Extraordinary by David Gilmour Page B

when Kyle and an American kid went into a cantina and drank a half-dozen rounds of mescal. Around midnight, they dropped in on a girl they’d met that morning. But the girl’s father answered the door and, seeing that they were drunk, sent them packing. Here the story gets fuzzy. Kyle always claimed his friend did it, his friend said Kyle did it, but somebody threw a brick through the girl’s window. The police were called. They picked up the two boys in a cantina down the street. At four o’clock in the morning, there was a knock on my door. There was Kyle. They’d roughed him up a bit. He had a black eye and a loose front tooth. Luckily, he had mentioned Freddie Steigman’s name.
    â€œThe next day, I made my decision, and I’ve been living with the consequences of it since then. I packed up his little suitcase and put him on a bus back to the airport. I’ve often thought about it—maybe I should have kept him. But I was too vulnerable, too weak to deal with a six-foot-tall teenager crashing around town and getting in trouble and maybe, just maybe, getting us all thrown out of the country. Was I a coward? Was I using the wheelchair as an excuse to not deal with a troubled—and more to the point, trouble
some
—teenager? Did I abandon my son? Was I playing the ostrich when I sent him back to his father? Am I responsible for what happened afterwards?”
    â€œProbably not,” I said.
    â€œIt doesn’t change anything anyway. Things went the way they went.”
    â€œAnd how was that?”
    â€œYou know the answer to that,” she said flatly.
    â€œYes, but how did they get there?”
    â€œKyle got a job in Toronto looking after senior citizens in a Jewish retirement home. He’d take them out for walks, wheel them around the block in their wheelchairs, talk to them on the bench in front of the home and read their granddaughters’ letters aloud to them.
    â€œHe was a prince, everyone loved him—until they discovered he was stealing their medication. Librium, Valium, Seconal, Mandrax, Dilaudid, even cough medicine—anything he could find. They were seniors. Have you ever seen the medicine cabinet of a senior?”
    â€œYes, I have, in fact.”
    â€œThen you know. The pickings are good.
    â€œThe police were called in. They installed a hidden camera in the bathroom of one of the most frequently hit rooms, and waited. Sure enough, while Mrs. Cornblum was downstairs enjoying Shabbat dinner with her son and her grandchildren, Kyle was systematically going through the prescription bottles in her medicine cabinet. All on film. The police turned up at his house with a search warrant. They found jewellery, a necklace, even a silver pocket watch, very old and valuable, which had been stolen that same morning. A few pills, but not many. Kyle had taken them or sold them.
    â€œThe judge was a softie and handed down a conditional discharge. Kyle walked out of the courthouse with a slap on the wrist. Bruce threw him out. He flopped here and there, always with these losers. Kyle had a knack for attracting dumb-guy groupies. A string of arrests followed: shoplifting, breaking into cars, selling phony prescription pads, phone scams. One time he even got caught for stealing purses from cars in a cemetery parking lot while their occupants were paying graveside respects.”
    â€œA perfect little scumball.”
    Sally frowned; it hurt her to hear that. You can say bad things about your own child, but you don’t want someone else doing it.
    â€œSally, I apologize. I was just getting into the spirit of things.”
    She went on. “He landed in the hospital a few times. A furniture mover caught him breaking into his rig, this big-bellied, thick-armed ape who made his living driving to Mississippi and back on three hundred cigarettes and a handful of Dexedrine. Wrong guy to rob. Wrong guy to get
caught
robbing. He found Kyle sitting behind