Roost

by Ali Bryan

  “Spit happens,” I holler after him as I pull myself to my feet.

  He shakes his head and rounds the corner.

  The grandpa calls up from the elevator shaft, a little exasperated, “A little help down here?” and an orderly comes to his rescue.

  I walk down the hall, where women with gnarly robes and engorged breasts roam around looking for ice chips and free muffins, and arrive at Allison-Jean’s room. The baby is ten pounds. They’ve named her Emma. She is bald and wears a frilly dress and matching socks.

  “Why don’t you put her in a sleeper?” I suggest to Dan. “Don’t you think she’d be more comfortable?”

  “She’s having her picture taken,” he says irritably. He, understandably, looks tired.

  “Your breath stinks,” I tell him.

  He looks at me but says nothing as Allison-Jean emerges from the bathroom. I tell her congratulations. She looks like a drug addict. Her face is covered in broken blood vessels. She picks up a stack of papers and begins filling them out with a pen when a nurse comes in the room with painkillers. I wish it were like communion and we could all take part. Dan hands her water and she swallows the contents of the cup loudly.

  “How’s your pain?” the nurse asks.

  “About a five,” Allison-Jean responds.

  They continue to converse and the nurse nods and records things on a chart and I spy through the curtain at the patient next door. Her face is puffy and pale and she has broken blood vessels along her jaw line like Allison-Jean. Her baby sits next to her in a plastic bin. I wonder if she is alone.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Dan asks.

  The girl’s arm is long and stick-like. It appears she is reaching for her glasses.

  “What?”

  “I said her middle name is JANICE.”

  “Right.” Oh Danny, you shouldn’t have.

  Dan shakes his head and Emma begins to whimper and I can only assume it’s because just hours ago she had to travel out of Allison-Jean’s vagina, and now she’s been forced to wear a small headband that looks like a garter.

  “Don’t you want to hold her?”

  Allison-Jean appears to have fallen asleep in six seconds. Her mouth is open.

  “Do I want to?” I reply, stunned. “Yes, of course I want to hold her.”

  Emma is all face. Her cheeks spill out over her eyes and chin. There is a lot of her.

  “She’s adorable,” I say, gently unwrapping the receiving blanket to examine the rest of her features. Her shoulders are furry. Dan scooches in beside me on the heater I’m using as a seat.

  “Allison-Jean disagrees, but I think she looks like Liam,” he says.

  My brother and I stare at his offspring. The only one who will never know her grandma. It makes me sad. Soon enough, Joan probably won’t remember her. I am thinking about this, attempting to re-swaddle Emma, when her lips curl into the shape of a smile. It only lasts for a second, but my brother and I both see it. We look at each other.

  “Mom,” we say, together.

  20

  When I arrive home from the hospital the house is a mess. Dad is watching curling highlights on TSN and criticizing Kevin Martin.

  “Where are the kids?”

  Dad points ambiguously.

  “Where?”

  “They’re having a bath.”

  “All of them?”

  “They wanted to.”

  “Dad, Joan can’t take a bath unsupervised!”

  I charge down the hall to the bathroom. All four kids are jammed in the tub. Bottles of shampoo and conditioner float between them. Their labels have been picked off. The water is cool. Liam is blue.

  “Did Grandpa wash your hair?” I ask, fingering through Joan’s dreadlocks.

  “Look at this, Mommy,” Wes says, holding up a wrestler. “I pulled his head off.”

  “Why would you do that?” I ask, irritated.

  I can hear Dad cheering from the hall. He says, “Come look at this replay!”

  “I’m trying to get the kids out of the tub.”

  “You’re going to miss it!”

  “That’s okay,” I assure him.

  I hear him clapping as I lift the kids out one at a time and towel them off. I brush my kids’ teeth and give Dan’s kids dental floss. After I dress Wes and Joan in their pajamas, I tell them to go pick out a book. Hannah and Liam dress themselves. I give them my bed.

  “Check it out,” my father says, pointing to the TV. “Watch this shot.”

  “Emma has Mom’s mouth.”

  Dad looks away from the screen. His posture falls apart.

  “Sorry,” I say. “But you have to see her.”

  He covers his face in a childlike way. But I don’t have time for another child.

  “Did you feed them?” I glance at the clock in the kitchen, it’s 7:30.

  “We had microwaved English muffins, cheese slices and some of that left-over chicken.”

  Who microwaves English muffins? I look at Wes, sitting at Dad’s feet with a Hot Wheels. I go into my bathroom to restock the toilet paper and feel exhausted. Other people’s grief. The new baby. I won’t have another baby. I begin digging through my drawers behind vials of separated foundation and purse tampons for my stash of cigarettes — the menthols I occasionally smoke on weekends when the kids are with Glen. There are two left in the pack. I remove one and conceal it in my hand.

  When I return to the living room, Dad is explaining curling to Wes, who grinds his teeth between saying, intermittently, “Peep!”

  “Are you peeping?” I ask him, to which my eldest responds, “Peep.”

  “Do you have a piece of paper?” Dad asks.

  “On the second shelf,” I reply, nodding in its direction.

  He gets the paper and begins drawing a sheet of ice. “This is the hog line,” he points.

  “Peep!”

  “Stop peeping!” I yell. “I have to run out and get some milk. Do you mind watching the kids for a bit longer?”

  Of course Dad does not mind because I get TSN and he has basic cable.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” I put my boots on and pick my coat up off the floor.

  Wes walks by the entryway and says, “Peep.”

  “STOP peeping. Did anyone see my keys?”

  “Me come!” Joan says.

  “Mommy will only be gone for a minute.”

  “Peep.”

  “Wes! Dad — have you seen my keys?”

  “Sorry honey, I haven’t.” He moves to the edge of the couch, drawn to the TV. “Yes!” he raises his arms in victory.

  “Peep.”

  “Where the hell are my keys?”

  Wes points to his room. I remove my boots and my left sock gets stuck so I throw the left boot angrily into the hall closet and call it a bitch.

  I find my keys on Wes’s bed. I sit down momentarily to count to ten and there to my left on his bedside table are Wes’s wrestling figurines, each with a cigarette taped to his plastic lips. Eight wrestlers smoking. Wes stands in the doorway. He yells, “Peep!” and runs into the kitchen. I sit down on the bed. Joan runs in and yells, “Peep!”

  In the living room a commercial break comes on playing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

  I sing in my head, Two peeping children, and a mo-ther-er in a pear —

  Fuck. I still haven’t put up a tree.

  21

  Our artificial tree leans to the left. Despite hours of searching, I can’t find the box of Christmas decorations. So we improvise, hanging popcorn strings and household items: a stainless steel strainer, salad tongs, and a whisk. It looks like a dollar store. I take a corkscrew off the tree and open a bottle of wine to celebrate the beginning of Christmas vacation. Wes takes a small sip.

  “Tastes like dog poop.”

  “Have you tasted dog poop?” I ask him.

  “No!” he says, amused.

  “Well then how do you know it tastes like dog poop?”

  “Becau
se it is dog poop.”

  “Right, that makes a lot of sense.”

  “Sometimes dogs eat their poop,” Wes continues.

  “Yes, that is sometimes the case.”

  “George eats his poop.”

  “Who’s George?” I ask.

  “Daddy’s new dog.”

  “Your dad doesn’t have a dog.”

  Joan pipes in and says, “Yes he does.”

  “Since when?”

  Wes shrugs and Joan says since “last year,” which in her brain could mean ten seconds or a month. She then corrects herself, holds up six fingers, and says, “Thirty pounds.”

  “He got it when Grandma got killed.”

  “Grandma didn’t get killed, Wes. She passed away.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she died.”

  “That’s what I said. She got killed.”

  I re-clip Joan’s hair and ask her what George looks like.

  “He brown.”

  “He’s brown?”

  “And he nice.”

  “Well that’s good to know.” I kiss her head before she joins her brother on the couch. I top off my wine and phone Glen. Outside it starts to snow.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” He pauses. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. We just finished decorating the tree and the kids mentioned you got a dog.”

  “Yeah. George.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought I told you that months ago.”

  “No.”

  “Oh … is that it?”

  “I was also wondering what you got the kids for Christmas.” I’m hoping he didn’t go overboard this year. I unwrap a cranberry brie from the freezer and turn on the oven. Joan and Wes begin assembling a fort out of couch cushions and blankets.

  Glen says, “I was thinking of getting them ski lessons.”

  “Ski lessons? Joan’s not even three.”

  “It’s never too early.”

  “You don’t even ski.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Since when?”

  “I’ve skied for years.”

  “Well, I think that’s weird.”

  I hang up and get drunk in the fort so I don’t have to think about Glen. Ski Glen. Latte Glen. Dog Glen. I want the original Glen. The familiar one that likes Canadian Tire flyers and chocolate milk. The one with parenting suggestions I can dismiss or plans I can kibosh. The one I can control. New, separated Glen has hobbies and opinions like new Barbie. Pet Vet Barbie. Pancake Chef Barbie. I down the rest of my wine and lie like a starfish on the living room floor. The kids fall asleep on either side of me. Whatever happened to just plain old slutty Barbie?

  22

  It’s Christmas Eve, but it seems more like a terrorist attack is pending. Crowds gather at Walcrotch to buy one of everything. I join the masses and search for a turkey. Allison-Jean comes without the baby. We meet near the optometrist’s cubby hole and divide the Christmas grocery list in half. Wes asks if he can have glasses.

  Then Dad calls and insists on meeting me there. He has not done any Christmas shopping. I’m frustrated. This is going to hold me up. I tell him to find me in the toy department. When he does, he looks frazzled. There are water droplets on his glasses and he’s wearing one of my mother’s toques.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t find a parking spot.”

  “Or a hat,” I say.

  He pulls off the angora toque and stuffs it in his pocket. The bottom third of his pants are wet. He notices me staring at them.

  “I couldn’t find my boots either. Where are my grandkids?” he asks.

  “They’re looking at Christmas decorations with Allison-Jean. She’s helping me get stuff for dinner. Who do you have left to buy for?” I ask.

  “Just the kids.”

  Overflowing carts manoeuvre noisily around us. A pair of legwarmers gets stuck on the wheel of my cart and I push them around.

  “That’s not bad,” I say. “I thought you said you hadn’t done any shopping. Any ideas of what you’d like to get them?”

  “Not a clue. Your mother would always pick out stuff for the kids.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s start with the baby.”

  We cruise to the baby aisle and he picks out some pastel coloured blocks for Emma and a singing bear. He is proud.

  “Should I get her something else … I mean, is this enough?”

  “I think what you have is fine.”

  We amble up and down the toy aisles. My father loads up the cart with plastic things as Salvation Army bells jingle in the distance. When he’s finished I lead him back to the grocery section. I see Allison-Jean near the bananas. Joan is in the cart. Wesley stands close to her side and stares at an obese person driving a scooter.

  “Why don’t you go pay for this stuff so the kids don’t see?”

  He agrees and takes possession of the cart.

  “Other way,” I call after him.

  The produce department is busy. Middle-aged people guide their elderly parents around and ask them loud questions about root vegetables and if the parents don’t respond quickly enough their middle-aged children make executive decisions — yes to the turnip, no to the parsnip.

  Wesley is still staring at the man driving through the bakery on a scooter.

  “Is that the guy from Wall-E?”

  “No, Wes.”

  Joan points to a bin of chocolate in the bulk section. “Can me have some of dis?”

  I say, “No,” and she starts whining.

  “Why?”

  “Because there are bugs in there.”

  She stares at me suspiciously. “What kind of bugs?”

  “Ones with wings and yellow eyes.”

  “Can me see those bugs?”

  “No,” I reason, “they are too small.”

  They are too small the way the bugs on all of the Dora the Explorer toys are too aggressive, too fast on the Timbits, too poisonous on the coin-operated bus in the mall food court. She stops whining and stares at the chocolate. I add a giant bag of potatoes to the cart, aware I should stop using the bug excuse.

  Can I go to Grandpa’s?

  No.

  Why? Because he has bugs?

  We finish the rest of the groceries and join a line three carts deep. Dad has finished paying and waves at us. He is in the way of people trying to get to the McDonald’s. I offer to give Allison-Jean money since I am supposed to be hosting dinner, but she refuses. She pulls into the checkout beside me. Her post-partum cart is not orderly and she loads things onto the belt with a certain recklessness. Tins of cranberry sauce, loaves of white bread for stuffing. Her short hair stands straight up. It occurs to me that I don’t really know her that well. I know her as someone who can sew, take family photos, and play piano, when we need her to. But in this moment of can tossing, not surrounded by her three kids and Dan, I sort of want to know more.

  The man in front of me watches the conveyor belt intently and when vacant space appears he taps the person in front of him and points. The lady shrugs off his tapping and hoists her ham up onto the belt. It rocks back and forth and leaks. He takes a step forward and prepares to unload his basket the second space becomes available so that he may immediately line up his endives. There’s a pleased shriek to my right, which shifts my attention to Joan who has ripped the covers off four different magazines. I pretend she hasn’t and hide them in a discarded shopping basket.

  It is snowing by the time we reach the parking lot. The flakes are large and all three of us instinctively stick out our tongues. My mother loved this type of snow. Quiet snow, she would call it. Heavy and silent. I load the kids and the groceries into the car. The nearest cart corral is full. As I look for a place to ditch the cart, someone interrupts my search and asks if he could use it.

  “Sure,” I say, turning around. I hand the cart off to someone I briefly dated in university. We share an awkward look. Uncomfortable familiarity. He reaches for the cart, n
ods his thanks, and he and a woman in a brown coat make their way towards the store. I feel nothing but the damp cuffs of my Joe Fresh pants and a sudden pang of loneliness. My mother isn’t coming for Christmas dinner and neither is Glen.

  I start the car, reverse into the fray of shoppers, and begin the slow exit from the parking lot. My dad cuts in line in front of me, with a little wave. He’s wearing my mother’s purple angora hat again, and attempts to make a left-hand turn from the right lane. Honking ensues.

  23

  The kids ask to play outside when we get home. I exchange wet mittens for dry ones and send them into the backyard. As I’m putting the groceries away, even though it’s 11:00 a.m., I open a Corona. It doesn’t seem quite right with the snow, or the hour. But it’s completely refreshing. Cathy calls and asks to come over. I welcome the company. She will see the afternoon as a project.

  Now that I have real ornaments I’m able to swap them on the tree for a combination lock and a set of wooden spoons. The top of the tree remains vacant. This will need to be remedied.

  I settle into the couch with my beer, telling myself I can take a break until Cathy arrives. The First 48 is on TV. Someone finds a body hog-tied in an alleyway. A man in his fifties with pink feet. There’s an old mattress nearby with gold thread that catches the sunlight. It’s in Miami. The investigators arrive on the scene and notice bugs on the mattress. I shiver and glance out the sliding door at the backyard. The kids are building a snowman.

  “Hello?” Cathy sings from the front door.

  “Come in,” I call.

  She hangs her coat in the closet and removes her boots.

  “Grab a beer, there’s lime on the counter.”

  She swings open the fridge and takes one.

  “Where are the kids?”

  “In the backyard.”

  She pokes her lime wedge into her bottle and licks her fingers.

  “I brought presents,” she says, cheerily.

  “I told you not to get anything.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I had to.”

  She joins me in the living room, stands at the sliding door. “Do you know Wes is using your barbecue brush as a shovel?”