The Better Mother (21 page)

Years ago, on a still Saturday morning, Danny was polishing the insides of the shop windows with newspaper while Doug grunted in the back, unpacking a pallet of Chinese comic books. The sky was overcast, and there were no shadows on the street. Danny stared at the tiny fingerprints near the sill and wondered which child Doug had allowed to touch the glass. A pair of feet in grubby sneakers appeared outside the window. When Danny looked up, he saw a freckled face on the other side of the glass, grinning.

Danny knew this boy, whose father used to work mixing paint at the warehouse by the water. He was one year behind Danny at school, but swaggered through the halls as if he were student body president. At lunch, he sat by himself in the baseball diamond, digging holes into home plate with his penknife and smiling. Danny searched his brain for a name. Eugene? Gerald? No, it was George. George Mason. He frowned at George’s diabolical face. What on earth was he doing here at the shop?

Seeming to read Danny’s thoughts, George reached behind his back and pulled a can of spray paint from his waistband. They were so close that Danny could see the colour printed on the label—Midnight Black. Danny stepped backward from the window and looked around for his father, but
he was in the backroom. George, grin still in place, pulled the cap off. Desperate, Danny waved both arms in front of him and mouthed,
No
.

Everything seemed to happen slowly. Danny watched as George deliberately sprayed the words
CHINKS GO HOME
across the front window with a fine workmanship that was disorienting. George paused to admire his work before adding a smiley face with two slanted eyes. Even through the glass, Danny clearly heard the singular pitch of George’s laugh, like coyotes mating in the park.

From behind, Danny heard his father’s voice. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Doug rushed outside to the window and glared at the words, now dripping down the glass and pooling around the row of bricks underneath. George, crossing the street, turned and waved. Doug pounded his fist against the wall and shouted, “Come back here, you little prick!”

Danny picked up the wad of newspaper he had dropped. When Doug came back inside the shop, Danny timidly said, “Maybe if I try to clean it now, while it’s still wet, I can get most of it off.”

His father cocked his head toward him. “Do you know that boy?”

“Yeah, he goes to my school.”

Every word that came out of Doug’s mouth seemed forced. “Younger or older?”

Danny shrank, just a little. “A year younger, I think. But he’s pretty tough. Once, I saw him in the alley and—”

Doug waved his thick hand to silence him. “Why didn’t you go outside and stop him? He’s no bigger than you.
Why are you standing here like a sissy?”

“Dad, he’s tough. I’ve been trying to tell you,” Danny started, but Doug was already across the shop, opening the closet where they kept the cleaning supplies.

He turned back to look at Danny’s face. “You’re useless. How I ever had a son like you I’ll never understand.”

Danny now looks at Cindy’s face, the impeccable makeup shading her cheekbones, the precise blue eyeliner. “There’s nothing to explain to them, is there?” he says. They’re answering questions with questions, and Danny wants to laugh at the way this mysterious disease has turned even the words they speak into something shifting and thin.

Cindy says, “Still, do you want to come home with me tonight? At least you’ll get some of Mom’s cooking, not that it necessarily does anyone any good.” The dry edge to her voice is back, and Danny allows himself a small smile.

“No, I’m going back to the apartment. I haven’t been sleeping much.”

“Oh, Danny,” Cindy whispers. Tears are starting to form in her eyes. “I don’t know how to help you.”

“I guess I have to wait and see.”

He places his hand over hers, their identical brown hands. He realizes that waiting is the very thing that will allow him to wake up to another day. Without it, the lines of his life are final. For now, waiting is the best part.

This problem, this invisible disease that manifests in sores and coughing and germs that settle in their bodies and multiply, like unthinned mint in a small garden. Danny stumbles toward the dry cleaner, wishing he could shut his eyes against the
sharp sunlight piercing his face.
I want rain
, he thinks.
Where has all the rain gone?

He considers calling Edwin, but he will be no help. He will bring Danny a six-pack of beer and drink it all himself until he falls into a restless sleep. Besides, Edwin will repeat the whispers on the street, the rumours he catches and then releases.

An old woman totters past him, pushing a walker. Their eyes meet and she looks afraid. Surprised, he wonders if she is scared of him; if she thinks that he will try to snatch her purse and knock her down. But after she is a half block away, he realizes that the fear in her eyes was a reflection of the fear in his own, that blazing fear that others can instantly recognize and be repelled by.

He walks by a clinic on Davie Street. In its large window, his body looks so thin that it appears transparent. His eyes focus on something reassuringly solid taped to the window, black type on white paper.

“New disease affecting gay men and IV drug users now called AIDS. Information inside.”

It’s that tension of knowing and not knowing. He can hold what he knows in his head and pass it from one side of his brain to another. He can prepare. He can grieve. What he doesn’t know is less tangible than dreams, more like the shreds of dreams, what dreams would be if they were clawed at by raccoons. With not knowing, all he can do is stifle his horror at the possibilities, but also breathe with relief that the worst hasn’t happened yet. Stepping into the clinic will change everything.

Danny pushes open the door to the waiting room and stands awkwardly in a square of sunshine. The other people
(small, they all seem, bodies crunched like discarded pieces of paper) stare at him. The receptionist looks up at him with dark eyes ringed by purple liner. She smiles.

“How can I help you?”

He steps up to her desk and leans over so that he is as close to her as possible. “The paper in the window,” he whispers. “It says you have information.”

She looks confused, and Danny points discreetly to the sign. “Oh,” she says. “Yes, we have some sheets typed up. Would you like one?”

He nods, and she hands him a photocopy.

“Thank you,” he says. He grasps her hand and shakes it. She smiles again, her lips frozen into an expression he imagines she settles her face into dozens of times a day.

He rushes to a bus stop bench and sits down, holding the paper as still as he can.

It’s simple: AIDS attacks the immune system. No one knows why, and no one knows how. Infected people are vulnerable to opportunistic infections and diseases, like Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia. Doctors think it’s passed through bodily fluids, like semen and blood, but they’re not sure. There are only a few cases reported in Canada, but doctors suspect there are many more that have been undiagnosed.

By the time Danny has finished reading half of the sheet, it becomes clear that all these words are meaningless, for there is nothing anyone can do. No one knows how to prevent it from spreading. Like an advancing tidal wave that you watch coming toward you, knowing it will consume you.

A bus stops and people stream off, their eyes fixed on
the sidewalk or the displays in the shop windows. None of them allow their gaze to fall on his face. Even the passengers on the bus look straight ahead, at the power lines, perhaps, or the crows gathered on the rooftops.

Life and death are printed right here, in words that will define things to come: the silence of nightclubs, the drying-up of bathhouses, even the emptiness of the park at night. The weight of the words and his thoughts seem to have rendered him immobile. What if his parents have already heard of AIDS? Seen it on the news, discussed it with Cindy? And if Edwin dies of a mysterious illness his grandmother never names, what questions will his parents ask then? He holds the back of his hand to his forehead.

When he looks up, he sees a blond man hovering outside the clinic, staring at the same sign in the window. The fear is visible in the line of his shoulders, the quick steps he takes as he paces back and forth. Despite himself, Danny reaches out and his body forms itself into a half-hug.
I may as well give him my sheet
. As he stands and takes a step toward the clinic, the man turns around. Familiar eyes. A moustache he once gazed at in thin, shifting moonlight.

Danny could laugh hysterically or run away. He grips the white sheet with both hands and watches as the tall, blond man looks at Danny’s face, the paper he holds, and then back at the clinic window. Before thinking twice, Danny hurries forward and grasps the man’s sleeve. “Here,” he says. “Take mine. I don’t need it anymore.” Danny stuffs the paper into the crook of his ex-lover’s arm and walks away. He feels worse with every passing pedestrian, every shiny car that speeds down the street. He turns up Jervis, remembering there are
prints to make and film to buy for the next wedding. He stumbles toward his own particular silence in his contained studio.

That evening, Danny steps onto the walk leading to his apartment building. The laurel shrubs on either side have grown taller than him and lean inward, their branches brushing his shoulders, their tops connecting like a roof. He is overwhelmed by the feeling that he is being swallowed by the bush, and he puts his hand out to swat away the glossy leaves.

A quacking duck flies through the dimming sky. Danny looks up at the sound and squints. As he pushes his key into the lock of the front door, his foot brushes a paper bag beside the welcome mat. He sees the message,
FOR DANNY LIM
, written in black marker across the front. He crouches down and unrolls the crumpled brown paper, so wrinkled it appears to have been used and reused, folded and stuffed into a drawer between uses. Inside is a glass pickle jar with its label scrubbed off. On the lid, a piece of paper reads, “Danny, some soup for you. From, Mommy.” He picks up the bag, one hand supporting the bottom, and carries it into the building. The jar’s vaguely green contents slosh as he steps into the elevator. He stares ahead at the textured light pink wallpaper, striated to look like linen, or, he supposes, Thai silk.

In his kitchen, he pours the soup into a pot and sets it on a burner, watching as the coils turn red. The empty pickle jar stands on the counter, residual solids from the soup lining the bottom. Danny wants to pick up the jar and fling it across the room, watch it smash into shards that fall to the hardwood floor. He can imagine his mother, wearing a pair of long walking shorts and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt, riding the bus
to the West End. The backs of her legs stick to the vinyl seat. Her thickly knuckled hands cradle the soup in her lap. She switches buses, walks down streets she memorized earlier only because her son chooses to live here and presses the buzzer by the front door to his apartment building. He can imagine her waiting patiently, buzzing once, maybe twice more. After several minutes, she carefully places the bag by the welcome mat, where Danny is sure to see it. She hesitates then tightens the lid once more so the raccoons, with their strangely human hands, won’t be able to pry it open. And then she walks to the corner and boards the bus to return home, where Doug will be silent and brooding because dinner isn’t ready yet, where she will lie and say she was visiting Auntie Mona and lost track of time.

His mother was here, standing at the front door to his building, peering through the glass doors, watching to see if Danny might step out of the elevator into the lighted lobby. He grips the counter with both hands. His mother has stepped into his carefully constructed life, bearing a gift that will taste like his childhood, those days he spent helping her in the kitchen, his skin absorbing the ginger-scented hot oil until he was sure if he sniffed himself, his nose would recognize each dish his mother cooked.

One particular Sunday, Danny walked into the kitchen, blinking against the blazing lights. He wore the new pyjamas his mother had bought him for his eighth birthday. It was the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, and he still wasn’t sure if it was morning or night. Betty moved from stove to sink to table, her hands covered in rice flour. A patch in her hair released a fine white dust whenever she stepped forward
or turned around, as if she were slowly shedding her outer self in small puffs. Danny sneezed before the thick smell of pork broth coated the inside of his nose.

“You must help me or I won’t finish before the solstice is over,” his mother said. She took Danny’s hand and pulled him toward the kitchen table. “You make the balls,” she said, pointing to a mound of white dumpling dough in a bowl. She pulled off a piece the size of a Ping-Pong ball and began rolling it between her hands until it formed a sphere. “You see? Like that.”

The dough—thick and elastic, like drying glue—stuck to Danny’s palms, leaving a thin white layer that settled into his lifeline and the other spidery lines that snaked across it. He placed each ball on a floured cookie sheet, making rows and rows of smooth white spheres. When he looked up at the window, it was finally daylight.

“Such a good boy, Danny,” Betty said. “Your sister would never sit here for so long. Look at that, all the same size too.” She turned back to her cutting board, piled with peeled daikon waiting to be julienned. “We will have the luckiest solstice feast ever because you did such a good job.”

He could have left the kitchen, gone to join his sister who was outside in her puffy coat, looking up at the low sky, her mouth open in the hope that a few flakes of snow might fall. He could have cocooned himself in his room, rearranging his collection of department store catalogues by preference, his favourite one in the middle so it was protected from dust and damp. He could even have watched television with his father, who was sitting in his armchair as he always did on the one day of the week the shop was closed.