The Better Mother by Jen Sookfong Lee Page B

of the city’s core, only eight kilometres from the family house—was possibly just far enough. There was something he loved about the salt air in his nose, the burn that filled his throat and lungs. He looked down at his own feet and wondered why he wasn’t running, why he wasn’t pounding thesidewalk, smiling so widely that his face might never recover, laughing when he stopped to catch his breath because he was on the way to somewhere else. He looked to his left, where a man and woman were helping a little girl build sandcastles. All three were covered in a fine grey-brown dust. Danny slipped behind a maple tree and began shooting.
    The little girl had dug a hole with her bare hands. A collection of brightly coloured spades and rakes lay in an abandoned pile beside her. The woman offered her a bucket to help shape the mound of sand, but the little girl frowned and slapped at her hand. Face reddening, the man yelled, “Don’t you ever hit your mother like that!” The girl looked up, startled, and began to cry, her wails floating over the sand and water, travelling swiftly through the air in all directions. Danny winced.
    And then, both parents crouched forward and began murmuring. Danny could see the father saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” while the mother fumbled in her purse for a tissue. Danny wasn’t sure who was more upset, the tiny four-year-old or her furrowed, anxious parents. He didn’t stop shooting. Each frame was this whole story in miniature.
    Inside, his stomach was churning; the ham and pickle sandwich from lunch had become a brick-solid mass. He could hear his father’s voice booming.
    “I’ll teach you to steal one of my beers.”
    “Give me that look again, I dare you.”
    “Your mother might think the sun shines out of your ass, but I sure don’t.”
    “Not such a smart-mouth now, are you?”
    The words all pointed to the same truth. If his fathercould have chosen a son from a lineup, Danny would have remained unpicked, standing by himself, staring at his own shoes. Waiting for the right family.
    When Danny looked again, the little girl was drinking from a nearby water fountain and her parents were sitting on a log, staring out at the water, their hands hooked together, each finger woven with the next. Danny pressed the shutter release one more time before walking off the beach to the corner of Denman and Davie. He took three buses to get home and when he arrived, his parents were both waiting for him in the living room.
    “Am I late?” Danny asked, checking his watch.
    Betty, sitting in the far corner of the couch, looked at Doug, who held a beer can on his lap. “Not this time,” he said.
    His mother scratched her nose before speaking. “Your father wants to talk to you about your plans.”
    “Plans? For what?”
    Doug sat up straighter in his armchair and stared at Danny until Danny looked down at his sand-covered shoes. “When the Exhibition is over, I want you to work at the shop full time. You’re old enough now to learn how to run things. We don’t have the money to send you to school anyway.” He ran his hand over his face. “Not that you or your sister could even get in.”
    Danny didn’t say anything. He turned his head toward his mother, who nodded at him gently. For a moment, he wanted to shake her, bounce her head off the wall behind her and yell, You should know better. You should know that working at the shop will be the end of me. You should know this is nothing close to what I want . But her eyes were so blank, soblandly accepting and quiet that he knew it wouldn’t be any use.
    After a minute and a half of silence, Betty stood up and took one of Danny’s hands. “Auntie Mona’s friend has a daughter about your age. Maybe we could invite them over for dinner.”
    Danny looked from his father to his mother and back again, and saw that they both had set jaws and unshaking hands. He patted his mother’s shoulder and stepped around her toward the