Every Little Thing (39 page)

COHEN'S FATHER WAS smiling at him as Cohen sat at the table that afternoon.
Smiling.
So Cohen's words came like cold water. “You fucked up, Dad, as a parent, as anything...I mean...do you have
any
idea what an absolute mental...like...” He clenched his teeth, shook his head. Looked around the room and back at his father's shocked face. “
Keith's
been here. And I can't make sense of what he was talking about!”

His father, deflating like a balloon, “Your mother, she—”

“I don't even want to hear an excuse for her. She's crossed a line this time, even for her. I just want the facts. Where's Allie? What does Mom have to do with it?Why is she talking to Zack's father, and the—”

“Your mother,”he stuck his hands up to stop Cohen's words, “just wanted you to worry about getting through your sentence. She wanted you to focus on finding a job, while she tended to—”

“A
job
.”He shook his head.

“You asked me to look in on this boy, didn't you?”

“There's a
huge
difference, don't you think? Between finding out if he's dead or alive and busting in on his life and doing whatever the fuck
Keith
just blurted out in bits and pieces!”

His father nodded, caught. “We'll start with the boy, then?”

“Just...start somewhere. We've got fifty minutes. And Allie. Is she really missing?”

“I honestly don't know anything about Allie. To be blunt, I don't care. That's your mother, dealing with her. I've stayed out of what your mother's been up to until she started needing my help. We fought long and hard about how much she's stuck her nose in. I mean, the both of you: look where sticking
your
nose into the kid's business landed you!”

“The boy. You said you'd start with the boy. So start!”

“I know you're mad,Cohen, but—”

“I am. I'm mad. And I'm sorry if I'm being horrible, but I'm exactly that, mad.”

“I don't know what you know of the boy's adoptive situation. In a nutshell, the boy's father got stuck with the kid after his partner took off...” He paused and his face held still while he searched for a word. “I can never think of the boy's father's name?”

“Jamie.”

“Jamie spent two years thinking of what to do about Zack. He got offered a
dream job
, his words,
dream job
, in Alaska. But there's no major hospital anywhere
near
the resort he'll be cooking in.”

Cohen motioned his hand like he was trying to fast-forward his father. “Okay, so what? Jamie stuck Zack back in foster care and left for Alaska?”

“I'm getting there. Let me get there. The boy's name comes up and you get your back up!”They both sat back in their chairs. “ARVC is pretty much endemic to families in Atlantic Canada or something. There's specialists here. Zack's living in a topnotch pediatric cardiac care unit, and he's getting their absolute attention. Jamie couldn't take him away from the care he can get here and couldn't get in Alaska or Florida, and those places don't have free healthcare.”

“So, he's still waiting on a heart transplant then?”

“Yes, and...” his father snapped his fingers, “What's his name again?”

“Jamie!” Cohen leaned forward in his chair.

“Jamie had been looking into putting Zack back into foster care long before the job opportunity in Alaska. And with the heart condition, well, that's that. Jamie's gone. The boy's here.”

“All right, but I still don't understand the trouble with the boy's heart. He has what we have: a rhythm defect. It's not making any sense.”

“His heart's failing,Cohen. His tissues are filling with fluid. He's swelling up. He's lethargic and confused. It's a hard thing to look at, I'll tell you that.”

“So you've
seen
him then?”

“I'm getting to that. Yes.”

“What you're describing is congestive heart failure. Like old people get. Not ARVC.”He shook his head,“Has he
officially
been diagnosed with ARVC, with the DNA test?”

“Dr. Jennings explained it to me in analogies. Whatever's wrong with our heart gene, that causes ARVC, he's got that same thing wrong with his gene too, but he's also got other issues, with his heart gene, and all those issues are interacting negatively. Like gas on a fire.”

“I—There's no such thing as a
heart gene
, Dad. It's a little more complicated than that.”

“Well then I guess that's why he spoke to me in analogies? We're not all fluent in genetic-speak, are we?” His father put his hands up,
settle down
. “I didn't say I understood it. That's the best I can get my head around it.
Something
is exasperating the ARVC problem. There's virtually nothing on the internet about what's happening with Zack because cases like his have only been treated a dozen times in Canada.”

“Who said that, Jennings, or the internet?”

“Jennings.”

“So his heart is officially failing?”

“The heart is a muscle, Jennings said, and bits of the boy's heart are turning to fat, and fat can't pump like muscle can. Most days someone from the government comes by and sits with him, but your mother and I. We've been looking in too. They're watching his urine output. I don't know why, but I know it's a bad thing that it's getting lower and lower. Your mother sits with him a lot. Staring at the bag. Waiting for yellow.”

“So, you're both looking in on the kid, yet you've been lying to me about not having any updates on the boy—”

“I got your mother involved in helping me gather news on the kid. I guess I should've seen this all coming, once she started poking her nose in. But, just to finish up on how Zack is doing, there's an upside to how bad off he is. It's bumped him up in queue on the transplant list.”

Cohen blinked long and hard. His father said, “Do you know what an RVAD is?”And Cohen nodded yes.

“The RVAD is doing the pumping work his right ventricle can't do anymore. He's come around some since they hooked him up to it. The swelling is down, and he's breathing better. It's made the newspapers,Zack's plight. Heart transplants in children aren't common,and kids on VACs are even rarer.”And he stopped there. Looked at his watch. Looked at Cohen. Looked at his watch again.

“Now listen. I'm going to leave you with that. That's enough for right now. Then I'm going to tell you the rest, with updates, on my next visit.”

“Finish the story,Dad.”

His father looked at his watch again. Tapped it this time.” I can't blurt this next bit out in ten minutes, I'm sorry. And there's really nothing to say until your mother...gets through a few more tasks.”

“Call me then, tonight?”

His father looked at him. “Like I said, there's nothing more to say until your mother clews up a few things.

“
Dad?
”

His father put his hat on. Twirled a scarf around his neck. Left.

THE PRISON LIBRARY had a horrible selection of books. Or it had been curated by someone with bad taste. Or they took whatever they could get in donations. There were nothing but trashy paperbacks with no substance or variation on
noble lawyer turned hero.
There was a whole wall of non-fiction, but he'd never read non-fiction because nothing seemed interesting enough to read three hundred pages about. So he stuck with the crime novels. There wasn't much else to do in there, other than read, but since his father's abrupt departure earlier that week, since his father's dangling
more to come
, Cohen had become too distracted to lose himself in the novels. His attention span would get punctured by isolated sentences from his father's visit.
There's really nothing to say until your mother...gets through a few more tasks.

He went to the hack squat in the yard. Put on more weights than usual. Up and down, up and down. He closed his eyes, kept going. Felt the throb of a kick in the shin,
Get up
. It was Truck. For months, Cohen had skillfully managed to avoid a confrontation with the Truck—how to look at the man, how to not look at the man,where not to sit. But here it was. Cohen had let avoiding Truck slip his mind, and now Truck was kicking him in the shin,
Get up
.

Cohen stopped the up and down motion. Opened his eyes. He was taking his hands off the bar, and he knew what he did next mattered. If he cowered,Truck would hit him out of instinct, and if he challenged Truck,Truck would do the same. There was a middle ground, and Cohen had to find it—yield, give him the machine, but a solid look too, and not a word. But Cohen stood up, and Truck said, “Thanks, man,” and slid in around him, onto the hack squat machine. And that was it.

Cohen walked off, afraid to turn around and see Truck there, swinging at him. He pictured a dumbbell into his mouth, the pain of cracked teeth and exposed nerve endings; the sight of his teeth bobbing in a pool of his own blood, and the guards not seeing it happen before another blow. He was afraid to turn around and see it coming, and he was afraid if he didn't turn around, he'd not see it coming.

There were weathered bleachers, not far from the exercise equipment. They used to be blue, but time had chipped and muted the colour. He sat there and watched Truck be calmed by the up and down motion of the hack squat. He heard a voice he recognized behind him. “That was close,” the man said. Cohen turned around, and it was the drunk driver Truck had beaten up in the shower that day. “Thought you were a goner.” Cohen felt wedged between enjoying the camaraderie and not wanting to talk to a man who'd run two kids down on a crosswalk instead of spending ten bucks on a cab. He said he had a book to get back to. A book he couldn't stop thinking about, and he went inside, willing the clock to spin faster so his father would arrive.

Visitation hours were his only real access to the outside world, and that meant he knew nothing of his life, but what visitors told him. His house could've burn down or Zack could've died or the town could've been rioting, and Cohen would only know it if his father chose to tell him, on one of those visits. It meant news came abruptly, like a rock thrown, with no warning. His father came by that day, and they were immediately arguing. Cohen was so painfully confused and overwhelmed, his panic came out caustic.

“This is
waaay
too much to orchestrate without a man's knowledge, his consent, I mean, Jesus, Jesus
fucking
Christ, Dad. Think about it!”

“She only wanted everything set up, so that all she'd need was your green light, your okay, and the child would come into our family.
If
that's what you wanted.
If
he turns out to be yours.
If
you want Zack in your life, then she'd have it all lined up, all the complicated mechanics of it. It's taken her two months to get to where we are now.”

Cohen's shock had worn away after twenty or thirty minutes of circular yelling and invective retorts.
You're fucking kidding me! You've got to be kidding me! Are you goddamn crazy?
His father spent the first third of the visitation hour calming Cohen down. He'd gotten up from the table at one point, circled it, and the guards warned him.
Sit down, Davies, or it's back to your cell!
One of the guards had his hand wrapped around the club tied to his waist.

“It was Keith's child, Dad. Not mine. He all but told me that on his last visit.”

“Let's not take the man's word over Allie's, who, no surprise at this point, really doesn't know the paternity. Your mother would
not
have made the headway she's made if there wasn't a significant chance this child is yours. So let's stick to working through your feelings about how to handle this, if he's yours.”

“I can't even request a paternity test. I know I can't. For a fact.”

“The immediate issue is when Allie gave her boy up for adoption, she said the paternity was uncertain, so your name isn't on your boy's adoption file.
If
your name
had been
on an adoption file, you could register with Post-Adoption Services, and maybe, given the circumstances, rules could be bent and things could be sped up. But your name isn't on the file associated with your boy. Understand? You have no way of tracking your son because Allie checked a box on her adoption file that said, paternity uncertain. Which means your name is nowhere on file associated with her child.”

He waited for Cohen's nod. “But that's where the ARVC comes in, and what your mother's been up to. Allie's name
is
on a child's original adoption file. Is it Zack? Is it some other boy or girl?Who knows? No one but Adoption Services. But if we can get a court order to see the file for Allie's child, and that child is Zack. Well, Zack has
your
rare genetic heart disorder. Basically, logically, it'd make the boy yours. And then we could assess our next steps. Your feelings about adopting the boy, and the barriers we'd have to knock down to make that happen.”

He'd had fifty minutes to calm down, but it was still surreal. His lungs still wouldn't fill, and he had more questions than he could ask in the next ten minutes. He still felt hot and cold at the same time, and he desperately needed his father to better understand the absurdity of asking a man what he was asking Cohen. His father had been far too calm as he sat there relaying concrete details about a plan long in the works. The dizzying anger, and the jangling in his bones, was identical to the feeling of being stuck in traffic, late for something important—a flight, a wedding—and wanting to slam his hand on the horn or use the sidewalk as a passing lane. Like he had to get somewhere. It felt like that and felt like being accused of something too. And the latter didn't make sense.

“Your mother has gotten a lawyer. The lawyer is working on getting our eyes on Allie's adoption file. And if Zack is Allie's son, it's only a matter of a court-ordered DNA test to prove he's yours and Allie's.”