Ana had arrived to him, at age twenty-six, exhausted by the needs of those who claimed to love her. She no longer wanted to be tired out by the folly of others. James knew how her father had vanished literally, and her mother vanished nightly into the drink. He knew her teenage days stopped at 10 p.m., when she shut her door and put on headphones to drown out the rattle and rant of her mother on the telephone or cackling in the living room with a new friend. And in the morning, when the sunlight hit the African violets, Ana felt optimistic again and was eager to bring her mother back to the world, carrying her a tray of Tylenol and tea.
Later, Ana tended to boys who loved her only part of the time, too. She might stitch a torn sleeve, or show up on the doorstep with the right album, but even a fuck in some vacationing parents’ bedroom was never enough to keep the full attention of these sleepy-eyed lovers. They left.
But James would be present. James wouldn’t take advantage. James promised to fill this vacant building from which all the people who had promised to love Ana had fled. He knew that she couldn’t sustain any more betrayal. And three weeks after he had sex in the bar bathroom, he awoke to Ana’s eyes on him. They were her real eyes at last. “Never again,” she said, and James held her so tight he left a faint yellow bruise on the back of her left shoulder.
This was their covenant, then. It seemed to James that there were things he needed to keep from her, and that she had asked him to do so, in fact. And now, driving to his parents’ house, he tried to convince himself that not telling her about his weakness and terrible mistakes was a gesture akin to love. He told himself this while attempting to ignore the rotten stench floating up from his guts.
“Where doggy?” asked Finn.
“He didn’t come with us, Finny,” said James. Ana opened her eyes, saw a mall before her, closed them again, her headache rotating.
And then it began. Finn started to snarl, and the snarl begat a kind of bark that was actually a cry, a sob, a wracking of body, a flailing of legs, small, strong feet pounding into James’s back as he drove.
“Dogggyyyyy!” he wailed through a wall of sobs and screams.
“Finn, don’t kick me! I’m driving!”
A huge truck went by James’s window, too fast, too close. He swerved, and bodies thrust forward and back.
“James!” said Ana, clutching her side.
“Doggyyyy! Want him! Want him! Want him!”
Ana’s stomach bounced up and down. She put one hand over her belly, one on the top of her head, holding both in place.
“Doggyyyy!”
“Make him stop,” whispered Ana.
“What?”
“Make him stop!”
“Doggyyyy!”
“What can I do?” shouted James.
“Just do your thing! Just do it!” Bile rose in her throat; she choked it back.
“Finny—just stop it. We’ll get the dog later,” shouted James.
Finn seemed to regard the words as a challenge, ramping up the volume, the kicking. James felt Finn’s snot and spit flying in droplets through the car.
James took the next exit, following the signs to Tim Horton’s.
“Are you coming?” he asked Ana from the backseat, unstrapping the flailing body. She nodded, trying to unlock the door.
“Drugstore,” she said, feeling her throat, parched and burning.
“Maybe you could fucking help me,” he said, but Ana didn’t hear him.
They split off from each other, then, Ana retreating to the relative calm of the small pharmacy in the strip mall. She bought a box of cold medicine, throat lozenges, a large bottle of water.
While she thumbed through a magazine, the pictures shifting and sliding in front of her eyes, James guided Finn into the handicapped stall at Tim Horton’s. There was no hook for Sarah’s diaper bag, a pink-and-blue-striped tote with a small, tasteful label on the pocket: YUMMY MUMMY. James placed it far from the sticky floor surrounding the toilet.
Finn was calmer. He stood, puffy and shellacked with snot, pulling at the toilet paper roll, pointing at random, vaguely disgusting objects that James had never noticed existed in a bathroom stall. “What’s that?”
“A wad of toilet paper someone stuffed in the lock.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s called graffiti.”
“What’s that?”
“It says: ‘Blow me.’ ”
“Ha!” Finn laughed.
Without a changing table, James was reduced to pulling off Finn’s Pull-Up as he stood, which meant shoes had to come off, which in turn meant he was standing in his stocking feet in the sticky circle. James located the wipes, which had been left open, and had become dry and useless.
“Wait here.” At the sink, James tried to dampen a wipe with water. It began to disintegrate in his hand, forming small globules.
A man entered the bathroom and nodded, began peeing in the urinal.
“What’s that?” cried Finn from the bathroom at the sound of the urine rushing with the force of a shaken beer can being dumped down a sink.
“It’s someone …” James hesitated. The man’s girth had not escaped him, nor the fact that he was wearing a sleeveless jean jacket with no shirt underneath. The word “peeing,” which sat on the edge of James’s tongue, didn’t seem adequate to the task, suddenly.
“Going”—he considered the word—“urinating.”
“Tinkle?” shouted Finn, who had flung open the door of the stall and stood naked below the waist, his pants around his ankles, Spider-Man socks pulled up around his calves. He glanced at the man. “Giant go tinkle?”
“Yes,” said James, entering the stall quickly and shutting the door. He wiped the boy with a paper towel.
“Do you want to try to pee in the toilet? We should get moving on this issue.”
Finn looked alarmed.
“Toilet?”
“Don’t the big kids at daycare use the potty? Big kids go peepee in the toilet?”
James was speaking in a tiny voice, trying not to be heard by the giant, who washed his hands at the sink, though James realized the giant could easily peer over the stall if he were so inclined.
James whispered again: “Let’s go pee in the toilet. Maybe later we can buy you some underwear.”
“Spider-Man underwear?” Finn had seen this in the mall with James only a few days before. James marveled at his powers of recollection.
“Sure, sure,” said James. “Want to pee in the toilet? You can sit.”
Finn looked at the toilet, frowning. He shook his head.
“Another time,” said James, strapping the Velcro on Finn’s sneakers that matched his own.
The urinator left the bathroom, and James hoisted Finn to the sink to wash his hands. James took small pleasure in depositing the wet diaper in the garbage and wiping Finn’s face clean with a paper towel. He exited like a victor, pink diaper bag slung over his shoulder, the giant glancing his way with a manly nod as they left the restaurant.
When he got to the car, Ana was in the front seat, staring at the row of garbage and recycling cans in front of the car.
“Thanks for your help back there,” said James, strapping Finn into place.
Ana said nothing.
“I can’t do everything,” he said, backing out of the space quickly.
Ana reached down between her legs and into her purse. The dog in her hand was small, brown, not unlike the one James had bought Finn. She turned and held it out for Finn, who grabbed it, as if starving.