Things Go Flying (14 page)

This was a little confusing for John. It also didn't give him the information he so badly needed to know. He waited anxiously.

At last Audrey said, “I haven't figured that out yet.” She saw Dylan smirk at John, and added, with a spark of irritation, “But for now you're still grounded—indefinitely. And if I were you, I'd lie low for a couple of days.”

John looked down at his feet.

“Now, what are we going to do about your father's birthday?”

“Mom, maybe Dad isn't in the mood for a big splash for his birthday,” Dylan pointed out. This seemed pretty obvious to everyone. The game was coming back on, and John's eyes slid back to the television. Audrey kept her grip firmly on the remote.

“I wasn't thinking of a
party
or anything,” Audrey said, “but we ought to do something special.” Then she had an inspiration—why didn't she think of this before? “You boys could make something for him. That might cheer him up.”

Dylan groaned and rolled his eyes. John looked doubtful.

“Like what?” John asked.

“I don't know,” Audrey said brightly. “I'll leave that to you. I'm sure you'll come up with something.” She tossed the remote back to the couch—where Dylan neatly intercepted it with one hand before it hit the cushion—and left them to their football game.

“What do you make of that?” Dylan said, when Audrey had gone back upstairs.

“I don't know,” John said, not wanting to talk about it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

H
arold wasn't the only one having an identity crisis. It was with dismay that Audrey read in the newspaper that the average age of a child leaving home was now twenty-eight. She had a neighbour, a woman with four children, who started training for a marathon just to get away from the kids. Audrey saw her every day, running down the street away from her house. Audrey, standing in the living room looking out the window with a cup of coffee in her hand, watched her go now. She understood perfectly.

It was Monday at last, and the house was empty. Dylan had annoyed her this morning by impersonating her at breakfast—dancing and twirling around the kitchen with the Swiffer while he poured coffee and hummed along with the radio. Surprisingly, Harold had got up and gone to work as usual, looking much like his normal self. Audrey, exhausted from the weekend, had let him go. She returned to the kitchen, poured herself a second cup of coffee, and glanced again at the newspaper for confirmation. It definitely said twenty-eight. She'd never last that long.

For a moment she fantasized about getting a job, or going back to school. She'd been having this fantasy quite a lot lately, but practicality always took over. Her family needed her too much. They seemed to need her more now than ever, which wasn't how it was supposed to be at all. But the last thing she should be thinking about, under the circumstances, was herself.

Today she would call Dr. Goldfarb again. She had a brain wave and figured she could talk to Goldfarb about Dylan's drug problem at the same time, thus killing two birds with one stone. Also, she still had to find a birthday present for Harold—now she was thinking of something along the lines of a new, comfy bathrobe, as the old one which she seemed to be looking at all the time these days was getting pretty ratty, which irritated her.

Or was that too enabling?

Downstairs, in the laundry room, she sorted the pile of wash that always seemed to spring up overnight like a giant mushroom in the moist darkness of the unfinished part of the basement.

• • •

B
ACK AT WORK
, Harold felt himself starting to revive. Even his spine was straighter; he was like a thirsty plant that had been given some water. There was nothing like having a goal. He was going to work through lunch and leave work early to buy a television at Future Shop on the way home. For this reason, he had taken the rental car to work again today instead of the subway and would again spend over twenty dollars on parking. It would be worth it though. Also, he'd been thinking about the girl at Staples, the one with straight As. Audrey was adamant the boys not have after-school jobs, but during this morning's staff meeting, Harold had had the brilliant idea of tying their allowance to chores. Instead of handing out twenty dollars a week to each of them like he did now, their spending money could be made contingent upon their doing chores around the house! Why hadn't they thought of this before?

He had also learned from Al that his car was in fact going to be fixed and would be ready in a couple of days. Harold was sitting at his desk thinking about how to find a lawyer for John's careless driving charge, when he noticed the spider. How did a spider get in here?

He watched with interest as the spider wove its web at the base of his potted palm. It was fascinating to watch it work; Harold hadn't been this interested in anything at the office in ages. The papers that required his attention were sitting on his desk, ignored.

When, Harold asked himself, had he lost his natural boy's interest in bugs? He could remember, as a child, trapping clusters of tiny fruit flies in his cupped hands, shaking them all about and then releasing them, laughing at their seemingly drunken flight. He could suddenly remember this very clearly—he used to do it in the barn at Riverdale Farm.

There was a knock on his partially open door, but Harold didn't look up. He called, “Come in.” He didn't realize that in his enthusiastic study of the spider he had leaned so far forward in his chair toward the potted palm that he was actually below the sightline of the desk.

“Where the hell are you, Harold?” Stan Toft, his supervisor, asked.

“Over here,” Harold said, popping his head up for a minute, and then dropping below the desk again.

“Did you drop something?” The other man came over to see what Harold was doing.

“This is fascinating,” Harold said.

“What?”

“Have you ever watched a spider weave a web? It's really something.”

Stan looked carelessly at the spider and then more intently at Harold. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“Good. Then get back to work. I want your report by the end of the day.”

Harold reluctantly turned back to his desk. He picked up a pen and started to scan a page. But once his supervisor was out of the room, he went back to studying the spider. He admired its purposefulness, its skill, how it seemed to build something out of nothing. He could happily watch the spider work for hours.

“
I don't like to disturb you when you're busy
,” his mother said, from somewhere between the filing cabinet and the potted palm.

Harold got an unpleasant adrenaline surge and whipped his head around to where the voice was coming from. “Leave me alone!” he said, a knee-jerk reaction.

“I'm worried about you,” said his mum.

Harold looked around wildly and got up to close his office door. “I'm fine,” he said. “Now go away.”

“Harold, I'm your mother. I may not have been the best mother, but you could have done a lot worse.”

This was true; he really didn't have anything against his mother, other than her consorting with the dead. He'd held that against her all his life and this wasn't helping any. Now that he was sober, he'd lost all interest in those questions he'd had ready for her the other night, save one. “Am I going to die?” he whispered.

“How would I know?” his mum answered.

“Is that why you're here?”

“I'm
dead,
not omniscient. I can't tell you what's going to happen.” She paused, and added, “It's not that different here than it is there, to tell the truth. We have a little more perspective, but that's about it.”

This was all so bizarre that Harold was beginning to wonder if he was imagining it. Either way, the implications were alarming. He wanted more than anything to escape, to pretend this wasn't happening. He didn't want to know why his mother was here.

“I have to go to a meeting now,” he lied.

“Fine. But when you have a minute there's someone here that would like to talk to you.”

“Who?”

But she was already gone, and Harold turned at a sound near his office door. His supervisor, Stan, was standing there, tapping his knuckles on the opened door, looking at him uncertainly.

“For a minute there it looked like you were talking to the filing cabinet,” he said.

Harold laughed as if it were a great joke.

• • •

H
AROLD WAS AT
Future Shop after work, staring at a dizzying array of televisions. This was more choice than anyone could ever need. He just wanted something simple. He searched in vain for someone to help him navigate through all this excess functionality, but it looked like he was on his own. He read about the features of each model carefully, comparing prices. At last, he made his selection, telling himself it didn't really matter—he'd just take the cheapest one. It was a fourteen-inch jvc and he thought it would fit nicely on the end of the kitchen counter.

He searched carefully for the right box, and then, with a grunt, careful to lift with his legs not his back, hoisted it up and carried it with some difficulty to the cash. It wasn't that big, but it was awkward and heavier than he expected, and his stomach got in the way. When he got to the cash there was a lineup. He needed to put the TV down but there was no room on the counter, so he put it down on the floor, this time forgetting to use his legs instead of his back, because he was more focused on not dropping the damn thing and he was running out of time before he'd lose his grip. When he tried to straighten up, a stabbing pain shot down his lower back and into his leg.

Shit.

He straightened gingerly, careful to put weight on his right leg very gradually. He was breathing heavily and wincing in pain, embarrassed that he couldn't carry a portable TV a few feet without injuring himself. He was surrounded by slim, limber people in their teens and early twenties, and for a few seconds he actually considered starting an exercise program, maybe some stretches at least.

When it was his turn, the girl at the cash leaned over and scanned the box and said, “Will that be a cash or credit?”

Harold was leaning his fingertips on the counter and still trying to put his full weight on his right leg when he suddenly remembered the screwed-up state of his financial identity. He'd been so blinded by his desire for this TV that he'd simply forgotten that for the time being, his credit was nonexistent. He'd had to use cash when he'd bought the shredder.
How could he have forgotten something so critical?

She raised her eyebrows at him, impatient, and said, “Do you have a credit card, or will that be cash?” At the word
cash
, she smirked.

The smirk tried his patience severely, but of course he didn't have that much cash on him; just paying for the parking had cleaned him out. He felt the flush creep up his neck.

She shook her head. “Next,” she called, fed up. The people in the line behind him were fidgeting rudely, utterly without compassion. He saw the rolling eyes of the superior young woman behind him; a kid no older than Dylan looked impatiently at his watch and huffed loudly.

None of these people, Harold thought numbly, realized the situation—that he wouldn't be able to get through supper tonight— that he simply wouldn't be able to carry on—without this TV.

His only recourse was the bank, but he'd have to go to his own branch. He snuck a hopeless look at his watch, but naturally by now the bank would be closed.

He limped away, leaving the TV on the floor behind him, the lineup spilling around it in its rush forward.

• • •

T
HAT NIGHT AT
supper, a wild-eyed Harold laid out his “allowance for chores” scheme, which was met with a long silence. This seemed to come out of nowhere.

John didn't protest, figuring it was just one more example of how things never went right for him, and he was already in the doghouse. Dylan didn't say anything either, assuming nothing would come of it. Audrey was quietly furious that Harold hadn't consulted her about this first—if he had she could have reminded him that they'd tried it years ago (it was hardly an original idea) and it hadn't worked. Also, Audrey couldn't think of a single household chore that the boys would do well enough that she wouldn't simply have to do it over anyway, and then there would be all the nagging . . . This was going to be
way
more work for her. She looked resentfully at Harold but held her tongue.

• • •

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
, Audrey and Harold were back at the doctor's. Dr. Goldfarb had Harold sit down on the examining table, covered in a rustling white paper sheet, while Audrey stood by. Harold sat there sullenly, stubbornly mute.

Audrey had managed to get Harold an appointment. However, she hadn't been able to get past the doctor's secretary to speak to him on the phone, and she couldn't discuss Dylan's drug problem in front of Harold, so she was no further ahead on that score. But she hoped to bring this up privately, maybe when Harold was sent to do a pee sample or something. She figured she'd improvise.