Every Happy Family (17 page)

“Beau?” he says.

“I'm still not changed.”

“Did you lock the door?”

“I guess I did.”

“You have to answer it.”

“I will, I will.” She finishes tying his shoes and stands up.

“I wanted to be sitting in my chair,” he says, more to himself.

“Well, here's the walker.” She wheels it over.

He doesn't want his son to have to witness his old-man procession from bedroom to family room. Jill grips his elbow to help him stand but he hesitates. “I'd like not to be wearing the oxygen tubes.”

“Let's get you to the chair then I'll take them off.”

“Tell him you're coming,” he says, and she hurries into the hall and yells, “Just a minute.”

It's the first step that requires the most courage. An image has formed in his head of his cancer-riddled bones as porous coral that might fracture on impact and send the twin towers of his legs crumbling beneath him. He closes his eyes and steps forward. Still standing and the pain's bearable. The most efficient way of exerting himself is to take six even steps and stop for a deep breath, six even steps, stop, deep breath.

“Coming,” Jill calls again.

When his easy chair comes into view, he has to hold himself back from hurrying. Finally seated, Les takes a couple of full breaths of concentrated oxygen, unhooks his tubes and hands them to Jill, picks up the ball cap he keeps handy. She hurries to return them to the bedroom when he stops her.

“What?” she says, exasperated. “He's waiting.”

“How's my hair?”

That sober face of his wife's softens into a smile. Nice. He covers his baldness with a ball cap and she hurries down the hall to the door. He listens intently to the door opening, Jill's squeak of a cry.

“Hey Mom.” Beau's jocular tone.

“Come here,” she demands.

“I need a shower, badly.”

Les pictures Jill giving him a hard squeeze and Beau sighing like he's doing her a favour.

“Tell him we gave at the office,” calls Les.

Beau's chuckle gives Les a throat-swelling thrill.

“So am I the first one here?” Beau sounds tentative.

“Yes, thank goodness,” says Jill. “I'm not even dressed yet.”

Hurry in here, thinks Les. I can't stand it.

The smell of lilacs competes with something sour, thinks Beau, his nose wrinkling as he drops his pack. Glancing up the staircase, he flashes on racing Quinn and Pema down these stairs, round the banister, past the guest bathroom, slipping on his socks down this hall then hopping over the back of the couch in the family room, the first one in prime position for Saturday cartoons.

His mom's a fluttering bird behind him, winging him towards his dad's voice saying weakly, “Let's see you.” The kitchen and family room are really one large room and between them, on the far wall, French doors open onto the back patio and yard. He knows the trampoline's been sold but is glad to see the ping pong table set up on the grass.

Dad sits in front of the picture window that frames a rhododendron gaudy with hot pink blossoms. He looks pinned to his chair as he leans back to see from under the brim of one of Pema's old softball caps. His narrow face is a chalky yellow, his lips a chapped stinging red. Beau hardly recognizes him.

“I'd hug you if I didn't think you'd snap me in half,” says Les, holding up a hand.

Beau can't help but smirk. He squeezes his dad's hand, hears a small crack and quickly lets go.

“God, I think you broke it.” Les grabs his hand and hunches over it as if in pain.

“Whaaat?” Beau is horrified and looks to his mom. “I didn't –”

“Gotcha.” Les's laugh is strangulated.

“Jesus.”

“Les,” scolds Jill.

Beau forces a laugh. Remembers back in grade ten challenging his dad in kitchen doorway rucks to see who could push the other over the threshold. Les would hold back, give Beau the edge until the last minute when he'd put real muscle into it and easily win.

“You are even bigger than the last time we saw you,” says Jill.

“You're a monster,” says Les. “I bet you eat like one too.”

“I'm actually one of the smaller guys on the team.” Two-thirteen. But fifth best bench press. Second best fifty-metre sprint time. So-so tackler. Lousy kicks.

His parents are shaking their heads, smiles stuck on their faces.

“You can take a shower. Or are you hungry? Where's your luggage?” His mother is clearly in multi-tasking mode.

Beau tells the story of his luggage and Jill reminds him that he still has some old clothes in his room. “Though I doubt they'd fit you any more.”

“You'd crush those clothes,” says Les and breaks into an ugly fit of coughing that sounds like it must hurt.

Beau looks to Jill, who asks him in a strange upbeat voice if he'd fetch his dad a glass of water, no ice, then disappears down the hall. Though the kitchen's just on the other end of the room, he's relieved not to have to stand there and watch his father struggle. The phone rings and Jill calls out for Beau to answer it.

“Hello?”

“I know that voice, I do. That you, Beau?”

“C'est moi, ma tante Annie,” he answers and her laugh is maniacal. He grabs a glass for water. Dad now sounds like he's choking.

“I can't wait to see you, pinch your cheeky cheeks. So great you're home. So great. Just calling to ask if your mom needs me to bring anything other than all the shit I'm already bringing.”

“I'll ask.” He takes the glass of water to his dad who, still coughing, points to the table beside his chair.

“Who's coughing?” Annie asks. “Is that Les? Oh God, is he all right?”

“I'm just bringing him water. Here comes Mom.”

Jill appears with a long transparent hose that his father fits into his nose. His ball cap has fallen onto the floor beside his chair and the sun shining through the window illuminates a large blue vein like an underground river arcing across his whiter than white bald head. An alien's head, thinks Beau.

“Thanks, Beau.” Jill slips a bendy straw into the cup and Les's lips reach for it in sad fishlike motions. Beau looks away.

“Auntie Annie wants to know if you need anything else.”

“Got it covered, tell her.”

“She's got it covered.”

“Of course she's got it covered,” says Annie. “Okay, so how is he today?”

“Pretty good, I think.”

“He's so amazing.” A minute ago his aunt sounded insanely happy and now sounds close to tears. “You are one lucky kid to have such a dad. Sorry, this is a celebration. A happy day. I'm going to hang up so I can hurry over and see your handsome face.”

“Bye, Auntie.”

“And you can see what you think of my new look,” she says. “God help us.” And with a fresh rocket of laughter, she hangs up.

As Les's cough subsides, Beau, feeling like he's in the way more than anything, thinks he might escape upstairs. “So I slept in this shirt and should probably shower,” he says.

Les just smirks and takes in Beau's bulked-up body, not with any hint of jealously, thinks Beau, but with something like pride of ownership, and Beau has a fleeting sense of himself as an extension of his dad or of what his dad once was.

“Okay, say it,” croaks Les as he catches his breath.

“What?” says Beau and hopes he knows what his dad is asking. “That you look like shite?”

Les's head falls back against his chair. “Don't I know it. So how about a beer?” Another noisy breath. “Or you a wine snob now?”

“Beer sounds great.”

“Beer. Coming right up,” says Jill from the kitchen.

Annie parks in her brother's driveway, flips down the visor mirror and repowders a rogue freckle in front of her left ear, then a string of satellite freckles along her hairline. Les didn't have any spots under
his
hair. She turns to reassess the melted chocolate chip on the side of her head.

“Bull's eye,” she mutters, “mole's eye,” and doesn't bother to try and cover that one.

Convinced her head looks freakishly small without her mass of curls, she wore her most daunting earrings – four-inch bronze discs. And, to feminize her suit, sky-high heels and a ruffled blouse. Wouldn't want the kids to start calling her Uncle.

She had a difficult drive over because small animals, squirrels or cats, maybe rabbits she couldn't tell which, kept darting out in front of her car. After the sixth or seventh time it happened, she figured out that her missing drugs were playing games with her brain stem, which had branches that tickled the insides of her eyes.

A black sedan pulls in behind hers and she flips up the visor. Quinn? She can't wait to meet this new girl of his, and can sure use help carrying things. She grabs the two bottles of wine and gets out of the car as a tall, thick-shouldered man unfolds from the black one. Not Quinn. This man has a grey-streaked ponytail, a goatee ringing his full lips and is wearing a wrinkled sports coat. He bends down and announces, loudly, to whoever's in the passenger seat, “We're here.” Sun reflects off the windshield and Annie can't see who's inside.

He turns to face the house and therefore Annie, rests his elbow on the car roof and his chin in his hand.

Annie gives a wave but he doesn't move. Can he not see her? Is her head that small?

“Do you happen to speak Alzheimer?” he asks.

Annie barks out a laugh. “You,” she says and closes her door, “must be the infamous Kenneth?” He has a slightly bulbous nose and friendly, dog-eared brown eyes. She was picturing a Japanese aesthete not a St. Bernard. “I'm Annie, Les's sister.”

“Give me one of those lovelies.” He takes a bottle so they can shake hands.

His handshake is rugged and sloppy and she suspects the Japanese view him as a Canadian cartoon, a little barrel full of beer around his neck.

“That must be Nancy,” she says, looking in the window.

“More or less.” He slips the other bottle from Annie's grip.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she says and starts round to the passenger door. “I haven't seen Nancy in ages.”

“She's refusing to get out of the car.” He shuts his door, presses his key chain and the doors click and lock. “Locking it so she can't escape. Got a window cracked.”

“But...” Annie taps a finger on Nancy's window. “Nancy, hi. Remember me?” Dumb thing to ask. “Would you like to open your door?”

Deliberately ignoring her, Nancy stares straight ahead, her nose tilted an inch upward, her eyebrows arched.

“Infamous,” Kenneth repeats and trudges up the driveway with her wine.

“Wait,” says Annie but he doesn't. “Be right back,” she says to Nancy.

She gets a bag of clothes from the trunk of her car, things she can no longer fit into that she trusts Pema or Pema's Tibetan family can use. She's received the nicest, most illiterate notes from that crew and is starting to think she'd do well to set up shop in Nepal.

Walking towards the front door where Jill's appeared, Annie sees something tan and fuzzy slip past her sister-in-law and into the house. Don't say anything, Annie tells herself, not wanting to add to Jill's burden in any way, shape or form. “Jill. How are you holding up?” she says. “I don't know how you do it.” Jill's wearing a shimmering sea-green dress that Annie instantly wants to alter, cut out strategically placed rectangles and back them with fishnet the same colour as the dress. Add a heavy bracelet of knotted rope.

“I'm fine,” says Jill. “Annie, where's your hair?”

“My hair?” She gropes her head as if in a panic, then laughs. “Just wanted to know how Les feels. I'm donating it to Wigs for Cancer. Do I look seriously disproportioned? I've got a little Chihuahua head, don't I?” She takes a step back to give Jill a better view but Jill is looking past her. “
You've
still got a waist,” says Annie, knowing she's being a faucet mouth but unable to turn it off. “And you've had two kids. How do you do it? I'm inflating from the neck down.”

“Did Kenneth lock my mother in the car?”

“He did but he left a window cracked for air. I tried to get her to open the door but I don't think she remembers me.”

“He thinks it's funny. Kenneth, give me the keys.” she yells over her shoulder.

He appears in the hall behind her, a glass of wine in hand. “Full-bodied,” he says with a little up-nod to Annie and for a moment she thinks he's referring to her figure.

“We don't have all day,” says Jill.

He tosses the keys and Jill, clearly not amused, snatches them out of the air and strides away.