The Best Thing for You

  Copyright © 2004 by Annabel Lyon

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lyon, Annabel, 1971-

  The best thing for you / Annabel Lyon.

  ISBN 0-7710-5397-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-55199-670-7

  I. Title.

  PS8573.Y62B48 2004 C813′.6 C2003-907171-5

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  The Canadian Publishers

  481 University Avenue

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5G 2E9

  www.mcclelland.com

  v3.1

  For Bryant

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  No Fun

  The Goldberg Metronome

  The Best Thing For You Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Acknowledgements

  NO FUN

  The landscapers wake me up. It’s five o’clock and they’re leaving for the day. They’re dragging their shovels along the gravel path under my window, back to their truck, which bristles with implements.

  I pull on a robe and go downstairs in my bare feet. Outside I catch the older one coiling my garden hose. “I’ve been rethinking the patio.”

  “Good morning to you,” he says. My hair must be sticking up.

  “I work nights. What I was thinking, instead of concrete, maybe stone? With plants growing in the cracks.”

  He nods. “The old wild-thyme-amongst-the-stone-flagging trick. The aged look? You step on it, it smells nice?”

  I nod.

  “Tuscany, am I right?”

  “I’ve never been.” Although, okay, yes, this is one of my plans for a perfect future. Maybe when my son is old enough to fall in love. It would be a gift his parents could give him, taking him to a place like that to fall in love. Olives and wine and wild thyme in the flagging. Olives and bicycles, summer.

  Back upstairs I’m pulling on my running gear when I overhear the older one telling his assistant about my idea.

  “Tuscany?” the assistant asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “Funny,” I say to no one. If I keep moving, I just have time to make supper, go for my run, shower, and still make my shift at the hospital.

  My husband, Liam, comes in and slumps down behind me while I’m on the floor lacing my runners. He puts his arms around me and hooks one leg over mine and starts kissing the back of my neck. “Hi,” he says.

  I give us a couple of minutes of this. Then I say, “Where are the boys?” Our son, Ty, this summer, is inseparable from Jason-from-swimming. This summer they are “the boys.” We like saying this, Liam and I. We’re distantly thinking of another baby, when life settles down, the renovations and my shifts and his tenure. It’s not too late, although Ty is fourteen and it might look a little weird. But it might look cool, too.

  “Look.” Liam points out the window. Down in the yard Jason is holding three white tennis balls and looking over Ty’s shoulder. Ty is reading aloud from a book. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a white vest with great loops for armholes, showing a lot of thin brown chest. He’s just started putting muscle on his back and shoulders, and he’s almost as tall as I am, but his face is still smooth. Jason is blond to my son’s dark, with a backwards baseball cap and a black T-shirt with white lettering on it, cut for someone fifty pounds heavier. His elbows flex in and out of sight in this T-shirt. He clutches the tennis balls to his chest like eggs. When he drops one we hear his thin, unbroken voice say, “Sheet.”

  “They’re going to learn to juggle from a book,” Liam says.

  “Ty’s idea, sounds like.”

  “Who else?” Liam has told me he finds Jason a bit dull, also shifty. He’s not wrong. We go downstairs, holding hands.

  “Fish for supper,” I say.

  Liam lets go of me and snatches open the fridge door. He spreads his arms like an opera tenor hitting a high one, waiting to be impressed by the contents. “It’s all mocha yogurt with you people, isn’t it?”

  I grind a lemon on the juicer, pinch cilantro, fork oil in a dish. One of my half-hour marinades. The door opens and Ty sticks his head through. “Can Jason stay for supper?”

  “Nah,” Liam and I say together. He grins. Jason appears at his side and he starts smiling too, although he doesn’t know what at. “Is it okay?” he asks. “We’ll do the dishes.”

  This is too sweet, even for them. “It’s okay if you go home and tell your mother and change your T-shirt,” I say. Liam comes over to have a look so he stands up tall and pulls it straight with his hands, I’VE HAD SEX, the T-shirt says.

  Ty is smiling at the ceiling. Liam bites the inside of his cheek and turns away quickly. He starts humming, ducking to look out the window. He’s holding his breath, humming, eyes closed.

  “Now,” I say.

  While the fish marinates, I go for my run. My route takes me along a few quiet streets of big old houses and maples, down to the gravel beach path. At twenty minutes I turn back. When I turn the last corner I stop to walk, to cool down and admire our house – gables and dormers, an upstart thirties’ baby but trying to blend. Now it’s a character home. When we bought it, it was acid yellow and the yard was somebody’s scorched earth policy. We threw a party for all our friends. “That’s going to go,” we said, pointing at the paint. We gestured at the yard, expansive gestures. “It’s all going to go.” Now it’s the prettiest on the block: Nantucket blue, climbing yellow roses, lawn like jade, basketball hoop nailed to the garage. And we’re having the back done, finally – sunroom, greenhouse, patio. I stand, hands on my hips, breathing hard, and admire.

  Ty is sitting on the front steps, using a stick to prise pebbles from the treads of his new Nike Shox. He begged me for those shoes. I’ve seen him wash them with shampoo.

  “Jason gone home?” I ask.

  “He’s coming back.”

  “That’s what I meant.” I ruffle his hair as I pass. Soft hair, like his father’s. He jumps up, sock-footed, and opens the door for me with a courtly bow.

  I shower, bake the fish, and we eat. Liam, professor of film studies, explains to the boys why we won’t let them go see Summer of Sam at the second-run theatre.

  “It has violence,” he says, taking salad. “Violence and sex and penises.”

  “Yech,” Ty says.

  Jason says, “It does not,” and looks expectant. He now has a flannel shirt buttoned over the T-shirt. He holds his fork in his fist and his knife in his other fist, like a toddler. But he says please and thanks and washes his hands before he comes to the table. I asked Ty once about his parents and he said, “They’re really nice.”

  “Still, no,” Liam says.

  Jason loves Liam. He watches him, waiting to laugh.

  “What are you boys going to do tonight?” I ask.

  “Get into trouble,” Jason says promptly.

  Ty says, “Pillage.”

&nbs
p; “Not on my watch.” Liam stacks our plates. When he gets to Jason’s, he squints at it. Jason has scraped all his cilantro to one side, a green wad. “What in hell is that?”

  Jason looks at me, embarrassed. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “It’s okay,” I say softly, and smile. “It’s just a herb.”

  “It’s grass from the lawn,” Liam says, and Jason smiles.

  “I gotta go.” I stand up. “You’ve got ten hours to do the dishes.”

  Liam follows me out to the garage and presses against me in the dark. “Wake me up when you get in,” he says. He’s serious.

  “Wow, no kidding.”

  “This is nothing,” he says. “I’m waiting for you.”

  I’m a doctor at Charity Eagle – a tiny local hospital with an even tinier Emergency that strictly ought not to exist, except that we’re a wealthy riding. I spent years pulling strings to get here, a ten-minute drive from home, which is why I’m temporarily on nights, filling in for the Emergency resident who’s on stress leave. What stress? is what I can’t help thinking. Not a stabbing, not an overdose, not a severed spinal cord in sight. I keep thinking, hit me. I can take it.

  There’s no vending machine. Once an hour or so, the nurses make everybody tea.

  “Dawn,” I say, greeting the nurses. “Daisy.”

  “Hi, hi, hi,” they say.

  It’s a quiet night. An MI, a dog bite. “What kind of dog?” I ask, as Daisy prepares the hypodermic.

  The victim, who looks golf, shakes his head. Fifties, rueful. “Terrier. My own damn dog. I thought we were playing.”

  “Little guy probably thought so too,” Daisy says.

  It’s a ripping bite, not deep, but messy. “He hung on,” I say. I get him to bend the knee a few times.

  “Sure, what do you want, he’s a terrier,” the man says.

  Dawn sticks her head through the curtains. “Doctor,” is all she says.

  Outside they’ve got one on the table. “Okay, yes,” I say.

  The ambulance man reads from a clipboard. “Concussion, fractured rib, fractured jaw, broken nose, bruising to face, back, shoulders, shins, severe bruising to genitals.” He looks up. “A beating.”

  I look at his face. Down syndrome. He’s awake.

  “Hey, buddy,” I say.

  “He’s not, ah, receiving you,” the man says, tapping his ear.

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “No, I mean they found his hearing aid nearby. Looked like someone stepped on it. Here’s his jacket. Wallet, Care Card, provincial ID. In case of emergency contact.”

  “Okay.” I point to reception. “Dawn?”

  “Sorry,” she says, hustling back. “Paul Malone.”

  “Who found him?” We’re busy now.

  “In the parking lot behind Silver Video. At Eighth Avenue?” I nod. It’s our local. I have a card for Silver Video in my wallet. “Employee locking up. Said he’d been in the store an hour and a half before, returning videos, wanting to chat. Apparently he’s a regular.”

  “What was he doing round the back?”

  “I guess getting the crap kicked out of him.”

  We send Paul Malone off for X-rays and a scan, an orderly wheeling him. He’s awake this whole time. He’s cleaned up and we’ve got painkillers in him but his face is looking worse, puffy and darkening.

  “Who would do that?” I say, watching him go, and Dawn says, “Lord, I know.”

  I pick up his jacket, a navy blue shell from Coast Meridian Sports. It’s pretty scuffed up, and square in the back is a footprint, so clear you can see the pattern on the sole – Nikes.

  Dawn spans her hand next to the print.

  After about twenty minutes his people start coming. By this time I’ve got a baby. I’m telling the parents, your baby eats talc, your baby’s going to vomit talc. Keep the lid on the talc. They’re nodding.

  “Doctor,” Dawn says.

  I shake hands with a white-haired woman, the supervisor of Paul Malone’s group home. I explain about the tape on his ribs, the jaw, the nose, which will need surgery but not immediately. No apparent brain damage or internal damage, although he’s going to have pain talking and especially urinating. I explain he might not recognize her right now, with the Demerol, and we’d like him to stay at least until tomorrow for observation.

  She asks for a list of his medications, goes and takes a look at him, then sits down in the waiting area and starts making notes.

  A family with food poisoning – shellfish. Even the two-year-old had clams. I would never give my two-year-old clams. The next time I look over, there’s a weedy man with a honey-coloured moustache sitting next to the supervisor. They’re conferring, I would say. He goes over and makes a call at the pay phone, referring to some papers she’s given him. Then he tips her a little salute and leaves.

  It’s about three a.m. “Pastry?” says Julie at Reception, when she sees me heading for the double doors with my water bottle, and holds out a plate.

  I take my break outside, in the dark cool, like a smoker. I chomp my Danish and suck my water. The sliding doors sigh and two people come out, the supervisor and another woman. They don’t see me. The supervisor lights up. When she sucks, her cheeks go black in the white fluorescence from the EMERGENCY sign over the doors. They wander off the grooved rubber mat and the doors sigh closed. They sit on the edge of a box planter.

  “I’m guessing kids,” the new woman says. “Teenagers.”

  I bite my Danish quietly. It’s good.

  The supervisor taps ash, looks away. “He shouldn’t have been out so late on his own. The videos were overdue. The night staff told him, first thing tomorrow morning, you go take those videos back. I guess he was trying to get the job done. Nice warm summer evening and all.”

  “Elaine, I’m not blaming you, I guess,” the woman says. “But I just think someone has to take responsibility here. He could be dead.”

  The supervisor tucks her cigarette into the bark chips in the planter behind her. “Let’s go back in.”

  “Somebody’s at fault,” the woman says.

  The rest of my shift is medium busy. It’s the weekend, so we get a few extra drunken stupidities, nothing major. In a quiet moment I pick up Paul Malone’s jacket again and look at the footprint on the back. I’m thinking, teenagers. The print is kind of small.

  “See what I mean?” Dawn says.

  Pink light, filtered through the smoked-glass doors, hits the floor in an orange pool. It glows fiercer and fiercer until it disappears – sun’s up. Julie’s phones are ringing silently, red lights winking and twitching, fibrillating.

  I take a last look at Paul Malone. His face is purple, lip stitched, jaw wrapped. He watches me move around the bed. The woman from outside sits beside him, holding his hand. Someone’s put a hearing aid back in his ear.

  “Is this your sister?” I say, and he nods.

  Six a.m. I go home.

  The neighbourhood is bathed in summer dawn, the trees are weighed down with it like syrup. In this light even the cars are tender and lovely, although the damp salt cool off the ocean, tangible blocks up from the beach at night, is already fizzing dry under the blue heat of the sky. And people hate our neighbourhood, elsewhere in the city, hate it, they talk about us on the radio call-in shows because our old trees are saved at extra expense during road repair, because Charity Eagle thrives when other hospitals are closing, because this is where the lawyers live. Liam and I shouldn’t be here, even with our incomes. There was a blip in the market, a window, and we jumped; otherwise we’d be bitching it out in the suburbs and hating us too. In fact, most of our good friends, people we went to university with, live elsewhere. In fact, we only know one lawyer, and she is shy.

  A police cruiser is parked in our driveway. As I pull up alongside it backs into the street. The officer waves at me before he drives away. Moustache, sunglasses. He looks like a prick.

  “Fuck was that,” I say to no one. My heart is beating. I put the car awa
y. In the house, I go straight up to Ty’s room, but he’s not there. His weights are lined up under his Steve Nash poster, his plaid sheets are on his bed, his computer is on his desk, but he’s not in any of his places. I can’t see his shoes.

  I go to our bedroom. Liam’s in bed, asleep, naked. The note on my night table says, Kid’s sleeping over at Jason’s.

  The room is white, light-swollen, awake.

  “How was work?” Liam says. So he’s awake too, just not moving. I sit beside him on the bed and tell him about the very first one, the one I lost, the MI.

  “Again?”

  “Heart attack. He was hanging on when they brought him in, but there was nothing we could do. I wish those guys would die at home sometimes.”

  “With their martinis and their chicken-fried steaks and their hippo guts and their stressful stockbroking careers.”

  “All of that,” I say. “Why was there a police cruiser in the driveway just now?”

  The phone rings. “What the hell?” Liam says. “It’s not even seven. If that’s Ty wanting to be picked up, tell him he’s on his own.”

  I let the machine down in the kitchen take it. “Liam.”

  “We’re having words when he gets home, anyway. The pair of them took off last night without telling me. Then he phones from Jason’s, by the way Dad, I’m staying here tonight. Not asking, notice, telling. And they left me the dishes, which as we all know is women’s and small boys’ work.”

  “What time was this?” I say. “Approximately.”

  “It’s that Jason, I think.” He’s up on an elbow now. “There’s something kind of morose about that kid.”

  “Liam.”

  “Ty’s a bright boy,” my husband says, sitting up. He’s getting excited. “He should have bright friends. That Jason gets on my nerves. I want to sock him.”

  “No you don’t want to sock him.”

  He cups my face in his hands and looks at my hair. “Yes, I honestly do.” He makes a fist, draws it back, slow-mo, lets his knuckles kiss my jaw in a pretend right hook. “Bam! Like that. And that T-shirt.”

  I bite my lip.