The Best Thing for You (3 page)

“No,” Ty says to me.

Liam says, “Don’t say anything.”

Mr. Parmenter says clearly, “Animals.”

And now I can see it coming: like a fist, like in slow motion, I can see where it’s going to hit before it hits – a meteor closing in on its own shadow. Pinned, fascinated, I let Liam do the talking. “You are fucking out of your mind,” Liam says.

“Do you want to know what they’ve done,” Mr. Parmenter says.

I can feel Ty start to shiver like he’s cold. A big dirty yellow dog walks into the living room and falls to the floor at Jason’s feet like it’s been blackjacked. When Mr. Parmenter talks its tail thumps, grooving on the sound of the familiar voice.

“Do you want to know what they’ve done,” Mr. Parmenter repeats.

“Don’t fucking tell me anything,” Liam says. “Look at your family.” And, indeed, peripherally, I’ve been keeping an eye on Mrs. Parmenter, who is now smiling fixedly at her hands. She’s got a dozen years on me, more, with the perm and the house dress. The smile is shock. Beside her, Jason is watching Liam. Probably, it occurs to me, he’s never heard anyone talk to his dad the way Liam is talking to his dad. Probably Liam is just going up and up in his little head.

“Our boys beat up a retarded man,” Mr. Parmenter says.

I walk out of the house, then, with my son, and no one tries to stop me.

In the car, I watch him strap in, next to me, in the front. Liam is still inside.

“I know about it but I wasn’t there,” Ty says.

And I love him, I can’t help it.

Instead of asking questions, I tell him I know about it too. I tell him about the tests we ordered, the injuries. I use terminology. Inessential details come back to me as I talk – dandruff, how the fingernails needed clipping – but I leave those out. While I’m talking I put the key in the ignition and turn it to Battery so we can play the radio while we wait for Liam. I’m unafraid because I have seen and believe in mistakes.

“Will he be all right?” Ty asks, when I finish talking.

“Yes.”

We sit in silence. Finally Liam comes out the front door, closes it behind him, and jogs down the path. He gets in the back. The first thing he says is, “We need a lawyer.” I put the car in gear and pull away from the curb. The second thing he says is, “How about a drive?”

“Dad,” Ty says, but Liam puts a hand on his shoulder.

I drive us to the parking lot of Ty’s school, Carter High. I know what Liam’s thinking: they could be there, waiting for us, cruiser in the driveway. And if our son’s time is suddenly valuable, it’s most valuable to us. We get him first.

I back us up against the green chain-link fence and cut the motor. We watch a pair of older boys, shavers, go one-on-one in the court. Ty watches too, his eyes alert, even managing a brief wry smile at a goofy one-hander that shouldn’t sink but does. I wonder if he knows them.

“So what happened,” Liam says.

Ty keeps his eyes on the game. He’s thinking. To help him, I repeat everything I just said for Liam. For those moments, when I’m conscious of him knowing what I’m going to say before I say it, it’s as though he’s my husband and Liam is our son.

When I’m done, Ty says, “Jason and another guy did it. He bragged about it after, but I didn’t believe him.”

“Where were you?” Liam says.

I try to see my son’s shoes but he’s got his feet stuffed up by the heater vent, the way he always does, out of sight. Have I mentioned our car, a Jetta? And his legs are getting long?

“I was tired,” Ty says. “It was like ten, eleven? Jason went out but I stayed in bed.”

“His parents let him do that?” I say.

“Which was it, ten or eleven?” Liam says.

“His mom went to bed early and his dad had bowling league. I think ten.”

“Bowling league,” Liam says.

“But they knew you were in the house.”

“Well,” Ty says. “No.”

I do ironico-skeptical: lean back, chin down, eyebrows up. “You’re never in bed by ten.”

“Well, then, eleven.”

“Ty, which,” Liam says. “People are going to ask you this stuff.”

He’s fiddling with the dash vents, flicking them open and closed. “I don’t look at the clock right before I fall asleep.”

“You go to a sleepover and he goes out and you stay in?”

“Mom, god,” he says. “Sleepover.”

“What your mother is saying,” Liam says, “and we’re together on this, okay?, is we don’t quite believe you. We want to believe you, we’re trying, but our feeling is you are fucking around. You’re not even looking at us when you talk. Look at me.” Ty turns around. “I don’t believe what Mr. Parmenter believes, which is that you and Jason did something together. I don’t accept that. But you’re acting tricky, son. Did you watch?”

“Jesus Christ of course he didn’t watch,” I say.

“I once watched a group of white kids beat a black kid,” Liam says. “You know, beat him up. In high school. When I say watched, I was a distance away. I was aware of it going on, okay? Most of the school was aware of it going on, I would include some teachers. So I’m asking, did you watch?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you say anything when you heard about it on the news?”

He shrugs.

I ask, “Who was the other boy?”

“What?” Ty says.

“You said Jason told you he did it with another boy. Who was that?”

“I don’t know,” Ty says. “Somebody he met. Some kid. He might have been someone Jason knew but I didn’t know. Probably that’s who it was.”

“Why didn’t you go out with Jason?” Liam asks again.

Ty yawns. This time he says: “I wanted to use his computer.”

I squint at him.

“I pretended I was too tired so I could play on his computer while he was out. Like, how far away were you, Dad?”

“What?”

“From the black kid.”

Liam looks out the window for a long time without answering. I don’t realize he’s actually looking at landmarks, gauging distances, until he says, “Basketball court.”

“What were you doing on the computer?” I ask.

“What?” Ty says.

“Tyler.”

He looks at his lap. He digs a finger under his sock to scratch an ankle and I see the shoes, the Nikes, and the Indiglo watch on his left wrist. It’s exactly eight o’clock and some split seconds. “I was looking at this web site,” he says next, softly.

“What Mr. Parmenter told me,” Liam says later, “is that our son was the other boy.”

It’s 10:10. We’re sitting in the kitchen, drinking the Cabernet. Ty is up in his room. We’ve got a call in to our shy lawyer friend to ring us when she gets in, no matter when. “I shouldn’t really be drinking this, in case,” I say, pouring us more wine.

“Do you believe him?”

I raise my glass, hesitate. “Have to.”

He touches his glass to mine and I wonder what we’ve just decided, just done. “You?”

“I believe the part about the dirty web site. Would he have told us that if he didn’t have to?”

I take a deep breath, like I’m about to say something, and then I exhale.

Liam taps his mouth with his fingers, thinking. Minutes pass.

“Healthy curiosity,” I say finally, which is the succinct kernel of everything I want to say. I’m drinking faster than Liam. “At his age of fourteen.” The phone rings. “Finally.”

“Shut up,” Liam says, and answers it. It’s our very good shy lawyer friend, Isobel. “Yeah, not so,” he says. “Our son might be looking at an assault charge.”

What an amazing sentence. I shake my head. Assault charge, that’s the nut of it, right there. I’m blasted and I know it, but still I’m acting like I’m blasted. “Amazing,” I say.

“Kate, quiet.” Liam looks at me while he listens to Isobel. Then he looks away. “Well, you know. You can pretty much guess.”

“Hi, Isobel,” I say loudly.

“She says hi,” Liam says to me, relaying. “She says she knows a great criminal lawyer.”

“Great!” I say.

I go upstairs to Ty’s room. “It’s me,” I say from outside, and then I go in. It’s dark except for the liquid crystal light of the computer screen on his face. He’s playing a green game. He plays a lot of games because we don’t let him have the Internet in his room. I lean in the door frame like he’s taken my crutches.

“Mom.” He doesn’t look up, joylessly savaging the joystick.

“You’re gonna be a pilot,” I say, and then he looks at me. I lean down to pull the plug out of the wall and the room goes dark. The computer takes a few last seconds to die, strangely lifelike with its falling whine.

“Ah, Mom?” he says. “You could wreck it that way. You could have just wrecked it right there.”

“You shouldn’t be playing games right now,” I say. “Go to bed.” I drop the plug on the carpet and go back down to the kitchen.

“Isobel says we’re looking at the Young Offenders Act,” Liam says. “I guess I knew that without knowing it. Also there are some changes pending in the legislation, apparently.”

I take my wineglass out to the front step. I stand in the doorway, looking at our street. It’s warm. There are stars and cars and rags of cloud.

“Let’s drink inside.” Behind me, Liam tries to get my elbow. I walk down the steps so he follows. I sit on the grass so he sits on the grass. “Almost done?”

“You made that up about the black kid, right?”

“No.”

I look at him.

“I didn’t make it up,” he says defensively, like I was accusing him of something. “You never watched somebody do something bad?”

I go down on my elbows.

“Oh, don’t do that. Don’t settle in.”

I toss the rest of my wine behind me into the bushes so it won’t spill and set the glass on the grass. It falls over. I lie down and tell the stars, “I think it’s hitting me.”

I feel Liam lie down beside me.

“Can you imagine what they must be going through?” I mean the Parmenters.

“You just knew the dad was going to be at bowling league, or something,” Liam says. “I don’t want to imagine what they’re going through. I don’t want to think about their ugly lives at all. Do you think it’s obvious we don’t want Jason coming over any more, or should we spell it out?”

I ponder. “I think it’s obvious.”

Across the street, a light goes out in an upstairs window. Liam says, “The neighbourhood is watching us.” He sits up. “Ah, Jesus. How’re we going to keep this quiet?”

“Not by talking about it on the front lawn.”

“My point.” He tugs at me but I don’t give. I think of the backyard – plumbing trenches, plastic sheeting, rock dust – a
dark, crowded disorder we’re paying for but don’t totally control. I don’t want to go back there.

“There’s nothing to hide,” I say. “He didn’t do anything.”

Liam picks at the grass.

“So they beat the shit out of the black kid,” I say.

“On the playing field at recess. Someone went after him pretty much every day. That day was just a little worse. I wasn’t even watching, it was going on in the background kind of thing. I was sitting with my friends talking about the Canucks or whatever. I only remember because the rumour was he went to hospital after. He was back in school the next day, though. I’m saying that was one tough kid. And his name just came back to me, how’s this for weirdness: Taylor. Okay?”

“High schools don’t have recess.”

“You’re right, they don’t,” Liam says. “What am I thinking of?”

My stomach gurgles. “That child ate food in our house.”

We lie quietly for a while under the constellations. I get the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt and then I’m stumped. For a while my ignorance frustrates me, but then I think: I’m urban. Is there any reason why I should know these things?

“Well,” Liam says, and waits.

“I was going to take him shopping tomorrow.”

“Well, do that,” he says.

“Are we hungry?”

“We are. Wow. Now that you say it, I realize.”

“Kind of like the Young Offenders Act.”

The day is pretty much over. Our voices are the only voices around.

“Maybe do the shopping in the afternoon,” Liam says. “I forgot to mention, Isobel figures they’ll probably drop by in the morning.”

“They.”

“They, them. You know who I mean.”

We hear the front door and Ty’s step on the porch. I can’t see him, but he must be looking down at us. “Hey, you guys are lying on the lawn,” he says.

“I already told you to go to bed,” I say. “They’re coming for you in the morning.”

“Did you come out here to lecture us on deviant behaviour?” Liam says.

We hear the door close behind him.

“I think I’ve handled this pretty well so far,” Liam says.