Free Roost by Ali Bryan

father.
    He says, “Of course not.”
    A minute later Wesley says, “This is yucky,” and spits his juice on the coffee table.
    His cousins enjoy this type of behaviour because it is foreign to them. Particularly Hannah who is six going on twelve.
    I tell him to clean it up. Argue that there is nothing wrong with the juice, though upon closer observation notice it’s cloudy. I take it to the kitchen.
    “Did you notice anything funny about the juice?” I say to my father, holding the cup up to the light.
    “I just mixed in a little apple juice,” he explains, putting a handful of cheese in his mouth. “There was only a bit left.”
    “But we don’t mix juice.”
    “I just didn’t want to see it go to waste.”
    I say nothing but try to determine why he assumed the apple juice would go to waste. Does he mix the juice at Dan’s house? Is their juice also at risk of going to waste? Are all juices at risk of going to waste? I chop a tomato, count to ten the way my mother would, and stir the meat.
    “We don’t mix juice,” I say again.
    “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “You don’t have to apologize.”
    I count to ten, in Mandarin this time, and I think of Alphonse Jr. and how peaceful he looked dead.
    “Say, what did you do with the roosters?” he asks, pointing at the border. “Your mother loved those darn things. Especially those ones.” He gestures to one of the remaining mug shot roosters. “Did you know that’s the reason she put the border up in the living room?”
    “No, Dad. I did not know that.” I set the table, and then I slip out the back door for fresh air.
    Later that night, Allison-Jean pushes out a girl in sixteen minutes.

19
    I take the next day off work
. Dad comes back to babysit all the kids when I go to the hospital. After arriving and realizing I’m empty-handed, I duck into the gift shop. The selection is limited to overpriced stuffed animals, Willow Tree statues, and Glosette raisins.
    The man behind the cash says, “Can I help you?” He wears a name tag and a blue pin with volunteer typed in bold letters.
    “Just looking for a gift,” I reply, stopping at a rack of bibs that say Spit Happens.
    “Boy or a girl?”
    “Girl.”
    The bibs don’t amuse me. They amuse middle-aged women with tight perms and turtlenecks.
    “How about music?”
    He points to a collection of CD s by a Pepsi machine.
    I glance over the display and pick one featuring Celtic lullabies, then go back and choose a Spit Happens bib because it will likely also appeal to piano teachers like Allison-Jean.
    “Will that be everything?” the volunteer asks.
    “That’s it.”
    He rings the stuff in and jams the items into a tiny bag. I stop and pick up a coffee at a Tim Horton’s kiosk before heading up to the fifth floor. The elevator is crowded and smells like fish. People around me sniff. Then the elevator dings and opens a few feet below the fifth floor.
    “Well that doesn’t happen every day!” says a man wearing a Proud Grandpa T -shirt.
    A doctor opens the compartment containing the emergency phone and everyone glances in, expecting to see an octopus or something, but there is nothing in there, except the phone, which is covered in tape and not working. He sighs and presses the emergency button eleven times. I know it’s eleven because I count and it makes me wonder if he has inside information that indicates the button has to be pressed specifically eleven times so that we all warp to level six and start clubbing turtles.
    The elevator shakes a bit and seems to lose power.
    “We’re going to have to climb out,” a nurse says. She finishes eating a tea biscuit then moves to the front of the pack.
    “Some help?” she requests.
    The proud grandpa hikes up his pants and goes down on one knee. The nurse promptly steps on and it and hoists herself up. Then she says, “Next,” and a woman takes off her drippy snow boots and, also with the help of the grandpa’s knee, and the nurse’s