Every Little Thing Read online

  “Holy shit! He’s actually got something. I’m coming home. I—I’ll call you later. Stay there, okay, like you promised? Stay there?”

  He shouted Allie! into the phone, but she was gone.

  JUST SHY OF midnight,Cohen had finished brushing his teeth and heard evil snickering coming out of Lee’s room. He snuck up the stairs like a burglar, tiptoeing, knowing that if he kept quiet, Lee couldn’t see him. He watched Lee, on his side in bed, muttering like a character possessed in a horror movie. That jaw wobbling around. It was eerie. Spooky. And Cohen crept away.

  He went out to his car with shoes on this time to avoid the angry tack-sharp pebbles. He took out his phone and punched in the number Allie had been calling him from.

  “Look. I don’t want to scare you. And like I said, I don’t know what Lee was like before you left, and the latest stroke, but I think he’s worse off than the doctors thought. Mentally, I mean. He eats when I cook something and all that basic shit, but when he’s alone. I don’t know. He’s talking to himself. Or. To someone that’s not there. And he talked to the news on the TV earlier, like the anchors could hear him. Like he thought they were listening or being rude for talking over him.”

  “I got a ticket already. I’m coming home early.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know what’s normal for the man anymore.”

  “I’d have lost my mind by now, if you weren’t there. You know that, right? And the TV thing. That’s nothing new. The doctor said it was harmless and common and not to upset him by making him feel strange about it. I’m gonna figure everything out when I get home. Long-term care, all that. I’ve been reading up on Binswanger Disease all night.”

  “You there alone, in your hotel room?”

  She paused, like he’d said something wrong. “Yeah. And I might have to let you go, so I can call room service. I’m looking through the menu right now. What’s Cod au Gratin all about anyway. Can you believe I’ve never had it? Maybe tonight’s the night?”

  “You wouldn’t like it. Trust me. Too many greases for you. Cheese, fish—”

  “They’ve got a pizza here with caramelized grapes and pears on it. Yum.”

  “Remember how Lee would always take us out to supper and tell the waitress that it’s my son’s birthday so I’d get a free piece of cake? One less dessert I have to pay for, he’d say, and I never had the heart to tell him the bland birthday cake was the last thing I wanted to eat on the dessert menu.”

  “Yeah. All I remember is being a little jealous he pretended you were his son, but never that I was his daughter. He liked you right from the start. I remember that. Most women have a dog, and when their dog bonds with a new man, she knows he’s the one. I had Lee, instead of a German Sheppard, and he took to you almost right away.”

  “He called me Colin for like, months.”A little giggle on her end.

  “Probably on purpose,” she said.

  Cohen was fully reclined in the car seat and gripping the steering wheel with his toes. Smiling in a way that made his face warm. “Little Allie Crosbie.”

  “Let’s…um…not do this nostalgic, memory-lane flirtation thing, okay? I’m engaged, and I’m hungry. I’ve got room service to order. I’ll call you when I get back in town. Maybe you can come pick me up at the airport?”

  “Sure.”

  “Or. No. Maybe I should get a cab.”

  “I don’t mind picking you up.”

  “No. See you soon and thanks again.”

  But neither of them hung up.

  “Hello? ”

  “It was nice talking with you. You’re an okay guy.”

  “You’re half-decent too.”

  “Half? ”

  “Fully. Fully decent.”

  “G’night.”

  “K.”

  HE HUNG UP the phone, but didn’t go back in the house. He thought about how she was always putting on hand lotion. How she’d take a long sniff at her wrist. Honey or vanilla or something like that. It was odd what memories came. They were minor, trivial things. Like the way she ate ice cream right out of the tub with an ice cream scoop and not a spoon. A big ball of ice cream that took ten or eleven bites and licks, and that was the point, she’d said, of eating it with a scoop and not a spoon. Less double dipping.

  FALLING BACK

  COHEN EXPLAINED THE situation with Lee to Clarence and asked to work from home for a while to look after him.

  “Just while Allie’s looking into...homes to register Lee with.”

  “I don’t care where you analyze these samples,” he shouted into the phone, crunching through his daily dose of salt’n’vinegar chips, “just hurry up about it!This project’s behind schedule. That Morris kid we had working it was slower than a sloth. About as bright.” He laughed.

  “I’ll tear through this in under a month.”

  “I’ve missed you in the lab, kid. Cheetah quick, wiser than an owl.” Clarence finished a mouthful of chips. Added, “Ugly as a boar.”

  So Monday mornings, Cohen would drive into town to fetch more pond samples to analyze and to punch the previous week’s stats and notes into his work computer. Clarence stumbled onto Cohen in the lab one day.

  “How’d you make out last week?

  “Two weeks’ worth of pond samples, processed in one week, check.”

  “Flash Lightning over here,” Clarence pointed to Cohen as if addressing an imaginary crowd that should be impressed. “But don’t let me hear you’re getting too attached to the pond samples and roughing up their fathers, hey?”

  “I didn’t rough anybody up—”

  Clarence clawed a hand through the air. “Drop it. Too early to joke about it anyway. I shouldn’t be making light of the Zack Janes incident. Just saying, it’s behind us. I don’t like tension in the workplace.”He tapped the Bob Marley CD case on his desk, said, “All about zee good vibes,mon,”and laughed at himself. “I’m happy to have you back on projects like this anyway. You’re so on the ball. Kids these days, man, the ones we’re getting from the university. You take away their textbooks and ask them to think for themselves and they’re deer in headlights.”

  Cohen nodded. “I’m fuckin’ brilliant. Einstein with better hair.”

  “Hardly, Einstein was too much of a hippie to go around roughing up peoples’ fathers.”

  “I talked to the man, Clarence. That’s all.”

  “Seriously, enough joking about it. Was what it was, whatever it was.”

  “So, how’s the new hire working out? My replacement? For the kids?”He didn’t mean to sound so sheepish.

  “Her name’s Jenny Lane.” Clarence looked at Cohen to see how he’d take the news. “She’s working out. I even checked her background for violence against single fathers.”

  Cohen shook his head, laughed. Clarence said, with raised eyebrows, “I thought you’d be irreplaceable for a while there. Even your precious Zack likes her.”

  “That’s…good I guess.”

  He said it sternly, “You know you’re not to even look at that kid’s father again, right, if, God forbid, you two cross paths in this building? And I’d like you to steer clear of the kid. We don’t need Zack going home to Jamie, dropping your name. We’ve got less than twenty kids in our program. Every loss would count.”Cohen nodded, but Clarence said, “Nod harder. I’m dead serious.”

  Cohen’s phone rang. So he gave Clarence the solid nod he needed to see and excused himself. He found a chair in the empty staff lunchroom and answered the phone.

  “Hey, it’s me, Allie Crosbie. Any chance you can come get me at the airport? Save me the cab fare? Keith’s in Ottawa until Sunday night.”

  “Sure thing. I’m not far from the airport now, actually. I’m at the Avian-Dome—”

  “Why aren’t you in Grayton...with Lee!”

  “Relax! It’s eight thirty in the morning and the man sleeps until noon! It seemed like the right time to run out. I’m doing my best not to leave him alone, but I do need to occasionally pop into work—�
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  “Sorry. God. I’m so sorry.”

  “I got up and over here early, so he’d still be asleep while I was out.”

  “Look, I’ll get a cab. You picking me up is…too weird.”

  “Is it?”

  “I still need to get my luggage, maybe some breakfast. See you ten-ish.”

  She hung up. He took the phone away from his face and stared at it, shook his head, put it back in his pocket.

  He purposefully walked towards the front exit, so he’d pass the kids and try and gauge this Jenny girl’s character. He poked his head in the door and looked around, but Zack wasn’t in there. Just Erykah, Bryan, Kaytee, and Jennah. No one spelled their name normal anymore. Jenny saw him and approached him.

  She had a voice like she’d just sucked in a blast of helium. “Hi! Are you…one of the parents?” A ginger, five foot five. Freckles thicker than cookie crumbs.

  “No. I’m Cohen Davies.” He extended his hand and she shook it. “I work here. I used to do the afterschool program, actually.” She had tiny hands. So tiny he had to leave two fingers out of the handshake.

  “Oh.” She said it in a way that meant she knew exactly why he’d said used to. “Well! Nice to meet you! I better get back to the kids! Such a handful! These aren’t natural curls!” She laughed and pointed to her hair,“I’mjust that rattled!”She couldn’t do more than three words without an exclamation mark slowing things down.

  “Yes, take care, Jenny.” He looked down and saw she was wearing real moccasins. Instead of waving, she flashed a quick peace sign.

  He was walking towards the front exit when he heard Zack calling out to him, running, like he’d spotted Santa out of season. “Mr. Davies! Mr. Davies! Hi! Hi, Mr. Davies! Hi!” and he wasn’t going to stop greeting Cohen until they were face to face.

  Cohen bent down to get on Zack’s level and stuck his hand up for a high five, but Zack came in with a bear hug. His two little arms like sticks around Cohen’s neck. A reek of cheap gummy candies. “Want one?” and he stuck out a bag full of shark-shaped candies. Their spongy white bellies looked like a different texture than the gummy blue tops.

  “No thanks, buddy. I don’t want a blue tongue like you’ve got there!”

  “I know! I was just looking at it in the mirror. I like having a blue tongue! It’s cool. Did you know that there’s blue octopuses?”

  “Is there? I don’t know much about octopuses.”

  “I know something you didn’t know!”

  “You’re getting smart, buddy!”

  “Mr. Davies?”

  “You know you can call me Cohen, right? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “I like saying Mr. Davies.”

  “Okay, that’s fine too, whatever you like,Mr. Janes.”

  “Why’d you leave daycare teaching? Was it because I eavesdropped on you and Dad that night? I’m sorry. Dad told me listening in on other people’s chats is a bad thing to do. I didn’t know. I promise I didn’t know—”

  “No, buddy, no! That had nothing to do with it, okay? Say yes. Say you understand that that had nothing to with it.”

  And Zack’s little head was bouncing up and down like a dropped ball as he said, “Okay, good. But I was just going to ask you if you wanted to be my best friend. Then you stopped being our afterschool teacher.” He shrugged his shoulders, a little embarrassed at the statement. “Jenny is okay.”

  “Did you hear us that night, though, your dad and me?”

  “No. Just muffles, but Dad sounded mad at you.”

  “He wasn’t. Okay?The traffic was really loud, so we had to shout to hear each other over the traffic, that’s all. And, about daycare, my boss needs me doing other things now, that’s all.”

  “Forever?”

  Jenny came out of nowhere. “There you are,Zack Janes! I was getting worried!What did I say about going to the bathroom and not coming right back? You don’t want me to have to wait outside the door, do you? You’re a big boy, aren’t you?”

  Cohen butted in, “It was my fault, really. I distracted him. Sorry.”

  “No, no! This little boy is a wanderer, aren’t you? Always off playing by himself somewhere, this one!”

  Cohen got up and stuck his hand out for Zack to take, and Jenny shot him a look. “C’mon then, let’s get back.” Zack took Cohen’s hand. They got back to the room, and Zack hugged Cohen’s left leg goodbye then scurried off to the toy chest.

  “He’s a sweet kid. I see you two really hit it off?”

  “He reminds me of my brother, actually. And he’s a firecracker, bright.”Cohen motioned to say goodbye and nice to meet you, but she said, “Very sad about Zack though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “His health.”

  “Yeah, the fainting you mean?” And here was his chance to pry. She nodded yes, and he said, “It was still a new thing when I was told about it. Are things any better or worse?”

  “As of this week, the doctors have him taken out of gym class until they figure out what’s happening. I’ve got to keep an eye on him, make sure he’s not up to much. His episodes are linked with physical exertion, every time. They’ve ruled out all the epilepsies, low iron, the basic stuff. They think it’s a physical exertion thing. Poor little guy. They had him in an MRI machine last week, and he was crying his eyes out. Claustrophobic, I guess. He told me it was like being trapped in a tiny rocketship so small you can’t move your legs and arms, and he mimicked the banging noises the machines made. This week, he’s had a barrage of EEGs and EKGs.”

  He couldn’t talk to Zack’s father or to Clarence about Zack’s health, but chatty Jenny Lane would do the trick. So he laid his second hand atop their shaking hands, and patted her hand too affectionately. Like,Hey, let’s talk again soon.

  Jenny walked on, and Cohen watched Zack bang two dinosaurs together; the Tyrannosaurus winning the battle. He thought of Jamie sending Zack off to Florida. And he thought of adoption again. Since the night Jamie had burnt his hand and shared his story of adopting Zack, Cohen couldn’t stop thinking about adoption as the way to fill the hole in his life. To catch up. To find meaning, purpose. But the waitlist was unreasonable. The criteria. The fact he was unmarried wouldn’t help. He’d want a newborn, and those had the longest waitlists. There were codes your house had to meet—impossible codes normal parents weren’t subjected to, and the renovations were beyond him. Yet he’d logged into that website a few times. Bookmarked it.

  ALLIE WALKED IN the front door like a mother who hadn’t seen her kids in a month. She flung the screen door open so hard it gonged off the outside of the house. And then she smacked a knee off the porch doorframe. She bent over to rub out the pain, but didn’t stop walking forward. Cohen had been sitting in a chair, at the kitchen table, peering through a microscope at a petri dish full of insect larvae and pond matter. Tweezers in one hand, a pencil in another. He looked up and saw her rubbing her knee, but coming towards him in long strides.

  She was wearing a form-fitting, form-enhancing black dress, and the first thing he remembered when he saw her was how much he liked to run his hands over that body when they kissed. She stuck her head in the kitchen, craned her neck left and right—her ponytail playing catch up with the movement of her head—and asked, “Where is he?”

  He remembered her hair as being black, and yet it was brown, light brown, the colour of dry soil. “Lee’s in bed. He sleeps until, like, noon. I never know if I should make him breakfast or lunch when he gets up. So I compromise and make something brunchy.”

  She nodded, not really listening, and sat across the table from him. “I guess I’ll let him sleep then. So, how are you? Been a while,” she said, laughing. She took an apple out of a fruit bowl Cohen had pushed to the edge of the table and bit into it. “I’m starving.”

  “How I am is a long story. Kind of a boring one. You?”

  She brought the apple back to her mouth. Chomped into it. “What’s all this anyway?”She swept her apple-holding hand over
the microscope, the bags of pond water, and the photos of freshwater invertebrates.

  “Work.”

  “Duh.”

  “Fish research. Via insect larvae. I’m off birds for a while. Long story, again, pretty boring. My life’s pretty boring lately. I’ve been picking dead snails and larvae out of petri dishes, counting them, and in between that, I’ve been getting harassed by that surly man who used to be Lee. Meanwhile, some of us are off in Montreal, sauntering around from deli to bakery, buying nice dresses like that one.” He nodded to her black dress and she smiled.

  Crunching her jaw into the apple, “Thanks!,” she said, standing up to model it. “Kinda had to buy it, right? But seriously, why are there bags of bug-filled pond water and gross photos on the table?” She got up off the chair, scooped up the fruit bowl. “I don’t want this bowl of fruit next to dead bugs for some reason.” She walked it over to the kitchen counter.

  “There’s a few government-funded folks throwing nitrogen and phosphorus into a lake. All these bags are samples, from the last six years, of the bottom of that lake. I’ve gotta count and compare the number of larvae to see if fertilizing the pond increases the number, size, and diversity of larvae. Because trout and salmon feed on these things. Another guy is summarizing the number and size of fish caught in the fertilized and not fertilized lakes, to see if more fertilizer equals more insect larvae and, in turn, if more insect larvae equals more and bigger fish in the fertilized pond. It’s for fish farms, I guess.”

  “Riveting,” she said. “And what’s the deal? Fish galore?”

  “By the bucket. Backfires though, because loons have caught on that this pond is a jackpot. They’re eating the shit out of the fish.”

  “Maybe,” she said, as if truly contemplating it, “Maybe I missed this vicarious scientific experience you gave me. I mean, who doesn’t want their kitchen full of snails and insect larvae and pond water?”She picked a bag up and peered into it. “G’ah!What are these spidery-looking ones?”