Roost (10 page)

Saturday morning there’s an article in the paper
about a man charged for extorting his seventy-eight-year-old mother out of her life savings by threatening to kidnap her cat. A picture accompanies the article. The son wears jogging pants and looks like Chef Boyardee. My brother calls and I share the story with him but he tells me he’s not interested.

I want to swear at him, but instead I just ask, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Emma will not stop crying.”

“I can hear that.”

“So what do I do?”

“Have you tried to feed her? Is she hungry?”

“No she’s not freaking hungry. I’ve fed her like six bottles.”

“Well if you fed her six bottles, she’s probably sick.”

“Claudia!”

“Well? What does Allison-Jean think?”

“Allison-Jean isn’t here.”

“Try to burp her.”

“And how do I burp her?”

“You don’t know how to burp her? Didn’t you ever have to burp Hannah or Liam?”

“Claudia, are you going to help me?”

I close the newspaper. “Put her on your shoulder and gently pat her back.”

I pause, giving him time to follow direction.

“I’m putting you on speaker phone,” Dan says.

“Are you okay? Where is Allison? Are you sick or something?”

“I just need her to stop crying.”

“Who? Emma or Allison-Jean?”

“The baby!”

“Keep trying to burp her and call me back in ten minutes if it doesn’t work. Where’s Allison?”

He hangs up.

That was bizarre
, I think, dialling my dad.

“Hi, honey,” he answers cheerily. “I only have a minute here. I’m volunteering at the curling club this morning.”

“Sure. Anything new?”

He hums for a minute and then replies, “Not that I can think of.”

“Okay. Have you talked to Dan lately?”

“Not recently. He missed swimming this week because he was busy at work.”

“Oh.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just wondering if you talked to him. What are you doing at the curling club this morning?”

“We’re fixing up the change rooms.”

“Cool. Listen, I was thinking the other day about Mom’s stuff. Maybe we should go through it sometime?”

“No,” Dad chirps. “No, no, no.”

“Okay, so
no?
”

“No. We don’t need to do that.”

“All right then, I just thought it might be good to start going through some of her stuff. Her clothes and things. You know? Her makeup, shoes. Maybe we could have a garage sale in the spring. Or we could donate some of it. Mom would like that.”

“We can talk about that later. I have to get going because I have the key to the club.”

“Okay.”

I hang up.

An hour passes and I don’t hear back from Dan. I assume he was able to settle the baby. The kids and I spend the morning lounging, and while they strip their beds and build forts in the living room, I think about my brother. The cowlicks in his hair, his fleshy wife. I’m embarrassed that he doesn’t know how to burp his daughter. Glen was at least hands-on when Wes and Joan were babies. Took an hour to dress them, but he had the basics down.

The kids take turns crawling through the makeshift back door of the fort and shout unintelligible things at each other. Joan hits her head on the
TV
stand.

“Don’t throw that!” I warn, seeing her wind up with the remote in her hand.

She hesitates. “Me go throw dis,” she says, holding up the remote.

“Don’t you dare.”

She throws it. A clear pitch. It sails through the air and hits the wall. The batteries empty out and roll in opposite directions.

“Go to your room.” I point.

She makes a beeline for the kitchen. I snare her midway, carry her under my arm, and put her on her bed.

“DO NOT THROW THINGS.”

I close the door and hear the books empty off her shelf.

“Claudia?”

“Dan?” I head down the hall. “What are you doing here?”

“I need you to watch the kids for a bit,” he says, setting the car seat on the floor. Hannah and Liam take off their Crocs.

“All of them?” I ask, staring at the baby.

“Yes, all of them,” he replies irritably.

“Okay … why?”

“Because I need to go into work for a few hours.”

“But it’s a Saturday. Since when do you work on Saturdays?”

He turns and stares at me with his red eyes. He looks slightly deranged.

“Easy,” I say. “What is wrong with you?”

“Hannah, Liam, take off your coats and go over there.” He points to the fort in the living room. They do as they’re told.

“Seriously, Dan. What’s going on? Where’s Allison-Jean?”

“Allison,” he whispers, “is crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“She has post-partum depression.”

“She does?” I ask, shocked. “Where is she?”

“At her mother’s.”

“Maybe she just needs a little break.”

“It has lasted for weeks. We have an infant!” He gestures to Emma who has slithered halfway out of her unbuckled car seat. “I have missed a week of work!”

“You’ve had the kids on your own for the past week?”

“Yes!” He throws his hands up by the sides of his head, fingers crimped and full of tension.

“Don’t yell at me! You could have asked for help earlier. When is she coming back?” I take a few steps down the hall towards the kitchen, and look in on the kids, playing in the living room. Hannah’s hair is matted, unwashed. Is Liam wearing socks? These kids look like they could be mine.

“Hell if I know,” he says, lingering in the hall, eyeing the baby in the car seat nervously. “She has a doctor’s appointment for Monday. Can you just watch the kids for a couple of hours?”

“Yeah, yeah. Of course. But you should get some rest or something. Take a shower or brush your teeth. Are you hungry?” I look around the kitchen and go to the fruit bowl. “Here, take an apple.”

“I’m fine,” he says, waving it away.

I shrug and take a bite. “Did you bring a bag for them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like a diaper bag with formula, bottles, that kind of stuff.”

“I assumed you had bottles.”

“Joan’s almost three. I have a few sippy cups, but I don’t have any bottles, and I definitely don’t have any formula.”

“Do you have milk?”

“Yes, I have milk, but you can’t feed an infant skim milk.”

“Why not?”

“Because you just don’t! She’s only a month old!”

“What about water, then?”

“Holy shit, Dan. I will have to go get some formula.”

I pick the baby up from the car seat. She smells of artificial milk and feet. I allow my nose to adjust and fix her sloppy socks. She jams her fist in her mouth.

“Hi, baby,” I say.

Dan returns to the door. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Yeah, clean yourself up, will you?”

I am alone with five kids on a Saturday. I feel like a Duggar. It occurs to me that I can’t even go to the grocery store because I don’t have enough seats in the car. I dial my father but he has already left for the rink. He has not changed the voice-mail recording and it’s my mother who informs me that no one is home. Her voice and the tiny body now settled in the crook of my arm throw me. I need to smoke something or eat a whole cake. Instead, I ram my feet into Hannah’s fuchsia Crocs, peel
a blanket off the top of the fort on my way through the living room, and swaddle it around the baby. I carry Emma out to the back deck. The cold shortens my breath. I adjust her to an upright position on my chest. My fingertips just fit between her shoulder blades. Wind blows her wispy hair into tall stalks that I smooth down. I kick up the barbecue cover, but the spare booster seat isn’t underneath. Glen probably has it. I consider taking the double stroller but I remember the wheels are flat.

Back inside the house I call Cathy. “Can you come over for a bit?”

“You okay?”

“Dan dropped off his kids and forgot to bring formula. I need to run to the store.”

“I’m at the shop this morning, but I can get out of here. Give me fifteen minutes.”

She talks to someone in the background before hanging up. I can’t make out what she says over the sounds of the garage. Clinking and whizzing. A robot dinner party.

When Cathy arrives in her coveralls and greasy hands, the kids are all playing in the fort with the
TV
blasting, while I’m wiping crusted formula off of Emma’s face.

“Hey kids!” she yells from the front door.

Wes pokes his head out of the fort. “Cathy! Come in our fort!”

Cathy unties her work boots. “I just need to wash my hands.”

“Thank you so much,” I say, changing Emma from one hip to the other. “I won’t be long.”

She washes her hands in the kitchen sink with
PEI
red dirt soap she must have found under the sink; I forgot I even had that. “I’m in no rush,” she says. She dries her hands on the back of her coveralls, while I strap the baby into her car seat. By the time I put the seat in the car without its base, Emma is
asleep. I pause before closing the back door to observe. The downy hair on her ears that are small and perfectly round. Her lips pale and flutter-sucking. I stroke the top of her nose and shut the door.

I race to the baby section in the grocery store with the car seat weighing down my arm and banging against my thigh. There are ten thousand kinds of formula. Soy-based, kosher, lactose-free, ones with rice starch, ones that fight acne, ones that play music. I buy the one with the happiest looking baby on the label, some bottles, and a package of diapers. The lines are long and I tap my foot impatiently.

On my way to the car my phone rings but I can’t get to it. I put Emma in the back and see it was Dan. I go to call him back but the bag with the formula in it splits and cans of Happy Baby roll underneath the car. I kneel down and collect them and toss them onto the front seat. The Happy Babies are assholes but I still let them ride shotgun.

When I get home, Dan’s car is in the driveway. What the heck? Inside, he and Cathy are talking in the kitchen.

“What are you doing back so soon?”

“I forgot my proxy card at home. I couldn’t get into my office.”

“I just spent like fifty bucks on this stuff,” I say plunking the diapers and formula on the counter.

He bends down as Emma starts to whimper in her car seat, her eyes still closed, and mumbles, “Sorry.”

“You should change her,” I suggest. He stares up at me. “Give her to me.” He takes her out of her car seat and passes her to me. “Let’s go change your bum,” I say grabbing the diapers from the counter.

Cathy excuses herself from the kitchen. “I told them I’d go in the fort,” she says.

I lay Emma in the hall, pull off her leggings, and watch Cathy in the living room open the fort’s side flap and crawl in. Hannah and Liam go around the back and attempt to do the same but there’s not enough room. Liam’s legs and Hannah’s head stick outside, her ponytail draped behind her like spilt milk. They look dejected. They want their mom. The fort begins to move. The roof slips off exposing Cathy attempting to stand.

“Cathy!” Hannah calls out, “You can’t stand up.”

“Now we have to start all over,” Wes whines.

I look at my brother standing in the kitchen. Hair unkempt, a week’s worth of stubble, shirt un-tucked, no belt. “Go home,” I tell him. “I’ll keep them for the night.”

“Even Emma?”

“Get some rest, Dan. I got her.”

He looks completely pathetic and like he might try to hug me, but instead he gives me fifty bucks for the diapers and formula and kisses each of his kids goodbye.

The kids play musical beds moving from one room to the next. They swap sleeping bags and positions. No one wins. Emma sleeps beside me in my own bed. A strange and wriggly bedfellow.

In the morning I do a head count
. Joan turns on
The Littlest Hobo
. All the kids watch, mesmerized, from the table where I dispense four bowls of cereal like it’s summer camp.

Dan, looking refreshed, arrives to pick them up just before 10:00 a.m. He brings me a 7-Eleven coffee that smells nutty. I take a sip from my coffee, standing in the driveway, watching my brother pack his kids in the car. He takes the steering wheel and adjusts things on the dash the way he did in the makeshift cars we drove as kids. Opening vents, turning dials, depressing buttons. Cars made from empty appliance boxes. The broken picnic table. Two stools in the sandbox. He backs down the driveway and disappears up the street.

Joan stands an inch from the
TV
screen, fascinated by a little girl in a wheelchair ministering to a man in blue pajamas. He is also in a wheelchair, newly paralyzed. Quadriplegic and in denial. Wes is less enthusiastic. He pays little attention until the man starts hollering and the dog mysteriously arrives at the hospital.

Joan attacks the carpet with my round hairbrush.

“Don’t use that on the carpet,” I say. “That’s dirty.”

She tells me to sit down so she can brush my hair. A male nurse enters the hospital room and tells the patient he’s going swimming. The patient hollers, “No!”

“Is he going to kill him?” Wes asks.

I try to explain the story as the nurse swoops up the bald
man, places him in the chair, and wheels him to the pool where the girl waits in a bathing cap that is red like my mother’s.

“Is
she
going to kill him?” Wes asks, hopeful.

“No. No one is going to kill him. That hurts, Joan.” I massage the top of my head where my hair has been yanked. “Brush it gently.”

She takes offense, brushes harder, and then says, “It just an accident.”

By the end of his swim, the man has accepted his disability. Joan manages to get this and stops brushing to clap.

“What’s happening now?” Wes asks as the man leaves the hospital in his wheelchair.

“He’s off-roading,” I reply.

“Where he going?” Joan asks.

“I don’t know, you’ll have to watch.”

He comes upon his child companion who has somehow managed to fall out of her own wheelchair and down an embankment. She looks like I did as a child. Long braids, plaid dress, dirty face.

“Is she dead?” Wes asks.

I tell him she’s probably only unconscious and go on to explain what that is. “It’s sort of like she’s sleeping.”

“Then where’s her tent?”

“She’s not camping. She fell out of her chair.”

In a courageous effort, the man in the blue pajamas throws himself out of his chair and hurls himself down the hill. Seconds later the dog arrives and runs for help.

“Dog!” Joan exclaims.

“Yes. He’s going to save them.”

Joan comes around in front of me. Picks up a stray peanut off the floor and eats it. I pat the top of my head. The brush is attached to it. Sitting an inch off my scalp. I tug at it gently.

“Wes, see if you can take this brush out of my hair.”

“Where did that dog go?”

“Wes, try and unravel this.”

He stares at me blankly. “Is he going to get a doctor?”

“Yes, now see if you can get this out.”

My face starts to get hot.

“How does the dog know where to find a doctor?”

“Because he’s magic.”

In the bathroom I stare at the bird’s nest on the top of my head. I try and manoeuvre the brush forward so I might be able to unravel some of the hair but it’s a matted mess. I hear screaming from the living room and return to find Joan straddling Wes.

“She bit me!”

“Joan! Get off your brother right now.” The brush sways a bit as I stomp across the room. Joan wraps her arms tight around Wes’s neck and he flails his legs and tries to buck her off. I hoist her up by the waist but she bends backwards and jabs her finger into my eye. I put her on the couch and cover my face. The theme song from
The Littlest Hobo
plays.

“I didn’t see how they got saved!” Wes cries.

Joan escapes down the hall, her wide feet flapping loudly against the laminate. I can’t open my eye. I am now a Cyclops sporting a bouffant. A steady stream of tears trickles down my face from the poked eye. I order Wes to get my phone.

“Who are you calling?” Wes whines.

“I need to find a babysitter.”

“Can you tell Cathy?” Joan asks.

“Go back to your room,” I yell. “Look at Mommy’s eye and look at the bite mark on your brother’s cheek.”

Wes picks up my phone. “Can I play Angry Birds?”

“No.” I take the phone from Wes and call my father. It’s nearly an hour before he’s at my house. When he arrives, he
braces himself against the wall and pulls off his loafers with a grunt. He’s not wearing socks. I don’t look at his toenails in case they are too long, like his hair.

My dad stands facing me. “Can you open it?” he asks, tilting my chin up to examine my eye.

“No,” I wince. “It stings.”

He looks at the brush, puzzled. “Yep, I think you should go in.”

I sigh and gather my belongings. “Be good for Grandpa,” I caution.

I return home from the emergency room well after the kids’ bedtime with a maxi pad taped over my left eye and the brush still attached to my head, smelling like hospital. I pull off my sweatshirt and dump it in the hall. My father sits at the kitchen table, hovering over a bowl, milk dripping from his chin.

“Were the kids okay?” I ask, peeking into Wes’s room.

“They’re in your room. They wanted to sleep in your bed.” Dad points at the brush. “They couldn’t get that out?”

“Unfortunately, no. They remove bullets, not brushes.” I sit beside him.

He reaches over and gives the brush a little tug. “Where’s your mother when you need her? I’ll give it a try.”

He begins pulling and unraveling my hair from the brush, a few strands at a time. I bite my lip. It reminds me of when my mom French-braided my hair. For such a mild-mannered woman she was an aggressive braider.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” my father apologizes, “it’s almost out.”

I cringe under the strain, look down at the floor. My father’s toenails are impossibly long. Yellowed claws. He hands me the brush.

“Dad, you need to cut your toenails.” He studies his feet
while I massage the top of my head feeling for bald spots. “When’s the last time you cut them?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know where your mom keeps the clippers.”

When I go to the bathroom to retrieve the steel clippers from under the sink, I glance in the mirror and see the small goatee on top of my head.

Returning to the kitchen, I hand the clippers to my father. “Here, you need to cut them.”

He rolls up his pant legs and begins snapping off his nails with the clippers held backwards.

“Hold them the other way.”

He flips them over and works on his big toe, cutting the nail into the shape of an arrowhead and proceeding to the next.

“Whoa, back up. You need to fix that.” I can’t tell if it’s inexperience or age. His eyes indicate a bit of both. “Here, let me do it.”

I pull up a chair across from him and rest his foot on the edge between my legs. His foot is surprisingly soft. There’s a sprig of grey curls on his big toe. I trim the big toenail first then move on to the others, methodical in my execution. My father pays close attention. I hand him the clippers.

“You have to cut them regularly. Okay?”

He nods. “Yes, I will do that.”

He rises from his chair, and pats me, once, on the shoulder. Then he heads into the entryway, retrieves his coat from the floor, slips into his unlaced loafers, and heads out the front door.

“Love you,” I call after him. “Call me when you get home so I know you got there safe.”

After the front door closes behind him, I go straight to the sink and wash my hands. When I look down I still see my father’s feet. His thick nails, crooked metatarsi, raised veins.
I gag and rinse. My left eye itches beneath the patch and I attempt to rub it with my shoulder. My mother told me that Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. I wonder if he cut their nails too. I think Mom did both for my dad.

After forty minutes, I phone Dad. “You were supposed to call when you got home.”

“Sorry. Let me turn down the music.”

“I wanted to know you got home safe.”

“Yes, yes.” He yawns. “I’m so tired.”

“Why don’t you go to bed?”

“What time is it?”

I look at the clock. “Twenty after ten. When do you normally go to bed?”

“I often fall asleep in my chair.”

“That’s probably not good for your neck.”

“You’re probably right. Your mother would make sure I came to bed before then.”

“From now on you should go when you’re tired. You need a good night’s sleep.”

He yawns again. “I should have paid more attention. I didn’t know she was going to die.”

“I know.”

“Now I don’t know when I’m supposed to go to bed or how often I should see the dentist. And the mail. What of it do I toss? What am I allowed to keep?”

“Toss the flyers.”

“But your mom loved the flyers.”

“Then keep them until the next ones come.”

We both say nothing for a moment, but stay on the line. I hear him adjust his weight in his chair. The muffled warble of old springs.

“Dad,” I say, “it’s time to go to bed.”