The Best Thing for You (12 page)

Before this, the worst thing I ever did was vandalize a car. That ended badly, as you’d expect – getting caught, going to court with the sweating, stuttering, milky-eyed phone-book lawyer, facing my parents – but the core truth was it was fun and I’d have done it again. The car belonged to Liam’s aunt, though I
didn’t know that at the time; I thought it was Liam’s car. Nor did I know that she lived with Liam (or rather he with her); that she was watching me through the window, phone in hand, blue lights already on their way, while I tried to let Liam know how I felt about him pursuing me. Love was a disease I was immune to, for a while anyway.

“Just so you know,” I tell Ty. “Your father’s been telling people I had a biopsy, to account for all the work he’s having to miss, because of you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he says. He’s crying, again.

Stuffed in the bike courier bag I use as a purse, in my office at the clinic at the end of another endless day, these gifts: the twenty-fifth anniversary reissue
CD
of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” and a travel-size vial of chewable Gravol. No card, no note, no mystery either.

Sunday night, end of the line. Rain hemorrhages. In our basement, what the Parmenters call the rec room, a window no bigger than a shoebox lurks near the ceiling. A watery black eye: rainwater makes sheets and swags of unclarity on the glass. Beyond I can see the wavering lines of the iron grille we bolted over the window after a rash of neighbourhood break-ins last summer, but not the low-down, grass-in-your-face, cat’s-eye view of the garden you get during the day. The garden is gone, the street is gone, the city is gone, and it is just the three of us, alone together in this cave carved out of the empty black stuff of night. Dark-red tones I had chosen for a colour scheme down here, and grouped before the single flickering light of the
TV
we could be prehistorics before a flickering fire, holed up in the
false, ruddy safety of our den. We have adopted the following attitudes: myself at one end of the sofa, Liam lying with his feet on my lap, Ty between us on the floor, leaning half against the sofa, half against my leg. The movie is a soother of Liam’s, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake with the sound turned low. A few hours ago we told Ty we loved him. Then, not knowing what else to do, we suggested movies. He asked for popcorn, but the bowl sits full and untouched on the chair he abandoned to sit nearer to us. Now, touching, we are still and separate as three photographs. The rain rains, the movie moves, and the hours roll away like weights that kept our lives from blowing away. The trial starts tomorrow.

The plan was that we would meet Joe Sumo in the courthouse cafeteria, but where we find him is in the underground parkade, jogging toward us, waving his cellphone.

“Good morning!” he calls, his voicing echoing off the cars and concrete. “I’m glad I caught you. Jason’s going to plead guilty. No trial, that means. For us that’s the bluebird of good news, or whatever. I just got the call. They’ll go straight to sentencing. You can watch, if you like.”

We ride upstairs in the elevator, the four of us, three of us dead numb. He explains Jason finally admitted to the beating, an hour ago, only, and if anyone was with him he wasn’t saying. Joe Sumo speculates there will be some psychiatric testing. When we step out into the courthouse lobby, he excuses himself to catch up with some character in a black robe and white dickie who greets him like a cowboy, pretending to draw guns from his belt and fire. They laugh.

I can’t breathe right. I say, “Let’s go home,” and my voice is loud in my ears.

Liam shrugs. It’s Ty who says, “I want to see.”

From a distance, Joe Sumo points us toward the right room and makes some hand signals meaning he’ll catch up with us inside.

Waiting for the judge to hand down his verdict, we watch him deal with a girl caught shoplifting K-Y jelly from Wal-Mart.

“What I’m going to do now, I’m going to suspend your sentence,” he says. “What that means is, I’m not going to punish you. Everything you’ve had to go through with the store security and then coming to see me here, I know this has been pretty embarrassing for you and I think that’s enough. I think you’re not going to be stealing again, right? Contraceptives or what have you?”

“Will this go on my record?” the girl asks.

“Yes,” the judge says.

When they’re finished, the girl comes and sits right in front of Liam and me, next to a tousle-haired woman in an Adidas warm-up jacket and matching tearaways. “Wake up, Mom,” the girl says. “Time to go.”

“I just want to watch this next one,” the woman says.

Jason is led in from a side door. I haven’t seen him since the night we took wine to his parents’ house. He wears leather shoes, dark dress pants, and a dark shirt buttoned up all the way, but no tie. He notices us right away, can’t not – the courtroom is not much bigger than a school classroom. I see him nod at Ty, next to me, who bobs his head. Shame? Liam’s seen, too; on my other side, he nudges me, but I’m not ready to react. Jason and his lawyer stand while the clerk reads the name of their file, and sit with their backs to us while the judge reads the charge and then the verdict. Jason’s lawyer talks a bit about Jason’s grades and behaviour at school – apparently he was having troubles – and about his little personality generally, and
then the judge hands down his sentence: a year in juvenile detention. Jason doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look up as he’s led back out the way he came in. Ty, beside me, exhales.

“All rise,” the clerk says, and then it’s time for lunch. Just like that.

“Mr. Leith,” Crown says to Joe Sumo. We follow them out of the courtroom along with the general throng. The Parmenters are nowhere to be seen. We watch the two men walk a little ways up the hall together, then shake hands. Crown hurries away while our lawyer comes stepping back to us, a costly peacock. “He’s dropping the charge against Tyler. You’ll get formal notification tomorrow the latest.”

“That kid was psycho,” the K-Y girl is saying, a few feet away.

“I’m just phoning your Dad.” The woman pulls a cellphone from one zippered pocket and bends over to dial, stretching the shiny fabric of her pants over her hams.

“I’m not talking to him,” the girl says. “I don’t want lunch. I hate the cafeteria here.”

“Did I say you had to talk to him?” the woman says.

“You’re not smiling!” Joe Sumo tells Ty.

“It’s grotesque.”

“But good, for us.”

“Great for us.”

“Animal, though. Jason.”

“I know who you meant.”

We’re giddy as moonlight here in the backyard in the sliding late afternoon sun, still trying to process it all.

“That’s basically it,” Liam keeps saying. “Right? For us?”

I start picking dead needles off the cedar deck. “It’s excellent,” I tell him. “It’s the bluebird of good news.”

“We’re lucky, though, hey. If you think we let Ty play with him all summer long.”

“We weren’t to know.”

“But that’s basically it, now, isn’t it?” Liam says.

Behind us we hear the latch. Ty steps through the kitchen door, carrying a mug of something hot.

“Hi, baby,” I say. “Is that my tea?” He hands me the mug. I tip him my gathered handful of sticky needles. “Smell,” I say, but he dumps them on the ground.

“Come here, son,” Liam says. “I’m sure that was the worst of it, today.”

Ty looks at the greenhouse. “I’m sure.”

“What?” I follow his gaze.

The tarpaulin-sheathed door opens from the inside and the landscapers come out, blinking. The younger one won’t look at us. The older one does a double take, a cartoon stagger. “Folks!” he says.

“Son of a bitch,” Liam says.

I say, “You’re still here?”

“Well, I guess so,” he says, setting a boot up on my deck like we’re the trespassers.

Getting ready for bed, I can’t relax. I walk around the bedroom, picking things up and putting them down, while Liam uses the ensuite bathroom. He keeps wandering out to check on me – brushing his teeth, popping floss. I do sit-ups, feet hooked under the end of the bed, then remember not to. “Adrenaline,” I explain. The faucet rushes. I mumble, “Psycho.”

“Do you sleep at night?” Liam’s voice is muffled. “I have trouble.”

I hesitate. I decide to say something, to listen to the sound of
the words. It’s a curious, strict feeling. “He could still be lying.”

Liam doesn’t answer. I wait, on my back, until I hear the toilet flush, the bedroom door open, and his padding footsteps on the stairs, heading down to the dorm room he’s made of his office.