Every Little Thing Read online

  I saw you at Dad’s grave once, by the way. I sort of watched you, standing there. You looked like you didn’t know how to interact with a headstone. It was windy and your unzipped jacket was a blue cape because of the wind. Like you were super-sorry-man. It was sort of beautifully sad. You there listless and biting fingernails. And I forgave you, that day. You had him to think about, too. I sort of understood that, that day. Watching you there. It wasn’t all about me, and you were caught in the middle. But I should have mattered more. And my father shouldn’t have left me so suddenly. You did things wrong, but unintentionally wrong. Here’s my forgiveness. Eons later. Via email.

  Look. Me and you, let’s talk more regularly. Okay? But, after that phone call and me hiding the phone, and this email—and how embarrassed I’ll be about it tomorrow morning—scrap the photo show tomorrow. Don’t come. It’ll be boring as hell anyway. They even made me write an artist’s statement. That’s not me, as you know. But call me sometime, okay? Let’s catch up. For all I know, you’ve got three kids and a wife by now. And it seems like I should know their names.

  I mean, I know you’re not married. But you know what I mean?It’s been fun acting like a drunk schoolgirl and typing non-censored blabbering, but it’d be even more fun to catch up over a coffee. And hear you talk back.

  Best, really, all of it, Allie. Allie Crosbie. Remember her? That cute little thing who followed you up to the rooftop that night?Hey Birdman?

  P. S—I met someone with your heart disorder recently. A woman. ARVC. There’s herds of you out there now, apparently, going around with robot hearts! Got me thinking of you. That and the show.

  HE RESPONDED RIGHT away, but if he had his time back, he would have thought out his response a little more. He would have asked more questions. Flirted a little. Pried, subtly, to see if she was okay, happy. All he typed back was,“Allie,Allie Crosbie. Yeah. The name rings a bell. The coffee sounds nice, or a drink. I’ll even buy the round. P. S. —You made Keith sound like a real catch in that email. I think you chose the right man after all. You?”

  And she’d typed back “A drink sounds great, moneybags.”

  But the drinks never happened. The passing of time and all that. Hectic schedules, things to do, a fear of awkward silences. Because what would they say, really?

  Not long after that email, he got up out of bed one night, half-asleep, half-awake, and sat on the edge of his mattress with his hands holding each other in his lap. His shadow on the wall looked like a toppling building. The light coming through the window was a shade of purple he read as four, maybe five in the morning. Minutes later, only slightly more awake, he wandered into his spare bedroom, to the computer desk, and opened the top drawer. There was a tin can full of things he didn’t know what to do with: a copy of the first article he’d published in a scientific journal and a photo of him and David Suzuki shaking hands at a benefit that the Avian-Dome had hosted in 2004. There were some old photographs, his birth certificate, and the engagement ring Matt had given him and made him promise Allie would get.

  He took the ring out of the tin and laid it on his desk. The ring cast a shadow beneath itself like a donut until a car drove by his window and its headlights hit that shadow, dragging the top of the donut down to make a temporary heart-shaped shadow beneath the ring. He Googled where the tradition of proposing with an engagement ring had come from and couldn’t get a clear answer.

  He put the ring in an envelope, with a note, and sent it to Lee. Make sure Keith gets this? It was her mother’s, and I promised Matt that she’d get it one day. Feel Keith out about whether or not he’s ever going to propose to her and, if need be, give him this ring? (But only if you know for sure the moron is going to propose. )

  Thanks, best, stay in touch,

  - Cohen.

  OFF AND ON, Julie Reid would stumble back into his life, between relationships of her own. They were friends, but sometimes she’d spend the night. She had a thing for sex in the shower and unbearably hot water, even in the summer. She liked the steam and slippery stall walls and the way he pressed her against the wall. She’d tuck her head into his neck, and her wet hair would cling to his chest. Her hands like hawk claws in the backs of his arms, and her heels squeak-sliding along the basin’s edge. And then always, after they were done, Take a bath with me? All that steam and heat and passion had his heart flickering like a wasp trapped in a jar. But only ever with her, in the shower, did sex shock his heart like that. It was the heat and steam or it was Julie Reid or it was both.

  She’d pour the bath, turn off the light, get in first, and ask him to lay back-on into her. She’d drape her hands over his shoulders and slide a finger over the glossy scar on his chest. She’d run her fingers over the hard chunk of metal below the scar, pressing hard enough to feel it there. She’d ask him to explain what ARVC was all over again because she could never remember what was wrong with his heart, and then she’d joke as she re-remembered. “So, you got poor rhythm? Can’t keep a beat? Hah hah.”

  Julie would meet someone online, or she’d give in to a neighbour’s forward advances, or a customer buying a hatchback would pick her up, the way he had, and he wouldn’t hear from her for months. And then one night she’d knock on his door. A distinct knock. Tap, tap…tap. Tap, tap...tap. She’d spend a night telling him that all men are inane or insane. It didn’t count as a relationship, and yet their periodic flings—three times after they’d broken up and never longer than a few weeks—were enough for Cohen. Whatever that meant about him.

  She’d comment on that, with an arm around him, lying in his bed, skating fingers around his chest. Don’t you want something permanent and meaningful? A wife to take to staff Christmas parties?A kid to throw baseballs at?

  She got knocked up by a high-school physics teacher named Pete. He met her baby once, in a coffee shop. My little Charlie Man, she’d called him, reaching down into the stroller to pinch his cheeks. And then he never saw her again.

  SEEING AND

  NOT KNOWING

  IT STARTED WITH a casual conversation at the staff coffee pot. “You like kids, right, Davies?”

  “Depends where you’re going with this. But yes, as a rule, more than adults.”

  “And they like you. You have a way with relaying information and making learning fun.”He tapped his skull twice, “Learning only sticks when it’s fun. Or at least, interesting.”

  “It’s not hard to make plants and animals exciting to kids.”

  Clarence laughed as he poured then handed Cohen a cup of coffee. “Tell that to any other adult who takes thirty kids on a hike in the woods. Your patience is a virtue.”

  Cohen took the mug from Clarence and took a slow, temperature-gauging sip of coffee,wondering where Clarence was going with this because the man never spoke a sentence without reason. He started every conversation like a persuasive essay.

  “I have a proposition,” he said, “not that you can say no, really.”

  Clarence grinned and pointed to his office door, but he’d pointed with the hand his mug was in, and hot coffee sloshed out of the mug, down across his fingers, and onto his shoes. “Shit! ” He shimmied his mug to his other hand and shook the burning fingers like he was strumming a banjo. “Go on, take a seat in my office.” He took a handful of napkins and soaked up the brown puddle of coffee on his black shoes. “I’ll be right in.”

  Clarence came in the room, shut his door, and sat behind his desk with a sigh, laying his mug on a coaster. “Fine way to start a rainy Monday, hey? Spilling your goddamn morning coffee all over yourself?” His office was all things nautical: a silver ship as a paper weight, framed photos of his boat on the walls, and blue curtains with a sea shell design. He was the only man Cohen knew who smoked a pipe and owned a yacht.

  “So, what’s up,Clarence? You looking to pawn your son and daughter off on me or something?”

  Clarence laughed and looked at a framed photo of his two children on his desk. “There’s days you could tempt me to pawn Ja
ne off on you, no doubt. Fucking junior high!” He shook his head. “Half her friends are spoiled brats and she has to play the part, you know?”

  A couple of nodding heads and a few sips of coffee and Clarence explained, “We’ve had great success with the Nature Adventurer hikes in the summer, in terms of registration and parent feedback. So, to bring in a little more cash and added community value to the Avian-Dome, year-round, and to avoid becoming a tourist trap, I want to do an after school program. I want you to be my man and educationally entertain the kids from three to five thirty, on weekdays. And well, to be blunt, having an afterschool program like this would also open up a whole new batch of grants the Avian-Dome could be eligible for.”

  “Is this for sure?”

  “Supposing I can get enough elementary school kids enrolled, and other such considerations, yes. Do you have any reasonable objections to being my man for this?”

  “Yeah. No. Sure. I mean, I’m your man.”

  Clarence nodded, once, and took a big sip of coffee into his grinning mouth. “It’ll mean you work until five thirty, Monday to Friday, but in exchange I’d be willing to give you a month off in the summer...like a teacher. Do you like the sound of that?”

  “I love the sound of that.”

  Clarence got up to pull his curtains open, and it was so foggy it was like they were in a tall skyscraper shrouded by clouds. “The two or three hours a day you spend with the kids will mean you’ll be doing less sample analyses and raw data crunching. Less research projects in general and seminar hosting. I’ll take on a few more honours and graduate students from the university to pick up your slack. I’m willing to bet that’s not going to bother you?”

  “That’s not going to bother me.”

  Cohen got up to leave the room, and Clarence said, “I’m not sure yet, but you might have to take some kind of childcare course or something. First Aid maybe. Not sure, but we’ll pay for it, of course. Strange PD for a scientist hey?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  THE NATURE ADVENTURERS After School Program was like any other daycare, except they drew dinosaurs instead of pictures of families standing in front of houses. They played To which bird does this egg belong? instead of hide and go seek, but they played hide and go seek too.

  There was a kid he took to right away, a favourite, and he couldn’t deny it. Years ago,Allie’s best friend had been a teacher, and she confessed the same. It just happens. Sometimes you click with a kid, but it’s the same with any friendship, right?

  The first day the bus pulled up in front of the Avian-Dome, he guided the fifteen kids inside. The sixteenth kid,Zack, had been sitting alone on the bus, drawing comics in the condensation on a window. He wouldn’t get out until he’d finished his masterpiece— a Tyrannosaurus rex. He got out last and hung back from the crowd. He wasn’t shy so much as disinterested in being part of the group. His imagination, or drawing on that window, was entertainment enough for him. What Cohen noticed right away, and found endearing, was Zack’s pride in his mental catalogue of random animal facts and how he’d only share those facts with Cohen if none of the other kids were nearby. Cohen wouldn’t even see him coming sometimes. There’d be a quick tug on Cohen’s pant leg, and then, “Hey! I know why all the dinosaurs died.”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s because a giant meteor smashed them!” and he banged a fist into an open palm: one hand the earth, the other a meteor.

  Most days, Zack was the last kid to be picked up. As they stood in the porch with their shoes on—Zack weighed down by his blue and red bookbag and clutching his Buzz Lightyear toy by its thick arm—he’d say something like, “Whales can’t breathe under water like fish can,”and smile about knowing it. “They gotta jump out of the water to gulp some air down. But they can hold their breath for a crazy long time, so it’s all okay. Don’t worry.”

  Sometimes Cohen would act surprised about what Zack had just told him. He’d say, Really? and Zack’s neck would pop off his shoulders like a jack-in-the-box. Eventually, Zack’s father would show up: a cellphone clenched between his ear and shoulder. His voice was always exhausted but stern with whoever was letting him down on the other end of the line. He’d smile and nod, but unlike all the other parents, this man never greeted Cohen. Or Zack.

  He never bent down and rubbed Zack’s head and said, Hey little man, the way Cohen, for some reason, wished he would. He wanted this kid’s father to be the best father of the lot, but the man would just snap his fingers and hold out a hand for Zack to take.

  By October, Cohen felt overly close to the kid. So it was a punch in the guts when he noticed how Zack’s father would hold Zack by the wrist, not the hand, as he guided him back to their car. Zack tripping up on his own little feet as he tried to keep pace with his father’s hurried gait.

  By November or December of that year, he could be tossing a spoonful of coffee into a percolator on a Sunday morning and wonder what Zack was doing. Same with a Wednesday night at a grocery store if he saw parents talking to their children in the cereal aisle. Because it had always bothered him to see a parent answer their child’s questions with a Shh! And he had Zack’s father pegged to be that kind of dad. The shushing kind. And that bothered Cohen to his core for some reason. It could’ve been that Zack was a dead ringer for Ryan. Not only in his face and bony little body, but in the way he was so full of questions and curiosity and thought Cohen had all the answers. Or it could’ve been that Cohen was halfway through his thirties and had always wanted a son and had always imagined that son would be exactly like Zack. Independent. Eyes held wide like everything was amazing. A big, breakable heart.

  Zack’s father was one of six parents—doctors, nurses, chefs—who dropped their kids off on school holidays. The Avian-Dome had kept a few snacks laying around for the kids: granola bars, yogurt, apples. Some of those mornings, Cohen would notice the way Zack gorged on granola bars like he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Two granola bars at 8:30 a.m. didn’t sit well with Cohen. It spoke to a missed breakfast. He wanted to pick through the kid’s bookbag to make sure his father had packed him a lunch.

  He mentioned all his concerns to Clarence at a staff Christmas party. They were at the drink table, a makeshift bar, shoulder to shoulder with their elbows plunked down, waiting for the bartender’s attention. All he got was a dismissive, “We’re not in the business of child welfare, and to be curt, it’s none of your business until the kid says something to concern you. Something specific, Cohen. I can hardly call up Child Services with what you’re giving me. And it would be drastically inappropriate for me to have a one-on-one with Jamie Janes because my employee thinks he’s too cold with his kid. Give me something concrete if you expect me to overstep my bounds.”

  The bartender came their way and axed the conversation with an inquisitive nod, “What can I get you?”

  Clarence asked Cohen what he wanted, bought the round, and said, “Look. Maybe the guy isn’t the father of the year, but you’ve got no right to say so, unless the child’s health and safety are on the line. Come to me then. And for fuck’s sake, Davies, lighten up. It’s nine days before Christmas!” He handed him his drink. “We’re all half-drunk and trying to have a good time, aren’t we?”

  Over the Christmas holidays, his mother casually asked Cohen how work was as she scraped bits of turkey and vegetables into the garbage. He found himself telling her all about a kid named Zack, and it simply fell out of his mouth, unexpectedly, like he’d dropped a glass of water. “He reminds me of Ryan, actually.”

  She looked at him like he’d said something wrong.

  But the fact was, since he’d met Zack, Cohen had been thinking a lot about Ryan because it was when Ryan was that age that they’d spent the most time together. Shared the controller for video games, stuff like that. On the first day back from Christmas vacation, it was the only time Zack had burst out of the bus before the other kids. Zack came running towards him with a high five, his feet stamping fresh prints
in the snow, and Cohen knelt down to greet him. He was well aware by now that he’d unfairly separated these kids into Zack and the other ones.

  There was the high-five—Zack’s mittened hand a muted slap off Cohen’s bare hand—and then Zack said, looking over his shoulder before the other kids caught up, “Guess what I know?”

  “What do you know?”

  “Not all owls sleep in the day and hunt at night!The snowy owl is different like that! It’s awake in the day!”

  “I know, buddy, I know.”

  “Oh.”

  The other kids had caught up, and they all walked into the building and down the hallway, near single file.

  “So how was Christmas, buddy?”

  “It was good. I saw my nan. She lives in the United States of America. Not Canada. She gave me a book about birds and read me a bunch of stuff about owls. There’s, like, two hundred and something of them, you know? And owls got special feathers that don’t make a sound when they fly, so that their prey can’t hear them coming.” He made one fist an owl and the other a shrew and smashed them together. It was a hand motion he made to explain just about everything. “She gave me a microscope too, but dad hasn’t put it together for me yet.”

  Walking into the boardroom, the boardroom that had become the kids’ rec room, Zack hauled a cheap plastic lantern out of his bookbag. When he pressed a button, the centre lit up yellow and a frog on the top lit up green. “I got this too. I turn it on when I’m home alone, if I think I hear something scary.”

  “What do you mean, when you’re home alone?”

  “If Dad has to run out or work. He locks all the doors and leaves his phone number by the phone. But still, sometimes I worry someone scary was already in the house before he locked the door. Sometimes Tanya can’t babysit, see.”