The Better Mother (2 page)

Miss Val looks down at his bent head, the concentration lining his small face. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“It’s Danny,” he says, without looking up.

“Danny, that’s real silk satin. Some of the new girls, they go cheap on the costumes, but not me. Here.” Miss Val reaches around and pulls the belt from her robe. “Take this. You seem to love it even more than I do.” She threads the long, narrow piece of silk through the loops on his shorts, passing it through twice and then knotting it in a symmetrical little bow at his belly, firmly over the pack of cigarettes in his waistband. Briefly, Danny feels her fingers in his hair, riffling the strands
until goosebumps rise on the back of his neck. “You remind me of a little boy I knew once,” she says. She straightens and laughs; her cigarette is now no more than a stub in her fingers. “Of course, you’re much more special. I wouldn’t give away bits of my costume to just anyone, you know.”

“Thank you so much, Miss Val. I can keep this for real?”

“Yes, honey, for real. It’s been a long time since any kid looked at me with those big saucer eyes, so that’s your reward.” Miss Val cocks her head at him and smiles, the sharp lines of her jaw and neck relaxing into a soft blur of skin that reminds him of the cheeks on his mother’s face. She throws her spent cigarette into a puddle. “Look at that. I’m getting lost in memories, like an old woman.” She runs a finger down Danny’s left ear. “You should run off and deliver those smokes to your dad before he goes looking for you. Don’t want to be caught with a used-up stripper in an alley, do you?”

Danny doesn’t quite understand what Miss Val means, but nods anyway. He knows that these few minutes have changed everything about him, and that he will forever be a different Danny—maybe even a glamorous, salty, fearless one. If his father weren’t waiting and likely pacing in the shop’s front window, Danny would stay and ask Miss Val how she became this lovely, silk-covered being. Maybe she had to break free from something as boring and everyday as Chinatown with its fish tanks and piles of cloth slippers.

Impulsively, he grasps Miss Val’s hand with both of his and kisses it, the way he has seen men who are in love with beautiful women do in the movies.

“Are you trying to get fresh with me?” she asks, her eyebrows knitted together in mock disapproval.

Danny shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to tell her that they could be the best of friends if they had the time, or that he would like to go home with her and create his own little nest in a pile of her clothes where she could tell him stories about dancing and parties. He owes her so much, for the cigarettes and the belt and this glimpse into a life that must be exciting and always bewitching. But he has taken far too long already.

Danny says in his best grown-up voice, “We’ll meet again. You’ve captured my heart forever.” He shoots her what he hopes is a debonair look before running away, one hand clasped over his belly, the silk bow a ball in his small fist. Her laughter bounces off the buildings and multiplies, until he is sure he is being chased by church bells, ringing and ringing for souls both lost and found.

PART ONE

THE RETURN
1982

This neighbourhood. Crooked sidewalks cracked by tree roots, eroded from rain and the burdened feet of people hurrying to work or hurrying home. Garbage from the twenty-four-hour convenience store is piled around the bus shelter. A cat meows. The dampness in the air shimmers as it rises, and Danny stands, staring at his parents’ house through the haze.

Everything looks the same, only greyer and smaller. The same windows fogged over with years of cooking grease. The same front steps that tilt to the right. The same gutters, choked with twigs and old leaves. He blinks slowly. When he opens his eyes, he is still here, his hand on the gate, sweat coursing down his back and pooling in his waistband. He might just pass out.

Fourteen years ago, he left this place in the early morning. Every sinew in his body was stretched taut as he rushed westward, headlong into the crush of buildings and traffic and the ever-present noise of downtown. He swore to himself,
I am never going back. That is not where I belong
. He stayed away completely, taking winding and circuitous routes
whenever he came within ten blocks of this place. He had removed this yard and those windows from his head on purpose. And yet he is here, all because Cindy’s eyes drooped at lunch last week describing their mother’s sallow and soft face in the living-room window as she waited for Cindy to come home from a date.

“I can’t do it by myself anymore,” she said. “All they do is wonder where I am.”

And he’s back because maybe this visit will exorcise the reverberations of his father’s voice in his ears.

“You’re weak.”

“What kind of boy are you?”

“A dog would be more useful than you.”

In all this time, Danny has only heard his parents’ voices on the phone when he called at Chinese New Year or Christmas. In person, he hopes his father will be less viciously articulate, and be round and jolly instead. He doesn’t dare hope anything for his mother.

His eyes travel over the chipped wooden siding. He looks behind him at the cars speeding down Dundas, each revolution of their wheels making a rhythm:
run run run
. When he was younger, his dreams beat to the same pace. Unrelenting. Continuous. At eighteen years old, he hurriedly and silently packed a small suitcase. As he drove off in his best friend’s car and counted every block they passed, it took all his willpower not to say the numbers out loud.

He had jobs, learned how to be a passable wedding photographer and lived in apartments in squat buildings that were half hidden by the high-rises blotting out the sky. He looked for and found lovers who asked him no questions. Living in
a world of his own making and escaping from a house in which he never belonged are his two successes. He is, after all, not the famous photographer he thought he might be, or the spectacularly dressed owner of a high-rise penthouse on English Bay. But everything else he dreamed of at eighteen and worked for is his. His own apartment. A little bit of money. No one sitting in the dark when he gets home at night, asking him pointed questions about where he’s been, or whose smell he carries on his breath.

Still, when he’s being honest with himself, he remembers how he sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, groggily wondering when his mother will call him for breakfast, or if his father will hustle him out the door to help in the shop. These moments never last, but they are numerous enough that Danny notices them. Even as he tries to forget.

But right now, he can feel himself leaning toward the house, his feet stepping down the front path by instinct. He remembers the feel of his mother’s hand on his feverish forehead, the baby-soft flannel sheets in which he cocooned on wet, windy nights. The grunt his father made every time he sank into his armchair at the end of the day. He closes his eyes and counts to ten. If he isn’t careful, this will begin to feel like home, even though home was hardly ever nice or warm or peaceful. And he fears that, at thirty-two, he is now too old to twist himself free again.

Heart beating, he pushes open the gate.

Cindy stands in the small vestibule, her thin hands holding open the front door, her feet in red Chinatown slippers. He wonders if anyone from her outside life—her friends, her co-workers at the bank, even the homeless man who sits in the
same spot at the corner of Robson and Burrard every day—would recognize her in this house. Is the real Cindy the sister he has been meeting for drinks once a week for the last thirteen years, with the glossy hair and wide smile, bright dresses and matching pumps? The one who only mentions their parents if she has four glasses of wine? Or this one, with the unpainted face and shoulder blades like arrowheads underneath her pilly blue T-shirt?

She hands him a pair of slippers, identical to hers but bigger. “Here, wear these,” she says. “No shoes in the house, remember?”

“Cindy, I think I’m going to be sick.”

She frowns. “You won’t feel better standing here. They’re waiting.”

“I want to go. I want to leave right now.”

She grabs him by the shoulder and gives him a little shake. “You can’t. If you leave now, I’m never going to speak to you again,” she hisses.

“We could leave together. Let’s get the hell out of here.” His voice rises to a glass-clear pitch.

She bites her lip. He knows what she is imagining: a twirling life, red shoes, drinks with condensation pooling on coasters in an apartment with high, wide windows. Something brighter, with music, where lovers laugh at the coming dawn and hold up their glasses for more. No pained looks when she comes home after eleven o’clock. No statements that seem small but are really about husbands and grandchildren and disappointment.

“Get your shoes. My car’s right outside,” Danny whispers.

Cindy’s face resettles. Her voice is clipped, a businesslike tone that Danny has heard her use at the bank when counting out money for customers.

“They need me. Maybe you’ve forgotten, Danny: I’m not you.”

She turns her head and moves down the hallway, the bottoms of her slippers slapping at the badly worn hardwood floor. She pulls on her ponytail and disappears into the kitchen. Danny takes in a deep breath, smells the unmistakeable scent of mildew that grows in the hidden crevices beyond his mother’s reach. He sniffs again, and his nose fills with ginger and garlic. This house. Like no other.

In the living room, Danny’s father, Doug, sits in a faded yellow armchair, his thick hands firmly gripping the armrests. The television sends blue and white and green light into the room, making Danny’s eyes water. The news anchor stares fixedly. “A young man was found dead in Stanley Park early this morning,” he intones. Danny jumps, but his father doesn’t notice and merely drums his fingers against his thigh. The voice continues, “Police are not releasing any details, but already those who live in the area are saying the victim was targeted for being a homosexual.” The newscast cuts to a shot of a heavily wooded area near Lee’s Trail, cordoned off with yellow police tape. Danny can see a suede shoe with a tassel poking out from under a tarp. He saw a man with shoes just like that, walking in the park at night.

Danny chokes back the heaving in his stomach as his father turns his head and stares.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Danny. Why do you look like that? Are you sick?”
Doug reaches for the half-drunk bottle of beer on the table beside him. A grease stain in the shape of a misshapen heart wrinkles on his thin blue work shirt as he moves.

“No. It’s just warm out, that’s all.”

“So, you’re back,” Doug says.

Danny shifts on his feet. His father doesn’t invite him to sit. “Just for dinner.”

“Why?”

Danny thinks he hasn’t quite heard. “What?”

“Why? Why are you here now?” For the first time, Doug looks at Danny’s face, and his eyes twitch. The bottom lids are red and watery. Danny suspects it’s from the beer and not his own long-delayed presence.

“I thought it would be nice to see everyone again. Cindy said you wanted to see me.”

“You haven’t visited once all this time. What makes you think I want to see you?”

Danny remembers those first weeks after he ran away, the fear that he might pass his own parents on the street or that they might descend on his best friend and nag him until he revealed Danny’s hiding spot. When he finally saw Cindy again at a pre-arranged time at a bus shelter near the Granville Bridge, he was shaking with anxiety, eyeing every bush in case his mother might pop out and grab his arm with a resolution to never let him go. But Cindy said they didn’t look for him. Doug yelled at his wife, saying, “This is all your doing,” before throwing out everything Danny left behind in his bedroom. He shook his finger in Betty’s face. “I don’t want anyone to know. If people ask, we say he moved away for a good job. Understand?” Betty wept every night for a week,
her head on the kitchen table. She cornered Cindy when Doug wasn’t home, but not once did either of his parents drive or walk through the city, looking for their son.

“It’s like they knew you would never stay, even if they found you,” Cindy had said as she shivered in the early morning wind. “How could they make you come home? Besides, it’s a big secret. God forbid any of their friends should figure out we’re actually a completely messed-up family.”

Danny puts a hand out behind him and touches the familiar, warm front window. If he could, he would launch himself through the single-paned glass right now. He pushes on it. The frame gives slightly but manages not to break.

His father mutters, “You’re home now. Nothing I can do about it.”

Danny reaches into his mind for the safe discussion topics he thought up that morning. “How’s work, Dad? The store still busy?”

Doug grunts and scratches his lower back with his free hand. “You know, always the same. People look, don’t buy. Some days, I sell nothing.”

“That can’t be true. Now that it’s June, there must be people looking for souvenirs. When I used to work there in the summers, it was packed with tourists.”

His father fixes Danny with a hard stare. “That was a long time ago. When’s the last time you were in the store? Fifteen years?”

This is not how the conversation was supposed to unfold. Danny closes his eyes and focuses on the darkness. When he opens them again, his father is once more staring at the television, his hands clasped and resting on his stomach.

“Well, I guess I should go and see if Mom needs any help in the kitchen.”

Doug nods. “Yes, you go and see. She’s cooking a big meal, all for you.”

The kitchen steams and spatters. Every surface is covered in food: snap peas, bean sprouts, thinly sliced chicken, butterflied prawns. Danny can feel the oil from the cast-iron wok hurling droplets through the air and settling on his hair and skin. He squints and his mother’s outline emerges through the hot, greasy fog.

She looks so happy
, he thinks.
She’s smiling like she is about to crack in two
. Danny stares at her stained apron and the cheap polyester shirt she wears underneath and takes an instinctive step backward.
God, will she ever pull herself together?