WE HAD recently moved to Virginia, to a fine two-story brick home with two fireplaces and a wrap-around porch, situated on nearly an acre of land.  The second fireplace was in my father’s and mother’s bedroom, and they kept it lit during the daylight hours and into the night, my father getting up at five-thirty each cold morning to first light the kitchen fireplace and then the fireplace upstairs so that my mother wouldn’t have to get out of bed into cold air.  And we had a warm kitchen, at least, where we sat down to French toast, fatback, and oatmeal, depending on what my father felt like making that day.  Those eating were my brother Frank, my sister Mathilde, and me.  There was a hot water problem. There was never enough time for us each to shower as thoroughly as we wanted while maintaining hot water for the rest, and so my brother and sister often raced through their breakfasts to get upstairs first, Frank and Mathilde having a substantial advantage over me as I was five years their junior, and a picky eater.  

     So on this particular morning I was dawdling through my oatmeal, popping errant bubbles, while my father talked on the phone.  I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was saying, just letting the rhythms of his voice fill the empty spaces in my subconscious.  But then he said something that sounded excited, and I started listening more intently.

     “Fifteen,” he said. Then he listened.  “So I heard you correctly.  And why are you giving me this stunning offer?”  Pause.  He was trying to sound dismissive, but I could hear the interest perking up the corners of each word.  “Who says I have the time?”  Pause.  “And what makes you so sure that I, among all the entries in your rolodex, can get there?”

     I took a bite of oatmeal and let it cool against the roof of my mouth, and swallowed.  I had no idea what the content of this conversation meant, but I knew my father, and I knew that something important, something that would have ramifications, was passing over the telephone lines.

     “I would expect that, in a situation such as this, the board would take bids,” he said, “and not just call people up to tell them about it.  You would publish that.  I suppose that might be what you’re doing.  And I am a believer.  But honestly, I think you’re pulling my leg.”  He looked over at me and saw how little progress I was making.  I could hear the water coming out of the shower upstairs, squealing with steam, and knew that, by the time my time came, it would be tepid at best.  Unless I went slow enough to give the water heater enough time to get back going again.  “Stuart,” he said, with his hand on the receiver, “would you try to make some progress through that oatmeal?  How are you going to get ready in time, sitting there staring off into space?”

     “Ok,” I said, and took another bite, watching him turn back to the phone on the wall and say, “You make an offer like that over the phone, you expect a person to know what to say?  I’ll tell you,” he said, “show me the equipment, bring it right here, and then we’ll talk.”

     My father put the phone on the receiver and turned to me.  “Ok,” he said, “What’s it going to take to get that oatmeal in your tummy and you upstairs getting ready?”

     I heard the water turn off upstairs.  My sister had already taken her shower, and now my brother had had his.  There was no excuse keeping me from the bracing cold water.  “I think I might like to eat more, but eating takes time, Dad,” I said.

     “Eating takes time when it’s interspersed with not eating,” he said.  “Can’t you daydream while shoveling that stuff in?” 

     I took a bite.  “You’re going to have to go faster than that,” he said.  He looked at his watch.  “You’ve got to be out that door in twenty minutes.”

     “I could,” I said, “not take a shower.  And that way I’d have plenty of time to, uh, shovel this stuff in.”

     “I don’t know about that,” he said.  “I don’t know about letting my youngest son be known as the stinky kid in school.  Would you like it if they called you Stinky?  They’d call you Stinky, and you might never know it.”

     “No,” I said, “I’d know it.  But I’m not stinky Dad.  Smell me.  I’ll shower at night,” I said, “from now on, I’ll shower at night, and that way the water will never be cold.”

     “The water’s cold, is it?” said my father.  “That’s a problem with the water heater.  We’ll need a bigger one.  How long have you been taking cold showers?”

     “It’s ok, I’ll just shower at night, and now I’ll have lots of time to sit here and eat my oatmeal,” I said. 

     My dad raised my arm and stuck his nose right in my pit.  “I guess you’re not too odorous today,” he said. 

     When I crossed into the schoolyard Michael emerged from behind a tree, took two steps towards me, and knocked my books out of my arm.

     “Wussy,” said Michael.  “Get a knapsack.”

     As I bent to pick up the books my glasses slipped down the bridge of my nose.

     “Four-eyes,” said Michael, “your four-eyes are falling all over the place.”

     Steve and Diego were standing behind Michael, laughing.  Steve wore the leather bomber jacket he more or less always wore, in all seasons, which was growing too small for him, as it had been purchased last year, and a dirty t-shirt.  Diego wore, as per usual, a leather football helmet.  Michael just wore regular clothes.  Everything about him was regular so as to forestall any possibility of a comeback.

     As I stood up with my books, Michael picked the glasses off my nose.  “Look at him now, he’s just a little mole,” said Michael.  I could see only the rough shapes of the other children standing about ten yards away on the schoolhouse steps. 

     “He’s an ugly mole,” said Diego.

     “What an ugly little mole,” said Michael.  “Without his glasses,” said Michael, “he’ll have to crawl back into his little hole, and then he’ll have to stop pretending to be a little boy.”

     “He’ll have to stop kissing ass,” said Steve.

     “That’s right, he’ll have to stop kissing assholes,” said Michael, and took the glasses in both hands.  They were tortoise shell standard round glasses, nothing frilly about them, lots of distinguished men wore them, my father said, including the president, and they presented to no cause for shame; in fact, I had grown rather fond of them, so it was with foreboding and regret that I watched Michael prepare to break them in two, and with deep relief and gratitude that I watched Miss Stansworth pinch Michael’s ear, pull it hard, and simultaneously grab the glasses from Michael’s hands.

     “Michael Orval Cafferty, what in God’s green earth do you think you’re doing here?” she said.  “You’ll be after school for the rest of the semester.”

     Steve and Diego looked at each other and walked away as nonchalantly as possible.  Miss Stansworth gave me back my glasses, and I put them on to watch her pull Michael by the ear all the way up the steps and into the building.

     I nodded to the other students who were just standing there watching me, wondering who had gone inside to get Miss Stansworth.  It could have been anyone, Freddie here who was picking his nose with his stocking cap almost covering both eyes, or Lawrence who gave me a thumbs up, stretching a smile full of braces.  Whoever it was, I owed that person a debt of gratitude.  For when we went outside for morning break an hour and a half later, Michael stayed inside, and on my way home that day, Michael was, once again, inside with Miss Stansworth, writing self-admonishments on the blackboard or reading aloud from the Manual on Interpersonal Relations, or doing something else which he would find equally unpleasant.  But when I asked Freddie and Lawrence whether they had themselves gone or seen anybody go inside to get Miss Stansworth, they said they hadn’t done so and hadn’t seen it; they had only watched our Fourth-Grade teacher rush down the steps, her arms raised.

     “It was probably one of the girls,” said Freddie, as we walked with our books home for the afternoon.  The sun was already low towards the horizon; there were tumbling birds above it and a sharp wind stinging our noses.  But which girl was it?  They were a monolithic species in my mind, with only a few notable exceptions:  Suzie, who always got math questions right, leaning on her left foot, at the board with chalk in hand, an air of casual confidence, and Ellie, who towered above the rest of the class and tended to dominate the basketball and volleyball courts.

     “I’d like to thank her,” I said.

     “You can thank them all I guess,” said Freddie.  “Bring cupcakes to school or something.”

     “Then Michael would have one.”

     “Put a piece of crap in one of them,” said Freddie.  I seriously considered how I would convince my mother to put a piece of crap in the muffin tin.  It was not conceivable.

     “I’ll spit on one,” I said, and, as we had reached the intersection which called for me to turn left onto my elm lined street, and for Freddie to head straight, I told him goodbye. 

     There were bulldozers in my backyard and a big gaping hole where once I had played half-rubber.  One of the bulldozers was currently extracting dirt from the big gaping hole.  It dumped the dirt in a mound at the very back of the yard, where hedges stood.  My father was standing between the hole and the side of our house with a clipboard in his hand and his tongue resting against the corner of his mouth.  I watched him push his wireframes up the bridge of his nose.

     “Dad,” I said, “What the hell?”

     “What the hey Son.  Say what the hey.”

     “What the bleeping hey Dad!”

     “It might not seem that way son, but things are all going according to plan.”

     “Whose plan?  I play out here.”

     “You know, some say the Lord has a plan,” said my father.  “And I am sympathetic to that view.  Your mother thinks that I have a plan, and most of the time, I do.  This is part of my plan, and the plan of the Wausheegee Electric Company, and maybe the Lord’s plan too.  You’ll have to play in the front yard, or over at your friends’ houses, but I think you’ll see the higher purpose behind this whole affair soon enough, and come to peace with it.”

     Then a man got out of one of the bulldozers and walked over to my dad, and began to say something.  My dad turned to him, and I was left staring at the big gaping hole.  The smell of fresh dirt was everywhere.  I watched Gregory sunning himself by the giant mound of dirt in back, lying on his side, his tummy going up and down quite peacefully.  Perhaps everything was going in accordance with Gregory’s plans, as he liked to dig holes.  I was not in control of a great many important things which pertained to my life, and I had made peace with this fact, but this was one thing which I could not abide without a complete explanation.

     “Father!” I shouted, interrupting him and the man from the bulldozer, “Tell me what the hey is going on right now, goddamn it!”

     “Son there is no cause for language,” said my father.  “You do not curse at your father in any instance.  I ought to escort you inside right now and show you just what your language amounts to.  However, while I am not sure that you are owed it, I am inclined to give you an explanation.”  He turned to the man in the hard hat.  “Excuse us for a moment,” he said, and took me and walked me up to the very lip of the great gaping hole.  

     “We live,” said my father, “in an inverted world.  I want to let that sink in.  You have been taught that the world is an orb, that the heavens surround it, and beyond outer space, other planets, the sun, and beyond, other suns, which make up the stars, comprising a galaxy, and that, in fact, the universe is composed of 200 billion of these galaxies.  No, no, my son.  Not so.  The earth is concave, and while it is circular, it curves outward, not inward, coming together at all points.  This has been proven.  Everything you have come to believe as the entire universe is contained in the middle of the earth, the sun, the stars, and each of these planets, and the sun, are merely rotating around themselves there in the center, where we are always looking.”

     “And beneath the earth . . .” I said.

     “Is unknown territory!” said my dad.  “We do not know how far it goes or what is on the other side.  But we aim to find out,” he said, “oh yes, we aim to find out.”

     “Why now?” I asked him, “and why haven’t you ever told me about this before?”

     “An investor has agreed to hire me for this project,” said my father.  “And you weren’t ready.  You’re still not ready.  Typically, knowledge such as this is passed when a boy or girl reaches twelve, but you have got to learn to adapt early, my boy, because your family is playing an important role.”

     I had one more question.  “If the earth is inverted,” I said, “and the sun and moon are inside of the earth, why do the sun and moon appear to set?  Where do they go?”

     “Good question,” he said, “yes, questioning is good.  We have tested many hypotheses, and come to the conclusion that they are either hiding behind a giant hippopotamus, or that they in fact pass through the earth and into the nether region which we are set to explore.”

     With that, I went inside to find my mother.  She was standing in a house dress, smoking a cigarette, staring out the kitchen window.

     “Mom,” I said, “how much are we getting paid?”

     “A lot, honey,” she said.  The lights were dim, and everything that was going on outside took on a heightened tint.

     “Enough to buy a new house with a new backyard?” I asked.

     “Don’t you like this house?” she said.  She took a puff on her cigarette and exhaled.  “I know,” she said, “we’ve entered new territory.”

     “Why did they want to dig in somebody’s backyard, rather than in an empty lot somewhere?”

     “Your father said they needed someone with complete ownership over the hole.”

     “Is he going inside of it?”

     “In fact, they’ve asked him to do that, honey.”  She stuck the butt into the coffee cup, where it fizzled into the water, and immediately reached for a new cigarette. I looked, for the millionth time, at the long row of kitchen knives stuck to the magnetic strip right above the sink.  I imagined what would happen if magnetism suddenly stopped working. 

     “Mom,” I said, “can I bring cupcakes to school tomorrow?”

     “You mean you want me to make cupcakes tonight?” said my mom.  What one might recognize as a wry smile was teasing at the corner of her mouth.

     “Yes.”

     “What’s the occasion?”

     “I want to thank somebody.”

     “Well, why don’t you bring one item?”

     “I don’t know who it is.”

     “You know what I always tell you to do when there’s something you don’t know,” she said, lowering herself to meet me eye-to-eye, “that you’ve really got to find out?”  She waited for me to say it, but I didn’t say anything.  “Communicate,” she said.  

     “I will,” I said, “I will communicate, but I think it’s a good idea to take those cupcakes to school anyway, because maybe it was, like, more than one person I needed to thank.”

     “Tell you what,” she said.  “Mother’s had a long day and doesn’t want to make cupcakes right now.  Mother needs to adjust to the current situation, just like everybody else.  Why don’t you go down to Fair Oaks to the little donut shop next to the Mobil, and buy twenty-four donuts for your class tomorrow?  Here,” she said, and reached into her purse for money, “put it in your pocket.  Now vamoose!”

     They were coming out of the donut shop as I passed in, crullers and eclairs in hand.  I tried to pass in behind them before they had time to react but Diego put his hand on my shoulder and soon I was wedged into the doorframe.  

     “Stinky’s back!” said Michael.

     “It’s that stinky little mole from school,” said Steve.

     “I’m not stinky!” I said.  “Get off of me!”

     “You didn’t shower today though,” said Michael.  “I can tell from the way your hair’s plastered down.”

     “It’s just one day,” I said.  “I’m taking a shower tonight.  And anyway it’s none of your business, and get your hands off me!” I said.

     From inside the store I heard Mr. Abelson, standing behind the counter.  “We don’t want any trouble in here boys,” he said.

     “Don’t worry,” said Michael, “the trouble is leaving,” and I felt them yanking me out the door.

     “I bet he’s got money on him,” said Diego.

     “No shit,” said Steve, “he was only going inside a donut shop to buy donuts.  Do you think he was planning to dance for them?”

     “Help me!” I shouted.  “I don’t want to go outside!”

     “Damn it,” said Mr. Abelson, “I don’t want to go outside either.”

     I could see, though I was being forced horizontally out of the doorframe, Mr. Abelson throwing his apron down onto the counter and walking, the pomade shining in his hair, around the counter and out towards the door.  But then I was all the way horizontal, and when I looked forward, I just saw my feet and the door closing behind me.

     Then I saw the door open again, and the tops of two brunette heads coming outside, and heard, “Put him down asshole,” from a voice I believed to belong to Katy, a classmate.  She didn’t normally say too much, and I wasn’t certain it was her, but I thought so. 

     “Language,” said Michael.

     “Drop him,” said Katy.  I could now see the top of her head near my feet, with another girl, I thought she was Beth, behind her.

     “You seriously want me to drop him,” said Michael.  “Like, pow! On the sidewalk.”

     Mr. Abelson was towards the back, in the doorway, and the two girls were in front of him.  Mr. Abelson had a rolling pin in his two hands, as though he were to make the three ruffians into a pile of biscuits.  They were backing me up over the sidewalk and towards the street, where cars were passing.

     “You’re backing out into traffic,” said Mr. Abelson.  “Better stop.”

     They put me down.  There were, in fact, cars passing at my heels.  I steadied myself and watched Katy kick Michael hard in the crotch.  The other two boys raised their fists, but Mr. Abelson shouted, “Enough!” and they dropped them in time.

     “None of you are welcome in my shop!” shouted Mr. Abelson.

     “But we were just helping,” said the girl whose name I thought was Beth, “and he was just on his way in . . .”

     “Enough!” said Mr. Abelson.  “I do not want trouble.”

     “They’re the trouble,” said Katy.  “You can ask my father.”  

     “You’re all just kids making trouble,” said Mr. Abelson.  “And I, can’t you see, am an adult, with a business, who doesn’t want trouble.”

     “We were just leaving, anyway,” said Katy.  Diego was patting Michael on the back.  Michael was coughing something up.

     “I wanted to buy some donuts,” I said, and instinctively felt in my pockets for the money, but the two girls took me by the arms and we walked away from the scene, down the boulevard.  We walked with purpose, though not with undue hurry.  “I was supposed to bring them to school,” I said.

     “The donuts?” said Katy.

     “That’s right.”

     “What for?”

     “Well,” I said, “because someone went inside and got Miss Stansworth this morning,” I said. 

     “That was me,” said Katy.

     “That was us,” said Beth.

     “She came too,” said Katy.

     “Well I was going to make you cupcakes, but my mom wasn’t in a good headspace—” I said.

     “You mean your mom was going to make us cupcakes,” said Katy.

     “For the whole class,” I said.  “Because someone clearly—”

     “That was us,” they both said at the same time.  

     “We already had donuts,” said Beth.

     “We don’t need any,” said Katy.    

     We had reached the intersection of Maple and Nutley, and the light was flashing red.  “Better run for it,” said Beth, looking over her shoulder, and I looked over mine, and saw Michael, Diego, and Steve taking their initial steps from the curb.

     “No, I think not,” said Katy.  I looked back and saw Mr. Abelson pointing a finger at them, saw his mouth moving, and watched them slump just a little, Mr. Abelson now waiving the rolling pin in the air.  “We can wait,” she said, and, sure enough, I watched Michael spit on the ground and take the other boys by the shoulder and walk off in the other direction.

     “Let’s go to my house,” I said, “I have cookies.”

     “We don’t need cookies,” said Beth.     

     “We just ate donuts,” said Katy, “and soon there’s dinner.”  

     I considered.  There was nothing I could offer them.  The light changed and we looked at each other and crossed together, unsure, each of us, as to where we might next go.  Then I said, “My father is drilling a big hole in the back of our yard.  There are caterpillar vehicles and everything.  He’s digging a hole to—”

     “China,” said Beth.

     “No, it’s even better,” I said.  “To . . . the undiscovered.”

     “So there’s a big hole,” said Katy.

     “It’s not that big.  I mean, it’s pretty big, but it’s not nearly as big as it’s gonna get,” I said.

     “Then what happens,” said Beth.

     “I don’t know,” I said.  “I guess someone goes down there.  Or through there.  Properly equipped.”

     “What do you mean through there?” said Katy.

     “In the hole,” I said.  “You see, it’s not like you think.  It’s more like a donut . . . or more like, the inside of a ball, is more precisely it, with all the stars and sun and moon and stuff in the inside.  And were just on the very surface of the inside of the ball.”

     “Surface of the inside?” said Katy.

     “What’s on the outside?” said Beth.

     “That’s precisely what my father aims to find,” I said.  “So do you want to see it?”

     “I think we should go find my father,” said Katy, “and tell him to go swear out an arrest warrant.”

     “Can he do it?” I said

     “Will he do it?” said Katy.

     “No, and no,” said Beth.  “We can find him, but he won’t do anything.”     

     “You guys did it,” I said.  “I mean, I’m free.  Let’s go to my house and look at the hole, and I bet my mom has lemonade.”

     They both shrugged, which was good enough, and when I turned left toward Knoll, they followed me, and we went on down the sun dappled sidewalks, ruptured by roots and scattered with leaves, until, eventually, we came to the house with all the noise in back.

     An enormous cylindrical machine, taking up the majority of the yard, was sitting on the lawn, with its nose near the hole.  The nose was cone shaped, bright steel, with nasty little teeth going in a spiral and very sharp at the tip.  The cylinder sat on its side, on tiny wheels.  The main part of the object, excluding the bright silver nose, was painted mustard yellow, like the other equipment in the yard. There was one small window on the side facing me, like that on a commercial plane.

There was a lot more dirt now surrounding the hole.  It was piled way up above the fence between our yard and the Abernathy’s, near the wood in back, and even up against our house, covering almost the entirety of the back of the house, up and above the twins’ windows, cresting near the roof.  Mother’s tomato plans were completely encased in dirt.  There was little to be seen but dirt, machines, and the hole, which had widened considerably.  There was a ramp leading into it on the other side, near the Abernathy’s, into which the caterpillar machine could travel to dig more dirt.

My father was standing with his hands on his hips, clipboard at his side, just next to the pile of dirt nearly covering the house.  We approached him.  I introduced the two girls and he said yes, pleased to meet you, but you see I’m a little occupied with the digging of the hole.  “Run along inside and see if your mother can scare up some lemonade,” he said.  There was no way in through the back, so we went around to the front.  I opened the door.

In the Hall of the Mountain King was playing on the stereophonic system, and mother had it up very loud.  I had to shout.

“Mom I brought friends!” I said.

“I can’t hear you,” she mouthed.

“Why don’t you turn down the music?” I said, pointing at the system, and pointing down.

“I don’t know what you’re saying dear, but you should introduce your friends,” she said.  I pointed again to the system.  “Yes, I’m playing music, dear, to drown out the sounds of that awful machinery.”  

I went and turned the knob.  “These are my friends from school,” I said, “Katy and Beth.”

“Actually my name’s Mary,” said the one I had thought was Beth.

“Don’t you sometimes go by Beth?” I asked.

“No, that’s Beth,” she said.

“Well that’s rude of you,” said my mother.  “One ought to learn names.”

“He’s still new,” said Mary.

“Well this is Mary and Katy,” I said, “and Mary and Katy, this is my mom.  Mom, do we have lemonade?”

“You know we do my dear.  And you know where to find it.”

I started towards the refrigerator when I heard Frank and Mathilde bounding down the stairs.  “You turned it down!” said Frank, “thank God I can think!”

“Why didn’t you turn it down yourselves?” I asked, but as I did, mother walked to the stereophonic console and turned back up the volume.  

I thought she said, “because I’m your mother,” but I couldn’t be sure.  

Frank and Mathilde put their hands over their ears and shouted “Noooo!” which only added to the surfeit of sound.

“I think we should leave,” said Katy.  Or I assumed she said something like that.  But I was still feeling very gracious for the way they had come out of that donut shop and basically saved my life, and wanted to show it by insisting on socializing through a situation that was making everyone uncomfortable.  So I just went to the door and opened it and, quite naturally, as though atoms released from a contracting balloon, the other children, my two friends and two siblings, all followed.  Mathilde shut the door behind her.

Then I said, “Why don’t we all stick around and go over and look at the hole for awhile?”

“We weren’t going anywhere,” said Mathilde.

“Right, but I mean everyone,” I said.

“I suppose I could take another look,” said Katy.

“I didn’t quite look all the way down into it last time,” said Mary.  So we walked through the grass around the house to the back, where a huge dirt pile threatened to engulf my home, and my father stood, peering down into a hole.  He had his left hand on the large yellow drilling vehicle, and the other hand gripping his clipboard.

I don’t know why it took me so long to put two and two together, but it just occurred to me then that my father would be getting in the vehicle and going down into that hole, and that it would be soon.  Had he made provisions for us?  Would the Wausheegee Electric company take care of the twins, mother, and myself?  Who would light the fires, and who would fix breakfast?  Who would get a new water heater?  If anyone should be tunneling into a hole, it should be me, as it was my life that was in danger.  I felt suddenly a pulse of enlivening anger.  “Dad!” I shouted.  “What the fucking hell!”

The other children hushed behind me.  “How much are they paying you to go down into that hole?” I asked.

“Down, you see, is not the right term,” he said.  “But they’re paying me a lot.”

“Wouldn’t you rather stay on the surface of things?” I said.  “Or at least, on the inner surface of things?  Where mom is, and I am, and Frank and Mathilde are?  Don’t you think somebody ought to take care of us?”

“You’re going to have a whole new team of butlers,” he said, “and the Wausheegee company has supplied us with top notch walkie-talkies.”

“Why does the Wausheegee company need you?  Why can’t they have somebody else?”

“I’m just the man for the job.  There are other adventurers, there are other resourceful chaps.  But the Wausheegee company chose your father to go into the hole, and he took the offer.  But rest assured, he’s coming back one day.  Rest assured, he loves you very much.”

“Dad, we don’t want butlers!” said Frank.

“I’ll just be right outside,” said Dad.  “The whole time, I’ll just be in the backyard, you see, just a stone’s throw away.”

“Dad, there are bullies after me,” I said.  “These two girls had to save my ass.”

“Language,” he said.  

“Who’s going to tell me about language?” I asked.

“The butler assigned to that duty,” said my father.

“We want to go with you,” said Mathilde.

“No, honey, you really don’t want to go into a hole in the ground.”

“But you do?” she said.

“I’m a different kind of fellow,” he said.  “The Wausheegee company knows that about me.”

“Will a butler be assigned to beat up the bullies?” I asked.

“No, son, you’ve got to do that yourself.”

“But they’re twice my size!”

“And who hasn’t been eating his breakfast?”

“Mr. Hersevoort,” said Katy, “maybe you shouldn’t leave your family and go down in that hole, no matter how much they’re paying you.”

“It’s not just the money you see, it’s the adventure one has by having all the money.”

“They could be literally anywhere,” I said.  “I don’t have a solution.”

“You grow up is the solution,” my father said, “I mean, eventually.  Then people are limited insofar as what tactics they can use.  Until then, things might be hard.  But you’ll always have your mother, and you’ll always have me, on the walkie-talkie.”  He popped open the door to the giant drilling vehicle and turned around with an arm full of walkie-talkies. 

“You each get one of these,” he said, “Frank, Mathilde, Stuart, and one for mom.  Not any for you though,” he said to Katy and Amy. 

“Dad these are toys,” said Frank.  “These aren’t going to work once you go very far.”

“They may look like toys,” he said.  “They may very well be toylike.  But they will work for as long as we need them to, I will promise you that.”

“I need you to stay here and train me,” I said.  “I need to you to be my sensei.  I am in serious trouble all the time.”

“I think I need it to work longer than it’s going to work,” said Mathilde.  “This says the range is two-hundred yards.”

“And I’ll be in the same yard,” said Dad.  “Ok, don’t worry so much about the walkie-talkies.  I’ll be with you in spirit.”

“When are the butlers coming?” asked Mathilde.

“Tomorrow.  Now go get your mother.  It’s time.”

“But you haven’t even had dinner yet,” I said.  “We’re all supposed to have dinner.  That’s definitely supposed to happen.”

“Your mother is making me a sandwich,” he said.  “She’s going to bring it out in just a moment, when you go and get her.”

Nobody was moving, so I turned away from my father and walked around the dirt-mound-covered back of the house to the front, where there wasn’t any dirt.  From the front, this looked just like the house as I had seen it on most any other evening since we’d been here.

I opened the door.  “Mom,” I said, “Dad says he’s ready for his sandwich.”

She had turned the music down to a normal volume, and I watched her silhouette, all the way through the foyer and the dining room, very elegant and pretty.

“Honey, you’re crying,” she said.

“So are you,” I said.

“No,” she said, “there’s just something in my eye.”

Tyler Anderson had long ears like a donkey.  They had always been that way.  When he was born, the doctors immediately suggested corrective surgery, or at least a trimming, but Tyler’s parents were Christian Scientists, and it was out of the question.  When he was old enough, he could decide.  Once he’d had a chance to live for awhile with the ears God gave him, if medical science could really transplant a human ear in place of those long hairy monstrosities, he could go for it.  But for now he was a perfect baby as God had made him, with perfectly floppy grey donkey ears, and no knife would come to him.  Of course they circumcised him.

As a child he was teased, but not excessively.  The children at first were in awe of the ears—they weren’t sure whether the ears were things to be celebrated or scorned—and once they got used to them, they became too obviously a part of the classroom character to serve as the butt of a joke.  Much better to rag on something a kid had said or done than something they were all well aware of, every day, and which made their class unique from all other classes.  But this is not to say that comments were not uttered, often by a boy in dire social straits himself, looking for a step up.

He couldn’t fit them into a football helmet, but his father cut holes in his little league cap, and even bored holes in a batting helmet.  And the boy could hear.  He knew when you were coming from a mile away.  

It was this quality which saved him—and his compatriots—in high school, when they were laboring a keg into the flatbed truck of a neighborhood boy, having paid for it, yes, in cold hard cash, but having intimidated their way into its possession through display of a switch-blade knife.  Tyler could hear the sirens a mile off, and told them, “If we don’t get it in this time, we’d better leave it be,” but they heaved and got it in, and scrambled inside the cab and, the remainder, into the other cars parked outside the A-Mart, and were off, and Roger said, and Edgar said too, that it was a damned good thing that Tyler had told them what he’d heard, for it was there in the local paper the next morning, about a gang of youths brandishing a knife to get a keg, but no names were there, for no names were known, and no license plates, for the owner of the A-mart had not dared to venture outside.

So Tyler had helped them get away with a keg.  But he was not all brigand.  Tyler had the heart of a poet.  But he kept it secreted away inside his bedroom, letting it out only at around three or four o’clock in the morning, maintaining, to the outside world, a hard exterior to compensate for his stunning ears.  During this period in which he opened the poet from his jail cells—at around three or four o’clock in the morning—Tyler let the poet do what the poet wanted to do.  And that was write poetry.  He kept it in a notebook hidden under a pile of sweaters in his dresser.  And the poetry wasn’t about ears, or about the difficult state of being of those who are different.  It was primarily about women.  Here’s how one of them went:

In your eyes I long to be,

to swim within the blue green sea,

for when I look into your eyes

the sparkling emeralds hypnotize

and when I lose control and stare

all’s forgotten, nothing’s there

except these eyes of green and blue

which force me into loving you.

Rather pedestrian, true, it makes you feel a little embarrassed, and the rhythm is off—it could be missing a couple lines after “sea” and before “for”—and it could also be taken as horribly narcissistic, for Tyler’s eyes were both a little green and a little blue, but in this case there was a girl Tyler knew—they were sort of friends—who had sparkling blue green eyes; they were magnetic; and this poem was for her.     

But he wrote other poems for other girls, and some poems for nobody in particular; instead, for an audience that would never materialize, for a mysterious other who fed on poetry jotted down early in the morning, or late at night, who ate feelings and demanded sweet pure ones, ideally ones that never could be acted on in daylight.

He was sitting in the library with the girl for whom he wrote the poem, ostensibly studying, but listening, as he was always listening, to the static hum of the room, to the occasional footfalls, to the birds outside, to the raucous sounds of the hallways.  And to her.  Listening to her breathe, listening to her turn the page, listening, or so he thought, to her cogitate.

“Were there really Aryans?” she said.

“I dunno,” he said, “they’re people in a textbook.  They came down into India and killed everyone.”

“I know what it says,” she said.  “But didn’t Hitler talk about Aryans?”

“He was probably just making things up,” he said, “after reading about the Indian Aryans in a textbook.”

“They didn’t kill everyone,” she said.

“They enslaved them.  Set up a caste system.”

“And wrote beautiful poetry.”

“Or maybe it’s just all garbage in a textbook that we’ve got to memorize.”

“I don’t know how you stay motivated if you think like that.”

“They weren’t very nice to women.”

“Nobody was.  And what about you guys?  What’s the locker room like?  It seems like an unhealthy atmosphere.”

“How would you know?”

“I just mean it seems like there would be a lot of misogyny.  Is there a lot of misogyny?”

“Sometimes there’s a place for misogyny.” 

“You don’t really mean that.”

“I just mean that the sexes each have their space for camaraderie, and that’s a good thing.”

“Camaraderie at the sake of hatred for women?  You do know what misogyny means?”

“Maybe not hatred.  But for talking about women.”

“What do you talk about?”

“I dunno.  We don’t hate women.”

“Then it isn’t misogyny.  But the truth of your statement depends on what you say.”

The locker room before baseball practice was filled with buoyancy; there was no dread of what was to come, for baseball practice was fun; there was only an expectancy, and, in truth, while some talked of girls, Tyler mostly listened, and caught the fear, below it all, that one might not know, and might not ever, really know.

Two weeks later, their history class spent a period in the library to find books on the industrial revolution.  Tyler was happy to be in a place he shared with her, with which he had grown familiar, the burnt orange carpet, the rows of books, the globe, the card catalogue that nobody ever used.  Just now, the librarian was telling them how to use the card catalogue, because it was a very important research tool.  Tyler was listening to a classmate, Fred, try to dress him down.

“So what do you have for that, captain comeback?”

“When Fred speaks, no comeback required.”

“Weak,” said Fred, and two other boys laughed.  The girl, her name was Alice, was standing with a group of girls, listening intently to the librarian.

There were science fair projects shielding the back of the library from the rest of the room.  These were neat affairs, with block letters, and bright construction paper on which typed pages described the hypotheses, experiments, conclusions, and so on.  When the librarian finished, they were given time to explore.  And the girls who had been listening merged with the boys who had not, and exchanged spare words, hellos, little more, as they traipsed through the library.

“Don’t forget that this is the genesis for your entire study,” said the librarian, patting the card catalogue, but only two or three students approached it.  Tyler was walking with three other boys near the back of the room, where the science projects were, and he noticed that, across the room, Alice was walking with another girl directly opposite.  Tyler wasn’t paying attention to the two boys, and soon they departed for a remote aisle in which to insult each other’s mothers, and he turned behind the science projects, just to see what was back there, and soon saw Alice, standing there too.  He listened to the wind outside; it was battering the flag, and, a block over, it was blowing into the face of a man who was cutting his grass.  He and Alice were crouched behind the science fair projects.  He smiled, and she smiled, and he thought, now is the time to kiss her, now or never, so he put his hands on her neck and did so, quickly, afraid she’d pull away, so afraid that in fact he pulled away before it was more than a mere grazing of lips.  But it was that.  She folded his ears down his cheeks and said, “Well . . .”

“Hey Anderson,” came Fred from his narrow aisle.  “Who are you bumping uglies with?”

“Just Alice,” said the other boy.  “Mwah!”  Tyler took her hand and they walked out from behind the science fair projects, and she said, “I’d better go look at the card catalogue,” and then she was gone, and Tyler walked over to the two boys, one of whom was humping a library book.

He saw her that day after school, in the library, before practice, and he saw her each day afterwards and, soon, he saw her on weekends too, when Tyler’s father drove them to the movies or, if Tyler was lucky, Tyler’s sister drove them and stayed quiet, and always picked them up a little late.  Tyler no longer felt the need to write poetry at night, for his day was exciting and bright; when he slept, he slept thoroughly and peacefully, and when he woke, he was refreshed and happy to start his day.  He wondered how long this could last.

Alice’s parents wouldn’t let her have guests over at night on a weekday, and there was a movie she wanted him to watch, Days of Heaven, right away, so they both rode their bikes to the video rental after school, in the interim before after school activities began, and found two copies of it.  “What is this, a cowboy movie?” said Tyler, looking at the amber fields on its cover, and she said, “no silly, it’s a love story, a love tragedy, or something like that, and I’m going to watch it at the same time as you are, we’ll synchronize our watches, and then, when it’s over, you’re going to call me.”

And so he watched the movie knowing she was watching it at the very same time as him—they had in fact synchronized their watches and were set to begin exactly at eight o’clock—and he listened to the faraway, detached youngling narrator, detached yet full of wonder, and took in the images, and knew that she was taking them in as well, not just the same, in her way, but taking them in.

“It’s not a love story,” he said to her afterwards.

“There’s love in it.”

“With who, with both of them?”

“Maybe with both of them.”

“I don’t think that’s what it’s about.”

“Well what’s it about?”

“About how beautiful the world is.”

“Every movie and no movie is about that.”

“But you have to admit it’s kind of about that.”

  “There are lots of pretty shots,” she said, “but there’s a story, you know.”

“Well aside from a love story with two men and a woman who pretends one’s her brother, and rejects him, but the other one goes crazy anyhow and they both die in the dirt, what’s it about?”

“Maybe it’s about how beautiful the world is, and how the world destroys a man.”

Alice got her license two weeks later and, to celebrate, she and Tyler went for a drive in her family’s faded blue Chrysler station wagon, first to the McDonalds by the school where they waived to some kids hanging out on the curb, second to the 7-11, where they tried, and failed, to purchase cigarettes, and third to the driving range, where they hit fantastic balls in wonderful parabolas, slicing a little, but good distance, both of them.  He thought he ought to try to teach her how to swing, as he’d seen that before on television, but she already had a good swing, and he could get close to her later, and it wouldn’t have made any sense.  

Afterwards they drove along a high side street, running near a freeway, but cordoned off with tall pine trees and sycamores, and he looked out the window at the full moon hovering there like it always belonged, and listened to the wind passing, and to the sounds within the wind.  They came to a little detour area with parking spaces, which was deserted, and she parked the car.  He took off his seatbelt and kissed her, and she kissed him back, and soon they were tangled in the front seats, Tyler’s leg caught in the console, and she said, “Hold on.”

And he said, “What?”

“Try this,” she said.

“Ok.”

“Here, let’s try this.”

And so it went for several minutes more until Tyler’s pants were down around his ankles, and she said, “There, relax.”

And so he relaxed.

And then she said, “Hmmm.”

“What?” 

“No, it’s just I thought, you know.”

“No, what?”

“Donkey ears,” she said.

“Those are may ears,” he said.

“I know, and so all the girls always said . . .”

“What did they say?”

“Don’t be so obtuse.  You don’t have a donkey dick.  That’s all.  You have a regular sized dick.”

“How do you know what’s regular sized?”

“Oh come on.  I just know.  Regular’s not bad.  So you don’t have a donkey dick.”

“Were you only spending all this time with me because you thought I had a donkey dick?”

“Of course not.  I just thought, also, you know, you just had one.”

He rolled down the window and spat.  “Why are you rolling down the window and spitting?” She said.  “Why aren’t you, you know . . .” she looked down.  “I guess you don’t feel like it.”

“I wrote poetry for you,” he said.

“Well that’s sweet,” she said.  “I wish I hadn’t mentioned it, you know.  I shouldn’t have mentioned it.  I didn’t even mean to . . .”

“It’s probably—” he said.

“—it’s just so regular,” she said, “like there isn’t anything wrong with you.  That there isn’t anything wrong with you.  You’re just regular you, is what I’m saying.”

“I heard you,” he said, “the first time.”

They sat for awhile.  She slipped her sweater back on.  “Well do you want me to take you home?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She started the engine.  He thought she might ask, “Are you sure?” but she didn’t, and he felt foolish for expecting that, to think she would keep offering.  “Well,” he thought, “maybe this will blow over,” as though it weren’t ultimately up to him whether it would.  But maybe she would hold this against him, as much as he would hold it against her, he thought.  He wasn’t ready to turn things back around, but he thought, maybe in a day or two he would be, and he wondered if, during that time, she would grow stubborn and hard towards him.  He had to be ready to drop it though, or else he might lose his sense of pride.  People had written books about that, and it was true.  They drove down the access road, which wound through the forest, and Tyler thought, what a nice night it was, and how impervious the night was to all that had happened in Alice’s car.  He heard an owl, and watched a plane blink its way through a smattering of stars.  

“Well,” she said, “it’s still early.  Do you want to go anywhere else?”

“I am kind of hungry,” he said.

So they drove back to the McDonalds, and Alice parked the Chrysler in the parking lot, and they got out, and saw all the kids sitting outside on the curb with their bags of McDonalds.  The management only half-heartedly went over and told them to leave every couple hours or so, since they were paying customers, and the McDonalds, which was only a couple blocks from the high school, was so popular with students.  Tyler knew some of these kids well enough that it made sense to go over and talk to them.  Alice knew some of the same kids, and some different ones.  “Let’s go over and talk,” said Tyler.

“Of course,” she said. She slammed the door.

As they walked, he reached out for her hand.

Walter took his instrument out of its case, along with the cloth, which he rubbed along the mouthpiece.  The day had gone on for quite a long time, but it would continue.  For now, it would continue in solitude, at least, and with scales, unfortunately, for that was all he knew how to play so far.  Walter was a french horn novice.  But he was learning.  He put the instrument to his lips.  He blew.  He fingered the valves.  And the great beast made sounds, it wheezed and gave forth, producing simulacrum of notes, and Walter and his neighbors were treated to, if not music, a building block of music.  Walter lived on the third floor of a walk-up near a respectable part of the city, and his neighbors were a quiet, friendly sort; rare was the occasion when they banged on his walls and told him to be quiet because it was one o’clock.  On most nights, he started up at eight, and stopped playing at eleven, and there seemed to be, if not approval, a detente as to this situation with the french horn.

A man of forty rarely takes up a new musical instrument.  And Walter didn’t particularly need to fill the time.  He had a demanding job as a paralegal at a law firm in midtown, he had friends who went to bars and movies and galleries, and he had a cat who could eat up space in a lap like a job eats time.  And Walter would have been relatively content to come home, make dinner, and have a glass of wine in front of the television, like most regular middle-aged folk.  But there was something about the french horn.  Walter knew the sound, distinct from other horns, like a horn who’d had a glass of port and was expounding with its hand upon its belly.  It would make for a fine story if Walter had seen a french horn in a shop window passing by from work, and had been struck with the desire to own his very own, but reality relies less on circumstance:  Walter simply googled “french horns” one day and ordered a french horn from a warehouse.   

When it arrived, Walter signed for the enormous box and opened it right there in the hallway before taking it inside, using his keys for a box-cutter; it was inside of the case, and there was a slender set of directions for it, as though you could learn everything that was needed in one flimsy pamphlet, along with a few packets of scales and music.

At this time, of course, Walter could not read music.  He had to learn on his own, through a tutorial he found on the internet, and for many long months while the horn sat idle against the wall, Walter memorized the positions of the notes at night.  That was all his nights consisted of:  making a simple dinner, doing facetime with his daughter, only every other day, and memorizing the notes.      

During his daughter’s first visit after acquisition he gestured to the horn proudly.

“Look,” he said.  “A french horn.”

“What’s that?” she said.

“It’s a type of horn.”

“Do you play it?” she said.

“No, not yet.  Do you want me to play it?”

“No, not really.  Is it time,” she said, “for me to look at your phone?”

Walter had not been with a woman for some time.  “I think the french horn is your way of signaling capitulation,” said his friend Michael from work.  “Because, with the time it’ll take you to learn to play that thing, you’re basically ceding a year, two years, to the sands of time.”

Michael was sitting in Walter’s apartment, on the black leather couch, staring at a picture of a boy with a toy sailboat on the wall.  “You probably think,” said Michael, “you’re going to serenade women with that thing.  But don’t be ridiculous.  Nobody serenades with a fucking french horn.  It’s not amorous.  It’s like showing up for a date in a fucking powdered wig.  You could have bought a guitar and saved yourself a lot of time.”

But Walter had, in fact, been thinking he would serenade with a french horn.  He had even been thinking of a particular woman he would serenade.  She was out of reach, he knew; it was inappropriate, he knew.  She was a summer associate at the law firm where he worked.  Because he was a paralegal, and not an attorney, she didn’t report to him, and he had no say in whether she would get a full-time offer so, it seemed, that it was plausible.  But she was young, too young, twenty-two or twenty-three, while he was over forty, and he was ensconced at the place where she was engaged in a long-term interview.  And the summer associates, aside from a few official attorney guides, stuck to themselves, so there was little opportunity to make any headway.  But still, there were the times she needed help with Adobe Acrobat, underlining deposition testimony, or bookmarking briefs, and she came to him, and he told her, this isn’t even work you should be doing, this is work you should just be giving to me, but she wanted to know, so she stood over his desk, and he showed her.  Then she left.  It might be, he simply didn’t have enough going on in his life.  It might be, he was prone to unrealistic fantasies and infatuations.  But he had also seen her at the happy hour his firm sponsored, and she had been standing by the bar, her sharp elbow jutting against the bar, and her lips so tranquil and forbidding, like a fantastic party going on with people you don’t know, at a house you’ve never entered, and yet she had asked him for help, and yet she smiled at him, and made her eyebrows say, yes, come over here and talk to me.  And so he did.

Her name was Katrina.  The name evoked the storm, but he never brought it up, because that would have been obvious and slow, but he wondered if he would eventually, if it were an inevitability, that the stupidity of the remark would gain steam and eventually force its way out, whether he wanted it or not, but he concluded that even if so it would be best to delay that moment for as long as possible, that the more time that passed before he brought up the storm Katrina, the more likely that the miscue would be forgiven.

He asked her how they were treating her at the firm.

“Oh wonderfully,” she said, and made a small gesture, as if to say, just look at all this.

“And where are you living for the summer?” he asked, and she told him, and he said, “Oh, I love that neighborhood,” which was a lie; he had only spent five or six hours in that neighborhood during the past twenty years, two of which were spent looking for a house party (this was before iphones), two at a restaurant whose waitstaff he complained about on Yelp, and one or two socializing in a manner that could be replicated easily in any other neighborhood in the city.

“What made you decide to become a lawyer?” he said, regretting it bitterly as it came out.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I guess I wasn’t sure what else to do.”

“Do you say that at interviews?”

“I said it at this one.”

“Here?” he said.  She nodded. 

“I’ve found that people admire honesty,” she said, “and it’s easier that way, for me.  What made you decide to become a paralegal?”

“The money and the prestige.”

But this was all just prelude.  They spoke briefly about politics, and then their parents, and then what it was like growing up.  He had grown up right here in this city, to a dour father and a mother who smoked Virginia Slims, and remembered well the harsh winters, the feeling of putting on long-johns in the dark next to the radiator.  She had grown up on the far coast to a loving father who wore cardigans, and a mother devoted to cocker spaniels, and her; she knew she was lucky; she knew they weren’t very happy people and hadn’t been for some time, but they hid it from her in the belief that her perceptions of her childhood were tantamount, and outweighed the longings and disquietude.  She told him she liked foreign films and had enjoyed Parasite greatly.

“Well have you seen Wild Strawberries?” he asked.

“No,” she said.  “Who did that?”

“Ingmar Bergman,” he said.

“Oh yes,” she said.  “The Seventh Seal.”

“And Winter Light,” he said.  “And others.  There’s something about those films.”

“They’re stark?”

“And light, at the same time.  Stark and light.”

“I’m not sure how much lightness can be found in Winter Light.”

“It’s there,” he said, “in the spaces in between.”

“What did you say?”

“The spaces in between.  But you’ve seen Winter Light.”

“I have.”

“Well you’re well on your way.”

There was an awkward moment where nobody said anything, and she stood holding her wine glass crooked against her chest, looking with her solid chin exposed over his shoulder towards a group of people talking.  This was an interview, for her, all of it, and so he excused himself to use the bathroom, which he actually entered, and went into a stall, and stood there for a moment lest anyone get the impression that he hadn’t needed to use the restroom, after which he turned and exited.  He spoke to a few more people that evening, and then went home, and played the french horn.

He was just playing scales, basic patterns, but he repeated them over and over again, hitting the notes, keeping his breath even and smooth, and in so doing he successfully completed the scales and readied himself for something real.  When his daughter visited that next week he asked her, during a lull, just after she had looked at his phone, when she was looking contented and open to new experiences, whether she would listen to him play, that he could play a little, that he could play a few small things.  “No,” she said, “not today, I don’t think.”

One week later he played his first real piece.  It was Ode to Joy.  He sputtered through the opening salvo and only found his rhythm a third of the way through, but when he found it, he kept it, and he rang through the rest of it like a freight train bearing down on its course.  Afterwards he went into the kitchen to have a drink, and poured himself one, and stood there smiling, wondering who he should call to tell he’d made it through Ode to Joy, and settling on no one, instead sitting down on the sofa and asking Alexa to play Debussy.

Two weeks later at around five o’clock on a Friday, Michael came into his office.  “Well are you going?” he said.

“Going where?”

“To the dinner.”

“I don’t know about any dinner.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Michael.  “You were invited.”

“I didn’t get an email.”

“Well there’s a dinner and you pretty much have to go.”

“If I had to go, I would have been notified.”

“Ask Celeste.”

“You ask Celeste.” 

Michael called Celeste.  “Yes, hi Celeste.  Is Walter invited to the dinner?  Oh really?  Ok.  Thanks.”  He hung up the phone.  “You have to go.”

They had emailed the wrong Walter. The principal of the firm had invited Walter and others to a dinner to celebrate the fulfillment of the summer associates’ terms.  The dinner was taking place a long cab-ride away from the office, in Katrina’s neighborhood. 

Walter felt uneasy about a firm dinner.  He would have to make small talk with the person on his left, or on his right, or both of them.  And then he would have to shake hands with people, and maybe even the principal himself, and make small talk with them too.  There was no time to go home first, so he stayed an extra half-hour in his office, finishing up on some documents that could have been attended to in the morning, and took a cab to the restaurant.

There was traffic.  By the time he got there, the entire group had been at the bar long enough to go through several rounds of drinks.  He shook hands with Greg, and Melissa, and Andy.  He wondered again why he was there.  Then he saw Katrina, sitting on a small round sofa, leaning forward intently and looking up at another summer associate, who was talking.  She probably didn’t remember Walter’s name. 

He ordered a drink.  “Make it a double,” he said, and the bartender grunted and went over to the bottles, and he stood there and wondered how long the dinner would be, and whether there would be speeches.

There were in fact speeches.  The principal stood up shortly after the bread had arrived and announced that not only he, but everyone in attendance would be giving a speech about how much he or she appreciated the firm.  The principal said that the firm was like his family, and that although he could live in a ten million dollar home if he wanted to, what he wanted most was to see the smiling faces of his family members at work every day, attending to their tasks.  Then Greg stood up and said that he was the craziest motherfucker at the firm, and that he would do anything to win a case, and that everyone had better recognize that he was a crazy motherfucker.  When it was Walter’s turn, he said that he liked everybody very much, and that he liked working there, and that although he kept his door closed, he felt it was a family too.  When it was Katrina’s turn, she said that when she told her friends and family what she was doing, they didn’t know what to say, and that she treasured her experience above all other summer jobs she’d had so far. 

Katrina sat down next to Walter.  About an hour before, passing into the private room where the dinner was taking place, Walter had seen her sitting next to an empty chair and had, delicately but determinately, set his course through the crowd to fill that seat.  “Is there anyone sitting here?” he asked her.

“Nope,” she said.  “I guess you are, Walter.”

“Well that puts me in good company,” he said.

“That’s nice,” she said.

“Isn’t this your neighborhood?”

“Yes,” she said, “I walked over.  I saw Wild Strawberries,” she said, “on Netflix.”

“What did you think?”

“I could see both stark and light,” she said, “in that one.”

“I’m playing a musical instrument,” said Walter.

“Tonight?”

“No, I mean I’m learning to play it.  At home.”

“Which one?”

“The french horn,” he said.  “Just recently I played Ode to Joy on it.”

“Well that’s good,” she said.  “Sounds enriching.”

“Yes, I thought it would be good to learn something new.”

“Do the neighbors mind?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “but most of the time they accept it.  Tell me,” he said, “if you could go anywhere in the world, right now, where would you go?”

“Home,” she said.  And at this moment, the principal stood and announced there would be speeches.

The firm went through innumerable bottles of wine, and the speeches became more and more impassioned, but as Walter’s speech was complete, he found the means to relax and enjoy the scenery.

When a particular employee’s speech so moved him, the principal rose and provided a kind of addendum, and additionally, before some of the employees even spoke, if they were special employees, the principal delivered a prologue.  So there were many opportunities for the principal to practice his speech-making.  This speech-making was often colorful, such as when the principal recounted the story of when a particular employee had helped him out by acting as his go-between with the bartender when he was too drunk to communicate effectively enough to obtain drinks.  There were many moments when nothing but nervous laughter was appropriate.  In these moments, Walter and Katrina laughed nervously together.  When the speech-making was over, and every employee had given a satisfactory account of his love for his employer, the principal stood one more time, and thanked everyone for their kind words, and then a hush fell, before individual conversations commenced.

“So,” said Walter, “you wanted to go home.”

“Yes,” said Katrina, “but look what I would have missed.”

“It’s a story nobody can ever tell.”

“That’s bullcrap.  I’m telling my mom.”

There was an easiness to the conversation, and a familiarity that felt even truer for the fact that it was completely unearned.  He knew she might leave and never come back.  She knew he was forty and that there were things he had done, and which had been done to him, which affected his vision, and that these things would persist despite anything new that might happen.  And yet they chatted on, ignoring the other people at the table, and soon she was touching his shoulder to emphasize a remark, and soon he was touching her arm. 

When the dinner was over, groups of people gathered, some near the main table where the principal was signing the check, some in the doorway, and some outside, waiting for cabs.  Everyone else was standing up, so Walter said, a little flush with wine, and not certain how to keep things going, “I know a good quiet place where we could have another drink.”

“Another drink?” said Katrina.  “I don’t think that’s necessary.  But could you walk me home?”

It had started to rain, but Walter had brought an umbrella, and soon they were walking arm-in-arm down the streets of this artsy and celebrated neighborhood, stopping at intersections and waiting for the lights to change, saying very little, but picking up the badinage every now and then to stave off the awkwardness of what was, when the awkwardness was scraped away, a beautiful moment.

Katrina lived in a building run by nuns, where no men were allowed after five-o’clock.  But there was a small garden facing the building with park benches where they could sit awhile and talk.  As they passed into the garden, he was struck by its beauty, for in the moonlight he could see twisting roses running through a trellis, round and inviting topiary, and a small brook, from which the pleasant babbling sound of moving water rose.  And looking up into the sky, he saw the clouds moving slowly through the bright moon, and the stars, and through all of these observations, moments passed.  He looked at her, and saw how inviting her lips were, her eyelids set off in the moonlight, but she hadn’t spoken for some time, and the moment in which she had not spoken, and he had not spoken, expanded, until he felt his inaction pressing down on him like a hundred pounds of pressure.  He took a deep breath.  She re-crossed her legs.  Maybe it was because she was too young.  Maybe it was because she was on a three-month-long interview, and he couldn’t fuck it up.  Maybe it was because the moment was too perfect, and then that moment stretched out and enveloped him, her, the park, the city block, the city, opened up like a gash welling with blood, and like a gash, demanded all of his attention, called to him immediately, until the moment had swallowed up many succeeding moments, and action was impossible.  Or maybe the sky opened up, and the gods reached down and stole his animating force.  But after a little more time passed, she stood up, and pressed her skirt to her legs, and smiled.

“I better go in,” she said.

“It’s late,” he said.

He made it back to his apartment by 11:30 and, risking the ire of his neighbors, took out his case, and from his case, the horn.  He had played it before so, he figured, he could play it again.  Ode to Joy. 

We woke at seven and tumbled downstairs, and set up shop in the living room, which we called the TV room, a dark wood-paneled enclave with wispy drapes and eclectic furnishings, including a bent wood rocking chair and purple paisley sofa, where played the collected efforts of a host of artists, visual and voice and writers, upon the dusty TV screen, these efforts comprising episodes which played, end to end, for five or so hours, creating our every Saturday morning.  There were the Smurfs, and Gummi Bears, the Muppet Babies, the Real Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Alf the Animated Series, Ed Grimley, PeeWee’s Playhouse, the Wuzzles, and whatever else the network execs approved for that year, hitting on a trend, or satisfying some need that only they knew we had.  When the sun got bright, we took the sofa cushions and stacked them up against the window to blot out the light.  Our father brought us chocolate eclairs at around nine or nine-thirty, and I remember biting into mine, feeling the gushy insides break open just for me, just for my teeth.  And even the commercials were flanked by little apologia of introductions and goodbyes, promises from a claymation cowboy hat that after these messages we would indeed be right back.  And even the commercials themselves, after these little apologia, were commercials for us, selling us He-Man, Play-Doh, Barbie, G.I. Joe, Teddy Ruxpin, or My Buddy (or My Buddy’s female equivalent, Kid Sister). 

We gorged on entertainment made by network execs with an eye toward keeping us glued, and selling us things, and we were flattered to be sold to, patronized in the true sense of the word, for here was a morning in which our senses were addressed, our needs anticipated, our mannerisms aped, and while Nick was for Kids, Nickelodeon was just one cable channel among hundreds, whereas here were networks—all of them, in fact—and they were singing to us.

My sister and I had a rule that the power in the TV room must be divided on Saturday mornings and, therefore, the person who chose where he or she sat could not possess the remote control, and the person with the remote control must defer as to seating arrangements.  But my sister often broke that rule and took the remote and lay down on the couch and so I, with no other recourse, put a cushion on her head and sat on it until she gave me the remote.  My sister would tell me that she found it comfortable to have my weight upon her head, and maybe she did, as I didn’t weigh much, but it was more likely a war of attrition.  Whether she gave in or not, most days, I can’t remember, but in any event there was a thrill those Saturday mornings of experiencing a world like an adult, a world marketed to you. 

The thrill was intensified by the fact that you had to wait all week to see these shows and that, when you finally saw them, they were all on in a row, one after the other, like a fireworks’ finale, or Christmas morning.  Our father sat in the kitchen, reading his paper, in the rocking chair, and we watched cartoons.  That’s what was happening on this particular day when we heard a Muppet Baby say, “fuck you.”

It was the Beaker Baby, and he never said much of anything, except little beeps, but he had said it.  He said, “fuck you.”

“What did he say?” I said to my sister.

“Quiet,” she said, “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

“But did you hear what he said?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “it sounded like . . .”

“Beaker said ‘fuck you,’” I said.

“Edmond,” she said.  “I can’t believe what you just said.”

“Beaker said it.”

“No he didn’t.”

“Well what did he say?”

“Not that.”

“I’m telling Dad,” she said, and then, without giving me time to rethink my position, she shouted into the kitchen, “Dad, Edmond said the F word.”

“No,” I shouted, “they said it on the TV.”

“What?” my father said, and I could hear him moving swiftly from his seat to our sacred area.

“Edmond said the F word,” said my sister.

“Did you?” said my father.

“They said it on TV,” I said.  “Beaker, he said it.  I was only saying it to say what Beaker said.

“Edmond, now you’re telling me a lie,” he said.

“I swear,” I said.  “Karen heard it too.”

“Karen,” said my father.

“I didn’t hear that,” she said.

“Do you think,” said my father, “that perhaps Beaker said something which could have been misinterpreted in that manner?”

“You mean it sounded like the F word?” she said.

“Yes,” said my father.

She thought for a while.  “No,” she said, “No I don’t think so.”

“Edmond,” said my father, “you know what this means.”  I did.  A spanking was the worst thing, not only because it hurt, but because it completely erased your dignity, in that it proved your parent able, at any time, to pull down your pants, in public or in private, and interact with a personal area that normally you considered to be yours and yours only.  “Come on,” he said.

But just at that moment, on the television, Beaker said it again.  He looked right at the screen and said, “fuck you.”

“There!” I said.

“That did sound like–” my father said.

“No it didn’t,” said my sister.  “They don’t say that word on TV.  You can take him.”

“No, that did sound like he said it,” said my father.  “What channel is this?”

“CBS,” I said.

“Well maybe he’s saying something else,” said my father.  “Maybe I should watch this.”  He sat down in the square cushioned chair that I liked to make into a fort.  I was in the rocking chair; my sister was on the couch.  We watched Muppet Babies.  The thing was, Beaker wasn’t even a main character.  Beaker only came on every once in a while, and when he did, he only made noises.  He was the one you would least expect to tell you fuck you.  Now the regular babies, Fonzie, and Kermet and Miss Piggie, etc., were on an extended fantasy sequence related to The Secret of My Success, which Muppet Babies presumed that we had seen.  But then that ended and, somehow, Beaker was on the screen again, just staring at us, and he said, “Drink Malt Liquor.”

“Turn off this TV,” my father said, and my sister turned it off.

“I don’t want you watching this show again,” my father said.

“What’s malt liquor?” I said.  I knew what liquor was, and I knew what malted milk balls were, but I didn’t know they could be combined.

“Something you shouldn’t know about,” said my dad.

“Can we watch a different channel?” said my sister.

“I think you need some fresh air,” said my father.  “I think we all need some fresh air.”

“But Saturday mornings are for kids,” I said.  “And kids like TV.”

“You should let us watch a different channel,” said Karen.  “The problem was with a specific show on a specific channel.”

“That’s true,” I said.  “You can’t blame all of TV for what happens on one channel.”

“Ok,” said my father, “but no CBS.”

We turned it to NBC.  My father stayed in the room to make sure nothing untoward came out of the television.  The Gummi Bears were on.  Cubbi Gummi and Sunni Gummi had been captured by Duke Igthorn.  Toadie was making his usual sycophantic display.  Duke Igthorn had prepared torture devices to force Cubbi and Sunni into telling him the secret of Gummiberry juice.  But Zummi Gummi and Gruffi Gummi had hatched an escape plan.  At the nick of time, Sunni, using a shard of glass, untied herself, and as Duke Igthorn came charging, she took a moment to turn to the camera to say, “I can’t wait until I have premarital sex.”

“Turn it off!” said my father.

“What?” I said.  Karen turned it off.

“We won’t be having that in this house,” he said.

“We’ll change the channel,” I said.

“Nope,” he said.

“But Saturday mornings are all about kids,” I said.  “There’s no other day of the week when it’s all about us.”

“You’re going to have to find something else to get excited about,” said my dad.

“But we haven’t even tried ABC yet,” said my sister.  “Don’t you think we have to try ABC?”

“ABC never did anything to me,” I said, “and it never did anything to Karen, and it never did anything to you.”

“I don’t have a good feeling about ABC,” said my dad.

“This is our morning,” said Karen, “Our one morning out of all the other mornings when we have to get dressed and go places.  I understand, the other networks had some problems.  But I have a good feeling about ABC.  I don’t think ABC is going to say anything bad to us.”

“We can try it,” said my dad.

My sister turned the set to ABC.  It was My Little Pony.  Neither my sister nor I would normally deign to watch this show, but it was our only hope, so I watched intently as the Pegasus Ponies learned of trouble in the Paradise Estate from the Grundles, who told them that some trolls had been spotted in a meadow, readying a cauldron large enough to fit all the happy creatures in the environs.  The trolls were kidnapping magical creatures, one by one, and readying them for the pot.  They had to be stopped, said the Pegasus Ponies.  Then one of the Pegasus Ponies turned to the screen and said, “I like to take a cotton ball, and dip it in rubbing alcohol, and insert it into my–”

“That’s enough,” my father said.  “Turn it off.”

“But Dad,” my sister said, “I didn’t even hear what she said.”

“She’s putting a cotton-ball somewhere,” I said.  “Up her nose?”  My sister laughed.

“Then I smoke on some wee–” said the Pony, but my dad had grabbed the remote out of my sister’s hand and turned the TV off.

“No more TV,” he said.

“What will we do?” I said to my sister.  We thought for awhile.  We could sit there and pretend that the TV was on.  We could sit in the kitchen, or go upstairs to my mother’s and father’s bedroom and try watching the cable news with my mother.  I thought perhaps I’d go in the closet, where my sadness would find comfort amidst the old moth-eaten winter coats, and I did that, and sat there in the darkness, and there I found a kite that was only a little bent.  I took the kite out and showed it to my sister.  We took it to the elementary school playground and ran with it until the wind took it up, up into the air, the sun hitting the corners of the orange kite just so, the streamers playing in the breeze, and we watched the kite for several solid minutes.  Then we came home and played board games, Sorry! and The Game of Life and Operation, and squealed with delight as our fortunes swapped places, increased and receded, and then we went out into the backyard and gave an impromptu imaginary concert in the woods just behind the swing-set.  My sister played the flute, and I the banjo.  Then we built model sailboats and painted them painstakingly, getting every detail just right, and our mother took us to the reflecting pool in the city where we raced them against other children who had brought their own boats, running alongside our boats at the water’s edge and redirecting them when they went askance by tapping them with the long tapping rods we had brought just for that purpose.  The shadows grew long, the breeze picked up, and mother told us it was time to go home, where we sat laughing in the kitchen while our father made us pancakes for dinner.

So it went for weeks and weeks.  My father wrote angry letters to each of the networks, and to his congressman.  At school we asked our friends if they were still allowed to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, if their parents knew the cartoons were saying fuck all the time, but they just looked at us like we were crazy, and changed the subject.  My sister and I grew closer, as we were forced to interact in order to achieve the great things that we were now doing, and my mother and father seemed to be in a better mood when we came back into the house on Saturday nights.  Then one evening, after dinner, my father called my sister and I both downstairs.

“Come on,” he said, “Edmond, Karen, come down here at once.”  We came down the stairs with trepidation.

“Yes father,” said Karen.

My father stood by the head of the stairway and took out from his inner pocket some pieces of paper, which he waived about above his head, saying, “I have in may hands three letters, one from each of the networks–”

“Yes,” I said.

“–which broadcast such filth some ten Saturdays ago.  And do you know what each of these letters tells me?  I’ll read to you from this letter, because it happens to be at the top of my sheath, it’s the one from CBS.  It says: ‘We apologize sincerely for any distress you or your children may have felt upon watching Muppet Babies on Saturday the fifteenth.  We have instituted a new marketing campaign which divides children up into several categories and markets to them accordingly.  The categories are:  exemplary, good, mediocre, tempted, and naughty.  Your children, based on our market research, fall into the naughty category.  And therefore we directed to them the naughty version of the Muppet Babies which we aired on that Saturday the fifteenth.  You might think we were in error.  Children in the naughty category are often unsupervised, so we rarely receive a letter like yours from a parent of a naughty child.  However, rare cases do exist.  It may be that, despite your hands-on parenting, you have naughty children.  Keep in mind that our research does not err.  However, fortunes do change, and if we perceive that your children have risen above the naughty category and into the tempted, or even mediocre category, we will broadcast to your home an appropriately edited version of Muppet Babies.  Sincerely, etcetera and etcetera.”

“And the other two are more or less the same?” I said.

“They are,” said my father.

“Well they didn’t give individual scores,” I said, “so there’s no telling how naughty either of us is individually.  It might be that one of us, ahem, is really low on the scale, and the other one is somewhere in the middle.”

“Shove it up your ass!” said Karen.

“Karen,” said my father.  “At any rate, they gave the score to both of you, you each have access to the same television, so you’re going to have to accept it as your score.  I told you that your behavior would have repercussions in your lives and look, now it’s affected your TV.”

“So we’ll be good,” I said, “But how will we know that the networks have changed their broadcasts?  If we can’t watch it, we won’t ever know.”

“I know,” said my father, “and I could tell you, sorry kid, you’re out of luck, it’s kite flying and mystical adventures in the woods out back until you leave for college.  But that doesn’t seem right to me.  Saturday mornings are for kids.  So here’s what I’m going to do.  Your mother and I are going to watch cartoons every Saturday morning, and take in all the filth, until you rise up to a category which doesn’t get broadcast filth, at which time, we’ll tell you that you can watch Saturday morning cartoons again.”

“But what if we aren’t good?” I said.

“I’m prepared for that,” said my father.  “I’m prepared to watch the filthiest cartoons every Saturday morning until you go to college on the off-chance that they will stop being filthy, and you can watch them again, out of love.  Have you heard of Agape?  I Agape you, son.  And I Agape you, daughter.”

But we were going to be bad, and the networks were going to know it.  The next day at school my sister got sent to the principal’s office for taking the class gerbil out of its cage, shoving it under her classmate’s noses, and shouting that the class gerbil smelled like farts, and I put gum in a girl’s hair.  It was bad enough knowing that our parents would find out, but now we knew that the networks would categorize us in a manner that prevented us from enjoying the networks’ offerings.  And how counter-productive was that, I wondered, for if the networks were categorizing us in order to better market to us, that categorization was actually serving the opposing purpose of keeping us from watching the very shows that were trying to sell us things.  We wanted to be marketed to; all they had to do was give us an excuse to sit in front of the television.  And I was growing tired of enriching Saturdays and the pale sunlight of fall mornings (it was now fall). 

So one Saturday morning, listening to the television blaring lovely cartoons, and knowing my mother and father were downstairs in the wood-paneled TV room watching those cartoons, I crept down the stairs carefully, my footfalls causing none of the usual wheezing the stairs made at normal speeds, and crawled on my hands and knees to the entrance to the TV room, and laid there on my belly, and watched the bright and pleasing images, drawn just for me.  It was Alf, and a bird was making a nest in his hair.  After awhile I noticed my sister lying beside me.  My father sat in the rocking chair, and my mother lay on the couch, and Alf, drawn to diminutive, hairy perfection, was having an adventure on Melmac.  And we were all four of us enjoying that adventure.  Then Alf, who on this show went by his original name of Gordon Shumway, facing the screen, told us all, “love your family.”

Stuart stood behind the other boys and waited for the ball to come.  They were in a clump about five yards from the brick wall.  When the ball came, they jumped and spun, and caught it, and threw it again.  Sometimes it glanced against their shins or elbows, and fell onto the blacktop.  Then there was a clamoring run to the brick wall, to put hands on it before someone picked the ball up and threw it back at the wall.

If you didn’t get to the wall in time, if the ball bounced against the wall before your hands were on it, you got an out.  And if you got three outs, you did a spread-eagle.  That meant you put your hands on the wall, and leaned against it, with your butt sticking out, and the one who got your third out wound up and pegged the ball as hard as he could, and as accurately as he could, at your ass.  When they had first started playing the game, Stuart had come home with bruises on his ass, and had trouble sitting down in the bathtub.  Now he stood behind the other boys, where he could have time to catch it, if it got that far, and participate, without risking so many outs. 

Nobody said that he couldn’t stand there.  Nobody said that he wasn’t really in the game.  The game went on, with Stuart in back of it, as though that were the usual thing, and the boys laughed and caught and threw and spun, until the recess period was over.

Stuart’s and Jane’s cubbies were next to each other because their last names both started with A.  She was just leaving hers, and he was walking over to his to get some new pencils.

“Why do you stand back there on the blacktop?” said Jane.

“What do you mean?” said Stuart.

“You stand back there while the other boys are playing, but you aren’t playing.”

“Yes I am.”

“What are you doing?”  Jane stood up.  Stuart had his pencils and was ready to leave.

“I’m playing wall-ball,” said Stuart.  He took a step around Jane.

“You’re not really playing wall-ball,” she said.

“You’re not really playing wall-ball,” said Stuart.  “I am.”

“Oh.  Ok,” said Jane.

Stuart asked himself what Jane was doing during break.  She wasn’t doing anything.  The girls walked around and talked, about God knew what, and accomplished nothing during their break.  There were other boys who played imaginary games on the playground, climbing over the wooden towers, in constant conversation.  But the thing to do during break, the right thing to do, was to play a game.  And then you had the exultation of the game.  And afterwards, sometimes, you could say that you had won.  Or if not, you could say, you would have won if.  And you had the moments from the game, and could keep them with you when you sat down at your desk.

They played different games as the seasons passed.  When they played kickball, Stuart could participate more or less fully, and if the ball bounced off his chest, he made sure to grab it and throw it in the right direction at least.  When they played football, there were difficulties.  This was an acute embarrassment for Stuart, because he liked football best, but he could not catch the football, and soon they stopped throwing it to him.  That was true on most days, but on one day, Greg had singled him out to try to make him catch it, and kept throwing it to him, over and over again, saying, “just catch it,” and walking closer, until finally Stuart did catch it.  Stuart could never acknowledge the incident.

The day escaped, and it was time to go home.  The teacher listed the assignments on the board.  Stuart wrote them into his notepad.  Stuart found his backpack in his cubby, checked his notepad, and put the books and notebooks he would need inside his backpack.  While they were waiting for the older students to call their bus numbers over the intercom, the boys and girls played boardgames, which did not require anyone to catch anything.  Greg and most of the boys he played with at break were already gone, so he started a game of Othello with Jane while two other girls watched.

He placed a piece on the board.  “Stuart is a Wall-Ball-Star,” said Jane.  “He’s a Wall-Star,” she said.  The girls giggled.

“If you say so,” said Stuart.

“That’s why he stands in the back,” she said.

“It keeps my arm strong,” said Stuart.  “Why do you care what I do?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why do you keep talking about it?”

“I have to greet you in some manner,” she said.  “I have to be polite.”

Time passed, and they played the game steadily, with great concentration.  Stuart suddenly realized that he hadn’t been paying attention to the loudspeaker.  “Did they call Run 54?” he said.

“Maybe,” said one of the girls.

“Better run,” said Jane.

“Well did they or didn’t they?” he said.

“We don’t know,” said Jane.  “We weren’t listening for it.”

Stuart put on his backpack and walked quickly to the front of the school, where the patrol captains talked on the intercom.  The patrol captains would have a clipboard which listed all of the buses that had arrived, and would be able to say if Run 54 had already come or not.

“Has Run 54 come yet,” Stuart said to the older boy.  “Look at your clipboard.”

“I’m looking,” he said.  “It’s here.”

“It’s still here?”

“It arrived.  I don’t know, I think it arrived not long ago.”

Stuart went outside and looked in the windows of the buses for the little cards that said which run they were.  There was Run 4, and Run 12, and Run 7.  He didn’t see Run 54.  He went back inside and found the older boy with the clipboard.  He was laughing with a different older boy and older girl.

“Excuse me,” he said.  “Do you mark when they’ve already left?”

“What?”

“On your clipboard, do you mark when they’ve left.”

“No, I told you, we only mark when they arrive.”

“Run 54’s not out there.”

“Call your mom,” said the older boy.  “Ask Joyce if you can use her phone.” Joyce was the receptionist who sat in front of the principal’s office.  Stuart went inside.

“I need to call my mom,” he said.

“Excuse me,” said Joyce.  “This is an office.”

“I’m sorry,” said Stuart.  “I don’t know quite what to say.  I need to borrow your phone.  May I please borrow your phone?  I need to call my mother.”

“Shouldn’t you use a pay phone?” said Joyce.

“I don’t have any change.”

“Maybe if you asked me for some change I’d give you some.”

“Maybe you could just dial my mom’s number and then give me the phone?  That kid out there said you’d do it.”

“Well I don’t know what kid you’re talking about, but this is an office.”

“Well can I have some change?”

“May I have some change, please.”

“Can I please have some change?”

“Oh you’d probably get lost on the way to the pay phone.  Let me see.  Your ear is filthy.  Go out to the wash room and clean your face, and your ears, and your hands, with real soap, and dry them off, and then come back here.”

Stuart went into the bathroom to wash.  He rubbed the soap all over his hands, and his face, and his ears, and then he rinsed.  When he splashed the water in his ears, they felt clogged, and he had to tilt his head to get all of the detritus out.  He went back into the office.

“Did you wash up?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What’s your mother’s phone number?”  Stuart gave her his mother’s work phone number.  She passed him the phone.  Stuart spoke to his mom.

“What is it Stuart?” said his mother.

“I missed the bus.”

“Stuart,” she said.  “How did you miss the bus?”

“I didn’t hear it when they announced it.”

“Don’t you listen when they announce things?” she said, “Especially when you’re waiting for a bus?”

“I guess I got distracted,” he said.  “Can you come pick me up?”

“No,” she said, “I can’t leave work right now.  I can leave in an hour and a half.  You’re going to have to wait there for an hour and a half.”

“But there’s nothing to do for an hour and a half,” he said.  “They’ll close up.”

“Your teacher will leave the room open for you,” she said.  “She has to.  And you have to learn to pay attention when things are important.”

“Ok.”

“Ok, I love you.”

“I love you too.  I’ll be in my classroom.”

He walked back down the hall to his classroom.  About half of the kids had gone.  Jane was packing up the Othello game.

“Are you leaving?” said Stuart.

“No.  Alice left.”

“Was she beating you at Othello too when she left?”

“You were not beating me at Othello.”

“I was and I’d do it again if you took the game board back out.”

“That’s big talk for a guy who missed his bus,” said Jane.

“Yeah,” he said, “beating you at Othello and catching my bus are not the same thing.”

She put the box back on the floor and removed its top.  Then she took the board out and placed it on the floor too.  “What bus are you on?” said Stuart.

“I’m not.”

“Do you walk home?”

“My mom picks me up.”

“Every day, does she come inside the class room?”

“No, I go outside at 4:00 and then she’s there.”

“My mom’s not going to get here until around five or later,” said Stuart.  “But she’s coming right to the class room.”

“Well that’s nice.”

“Do you know why I stand in the back during wall-ball?” he said.

“No, not really.”

“Because I can’t catch the ball,” he said.  “But I want to be in the game.”

“Then why don’t you stand in front and learn to catch?’

“Because I just drop it.  And then they pelt me in the butt.”

“Do you really want to be in the game?  Or do you only think you want to be in the game?”

“No, I really want to be in the game.”

“What’s so good about it?”

“Well you like this game.”

“This game involves strategy.”

“Oh really?  What strategy are you using?”

“One that’s going to sink you fast, mister.”

“There’s strategy in wall-ball too.”

“Like standing in the back so you don’t get pelted in the butt?”

“That’s a strategy.  I think you try to throw it so it bounces off and hits someone in the shoulder or the leg,” he said.

“You think?”

“There’s something about a game that’s exultant,” said Stuart.

“Exultant?”

“There are moments that stay with you, and if you were in those moments, those moments are yours.”

“And if you weren’t in them?”

“They’re still sort of yours.”

“Do you feel that way in gym?”

“Yes but it’s better when we do it ourselves.”

“We do it?’

“I’m there, I’m just a little bit behind.”

“I don’t feel that way in gym.  But I like games,” she said.

“What kind of games.”

“This game, that I’m winning.”

“It’s too early to say.”  He put another piece on the board.  “You play soccer,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“Gym.”

“Yeah.”

“So is it like that?’

“Like what do you mean?”

“Aren’t there moments you were glad you were a part of?”

“I guess so.  I just don’t ever want to pretend to be a part of something I’m not a part of.”

They were quiet for awhile. 

“Maybe you should just risk getting pelted in the butt,” she said.

“It slows up the game.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of the game?” she said.

They played some more.  He won a game, and then she won a game.  Then Jane looked at the clock.  “My mom’s outside,” she said.  Then she looked down at the floor for a second, and then she looked him in the eye.  “Do you want a ride home?” she said.

“My mom will come here after work,” said Stuart.

“You can call her from home.”

“Ok,” he said.  “Thanks.”

They took their backpacks and went out into the empty hallway with light reflecting in the floor tiles, and then out into the bright day.

Jane’s mother rolled down the window.

“This is Stuart,” said Jane.  “We’re giving him a ride home.”

“Well ok,” said Jane’s mother, smiling, “where do you live, Stuart?”  Stuart gave the address. Both children sat in the backseat.  Jane rolled down the window.

“Stuart’s a gamer,” said Jane.

“Oh?”

“Jane’s mean,” I said.

“Are you mean to him?” said Jane’s mother.

“I’m giving him a ride home, aren’t I?”  said Jane.

“No,” said Jane’s mother, “your mother is giving Stuart a ride home.”
“Thank you,” said Stuart.  Jane put her hand out the window and made little waves with the passing air.  Because nobody had said anything for awhile, Stuart said, “Jane’s going to play wall-ball with us tomorrow at break.”

“No, I am not,” said Jane.

“Why not?” said Stuart.  “You like games.”

“Not that game,” she said.

“You’re afraid,” said Stuart.

“No, I prefer to spend my break with my friends,” said Jane.

“We’re friends,” said Stuart.

“No,” said Jane, “We’re not.”

“Jane,” said Jane’s mother.

“Do you know what wall-ball is about?” said Jane.  “Pegging in the butt.”

“That’s just something that happens,” said Stuart.  “The game is about throwing the ball at the wall.”

“And that sounds completely mindless doesn’t it, when you say it?”

“No, there’s a simplicity to it though.  It’s this house,” said Stuart.  The car pulled into the driveway.  “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

“So long,” said Jane, from out the window.

The next day, at morning break, they played wall-ball.  Greg had the ball, and he ran with Charlie and Dave at each side to a spot in the blacktop about five yards from the wall.  The rest of the boys followed them.  Stuart, when he reached the blacktop, wedged himself in the middle of the pack between Michael and Andy.  He had to nudge them a little.

“Hey,” said Andy.  “What are you doing?”

“Make room,” said Stuart.  “Make some space.”  They moved over.  Then Greg threw the ball at the wall.  It came back fast and Charlie caught it and threw it back.  Then it bounced one time, coming off the wall, before it landed in Michael’s hand.  After Michael threw, it tipped Dave’s hand, but then Andy caught it before it touched the ground.  After it hit his hand, Michael had started running to the wall, but since it hadn’t touched the ground, he could stop.  Then Andy threw it and it hit Stuart’s hand and then hit the blacktop, and Stuart ran to the wall, but Charlie picked it up and threw it at the wall before Stuart could get there. 

“You have one out,” said Charlie.

Meanwhile Jane and several girls were walking around the back of the swing-set, where the younger kids were swinging, with a good view of the blacktop.  Jane was carrying a stick.

“Why do they throw it at their butts?” said Annabel.

“I dunno,” said Jane.  “I think they need stakes.”

During approximately that amount of time Stuart got two more outs.  He was standing spread-eagle at the wall.  They watched Greg throw the ball as hard as he could at Stuart’s butt, and they watched Stuart’s butt jiggle with the impact.  Then they walked some more, and talked some more.  As they walked, they watched Stuart go up to the wall again and again.

Annabel laughed.  “He sure has to go to the wall a bunch of times,” she said.

The other girls laughed too.  “He can’t catch,” one of them said. 

“Then why does he play?” said another.

Suddenly Jane was seized with a mighty impulse.  She raised her arm.  “You go Stuart!” she screamed.  “You keep fighting!  You kill them!  Destroy!”

The other girls thought it was terribly funny, and they carried on about it for some time.

My family had an outdoor cat.  He stepped along the patio, his feet imprinting the snow, and made his way across the yard, where he killed many birds, and came into the small play house, with falling sideboards, where he had a blanket, and kept warm.  That was how I imagined it, that he was warm when he curled up in his blankets because, I suppose, a child tells himself things, and that he was happy when he killed those birds.  He sometimes left their carcasses in front of the door leading outside to the patio, which is where my father exited to bring the cat his food.  And I imagined that the cat had left those carcasses as a gift to my father, to show that he was thankful for the food he brought, and maybe it was so. 

I named the cat Gizmo.  My sister had wanted to call him Dirty Snowball, but my parents had voted for my selection.  I don’t know why.  Maybe they were secretly as much fans of Gremlins as I was at the time, or maybe they preferred fewer syllables, but it was the less descriptive of the two names, as Dirty Snowball did, somewhat, describe his appearance.  Gizmo was an American Wire-Haired.  Later I heard his type described as tuxedo cat.  He was short-haired, mostly black with white splotches, and with one tiny black splotch on his nose, which was otherwise pink. 

When I think of Gizmo, I imagine him in winter, stepping through the snow, on some secret business, but the time in question it was early fall, he was climbing into my father’s lap, and we were sitting on the front porch.  My father ran at the high school track on the weekends and, after his runs, he sat on the front porch in his running clothes, and I often sat next to him, and he told me things.  As we were sitting out there, in his usual custom, Gizmo the tuxedo cat made his way up the steps to the front porch, got on his hind legs, and leapt into my father’s lap.  My father said that Gizmo must like the smell of sweat in his lap, and I have no other explanation for why Gizmo always jumped into his lap after runs. 

“Can Gizmo be an indoor cat one day?” I asked.

“No,” said my father, “no, he can’t.”  I asked why not.  “Your mother says that Gizmo is an outdoor cat,” he said, “and that’s final.”

“What if he could learn to use the litter box?’

“No,” he said, “I don’t think he can.”

“I think there must be a way to teach him.”

“No,” said my father, “there isn’t.  He can’t learn.”

“Is he happy outdoors?” I said.  I thought he probably was happy, because he could kill birds, and that must be what every cat most wanted to do, but I thought that I would be happier if he were an indoor cat.  “Why do you like to run?” I asked my father.

“To stay in shape.”

“Does it feel fun to do it though?” I said.

“When you run, is it fun?” he said.

“If I’m playing a game it can be fun.”

“Well I’m not playing a game,” he said.  “There are parts of it that feel nice.  But there is pain too, the pain of exhaustion.  And afterwards it feels sweet.  But that’s going to be true of lots of things in life, is that they are painful when you do them, and you’re going to have to do them anyway.”

“Ok.”

“And as you do them, you learn to forget the pain.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Maybe not painful but unpleasant,” he said.

“Ok,” I said.

We had many family friends who also had cats and very few if any who had any dogs.  The Andersons had a girl my sister’s age and a boy my age, and they lived in a subdivision only a couple miles away, on streets lined with roughly similar looking brick houses and deep yards in back.  The Andersons had cat-doors and their cats roamed the environs at will and, even at night, the Andersons left their doors open so their cats could crawl over them while they slept, or so my mother said.  My father sometimes took me over to the Anderson’s house and sat with Mrs. Anderson in the kitchen while James and I played out back and, on one such occasion, we were standing in back, while our parents sat inside.

The air outside was still.  There were leaves on the ground, and walnuts in their bright green casings.  “It’s calm,” I said.

“You know what it’s calm before,” said James.  “The end.  When eveything’s over.”

“No, it’s calm before the storm,” I said.  I didn’t have a jacket on because it wasn’t that cold outside, but a gust came, and I put my hands in my pockets.

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said it was calm before everything was over.  And during a storm, everything’s not over,” I said.  He was looking away from me.  “Everything might be over after the storm.  But it might not be.  But either way, everything’s not calm before it’s over, that’s not the saying.”

“That’s not what I said.”  He looked me in the eye for a moment, then looked away.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s what you said.”

“Just because you heard it that way, that doesn’t mean I said it that way.”

“Yes you did.  You said it that way.”

We walked along the path that led to the swing set, which had, at its top, a large plastic rainbow with every color, except for red.  Instead of red there was pink.  “What do you want to do?” I said.

“I said it the way I meant to say it,” said James.  “And anyway, you can’t tell me what I meant to say.”

“You can’t say it wrong and pretend you said it right,” I said.  “You have to say ‘I said it wrong.’”

“I don’t have to listen to you.  You can’t tell me what to think.”

“Your rainbow doesn’t have any red in it,” I said.

“Yes it does.”

“Pink’s not red.”

“I think you should go home,” said James.

“Ok,” I said, “I’ll go get my dad.” 

They were sitting in the kitchen right where we left them, with two coffee cups on the table in front of them.  Mrs. Anderson was laughing.  My father raised his eyebrows and asked us what was up.

“It’s time for us to go home,” I told my dad.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.  “I think you two can play for a little while longer.”  He let his hand traipse over the table and onto my head.

“No, James says it’s time to go home.”

“Adam,” said my father, “what did you say to James?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Now that isn’t true,” he said.  “What did you say?”

“Chuck, if they’re not getting along, maybe it’s time for the day to come to an end.”  Mrs. Anderson smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“No, I think we’re going to have to get to the bottom of this, because Adam is going to have to learn what not to say to people one day, and now is a good time for him to start learning.  James, what did Adam say to you?”

“He told me what to think,” said James.

“Yes,” said my father, “yes, and that must have felt intolerable.”

“It wasn’t nice,” said James.

“No, I’ll be it wasn’t,” said my father.

“Chuck, you know, kids get into arguments and say things, and it’s probably best to let it go,” said Mrs. Anderson.

“No, Jane, I think this is what’s called a teachable moment.  Because Adam, what if your mother and I, what if we told you what you could and couldn’t think?  What would that be like?”

“That would be like this,” I said.  “It would be a lot like this.”

“Now you’re telling me you don’t know the difference between thinking and saying.”

“I say what I think,” I said, “so there isn’t any difference.”

“And that is the thing you’re going to have to learn today.  People do not say what they think all the time.  They just can’t do that.  And neither can you.  So if you have the urge to tell someone what to think, you’re going to have to just keep that thought inside of that head of yours, and hold it in there, and keep that mouth shut.  And so what are you going to have to do with James now?”

“Shake his hand?”

“Apologize.  Say you’re sorry to James for telling him what to think.”

“I’m sorry, James, that what you said was wrong, and that I pointed that out,” I said.

“That’s not what I said,” said my father. 

“I’m sorry for telling you what to think,” I said. 

“And what do you say, James,” said Mrs. Anderson.

“Ok.”

“And what do you mean by ok?”

“It’s ok.  You can stay.”

“But it probably is time to go home,” I said.

“Nope,” said my father.  “We’ll let you know when it’s time.  Go on, have fun,” he said, and we went back outside.

“Where’s your father?” I said to James, while we were standing outside.

“What?”

“Where’s your dad?”

“How should I know/’

“I know where my dad is.  He’s inside the kitchen with your mom.”

“So?”

“So don’t you know where your dad is. It’s Sunday,” I said, because it was Sunday.

“How should I know?” said James.  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Maybe he’s at work.”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk about this, like I said,” said James.

“Do you want to play G.I. Joe?” I said.

“Ok,” said James.

That night Gizmo came to my bedroom window.  My room overlooked a small rooftop under which sat the kitchen, and Gizmo sometimes climbed up the ladder leading to that roof and walked over to a little window which was just next to my bed.  And he pawed at that window and meowed at me, and I would look at him and wonder what it would be like to let him in.  So it happened that night.   I put my hand up to the window, and he pawed at the window where my hand was, and I watched him for awhile.  “I can’t let you in,” I said, “but it’s not so cold outside.”  And it wasn’t; it was early fall, and the nights, though getting longer, were still gentle.  But he kept meowing and pawing at the window, and he was looking into my eyes, and I was looking into his eyes. 

I went into my parents’ bedroom.  “Gizmo is at my window,” I said.  “He’s up on the roof, and he wants to come in.”

“He can’t come in,” said my father.  His face was in a pillow.

“He’s tapping at my window,” I said.

“Remember, honey,” said my mother, “he’s an outside cat.”

“But he wants to come inside.”

“Remember, don’t you know, an outside cat always wants to stay outside.  He doesn’t really want to come inside.  He’s happy outside.  That’s why he’s an outside cat.”

“He’s an outside cat because you said he couldn’t use the litter box,” I said.

“That’s true, remember, he could not use the littler box.  And that’s a requirement for an inside cat.”

“The Anderson’s cats–” I said.

“They all use the litter box,” said my mother. 

“Why can they use it?” I said.

“Their mother teaches them.  And Gizmo’s mother did not teach him.  So Gizmo is an outside cat.”

“You can’t let Gizmo inside,” said my father, “even if he’s tapping on the window.  Even if he’s right there.  Cats are feral creatures,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Cats are wild and what they truly want is to be outside with other wild animals and to try and kill them.  That’s what makes Gizmo truly happy.  And that’s what we have given him.”

“What your father says is true,” said my mother.

And so I said, “Ok,” and I went into my room and shut the lights off and laid down in bed and turned toward the wall until I only heard the meowing very faintly, until he might have turned away, and then I slept a deep and untroubled sleep.

A week or so later, the family attended an awards ceremony for my father’s work.  My father wore a tux with a black cummerbund and black silk bow tie which he tied himself—there were no clips—and I wore dark grey pants my parents had bought for me that winter, and a tie and blazer.  My mom and sister both wore dresses, but I don’t remember what they looked like.  We drove into the city down the freeway, the bright lights of passing cars flashing in the windows, and arrived at a hotel, where there were escalators, and up the escalators, tables with what looked like candles on them, but which were really electric lights, several bars, and lots of people mingling in fancy clothes. 

My sister wanted a shirley temple and so my mom took her to one of the bars.  “Are you going to get an award, Dad?” I asked him.

“No, I told you, I am not.”

“Then why do we go to these things?”

“To maintain professional contacts,” he said, “and because it’s nice to get dressed up and go out every once in a while.  Don’t you want to meet people?” he asked.  “Here, this is Andy Jacobs and his wife Cynthia.”  He brushed down my shoulders.  “Hi Andy, hi Cynthia,” he said, “here, please meet my son Adam.”

They smiled wide at me.  Andy had a big ring on his extended hand.  Cynthia had extremely red lips and an elaborate necklace.  “Hi,” I said to them, “pleased to meet you.”

“Have you seen John?” my father said.

“Oh, he’s right over there,” said Andy.  “He looks nervous.”

“I’d be nervous too,” said my father, “but he’s probably used to this sort of thing.”

I felt in my pocket for the camera I’d brought.  My sister Rebecca and I had a plan.  When adults got dressed up like this and had drinks together, we knew from television that they often had affairs.  Some people were bringing their families, but my father had confirmed the prior evening that some were not.  So my sister and I were going to catch the adults out, and take pictures of them having affairs.  We weren’t sure where they were likely to be, but there were lots of little doors in a hotel and, if no other option seemed likely, we could always check out the bathrooms.

“Meet Susan,” Dad said, and a very pretty blonde woman in a blue dress bent down and shook my hand.  It felt as though my entire vision were taken up with her face, though she wasn’t that close.

“What does Susan do?” I asked.

“Why don’t you ask her?” said my dad.

“What do you do?” I asked Susan.

“I’m a reporter,” she said.  “Like your father.”

“Susan covers Capitol Hill,” said my father.

“I thought that’s what you covered,” I said to him.

“No, your father is our White House correspondent,” said Susan.

“Are you getting an award tonight?” I asked Susan.

“No,” she said.  “I don’t think I am.”

My mother and Rebecca were coming back from the bar.  My mother had two champagne flutes in her hands.  She gave one to my father. 

“Susan interviewed Tom Foley last week,” said my father.

“Tom Foley,” said my mother.

“He had some interesting things to say,” said Susan, but in fact the conversation had become so dull that I could no longer hear it.  My sister was just standing there, looking at Susan.  I pulled the hem of her dress.

“Are you ready?” I whispered.

“I dunno,” she said, “I guess so.”

“Are you backing out?’

“No, I’m not backing out,” she whispered.  “I just think it’s a little early.”

“They see each other and then they get all excited,” I said.  “And then they start kissing.”

“Do you see anybody kissing?” said my sister.

“They don’t do it out in the open.”

“Well how are we going to get away from . . . ” she gestured to Mom and Dad.

I had thought we’d just wander off when they weren’t looking directly at us.  I just tilted my head as though to say that.

“I know,” said Rebecca, and then she turned to Dad.  “Adam and I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“Can you take them?” my dad said to my mom.

“We can take each other,” said Rebecca.

“No you can’t,” said my mom. 

“I’m old enough,” said Rebecca, “to walk to the bathroom.”

“And I’m old enough to walk there with her.”

“And you’ll wait for each other outside of the bathrooms when you’re finished?” said my father.  We nodded.  “It’s a closed party,” he said to my mother.  “Let them have a little freedom.”

I clutched the camera in my pocket as we walked side-by-side.  “Are you sure that affairs happen in bathrooms?” said Rebecca.

“I told you, I saw it on HBO.”

“Which one do you think?”

“I think the women’s.”

“No I think the men’s.”

“We have to stay together,” I said.  “If a man and woman are having an affair, which bathroom do they pick?”

“The men’s,” said my sister.

“Why?’

“I don’t know, because women would tell on each other.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“I think so,” she said.

We had come to the point of decision.  We faced the men’s and women’s signs just above the doors on opposite sides of the divider.  “Ok,” I said, and she took my arm and led me into the men’s bathroom.  There was a man inside standing at the urinal.

“Gross,” said Rebecca.

I pulled her over to the stalls.  “Come on,” I said.  I opened a stall and we went inside.  It was cramped in there.  It wasn’t designed for two children to stand in.

“I can’t breathe,” said Rebecca, so I leaned over the toilet to give her some space.  “It stinks,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“So do you think people are going to have sex in stalls like this?”

“No, probably not.”

“They’d have to do it over by the sinks,” she said.

“But then people could come in.”

“They’d have to bar the door,” she said.  “They bar the door.”

“You meant they lock it?”

“If it has a lock.”

“If it doesn’t have a lock then they probably don’t have sex in here,” I said.

Someone was jiggling the door.  “This is occupied,” said Rebecca.

“Excuse me,” said the voice.

“I’m in here,” I said.  “I’m using the bathroom.”

“There are four legs down there,” said the voice.

“Just use another stall,” said Rebecca.

“Open up,” said the voice.

“You can stand out there and go in your pants,” said Rebecca.  “I’m not coming out.”

The man found another stall.  I was thinking that Mom and Dad would be worried about us.  I was thinking that Susan might also be wondering when I’d come back.  I was starting to feel uncomfortable leaning over the toilet, and the camera was sticking into my leg.  “I don’t think we’re going to catch anybody,” I said to Rebecca.

“Me neither,” she said.

“I think we should go,” I said.

“Ok,” she said, and opened the door.  Another man was standing at one of the urinals.  Yet another man was washing his hands, looking down at them, and then up into the mirror. 

We walked back to where our parents and Susan were standing.  “We took care of business,” I said to my father.

“That’s good,” he said.  More people came over, and I shook their hands and said “pleased to meet you,” and I drank a Coke with one giant ice cube inside of it, and ate from the small plates of food that the waiters were bringing around.  Then came the ceremony itself.  My family sat at a small table with Susan and two other people.  Men in tuxedos like my father’s and women in shiny dresses stood on the stage and said things about reporting, the work, they called it, and some of them became very emotional, and then they would announce awards to particular reporters.  The reporters would come onto the stage and give speeches about the people who had made this all possible, and the important subjects of the pieces that had been awarded.  I thought primarily about G.I. Joe, and whether Hawk-Eye would ever accept an award, and the Transformers, and the Thundercats, and whether the Eye of Thundera could be considered to have been awarded, ever, or else simply passed to the most deserving.  Then it was over, and there was dancing in an adjacent ballroom.  I danced with Rebecca until we both got bored and tired, and then we sat down at small table next the dance floor.  We didn’t know where our mother and father went.  Then I saw them sitting at a different table not too far away from us.  My father had untied his bow-tie, and was sitting with his right leg crossed over his left leg, a cup of coffee in his hand, and talking to a man standing just to the side of him, a little sweaty, like a fighter who had just cut his lip and was now all the more into the fight.  My mother was leaning across the table with her head propped up in her hand.  She looked tired.  The song changed to a slow song, or sort-of-slow, sort-of-fast, it was The Time of My Life, by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, and I saw, from out of nowhere, Susan walking across the dance floor and over to my father’s and mother’s table.  She reached out and took my father’s hand.  And my father, in the middle of his conversation, got up, and ended the talk, and took Susan’s hand, and walked with her over to the dance floor, with my mother sitting right there at the table.  And I watched Susan put her arms around my father, and my father put his hands around her waist, and I watched them slow-dance all the way through that song, even through the sort-of fast parts.  Then my mother did a thing I did not expect.  She got up from the table and pressed her dress down against her legs, and walked to the dance floor, and put her hand on my father’s chest, and tugged it just a little, until he faced her, and then she tilted her head, and let her hand fall against her waist, and then she raised her hand and slapped him hard.  His face turned. 

Mom and Dad collected us silently and we all walked out of the ballroom.  On the ride home, nobody was saying anything, so I said, “Dad, why did Mom slap you?”

“Ask your mother,” he said.

“Mom–” I said.

“Because he was being disrespectful.” she said.

“To you?”

“To all of us.”

“I don’t feel like you disrespected me,” I said.

“Don’t say disrespected as a verb,” said my father, “say you don’t feel as though I was acting disrespectfully towards you.”

“I want to say it as a verb,” I said.

“Why did you dance with her?” said Rebecca.

“We’re not going to talk about this,” said my father.

“Why not?” said Rebecca.

“No, we’re not,” said my mom.  “It’s between your father and me.”

“But you said he was disrespecting all of us,” I said.

“Say, ‘acting disrespectfully towards,’” said my dad.

“If he was being disrespectful to all of us then we can all talk about it,” I said.

“No we can’t.” said my mom.  She turned up the music.  “We’re going to sit here,” she said, “and listen to this nice music,” and we sat and listened, but the next song was I’ve Had the Time of My Life by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes.  My mom changed the channel.

The next Friday, after school, I let all the air out of the tires of my sister’s new ten-speed.  James was over, and we were playing in the play room, where the bike was located.  I had a mechanical fishing game, which consisted of plastic mechanical fish in little spherical indentures, on a rotating surface, and there were plastic fishing rods with strings that you could dangle in the fish’s mouths to catch them.  The fishing poles had tiny rings at their ends around which the strings were tied.  And it occurred to us that you could take those rings and use them to press the valve on the bicycle wheel and that would let all of the air out.  We had been watching The Goonies and there is a scene in The Goonies in which the younger boys let all of the air out of the older sibling’s tires so that he cannot chase them down and keep them from starting their adventure.  And so it seemed that if we let all of the air out of my sister’s tires we would be started on an adventure too.  We did it.  We let all the air out of her tires and then soon thereafter James went home and I went upstairs to watch television.

About an hour later, while I was watching television—I recall that it was Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas—my sister was downstairs trying to take her new bike out for a ride before dinner.  I could hear just bits of distressed noises coming from down there, without being able to tell what exactly they were saying.  Some more time passed.  Then, as the Riverbottom Nightmare Band was singing their entry, my father walked into the room.

“Adam,” he said, “did you do something to your sister’s bicycle?”

“No,” I said.

“All the air has been let out of the tires.  We don’t have a pump, so we’re going to have to take the bike to a gas station.  Did you let all of the air out of the tires?”

“No,” I said.

“Well here’s the thing,” said my father, “is that you and James were playing in the play room this afternoon.  And before this afternoon, there was air in the tires.  And after you were playing in it, all of the air was gone.  Now what explains it?’

“Maybe there’s a hole in the tires,” I said.

“Now maybe there is.  But what if we thought that was true, and then we went and bought a new set of tires, and put them on, and all during the interim, your sister could not ride her bike, and then we of course paid the expense of the tires.  How would you feel about that?”

“Not good.”

“And that’s because you let the air out of the tires.”

“Yeah I did.  But you can put it back in, right?”

“Yes we can, but that’s not the point.  Your sister wanted to ride her bike today, and now she can’t do that, because you let the air out of her tires.  Now you can’t go and do a thing like that.”

“Ok.”

“And you can’t lie about it.”

“Ok.”

“And you can’t always trust someone who comes along to be as kind about it as your father if this happens again.”

“I won’t let the air out any more.”

“Any mischief,” he said.  “And what if I hadn’t been here to tell you I knew you did it, and you had gone on lying about it, what would that have been like?”

“Pretty bad.  But you’ll always be here.”

“No,” he said.  “No, there is no always in life.  There is an often and a usually and a for the foreseeable future, but there is no always.  Now go to your room and stay there until dinner, and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do with you.”

After dinner I went back to my room, per orders.  I had homework to do anyway, so I did it on my bed.  Then I went out to the bathroom and brushed my teeth.  It was early, but I wasn’t allowed to watch television, and there was nothing to do but sleep.  So I got in the bed and lay down.  I didn’t bother to close the door.  It took awhile, but eventually I could feel myself falling asleep.  And then I thought, is this what it feels like every night when I go to sleep?  And then I wondered if I would forget having had that thought when I woke up in the morning.  And then sleep came.  I don’t know how much time passed, but I think it was a significant amount of time.  I felt a tapping on the window.  Gizmo was there.  It had been cooler today, and I imagined that Gizmo must be cold.  I watched him pawing at the glass.  He had a noble look about him, like he knew what he was asking for and he was giving me room to decline, though he would keep asking.  I watched his little chin nodding up and down, and the black speck on his nose.  Then I unlatched the window, and I opened it right up.  Gizmo hopped inside.  “Gizmo!” I said.  But just as I said it Gizmo was at the edge of my room and then out the door.  I followed him.  “Gizmo,” I said in a hushed voice.  But he was already in my parents’ room.  I went inside.  I saw him hop on on the bed, were there was a single hump, and the hop off of it.  My mother pulled back the covers.

“What is it?’  she said.

“Gizmo,” I said.

“Did you let him inside?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Adam,” she said, in a way that pulled at my stomach.  “Where is he?”

“I think he’s under the bed.”

“Well you’d better turn on the lights,” she said, and I did, and she got out of bed.  Now the bed was empty.

“Where’s Dad?” I said.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Dad had to leave, and now we have to find that cat,” she said.  “Find the cat so we can go to sleep.”

“Dad would help us find the cat,” I said, thinking that he would be really good about a thing like that.

“Your dad is gone now help me find that goddamn cat,” said my mom.

Please click here for independent cinema