Read Toby for Free Online Page B

nineteen months.
    “Can you help me to the toilet?”
    “Now?”
    “Please.”
    “All the way? Right to the toilet?”
    Edward placed his mitts together.
    “There’s a nurse in the hallway.”
    “Just to the room. To the room, Toby. The things I did for you.”
    “Can’t we just have one normal conversation?”
    “How? How?”
    He helped Edward down, and into a pair of paper slippers. They shuffled to the bathroom like geishas. Edward leaned on the toilet tank and breathed, hunched. Most of the blisters had popped; the gauze had fallen off with the movement, and his bare shins glistened yellow and black.
    “You’re all right?”
    “No.”
    “Marvellous. So I’ll just close the door.”
    Edward breathed through his mouth.
    “Whatever you might need, Dad, just shout. I’m closing the door now.”
    Edward watched him close the door, his eyes red and wide and wet. Never simply looking anymore. This was not a new phenomenon. In the summertime, an intensity was drawn out of him that neither Karen nor Toby had ever seen.
    Two months before, in early August, the three had met for dinner in a ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton. The station was celebrating its new season of American reality television and cheap Canadian movies-of-the-week starring D-list Hollywood actors. Back when Montrealers read newspapers, these launches were designed for publicity. Now the station’s president, Mr. Demsky, threw them as family parties—in lieu of a Christmas event, which he had always considered depressing.
    Toby and Alicia sat at a table of prominence across from his parents, her parents, and a childless VP of advertising and her husband. Edward had laughed at everything, not just the jokes. He had actually booed, in a frolicsome manner, as Dwayne introduced The Circle of Hope, a reality show about a town built and administered by the mentally retarded. During the speeches, Edward had whispered insistently about the role television should play in our society, as a vehicle of education. Climate change was going to kill us all, to say nothing of illiteracy, crystal meth, and general ignorance. He had made cracks about the wealthy, their shocking selfishness in the face of social and environmental disasters, the moral failure of Montreal’s elite—of which Alicia’s father was a charter member. He teased Alicia, passive-aggressively, about never coming to Dollard for a family dinner. After three glasses of wine, Edward had touched the advertising VP’s hair and made pronouncements about its softness. He had asked Alicia if it bothered her to date Toby, knowinghe was part Jew, and elbowed her father in the ribs when he failed to laugh. Then a switch, a physical transformation. His eyebrows lowered, his cheeks sagged. He would not touch his dessert. He accidentally dipped his tie in the chocolate sauce.
    “It’s no big deal.” Karen inspected the tie. “I can get that out.”
    “I didn’t mean to do it.”
    She laughed. “Of course you didn’t.”
    “I’ve ruined everything.” He looked around the table. “Haven’t I?
    Edward had explained that these emotional outbursts originated in his solar plexus. It would go mouldy, and the mould would spread everywhere and take him over the way stink takes over a river town.
    All evening, Toby had alternated between gripping his serviette and squeezing Alicia’s hand. She was appalled, her parents were appalled, Karen was appalled, he was appalled. He hated his father for this, and despite his area of expertise it had tossed him into a silent rage. Edward had not seemed mentally ill at the time, only poor and stupid. If Karen had not picked out a tie for him earlier that afternoon, what might he have worn to the Ritz-Carlton?
    The plan had been to go for a drink in the lounge of the mighty hotel, just the three of them, after the launch. Instead, the moment Mr. Demsky said his thank yous and goodnights, Toby stood up and said his own thank yous and goodnights. He did not make eye