Mr. Hammond said. You need to put a steak on that.

  Instead of going up to his room, Foster took a seat on the ottoman beside his mother’s chair.

  Your mother tells me you’re having a hard time at school, Mr. Hammond said. What would you say about that?

  Jim, she said.

  Now, you see, Mr. Hammond said. This is what I mean. You have to let him answer for himself. You might as well hit him yourself as baby him, for all the good it’s going to do. So you’re cutting school, now, he continued, turning back to Foster. You’ve decided to run away from your problems.

  No, Foster said.

  I’ll tell you God’s truth, Mr. Hammond said. You’re like a nephew to me. A son, hell, you’re like a son. I held you in my arms before you could walk and I think of you in that way. It rips me up to see your face looking like that, and to know what you’re going through with those animals in that dump of a school. But, by Christ, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I thought it was good for you too.

  Stop it, Jim, his mother said. Not now.

  It’ll toughen you up.

  Jim.

  All right, Ben? Mr. Hammond said in a loud voice, as though speaking to a child.

  She can appeal, his father said, looking from face to face. Can’t she?

  He stood up and immediately toppled forward. Foster’s mother and Mr. Hammond jumped up, one to each side, to steady him. The toe of his mother’s shoe caught an empty bottle tucked beside his father’s chair and sent it rolling. Foster realized his father was blind drunk.

  Go ahead of us, John, his mother said. Open the doors.

  Foster opened the doors to the hall and the bedroom while his mother and Mr. Hammond coaxed his father forward and half-pushed, half-dragged him up the stairs. At the door to the bedroom, Mr. Hammond hesitated.

  Don’t back out now, you, his mother said. You’re the one who let him get like this.

  Cassie.

  He wouldn’t have gone there today without you. You’re the one who told him he had an obligation to see it through.

  I happen to believe that’s true.

  Oh, you happen to believe, Foster’s mother said. You happen to believe a lot of things, when it suits you. Get his shoes.

  Foster watched from the doorway while they half-undressed his father, lying now on the made bed.

  Next, a pot of strong coffee, Mr. Hammond said. He’ll want it when he wakes up. I wouldn’t mind some myself, and that’s the truth. Come here, Cassie. Don’t be angry. Tell her, sport, tell your mother not to be angry with an old friend of the family. I always mean to do the right thing.

  Much later they sat in the kitchen, the three of them, with coffee, and crackers and cheese on a plate.

  Oh, John, his mother said. This is hardly supper for a growing boy. I just can’t seem to get my mind around anything right now. I suppose there are eggs.

  I think Dad just called you.

  Did he? His mother jumped up fretfully. Coming!

  Across from him, Mr. Hammond set down his coffee cup and raised one of Foster’s mother’s good linen napkins to his lips. He watched Mr. Hammond smash a crag of cheese on a saltine with the flat of a knife, eat it in one bite, and prepare another.

  A week is a lot of school to miss, Mr. Hammond said.

  I’ll catch up.

  Oh, I know you will.

  More casual pasting of crackers.

  About the, the trial.

  Not here, sport, Mr. Hammond said. It upsets your mother. You come to the office and I’ll tell you what you want to know.

  He offered Foster a cracker. The taste was thick, salty, exquisite. Foster closed his eyes.

  Sure, you’re all right, Mr. Hammond said.

  Foster’s mother came back down.

  He’s out like a light, she said. Maybe he was having a nightmare. Or a sweet dream, Mr. Hammond said, winking at Foster.

  Her sentence was imposed the following April, on schedule, without appeal.

  John, his father’s old secretary said, with genuine warmth. I almost didn’t recognize you.

  Johnny! Mr. Hammond said. My God, you’re a monster.

  Five foot ten, Foster said. How are you, Miss Craig?

  Five ten! she said. And you’ve had a birthday, too, I think.

  Back in March.

  Fifteen years old, Miss Craig said. I can remember holding you on my knee.

  You’ll embarrass him, Mary, Mr. Hammond said. And I believe he’s here on business. I won’t have you embarrassing my clients. Hold all my calls and send my appointments away.

  All right, Mr. Hammond, she said, laughing and at the same time running a finger down the page of her bi
g book. Four o’clock is your next.

  Send them away, I tell you, Mr. Hammond said, glancing from his wristwatch to the clock on the wall above Miss Craig’s desk, which said twenty after three.

  Mr. Hammond had the office next door to the one that had been his father’s. Foster couldn’t help glancing in as they passed. A young man with a heavily Brylcreemed quiff of black hair was pitching intently into the phone.

  That’s Laster, Mr. Hammond said. Is what he rhymes with. He’s doing fine.

  He shut the door behind them and gestured toward a chair.

  It’s strange being here again, Foster said. Everything looks smaller. I know I’ve sat in this chair a hundred times –

  Spinning round and round, Mr. Hammond said. You made yourself throw up, once. You were about five.

  My dad was here a long time.

  Yes, Mr. Hammond said. Yes, he was. From the bottom of his file drawer he pulled a fifth of rye whisky, poured a shot into a paper cup, and took it into the hall, where Foster heard him top it up from the water cooler. He came back and shut the door again and sipped and grimaced.

  At first I was able to help him out a lot, Mr. Hammond said. Little mistakes, little errors of judgment. Later it got harder to cover for him. He changed, too, over the years. He never used to take things so personally, your dad. By the end he felt sorry for everybody and it was pay, pay, pay. He stopped even going through the motions of investigating claims. You’d have thought this Pass girl was his own daughter.

  Foster cleared his throat.

  I’m surprised it took you so long, frankly. To come see me. I was a little hurt. I thought maybe you didn’t trust me.

  It wasn’t that.

  Mr. Hammond crumpled his empty paper cup and fired it over his shoulder, expertly nailing the trash can in the corner of the room. Foster told him about the job his mother had got, shelving books at the local library. She had also become obsessed with the variety, economy, and nutritive value of meatless soups.

  Cassie, the older man said, laughing.

  I just couldn’t come here, right away, Foster said. I had to wait until –

  Mr. Hammond nodded.

  – over, I mean, at least for –