Free The Best Thing for You by Annabel Lyon Page A

what?” He isn’t looking at me now.
    “Borneo, Borneo, Borneo,” Jupiter says.
    May takes a half-spoonful of each curry, setting them at equidistant points on her plate so they won’t touch or mingle. “I bet they have that on the Internet.”
    “Don’t encourage him,” I say, and he scowls at me. This is the other Ty, the changeling.
    “Ask me some trig,” Jupiter says.
    For a while we eat, and I’m distressed because May and Jupiter are eating little, slowly. When May asks Ty what his favourite subject is at school he rolls his eyes. “Tyler,” I say sharply.
    “I’m not currently enjoying school, Mrs. Chan,” he says. Liam puts down his knife and fork. “I guess it’s the curriculum.” May and I start to laugh, we shouldn’t but it’s not a choice. Jupiter, lenses of his glasses flashing, is grinning at his red shirt. Gingerly, ignoring us, Ty fingers his bruised cheek. I guess he was trying to be rude, not funny, and we let him down.
    “You hear they made an arrest in that beating case? That retarded man?” Liam says.
    I start taking plates.
    “May I be excused?” Ty asks. Liam says no.
    “I heard it was a teenager,” Jupiter says. “Maybe a couple of teenagers?”
    “They’ve only charged one so far.”
    “Dad,” Ty says.
    Liam’s leaning back, hands in his lap. He’s left some odds and ends on his plate – gravy-dirty rice, a bit of skin, chickpeas – like he’s in a restaurant. “Speaking of hate crimes.”
    “It’s a weird phenomenon, these violent kids,” Jupiter says, nodding. “Predatory. It’s not like, you play dirty on the basketball court, I call you on it, we throw a couple of punches.” He winks at Ty. “But teenagers going after a disabled man in a deserted parking lot, it’s like they think they’re hunting moose or something.”
    “Like sport,” May says. “Where are their parents?”
    “Please Daddy may I be excused from the table?” Ty says.
    “So what do you think, Kate?” Jupiter winks at Liam this time. “What motivates these kids?”
    “Tea, coffee?” I count heads.
    “Kate,” Liam says.
    “We weren’t there,” I say. “There may have been reasons. We don’t know how it happened, what he did or what they did. But I agree with May. If the parents are good people, the children will be good people. Good kids will not get involved in things like that, and I believe that. A kid who’s been good all his life does not suddenly turn on a man with Down syndrome just because there’s an opportunity. You look at the kid who did this, you look at all the circumstances of his life, and you’ll find a straight path back from this act to other acts, to the upbringing, to the parents. I’m talking about patterns of behaviour, established predictable patterns. A thing like that doesn’t come out of a vacuum.”
    Jupiter’s waving his hand even as I’m talking. “Chicken and egg, fate!” he says, getting ready to argue.
    “Down syndrome,” May repeats. “Was that on the news?”
    “Daddy, please,” Ty says.
    “Come here,” I say. He comes over to where I’m scraping bits into the garbage disposal. “Are you really doing homework up there?” He shrugs. Liam is pouring the rest of the wine, saying something to May, who’s smiling again. I lower my voice: “Borneo?”
    “I was making conversation.”
    I walk him to the foot of the stairs, my arm on his shoulders. “Quit pissing him off.”
    He touches his face again. “He’s pissing
me
off.” But sick, not insolent, is how he looks.
    “I’ll tell you something,” I say. “When you came home from school looking like that? He started crying. After you went to bed.”
    Ty doesn’t say anything.
    “He loves you so much,” I say.
    “Ty,” Liam calls. Startled, he flinches.
    The kitchen smells of coffee now, that bracing, roast smell, and I see Liam has ferreted a bottle of liqueur from the cupboard under the food processor where we keep the kirsch and other undrinkables we seem