Roost

by Ali Bryan

He rounds the corner and hands me a dog. It looks like an Ewok. A mix of pug and Shih Tzu.

  “Found him in the bathroom,” he says. He pats it lovingly on the head. I stare at Lenny, speechless.

  “Good night,” he says. “If it helps, he just went to the bathroom.”

  “That doesn’t help,” I reply.

  As I’m carrying the dog to my car, cradled in my arm, my father’s Taurus pulls up to the curb. I notice Joan is asleep as I pass the back seat. My dad is slow to get out of his vehicle. I want to hit him and hug him. Shake him violently, rock him like a baby.

  “Dad,” I whisper, as he comes up the walk. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  He reaches out and pets the dog. “I see you found Paul.”

  “Paul? Dad there is dog shit all through the house! What were you thinking?”

  “Not in the bedroom,” he argues. “Paul was never allowed in the bedroom.”

  I stare at him in disbelief. “You should have said something earlier. You should have asked for help.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” He puts his hands up. They tremble.

  Wes lets himself out of the car. “A puppy!” he cries.

  “Back in the car, Wes.”

  “But I want to see the puppy!” He makes fists with his hands and jumps.

  “BACK in the car,” I repeat sternly.

  Wes starts to whine.

  “I set up a bed for you,” I tell my father.

  “I’ll be fine,” he argues, pointing to the house.

  “No, you will not be fine. Nothing about this situation is fine. You can’t go back in there. You can’t sleep there.”

  “Claudia, I really am fine.”

  “Just come to my place. At least until it’s all cleared out.” A next-door neighbour peers through her front window blinds. At the truck. The bits of debris littering the driveway. Seconds later her husband joins her. Dad takes note.

  He caves. “Fine. Let me just get a few things.”

  “I’ll wait here,” I say.

  The temperature drops and wind comes out of nowhere. I shiver. Paul licks my neck. I strain so he doesn’t get my lips. My dad emerges several minutes later empty-handed. I get into the car and place the dog on the front passenger seat next to me. Does it have fleas? My father finally gets in his car and sits behind the wheel.

  “I didn’t know Grandpa got a dog!” Wes exclaims.

  “Neither did I, Wes.” I don’t even know if Grandpa knows he got a dog. I think about Glen with George, Dad with Paul. Am I also supposed to get a pet? Am I allowed to get a dog?

  My convoy and I return home close to 9:00 p.m. I carry Joan in first. Accidentally take her to her room before remembering her bed is now in Wes’s room. I am sweating by the time I plunk her down. I take off her snow boots and go back out for Wes, passing my dad on the way. I wonder if he will be offended if I ask him to shower.

  “So do you have bugs on you? Right now?”

  “No,” my father replies sternly.

  “Can the dog sleep in my room?” Wes asks hopefully. Paul barks as if in agreement.

  “No way. Paul is sleeping outside.”

  As soon as we’re in the house, I tell Wes to put on his pajamas, and Paul starts barking.

  “Shut up, Paul!”

  Dad sits down at the kitchen table. I put Wes to bed, then I join my father.

  “Are you hungry? Can I make you anything to eat?”

  “No, Allison-Jean made a big roast beef dinner.”

  “How was Dan?”

  “We haven’t spoken,” he says.

  “He’s just upset. He’ll come around.”

  I observe my father in search of understanding. His garment of shame is slight; a mere pocket square in a jacket. It pisses me off. I want him to wear it like a Hazmat suit.

  “I don’t see why this is such a big deal,” he says. “My stuff has nothing to do with you or Dan or anyone else.”

  “YOU HAD SHIT ON THE FLOOR,” I say slowly and loudly. “I couldn’t step foot in my bedroom because it was filled to the top with NOTHING.”

  “That hasn’t been your bedroom for nearly twenty years!”

  “You had to have an exterminator!”

  “I didn’t need one!”

  “You got bedbugs!

  “They weren’t bedbugs!” he says, slamming his fist on the table. The movement sets one of Joan’s mechanical hamsters into motion. Like a lemming, it wheels itself right off the table. Paul runs in the room and sniffs it on the floor. “Dr. Harvey said it was just a skin infection.”

  “Yeah, well no wonder you got a skin infection. The junk people are coming back tomorrow. I think you should be there.” I get up from the table. “I think you should go to bed now.”

  45

  I get up early the next morning and drive to Walmart to buy my dad a few things. Large underwear, deodorant, a package of Stanfield’s undershirts and track pants because I don’t know his exact size. When I return home, I place the items on the table and make him breakfast. I suggest he give Paul a bath. Joan is enthralled with the dog.

  “Keep?” she asks.

  “No, honey. Paul is Grandpa’s dog.” I pick Paul up. “He doesn’t look like a boy.”

  “Paul’s a girl?” Wes asks. “Can we change his name?”

  “Grandma,” Joan suggests.

  “No, we are not naming the dog Grandma,” I tell her.

  “What was Grandma’s name?” Wes asks. He traces the liver spots on my dad’s hands.

  “Janice,” Dad answers.

  “What about her middle name?”

  “Mildred.” Dad chuckles. “After her own mother. She hated that name.”

  I flash back to the photo of Mildred that Dan gave Mom for her birthday.

  “I don’t mind it,” I say. “Anyway, the dog already responds to Paul. It’s short for Pauline. We’re not changing its name.”

  Joan takes her oatmeal to the floor and eats beside the dog. “Hi, Janice,” she says.

  “Paul, Joan. Her name is Paul.”

  She fishes out a handful of oatmeal and attempts to feed Paul. “Here, Janice,” she says.

  “Joan!” I look for my father to intervene but he’s preoccupied picking bacon out of his teeth with the hand of one of Wes’s wrestlers.

  “Gross,” I comment. “Remember, you’re supposed to be at home soon. We need to go.”

  My dad quickly gets his shoes and pulls his keys from his pocket. He gets into his car while I hurry the kids into their car seats. As we’re pulling down the driveway, Wes says, “Mommy, I want to have a party for Daddy.”

  “A party for Daddy? Why do you want to do that? His birthday is in August.”

  “Because he sold some of his paintings and I think we should celebrate.”

  “That’s very thoughtful,” I tell him. “But can’t you ask for something more reasonable? Like a DS or LEGO?”

  “Can I have a DS?”

  “No.”

  He growls. I can’t wait to get to work. I spend the morning reviewing a sponsorship request for a theatre group’s upcoming production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I call the director and say, “Yes.”

  Cathy and I meet for lunch.

  “Wes wants to have a party for Glen.”

  “What for?” she asks, pushing olives from her salad to the side of her plate.

  “Because he sold some paintings.”

  “Yeah, I saw that in the paper.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Herald did a story on him.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “I assumed you would have seen it.”

  I take one of the olives from her plate. “No, I didn’t. I normally read the paper at work but I was off yesterday.”

  “Travel day?”

  “Sort of. I needed to help my father.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  I pause before confessi
ng, take a large sip of my Perrier. Then I whisper, “He started hoarding.”

  “Hoarding?” She looks confused. “Like cats?”

  “Why cats?”

  “Isn’t that what most people hoard?”

  “No, like garbage and things. Well, I guess there was a dog living there.”

  Cathy’s eyes widen. She tears open a piece of dark seedy bread and slathers it with butter. “That sounds bad.”

  I provide her with the lowlights.

  She places her knife down. “Geez. That’s … wow. I’m sorry, Claud. Were there any signs?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s just stuff, though, right? I mean, stuff can be replaced. He’s okay?”

  “He’s staying with me until it’s cleaned up.”

  “Wow,” she repeats.

  “It’s fucked. And on top of all this, Wes wants to have a party. What do I do? I don’t want to have a party for Glen. I hate him right now.”

  Cathy waves down a server. “Could I have some more water, please?”

  “He’s getting on my nerves.”

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “And …” I lean in. “I think he’s frigging seeing someone.”

  Cathy’s jaw does not drop. Her eyebrows do not hit the ceiling. “That was bound to happen at some point. It’s been a couple years now, no?”

  “Depends on when you start counting. Either way, I’m not ready.”

  She nods. “When you’re ready, I have complete confidence that you will have no problem meeting someone.”

  “I mean I’m not ready for Glen to move on.” I consider telling her about Carl as proof of my own readiness to move forward, but the memory is uncomfortable. Is this why she is still single? Is it simply a matter of “readiness”?

  “Just throw the party, Claudia, keep it simple. Don’t over-think it. Get a cake and some chips and let Wes make him a card.”

  I sigh.

  “Do it for Wes,” Cathy says. “And let me get this.” She scans the restaurant for our server and sees him at the back entering things on a touch-screen computer. “You hoo,” she calls quietly, attempting to get his attention. He does not respond, so she takes her napkin and waves it high above her head. A white flag. Surrender.

  I’ll have the party.

  46

  “So what kind of cake do you want for Daddy’s party?”

  “Chocolate!” Wes yells from his car seat.

  “With sparkles,” Joan adds.

  “You mean sprinkles,” I correct.

  “No, sparkles, you idiot!” she says, slapping her legs.

  “Joan?” I say with astonishment. “How many times do I have to tell you this? You do not call your mother an idiot!” I stare at her in the rear-view mirror and she half-rolls her eyes. “For that matter you don’t call anyone an idiot. Do you even know what an idiot is?”

  “A stupid idiot.”

  “No, an idiot is not a stupid idiot. That doesn’t even make sense. It’s not a nice thing to call someone an idiot. I don’t want to hear you say idiot or stupid.”

  “Can we say stupididiot like it’s one big word?”

  “Wes,” I say, in warning. “Now I was trying to ask you what kind of cake you want for your father.”

  “I already told you chocolate.” He kicks the back of the seat in front of him.

  “WHAT KIND OF ICING?” I ask loudly and sternly.

  “Poop icing.”

  Both kids laugh. I think of my mother when she was the driver and I was in the back seat observing her. Most of the time she had her driving face on: focused and rigid. But the odd time I’d look up and catch her smiling at something I couldn’t see and though I never found out what it was, it was always comforting.

  “Why are you smiling, Mommy?”

  “Just because,” I whisper.

  Once home, thinking about what to make for dinner, I open the fridge and find the top two shelves stuffed with meat. It looks like a butcher shop. “Dad, do you know why there’s all this meat thawing in here?”

  “I thought I’d take something out for dinner,” he says. He’s sitting on the couch, reading.

  “Something? There’s enough meat in here to feed an army.”

  My dad suddenly looks nervous. He puts his book down and comes into the kitchen. I’ve got the fridge open for Dad to see, and Joan systematically starts emptying the door of its condiments, which includes four different kinds of mustard. I look at the kids as if they’re to blame for the lot of mustard.

  “Who bought all this mustard?” I ask.

  “I think it was Daddy,” Wes says.

  He is of course wrong. Glen hates mustard, but I go with it.

  “I think you’re right, Wes. And the syrup too. There are two bottles of syrup and both are open. I think Daddy did that too.”

  “He did,” Wes agrees.

  What else did Daddy do, I wonder, looking around the house. There is a spot of nail polish on the couch. Glen’s fault. The countertops are peeling. Glen. My jacket’s abandoned on the floor of the front hall. Still Glen. I could do this all day.

  “Seriously, Dad, why did you take all this meat out?”

  I go to open the freezer. Dad reaches out like he might intervene. His mouth opens but he doesn’t speak.

  “What the hell?”

  “Sorry,” he apologizes nervously. “It’s just temporary. Just until I can get back into my house.”

  “I told Lenny to throw these out!” I remark, counting the stack of casseroles five high and two deep. “Tell me you did NOT take these out of the garbage.”

  “They were still in the freezer,” he insists.

  “They are old.” I close the freezer and survey the farm melting in my fridge. “How are we supposed to eat all of this, Dad? That’s a week’s worth of meat.”

  “I’ll cook it,” he promises.

  “Keep your shoes on!” I say as Wesley sits down to yank off his Cars sneakers. Joan, hearing the order, kicks her Crocs across the front hall.

  “Put those back on.”

  “You do it,” she says.

  “No. You kicked them off, you put them back on.”

  She shakes her head defiantly. I walk over and remove some shitty McDonald’s toy from her fingers and toss it in the cupboard above the sink. She shrieks, as I expected she would. I am irritated and hungry.

  “Put your shoes back on and you can have it back.”

  She jumps around and I ignore her. I grab my iPhone and order KFC.

  The dinner arrives with a free strawberry cheesecake. I pull it out of the bag and slide it onto the counter. It smells like flavoured massage oil and I hate flavoured massage oil. It’s like spraying rose-scented aerosol on a poop. The resulting smell is rose-poop. Cheesecake on a crotch. Cheesecake-crotch. I messily set the table, dumping the napkins and individually wrapped plastic cutlery into a giant heap. I need to get out of the house.

  While we’re eating, I say to the kids, “Let’s do something. What is something fun that you’d like to do?”

  Wes dips a fry in ketchup. “Go to Disney World?”

  “Something like that, but a little closer to home.”

  “Swimming! Let’s go swimming.”

  I check my watch and wonder how late the pool’s open.

  “Do you think we have time?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Wes replies affirmatively.

  “Joan, do you want to go swimming?”

  She picks out a wedgie and nods her head.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. If we want to go swimming then everyone needs to cooperate and do what Mommy says. Wes, you go get your swim trunks and put them on — without your underwear underneath — then put your jogging pants and T-shirt back on.”

  “What about my socks?”

  “Skip ’em. Joan, you come with me to get your bathing suit on.” I pause. “Dad, wanna come?”

  “No, you go,” he says. “I’ll clean up here.” He gestures to the table, partially stands
, but it’s to take another piece of chicken from the tub.

  Joan follows me excitedly to her room. I dig out a Little Swimmer from last summer. She fusses a bit but cooperates as I shove her legs through the small holes. Her thighs bulge outward like the limbs of a balloon animal. I put her pajamas on over top and tell her to wait by the door while I round up towels and get myself ready. I tuck my pubic hair into my suit.

  By the time both kids are at the door with their Crocs on, Dad’s started cooking the farm for a hundred future meals. I tell him where the Tupperware is. He opens the cupboard releasing a landslide of lids.

  “Now, who’s ready to go swimming?”

  My kids scream “ME!” simultaneously.

  I pile them into the car, one car seat at a time, and though the buckle on Joan’s seat belt has slipped into the crack at the base of the seat and the subsequent retrieval causes me to flatten my finger like a breast in a mammogram, I remain externally calm. When we get to the pool, the parking lot is empty and I revert to internal motherfucker/asshole commentary. I pull up front.

  “Wait right here. Mommy will be back in just a sec.”

  I leave my door open and head directly for the sign posted on the main door: Close for Mainence. Clearly written by a university professor. I run back to the car and jump inside.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

  “Mommy just went to the wrong pool by mistake. We have to go to the other pool.”

  “The one with the big pirate ship?” Wes asks, hopeful.

  “No, not that one. We’ll do that one soon.” Soon meaning when he’s fifteen.

  “What other pool is there?”

  “I want to go swimming.”

  “We are going swimming, Joan. We’re just going to another pool instead.”

  I pull into the parking lot of a Quality Inn with a waterslide visible through the glass roof of the hotel pool.

  “Wait right here.” I say this again, despite knowing they are trapped between opposing layers of twisted seat belt. They both look at me like thanks for the suggestion, dumbass.

  I walk into the hotel and go to the front desk, prepared to trade my foot for access to the pool.

  “Checking in?”

  “Actually no. I’m just wondering, is your pool for public use?”

  “It is, as a matter of fact.” She gives me the pricing.