GERRY CAME BACK for Bo in early October. “You ready for work?” he said.
“Yes.”
There were fifteen country fairs scattered through Ontario. Gerry intended them to get to each one, at least two or three per weekend. Inside the cab, Bo could smell the truck falling apart, gas fumes leaking in through holes in the floor. He missed school every Friday and some Thursdays if they had a ways to travel to get to someplace that looked just the same as the last place they’d been. Loralei was stressed, so Gerry had started giving her Valium. It made her slower, which made her seem dumb, but it was better than risking her swatting someone, or so Gerry claimed. Bo spent some of the travel time staring out the window, some of it counting his money. Today was a Sunday and they were heading to Walkerton.
Bo placed his bills in piles on the truck bench between him and Gerry—ones, twos, fives, tens—which got Gerry singing about how the king was in the counting house, counting out his money. Bo didn’t mind because he loved the part of the song about the blackbirds, which always made him childishly check for his nose. The air was thick with summer still, as if no one had told October about fall, and Gerry, out of the blue, seeing him happy, asked Bo about that kid he’d been fighting when he found him.
Bo thought about Gerry “finding” him, and said, “Ernie?”
“That the ass-wipe’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Do you fight other kids?”
“No.”
“Why only him?”
Bo shrugged, leaned in to the radio. “Can I change the channel?” he asked, which made Gerry laugh.
“Sure you can, kid.” Then nodding to the money, Gerry said, “How much?”
“Four hundred and fifteen.” “Rubber Band Man” began pouring out of the radio. Bo rocked in his seat to it.
“A bundle,” said Gerry.
“Should I get a bank account?”
There would be two fights for Bo that day. He’d fought other boys, and he fought Loralei, and he always knew who would win and who would lose from the outset. Not once had there been a bout that went wrong. When he wasn’t at fairs with Gerry, he fought Ernie. He thought of it as training, that the experience was building him. He was strong. Mr. Morley had nodded and smiled when he broke a school record for sit-ups. He’d won the fitness medal, and been called a fucking slant for it by Ernie, who had red-faced it to second place. If he counted those slams with Ernie, he’d thrown his body at some other body thirty times these twenty-one days.
“I’m not tired,” Bo said, as if saying it would make it true.
“Why’d you say that, kid?”
He shook his head and furrowed his eyebrows. He would sleep when he was dead, a line Gerry spouted now and then. The thought of it made Bo shiver, then shrug it off, since sleeping wasn’t like dying, anyhow.
In Walkerton, it looked like the same kids milling around, same mums and dads, same 4-H Jersey calves, same giant pumpkin. Bo lost the first bout on purpose, at a cue from Max Jennings, who had begun to work more closely with Gerry on rigging the show. There must have been a lot of money at stake. The skinny boy who beat Bo was the son of the mayor. The kid had no sense of gravity, which made it difficult for Bo to create a decent spectacle, make it look good. It was easier to make a show with the overweight boys. They knew how to stand, and people seemed to find fat funny.
Bo had played this boy, getting him to chase, then evading his touch. He’d held the kid in a clutch, then shifted his weight in whatever direction the kid wanted it to go, so it looked as if Bo had lost his balance, which he had. The betting crowd didn’t need to know he was losing his balance on purpose. He’d let the kid ram his chest with a bony knee, and even that didn’t really hurt. When it got too much he slid out from under so the kid hit the boards with his knee. Bo smiled when he yelped. The thin padding on the ring floor did not forgive. Bo put on his most angry face when the referee lofted the mayor’s son’s hand in the air. Being a shitty loser made him hated, and hatred meant they’d bet against him with Loralei. The green would flow.
After the match, Gerry said, “You got two hours to kill, kid.”
Max Jennings thrust his chin toward Bo. “How’s the family?” he asked, meaning Orange. He wore a pristine, cut-silk, silver suit that glimmered. He knew how to make his face look sympathetic. “I’m just asking,” he said.
“They’re okay,” Bo said. But it wasn’t true. The family was not okay.
Max fanned twenty-dollar bills in his palm like a magician. “The offer stands.” He flicked his perfect eyebrows.
Bo walked away.
He heard Max as if he were talking through a foghorn in a dream. “Jesus, come on, kid!”
BO WAS THROUGH THE SHORT Walkerton midway strip in no time, so he circled back, angling past the bingo hall, and used his pass to enter the freak show. Freaks were nothing more than strangely built humans, some of them suffering diseases, all of them finding a home in this otherworld. If a person thought that humans only came in one shape, then they were fascinated by these beings. It was as simple as that. Bo knew that Orange would be excited to be here—to be anywhere. She wouldn’t notice kids staring, dropping their cotton candy, spilling their pops to get a look, necks craning. That she wouldn’t notice made it somehow worse.
Many of the regular summer attractions—freaks Bo had only heard about from Gerry—had already headed south for the winter, so the feature at this fair was a dwarf and his talking dog. People crowded in.
How’s the family? Max’s question leapt in his mind. A bad asking. His mum was vacant or drunk, his sister out of control. His own fake carnie bouts had become more real, and more reliable, than anything really real.
Bo watched the dog flip and beg and roll itself up in a ball and cry for a bone. It might have been interesting if the dwarf hadn’t looked bored and resentful. His act consisted of baiting the audience. The dog was just a cog in a carefully designed routine, but it had range. It could baa and moo, and make something like a quack. The dwarf finished up, then took a long pull from a beer bottle. The spectators milled around the tent, whispered over the mummified mermaid, the bottled microcephalic baby, the hairless cats, scared and drugged in their bright yellow miniature circus-train car, and the live cow with the second head sprouting from her skull. “Wow,” people said. “Will you look at that?”
Bo imagined Orange in a cage, or an aquarium, looking baffled, or worse, getting wild with that fury she had, bashing her twisted self against the floor, the walls, while these people, the normals, laughed, pointed in awe, shame, whatever they felt. He checked the time and left the freak show.
The crowd pressed in on him. Kids making their way to this or that ride, the pop of pellets hitting and missing paper targets, some toddler wailing. He thought of his mother despondent at the kitchen table two weeks before. “I lost my job.” Her eyes glancing up at him at the last second.
“Did you quit?”
“No,” she said.
“What happened?”
“I missed too many days.”
Bo had kept that news from Gerry and Max, not wanting pity, or any sort of drama. He forgot to breathe whenever he recalled Father Bart looming at him after mass that time. “Where is your mother?” It was something he, too, wondered from time to time.
For twenty minutes, Bo stood in line for the Ferris wheel, as a snake of twittering couples fed into the dangling cars. Before his fights, Bo sometimes spent his tension on the Ferris wheel or the Loop-the-Loop, whatever ride was biggest, fastest. It was like a dare he had with himself. The operator was an older man who looked like he hadn’t slept in a long time. He performed his job like a robot, shuffled Bo through the gate, then closed it, opened the bar on the ride, made sure Bo was strapped in, closed the bar, pushed a button to shift the car up. Automatic. He didn’t look at Bo, though Bo recognized him from every fair in all the different counties he’d been to.
Bo watched the faces of the people entering the cars as his rose in the air. They betrayed everything—fear, excitement, sorrow, anticipation, joy and worry. He thought that maybe it was only in these moments of anticipating how a ride could be your last, when everything of life showed. And then the Ferris wheel began to turn in earnest, and Bo’s body seized up. He recalled the swells under the fishing boat, and the screams of the men through two days and nights as they took turns trying to scare away pirates. There were tales of these pirates raping women and murdering men. Now, the mechanics of the ride, the slick gravity manipulation, the panic of it enveloped him. He was sweating with fear, his anxiety swelling and dying with each rotation, until it was over. He laughed at himself, then, and thought, Screw you, Max Jennings, my family is just fine.
He exited the car, and stood to watch as the others stumbled out, their eyes bright, their faces absolutely blank. He stopped to buy a burger, and ate it as he pushed through the midway crowd toward the ring, sidestepping grass muddied by the rain of the night before. He could smell Loralei as he got close.
THE BEAR GRABBED BO’S HEAD with her paw pads and pulled him in for a hug. He disappeared into her fur—the audience could see his legs and that was all, and they shrieked. Bo shouted right into her chest. They had practised this. He would shout into her chest and she would react by pushing him away. She had recoiled, frightened, the first few times he did it, until she realized it was part of the play. She thrust him to the ropes then, and he bounced around, rolling his eyes up for effect, then fell theatrically to the mat. He would have rope burns and scratches to prove he’d fought her.
She lumbered over while he lay there, and simply sat down on him.
“She’ll crush him,” someone yelled. “Hey!”
But she was perched, not fully sitting at all. Bo had enough room under her to press his feet into the mat and buck, the signal for her to leap up. She stood to her full height and clawed the air, bounded around the ring and made a great show for the crowd. Then she ran at Bo, head-butting him mid-body, heaving him up and onto her back. Here he was able to cinch his arm around her neck and manoeuvre her staged defeat. He pinned her with his scrawny body, and to prove his mastery over her, Loralei rolled her eyes back in her head and shot her tongue out—a cartoon death throe—until the announcer finally called it.
Gerry got Loralei to sit down. The referee came into the middle of the ring, between Bo and Loralei, grabbed Bo’s hand and held it aloft. Loralei sniffed, then nuzzled Gerry. A root beer emerged from Gerry’s pocket and Loralei lifted her head, opened her mouth like a baby bird, and Gerry poured it down. Her prize. The crowd’s frenzy was the soundtrack to Bo’s own joy.
And then in the truck, counting his cash again, Gerry said, “Nice job,” and handed Bo a wad of money.
“Thanks.”
“Well, kid.”
Bo piled the new bills smallest to largest and added them to his stack, then wound an elastic around it twice and thrust the wad into his pocket before looking over.
“Well what?”
Gerry sucked in his bottom lip and was chewing on it. He looked like he might cry or like he was trying to look like he might cry. “That’s it.”
“What is?”
“Walkerton is the end of the road, my friend. I got no work for you until next year. You keep yourself fit and you stand to make a load next season. Sit-ups. Push-ups. You keep fighting that arse-wipe of a friend of yours. If Max convinces the CNE to book the sideshow, you might get spotted, go professional. There’s no stopping you—”
“No more work?”
“Sorry, kid.”
His mum at the table. Orange. Bo’s ribs caved in on him. No work. He would not cry. He yanked the bundle out, tore at the elastic and counted and recounted. He thought forward to months without Loralei, his mum sick at heart, no way to pay for anything. What would they do? When he got home, he would go out and find Ernie, and he would punch.
BUT WHEN HE GOT HOME, Teacher was in his kitchen sitting across the table from his mother. “Hello, Bo.”
Rose looked up at him. Her eyes gave nothing away. Orange reached out to him from the floor, and when he didn’t react, she slapped the floor until he picked her up.
“Hello,” he said to Teacher, and then he nodded to his mother. He knew that Rose had already seen his panic.
“Sit down, Bo,” said Teacher. She gestured to the chair beside her.
“What is it?” he said. He jostled Orange and made a face at her. He didn’t want to sit down. He looked at Teacher and then at his mum again.
Teacher smiled. “I think you know,” she said. “You’ve missed a lot of school. You and Rose need to understand—”
“I’m sorry,” Bo said, interrupting her. “I won’t miss any more.”
“I know things aren’t easy,” Teacher said.
How did she know? Bo wondered. How was it that even their misery was public knowledge?
“If I can help in any way—” she said.
Rose tsked, and Teacher looked over at her.
“We’re okay,” said Rose.
Orange had nestled into Bo’s shoulder and was curled there, heavy and tired. Bo snuggled his face against hers. She smelled good. He could excuse himself and put her to bed.
Teacher glanced down at her purse hanging from the back of her chair, and Bo saw her flush. She said, “If you’d let me help.”
“Thank you,” said Bo. “I won’t miss any more school. Really.”
“Okay, Bo,” she said. She pulled her purse over her shoulder and opened the zipper. “I have something for Orange.” It was a red plastic bottle. Bubble Magic it read on the label.
Bo looked at it. He turned it around. “What is it?” he said. Orange jerked toward it, grabbing.
“You don’t know this?” Teacher said. She put out her hand to take it back. She smiled. “Let me show you, okay?”
Bo nodded, so she twisted the lid and pulled out a little red wand with a round plastic ring at one end.
“Watch,” she said. She gently blew into the wand’s ring.
Orange leaned in, and then, as the soap bubble began to blossom from the wand, her arms flailed and Bo had to set her down. Three or four bubbles floated around them. Teacher dipped the wand into the bottle and blew again. The bubbles found little currents in the air and danced along them. Teacher laughed.
Even Rose smiled. “So pretty,” she said.
Teacher dipped the wand again, and blew, and this time so many bubbles formed, it seemed impossible. They were everywhere, iridescent, perfect. Orange grabbed at them.
“Okay,” said Teacher. She handed Bo the wand. “I better go.” When he looked confused, she said, “You just blow softly.”
Orange slapped him, trying to get the bottle. Bo dipped the wand and blew, and did not notice Teacher leaving. He had to make bubbles for Orange; she hit him whenever he stopped. He made bubbles for an hour, and when he finally put the bottle away, Orange pummelled him.
HALF ASLEEP STILL, the next morning Bo thought of the floating bubbles. Before he had put them away, he and Orange had lain down on the floor so they could blow them back up into the air as they fell. It had been so pleasant, and now he wandered in that memory. Then suddenly he remembered that it was Monday, a school day, and that he would have no more bouts until springtime.
“Mum?” he called out, but she didn’t hear so he got up and stumbled into the kitchen.
Orange sat in Rose’s lap. His mother was trying to get Orange to eat. There was porridge crusted on Orange’s arms and splattered across her cheeks. Rose looked up when Bo came in.
“I slept in.”
“I thought you had already gone to school.”
“I’m late. I’m missing basketball practice.”
“You must have needed the extra sleep,” she said, and he knew she was right. But he wanted to be at practice, running, jumping, ridding himself of thought.
Bo took a banana from the counter and sat, peeling it all at once and eating it bit by bit. All he could think of was that he had no work, and neither did Rose. Orange lunged at him, flinging a bit of oatmeal she’d been mashing up in her hand.
“Ugh,” he said, when it landed on his clean shirt. And then he lunged at her and yelled, “You’re a dirty girl!”
“Bo!”
He had not known he could sound so mean. He crouched at the table and held Orange’s face for a second, and smiled to her.
“Mum?” he said.
“What?”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the roll of money. “Here.” Bo put the money on the table. “Gerry told me there wouldn’t be any more work until next year.” He pointed to the money. “That’s everything.” When Rose shook her head, he added, “I’ll get another job.”
“No, Bo. I will get a job,” she said. She slowly swallowed as if to calm herself.
“No,” he said. “Orange needs you.” I need you, he thought, but he didn’t dare say it, and his mother and Orange did not move, just sat amazed at what he had dared say, and so he left.
He grabbed an old mop handle that was broken and lying on the front porch and, on his way to school, swung it at every object that caught his fancy. He made noises as he whacked everything, and it made him feel a little better. An old lady crossed the street to avoid him.
When he got to the schoolyard, Teacher was at the front door. “Bo,” she called. She looked as crushed and sad as if he had hit her, despite the fact that he was far away from her, hitting the post of the fence that enclosed the schoolyard. The hollow metal twanged in an ugly way. “What is it, Bo?” There was no one else around. It was too early for most people, and practice was in the gym. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he called. Everything.
Teacher wore a dark blue blazer and white trousers under her coat. Her hair was perfect. “There must be something.”
“No.” He gave her a scorching look so she would leave him alone.
“Okay, Bo,” she said. “Okay.” Then she opened the door and went inside.
Bo followed her to the door, watched her through the glass, listened to her pumps click against the floor on the way to their classroom. He tapped the mop handle against the brick to the beat of them, until she was too far away and he couldn’t hear a thing. He didn’t feel like making practice anymore, or seeing anyone. He went around the school and did chin-ups on the geo-dome climber, over and over until he couldn’t breathe. As the other kids arrived, they played around him, until the bell rang.
THAT AFTERNOON, Bo stayed on at school for basketball practice, his worst sport after volleyball. He practised jumping so he would be able to compensate for his height in a game. Mr. Morley measured his vertical at point-seven metres, and said, “Good.” Bo headed home late, and stinking of body odour, and starving. At Dundas and St. Johns, Ernie was waiting for him.
“I can’t,” Bo said. “I need to get home.”
“Pussy-whipped,” said Ernie, so Bo ran at him and thumped him to the ground.
Ernie grabbed his ankle, pulling him down on top, and they tussled. “I have to be home, Ernie,” said Bo. “Really.” He freed himself and stood.
“I’m gonna kill you, Bo.” Ernie stood up too, and brushed off the wet leaves that had caught on his sweater. “I’m gonna kill you.”
Some of the children from the neighbourhood came out of nowhere to watch.
“I can fight later,” Bo said. “I can’t fight you now, Ernie.”
“Later then, sure.” Ernie looked angrily at his fists, as if it were them and not Bo he hated. And then he swung at Bo, clipping him across the nose and mouth.
Bo recoiled. The hit was so hard it had taken his breath with it. The blood came thick and fast—a glob of it from his nose, a red trail down his chin. Someone gave a great whooping yell. It crescendoed as Bo ran away. When he turned the corner, he lost the sound in the great rumble of a train hurtling downtown.
By the time he got home, the blood had crusted along the runnels and soft hairs at the bow of his upper lip. Rose barely turned when he came in. She was tucked up in the Naugahyde chair crooning to a Vietnamese cassette tape, and smiling. Her eyes were lit up and pretty. Orange was sleeping on a mess of laundry in the corner of the living room. Bo recalled a time when his mother might have noticed two lines of dried blood roving down his face, but she was either used to it or had given up. She never really looked at him anymore. “Mum,” he said. “I’m home.” He went down the hall to the bathroom and washed his face, then came back to see them.
“Hi, Bo,” Rose said.
He settled on the floor beside Orange, lying so that he could watch her face when she slept. He could feel the soft moving air of her breath on his face, and hear the tiny puffs as it left her lips. Sometimes, she went from being strange to being beautiful.
“The bubbles were nice,” he said.
Rose nodded. “A friend of Gerry’s came by today.”
“Who?” But he knew already.
“He said his name was Max Jennings.”
No, thought Bo.
Orange’s arm twitched in sleep, like a dog’s legs when it runs in its dreams. She was hitting in her sleep, he thought. Raging in her sleep. He swallowed, considering that Max might have seen Orange.
“You didn’t let Max see her, did you?”
He sat up, glaring at his mum.
“I thought she was asleep, but she had toddled up to the door while I was talking. And—” Rose hesitated when she saw Bo’s face crumple.
“And Max saw her.”
“He was very polite. He was kind.”
Bo imagined the secret glee with which Max would have regarded the distorted and warped body of his sister. He must have smiled. He must have seen the flow of green in her.
“He’s not kind,” said Bo.
“He said he made house calls to his favourite workers. He said to tell you to keep fit for the spring carnivals, that he enjoys working with you. Bo, he was very nice to me.”
“Okay,” Bo said. He did not want to tell his mother about the freak show or about anything that might make her think twice about letting him work for the carnival. He glanced back at Orange, sleeping still, and thought of Loralei, the muscles under her fur undulating as she moved, and how nice that was, and how good it was to tussle with her. How real it was.
“Mum?” he said.
“When the carnival gets back in the spring, I might have to miss more school.”
“But Teacher—” she said.
“I know.” Bo slid over to sit nearer to his mother. “I know she’ll be mad, but I need to do this.”
Rose’s eyes closed and then opened. She looked up at the ceiling and her mouth twisted a little with some thought. Then she said, “Okay, but make sure all your homework is done, every day. All of it.”
Bo nodded and smiled, thinking of Loralei’s fur and the press of her body against his. “I will,” he said.
Then his mother said, “Teacher has organized a babysitter for Sister so that I can look for work.” She let her hand drop onto Bo’s head. He stayed very still while she combed her fingers through his hair. “She noticed that Sister was alone, and did it to help us. The babysitter starts in November, in two weeks.”
“Is that okay with you?”
“Not really,” said Rose. “But I have to look for work. I have to find something to do. And Sister is walking; I need someone to be here to make sure she is safe.”
“Maybe it’s okay,” he said.
Rose stopped combing his hair then, and pulled her hand away. She sang the unwinding strain that was the last song on the cassette, and when it had finished, she said, “Yes, maybe.” She pushed herself out of the chair and walked to the hallway. She stopped at a mirror on the wall, straightened her T-shirt and made a face at her reflection. “That man did seem very polite, Bo.”
“Mum,” he said. “It’s okay. Forget it.”
Then she peered at herself in the mirror, smoothed her clothing again, before wandering to her bedroom. When Bo was sure she’d fallen asleep, he woke Orange. He wanted to take her through the streets and show her the dogs, and the trains, everything, but it was still light and he didn’t dare. Instead, he waited a bit, and then he snuck her to the tracks, and waited for a train so that he could watch her feel the suck of air, and see all the muted colours as the cars blurred past under the industrial lights. She watched in a trance as he held her there in his arms.
IT WAS AFTER SCHOOL on a Wednesday in November. Emily turned so fast when he shoved through the door, he realized he’d scared her. Except it was his heart racing. “What are you doing here?”
“Babysitting,” she said. “I really like Orange,” she added. And then she grinned so wide he thought he would fall in, and knew how awkward he must appear, because—well—this was Emily.
Bo pretended everything was fine by picking up a cloth and wiping Orange’s mouth. She’d spit her food down her chin as if to say, don’t clean me, I’m dirty. “Don’t,” he whispered. He looked over at Emily. She was the babysitter?
“Is this your first time babysitting her?”
“Oh, no. I’ve been here lots of times. Your mum wasn’t sure when you’d be home. Rose—your mum? I think she’s on a date.” Emily seemed pleased to tell him this.
“Date?” No. She was looking for work. “You can go home now,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
After she’d gone, he bundled Orange into a blanket and tucked her on his lap. He sat on the green chair and waited, and waited, even as Orange slumped in sleep, and even as he, too, began to drowse.
A knock woke him. He laid Orange down on the floor beside the chair and found Teacher at the front door.
“Oh, hi! Bo!” She looked confused. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I asked Emily to be here.”
“Practice was cancelled.”
“Oh. Well, can you let your mum know I’m here?”
“She’s out, Miss Lily.”
Teacher sighed at this. “I’m supposed to bring her to her doctor’s appointment. She wanted to look for work, and then we were supposed to meet back here. Didn’t she mention it?”
“She never goes to the doctor,” said Bo.
“Bo,” said Teacher. “Everybody needs to go to the doctor once in a while. It’s normal.” And then, when he just stared at her, she said, “Will you give her a message?” Actually there were two. One was inside an envelope with Rose Ngô on the front in cursive; the other Teacher asked him to pass on: could Rose come to the school to speak with her the next day. Bo looked up directly into Teacher’s face when she said this. His horror must have shown, because Teacher said, “What is it?”
“Sister will be alone,” Bo said, though this was not what concerned him. He did not want his mother at the school. He did not want her to be seen.
“I’m trying to help, Bo.” Teacher’s face was so smooth, and kind. “It’s after school. You can be here for Orange, right? Or else, I can ask Emily.”
He shook his head even as Teacher pushed the letter toward him. Not Emily.
“Just give this to your mum, okay? We’re trying to make this as easy as possible. Really.”
Bo looked at the letter. We, he thought. She was delivering a letter from We. He knew this meant the group of people who had sponsored them, that this meant gratitude and owing. His throat constricted. He thanked Teacher and closed the door, and set the letter down on the kitchen table where his mum would see it when she got home. He went back to the living room, cradled his sister and waited.
ROSE TRIED TO TIPTOE past them.
Bo said, “Where were you?” and heard her sharp intake of breath. She walked over to the kitchen table and looked down at the letter.
“I’m home now. Go to bed.”
Bo stood with Orange hanging in his arms and carried her to her bed. When he was sure she had settled, he went to stand at the threshold of his mother’s room. “Who were you with?” he asked.
The door muffled her response.
“… not your business.” But somehow from this he knew right away that it must be Max.
“Mum, no.” This knowing felt like crying did.
“Hush, Bo. Go to sleep. I’m all right.”
“Mum. Teacher came by for you. She said you had a doctor’s appointment. You have to go and speak to her tomorrow at the school. Did you open the letter? What did it say?” Bo waited in the dark for her answer. He felt if she would attend to these things, she’d have no time for Max.
Finally, he heard her say, “Nothing.”
TWO DAYS LATER, when he got home from school, Max Jennings and his mother leaned into one another at the table—Max’s glass tilted mid-air—as if they had suspended their conversation and were waiting for him. Orange was splay-legged on the floor between them. Bo picked her up.
Rose looked strange. And then Bo thought, no, not strange, she looked happy. She wasn’t smiling but there was something different, some freshness, and he felt only distress at this. Why should Max give her happiness?
“The prodigal son!” said Max, and added, “I have been regaling!”
“Max,” said Rose. She brought her empty glass toward him and he filled it sloppily from a gin bottle. His mother saying Max’s name was a hateful thing to hear.
Orange fought Bo’s hold on her, and so he let her dangle to the ground to stand. She caught her balance, and then caught it again.
Rose gave him a pained look, but then stopped herself when Max put his hands out toward Orange.
“No!” said Bo, but Orange waddled over to Max and let him catch her up.
Bo noticed that Rose was holding her breath. If there were air, he would scream. And then Rose laughed, and her face was so open that even Bo could see how beautiful she was. She let all this stifled beauty shine onto Max until the laughter faded.
“Little Sister,” Max said. “Little Orange.” He was holding her by her arms as she bounced on his lap. Max looked at Bo. “I’m trying to help out, kid.”
Bo turned to his mother. She would not resist, he could see. This gutted him. Mother, he thought, his thought screaming, but she wouldn’t pay attention. “Stop,” he said to Max, and pulled his sister away. “Leave her alone,” he said to Max, but he was looking at Rose. Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. Don’t make a fuss, these eyebrows said.
THE NEXT MORNING, Bo awoke on the floor beside Orange’s bed. Bleary-eyed, he went to the kitchen. Max Jennings sat in the same spot at the table—as if he had not moved. But where the glasses had been, there were plates, and Bo saw that for the first time in so long, his mother had cooked breakfast. She sat opposite Max.
“Aunt Jemima’s pancakes and syrup,” said Max. “Pull up a chair, son.”
Orange began to thump, a metronomic shiver through the house. Bo stared toward her room, and then turned and sat down. “Did you sleep here, Mr. Jennings?”
“Bo!” said his mother.
“Never mind, Thao.” Looking at Bo, Max said, “I slept on the couch,” and then laughed because there was no couch, only the chair.
Max slid a triangle of pancake into his mouth. He was chewing more than necessary. Max had called his mum by her Vietnamese name. He had—
“Max will drive me to the grocery store, Bo,” said Rose, rising from the table. “You will look after Sister.”
Bo nodded. He was sorting out what this all meant, but it was too much.
“And Bo,” said Max, chewing still, “I want you to understand—” and here he tilted his head to the side in a kindly way, “I find Sister a delight, a real treasure.”
Bo was punching Max’s face before he realized it. He slammed Max’s face with his fist, all the while hearing Rose yell, “Stop!” and “No!”
Max only smiled wanly when Bo finished, as if he had known it would come to this. Then his smile turned nasty.
“You little asshole,” he said, patting his clothes down. He stood up and threw his napkin down on top of his plate, then touched his cheek where Bo had hit him. “Let’s go, Thao.” Pointing at Bo, he hissed, “The world is perfect in its own way. As perfect as anything. You just need to let things be.” A red welt was already appearing on his cheek. “You little asshole.”
“Sorry, Max,” his mother was saying as they walked out of the house. “Sorry, sorry.”
Bo wished he had hit Max harder. He wished he had made Max bleed.
BO FUMED IN THE KITCHEN for ages before he finally went in to Orange. She wore only a messy cloth diaper, and this was half falling off. Orange’s hair was sweaty and skewed, her popped eyes lined with angry veins. Her finger stumps were red from hammering the wall and her face was teary from the frustration of trying to communicate, but when she saw the camera Bo had brought into her room, she calmed down. It was a new thing and she liked new things.
“Don’t move, you little asshole,” Bo muttered, but she was in constant motion unless she was sleeping. He still felt so angry. He looked through the viewfinder of Teacher’s camera, moving the dials to get the aperture right in Orange’s dark room, making sure the flash was turned on. “You’re hideous,” he added. “I hate you. You’re a little fucker.”
He took picture after picture of her and each snap of the shutter was like the jaws of a shark smacking together, exactly like that. He told her again how he hated her but there was no truth in repetition. Orange flailed around the room and finally scuttled under the bed, trapping herself, but he did not stop. He crawled along the floor and took more pictures of her ugly face, her terrible freak-show body.
He pulled her out by the feet. “There,” he said. “You’re a beast.” She was trying to rock away from him, but he held her down with his legs, and took several pictures of her panic, until the shutter would not click, until the camera had eaten up the film.
He opened the camera and took the roll out. He pushed the exposed film into the plastic case, and the case into his pocket. He would give Max what he wanted and be done with it.
There was a shop in Bloor West Village where they developed film. Bo ran, faster and faster, until his lungs clenched and his heart beat loudly in his head. Crying might have served the same purpose if he could cry, but he could not. The tears wouldn’t come.
When he handed the film to the clerk, Bo asked, “How big can you make them? I want them like this.” He showed with his hands roughly the size of the pictures he’d seen framed in Max’s trailer.
“Glossy?”
“Glossy?”
“Shiny. Do you want them shiny?”
“Yes.”
“Not cheap,” said the clerk, and then she looked up. “About sixty dollars.”
He did not know how he would pay. Maybe Max would pay for them. Or he could take back some of the money he had given to his mother. She kept it in a coffee tin in the fridge. “That’s okay,” he said.
“Write your phone number here and we’ll call you when they come in.”
When he got home, Orange was snot- and tear-drenched, and pressed into the hollow particleboard door. She had made more small dents in the wood with her mallet fists. His anger seeped out into guilt. Bo cuddled her in his arms, swayed her back and forth in wide arcs, as if she were a normal baby and he were a Swing Ride at half speed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, over and over, and after a while she seemed to believe him, and fell asleep.
While she slept, Bo went to his room and crunched through fifty sit-ups, then fifty push-ups. He skipped rope, losing count, revelling in the slap of the rope as it hit the floor with each rotation. Some time midway through his workout it began to snow.
IT SNOWED FOR WEEKS, and in that time, Bo spent more and more time inside with his sister, and his mother, and increasingly Max. Bo felt caged. He thought of running away with Orange, but couldn’t figure out where to, and how they’d manage.
When the clerk from the photo shop called on a Saturday, and said, “Your glossies are in,” with a tone that suggested he ought to be ashamed, he was. He hung up and pulled the tin out from behind the ketchup bottle, and counted what was left. A hundred dollars. Almost nothing. He took three twenties anyway, checked that Orange was sleeping, and headed to Bloor Street.
“These are unusual,” the clerk said.
Bo handed her the crumpled bills.
“Very very odd.”
Bo found himself nodding as he waited for the clerk to hand him the photographs. And when she did, Bo said, “Thank you,” and turned and ran.
At home, he went in his room and pulled the images out. So many shots of Orange. He felt sick looking at them. He began to shove them under his mattress with his journal when he heard the sound of the front door shutting.
“What’s that you got there?” Max already stood in the doorway of his room. He smiled like he knew everything there was to know about everything. He winked and cocked his chin. “You’ve been taking pictures.”
Bo looked at an image of Orange still in his hand. She was standing, crooked, with her diaper slipping. Her belly bulged even though she was so skinny. She held her arms out toward the camera. Her face was so open. A picture like this must be worth something to Max.
“I’ll give it to you if you leave us alone,” Bo said, half knowing that Max would never now settle for a mere photograph. He knew this for sure when Max’s cackle turned to a full-body laugh.
“You crack me up, kid,” said Max. He shook his head. And then he stepped into the room and sat beside Bo on the bed. “Let me see the rest,” he said, and reached into Bo’s hidden cache.
“No.” It came out as a squeak.
“Sure,” said Max. “Why not?” He pulled the photos out and looked at them one after another.
They were blurred with Orange’s movement, the energy of her fear. Bo watched Max as Max looked at them. His face stayed so still, but every so often he glanced at Bo as if to say, You took these?
“Give them back,” said Bo, reaching for them. But Max didn’t. Instead he tapped them straight on his lap and tucked them back under Bo’s bed.
“I’m leaving,” Max said. “I have work to do down south in the U.S., so you won’t see me for a while. Don’t jump for joy, kid.” He flicked the corner of the one happy shot of Orange. “How much?” he said.
“Six hundred.”
“Every man has his price,” said Max. He stood and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He said, “Don’t tell your mum where you got this,” and pulled ten hundred-dollar bills from the wallet, one by one, and handed the money to Bo.
“This is more.”
“Yeah,” said Max. “It is.” Then he tugged the edge of the glossy and turned to go. “Your mother owes two months’ rent,” he said. “I tried to give it to her but she won’t take it. Just so you know.”
Bo looked down at the money clutched in his hand. He would simply put it in the tin and not say a word to his mother. He nodded to Max.
“And kid?” Max said, gesturing to Bo’s bed. “Don’t let Thao see them. Get rid of those despicable things, will you?”
All Bo could do was frown. Leave, he thought. Hurry. Go away. There would be peace. Everything would go back to normal.