Read The Better Mother for Free Online Page B

will smile over her secret while twisting a piece of hair around her finger. But she will still have to sneak into her bedroom, shoes in hand, all the while listening for the sounds of their parents’ breathing—Doug’s snore and Betty’ssoft inhale and exhale, still alert because she has waited for her daughter’s return, but is pretending otherwise. How long can Cindy keep this up, swimming in a different life after dark, in these downtown clubs where she can be the most beautiful woman in a room? In the morning, she is just Cindy, the daughter who says little to her parents before taking the bus to the bank. When she returns in the early evening, she changes into her sweatpants and dutifully sweeps the puddles of water off the walk and into the storm drain.
    Danny looks up at the changing traffic light. As he walks away, he remembers that she is almost thirty, that one day she will be past the age that most men find attractive, and then what? She could be a caricature, a middle-aged, grinning version of herself in thick makeup who sips vodka tonics at a table for one in the back. Or she might fade away in her Chinatown slippers, white strands of hair growing at her temples as she rubs their father’s back every night in the fall and winter. Run away, Cindy , he thinks as the cars rush past him. Run now .
    Danny turns south on Seymour, feeling that the night is not quite finished. He looks ahead to the flickering green neon sign. Underneath, in crooked lettering, the club announces that it has THE BEST GIRLS IN TOWN!!! The fluorescent bulbs have a pulse of their own. Danny feels their buzz inside his body, that dark cavern in his torso where the blood echoes the sputtering rhythm of the flashing lights. Turning up his collar, Danny digs his hands in his pockets and steps from the sidewalk and through the front door, not daring to look up the street.
    Inside, he is not the only person sitting at a table by himself. To the right, a tall man with bifocals and sparse,straw-coloured hair sits with rigid posture, his hands wrapped around a full glass of white wine. His expression never changes, his colour remaining an unhealthy yellow, even when the dancer onstage walks slowly toward him and bends over, holding her breasts together two feet from his eyes. He nods slightly, and she walks away, winking at him over her shoulder.
    The waitress, wearing a red and black lace bra top and a faux-leather miniskirt, brings Danny a beer. Her frosted hair is carefully brushed away from her face. When she places the bottle on the table in front of him, she smiles. “Back again?”
    Danny nods, holds on to the beer with one hand, waiting for that chill to travel up his arm and into his spine.
    The waitress pats him on the shoulder. “At least you’re well-behaved, even if you’re a little quiet.” She laughs and turns away, sauntering toward a table of college boys, who wave at her with two-dollar bills.
    Danny is here for one complicated reason: this club—with its glossy stage and sticky tables—feels like home. Not, of course, the type of home where just-baked cookies cool on the windowsill, but a home where a fierce mother pulls you in for a hug that envelops you but also makes you gasp for air. A home where comfort and a crackle of excitement commingle. At his usual table, he waits for the stockinged leg to part the curtains with a kick, for the swish of satin as a dancer makes her way to centre stage, head up, back straight. He comes here because, every once in a while, a girl will make his heart swell. Sometimes it’s the ribbon in her hair, or the coral lipstick she wears. Sometimes it’s nothing at all that he understands, but even then he sits at this table, hope and dried liquor gluing him to his chair. There are nights when hesits here for hours and hours, and nothing catches his eye. He leaves dejected with a droop in his shoulders and the film of too many beers on his gums. When he returns home, his apartment feels