We call it Frink, and Frink it has been since he was able to demand “drink.” Frink it remains, though Frink is specific in a way only his family can know: a carbonated drink from McDonalds as dispensed by an accessible self-serve fountain (a pox on behind-the-counter tyrannical control!). Though cup sizes have escalated over the years, Frink’s always come as an earned reward. Frink as the meaning of life; Frink as the purest joy; Frink as the promise at the end of a long day pining for Frink; Frink if, and only if, one is Good. Frink because he is Good. Consider Frink to be your sex, your drug, your rash internet purchase, but also your wholesome chaste handhold with a first date at a carnival, your sleep stuffy, your comfortable around-the-house lived-in sweater. Frink for a blissful, refill-laden hour. Then the return to normal frinkless life.  

* 

At the Toronto Zoo, a spooked middle-aged woman walks alongside a much younger, frowning woman, their age difference thirty years, at least. Woman the Younger seems in a hurry; Older moves in a way I know: slow, subtly uncoordinated, arms slightly flexed. Her clothes (pastel polyester pants, an unflattering white blouse) fit poorly. Her thick, slightly sticky hair is shaped like a hard hat. Ungroomed, not unsightly or unkempt. In contrast, Younger dresses stylishly, in an actual dress – Van Goghian, blue with yellow erupting sunflowers. After a few more seconds of observation, I realize that these two probably unrelated people – they are different races, there is no affection – have been brought together in a care relationship. Older, who’s intellectually disabled in some way, is being led by hand-pull, not hand-hold. Ah. Like my son, she can’t move any faster, it seems. She’s not resisting, she just lacks a faster gear. Younger the Frustrated wants to get somewhere. Always, an abled somewhere to hurry to on the way to another Important Place. Older could be fearful about anything, I suppose. To be fair, Younger could want to get elsewhere for any reason, perhaps a reasonable one. In my gut, though, I interpret this scene as a disabled person taken out on an excursion by a personal support worker, easy gig for them. The relationship is both paid and overtly uncaring. It’s happened before – I sense Older accepts the lack of concern as the cost of coming to the zoo. I ask you: when you were a child, unable to arrange a trip to McDonalds, the movie theatre, or the zoo on your own, wasn’t it enough to just go? When I turn my head to see if anyone else notices the pair, I witness everyone else involved in their own lives, couples and families, my own son and daughter fighting over who saw the first polar bear. Kaz says “Me!” Aria says, “No, me!” I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t love them. I wouldn’t take them if I didn’t love them. I am privileged to love them. They are privileged to be loved. Is that right? That shouldn’t be right. 

* 

Kaz is late for the special van that couriers him and a few other disabled children to Galt Collegiate. By this point in our lives together, my self-appointed job title is “Leaving Specialist.” From the time he entered kindergarten until now, a strong organizational structure conveyors, coerces, and coaxes Kaz to leave the house in the morning. First, music from downstairs. Then, I climb the stairwell and call to him from his doorway. (Lately, he picks his own clothes.) Then, breakfast after he removes his Invisalign. Breakfast’s intricate movements: for the past few days, he’s attempted to choose an item or two from the fridge. Item choice influences pacing because peanut butter takes minutes to spread on crackers, an apple thirty seconds to slice. Breakfast is carefully arranged – he gets a halfway warning, a 5-minute warning, and then an absolute final warning to leave the table and dress for outside. Ding, louder ding, loudest ding. Waiting by the door, of course, are his bookbag (packed with a lunch made by his mother that he won’t eat, but which we must pack else the school will call us to bring one he also won’t eat), coat, and boots. I have streamlined everything, economized all. Milk in the fridge stands ready to pour, his go-to foods always accounted for and facing frontward, otherwise the routine will be disturbed, Kaz will angrify, and his chances of catching the bus reduce. If we fall behind, there is but one absolute truth and certainty: he will not, cannot accelerate. The factory installed a single low gear. If we fall behind, no admonishment can quicken him. This deep understanding of intellectually disabled (ID) physics enables me to discern the nature of care relationships in the wild. When I encounter ID people in public, I watch their carers. Are the carers in a hurry, at odds with their charges, or in synch? My son may never know this until the day I am gone, but the fact that much has been cleared away for him, that preparation and expertise smooth his progress, is a mark of love through action. Love is also that I understand he cannot be made to go faster, that slowness is his nature. If I were to shout and scare him as I was myself so often scared as a child, then he would startle, yet not move faster and quicker. And when I see him startle, I see myself, and I never want to see myself that way again, too scared to even move. Too heavy to move. 

* 

At the Toronto Zoo, I order an iced lemonade for Kaz and a croissant for my daughter Aria. Kaz savours the liquid, nursing it for over an hour; my daughter gobbles the croissant. Next to the entrance to Africa Savanna, Kaz sets his lemonade down on a concrete railing and tries to locate the biggest lion, but they hide from the sun, undetectable. When he turns back to his lemonade, yellowjackets swarm the rim. He looks up to me, asks me to get them away. Though I’m not scared of being stung, I know that stinging will happen with so many wasps crawling on the top, several already past the straw aperture soon to reach the sugar water. Plus, he shouldn’t drink the thing now that the wasps are in there. Plus, I want to teach him to respect danger. So I say “Let’s leave the juice for them. They’re yellow. It’s yellow. Yellow things go together.” But he does not accept my silly reasoning and begins to rage, screaming about his Frink, how it’s his, how he should still have it, noowwwwwwwww. The meltdown continues for another thirty minutes. The lions refuse movement, too.  

* 

Two women sit across a coffee shop table from a middle-aged man. He smiles oddly, askance from them both. Only one woman speaks to him, often in a sing-song voice about his “treat.” Every few minutes, she asks, “Do you want your treat?” Each time, he nods in return, says, “frozey lemonade” while continuing to smile. The one that doesn’t speak to him continues to not speak to him. In a minute, the one that talks to him leaves the table, soon returning with a yellow semisolid liquid in a large plastic cup that she places in front of him. The one who doesn’t speak to the man mentions her previous night spent with a boyfriend and how much of an asshole he is. Apparently, he’s handsy and cheap. The one who singsongs to the man responds with a generic sympathy no more authentic than her singsong interactions with the man. Now it’s her turn to talk, and she describes an aggressive client, pausing only to coo to the man who smiles oddly, who is not aggressive, no no, he is good, good. She talks to him like a dog. Then she complains about another client who soils himself and needs constant watching, otherwise he’ll run away. The one who doesn’t talk to the man mentions how much she hates her ex-boyfriend, who always walked around the house naked. Though she didn’t exactly hate how good he was in bed. The singsong woman watches the liquid level in the smiling man’s cup, as I do: the meniscus vibrates slightly as trucks rumble by the drive-through window. How often does the group home send someone to take him here? How often does he get his treat? Is treating the only activity he does outside the home? Is there anyone to love him?  

* 

A detail only a parent of a child with intellectual disability could understand: Henry Lee Lucas, a serial killer who died in custody in Texas, confessed to many dozens of murders he didn’t commit because his parental figure, thin Jim Boutwell, a paternalistic Texas Ranger (white Stetson, unfiltered Lucky Strikes, cowboy boots, handcuff tie clip) allowed him special privileges. According to records, Lucas had an IQ of 85, yet in watching him, I see my son’s same slowness, ID speed. In some respects, an IQ of 85 is a world away from 70. With 85, one can do well enough to get a driver’s license, work trades; at 70, my son’s IQ, the likelihood of passing the driver’s test is miniscule and employment is largely subsidized by the state through agencies. Maybe it’s the way Lucas holds a milkshake, as if it doesn’t matter where he is, what will happen to him. What matters for Lucas is that, right at that moment, he’s got a milkshake in his hand.  Footage exists of Lucas ranging freely within Boutwell’s jail, sucking on a strawberry milkshake. Henry Lee Lucas, a Frink for every murder confession that clears a capital case. 

* 

From the time he could walk, Kaz helped me take out the garbage. Once a week, we used to drag the blue, grey, and green containers streetside. Early on, he play-helped, but even when he contributed nothing except trouble, running underfoot, chucking Frink containers out of the bins, overturning the bins, and shoving bins onto the street, I considered this activity his ‘job’ and he would be rewarded with apple juice after we finished. As he became older, repetitively shown what to do week after week, year after year, and given so much juice, he eventually became able to perform the task himself. Once he completes a cycle (garbage out in the morning, bins back in the evening) correctly, without cueing, then the reward comes: a trip to the McDonalds on Main. Frink, from the fountain, classic mix: two-thirds Nestea, one-third red Fruitopia. The visit has its own ritual: we try to sit in the same place in the restaurant, across from the fish tank. We locate the sucker fish who hides in the hollow tree. We look for anyone else disabled. I don’t say what I often wonder: who will take him to McDonalds after I am dead? I know the answer already. Either no one, or people who don’t care about him. After a refill, we leave. 

* 

At Diwa in Guelph, a waitress places curry rice on the table. I’m having lunch with a physician mentor, a middle-aged woman with high risk tolerance for unfamiliar medical situations. A natural leader, warm and inviting – all things I am not. She knows about Kaz, has long known. For the first time, she discloses why, perhaps, I like her so much. “I have an autistic person in my family,” she says. “I had to take care of him a bit when I was an adolescent. We used to play bouncy ball, he’d do that for hours, chuck the ball in the house and then go find it. His mind just worked differently. Then one of my sons was born non-neurotypical and I played more bouncy ball. My life has seen lot of bouncy ball.” She says the words bouncy ball like she’s one of us, as if chanting them in singsong gives infectious pleasure, as if a roomful of children would suddenly become delighted repeating “bouncy ball” to one another, as if the words were the ball and we had to make the words bounce. As if the words were proper nouns, Bouncy Ball. No, as if the words were all caps, BOUNCY BALL. As if every phoneme were an exclamation mark. “One of the things I hear from my patients and friends who have disabled children is that they fear what will happen when they are gone. They tell me that’s the worst thing they have to think about.” Ahead of me sits my glass of water without ice, never ice – I despise the sensation of ice on my teeth. The meniscus rests, unperturbed. I could climb in and swim. 

* 

Another restaurant, this time Mandarin on King Street in Kitchener. Mando is Kaz’s favourite – he can see all the buffet items and pick exactly what he wants. Fries, onion rings, gravy, and California roll sushi, an undeviating selection. Everyone else at the table – Janet, Aria, me – drink water, Aria with double ice because I spoon out mine and make the exchange. Kaz gets iced tea. Across from us, a disabled pair of young men sit at a small rectangular table. One of the men is dressed as life-size Super Mario, red cap, suspenders, the whole deal. The other man has pronounced retrognathia and strabismus. I hear a speech impediment, a heavy lisp but also dysphonia to boot. As I eat my undeviating meal, chicken fried rice and chicken balls, I map the dynamic between them. Super Mario makes several trips to the buffet, his heaping plates scarfed down and replaced with more. He’s genial, always answering “Yes” to the other’s pleas to hang out after dinner, to hang out at other times. “Let’s hang out later” says the pulled-back jaw man after perhaps the two-dozenth “Yes” to the same question. It’s unclear if the man has been stood up or ghosted by Super Mario before, or whether his anxiety reflects being ignored by others. He pulls out his phone and shows Super Mario something. Retrognathia giggles, Super Mario guffaws. “Isn’t this fun?” Retrognathia asks for the tenth time, adding a new variant, “This is so fun, isn’t it?” As per the ritual, “Yes” comes as response. In time, the waiter comes by, asks “How are you going to pay?” in what I deem a not un-nice way, a not-mean way. A regular way. The normal way. Super Mario points wordlessly to Retrognathia, who volunteers that he will pay. I can tell that this was the deal. Retrognathia’s credit card doesn’t work on tap, so the waiter inserts it into the machine for him, but Retrognathia doesn’t know his passcode. Retrognathia calls someone on the phone, places it on speaker. Someone I assume is his mother patiently recites his code over and over again, a code for a card that is quite possibly hers. The code doesn’t work even when the waiter puts in the numbers. The waiter looks to Super Mario. “Can you pay?” he asks, but Super Mario smiles and says that he cannot. “Can your parents come and fix this?” he asks both of them. Have they been here before? Does he know they have parents? Realizing this interaction is attracting a lot of staring, the waiter commands the two men to stand up and move to the front of the restaurant where the manager will “work things out.” When I finish eating ten minutes later, I walk past the two men sitting at the front. Super Mario stares ahead happily. Retrognathia talks down into his phone, an image of an old woman looking back at him.  

* 

Excerpt from Shane Neilson’s Imaginary Last Will and Testament, as Written on a Brown McDonalds Napkin Using Red (Provided) Crayon 

For my son:  

* 

In the hopes that Kaz can be Frink-autonomous, Frink self-sufficient, beFrinkable, I send him walking up the kilometre-and-a-half incline to the McDonalds on Main Street. A quest for Frink. Money’s pre-loaded on a card, and we’ve practiced (and practiced and practised – after all, we come here every week) using the very accessible touchscreens that print out a ticket he can use to pay the cashier. Two hours later, he bangs on the front door, sweating, out of breath. “The homelesses!” he yells, checking behind himself as if he’s being chased. “They’re going to get me!” Kaz sometimes overcalls danger, paranoia skewing his interpretations. A bump in the night is a monster, except it’s the cat. A creak is a ghost, but this is an old stone house. A car that stops outside on the road is watching us until he sees it’s delivering an Amazon package. It takes about an hour to figure out what he’s saying. Reconstructing the story, it’s possible that a group of punks on bikes tried to take his money and beat him up. Based on his distress, I figure at least some variant of the story is true. “They chased me,” he said. “They said they were going to kill me.”  

* 

I sit in the usual place across from the McFishTank. Kaz stands at the counter. Though his order is just one large cup, he must wait until all the customers before him are served their food in sequence. Black suckerfish, check. Smaller zebrafish flutter by, their genius of being outrageously, autistically pink. Spliced jellyfish DNA is a thing of wonder. A text from Janet pings: Remember Aria dance tonight, dance appearing as a woman in platform shoes and red dress doing something ambiguously ballroomy. Ahead of me, a woman who had been steadily talking into her phone for the past ten minutes says, “Why are you recording me?” I figure she’s still talking into her phone, but soon realize she means me. She’s now staring at me. She adds, “I said, stop recording me, you terrorist, you CANADIAN terrorist!” I respond, “Hey lady, I don’t care about you, I’m checking my email.” She says, “Oh yeah, well, I’m recording YOU now, you TERRORIST!” and then lifts her camera, ostentatiously pushing a button. I turn my gaze from the phone back to the glowing fish, eerie in the water, tank mutants meant for the top layer, the lone slumbering bottom-feeder beneath. Kaz arrives with Frink while smiling the anticipatory pleasure of soonbliss, his two tinctures precisely drawn out to the measure of two-thirds and a third. I turn back to the obviously psychotic lady who’s recording me and use telepathy that she can probably hear. Put down your phone, or I will feed it to you. Message received. Angry-faced, twisting, she lurches up, revealing the soggy coat she was sitting on. A battered, overstuffed backpack holding a hundred things falls from the ledge behind, jostled by her movement. “Terrorist,” she spits out, then leaves, performing several feints and dodges before picking her door.  

* 

In this busy McDonalds, all we need is Frink, but there’s a press of people who wait at the counter for their orders. If not impatient, then the customers today are mad. The manager doesn’t register their complaints anymore. Understaffed, it’s dirty in the cooking area, as if they’ve stopped cleaning the floors and grills, all hands on food prep. Rather than try to sit near the aquarium, I stand next to Kaz, protecting him from the people, ensuring he can cut to the counter to get his cup when his number’s called. Ahead of us, a mother and her teenaged daughter glare at the counter like everyone else, waiting for their food. They’re forced apart by an overweight woman and a wiry man in a Chicago Bulls jersey, both bearing telltale signs of intellectual disability. On my quick read, it strikes me that the woman is the more cognitively able of the two, but the man is more physically able. Thin and quick, he pushes through the mother and daughter to get his food, crossing into their personal space in the process. He says, “I got it” loudly, with a lisp, making the mother and daughter grimace on their heels. When the couple leaves to find a table, I watch mother and daughter roll their eyes. Both make funny faces, and the daughter parodies a slight moan, as if she were nonverbal. I would be angry and admonish them for being mean, but instead I’m overcome. God, if my son could have what Bulls Jersey has. Kaz will experience the same mother-daughter routine a million more times from others in his life, but to get a drink with someone he loves, that he’s in a real relationship with? I’d give anything for that. I’d trade my life for that.