yes. Graham does have the nice car. Did he walk you over then?”
“No, I was running late and hopped in a cab.”
“I see.”
They smiled at each other and stirred their tea. Helen shifted her chair a bit to fill the silence.
“What’s he going to be up to today?” the older woman continued, circling.
“Oh. I’m not sure,” Glyniss replied brightly. Too brightly. Her cheeks began to burn.
“Really. If I’ve heard correctly, I believe he’ll be sitting in your living room concocting shopping lists of ridiculous items for you to fetch for him upon your return.” The first grenade had been lobbed.
“I can’t imagine where you heard that,” Glynnis said, glaring at Helen, only to find that Helen wasn’t looking even the slightest bit sheepish.
“Oh, come off it, Glyn. You wouldn’t have been complaining about it if you hadn’t had enough of it,” Helen said calmly. “And we know you can’t ever stand up for yourself, so you want us to stand up for you. That’s why you called. Admit it.”
Glyniss felt her body slump. She was deflated. Not because Helen was right, but because she was always so wrong. She didn’t want Stuart to go, and she didn’t want them to tell her that she did. She wanted to tell them that it was hard, and he was sad, and he never said thank you for any of it. She wanted them to say thank you, and she wanted to know that what she was doing was deserving of thanks.
She said none of this, of course. No one ever did. “Stuart is going through a horrible time right now, and he needs a little sympathy and support.”
Helen waved the explanation away with her spoon, saying firmly, and quite coldly to Glyniss’s ears, “I know he broke up with Emily, and that they dated a long time, and it must be hard, but he did not lose a limb. He’s not disabled, he’s disinclined. There is a huge difference.”
“And either way, darling, it’s not you who should be punished for this woman’s betrayal,” added Agathe. “Don’t let the boy treat you poorly. You’ve done too much for him to ever allow that.” She had that air of authority that made it nearly impossible for Glyniss to ever argue with her.
But she would argue today. For Stuart and for herself, she would put up a fight.
“He’s not mistreating me,” she started, remembering as soon as she said it that she’d armed her sister with a litany of complaints, proving that, in fact, he was. She went on hurriedly. “Not on purpose. He’s a sensitive boy, and he needs my understanding.”
“He’s not sensitive, he’s spoiled, and he feels sorry for himself, and he feels entitled to take it out on you because you’ve always let him,” Helen said, condemning both mother and son in the same staid, matter-of-fact tone one uses to tell the time.
“How dare you,” Glynnis said hotly. She could taste the tears before she felt them, thick in her throat.
“Now, girls,” Agathe interjected. “We are not here, Helen, to burden your sister further. Glyniss, we know that Stuart has always been special to you. We are simply worried you are letting that cloud your reaction to his current predicament in a way that may be harmful to you both.”
The attempt at diplomacy was lost in what Glyniss heard as a veiled accusation, made worse because it was true.
“So I’m a doormat, and I pick favourites? What’s coming next? That I picked a drunk for a husband, and my divorce tainted the family? That I didn’t save enough money to retire like you wanted? Going to remind everyone that I used to steal the penny candy, Helen? I’m such a mess, it’s a wonder you can stomach to look at me.”
Glyniss had said this in an attempt to be cool and cutting. But she could not control the wobble in her voice and had managed to jostle a good quantity of the tea from her cup with a waving hand.
“Everyone is looking at you, dear,” said Agathe through a tight smile. She would not be the object of her Ladies Circle gossip.
Helen, infuriatingly, remained unfazed by the outbursts, looking neither sorry, nor angry, but smiling as she said, “Glyn, I’ve got no problem with you having a favourite. Everyone has a favourite. I personally think my son’s an idiot and can’t believe he’s mine by blood. I just think it’s odd that your favourite’s Stuart. I never did understand that.”
To some it would be hard to understand, since Graham, Glynnis’s younger boy, was the one with his life together. The wife, the job, the car, the confidence. It was Graham who had carried them through the first few months after Hugh’s leaving, when Stuart hardly left his room and Glyniss couldn’t quite get herself motivated to pay the bills or buy the groceries. He was the one who never asked for anything.
Graham was the baby. In a way, he was the reason she and Hugh had split up, much in the same way that Stuart’s surprise appearance was the reason they had gotten together.
Glyniss and Hugh had been dating only briefly when she became pregnant. They had not been in love, but they had been intimate. That was enough of a reason for Hugh to propose, once Agathe had shown up at his boarding house one day and left five thousand dollars poorer.
Glyniss had been thrilled by his interest, the subsequent stroking and thrusting, and finally, his offer to make a legitimate woman of her. The day he proposed, she felt like she had dodged a bullet. Not that of family scandal, but of spinsterhood, which would have been worse. Glyniss was thirty-two years old at the time.
She had wanted to be a bride and a wife, and she was, all because of Stuart. In the few short months that it took the new couple to invest Agathe’s “wedding present” in a decent bungalow and set up house, Glyniss had managed to turn a blind eye to Hugh’s late nights and red eyes and stumbles over the steps upstairs.
Just when it seemed that things would settle and she would have to face the nights alone with no boxes to unpack or curtains to hang, Stuart had arrived, all sweet smells and chub. His big blue eyes staring into hers, he looked to her for everything, wanting her always near.
She was more than happy to spend her evenings by his cribside. Knowing in her heart that she had somehow pulled a fast one on Hugh with this marriage and baby business, she never requested that he spend time with his son or herself unless there was company present. He had done enough for her, and she was grateful.
Grateful enough to make his meals, clean up his messes and ignore his drunken ramblings. And, on occasion, to allow his drunken hands upon her, though he tended to find that comfort outside of their marriage bed, which suited them both.
Even as a youngster, Stuart had sensed this arrangement, staying far from his father unless he was called before him to sing a song or be taught to make fart noises or be tossed in the air and laugh, even though it frightened him. He was his mother’s joy and his father’s responsibility, and he knew he ought to be sorry for it.
In this way, they were not a dysfunctional family. They functioned quite well. And if they weren’t a happy one, they were close enough for Glyniss and, it seemed, for Hugh.
Graham’s arrival a few years later changed things. He was a handsome baby, as was Stuart, but he was not a pleasant one. He was quiet and solemn. He was so stone-faced, in fact, that his father had wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with him. He slept through the night almost immediately and cried only for meals and when he was in need of a change. And, as a final insult, he only wanted those tasks performed by his father.
He didn’t like being held by Glyniss. He didn’t want to feed from her breast. He preferred to sit alone in a baby seat in the corner, unfussed until his father got home. Then he would cry, inconsolable, until he had his father’s attention, until he had been seen.
But as he grew, he didn’t want even that. He didn’t much care for reciting the alphabet for a drunken audience or standing at the ready to play the role of loving son. He didn’t like being fussed over