The Better Mother

THE MORNING

1982


There is so much that Danny could say that would be misunderstood and hurtful. He putters around Frank’s apartment, answers his phone when he is asleep, massages his bony feet, which feel like bags of stones. Danny barely looks at himself in the mirror, seeing only the medicine cabinet behind the glass when he brushes his teeth.

If he could, he would say, “This apartment is so small. It’s only you and me here.” But he knows that if he were to ever say, “I need to get out,” Frank would assume that Danny wanted to leave him to his illness and would tell him to go away forever before he could even explain. Danny longs to walk through the city, hear the truncated conversations of people huddled under awnings in the August heat, smell the grease through the back doors of restaurants, step carefully around the piles of goose shit dotting the lawns at English Bay.

Tonight, Frank sleeps on his back, a pillow behind his head and another under his knees. The apartment is clean. The laundry is folded and tucked into drawers. The doctors told Danny that everything must be washed regularly so Frank is kept away from opportunistic bacteria that could burrow their way into his skin and blood, could travel through his veins to every organ and every bone until the end products of their journey emerge on the surface as pus or abscesses. The hot-water bottle at Frank’s feet will stay warm for another two hours, and yet Danny feels that he can’t leave. What if he’s out and the iron is still plugged in, or Frank reaches for the bucket beside the bed and it’s six inches out of reach? Before he can dwell on all these possibilities, he slips on his shoes and leaves.

For the first time this summer, he feels a wash of cool air down the collar of his shirt. He walks around the perimeter of English Bay, sees two figures huddled in sleeping bags, the tops of their heads resting against a log. He wonders if they’re in love or simply sleeping together for protection.

He continues up Davie Street, feeling the soles of his tan loafers sticking to the layers of grime and gum coating the sidewalk. Apartment buildings rise on the left and right. A bus rolls past, rumbling and snapping; Danny catches the face of a young girl through the window, her blond hair held away from her face with a barrette, her eyes flitting from tree to building to street sign. The street kids turn their faces away when he walks past and disappear into doorways and behind shrubs. He turns left on Granville, passes the pawnbrokers and sex shops before turning right into an alley. There, the same sign with the crooked letters, the same promise of the best girls in town!

He sits at his usual table in the back, directly opposite centre stage. There are only two other men in the club, both in light-grey suits, whispering in each other’s ears as they drink Scotch on the rocks. Danny takes his beer from the waitress and smiles.

The club is meant to offer the same things over and over. There is always flesh, the curve of breasts against the torso, the soft folds of skin between the legs. The repetition is soothing, like chicken soup on a cold day; comforting, like a pair of socks worn to the shape of your feet.

The dancer twirls on a pole, her dark hair swinging behind her. She looks bored and tired, makeup only partially covering the puffiness around her eyes, the enlarged pores on her cheeks. Still, her legs are long and smooth, and she dances with poise in her six-inch platform heels. In and out of the shadows, she shows her body and hides it, smoothly moving to the music. Danny wonders how he would photograph her, how the hollows above her buttocks would appear in black and white, whether she would be flawless on film or appear even older and drier. Something glitters under the stage lights. Danny squints and sees that, around her neck, a thin gold chain with a seahorse pendant blinks every time she turns and fixes her disinterested gaze on the empty tables around him. A vestige of her real life.

When he leaves the club, he resists the urge to run back to Frank’s apartment and hurries west and north, toward the park. The residue of cigarettes and beer sits like a skin over his clothes. To his left, the ocean. Above, thin smoggy clouds roll over themselves, changing shape in a darkly blue sky. Danny hears a boom and wonders if a thunderstorm is coming, if Frank will wake up, terrified by the crash and the crackling of lightning through the curtained windows.

He touches his hand to the rough bark of a spruce tree to feel the prickles on his palm. On the trail, dust floats up every time he steps forward. It hasn’t rained in eight weeks and the ground beneath him isn’t damp and spongy like it is in winter, when he feels he is walking on a breathing, fleshy body. Now it feels packed down, but covered in a layer of insubstantial gravel and powder that will cover his shoes and pants with a film of grey that smells both mineral and animal. He longs for rain.

If he finds someone here tonight, what will he bring home to Frank? A wayward, invisible germ on the sleeve of his polo shirt? The smell of another man so tenacious it won’t wash off, and be smelled by Frank, who will understand, but whose understanding will make Danny feel smaller? Or will this be the time he catches AIDS through spit or cum or the unknown substances coating his one-night partner’s body?

Cutting through the rustlings of the park comes a familiar voice. “Where the f*ck have you been all this time?” Edwin sits on a bench, his legs crossed and both arms stretched over the back. In his mouth hangs a bent cigarette.

The other men in the shadows have receded, and Danny is alone with Edwin in the middle of Lee’s Trail, staring at Edwin’s light-blue jeans and white runners.

“Well?” Edwin gestures to the empty spot on the bench beside him. “Are you going to answer me?”

Danny carefully brushes off the seat with his hand and sits. “I’ve been with Frank.”

Letting his head droop, Edwin says, “That’s what I heard. I didn’t believe it, though. Poor Frankie.”

“I’m not much of a nurse, I guess.”

Edwin laughs. “That’s not what I meant. He loves you, always did.”

“I suppose. I sometimes wonder,” he whispers, and the tail of his words is lost in the shifting of the branches around them. In a small voice he says, “Eddie, I’m sorry about that time. When I hurt you.”

Edwin pats him on the shoulder. “I know. I’m annoying sometimes. I’m surprised you never punched me before.”

“You don’t need to joke about it. I’m really sorry. It was my fault. I don’t know how you can even speak to me right now.”

“We all love you, Danny. Even your parents.” Edwin blows a line of smoke straight up, his head cocked back. “By the way, I saw them this morning at the shop.”

“What were you doing there? I didn’t think you went down to Chinatown so much anymore.”

“My dearest mother sent your mom some ginseng from the homeland, so I was dropping it off.” Edwin pauses to pull the cigarette butt out of his mouth and grind it into the arm of the bench. “They don’t know where you’re staying, and they were asking me if I’d heard from you. I said you were busy with work. Your mom worries, you know. I sometimes think she suspects.”

In a blur, Danny sees his mother, wiping her hands on her apron, watching with her turned-down eyes as he and Cindy play with their paper dolls, the radio at top volume. And then Frank, struggling with the twisted blankets, calling for his own mother, hearing only the bounce of his voice off his apartment walls and nothing else.

“I have to go,” Danny says. “Why am I even here?”

Edwin leans his head back on the edge of the bench and looks at the sky, now totally black. “To get laid; why else?”

“No, why now? I’m supposed to be watching Frank. I could even be hanging out with my mother. But no, I’m here.”

“Listen, Danny. This stupid thing called AIDS is going to get us all sooner or later. And if not that, then a heart attack or a stroke or something. In the meantime, what do we have left? A f*ck in the park, that’s what. I might get hit by a bus, or I might live to be eighty. But if I can’t get sucked off once in a while, then none of it matters much, does it?” Edwin’s mouth twitches like he might laugh, and he searches his pockets for his pack of cigarettes.

Danny stands up. “I’m going back to Frank’s.”

Edwin mutters, the lighter held up to his face, “This is what we wanted once, Danny. To come here whenever we wanted; to be with any guy we wanted. For a while, that was enough.”

The confusion in Danny’s head doesn’t clear as he stumbles through the streets. His thoughts are unfinished, nothing more than a jumbled pile. AIDS. Frank. His mother. Cindy. Sex. He’s tired of trying to sort it all out and wills himself to ignore the ugly mess. But disease and the prospect of death have a way of stirring it all together, like a bubbling, fetid soup. He wants to scoop out most of his brains, leaving behind only enough to function.

As the night air pushes warmly against his hurrying body, he visualizes the men cruising on the trail, their fingers linked. Two months ago, it would have been Danny looking for someone to fill an hour, someone whose face would live on in his memory, unencumbered by name or words or birthplace. And he would have been happy. Now, he can’t stay in the park for more than twenty minutes. Now, it’s not enough, but he doesn’t know what he wants instead.

When he arrives at Frank’s apartment, he rushes to the bedroom. Frank is still asleep, lying on his back as he was when Danny left. The rooms smell of pine-scented cleaner, and the dishes are drying in the rack. He steps into the shower, turning on the water as hot as it will go, until the fog in the stall matches the mess inside his head.


When they were children, Danny and Cindy often said nothing to each other. They walked their dolls across Cindy’s bed, built an indoor tent with blankets and pillows when it stormed outside, pretended to cook with their mother’s old dented pots. For hours, they silently smiled and nodded, dressed Paper Gina and Paper Adelaide in their evening gowns before sashaying them across the footboard to the same ball. As soon as Danny woke up in the morning, he could feel his sister on the other side of the wall, stretching under the covers, staring at the same morning light that was sometimes camouflaged by low, dense clouds, other times shining clear and thin through the windows and condensation around the sill. What was there to say when you already knew what the other was going to do?

Cindy is looking for him. This he knows without even thinking. He can feel her confusion, her fear that Danny might know it was she who suggested that Frank be forced to take a leave of absence. He can see her crunching in on herself, her shoulders curling forward, her hands twisting in her lap. He’s angry, and he’s sure Cindy knows it as she sits at her scratched, thinly varnished desk at work, as she rides the bus home, as she washes her office clothes by hand in the double-depth sink in the basement.

It’s afternoon, and Danny closes the door to Frank’s bedroom, where Frank is sleeping underneath two blankets and wearing flannel pyjamas over his long johns. Once in the hall, Danny looks into the bathroom, at the rubber gloves and toilet brush set out in the middle of the floor to remind him that he needs to clean it today. The phone rings.

The only calls Frank ever gets these days are the daily check-ins from his mother, and calls from his doctor’s office reminding him of his appointment the next day. Danny checks his watch. Too early for Frank’s mother, and he doesn’t think Frank has another appointment for at least five days. He picks up the phone.

Even if she never uttered a syllable, he could tell who she is by the sound of her breathing, by that particular hitch in her exhale.

“Danny? Is that you?”

“Cindy,” he says, “why are you calling here?”

“Is Frank all right?”

“No, of course not. He’s doing shitty, if you really want to know. I’m paying his bills, cleaning the sores on his back, even holding him up when he sits on the toilet. Does that sound like he’s all right?” His voice has reached that pitch where it will soon be incomprehensible; the sound of it panics even him.

Her words come out as half-sobs. “I didn’t know.”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Don’t call here again.”

Cindy half whispers, and it comes out like a hiss. “I called to say that I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get him fired. I just thought the bank should know, that’s all. It’s not my fault they made him leave. Why would I hurt him? He’s my friend too.”

“Some friend.”

“Danny, I’m asking you to forgive me.”

He turns to look at the closed bedroom door, wondering if Frank is awake and can hear what he’s saying. “Fine. I forgive you.”

“You don’t mean it. I can tell.”

Danny twirls the phone cord around his fingers and thinks about hanging up, but he can’t.

“You know what?” Cindy’s voice rises and she talks slowly, measuring every word she lets loose. “There’s plenty for me to forgive too. How about you leaving me alone with Mom and Dad? How about you running away so you could live the life you wanted? What about me? Do you ever think that I might like something different too? Do you think I like living at home, having to explain where I’ve been every time I come home after nine o’clock? I’m almost thirty years old. How do you think that makes me feel? Or do you think about me at all?”

And Danny wants to say that he didn’t know, but the truth is that he did. Everything she has said is true, but if Danny were ignorant, perhaps he wouldn’t need to be forgiven. He knew he was leaving Cindy. He knew he wasn’t trying to make his parents even a little bit happy. He knew that he was sacrificing his sister for his own imperfect freedom. As long as she never mentioned it, though, he could pretend that he hadn’t run away and ignored the needs of everyone else. But now there is no such comfort.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Really.”

“Good. Now we’re even. I have to go.” And she hangs up, the click of the line sounding tangibly final.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry plays in his ears as he walks to the bathroom and picks up the toilet brush. He hears Frank rustling in the bedroom and he wants to yell, “Just a minute! I just need a minute!” But yelling would startle Frank, send his heart racing in a way that isn’t good for anyone, so Danny sits on the edge of the tub and waits until Frank’s voice begins calling through the door.


It happens so gradually—like the light changing from night to dawn—that Danny doesn’t notice until the very end, until the change on Frank’s face is almost complete.

They are in Frank’s bed. Danny is curled around him, warming him with his own body. Lately, Frank has been unable to fall asleep, shivering no matter how high the heat is, no matter how many blankets cover him from chin to toes. Danny is dozing, falling in and out of sleep, waking when he hears a noise in the street, sleeping again when he realizes the noise is only a passing car, or the soft footsteps of a cat on the windowsill. Frank breathes quickly and then slowly, and the breaths themselves seem to skip and stutter, but Danny is used to this; he simply holds him tighter and puts his feet on Frank’s icy ones.

For a time, their breathing in tandem soothes Danny, and he sleeps undisturbed.

He wakes suddenly and opens his eyes to see the pink light of early morning through the window. He sits up, propped on one elbow as he groggily tries to figure out what has woken him. There are no noises in the street outside, no thumping from the upstairs neighbours, not even the hum of the refrigerator. The silence is absolute.

And there it is, the thing that has shaken him out of sleep. The silence. The total absence of sound.

He leans over Frank, puts his fingers to his neck. Nothing. He turns his head toward him, holds his hand over his open mouth, hoping to feel the heat of his breath. Nothing. He touches his forehead. Cool, like a cup of coffee left out overnight.

Then Frank shudders, and a long, wheezing breath escapes from his body. His eyelids flutter, and he looks once at Danny, his eyes travelling over his face, stopping at his nose, his cheeks, his mouth. Danny holds his head with both hands, afraid to let go.

“What are you thinking?” Danny whispers. “Tell me.”

Frank shudders again, and his eyes close. He grows limp, and his thin, thin body falls into Danny’s. He lies motionless, his mouth still open, his head resting against Danny’s stomach.

Strange how these things are always so quiet. Danny wonders why the earth isn’t groaning underneath them, why thunder and lightning aren’t crashing outside. Looking at Frank, being this close to the knife’s edge, this close to an emptiness he has never seen before, Danny feels that he is being sucked away, as if a vacuum is pulling at him inexorably. He closes his own eyes and forces himself to count to ten before opening them again.

When Danny finally looks up, he sees that dawn has passed and the morning has fully arrived. As usual, he never saw the transition.