never spoken of her since.
Unlike Glyniss, Helen had fought for her senior years with a vengeance. Losing a breast in the battle, she had emerged victorious and more than willing to embrace all that golden age had to offer. Senior moments and senior discounts, afternoon teas, extra fibre cereals, as well as the God-given right to say whatever the hell she felt like saying and to keep a watchful and reproachful eye on her neighbours’ comings and goings.
The yellow teeth, falling uterus, grandchildren and saggy boobs, well boob, Helen thought it was all pretty hilarious. And Glyniss, with her A+ medical record, was too ashamed to disagree.
Which is why she was sitting on a hard plywood chair with her stocking catching on the mechanics of a folding card table draped in a lace cloth, as she meekly granted her aunt’s request that she pass the cream and sugar.
They were seated among a sea of other women in the slightly dank and heavily linoleumed parish hall of Agathe’s church.
The sisters, Helen and Glyniss, had been summoned early in the week. They were there, supposedly, to raise money for new hymnals which would provide the female congregation the necessary means to practice the other pastime deemed suitable for them, singing in the church choir.
But that was not why they were really there. They were there to talk to Glyniss about Stuart. They were concerned.
In the wee morning hours of the day after Labour Day, Stuart had arrived at his mother’s apartment building, drunk, broke and without the means to pay the cab driver who had brought him there.
He’d left Elizabeth alone to wait on yet another pitcher of beer and headed for the bathroom. Coming out, he had felt the overwhelming urge to flee. Standing at the urinal, holding on to the wall for support, it had come to him that there was still one place in the world that he could still technically call home. By the time he’d finished and zipped his fly, it was clear to him that he wanted his mother. With the idea planted, he couldn’t get himself there fast enough. He forgot to wash his hands, forgot Elizabeth’s kind offer to stay at her place…forgot Elizabeth entirely, along with the bar tab. His tab, since Elizabeth had her car and had been reduced to drinking tap water. He stumbled out the door and into a taxi. From there it was a twenty minute and thirty-five dollar trip to Glyniss’s door.
When Stuart stepped out of the cab, he realized he did not have thirty-five dollars, or ten dollars or two. So he began to ring the door buzzers of a random selection of his mother’s neighbours, calling “Sanctuary, sanctuary” into the intercom.
The driver, desirous of his fare and a quick escape from his obviously obliterated, possibly deranged passenger, managed to tease the right call number from Stuart’s muddled mind, waking Glyniss from what had been a fitful and unsatisfying sleep.
Picking up the phone to hear an accented description of a son downstairs in a bad way with no money to pay for his cab ride, she immediately brought to mind an image of her younger son Graham. But even as she could see his hazel eyes staring back at her, she could hear it was the voice of her older boy coming through the static.
“Sanctuary!”
She threw on slippers and donned a robe. Leaving the curlers in her hair, she stopped only to put on a splash of lipstick before grabbing her purse and heading for the lobby. She wasn’t about to buzz in a stranger; especially one who was audibly so unlike herself.
She said “stranger” even in her own head, but she knew what she really meant. Foreigner. And she knew it was wrong to mean it. But that didn’t change a thing.
Two unkind assumptions in about as many minutes, she noted. She knew it was wrong always to think the worst of Graham. She knew it was wrong not to buzz in foreigners. She was a bad mother and a bit of a racist. She knew it, and she could live with it.
The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open, offering Glyniss a view of her baby staring at her through the glass. He waved.
He looked half-cocked, and just like his father. She bristled but decided she wouldn’t mention that, even if it meant biting through her tongue. She was going to get this right.
She took a breath and opened the main door, wider than necessary to try to give the impression that she had no fear of this brown-skinned man who was holding her son ransom.
She pulled Stuart through the doors, handing the man two crisp twenties from her purse and thanking him profusely for bringing her son home. She sympathized that it must be terrible work having to bring home people like this, especially when in his old country he must have been “a doctor or scientist or something.” She told him she’d seen those commercials and thought the whole immigration process was such a crying shame.
Then she wished him a pleasant night and turned toward the elevator, resisting the urge to push the automatic door shut. Instead, she walked slowly, followed by Stuart, but stopping to open her purse and conduct a pretend key search until she heard the door click shut. It was all very well and good to be polite, but she wasn’t about to grant some stranger free access to the building.
Satisfied, she brought her boy up to her apartment, settling him on the couch before asking him what this was all about.
He hiccupped, then giggled, finally sighing as he said, “Emily broke up with me, but she still loves me, I think, but it’s over I think, so I don’t live there any more, and I had to come home. Can I get a glass of water or something? I am totally dry.”
Artfully ignoring the word “had”, Glyniss focused almost gleefully on the word “home”. Her boy wanted home. All motherly insecurities were momentarily swept away by the fact that in this time of crisis, her son had chosen her. She was a good mother. She was not her mother. Stuart had just proved it.
Stuart had never let her down.
Glyniss was saddened, of course, that he had been tossed aside. Well, not saddened really. Piqued. She’d never liked that Emily anyway. She was a bit on the vulgar side and was always chasing some cause or another. She had cost Glyniss a small fortune in donations to save baby seals and to stop bio-farming. But she had never once got her socially conscious behind out of her seat to help clean up the dinner dishes. Glyniss was sorry to see Stuart looking so terrible over the whole thing. Still, she couldn’t help feeling good about feeling needed.
Stuart wanted some water, and the responsibility was hers. She ran to the kitchen to fill up a glass, searching her cupboards for something he could put in his stomach to save him some agony in the morning.
Hugh, his father, had always fancied something salty when he’d rolled in from a night on the town. But it had been years since she’d kept the kinds of nuts and pretzels he preferred on hand. In the end, she grabbed a box of soda crackers and headed back to Stuart.
He thanked her for the water, and when she sat beside him and started to stroke his hair, he let her. Even though she felt him tense, he didn’t pull away. Victory. They sat there until his glass was empty. Until Stuart placed it on the ground, and, tipping to the left, landed his head on the arm of the sofa.
He’d been there ever since. That was six weeks ago. Glyniss had become, voluntarily, a slave to his every whim. It had been an honour, then a duty, and was now, frankly, a large, boring drain. She had mentioned this to her sister the last time they’d spoken on the phone. She had asked for sympathy but had also expected praise. “You’re a good mother, Glyniss. There’s a good girl.”
It had been a mistake. Helen thought her less a saint than a sucker and had hung up after telling her so, only to pick it up again to call Agathe.
Naturally, Glyniss’s presence had been requested. She was to be called on the carpet to explain, to defend why she would spend her days fetching a grown man’s bathrobe and favourite cereal and preferred magazines, because he refused to get his lazy ass off the couch.
There wasn’t even any small talk to prepare her before the questioning began.
“Did Stuart drop you off?” Agathe asked, innocent as a vulture.
“Well, no, Stuart