The Better Mother (7 page)

“After I met him,” Danny’s mother whispered, scrubbing his back with a damp cloth, “I would tie my scarf around his arm and he would tell everyone, ‘This race is for Betty.’ Your father was very sweet then. He really wanted to marry me and have a son and daughter.” She tilted up Danny’s chin
and said, “You should remember that and try to get along better.”

He saw his mother in a red circle skirt, hair combed up into a bouncing ponytail. He wanted to ask if she had ever looked like that, but was afraid that she never had, and he would be left with an image of a less wrinkled, slightly thinner version of the woman she was now. Danny tried to imagine his father walking down the street with his hands in his pockets, his hips tilted forward in a teenaged boy’s swagger, but all he saw was the same rounded, cranky man who ended up running a curio shop for the tourists he sneered at when they weren’t watching.

Maybe everything changed when he decided to marry Betty, who had arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong at sixteen to join her father. Maybe Doug fell in love with her quietness, with her wide mouth and round, sad eyes. Maybe he wanted this life, and hadn’t fallen into it. Maybe, as a young man, he dreamed of having a little house like this one on Dundas, and maybe he didn’t mind saving eggshells for fertilizing the garden, or layering sweaters to save on the heat in winter.

She dried Danny off with a large blue towel, mercilessly rubbing under his armpits and around his ears. The mirror above the sink was fogged over and Danny thought he might choke on the heavy dampness in the air. He looked at his mother’s blurry reflection and imagined how beautiful she could look if she tried. She could wear some blush on her brown cheeks, even put on something with a low neck to show that she really was a woman underneath the shapeless cardigans and wool slacks. But he knew that if he even
suggested it to her, she would knit her ungroomed eyebrows together and stare at him like she might stare at a two-headed cat.

“Have you heard enough for tonight?” Betty smiled, but her eyes didn’t change, didn’t crinkle up in mirth the way Cindy’s did when Danny made a funny face. “Was that a good story?”

As he pulled on his pyjamas, he nodded and said what he always did: “Yes, Mama. The greatest.”

The morning light hurt Danny’s eyes and he curled up in bed, the covers pulled over his face. He could hear Cindy’s voice, clear and shrill. “It’s Thursday, right? We’re going to help Ba at the shop today, right?”

The walls shook with his father’s shout. “Don’t you ever shut up? Every Thursday, it’s the same thing. Mama goes to clean the big house and you and your brother come to the shop with me. You know how it works, so stop talking. All I want is a little quiet to eat my goddamned toast.”

Then, silence. Danny felt sleep dragging him down, felt the warmth of his blankets pooling around his body.

His mother opened the door to his bedroom and put a hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling all right, Danny? It’s not like you to be late for breakfast.”

He peered up at her, his eyes rolling slowly underneath hot lids.

Doug’s face peered around the door frame. “Is he sick? I can’t have him spreading germs all over the shop.”

Betty turned and said, “But I have to go to work. He can’t stay home by himself.”

His father began walking away, toward the kitchen. “Then take him with you. It’s a big house. There has to be some place he can hide.”

His mother pulled the blankets down and helped Danny get dressed. Even the act of stepping into his pants pained him, made his joints shudder with the effort. She rummaged in the cupboards for some crackers and an apple and packed them in her purse. Holding hands, they hurried down the street toward the bus stop, where the sun pushed on Danny’s head and he shivered in the heat.

When they stepped off the bus, all Danny could see were the tall trees lining King Edward Avenue and the boulevard in the middle covered with grass. He stared, searching for one stray brown blade, but found only an even, unblemished green carpet.

As Danny and Betty walked up the street, they could see the house through gaps in the shrubbery. First the stone facade and double, panelled front door, then the high, peaked roof with the spinning, wrought-iron weathervane. By the time they reached the circular driveway, Danny’s hands had grown cold, and his mother folded the one she was holding into the pocket of her skirt.

He saw dark shadows moving behind the windows, changing shape as they flitted past each diamond-shaped, narrow pane. The stones flanking the front door seemed obscenely alive—bulging, round, pushing out of the walls before receding again.

They knocked on the side door and a broad woman with blond hair fading to white answered. She nodded at Betty before glaring at Danny, who peeked around his mother’s body.

“Why is he here?” she asked, in an accent Danny was sure he’d heard before, maybe in a movie.

Betty bowed her head before speaking. “He’s sick today, Mrs. Lehmann, and can’t stay at home by himself. I thought he could sit in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Lehmann wiped her hands on her apron. “Well, he can’t. What if he sneezes on the food? Better take him with you. The family won’t be home until suppertime.” And she walked away, her hips falling heavily as she stepped across the room.

Danny followed his mother from room to room, carrying her rags as she hauled the domed, shiny metal vacuum up the stairs. The children’s rooms were first, and Danny, careful not to touch anything, sat at their desks, his eyes wandering over model airplanes, a silver tray covered with hair ribbons and barrettes, stuffed animals arranged precisely at the foot of each bed. When his mother wasn’t looking, he traced his fingers over the wallpaper, the lions and tigers in the boy’s room, and Little Bo Peep with her herd of fat, fleecy sheep in the other.

The master bedroom was dark; all four of its windows were covered in thick purple curtains. When Betty pulled them open, Danny could see the mess: the unmade bed with sheets wrinkled and twisted, the water glass overturned on the nightstand, the clothes all over the floor, sleeves reaching limply out like empty skin. And the smell. Even Danny, with his stuffed nose, could detect that tang of bodies, of wine gone sweet as it slowly evaporated into the air, of expensive, ethereal perfume wasted on the stale, motionless air in this silent room.

His mother, her face screwed up, opened the windows before she began to clean, pausing long enough to pat Danny on the head and whisper in Chinese, “My boy would never be this messy. You’ll be the good kind of husband, won’t you? You’ll help your wife clean and not shout or argue. You’ll be the nicest man, Danny. I just know it.”

When they had gone upstairs to clean, Mrs. Lehmann had been kneading bread dough and listening to the radio. But in this bedroom, he couldn’t hear anything that would suggest there was another living creature inside this house; only the swish and thump of his own mother as she cleaned, and the shiver of leaves outside in the wind.

“Almost done, Danny,” Betty said, straightening up with her hand resting in the small of her back. “And then we’ll go home, have some cool noodles with cucumber.” She walked to the door beside the carved wood headboard and opened it.

Clothes hanging from racks on all four walls. Shoes arranged in rows on the floor, in shelves, even in drawers. A three-sided, full-length mirror and a hanging chandelier, the crystals sending out fragments of light, tiny rainbows that danced around the room.

“The lady’s dressing room,” Betty whispered as she pointed Danny toward a silk-covered stool in front of the mirror. “Pretty, don’t you think? All these clothes though. I have to put mothballs everywhere.” She smiled as she looked at Danny’s reflection. “I know what you’re thinking. So impractical. So silly. Right?” She paused as she looked at his wide-open eyes. “Don’t tell your father you were in here.”

He nodded absentmindedly as he stared at a row of evening gowns, the deep colours like jewels. Black, green, red,
gold and silver. Danny wanted to bury his face in the skirts, tear the dresses off the hangers and jump into the silken pile on the floor. How would it feel if those long skirts were tangled around his legs, if he could run his finger along an expertly sewn seam? He could take one of these dresses home and keep it in his bed, where he could lie with it every night and dream that he was dancing in a ballroom, leading one of his paper dolls come to life. Afraid that he couldn’t control his own fingers, he sat on his hands and kept his eyes on his dull brown shoes, the laces knotted over and over again because his parents couldn’t afford to buy new ones. He told himself that he would be willing to miss out on another breakfast of congee instead if that would help save money.

As they were leaving, Mrs. Lehmann handed him a cookie in a paper napkin. “He looks pale, Betty. He’d better have something for the trip home. You were so quiet, Danny. I hardly even knew you were here.” She smiled down at him, showing the silver caps on her teeth and the deep wrinkles around her mouth. Danny smiled back, and wondered what the lady of the house looked like, whether she wore silk every day and how she arranged her hair. He bit into the cookie—thick, dense and gingery—and Mrs. Lehmann nodded kindly.

He fell asleep on the bus ride home, his fists covered by the sleeves of his thin jacket, his head resting on his mother’s arm. He dreamed that he was walking back toward the house and could see in the window the outline of a woman—curled hair, sharp shoulders protruding from a well-tailored dress. He called to her from the lawn and he swore that he saw the glint of her green eyes as she glanced at him through those tiny panes that distorted everything. Her shadow paused, as
if considering this grubby little boy with the uncombed hair. He woke up to the bump of the bus and the odour of his mother, a smell like Comet and cooking oil, comforting but oh, so ordinary.

The last days of summer had crept up. Danny felt that autumn might arrive any minute and the long evenings would then recede, leaving the burning of leaves in backyards and the wearing of woolly socks in bed. Next week, school would start again.

On the way to the shop, Danny looked up through the open car window at the power lines, the crows sitting in a line, unruffled by the electricity pulsing under their feet or the wind blowing in from the west.

By ten o’clock, Cindy was dusting the shelves, carefully lifting and replacing the ceramic lucky cats, the small brass buddhas and the tea sets painted with cherry blossoms and bamboo. Danny saw her press her index finger to her upper lip, and knew that she was trying to contain a sneeze. Once, she coughed on a box of folded-paper fans and their father locked her in the storage closet for two full hours for contaminating the merchandise. “If you’re going to cough, you run outside first,” he shouted at her through the closet door. Danny could hear her sniffling (quietly, so Doug wouldn’t notice from his perch behind the front counter), but didn’t dare say anything. When she was let out, she simply sat on a stool at the back, rolling two metal worry balls in her hands.

Now, Danny unpacked a box of silk placemats, black with red Chinese characters that he couldn’t read. As he was pulling out the paper stuffing, his father snapped, “Stop
throwing that on the floor. The garbage can is right there. Lazy.” Danny froze then hastily gathered up his mess.

The high, narrow windows in the backroom were open and he could hear the trucks that sped down the alleys, the sounds of men unloading crates of produce and pushing them along the concrete toward the back doors of the shops. He heard the cries of a colony of seagulls and, when he looked up, he watched the grey and white of their wings, the rapid flapping that meant they were fighting for the same piece of food, perhaps a glob of sticky rice or a squished banana. A conversation between two men floated in on the air and Danny, bored with the emptiness filling the shop, strained to listen.

“My wife wants to start her own produce store. Outside of Chinatown, she says, where people have money.”

“Yeah? What does she know? Does she know how to run a business?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but you can’t say those things to your wife. She might clamp those legs shut for a month.” Danny winced, but kept listening.

“You know, you can fix that sort of problem. Lots of girls around here willing to do what you need for a little bit of cash.” Both men laughed and the sound was distorted and ugly, like a radio whining between stations.

“I feel guilty enough going to see the strippers. But boy, some of those ladies can dance.”

“Have you seen the one they call the Siamese Kitten? Some legs on her. And she dresses up Chinese, so, really, it’s no different than being with your wife.”

“I wonder what she’d do for a little extra cash on the side?”

They laughed again and Danny stared at the empty placemat box. He wanted to run out the back door and throw garbage at these two men. Miss Val commanded a stage and wore satin. She could have been a movie star. What had they ever done? Slowly, as his anger cleared, he began to feel sorry for those men who spent most of their days staring at apples and wilted greens. They would never know the touch of Miss Val’s hand on their hair, never see her red lips break into a smile that, to Danny, meant love and caring and held a little bit of weariness. After lunch, the shop filled with tourists and he saw that his father was busy juggling three white families who all wanted to buy the last jade monkey on the shelf. Danny tiptoed through the store, careful to duck so that he was obscured by the shelves and customers, and hurried out the front door.

He knew where he was going; there was no question, really. He didn’t even look at the jars of candy in the newsagent’s window, or stop to say hello to Clarence, Mr. Ng’s son who helped his father change and clean the tanks in the fish shop. He headed a few blocks west, turned right and then right again into a familiar alley.

He stopped at a partially open grey door. He could see nothing from where he was standing, so he stepped closer until he could smell the cigarette smoke and hear, faintly, the tinny sounds of a piano being played with more force than finesse. Silently, he reached out and pulled the door open wide enough for him to slip through.