Toby (19 page)

Karen whispered, “I remember.”

“Why are you crying?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you unhappy?”

“No.”

Edward reached down and lowered the recliner, climbed off it, and crawled to his wife; he winced and smiled and kneeled before her. “
Three is a magic number. Yes it is.
”

“Stop, please, Edward.”

“
It’s a magic number.
”

“Stop.”

Edward reached out to Toby. His mother shook her head,
No, stay where you are.
Toby did not want to hurt his father, so he walked to his mother’s recliner. He did not know what to do. Stand over them? Touch them? Edward pulled him down, and father and son crouched at Karen’s feet. Edward put his arm around Toby’s shoulder and sang, “
Three is a magic number.
”

The chair trembled. Toby would leave here, eventually, but his mother would stay. Edward finished singing and remained on the floor, with his arm around Toby’s shoulder, a couple of priests considering the divine mystery. Nothing had prepared Toby for this. Not even a word to say. The living room was a desert, and every direction led nowhere. It hurt to kneel. Another suit ruined. He feared his father, what he could do in the night.

“I’m very thirsty.” Toby stood up slowly, easing out of Edward’s embrace. “Can I bring anyone anything? Mom?”

Karen shook her head, her face streaked with tears.

“Dad?”

“Bring me a brew, why don’t you?”

In the kitchen, Toby crumbled two of Karen’s sleeping pills into Edward’s Labatt 50. He was tempted, as the powder absorbed into the alcohol, to drink it himself. He poured a second beer, and a third for his mother.

Back in the living room, he proposed a toast. “To our family.”

“Here here,” said Edward. “To love.”

The three of them drank, and Toby lightened the mood by talking in a flat tone about Mr. Demsky, who had sent his reel out to a friend. He told his parents about the Cuban exhibition at the Musée. Perhaps they could go, as a family, and introduce Hugo to the peculiarities of Caribbean communism. Twenty minutes after his first sip, Edward faded. Toby helped him out of his recliner and, careful not to bang or scrape his father’s still-tender shins, eased him into his bedroom. There was just enough consciousness and energy remaining in Edward to allow Toby to remove his clothes and baby him into pyjamas. Together, in the aromatic darkness of the master bedroom, they sang “Three Is a Magic Number.” Edward invented lyrics and, finally, notes. Like Hugo, he held Toby’s hand as he fell asleep.

The halls of the emergency department
had been decked with thirty-year-old Christmas lights and garlands, cardboard Santas and menorahs. Edward held an old issue of a trashy current affairs magazine in his hands as though it were spoiled meat; he felt he had been tricked into coming. He had refused to see his family doctor, Dr. Smythe, that morning in Dollard. “A quack with cold hands and vodka breath,” Edward had concluded. The lunch rush had amounted to Randall and Garrett, and no one had showed up between one and two, so Toby closed Le Chien Chaud early and suggested they “take a drive, see the sights,” which led them to explore the architectural nuances of the Montreal General. Hugo lay silently across their laps.

An hour and a half after they sat down, a gigantic nurse appeared in the waiting area and called out, “Edward Mushinsky?”

Despite Toby’s best efforts, Hugo woke out of his doze in the transfer from lap to shoulder. Several women had commented on his outfit, and how darling a boy he was, next to
his daddy. Toby nodded to them and followed his father. The nurse, almost six and a half feet tall, with bad skin and the jaw of a man, a fascinating specimen, showed them to a room and instructed them to sit and wait.

“What’s wrong with me, do you think?”

“It’s a small chemical thing in your brain, Dad. Easy to fix. You’re going to feel a whole lot better.”

“You remember what I told you, that something’s wrong with me.”

“I do, Dad, and that’s why we’re here.”

“You know it hurts to piss.”

“Right now?”

“Has for ages. And to shit, too.”

“Just tell the doctor.”

“The doctors know all about it.”

“This is a different thing. You need a pill, that’s all, and by this time next week? ‘Wow,’ you’re going to say. Just really, ‘Wow.’”

“About what again?”

“About how good you feel.”

“Thanks so much for this, son. I do mean it.”

Toby asked Hugo if he would be all right with Edward, and the boy said he would be. Edward held out his arms, and Hugo shook his drowsiness away and jumped into them.

“I’m feeling so much better, Hugo, now that I’m here,” Edward said.

The giant nurse stood in the hall, speaking with a colleague. Toby closed the door behind him and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Yes?”

“May I speak to the doctor before he sees my father?”

“She.”

“Of course.”

The nurse led Toby to a small office, where an Indian woman of his generation, Dr. Singhmar, sat in front of a computer, an e-mail program open before her. The nurse introduced him as the son of a patient. Toby sat.

“I was just about to join you.”

Toby thanked her. “My father has been acting strangely. Very strangely. But I didn’t want to tell you about it in front of him.”

The doctor asked Toby to summarize recent events, and he did, right up to the sleeping pills in the beer. She sat for a moment, in active silence, a sexy hint of a moustache on her upper lip. It was a small office, with few personal decorations. Some inspirational quotations, in French, about treating the whole being. Dr. Singhmar stood up abruptly and led Toby into the examination room. She introduced herself warmly and dismissed both Toby and Hugo.

The toys in the waiting area of the emergency department were of the broken truck and naked Barbie variety, and Toby worried that they were covered in bacteria and viruses that would attack and harm the boy. Hugo received several more compliments on his smart attire from the women in the waiting area. He thanked them in the language in which he had been addressed, and each time Toby rubbed the boy’s head and kissed him.

His phone rang: Karen. She had been to the Chien Chaud, to the bank, and to Garrett’s office. It was over. She would be filing for bankruptcy protection first thing in the new year.

“How’s Edward?”

“We should be home soon.”

“Let’s order in tonight, while I still have a credit card.”

The big nurse came through in the automatic swinging doors that separated the waiting room from the emergency wing. She beckoned to Hugo and led him into the examination room, saying, “Let’s go see your grandpa.” Dr. Singhmar stood in the doorway of her office, waiting for Toby.

Her expression was stern. He worried that Edward had complained about the way Toby had acted toward him, the birdwatching, the dope in his beer. A scolding was in order.

“When was the last time your father had a physical examination?”

“I don’t know.”

The doctor transferred her prescription pad, for the drug that would return Edward to him, from one hand to the other. “Edward is going to have to stay with us. I’m ordering some tests.”

“Tests for what?”

“I can’t say, exactly.”

“Can you say inexactly?”

“I suspect your father is ill.”

“Mentally ill, I know.”

“His behaviour may be only a symptom.”

“A symptom of what?”

“It is my strong suspicion that your father has cancer and that it has metastasized. There are certainly tumours in his abdomen—I could feel them during my examination. It’s possible they have spread to his brain, you see, where pressure can cause—”

“You could be wrong.”

“I could be.”

“They might be benign. It might be nothing. It’s nothing. He just needs a pill.”

“Would you like to sit down?”

An open box of Pot of Gold chocolates sat crookedly on the doctor’s desk. Underneath one corner of the box were a set of keys and a grocery list. Canola oil, yogurt, chickpeas, butter. Five of the chocolates were missing from their plastic moulds. Outside, a siren. A heart attack or a car accident or a stabbing on the north side of the mountain, where the stabbings happen.

“What do people do in these situations, Dr. Singhmar?”

“Sorry?”

“What do I tell him?”

“I tell your father, we tell him, that further tests are necessary.”

She stared at Toby for a moment, drew air in, and released it with a faint gesture of uncertainty. Uncertainty or defeat.

In the examination room, Edward and Hugo had pulled out several feet of the paper blanket. They had constructed a fort, using the chairs and stool, and had hidden under it, giggling. Edward whispered something and Hugo peeked his head out.

“Surprise!”

All the way home Toby and Hugo played the translation game. Toby would say a word in French and the boy would either translate it or ask for help. They had made it through barnyard animals, fruits and vegetables, clothing, and musical instruments.
When they were only a few minutes from the house on rue Collingwood, Toby stalled for time by stopping at the IGA. Neither Emily Post nor Letitia Baldrige had prepared him for the conversation he would soon have with his mother.

From the grocery store to rue Collingwood, they concentrated on automotive concerns.

“
Autobus.
”

“Bus.”

The cars and minivans parked along the curved streets had acquired an exotic quality. Vehicles
after
one’s father is diagnosed.

“Bus. More, Poney.”

“Please sit quietly.”

They remained in the Chevette, under the dim street light.

“You want to see Karine.”

“Just a minute, Hugo.”

“Now, please. You want to see her. Okay?” He struggled in the Westchester. “Okay!”

Toby released the boy from his straps. They held hands. Toby walked slowly through the wet snow in the front yard, while Hugo tried to run. In the interests of environmental conservation, Toby had refused a plastic bag at the IGA. He carried the carton of eggs in his left hand, but he did not trust the muscles in his fingers to work, so he cradled it.

The door opened. Karen stood in jeans and a white Juste Pour Rire T-shirt. It was too large for her. Her husband’s shirt.

“Where’s your dad?”

This was not how Toby had planned it. They weren’t even inside yet. Hugo was supposed to be on the floor, playing. Karen was supposed to be in her recliner, relaxed and philosophical. “Back at the hospital.”

“What for?”

“Tests.”

“What sort of
tests?
”

“I don’t know, exactly. Scans and things. He has to stay overnight.”

“And you left him?”

“I have a two-year-old here. His bedtime is in an hour.”

“You can’t leave someone alone in a hospital. You know the condition he’s in. He’ll be scared.”

“I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“We should save some things for genuine human contact, shouldn’t we?”

Karen pulled a ski jacket from the rack. “This isn’t one of those things, Toby. You should make a note of that.”

Toby and Hugo remained outside.

“Karine! You are here.”

“Hi, baby.” She snatched up her purse and stepped outside. “You’re all right for dinner? I was going to make a—”

“Soufflé, I know.”

Hugo reached for Karen, and she picked him up, hugged him tightly, kissed him. “Édouard and I will be back soon, Hugo.”

Karen tromped over the snow to her Corolla. Toby nearly let her go. “Mom.”

“What?”

“It’s not good.”

She stopped on the sidewalk and moved the hair from her face. “What’s not good?”

“Dad.”

“What’s not good, Toby?”

“He’s sick.”

“But there’s a pill.”

A plumbing van drove by slowly, the driver squinting at the house addresses.

“You left him there, sick and alone?”

Toby picked up Hugo.

“Did you…” Karen rested her arm on the roof of the Corolla. A man in tights and a long yellow jacket jogged down the middle of rue Collingwood, puffing. Days into days. Karen watched him go. “Did you get a second opinion?”

“The tests aren’t all done.”

“You have to get a second opinion. And you never leave. I would never leave you. Never.” Karen stomped around and opened the driver’s-side door. She paused and looked up into the cool night sky, its faint glow obscuring all but the brightest stars. She slammed the door closed and walked back toward the house. Toby put the boy down and met her near the cherry tree. She fell into him. Hugo pulled at their jackets.

“What kind of sick?”

“Terrible sick.”

“How is he? Is he terrified?”

“He doesn’t really know.”

Karen cussed all the way to the Corolla, then shouted an apology to Hugo. She honked and held the horn as she sped down rue Collingwood. The jogger veered toward the sidewalk, a strip of silver shining in the headlights.

Hugo stood in the snow.

Inside, Toby sliced vegetables for the soufflé while the boy sat against the warm door of the oven, flipping through an oversized edition of
The Velveteen Rabbit
Edward had picked up for him. In Toby’s chest and pelvis, minute tickles
and clenches. He was clearly being poisoned by the same forces that were killing his father: tobacco, microwave popcorn, failure. Edward, as they took him away to be scanned, had dished his son a thumbs-up: “Wipe that look off your face. It’s a
test.
”

The doorbell rang. It was the original bell that came with the house, and part of it had died in the mid-eighties. There was a distinct melancholy about the sound, heralding not the excitement of a new visitor but the miserable certainty that someone else had arrived and would need to be fed. It was the first time Hugo had heard the dying elephant call of the doorbell, and it alarmed him. Toby scooped him up and carried him to the door.

A small man in a black watch cap, an army jacket, and astoundingly thick spectacles, stood clutching a piece of paper. “Yeah, hi, Toby.”

“Hello.”

The man waved the piece of paper before him. “I’m here for the meeting.”

“What meeting?”

He read aloud from the paper. “The first meeting of the Benjamin Disraeli Society, devoted to the art of how to be a gentleman. And in brackets here it says, ‘in the twenty-first century.’ Hosted by celebrated television host Toby Ménard, of television’s
Toby a Gentleman.
And then it says your address.”

Snow had begun to fall. Hugo delivered a whispered monologue directly into Toby’s ear, in a combination of French and English, about the snowman he would build tomorrow. The man at the door adjusted his eyeglasses.

“I’m Toby Ménard.”

“From television’s
Toby a Gentleman.
”

“Evidently.”

“Real nice to meet you. I’m James.”

“May I look at your flyer?” Toby noticed right away that James was half an hour early. The military garb, designed to conceal weapons, and
half an hour early.
“This may come as a disappointment, James, but I think you’ve been tricked. I didn’t put these up.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not at all, and I know nothing of this.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, I am half interested in starting a Benjamin Disraeli Society, and I’m thrilled to know that interest is out there. Thrilled, so thank you, James. But a meeting: no, not yet. And not here, at my parents’ house. And
definitely
not tonight. I can’t think of a worse night.”

“It’s something I want.” The man sniffed, looked away. “I want to know how to be a gentleman. It isn’t easy, with all those temptations out there.”

Toby fetched a pen and asked James to write his name and contact information on the back of the paper. It took some work to convince James to actually leave the property, first promises and, eventually, as James grew both suspicious and ornery about the misunderstanding, sincere apologies.

To ensure his safety and that of his family, Toby walked out and wrote down the licence plate of James’s red Trans Am. It was a rear-wheel drive, and it fishtailed in the slush as it growled down Collingwood.

Fifteen minutes later, when Randall and Garrett arrived, Toby was ready for them. He described James as a hulking criminal who was not at all happy to have his evening’s plans
thwarted. The irony of all this, he explained, is that a gentleman would never do this to a friend: spring a party on him, in his own house.

Randall swung a white plastic bag. “We brought meat.”

Flyers had been posted all over the West Island, in restaurants and coffee shops and on community bulletin boards. Garrett had designed them and Randall had photocopied and distributed two hundred of them. The festivities were set to begin at eight. Only two more budding gentlemen arrived, one an old high school classmate who was now a toupee-wearing accountant in Dorval and the other a newly divorced science teacher from West Island College who was so nervous that Toby worried he would faint.