Roost

by Ali Bryan

  I ask the same questions in slightly different ways hoping to extract more information about my mother’s condition, but his answers remain the same. She is alive, she is okay, she is being looked after. We hang up with plans to talk tomorrow and I repeat my father’s words: “She is alive, she is okay, she is being looked after.”

  I pace the kitchen, unsure of everything. Why am I here? Then I climb back up onto the chair with my chisel. A section of border peels clear with a single tug. I drop it to the floor and start scraping the next. It is less forgiving. Why was my mother swimming outside the roped-off area? Even without her glasses, didn’t she have to duck under a rope? Why did no one notice her? I apply more pressure to the rooster. Why would the boat drive that close to the swimming area? Paper flutters to the floor. She doesn’t even like swimming. She likes organized tours and museum talks. Not buffets and soca music. Maybe a driving range if she’s feeling adventurous. She should be in Paris. I wipe my brow on my sleeve. I’ve cleared another three roosters along with much of the supporting drywall. The plaster dusts my countertops and cheeks like flour.

  7

  At breakfast Wesley looks up from his scrambled eggs and stares at the remains of the border in the kitchen.

  “Why are some of the roosters wearing blindfolds?” he asks.

  “They have cataracts. Like Grandpa.”

  He adds more ketchup to his egg while Joan counts her Mini-Wheats.

  “One, sixteen, ninety hundred.”

  “What are cataracts?”

  “It’s when your eyes get cloudy.”

  “But Grandpa doesn’t wear a blindfold.”

  “Yes, but Grandpa isn’t a rooster. Finish your egg.”

  The phone rings.

  “Who is it?” Wes asks.

  “It’s your Uncle Dan,” I reply, looking at the call display.

  “You heard about Mom?” my brother asks.

  “Yes, Dad called last night.”

  “So, you haven’t talked to him this morning?” He’s upset.

  “No,” I reply, helping Joan down from her chair. “Get dressed,” I whisper, pointing towards her room. “He called you this morning?”

  “Mom is not doing so well,” he says.

  “What’s different from last night?”

  I jam diapers in Joan’s backpack and glance up at the Turtle Grove Daycare calendar on the fridge.

  “According to Dad, decreases in her motor and verbal responses.”

  The calendar indicates that today is Orange Day.

  “Wes, go put on an orange shirt! Yesterday she wasn’t even speaking. How can her verbal response decrease?”

  “I don’t know, Claudia. I just know that Dad said she was worse. I called and got a flight in a couple hours. I’m heading out now.”

  “Dad didn’t call me.” I toss Joan’s backpack towards the front door. Wes hurries out of his room and parks himself an inch from the TV. “That is not an orange shirt, Wes. Go back and get an orange one. Dan, should I go?”

  “It’s up to you.”

  “I can’t go!”

  “No one said you had to,” he says, irritated. “Geez.”

  “I can’t just take off work like you.”

  He sighs. “Hold on a minute. It looks fine.”

  “What looks fine?”

  He whispers, “Allison-Jean cut off all her hair.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yes, all of it.

  “And it looks fine?”

  “No, it doesn’t look fine, it looks horrible. Why would they do that to her?”

  “I’m sure it looks fine.”

  “I promise!” he calls out from the mouthpiece. “You look beautiful.”

  “Just call me when you get there.” I bite my tongue, then add, “Mom will be glad to see you.”

  I hang up the phone and search for orange clothes in my children’s bedrooms and make Wes put on his soccer jersey.

  “Do I have soccer today?”

  “No.”

  “Then how come I’m wearing my soccer shirt?”

  “Because it’s Orange Day.”

  “And I have soccer on Orange Day?”

  “No, Wes! You haven’t had soccer in three months. Do you honestly think you were just randomly going to have soccer again?”

  “Yes?”

  I say fuck in my head and move on to Joan. I stop her from chewing her toenails and dress her in a peach shirt that is too small.

  “We’re going to be late,” I tell them, gathering Wes’s backpack, turning off the TV, and moving us all out the front door.

  Outside the morning fog has yet to dissipate causing everything to appear under strain. A typical October day in Halifax: bare and wet, grey and swollen, the storm drains leaf-blocked and foaming, the pigeons distended and mumbling.

  “Put on your seat belt, Wes.”

  I drop them off at Turtle Grove and return to the car wondering if the hospital in Cuba is white and institutional or resort-like and merrily inappropriate. I imagine the latter, a place saturated with colour and whimsy: fuchsia gauze and swan-shaped towels, umbrella-pricked cherries in the IV bags, and limbo competitions in the common room. When I leave the daycare I do not go to the office. Instead I call my boss and tell him about my mother, pledging to work from home as I wait for an update. He agrees and I leave Turtle Grove hopeful. The fog has lifted by the time I reach the house.

  Glen is on the front step.

  “What are you doing here?” I call out to him, retrieving my laptop from the passenger seat.

  “I just ran into your brother at Starbucks. He said he was on his way to the airport. Your mom was in an accident?”

  “Yeah, but she’s okay,” I assure him.

  “Yeah?” He pauses. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Dad said they were looking after her.”

  He paces around the front step while I fiddle with the key in the lock.

  “Dan said she sounded pretty bad.”

  “Well yes, Glen, she got run over by a boat, but she is fine.”

  “Okay,” Glen says defensively, “I just thought because Dan was going there that things were more serious than that.”

  I open the door and he follows me in. “He’s mostly going to look out for my dad.”

  Glen rests his hands on his hips and exhales loudly. “That’s good then.”

  “Besides, you know Dan. He overreacts to everything and needs to feel important. If anything he’ll probably get in the way. Remember the time we went camping at Dollar Lake and it started storming and there was lightning? He told everyone to stand under a tree.”

  He shrugs. “Didn’t you suggest we go in the tent?”

  “A tent is safer than under a tree!”

  “It was full of metal poles.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  He sighs.

  “If I needed to be in Cuba, my dad would have said, Claudia, you need to come to Cuba. Since when did you start wearing turtlenecks?”

  “What’s wrong with my turtleneck?”

  “Nothing really.”

  “So you’re fine then?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Tell your mom I’m thinking of her and that I hope she gets better quickly.”

  “Yep,” I say, opening the door for him.

  “Do you mind?” He hands me his empty Starbucks cup and heads out the door. I retreat to the kitchen and open my laptop and begin searching for flights to Cuba, placing Glen’s coffee cup on the table beside me, wondering when he started drinking lattes.

  8

  I tell the kids about Grandma when I pick them up from Turtle Grove. Wes kicks at a pile of red and orange maple leafs.

  “What happened?” he asks. “Did she eat too many Smarties?”

  “No,” I tell him, “she did not eat too many Smarties.”

  “Did she jump off a building?”

  “Wesley! What kind of question is that? No, she didn’t jump off a building. She was
hit by a boat.”

  He says, “Cool.”

  “It’s not cool,” I tell him. “Grandma really hurt her head.”

  “Alexander’s father got a nail in his eye and now he has a fake eye that he can pull in and out of his head. I think it’s made of rubber.” He pauses. “What kind of boat was it?”

  I think before I respond. If I mention fruit, Wes will go to school tomorrow and tell his classmates Grandma was run over by a giant banana.

  “A big one.”

  “Did she bleed?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, getting irritated. “She is very sick and we’re going to go home and make her a get-well card.”

  I look at him in the rear-view mirror. I can tell he is dreaming up more gory details of his grandmother’s fate. Joan picks at her blanket. She looks tired.

  We get home and have breakfast for dinner. Afterwards I get an update from Dan, who’s just visited Mom in the hospital.

  “She looks like shit,” he says. “Her face is purple and black and the sides of her head have been shaved. She’s covered in stitches.”

  Joan’s Cabbage Patch Kid pops into my head.

  “Is she speaking?”

  “Not yet. The doctors say that could be one of the side effects of a concussion.”

  “Concussion,” I repeat. “But she’s awake?”

  “Yes, she’s awake. She just doesn’t respond when you talk to her.”

  “How’s Dad?”

  “He’s a mess. He’s still wearing his swim trunks.”

  “The red ones missing the crotch netting?”

  “Yes, those ones.”

  “Well, frig, help him!”

  “Claudia,” he yells into the phone, “what the hell do you think I’m doing down here?”

  “Put those dinosaurs back in the bin,” I tell the kids, who pay no attention because Chuggington the asshole train is on.

  “Is she allowed to fly home?”

  “In a few days,” Dan says, “but it might be a long recovery. Her arm is broken and her ribs are bruised.” A calypso version of “I Just Called to Say I Love You” plays in the background.

  “What’s the hospital like?”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “The beds are really small and there was quite a bit of dust underneath them, but the equipment looks modern and I saw the nurses washing their hands.”

  “Is she eating?”

  “Seems to be. And I had her moved to a room with a window.”

  “I’m sure she appreciates that.”

  “Oh, she does.”

  I roll my eyes. “So it sounds like everything is under control.”

  “The doctor’s optimistic.”

  “Good.” I sigh. “I have software training.”

  “Oh,” he says. Why am I telling him this? Our mother’s in the hospital in Cuba.

  “All day Friday. Saturday too.” I qualify my busyness. “Hey, tell Mom I love her. And the kids are making her a card.”

  “Yep,” he replies. “Okay, I need to go find Dad some pants.”

  I hang up and load the top rack of the dishwasher with glasses and watch milk drip through to the bottom. I think about my mother. Her broken arm and patched-up head. How she can knit sweaters and polish floors and roast things. How good she was in the delivery room when I had Wes, until she started singing. That part was annoying. I panic for a minute knowing I can’t just hop in the car and go see her.

  “Mommy?” Wes points a plastic gun the size of a toothpick at my face.

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher?”

  “Because they’re dirty, Wes, and don’t point that thing at my face.”

  “Those ones aren’t,” he says, pointing at dishes in the bottom rack.

  I take the gun and toss it on the counter. “Well, they are now.”

  “Is Grandma going to die?”

  “Of course not.” I ruffle his brown hair.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “So she’s still going to bring me something back from her trip?”

  I close the dishwasher and lean against it with my arms crossed. My look is one of disappointment but it goes over Wesley’s head. He retrieves the gun and spins it in his hands, waiting for my response.

  “Your question is inappropriate.”

  He rolls his eyes and leaves the room. Stops momentarily to discard his socks. His feet are delicate and narrow and I remember kissing them in the delivery room when he was new and pristine and tasted like heaven.

  “Brush your teeth,” I call after him.

  I get a second wind when they’re in bed, pour a glass of wine, and paint my toenails a garish pink in the living room. Napa Valley wine, brothel-like polish. I stare at the wall between coats and try to imagine my mother’s face, but all I see is the French woman who had the first face transplant. Her chin is small and pointy. Nothing like my mother’s, which is wide and rather square. I reach for my lip balm in the dimly lit room. I have her thin lips.

  9

  Dan sends a text in the morning. Mom is acting strange. She can’t taste her food and her blood pressure has dropped.

  I text back, What does the doctor think?

  He writes, He says all her symptoms are typical of a head injury.

  I reply, Let me know if anything changes.

  I get ready for work.

  After dropping the kids off at Turtle Grove, I call Glen and ask him if he can take the kids to daycare tomorrow morning and pick them up after, for his weekend with the kids. It’s a bit of a special request, but he’s always liked my mother. She indulged him. Praised his accomplishments, stocked relish in her fridge for him. He agrees to the extra day of parenting.

  At work I am hustled into meetings for most of the morning. I periodically check my phone for updates.

  Dan sends me a picture of a skinny cat with a tight ballsack outside their suite at the resort with the message: mom in physio this morning.

  I reply, is she being neutered?

  He ignores my joke and sends the correct thumbnail of my mother. She appears to be performing circles with her good arm. The other is tucked beneath her nightgown. The side of her head is shaved as Dan described.

  She doesn’t look too bad, I write.

  Look at her face, he replies.

  I zoom in on my mother’s head and observe the network of stitches on her cheek. Her eye is black. The nurse in the background wears a white cap on her head and is standing in front of a barred window.

  Does that window have bars on it?

  My brother doesn’t reply.

  The kids come home from daycare with collages of orange things.

  “What’s that?” I ask Joan, pointing to a series of lines on her picture.

  “Dat’s a cat squirrel,” she replies.

  “What’s a cat squirrel?”

  “It orange.”

  “Oh. Thanks for clarifying that.” I stick her picture on the fridge on top of some others, but the magnet fails and a pile of artwork sails to the floor. She helps pick it up.

  “I’ll put the cat squirrel on top,” I say, filing through the stack.

  “Put mine up too!” Wes chimes in, presenting his own collage. “That’s you Mommy,” he says, pointing to a person in an orange T-shirt with what appears to be a cleft palate.

  “Nice, Wes. Listen kids, Daddy is going to pick you up tomorrow morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mommy has to work tomorrow and I have to be there really early.”

  “Can me come?” Joan asks.

  I correct her, “Can I come. And no.”

  “I thought we were going to make Grandma a get-well card?”

  “Yes, but I think instead of a card we’ll make her a welcome-home sign we can take to the airport.”

  Wes jumps with enthusiasm. I tell him to get the craft box from the shelf. Then I hear a familiar knuckle knock on the door — the one where Gle
n doesn’t wait for me to open it

  “What’s up?” I say.

  He wipes his feet in the entry and takes off his jacket, which is wet. “My last appointment cancelled,” he says, shivering. “Thought I’d take them tonight. Give you some extra time in the morning.”

  “Right.” I ask him, “Are you still selling speculums?”

  “No,” he says. “Neurological products.”

  I stare at him.

  “Genetic tests. To detect things like epilepsy.”

  “What else?”

  “Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, some cancers.” He fixes his hair in the mirror. “I told you that a while ago.”

  This is when he started drinking lattes. Tim Horton’s was fine when he sold what Wes referred to as “water guns to open your front bum.”

  “We haven’t even eaten dinner.”

  “What are you making?” Glen asks Wes, moving past me and kissing him on the cheek.

  “A welcome-back sign for Grandma.”

  “Wes,” I interject, “you need a bigger piece of paper. Grandma will not be able to read that.”

  He sighs and moves the apple-shaped Post-it note to the side, and then he grabs the jumbo pad of construction paper from Joan’s hands. She stands up in her chair and screams before jabbing him in the forehead with a marker. Glen and I each grab a kid before the situation escalates.

  “I’m hungry,” Wes cries.

  I tell him to choose a piece of paper from the pad and then give it back to Joan while I search the cupboards for something to eat. Our options are canned salmon, slivered almonds, and Panko breadcrumbs.

  “Why don’t I buy pizza?” Glen offers.

  “You’re staying for dinner?” I hike up my jeans, which are loose from not being washed.

  “Not if you’re having that,” he says, pointing to the salmon.

  “Fine. Order pizza. And don’t get pineapple on it because you’re the only one who likes it.”

  “Wes likes pineapple on his pizza.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Wesley, do you like pineapple on your pizza?”

  He looks up from the construction paper and nods absentmindedly.

  “Take the wrestler out of your mouth,” I order. “You’re going to hurt your teeth.”