an illusion of movement where, in the distance, the farmhouse, a granary, a shelter belt wobbled in the distortions wreaked by the burning air.
That junk in storage could easily have belonged to Pooch’s Lyle, she thought. Right off the bat I knew that one was no good. If circumstances had been different I’d have forbidden Daniel from having anything to do with him. But what with Pooch working with me and the two of us living in the same building I didn’t have the guts to say I didn’t want her boy associating with mine. Especially since Pooch helped me get my suite in the building by putting in a word with the super.
Yet there’s no denying Lyle Gardiner is a little weasel and the worst case of smart-too-soon I’ve every encountered. Of course, Pooch is responsible for that. No respect for herself when it comes to men. Never even makes a pretence of hiding from Lyle what she’s up to. She laughed when she told me that Lyle charges her retired fireman boyfriend fifty cents for every hour he keeps away from the apartment when the fireman drops in to put the fire out. Discusses everything in front of the kid, even her period. I’d sooner hang myself in a closet than let Daniel in on any of that. Lonely single women shouldn’t talk personal things over with their sons as if they were husbands. Pooch does. That’s what’s made Lyle so unnaturally old. A creepy, smirky fourteen year old going on forty-five. Used to stare at my tits when he talked to me. Didn’t look me in the face, just stared point-blank at my tits. Called me Vera, instead of Mrs. Miller.
I can just imagine the stories that Lyle filled Daniel’s head with. Stories of what men and women get up to together. Sickening ones is my guess.
Daniel’s never seen any of that. With the exception of Stanley, I haven’t had much luck with men in my life. Still, with the way Daniel’s been carrying on lately I’ve got to wonder if this Male Influence business I read about in all the women’s magazines isn’t a factor. Could be reading those articles in
Not having one of those kicking around the place is another reason I suppose for going back to Connaught. I don’t mean Dad. He couldn’t be trusted to raise a cat. Look how he terrorized the life out of poor Earl with his shenanigans. I wonder about this Mr. Stutz. During the war Earl thought a lot of him; I could read it between the lines in the letters he wrote me. Brother seemed to worship the very ground this Mr. Stutz walked on. So he must be something special because Earl wasn’t one to take to people. Too shy and too timid. I think Earl was afraid of most people. What was it once that Mother said to me about Earl? That he ought to have been born a girl so he could marry and be taken care of for the rest of his life. He was an odd duck, Earl. Which makes me think that if Mr. Stutz could make a favourable impression on a wary one like him, it’s possible he could be a Male Influence for Daniel.
Daniel was waking. He yawned, scrubbed his face with his hands, rolled his shoulders. He was a slim, fine- boned boy with the promise of extraordinary height if the rest of him caught up with a pair of long, skinny legs. His narrow, foxy face appeared slightly sullen despite being sprinkled with cinnamon freckles. Or maybe it was his hair that suggested sullenness; a twelve year old patterned on James Dean. He combed it now, using the window as a mirror, raking it with a rat-tail comb until every tooth mark stood out in his thick, lank reddish hair darkened with Brylcreem to the colour of an oily old penny. When he had finished, he stuffed his hands in his pockets, lowered his neck into the collar of his jacket, planted the soles of his shoes on the chair back in front of him, and jiggled his legs so fiercely that his trousers shimmied up his calves, revealing his sagging white socks. Not once during all this did he allow his mother to catch his eye.
Look at him sitting sassy. Trying so hard, so soon to get old. Now everything’s an occasion for him to try and put distance between us. Even his socks, that jacket. The jacket’s casual but decent – not cheap either. But if I like a thing, he won’t.
“I’m not wearing a golf jacket,” was what he said. “Have I ever seen a golf course? Who do you think I am? Arnold Palmer?”
I tuned him in on what he should and shouldn’t wear but that doesn’t mean I won. He’s got the jacket on, but look at it. Cuffs turned back to the elbows and collar turned up to the ears. To provoke me.
“You explain to me the percentage in looking like a hoodlum,” was what I said to him.
To think his father had operated a men’s wear store; wore a suit and tie every working day of his life. Put a briefcase in his hand, walking down the street he could’ve been mistaken for a lawyer. I told Daniel, “People draw conclusions about you according to how you dress.”
Looking at him you’ve got to conclude he’s another Lyle Gardiner. The sort of brat who lives with his mother in a one-bedroom apartment and sleeps on a fold-out in the living room with his socks and underwear lying on the floor. A kid who thrives on wieners and canned pork and beans, who drinks Coke with his breakfast toast, who reads nothing but comic books and falls asleep in front of the television watching the late movie on a school night. That’s what my kid looks like.
And how to make sure that he becomes the other? Like that medical student up front with his short hair, clean shirt, tie, purpose in life? Appearances do matter. From the look of him the medical student is the only person on this bus I’d risk a pleasantry on. With a young man of that type you could have a sensible, intelligent conversation. That’s because people like him are taught reserve and tact and courtesy in their homes from knee-high on up. Not like the majority of people on a bus who no sooner drop in a seat beside you than they light into a description of their latest bladder repair operation, or some equally gruesome and edifying topic. It causes my head to hammer all the harder just to think about it.
Exactly the kind of people Pooch and Lyle are. And when I’m at my worst, I don’t deny it, people like me. The difference being I know better and Pooch doesn’t. As I told Daniel a thousand times, “We may have to live with these people but we don’t have to act like them.” Although I have difficulty remembering that, what with a bad mouth, swearing and all. An Army habit that’s hard to break. But as I said to Daniel, “Me, I’m a lost cause. It isn’t me we’re preparing to succeed. It’s you. So as the old saying goes, ‘Don’t do as I do. Do as I say.’ ”
When I look at him over there I’ve got to trust it’ll all come right. It has to, with so much of Stanley in him. Not just the intelligence either, but the rest too. That funny shade of strawberry red hair; the tall man’s stoop to his shoulders even though he isn’t tall yet. The spitting, walking, talking image of his old man.
Other people, Pooch for one, can say he takes after me, but I don’t see it. Unless it’s the eyes, which are blue like mine, only brighter. Set against that pale skin they shine like all get out. When he was small I’d call them his stars. “The stars are out and shining,” is what I’d say when he woke up from his nap, just like he has now. I wonder what his reaction would be if I tried that on him again? Say it good and loud so everyone on the bus can hear.
They come out and shine at what they oughtn’t to come out and shine at, those eyes. By Christ, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back when I stumbled on that peekaboo. Sunday, I was cleaning the apartment. No rest for the wicked. Of course, as soon as I got ready to wash and wax the floors who turns up like a bad penny but Lyle Gardiner? Nothing for it but to send both boys upstairs to watch television at Pooch’s until I got my floors done. Let Pooch entertain them and then when I was finished we could send them downstairs to amuse themselves at my place and Pooch and me could have fifteen minutes of peace to put our feet up and have a coffee. Or a coffee and a bit, as Pooch puts it. The bit being liqueur. Courtesy of Pooch’s boyfriends. So she was well-supplied and most Sundays got into her stock. I never took more than a sprinkle of Tia Maria in my instant to make it drinkable, but some Sunday afternoons didn’t Pooch get awful carefree drinking coffee?
I did my final buff and was off. Knocked on the door but the television was roaring so loud you couldn’t have heard cannons fired off in the hallway. So I walked in. It’s not often you get treated to a scene like that, Pooch in her easy-chair, still in a housecoat in the middle of the afternoon, both of her big yellow feet resting on a hassock spread with newspapers and her three sheets to the wind. Giggling and holding a glass of liqueur with her pinky out. I suppose she thought the extended pinky made her look gracious and was the accepted way to sip Drambuie out of a Melmac mug that had been the bonus offer in a box of dish soap.
“Don’t tickle! Don’t tickle!” I can hear her crying it now in her phoney girlish voice.
The two boys on their knees around the hassock, snorting with laughter, painting Pooch’s toenails. Each with his tiny brush. Daniel doing the left foot in pink; Lyle the right in red. And Pooch so far gone she had no idea that with her legs drawn up like that on the hassock the boys could see clear up her housecoat. And her without panties
