Every Little Thing (23 page)

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 Jane 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.”

Cohen urged Clarence to do something about that. A kid being left home alone. Six years old.

“Do what,Cohen, citizen's arrest?”

“No. Put in a call to Child Services. I'd hate to see the day come that I'm put in the position to tell someone in Child Services that I told my superior that a child was being left alone, and possibly neglected in other ways, and that my superior ignored—”

“Watch it, Davies! D'you hear me? Cool off. Get out of my office and get back to work.”

“That came out wrong.”Cohen laughed. “I wasn't threatening to call them.”

But Clarence stayed firm. Eyed him curiously. “You bring your concerns to me and then you're done with the matter, you hear me? I take action on this stuff. Not you. And I do as I see fit. Do
not
overstep me on these matters. That's an official warning,” he said, making a note on his computer. “And I've just sent you an email, so the warning is on record. I like you, I like the kid, but I'm concerned with what your worry might do to us all here.”

MAY SEVENTEENTH. A call from the hospital. Zack's father had badly burned his hand at work.

“I don't know what to say, I'm really sorry, I'm still in the waiting room, and what time is it?” a slight pause while he must have checked a watch. “It's after six. Shit.”

“Shit is right. We've been waiting in the porch for an hour!”

“Listen. I'm injured. I've been held up here, waiting forever.

I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything to do, about getting Zack looked after.”

“What about that girl who picked him up a few times last month?”

“Tanya?”

A harsh sigh, “I don't know her name, man.”

“We're...we've broken up. Like. Listen. I know you've got some kind of problem with me. I see it on your face every day I pick the kid up—”

“See, man, it's the fact you just called him
the kid
, not
my
kid or Zack—”

“Listen, I'm in a hospital waiting room. I can't have this...confrontation right now. But I know you think the world of Zack, and I need a favour. I need someone to watch him until I get my hand taken care of here. He talks about you, you know. At home. This will never happen again, but I'm stuck. Can you just…take him back to your place maybe? I'll pick him up there?”

“That's. I mean. I would, but my employer will have my head. These days, you don't...take kids back to your place. Liabilities, perceptions—”

“Are you saying you can't or?”

He gave Jamie his home address and hung up without saying goodbye.

In the car, on the way back to Cohen's, Zack seemed really worried about his father and that much made Cohen happy. Worry stems from love.

Zack had a tiny toy dinosaur pinched between each thumb and forefinger, making them fight on his left knee. “Is my dad gonna be okay?”

“Yes. He hurt his hand is all. But he's got two of those! And we can always buy him a new one if he needs it.”

Laughing his head off. “You can't buy a new
hand
!”

“I know. I'm kidding. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

“My dad's a chef. He always hurts his hands.”